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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13561 ***
+
+BROWNING AS A PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS TEACHER
+
+by
+
+HENRY JONES
+
+Professor of Philosophy in the University of Glasgow
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING.]
+
+
+
+THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
+MY DEAR FRIENDS
+
+MISS HARRIET MACARTHUR
+AND
+MISS JANE MACARTHUR.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The purpose of this book is to deal with Browning, not simply as a poet,
+but rather as the exponent of a system of ideas on moral and religious
+subjects, which may fairly be called a philosophy. I am conscious that
+it is a wrong to a poet to neglect, or even to subordinate, the artistic
+aspect of his work. At least, it would be a wrong, if our final judgment
+on his poetry were to be determined on such a method. But there is a
+place for everything; and, even in the case of a great poet, there is
+sometimes an advantage in attempting to estimate the value of what he
+has said, apart from the form in which he has said it. And of all modern
+poets, Browning is the one who most obviously invites and justifies such
+a method of treatment. For, in the first place, he is clearly one of
+that class of poets who are also prophets. He was never merely "the idle
+singer of an empty day," but one for whom poetic enthusiasm was
+intimately bound up with religious faith, and who spoke "in numbers,"
+not merely "because the numbers came," but because they were for him the
+necessary vehicle of an inspiring thought. If it is the business of
+philosophy to analyze and interpret all the great intellectual forces
+that mould the thought of an age, it cannot neglect the works of one who
+has exercised, and is exercising so powerful an influence on the moral
+and religious life of the present generation.
+
+In the second place, as will be seen in the sequel, Browning has himself
+led the way towards such a philosophical interpretation of his work.
+For, even in his earlier poems, he not seldom crossed the line that
+divides the poet from the philosopher, and all but broke through the
+strict limits of art in the effort to express--and we might even say to
+preach--his own idealistic faith. In his later works he did this almost
+without any disguise, raising philosophical problems, and discussing all
+the _pros_ and _cons_ of their solution, with no little subtlety and
+dialectical skill. In some of these poems we might even seem to be
+receiving a philosophical lesson, in place of a poetic inspiration, if
+it were not for those powerful imaginative utterances, those winged
+words, which Browning has always in reserve, to close the ranks of his
+argument. If the question is stated in a prosaic form, the final answer,
+as in the ancient oracle, is in the poetic language of the gods.
+
+From this point of view I have endeavoured to give a connected account
+of Browning's ideas, especially of his ideas on religion and morality,
+and to estimate their value. In order to do so, it was necessary to
+discuss the philosophical validity of the principles on which his
+doctrine is more or less consciously based. The more immediately
+philosophical chapters are the second, seventh, and ninth; but they will
+not be found unintelligible by those who have reflected on the
+difficulties of the moral and religious life, even although they may be
+unacquainted with the methods and language of the schools.
+
+I have received much valuable help in preparing this work for the press
+from my colleague, Professor G.B. Mathews, and still more from Professor
+Edward Caird. I owe them both a deep debt of gratitude.
+
+HENRY JONES.
+
+1891.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+INTRODUCTION
+
+CHAPTER II.
+ON THE NEED OF A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
+
+CHAPTER III.
+BROWNING'S PLACE IN ENGLISH POETRY
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+BROWNING'S OPTIMISM
+
+CHAPTER V.
+OPTIMISM AND ETHICS: THEIR CONTRADICTION
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+BROWNING'S TREATMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE
+OF LOVE
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+BROWNING'S IDEALISM, AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL
+JUSTIFICATION
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+BROWNING'S SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM
+OF EVIL
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+A CRITICISM OF BROWNING'S VIEW OF
+THE FAILURE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+CHAPTER X.
+THE HEART AND THE HEAD.--LOVE AND
+REASON
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+  "Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
+  Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum." (_Faust_.)
+
+There is a saying of Hegel's, frequently quoted, that "a great man
+condemns the world to the task of explaining him." The condemnation is a
+double one, and it generally falls heaviest on the great man himself,
+who has to submit to explanation; and, probably, the last refinement of
+this species of cruelty is to expound a poet. I therefore begin with an
+apology in both senses of the term. I acknowledge that no commentator on
+art has a right to be heard, if he is not aware of the subordinate and
+temporary nature of his office. At the very best he is only a guide to
+the beautiful object, and he must fall back in silence so soon as he has
+led his company into its presence. He may perhaps suggest "the line of
+vision," or fix the point of view, from which we can best hope to do
+justice to the artist's work, by appropriating his intention and
+comprehending his idea; but if he seeks to serve the ends of art, he
+will not attempt to do anything more.
+
+In order to do even this successfully, it is essential that every
+judgment passed should be exclusively ruled by the principles which
+govern art. "Fine art is not real art till it is free"; that is, till
+its value is recognized as lying wholly within itself. And it is not,
+unfortunately, altogether unnecessary to insist that, so far from
+enhancing the value of an artist's work, we only degrade it into mere
+means, subordinate it to uses alien, and therefore antagonistic to its
+perfection, if we try to show that it gives pleasure, or refinement, or
+moral culture. There is no doubt that great poetry has all these uses,
+but the reader can enjoy them only on condition of forgetting them; for
+they are effects that follow the sense of its beauty. Art, morality,
+religion, is each supreme in its own sphere; the beautiful is not more
+beautiful because it is also moral, nor is a painting great because its
+subject is religious. It is true that their spheres overlap, and art is
+never at its best except when it is a beautiful representation of the
+good; nevertheless the points of view of the artist and of the ethical
+teacher are quite different, and consequently also the elements within
+which they work and the truth they reveal.
+
+In attempting, therefore, to discover Robert Browning's philosophy of
+life, I do not pretend that my treatment of him is adequate. Browning
+is, first of all, a poet; it is only as a poet that he can be finally
+judged; and the greatness of a poet is to be measured by the extent to
+which his writings are a revelation of what is beautiful.
+
+I undertake a different and a humbler task, conscious of its
+limitations, and aware that I can hardly avoid doing some violence to
+the artist. What I shall seek in the poet's writings is not beauty, but
+truth; and although truth is beautiful, and beauty is truth, still the
+poetic and philosophic interpretation of life are not to be confused.
+Philosophy must separate the matter from the form. Its synthesis comes
+through analysis, and analysis is destructive of beauty, as it is of all
+life. Art, therefore, resists the violence of the critical methods of
+philosophy, and the feud between them, of which Plato speaks, will last
+through all time. The beauty of form and the music of speech which
+criticism destroys, and to which philosophy is, at the best,
+indifferent, are essential to poetry. When we leave them out of account
+we miss the ultimate secret of poetry, for they cling to the meaning and
+penetrate it with their charm. Thought and its expression are
+inseparable in poetry, as they never are in philosophy; hence, in the
+former, the loss of the expression is the loss of truth. The pure idea
+that dwells in a poem is suffused in the poetic utterance, as sunshine
+breaks into beauty in the mist, as life beats and blushes in the flesh,
+or as an impassioned thought breathes in a thinker's face.
+
+But, although art and philosophy are supreme, each in its own realm, and
+neither can be subordinated to the uses of the other, they may help each
+other. They are independent, but not rival powers of the world of mind.
+Not only is the interchange of truth possible between them; but each may
+show and give to the other all its treasures, and be none the poorer
+itself. "It is in works of art that some nations have deposited the
+profoundest intuitions and ideas of their hearts." Job and Isaiah,
+Æschylus and Sophocles, Shakespeare and Goethe, were first of all poets.
+Mankind is indebted to them in the first place for revealing beauty; but
+it also owes to them much insight into the facts and principles of the
+moral world. It would be an unutterable loss to the ethical thinker and
+the philosopher, if this region were closed against them, so that they
+could no longer seek in the poets the inspiration and light that lead to
+goodness and truth. In our own day, almost above all others, we need the
+poets for these ethical and religious purposes. For the utterances of
+the dogmatic teacher of religion have been divested of much of their
+ancient authority; and the moral philosopher is often regarded either as
+a vendor of commonplaces or as the votary of a discredited science,
+whose primary principles are matter of doubt and debate. There are not a
+few educated Englishmen who find in the poets, and in the poets alone,
+the expression of their deepest convictions concerning the profoundest
+interests of life. They read the poets for fresh inspiration, partly, no
+doubt, because the passion and rapture of poetry lull criticism and
+soothe the questioning spirit into acquiescence.
+
+
+But there are further reasons; for the poets of England are greater than
+its moral philosophers; and it is of the nature of the poetic art that,
+while eschewing system, it presents the strife between right and wrong
+in concrete character, and therefore with a fulness and truth impossible
+to the abstract thought of science.
+
+                "A poet never dreams:
+  We prose folk do: we miss the proper duct
+  For thoughts on things unseen."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, lxxxviii.]
+
+It is true that philosophy endeavours to correct this fragmentariness by
+starting from the unity of the whole. But it can never quite get rid of
+an element of abstraction and reach down to the concrete individual.
+
+The making of character is so complex a process that the poetic
+representation of it, with its subtle suggestiveness, is always more
+complete and realistic than any possible philosophic analysis. Science
+can deal only with aspects and abstractions, and its method becomes more
+and more inadequate as its matter grows more concrete, unless it
+proceeds from the unity in which all the aspects are held together. In
+the case of life, and still more so in that of human conduct, the whole
+must precede the part, and the moral science must, therefore, more than
+any other, partake of the nature of poetry; for it must start from
+living spirit, go from the heart outwards, in order to detect the
+meaning of the actions of man.
+
+On this account, poetry is peculiarly helpful to the ethical
+investigator, because it always treats the particular thing as a
+microcosm. It is the great corrective of the onesidedness of science
+with its harsh method of analysis and distinction. It is a witness to
+the unity of man and the world. Every object which art touches into
+beauty, becomes in the very act a whole. The thing that is beautiful is
+always complete, the embodiment of something absolutely valuable, the
+product and the source of love; and the beloved object is all the world
+for the lover--beyond all praise, because it is above all comparison.
+
+  "Then why not witness, calmly gazing,
+  If earth holds aught--speak truth--above her?
+  Above this tress, and this, I touch
+  But cannot praise, I love so much!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Song_ (Dramatic Lyrics).]
+
+This characteristic of the work of art brings with it an important
+practical consequence, because being complete, it appeals to the whole
+man.
+
+"Poetry," it has been well said, is "the idealized and monumental
+utterance of the deepest feelings." And poetic feelings, it must not be
+forgotten, _are_ deepest; that is, they are the afterglow of the
+fullest activity of a complete soul, and not shallow titillations, or
+surface pleasures, such as the palate knows. Led by poetry, the
+intellect so sees truth that it glows with it, and the will is stirred
+to deeds of heroism. For there is hardly any fact so mean, but that when
+intensified by emotion, it grows poetic; as there is hardly any man so
+unimaginative, but that when struck with a great sorrow, or moved by a
+great passion, he is endowed for a moment with the poet's speech. A
+poetic fact, one may almost say, is just any fact at its best. Art, it
+is true, looks at its object through a medium, but it always seems its
+inmost meaning. In Lear, Othello, Hamlet, in Falstaff and Touchstone,
+there is a revelation of the inner truth of human life beyond the power
+of moral science to bestow. We do well to seek philosophy in the poets,
+for though they teach only by hints and parables, they nevertheless
+reflect the concrete truth of life, as it is half revealed and half
+concealed in facts. On the other hand, the reflective process of
+philosophy may help poetry; for, as we shall show, there is a near
+kinship between them. Even the critical analyst, while severing element
+from element, may help art and serve the poet's ends, provided he does
+not in his analysis of parts forget the whole. His function, though
+humble and merely preliminary to full poetic enjoyment, is not
+unimportant. To appreciate the grandeur of the unity of the work of art,
+there must be knowledge of the parts combined. It is quite true that the
+guide in the gallery is prone to be too talkative, and there are many
+who can afford to turn the commentator out of doors, especially if he
+moralizes. But, after all, man is not pure sensibility, any more than he
+is pure reason. And the aesthete will not lose if he occasionally allows
+those whom he may think less sensitive than himself to the charm of
+rhythmic phrase, to direct sober attention to the principles which lie
+embedded in all great poetry. At the worst, to seek for truth in poetry
+is a protest against the constant tendency to read it for the sake of
+the emotions which it stirs, the tendency to make it a refined amusement
+and nothing more. That is a deeper wrong to art than any which the
+theoretical moralist can inflict. Of the two, it is better to read
+poetry for ethical doctrines than for fine sensations; for poetry
+purifies the passions only when it lifts the reader into the sphere of
+truths that are universal.
+
+The task of interpreting a poet may be undertaken in different ways. One
+of these, with which we have been made familiar by critics of
+Shakespeare and of Browning himself, is to analyze each poem by itself
+and regard it as the artistic embodiment of some central idea; the other
+is to attempt, without dealing separately with each poem, to reach the
+poet's own point of view, and to reveal the sovereign truths which rule
+his mind. It is this latter way that I shall try to follow.
+
+Such dominant or even despotic thoughts it is possible to discover in
+all our great poets, except perhaps Shakespeare, whose universality
+baffles every classifier. As a rule, the English poets have been caught
+up, and inspired, by the exceeding grandeur of some single idea, in
+whose service they spend themselves with that prodigal thrift which
+finds life in giving it. Such an idea gives them a fresh way of looking
+at the world, so that the world grows young again with their new
+interpretation. In the highest instances, poets may become makers of
+epochs; they reform as well as reveal; for ideas are never dead things,
+"but grow in the hand that grasps them." In them lies the energy of a
+nation's life, and we comprehend that life only when we make clear to
+ourselves the thoughts which inspire it. It is thus true, in the deepest
+sense, that those who make the songs of a people make its history. In
+all true poets there are hints for a larger philosophy of life. But, in
+order to discover it, we must know the truths which dominate them, and
+break into music in their poems.
+
+Whether it is always possible, and whether it is at any time fair to a
+poet to define the idea which inspires him, I shall not inquire at
+present. No doubt, the interpretation of a poet from first principles
+carries us beyond the limits of art; and by insisting on the unity of
+his work, more may be attributed to him, or demanded from him, than he
+properly owns. To make such a demand is to require that poetry should be
+philosophy as well, which, owing to its method of intuition, it can
+never be. Nevertheless, among English poets there is no one who lends
+himself so easily, or so justly, to this way of treatment as Browning.
+Much of his poetry trembles on the verge of the abyss which is supposed
+to separate art from philosophy; and, as I shall try to show, there was
+in the poet a growing tendency to turn the power of dialectic on the
+pre-suppositions of his art. Yet, even Browning puts great difficulties
+in the way of a critic, who seeks to draw a philosophy of life from his
+poems. It is not by any means an easy task to lift the truths he utters
+under the stress of poetic emotion into the region of placid
+contemplation, or to connect them into a system, by means of the
+principle from which he makes his departure.
+
+The first of these difficulties arises from the extent and variety of
+his work. He was prodigal of poetic ideas, and wrote for fifty years on
+nature, art, and man, like a magnificent spendthrift of spiritual
+treasures. So great a store of knowledge lay at his hand, so real and
+informed with sympathy, that we can scarcely find any great literature
+which he has not ransacked, any phase of life which is not represented
+in his poems. All kinds of men and women, in every station in life, and
+at every stage of evil and goodness, crowd his pages. There are few
+forms of human character he has not studied, and each individual he has
+so caught at the supreme moment of his life, and in the hardest stress
+of circumstance, that the inmost working of his nature is revealed. The
+wealth is bewildering, and it is hard to follow the central thought,
+"the imperial chord, which steadily underlies the accidental mists of
+music springing thence."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_.]
+
+A second and still graver difficulty lies in the fact that his poetry,
+as he repeatedly insisted, is "always dramatic in principle, and so many
+utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine."[B] In his earlier
+works, especially, Browning is creative rather than reflective, a Maker
+rather than a Seer; and his creations stand aloof from him, working out
+their fate in an outer world. We often lose the poet in the imaginative
+characters, into whom he penetrates with his keen artistic intuition,
+and within whom he lies as a necessity revealing itself in their actions
+and words. It is not easy anywhere to separate the elements, so that we
+can say with certainty, "Here I catch the poet, there lies his
+material." The identification of the work and worker is too intimate,
+and the realization of the imaginary personage is too complete.
+
+[Footnote B: Pref. to _Pauline_, 1888.]
+
+In regard to the dramatic interpretation of his poetry, Browning has
+manifested a peculiar sensitiveness. In his Preface to _Pauline_ and in
+several of his poems--notably _The Mermaid_, the _House_, and the
+_Shop_--he explicitly cuts himself free from his work. He knew that
+direct self-revealment on the part of the poet violates the spirit of
+the drama. "With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart," said
+Wordsworth; "Did Shakespeare?" characteristically answers Browning, "If
+so, the less Shakespeare he!" And of himself he asks:
+
+  "Which of you did I enable
+    Once to slip inside my breast,
+  There to catalogue and label
+    What I like least, what love best,
+  Hope and fear, believe and doubt of,
+    Seek and shun, respect--deride?
+  Who has right to make a rout of
+    Rarities he found inside?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _At the Mermaid_.]
+
+He repudiates all kinship with Byron and his subjective ways, and
+refuses to be made king by the hands which anointed him. "He will not
+give his woes an airing, and has no plague that claims respect." Both as
+man and poet, in virtue of the native, sunny, outer-air healthiness of
+his character, every kind of subjectivity is repulsive to him. He hands
+to his readers "his work, his scroll, theirs to take or leave: his soul
+he proffers not." For him "shop was shop only"; and though he dealt in
+gems, and throws
+
+  "You choice of jewels, every one,
+  Good, better, best, star, moon, and sun,"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Shop_.]
+
+he still _lived_ elsewhere, and had "stray thoughts and fancies
+fugitive" not meant for the open market. The poems in which Browning has
+spoken without the disguise of another character are very few. There are
+hardly more than two or three of much importance which can be considered
+as directly reflecting his own ideas, namely, _Christmas Eve_ and
+_Easter Day, La Saisiaz_, and _One Word More_--unless, spite of the
+poet's warning, we add _Pauline_.
+
+But, although the dramatic element in Browning's poetry renders it
+difficult to construct his character from his works, while this is
+comparatively easy in the case of Wordsworth or Byron; and although it
+throws a shade of uncertainty on every conclusion we might draw as to
+any specific doctrine held by him, still Browning lives in a certain
+atmosphere, and looks at his characters through a medium, whose subtle
+influence makes all his work indisputably _his_. The light he throws on
+his men and women is not the unobtrusive light of day, which reveals
+objects, but not itself. Though a true dramatist, he is not objective
+like Shakespeare and Scott, whose characters seem never to have had an
+author. The reader feels, rather, that Browning himself attends him
+through all the sights and wonders of the world of man; he never escapes
+the sense of the presence of the poet's powerful personality, or of the
+great convictions on which he has based his life. Browning has, at
+bottom, only one way of looking at the world, and one way of treating
+his objects; one point of view, and one artistic method. Nay, further,
+he has one supreme interest, which he pursues everywhere with a
+constancy shown by hardly any other poet; and, in consequence, his works
+have a unity and a certain originality, which make them in many ways a
+unique contribution to English literature.
+
+This characteristic, which no critic has missed, and which generally
+goes by the name of "the metaphysical element" in his poetry, makes it
+the more imperative to form a clear view of his ruling conceptions. No
+poet, least of all a dramatic poet, goes about seeking concrete vehicles
+for ready-made ideas, or attempts to dress a philosophy in metaphors;
+and Browning, as an artist, is interested first of all in the object
+which he renders beautiful for its own sole sake, and not in any
+abstract idea it illustrates. Still, it is true in a peculiar sense in
+his case, that the eye of the poet brings with it what it sees. He is,
+as a rule, conscious of no theory, and does not construct a poem for its
+explication; he rather strikes his ideas out of his material, as the
+sculptor reveals the breathing life in the stone. Nevertheless, it may
+be shown that a theory rules him from behind, and that profound
+convictions arise in the heart and rush along the blood at the moment of
+creation, using his soul as an instrument of expression to his age and
+people.
+
+Of no English poet, except Shakespeare, can we say with approximate
+truth that he is the poet of all times. The subjective breath of their
+own epoch dims the mirror which they hold up to nature. Missing by their
+limitation the highest universality, they can only be understood in
+their setting. It adds but little to our knowledge of Shakespeare's work
+to regard him as the great Elizabethan; there is nothing temporary in
+his dramas, except petty incidents and external trappings--so truly did
+he dwell amidst the elements constituting man in every age and clime.
+But this cannot be said of any other poet, not even of Chaucer or
+Spenser, far less of Milton, or Pope or Wordsworth. In their case, the
+artistic form and the material, the idea and its expression, the beauty
+and the truth, are to some extent separable. We can distinguish in
+Milton between the Puritanic theology which is perishable, and the art
+whose beauty can never pass away. The former fixes his kinship with his
+own age, gives him a definite place in the evolution of English life;
+the latter is independent of time, a thing which has supreme worth in
+itself.
+
+Nor can it be doubted that the same holds good of Browning. He also is
+ruled by the ideas of his own age. It may not be altogether possible for
+us, "who are partners of his motion and mixed up with his career," to
+allow for the influence of these ideas, and to distinguish between that
+which is evanescent and that which is permanent in his work; still I
+must try to do so; for it is the condition of comprehending him, and of
+appropriating the truth and beauty he came to reveal. And if his
+nearness to ourselves makes this more difficult, it also makes it more
+imperative. For there is no doubt that, with Carlyle, he is the
+interpreter of our time, reflecting its confused strength and chaotic
+wealth. He is the high priest of our age, standing at the altar for us,
+and giving utterance to our needs and aspirations, our fears and faith.
+By understanding him, we shall, to some degree, understand ourselves and
+the power which is silently moulding us to its purposes.
+
+It is because I thus regard Browning as not merely a poet but a prophet,
+that I think I am entitled to seek in him, as in Isaiah or Aeschylus, a
+solution, or a help to the solution, of the problems that press upon us
+when we reflect upon man, his place in the world and his destiny. He has
+given us indirectly, and as a poet gives, a philosophy of life; he has
+interpreted the world anew in the light of a dominant idea; and it will
+be no little gain if we can make clear to ourselves those constitutive
+principles on which his view of the world rests.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ON THE NEED OF A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.
+
+  "Art,--which I may style the love of loving, rage
+  Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things
+  For truth's sake, whole and sole, not any good, truth brings
+  The knower, seer, feeler, beside,--instinctive Art
+  Must fumble for the whole, once fixing on a part
+  However poor, surpass the fragment, and aspire
+  To reconstruct thereby the ultimate entire."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xliv.]
+
+No English poet has spoken more impressively than Browning on the
+weightier matters of morality and religion, or sought with more
+earnestness to meet the difficulties which arise when we try to
+penetrate to their ultimate principles. His way of poetry is, I think,
+fundamentally different from that of any other of our great writers. He
+often seems to be roused into speech, rather by the intensity of his
+spiritual convictions than by the subtle incitements of poetic
+sensibility. His convictions caught fire, and truth became beauty for
+him; not beauty, truth, as with Keats or Shelley. He is swayed by ideas,
+rather than by sublime moods. Beneath the endless variety of his poems,
+there are permanent principles, or "colligating conceptions," as science
+calls them; and although these are expressed by the way of emotion, they
+are held by him with all the resources of his reason.
+
+His work, though intuitive and perceptive as to form, "gaining God by
+first leap" as all true art must do, leaves the impression, when
+regarded as a whole, of an articulated system. It is a view of man's
+life and destiny that can be maintained, not only during the impassioned
+moods of poetry, but in the very presence of criticism and doubt. His
+faith, like Pompilia's, is held fast "despite the plucking fiend." He
+has given to us something more than intuitive glimpses into, the
+mysteries of man's character. Throughout his life he held up the steady
+light of an optimistic conception of the world, and by its means
+injected new vigour into English ethical thought. In his case,
+therefore, it is not an immaterial question, but one almost forced upon
+us, whether we are to take his ethical doctrine and inspiring optimism
+as valid truths, or to regard them merely as subjective opinions held by
+a religious poet. Are they creations of a powerful imagination, and
+nothing more? Do they give to the hopes and aspirations that rise so
+irrepressibly in the heart of man anything better than an appearance of
+validity, which will prove illusory the moment the cold light of
+critical inquiry is turned upon them?
+
+It is to this unity of his work that I would attribute, in the main, the
+impressiveness of his deliverances on morality and religion. And this
+unity justifies us, I think, in applying to Browning's view of life
+methods of criticism that would be out of place with any other English
+poet. It is one of his unique characteristics, as already hinted, that
+he has endeavoured to give us a complete and reasoned view of the
+ethical nature of man, and of his relation to the world--has sought, in
+fact, to establish a philosophy of life. In his case, not without
+injustice, it is true, but with less injustice than in the case of any
+other poet, we may disregard, _for our purposes_, the artistic method of
+his thought, and lay stress on its content only. He has a right to a
+place amongst philosophers, as Plato has to a place amongst poets. There
+is such deliberate earnestness and systematic consistency in his
+teaching, that Hegel can scarcely be said to have maintained that "The
+Rational is the Real" with greater intellectual tenacity, than Browning
+held to his view of life. He sought, in fact, to establish an Idealism;
+and that Idealism, like Kant's and Fichte's, has its last basis in the
+moral consciousness.
+
+But, even if it be considered that it is not altogether just to apply
+these critical tests to the poet's teaching, and to make him pay the
+penalty for assuming a place amongst philosophers, it is certain that
+what he says of man's spiritual life cannot be rightly valued, till it
+is regarded in the light of his guiding principles. We shall miss much
+of what is best in him, even as a poet, if, for instance, we regard his
+treatment of love merely as the expression of elevated passion, or his
+optimism as based upon mere hope. Love was to him rather an indwelling
+element in the world, present, like power, in everything.
+
+  "From the first, Power was--I knew.
+    Life has made clear to me
+  That, strive but for closer view,
+    Love were as plain to see."[A]
+
+[Footnote: A _Reverie--Asolando_.]
+
+Love yielded to him, as Reason did to Hegel, a fundamental exposition of
+the nature of things. Or, to express the same thing in another way, it
+was a deliberate hypothesis, which he sought to apply to facts and to
+test by their means, almost in the same manner as that in which natural
+science applies and tests its principles.
+
+That Browning's ethical and religious ideas were for him something
+different from, and perhaps more than, mere poetic sentiments, will, I
+believe, be scarcely denied. That he held a deliberate theory, and held
+it with greater and greater difficulty as he became older, and as his
+dialectical tendencies grew and threatened to wreck his artistic
+freedom, is evident to any one who regards his work as a whole. But it
+will not be admitted so readily that anything other than harm can issue
+from an attempt to deal with him as if he were a philosopher. Even if it
+be allowed that he held and expressed a definite theory, will it retain
+any value if we take it out of the region of poetry and impassioned
+religious faith, into the frigid zone of philosophical inquiry? Could
+any one maintain, apart from the intoxication of religious and poetic
+sentiment, that the essence of existence is love? As long as we remain
+within the realm of imagination, it may be argued, we may find in our
+poet's great sayings both solacement and strength, both rest and an
+impulse towards higher moral endeavour; but if we seek to treat them as
+theories of facts, and turn upon them the light of the understanding,
+will they not inevitably prove to be hallucinations? Poetry, we think,
+has its own proper place and function. It is an invaluable anodyne to
+the cark and care of reflective thought; an opiate which, by steeping
+the critical intellect in slumber, sets the soul free to rise on the
+wings of religious faith. But reason breaks the spell; and the world of
+poetry, and religion--a world which to them is always beautiful and good
+with God's presence--becomes a system of inexorable laws, dead,
+mechanical, explicable in strict truth, as an equipoise of constantly
+changing forms of energy.
+
+There is, at the present time, a widespread belief that we had better
+keep poetry and religion beyond the reach of critical investigation, if
+we set any store by them. Faith and reason are thought to be finally
+divorced. It is an article of the common creed that every attempt which
+the world has made to bring them together has resulted in denial, or at
+the best in doubt, regarding all supersensuous facts. The one condition
+of leading a full life, of maintaining a living relation between
+ourselves and both the spiritual and material elements of our existence,
+is to make our lives an alternating rhythm of the head and heart, to
+distinguish with absolute clearness between the realm of reason and that
+of faith.
+
+Now, such an assumption would be fatal to any attempt like the present,
+to find truth in poetry; and I must, therefore, try to meet it before
+entering upon a statement and criticism of Browning's view of life. I
+cannot admit that the difficulties of placing the facts of man's
+spiritual life on a rational basis are so great as to justify the
+assertion that there is no such basis, or that it is not discoverable by
+man. Surely, it is unreasonable to make intellectual death the condition
+of spiritual life. If such a condition were imposed on man, it must
+inevitably defeat its own purpose; for man cannot possibly continue to
+live a divided life, and persist in believing that for which his reason
+knows no defence. We must, in the long run, either rationalize our faith
+in morality and religion, or abandon them as illusions. And we should at
+least hesitate to deny that reason--in spite of its apparent failure in
+the past to justify our faith in the principles of spiritual life--may
+yet, as it becomes aware of its own nature and the might which dwells in
+it, find beauty and goodness, nay, God himself, in the world. We should
+at least hesitate to condemn man to choose between irreflective
+ignorance and irreligion, or to lock the intellect and the highest
+emotions of our nature and principles of our life, in a mortal struggle.
+Poetry and religion may, after all, be truer then prose, and have
+something to tell the world that science, which is often ignorant of its
+own limits, cannot teach.
+
+The failure of philosophy in the past, even if it were as complete as is
+believed by persons ignorant of its history, is no argument against its
+success in the future. Such persons have never known that the world of
+thought like that of action makes a stepping stone of its dead self. He
+who presumes to decide what passes the power of man's thought, or to
+prescribe absolute limits to human knowledge, is rash, to say the least;
+and he has neither caught the most important of the lessons of modern
+science, nor been lifted to the level of its inspiration. For science
+has done one thing greater than to unlock the secrets of nature. It has
+revealed something of the might of reason, and given new grounds for the
+faith, which in all ages has inspired the effort to know,--the faith
+that the world is an intelligible structure, meant to be penetrated by
+the thought of man. Can it be that nature is an "open secret," but that
+man, and he alone, must remain an enigma? Or does he not rather bear
+within himself the key to every problem which he solves, and is it not
+_his_ thought which penetrates the secrets of nature? The success of
+science, in reducing to law the most varied and apparently unconnected
+facts, should dispel any suspicion which attaches to the attempt to
+gather these laws under still wider ones, and to interpret the world in
+the light of the highest principles. And this is precisely what poetry
+and religion and philosophy do, each in its own way. They carry the work
+of the sciences into wider regions, and that, as I shall try to show, by
+methods which, in spite of many external differences, are fundamentally
+at one with those which the sciences employ.
+
+There is only one way of giving the quietus to the metaphysics of poets
+and philosophers, and of showing the futility of a philosophy of life,
+or of any scientific explanation of religion and morals. It is to show
+that there is some radical absurdity in the very attempt. Till this is
+done, the human mind will not give up problems of weighty import,
+however hard it may be to solve them. The world refused to believe
+Socrates when he pronounced a science of nature impossible, and
+centuries of failure did not break man's courage. Science, it is true,
+has given up some problems as insoluble; it will not now try to
+construct a perpetually moving machine, or to square the circle. But it
+has given them up, not because they are difficult, but because they are
+unreasonable tasks. The problems have a surd or irrational element in
+them; and to solve them would be to bring reason into collision with
+itself.
+
+Now, whatever may be the difficulties of establishing a theory of life,
+or a philosophy, it has never been shown to be an unreasonable task to
+attempt it. One might, on the contrary, expect, _prima facie_, that in
+a world progressively proved to be intelligible to man, man himself
+would be no exception. It is impossible that the "light in him should be
+darkness," or that the thought which reveals the order of the world
+should be itself chaotic.
+
+The need for philosophy is just the ultimate form of the need for
+knowledge; and the truths which philosophy brings to light are implied
+in every rational explanation of things. The only choice we can have is
+between a conscious metaphysics and an unconscious one, between
+hypotheses which we have examined and whose limitations we know, and
+hypotheses which rule us from behind, as pure prejudices do. It is
+because of this that the empiric is so dogmatic, and the ignorant man so
+certain of the truth of his opinion. They do not know their postulates,
+nor are they aware that there is no interpretation of an object which
+does not finally point to a theory of being. We understand no joint or
+ligament, except in relation to the whole organism, and no fact, or
+event, except by finding a place for it in the context of our
+experience. The history of the pebble can be given, only in the light of
+the story of the earth, as it is told by the whole of geology. We must
+begin very far back, and bring our widest principles to bear upon the
+particular thing, if we wish really to know what it is. It is a law that
+explains, and laws are always universal. All our knowledge, even the
+most broken and inconsistent, streams from some fundamental conception,
+in virtue of which all the variety of objects constitute one world, one
+orderly kosmos, even to the meanest mind. It is true that the central
+thought, be it rich or poor, must, like the sun's light, be broken
+against particular facts. But there is no need of forgetting the real
+source of knowledge, or of deeming that its progress is a synthesis
+without law, or an addition of fact to fact without any guiding
+principles.
+
+Now, it is the characteristic of poetry and philosophy that they keep
+alive our consciousness of these primary, uniting principles. They
+always dwell in the presence of the idea which makes their object _one_.
+To them the world is always, and necessarily, a harmonious whole, as it
+is also to the religious spirit. It is because of this that the universe
+is a thing of beauty for the poet, a revelation of God's goodness to the
+devout soul, and a manifestation of absolute reason to the philosopher.
+Art, religion, and philosophy fail or flourish together. The age of
+prose and scepticism appears when the sense of the presence of the whole
+in the particular facts of the world and of life has been dulled. And
+there is a necessity in this; for if the conception of the world as a
+whole is held to be impossible, if philosophy is a futility, then
+poetry will be a vain sentiment and religion a delusion.
+
+Nor will the failure of thought, when once demonstrated in these upper
+regions, be confined to them. On the contrary, it will spread downwards
+to science and ordinary knowledge, as mountain mists blot out the
+valleys. For every synthesis of fact to fact, every attempt to know,
+however humble and limited, is inspired by a secret faith in the unity
+of the world. Each of the sciences works within its own region, and
+colligates its details in the light of its own hypothesis; and all the
+sciences taken together presuppose the presence in the world of a
+principle that binds it into an orderly totality. Scientific explorers
+know that they are all working towards the same centre. And, ever and
+anon, as the isolated thinker presses home his own hypothesis, he finds
+his thought beating on the limits of his science, and suggesting some
+wider hypothesis. The walls that separate the sciences are wearing thin,
+and at times light penetrates from one to the other. So that to their
+votaries, at least, the faith is progressively justified, that there is
+a meeting point for the sciences, a central truth in which the dispersed
+rays will again be gathered together. In fact, all the sciences are
+working together under the guidance of a principle common to them all,
+although it may not be consciously known and no attempt is made to
+define it. In science, as in philosophy and art and religion, there is a
+principle of unity, which, though latent, is really prior to all
+explanation of particular matters of fact.
+
+In truth, man has only one way of knowing. There is no fundamental
+difference between scientific and philosophic procedure. We always light
+up facts by means of general laws. The fall of the stone was a perfect
+enigma, a universally unintelligible bit of experience, till the
+majestic imagination of Newton conceived the idea of universal
+gravitation. Wherever mind successfully invades the realm of chaos,
+poetry, the sense of the whole, comes first. There is the intuitive
+flash, the penetrative glimpse, got no one knows exactly whence--though
+we do know that it comes neither from the dead facts nor from the vacant
+region of _a priori_ thought, but somehow from the interaction of both
+these elements of knowledge. After the intuitive flash comes the slow
+labour of proof, the application of the principle to details. And that
+application transforms both the principle and the details, so that the
+former is enriched with content and the latter are made intelligible--a
+veritable conquest and valid possession for mankind. And in this labour
+of proof, science and philosophy alike take their share.
+
+Philosophy may be said to come midway between poetry and science, and to
+partake of the nature of both. On the one side it deals, like poetry,
+with ideals of knowledge, and announces truths which it does not
+completely verify; on the other, it leaves to science the task of
+articulating its principles in facts, though it begins the articulation
+itself. It reveals subsidiary principles, and is, at the same time, a
+witness for the unity of the categories of science. We may say, if we
+wish, that its principles are mere hypotheses. But so are the ideas
+which underlie the most practical of the sciences; so is every forecast
+of genius by virtue of which knowledge is extended; so is every
+principle of knowledge not completely worked out. To say that philosophy
+is hypothetical implies no charge, other than that which can be
+levelled, in the same sense, against the most solid body of scientific
+knowledge in the world. The fruitful question in each case alike is, how
+far, if at all, does the hypothesis enable us to understand particular
+facts.
+
+The more careful of our scientific thinkers are well aware of the limits
+under which they work and of the hypothetical character of their
+results. "I take Euclidean space, and the existence of material
+particles and elemental energy for granted," says the physicist; "deny
+them, and I am helpless; grant them, and I shall establish quantitative
+relations between the different forms of this elemental energy, and make
+it tractable and tame to man's uses. All I teach depends upon my
+hypothesis. In it is the secret of all the power I wield. I do not
+pretend to say what this elemental energy is. I make no declaration
+regarding the actual nature of things; and all questions as to the
+ultimate origin or final destination of the world are beyond the scope
+of my inquiry. I am ruled by my hypothesis; I regard phenomena _from my
+point of view_; and my right to do so I substantiate by the practical
+and theoretical results which follow." The language of geology,
+chemistry, zoology, and even mathematics is the same. They all start
+from a hypothesis; they are all based on an imaginative conception, and
+in this sense their votaries are poets, who see the unity of being throb
+in the particular fact.
+
+Now, so far as the particular sciences are concerned, I presume that no
+one will deny the supreme power of these colligating ideas. The sciences
+do not grow by a process of empiricism, which rambles tentatively and
+blindly from fact to fact, unguided of any hypothesis. But if they do
+not, if, on the contrary, each science is ruled by its own hypothesis,
+and uses that hypothesis to bind its facts together, then the question
+arises, are there no wider colligating principles amongst these
+hypotheses themselves? Are the sciences independent of each other, or
+is their independence only surface appearance? This is the question
+which philosophy asks, and the sciences themselves by their progress
+suggest a positive answer to it.
+
+The knowledge of the world which the sciences are building is not a
+chaotic structure. By their apparently independent efforts, the outer
+kosmos is gradually reproduced in the mind of man, and the temple of
+truth is silently rising. We may not as yet be able to connect wing with
+wing, or to declare definitely the law of the whole. The logical order
+of the hypotheses of the various sciences, the true connection of these
+categories of constructive thought, may yet be uncertain. But, still,
+there _is_ such an order and connection: the whole building has its
+plan, which becomes more and more intelligible as it approaches to its
+completion. Beneath all the differences, there are fundamental
+principles which give to human thought a definite unity of movement and
+direction. There are architectonic conceptions which are guiding, not
+only the different sciences, but all the modes of thought of an age.
+There are intellectual media, "working hypotheses," by means of which
+successive centuries observe all that they see; and these far-reaching
+constructive principles divide the history of mankind into distinct
+stages. In a word, there are dynasties of great ideas, such as the idea
+of development in our own day; and these successively ascend the throne
+of mind, and hold a sway over human thought which is well-nigh absolute.
+
+Now, if this is so, is it certain that all _knowledge_ of these ruling
+conceptions is impossible? In other words, is the attempt to construct a
+philosophy absurd? To say that it is, to deny the possibility of
+catching any glimpse of those regulative ideas, which determine the main
+tendencies of human thought, is to place the supreme directorate of the
+human intelligence in the hands of a necessity which, _for us_, is
+blind. For, an order that is hidden is equivalent to chance, so far as
+knowledge is concerned; and if we believe it to exist, we do so in the
+face of the fact that all we see, and all we _can_ see, is the opposite
+of order, namely lawlessness. Human knowledge, on this view, would be
+subjected to law in its details and compartments, but to disorder as a
+whole. Thinking men would be organized into regiments; but the regiments
+would not constitute an army, nor would there be any unity of movement
+in the attack on the realm of ignorance.
+
+But, such is not the conclusion to which the study of human history
+leads, especially when we observe its movements on a large scale. On the
+contrary, it is found that history falls into great epochs, each of
+which has its own peculiar characteristics. Ages, as well as nations and
+individuals, have features of their own, special and definite modes of
+thinking and acting. The movement of thought in each age has its own
+direction, which is determined by some characteristic and fundamental
+idea, that fulfils for it the part of a working hypothesis in a
+particular science. It is the prerogative of the greatest leaders of
+thought in an age to catch a glimpse of this ruling idea when it first
+makes its appearance; and it is their function, not only to discover it,
+but also to reveal it to others. And, in this way, they are at once the
+exponents of their time, and its prophets. They reveal that which is
+already a latent but active power--"a tendency"; but they reveal it to a
+generation which will see the truth for itself, only after the potency
+which lies in it has manifested itself in national institutions and
+habits of thought and action. _After_ the prophets have left us, we
+believe what they have said; as long as they are with us, they are
+voices crying in the wilderness.
+
+Now, these great ideas, these harmonies of the world of mind, first
+strike upon the ear of the poet. They seem to break into the
+consciousness of man by the way of emotion. They possess the seer; he is
+divinely mad, and he utters words whose meaning passes his own calmer
+comprehension. What we find in Goethe, we find also in a manner in
+Browning: an insight which is also foresight, a dim and partial
+consciousness of the truth about to be, sending its light before it, and
+anticipating all systematic reflection. It is an insight which appears
+to be independent of all method; but it is in nature, though not in
+sweep and expanse, akin to the intuitive leap by which the scientific
+explorer lights upon his new hypothesis. We can find no other law for
+it, than that sensitiveness to the beauty and truth hidden in facts,
+which much reflection on them generates for genius. For these great
+minds the "muddy vesture" is worn thin by thought, and they hear the
+immortal music.
+
+The poet soon passes his glowing torch into the hands of the
+philosopher. After Aeschylus and Sophocles, come Plato and Aristotle.
+The intuitive flash grows into a fixed light, which rules the day. The
+great idea, when reflected upon, becomes a system. When the light of
+such an idea is steadily held on human affairs, it breaks into endless
+forms of beauty and truth. The content of the idea is gradually evolved;
+hypotheses spring out of it, which are accepted as principles, rule the
+mind of an age, and give it its work and its character. In this way,
+Hobbes and Locke laid down, or at least defined, the boundaries within
+which moved the thought of the eighteenth century; and no one acquainted
+with the poetic and philosophic thought of Germany, from Lessing to
+Goethe and from Kant to Hegel, can fail to find therein the source and
+spring of the constitutive principles of our own intellectual, social,
+political, and religious life. The virtues and the vices of the
+aristocracy of the world of mind penetrate downwards. The works of the
+poets and philosophers, so far from being filled with impracticable
+dreams, are repositories of great suggestions which the world adopts for
+its guidance. The poets and philosophers lay no railroads and invent no
+telephones; but they, nevertheless, bring about that attitude towards
+nature, man and God, and generate those moods of the general mind, from
+which issue, not only the scientific, but also the social, political and
+religious forces of the age.
+
+It is mainly on this account that I cannot treat the supreme utterances
+of Browning lightly, or think it an idle task to try to connect them
+into a philosophy of life. In his optimism of love, in his supreme
+confidence in man's destiny and sense of the infinite height of the
+moral horizon of humanity, in his courageous faith in the good, and his
+profound conviction of the evanescence of evil, there lies a vital
+energy whose inspiring power we are yet destined to feel. Until a spirit
+kindred to his own arises, able to push the battle further into the same
+region, much of the practical task of the age that is coming will
+consist in living out in detail the ideas to which he has given
+expression.
+
+I contend, then, not merely for a larger charity, but for a truer view
+of the facts of history than is evinced by those who set aside the poets
+and philosophers as mere dreamers, and conceive that the sciences alone
+occupy the region of valid thought in all its extent. There is a
+universal brotherhood of which all who think are members. Not only do
+they all contribute to man's victory over his environment and himself,
+but they contribute in a manner which is substantially the same. There
+are many points of superficial distinction between the processes of
+philosophy and science, and between both and the method of poetry; but
+the inner movement, if one may so express it, is identical in all. It is
+time to have done with the notion that philosophers occupy a
+transcendent region beyond experience, or spin spiritual cocoons by _a
+priori_ methods, and with the view that scientific men are mere
+empirics, building their structures from below by an _a posteriori_ way
+of thought, without the help of any ruling conceptions. All alike
+endeavour to interpret experience, but none of them get their principles
+from it.
+
+                           "But, friends,
+  Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
+  From outward things, whate'er you may believe."
+
+There is room and need for the higher synthesis of philosophy and
+poetry, as well as for the more palpable and, at the same time, more
+narrow colligating conceptions of the systematic sciences. The
+quantitative relations between material objects, which are investigated
+by mathematics and physics, do not exhaust the realm of the knowable, so
+as to leave no place for the poet's, or the philosopher's view of the
+world. The scientific investigator who, like Mr. Tyndall, so far forgets
+the limitations of his province as to use his natural data as premises
+for religious or irreligious conclusions, is as illogical as the popular
+preacher, who attacks scientific conclusions because they are not
+consistent with his theological presuppositions. Looking only at their
+primary aspects, we cannot say that religious presuppositions and the
+scientific interpretation of facts are either consistent or
+inconsistent: they are simply different. Their harmony or discord can
+come only when the higher principles of philosophy have been fully
+developed, and when the departmental ideas of the various sciences are
+organized into a view of the world as a whole. And this is a task which
+has not as yet been accomplished. The forces from above and below have
+not met. When they do meet, they will assuredly find that they are
+friends, and not foes. For philosophy can articulate its supreme
+conception only by interaction with the sciences; and, on the other
+hand, the progress of science, and the effectiveness of its division of
+labour, are ultimately conditioned by its sensitiveness to the hints,
+given by poets and philosophers, of those wider principles in virtue of
+which the world is conceived as a unity. There are many, indeed, who
+cannot see the wood for the trees, as there are others who cannot see
+the trees for the wood. Carlyle cared nothing though science were able
+to turn a sunbeam on its axis; Ruskin sees little in the advance of
+invention except more slag-hills. And scientific men have not been slow
+to return with interest the scorn of the moralists. But a more
+comprehensive view of the movement of human knowledge will show that
+none labour in vain. For its movement is that of a thing which _grows_!
+and in growth there is always movement towards both unity and
+difference. Science, in pursuing truth into greater and greater detail,
+is constrained by its growing consciousness of the unlimited wealth of
+its material, to divide and isolate its interests more and more; and
+thus, at the same time, the need for the poets and philosophers is
+growing deeper, their task is becoming more difficult of achievement,
+and a greater triumph in so far as it is achieved. Both science and
+philosophy are working towards a more concrete view of the world as an
+articulated whole. If we cannot quite say with Browning that "poets
+never dream," we may yet admit with gratitude that their dreams are an
+inspiration.
+
+  "Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear.
+    Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:
+  But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;
+    The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Abt Vogler_.]
+
+And side by side with the poetry that grasps the truth in immediate
+intuition, there is also the uniting activity of philosophy, which,
+catching up its hints, carries "back our scattered knowledge of the
+facts and laws of nature to the principle upon which they rest; and, on
+the other hand, develops that principle so as to fill all the details of
+knowledge with a significance which they cannot have in themselves, but
+only as seen _sub specie aeternitatis_."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Problem of Philosophy at the Present Time_, by
+Professor Caird.]
+
+So far we have spoken of the function of philosophy in the
+interpretation of the phenomena of the outer world. It bears witness to
+the unity of knowledge, and strives by the constructive criticism of the
+categories of science to render that unity explicit. Its function is, no
+doubt, valid and important, for it is evident that man cannot rest
+content with fragmentary knowledge. But still, it might be objected that
+it is premature at present to endeavour to formulate that unity.
+Physics, chemistry, biology, and the other sciences, while they
+necessarily presuppose the unity of knowledge, and attempt in their own
+way and in their own sphere to discover it, are making very satisfactory
+headway without raising any of the desperate questions of metaphysics as
+to its ultimate nature. For them it is not likely to matter for a long
+time to come whether Optimism or Pessimism, Materialism or Idealism, or
+none of them, be true. In any case the principles they establish are
+valid. Physical relations always remain true; "ginger will be hot i' the
+mouth, and there will be more cakes and ale." It is only when the
+sciences break down beneath the weight of knowledge and prove themselves
+inadequate, that it becomes necessary or advantageous to seek for more
+comprehensive principles. At present is it not better to persevere in
+the way of science, than to be seduced from it by the desire to solve
+ultimate problems, which, however reasonable and pressing, seem to be
+beyond our power to answer?
+
+Such reasonings are not convincing; still, so far as natural science is
+concerned, they seem to indicate that there might be no great harm in
+ignoring, for a time, its dependence on the wider aspects of human
+thought. There is no department of nature so limited, but that it may
+more than satisfy the largest ambition of the individual for knowledge.
+But this attitude of indifference to ultimate questions is liable at any
+moment to be disturbed.
+
+  "Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
+  A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
+  A chorus-ending from Euripides,--
+  And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
+  As old and new at once as nature's self,
+  To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
+  Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
+  Round the ancient idol, on his base again,--
+  The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.
+  There the old misgivings, crooked questions are."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Bishop Blougram's Apology._]
+
+Amongst the facts of our experience which cry most loudly for some kind
+of solution, are those of our own inner life. We are in pressing need of
+a "working hypothesis" wherewith to understand ourselves, as well as of
+a theory which will explain the revolution of the planets, or the
+structure of an oyster. And this self of ours intrudes everywhere. It is
+only by resolutely shutting our eyes, that we can forget the part it
+plays even in the outer world of natural science. So active is it in the
+constitution of things, so dependent is their nature on the nature of
+our knowing faculties, that scientific men themselves admit that their
+surest results are only hypothetical. Their truth depends on laws of
+thought which natural science does not investigate.
+
+But quite apart from this doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, which
+is generally first acknowledged and then ignored, every man, the worst
+and the best alike, is constrained to take some _practical_ attitude
+towards his fellows. Man is never alone with nature, and the connections
+with his fellows which sustain his intelligent life, are liable to bring
+him into trouble, if they are not to some degree understood.
+
+  "There's power in me," said Bishop Blougram, "and will to dominate
+  Which I must exercise, they hurt me else."
+
+The impulse to know is only a phase of the more general impulse to act
+and to be. The specialist's devotion to his science is his answer to a
+demand, springing from his practical need, that he realize himself
+through action. He does not construct his edifice of knowledge, as the
+bird is supposed to build its nest, without any consciousness of an end
+to be attained thereby. Even if, like Lessing, he values the pursuit of
+truth for its own sake, still what stings him into effort is the sense
+that in truth only can he find the means of satisfying and realizing
+himself. Beneath all man's activities, as their very spring and source,
+there lies some dim conception of an end to be attained. This is his
+moral consciousness, which no neglect will utterly suppress. All human
+effort, the effort to know like every other, conceals within it a
+reference to some good, conceived at the time as supreme and complete;
+and this, in turn, contains a theory both of man's self and of the
+universe on which he must impress his image. Every man must have his
+philosophy of life, simply because he must act; though, in many cases,
+that philosophy may be latent and unconscious, or, at least, not a
+definite object of reflection. The most elementary question directed at
+his moral consciousness will at once elicit the universal element. We
+cannot ask whether an action be right or wrong without awakening all the
+echoes of metaphysics. As there is no object on the earth's surface
+whose equilibrium is not fixed by its relation to the earth's centre, so
+the most elementary moral judgment, the simplest choice, the most
+irrational vagaries of a will calling itself free and revelling in its
+supposed lawlessness, are dominated by the conception of a universal
+good. Everything that a man does is an attempt to articulate his view of
+this good, with a particular content. Hence, man as a moral agent is
+always the centre of his own horizon, and stands right beneath the
+zenith. Little as he may be aware of it, his relation between himself
+and his supreme good is direct. And he orders his whole world from his
+point of view, just as he regards East and West as meeting at the spot
+on which he stands. Whether he will or not, he cannot but regard the
+universe of men and objects as the instrument of his purposes. He
+extracts all its interest and meaning from himself. His own shadow falls
+upon it all. If he is selfish, that is, if he interprets the self that
+is in him as vulturous, then the whole outer world and his fellow-men
+fall for him into the category of carrion, or not-carrion. If he knows
+himself as spirit, as the energy of love or reason, if the prime
+necessity he recognizes within himself is the necessity to be good, then
+the universe becomes for him an instrument wherewith moral character is
+evolved. In all cases alike, his life-work is an effort to rob the world
+of its alien character, and to translate it into terms of himself.
+
+We are in the habit of fixing a chasm between a man's deeds and his
+metaphysical, moral, and religious creed; and even of thinking that he
+can get on "in a sufficiently prosperous manner," without any such
+creed. Can we not digest without a theory of peptics, or do justice
+without constructing an ideal state? The truest answer, though it is an
+answer easily misunderstood, is that we cannot. In the sphere of
+morality, at least, action, depends on knowledge: Socrates was right in
+saying that virtuous conduct ignorant of its end is accidental. Man's
+action, so far as it is good or evil, is shot through and through with
+his intelligence. And once we clearly distinguish between belief and
+profession, between the motives which really impel our actions and the
+psychological account of them with which we may deceive ourselves and
+others, we shall be obliged to confess that we always act our creed. A
+man's conduct, just because he is man, is generated by his view of
+himself and his world. He who cheats his neighbour believes in
+tortuosity, and, as Carlyle says, has the Supreme Quack for his God. No
+one ever acted without some dim, though perhaps foolish enough,
+half-belief that the world was at his back; whether he plots good or
+evil he always has God as an accomplice. And this is why character
+cannot be really bettered by any peddling process. Moralists and
+preachers are right in insisting on the need of a new life, that is, of
+a new principle, as the basis of any real improvement; and such a
+principle necessarily carries in it a new attitude towards men, and a
+new interpretation of the moral agent himself and of his world.
+
+Thus, wherever we touch the practical life of man, we are at once
+referred to a metaphysic. His creed is the heart of his character, and
+it beats as a pulse in every action. Hence, when we deal with moral
+life, we _must_ start from the centre. In our intellectual life, it is
+not obviously unreasonable to suppose that there is no need of
+endeavouring to reach upward to a constructive idea, which makes the
+universe one, but when we act, such self-deception is not possible. As a
+moral agent, and a moral agent man always is, he not only may, but must
+have his working hypothesis, and that hypothesis must be all-inclusive.
+As there are natural laws which connect man's physical movements with
+the whole system of nature, so there are spiritual relations which
+connect him with the whole spiritual universe; and spiritual relations
+are always direct.
+
+Now it follows from this, that, whenever we consider man as a moral
+agent, that is, as an agent who converts ideas into actual things, the
+need of a philosophy becomes evident. Instead of condemning ideal
+interpretations of the universe as useless dreams, the foolish products
+of an ambition of thought which refuses to respect the limits of the
+human intellect, we shall understand that philosophers and poets are
+really striving with greater clearness of vision, and in a more
+sustained manner, to perform the task which all men are obliged to
+perform in some way or other. Man subsists as a natural being only on
+condition of comprehending, to some degree, the conditions of his
+natural life, and the laws of his natural environment. From earliest
+youth upwards, he is learning that fire will burn and water drown, and
+that he can play with the elements with safety only within the sphere
+lit up by his intelligence. Nature will not pardon the blunders of
+ignorance, nor tamely submit to every hasty construction. And this truth
+is still more obvious in relation to man's moral life. Here, too, and in
+a pre-eminent degree, conduct waits on intelligence. Deep will only
+answer unto deep; and great characters only come with much meditation on
+the things that are highest. And, on the other hand, the misconstruction
+of life's meaning flings man back upon himself, and makes his action
+nugatory. Byronism was driven "howling home again," says the poet. The
+universe will not be interpreted in terms of sense, nor be treated as
+carrion, as Carlyle said. There is no rest in the "Everlasting No,"
+because it is a wrong view of man and of the world. Or rather, the
+negative is not everlasting; and man is driven onwards by despair,
+through the "Centre of Indifference," till he finds a "Universal Yea"--a
+true view of his relation to the universe.
+
+There is given to men the largest choice to do or to let alone, at every
+step in life. But there is one necessity which they cannot escape,
+because they carry it within them. They absolutely must try to make the
+world their home, find some kind of reconciling idea between themselves
+and the forces amidst which they move, have some kind of working
+hypothesis of life. Nor is it possible to admit that they will find rest
+till they discover a true hypothesis. If they do not seek it by
+reflection--if, in their ardour to penetrate into the secrets of nature,
+they forget themselves; if they allow the supreme facts of their moral
+life to remain in the confusion of tradition, and seek to compromise the
+demands of their spirit by sacrificing to the idols of their childhood's
+faith; if they fortify themselves in the indifference of
+agnosticism,--they must reap the harvest of their irreflection.
+Ignorance is not harmless in matters of character any more than in the
+concerns of our outer life. There are in national and in individual
+history seasons of despair, and that despair, when it is deepest, is
+ever found to be the shadow of moral failure--the result of going out
+into action with a false view of the purpose of human life, and a wrong
+conception of man's destiny. At such times, the people have not
+understood themselves or their environment, and, in consequence, they
+come into collision with their own welfare. There is no experiment so
+dangerous to an age or people, as that of relegating to the common
+ignorance of unreasoning faith the deep concerns of moral conduct; and
+there is no attitude more pitiable than that which leads it to turn a
+deaf ear and the lip of contempt towards those philosophers who carry
+the spirit of scientific inquiry into these higher regions, and
+endeavour to establish for mankind, by the irrefragable processes of
+reason, those principles on which rest all the great elements of man's
+destiny. We cannot act without a theory of life; and to whom shall we
+look for such a theory, except to those who, undaunted by the
+difficulties of the task, ask once more, and strive to answer, those
+problems which man cannot entirely escape, as long as he continues to
+think and act?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+BROWNING'S PLACE IN ENGLISH POETRY.
+
+
+    "But there's a great contrast between him and me. He seems
+    very content with life, and takes much satisfaction in the
+    world. It's a very strange and curious spectacle to behold
+    a man in these days so confidently cheerful." (_Carlyle_.)
+
+It has been said of Carlyle, who may for many reasons be considered as
+our poet's twin figure, that he laid the foundations of his world of
+thought in _Sartor Resartus_, and never enlarged them. His _Orientirung_
+was over before he was forty years old--as is, indeed, the case with
+most men. After that period there was no fundamental change in his view
+of the world; nothing which can be called a new idea disturbed his
+outline sketch of the universe. He lived afterwards only to fill it in,
+showing with ever greater detail the relations of man to man in history,
+and emphasizing with greater grimness the war of good and evil in human
+action. There is evidence, it is true, that the formulae from which he
+more or less consciously set forth, ultimately proved too narrow for
+him, and we find him beating himself in vain against their limitations;
+still, on the whole, Carlyle speculated within the range and influence
+of principles adopted early in life, and never abandoned for higher or
+richer ideas, or substantially changed.
+
+In these respects, there is considerable resemblance between Carlyle and
+Browning. Browning, indeed, fixed his point of view and chose his
+battleground still earlier; and he held it resolutely to his life's
+close. In his _Pauline_ and in his Epilogue to _Asolando_ we catch the
+triumphant tone of a single idea, which, during all the long interval,
+had never sunk into silence. Like
+
+  "The wise thrush, he sings each song twice over,
+  Lest you should think he never could recapture
+  The first fine careless rapture!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Home Thoughts from Abroad_.]
+
+Moreover, these two poets, if I may be permitted to call Carlyle a poet,
+taught the same truth. They were both witnesses to the presence of God
+in the spirit of man, and looked at this life in the light of another
+and a higher; or rather, they penetrated through the husk of time and
+saw that eternity is even here, a tranquil element underlying the noisy
+antagonisms of man's earthly life. Both of them, like Plato's
+philosopher, made their home in the sunlight of ideal truth: they were
+not denizens of the cave taking the things of sense for those of
+thought, shadows for realities, echoes for the voices of men.
+
+But, while Carlyle fought his way into this region, Browning found
+himself in it from the first; while Carlyle bought his freedom with a
+great sum, the poet "was free born." Carlyle saw the old world faith
+break up around him, and its fragments never ceased to embarrass his
+path. He was _at_ the point of transition, present at the collision of
+the old and new, and in the midst of the confusion. He, more than any
+other English writer, was the instrument of the change from the Deism of
+the eighteenth century and the despair which followed it, into the
+larger faith of our own. But, for Browning, there was a new heaven and a
+new earth, and old things had passed away. This notable contrast between
+the two men, arising at once from their disposition and their moral
+environment, had far-reaching effects on their lives and their writings.
+But their affinity was deeper than the difference, for they are
+essentially heirs and exponents of the same movement in English thought.
+
+The main characteristic of that movement is that it is both moral and
+religious, a devotion to God and the active service of man, a
+recognition at once of the rights of nature and of spirit. It does not,
+on the one hand, raise the individual as a natural being to the throne
+of the universe, and make all forces social, political, and spiritual
+stoop to his rights; nor does it, on the other hand, deny these rights,
+or make the individual a mere instrument of society. It at least
+attempts to reconcile the fundamental facts of human nature, without
+compromising any of them. It cannot be called either individualistic or
+socialistic; but it strives to be both at once, so that both man and
+society mean more to this age than they ever did before. The narrow
+formulae that cramped the thought of the period which preceded ours have
+been broken through. No one can pass from the hedonists and
+individualists to Carlyle and Browning without feeling that these two
+men are representatives of new forces in politics, in religion, and in
+literature,--forces which will undoubtedly effect momentous changes
+before they are caught again and fixed in creeds.
+
+That a new epoch in English thought was veritably opened by them is
+indicated by the surprise and bewilderment they occasioned at their
+first appearance. Carlyle had Emerson to break his loneliness and
+Browning had Rossetti; but, to most other men at that day, _Sartor_ and
+_Pauline_ were all but unintelligible. The general English reader could
+make little of the strange figures that had broken into the realm of
+literature; and the value and significance of their work, as well as its
+originality, will be recognized better by ourselves if we take a hurried
+glance at the times which lay behind them. Its main worth will be found
+to lie in the fact that they strove to bring together again certain
+fundamental elements, on which the moral life of man must always rest,
+and which had fallen asunder in the ages which preceded their own.
+
+The whole-hearted, instinctive life of the Elizabethan age was narrowed
+and deepened into the severe one-sidedness of Puritanism, which cast on
+the bright earth the sombre shadow of a life to come. England was given
+up for a time to a magnificent half-truth. It did not
+
+    "Wait
+  The slow and sober uprise all around
+  O' the building,"
+
+but
+
+    "Ran up right to roof
+  A sudden marvel, piece of perfectness."[A]
+
+[Footnote A:_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
+
+After Puritanism came Charles the Second and the rights of the flesh,
+which rights were gradually clarified, till they contradicted themselves
+in the benevolent self-seeking of altruistic hedonism. David Hume led
+the world out of the shadow of eternity, and showed that it was only an
+object of the five senses; or of six, if we add that of "hunger." The
+divine element was explained away, and the proper study of mankind was,
+not man, as that age thought, but man reduced to his beggarly
+elements--a being animated solely by the sensuous springs of pleasure
+and pain, which should properly, as Carlyle thought, go on all fours,
+and not lay claim to the dignity of being moral. All things were reduced
+to what they seemed, robbed of their suggestiveness, changed into
+definite, sharp-edged, mutually exclusive particulars. The world was an
+aggregate of isolated facts, or, at the best, a mechanism into which
+particulars were fitted by force; and society was a gathering of mere
+individuals, repelling each other by their needs and greed, with a ring
+of natural necessity to bind them together. It was a fit time for
+political economy to supplant ethics. There was nowhere an ideal which
+could lift man above his natural self, and teach him, by losing it, to
+find a higher life. And, as a necessary consequence, religion gave way
+to naturalism and poetry to prose.
+
+After this age of prose came our own day. The new light first flushed
+the modern world in the writings of the philosopher-poets of Germany:
+Kant and Lessing, Fichte and Schiller, Goethe and Hegel. They brought
+about the Copernican change. For them this world of the five senses, of
+space and time and natural cause, instead of being the fixed centre
+around which all things revolved, was explicable only in its relation to
+a system which was spiritual; and man found his meaning in his
+connection with society, the life of which stretched endlessly far back
+into the past and forward into the future. Psychology gave way to
+metaphysics. The universal element in the thought of man was revealed.
+Instead of mechanism there was life. A new spirit of poetry and
+philosophy brought God back into the world, revealed his incarnation in
+the mind of man, and changed nature into a pellucid garment within which
+throbbed the love divine. The antagonism of hard alternatives was at an
+end; the universe was spirit-woven and every smallest object was "filled
+full of magical music, as they freight a star with light." There were no
+longer two worlds, but one; for "the other" world penetrated this, and
+was revealed in it: thought and sense, spirit and nature, were
+reconciled. These thinkers made room for man, as against the Puritans,
+and for God, as against their successors. Instead of the hopeless
+struggle of ascetic morality, which divides man against himself, they
+awakened him to that sense of his reconciliation with his ideal which
+religion gives: "Psyche drinks its stream and forgets her sorrows."
+
+Now, this is just the soil where art blooms. For what is beauty but the
+harmony of thought and sense, a universal meaning caught and tamed in
+the particular? To the poet each little flower that blooms has endless
+worth, and is regarded as perfect and complete; for he sees that the
+spirit of the whole dwells in it. It whispers to him the mystery of the
+infinite; it is a pulse in which beats the universal heart. The true
+poet finds God everywhere; for the ideal is actual wherever beauty
+dwells. And there is the closest affinity between art and religion, as
+its history proves, from Job and Isaiah, Homer and Aeschylus, to our own
+poet; for both art and religion lift us, each in its own way, above
+one-sidedness and limitation, to the region of the universal. The one
+draws God to man, brings perfection _here_, and reaches its highest form
+in the joyous life of Greece, where the natural world was clothed with
+almost supernatural beauty; the other lifts man to God, and finds this
+life good because it reflects and suggests the greater life that is to
+be. Both poetry and religion are a reconciliation and a satisfaction;
+both lift man above the contradictions of limited existence, and place
+him in the region of peace--where,
+
+    "with an eye made quiet by the power
+  Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
+  He sees into the life of things."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Tintern Abbey._]
+
+In this sense, it will be always true of the poet, as it is of the
+religious man, that
+
+    "the world,
+  The beauty and the wonder and the power,
+  The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades,
+  Changes, surprises,"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fra Lippo Lippi_.]
+
+lead him back to God, who made it all.
+
+He is essentially a witness to the divine element in the world.
+
+It is the rediscovery of this divine element, after its expulsion by the
+age of Deism and doubt, that has given to this century its poetic
+grandeur. Unless we regard Burke as the herald of the new era, we may
+say that England first felt the breath of the returning spirit in the
+poems of Shelley and Wordsworth.
+
+  "The One remains, the many change and pass;
+    Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly;
+  Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
+    Stains the white radiance of eternity,
+    Until death tramples it to fragments."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Adonais_.]
+
+"And I have felt," says Wordsworth,
+
+  "A presence that disturbs me with the joy
+  Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
+  Of something far more deeply interfused,
+  Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
+  And the round ocean and the living air,
+  And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
+  A motion and a spirit, that impels
+  All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
+  And rolls through all things."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Tintern Abbey_.]
+
+Such notes as these could not be struck by Pope, nor be understood by
+the age of prose. Still they are only the prelude of the fuller song of
+Browning. Whether he be a greater poet than these or not,--a question
+whose answer can benefit nothing, for each poet has his own worth, and
+reflects by his own facet the universal truth--his poetry contains in it
+larger elements, and the promise of a deeper harmony from the harsher
+discords of his more stubborn material. Even where their spheres touch,
+Browning held by the artistic truth in a different manner. To Shelley,
+perhaps the most intensely spiritual of all our poets,
+
+  "That light whose smile kindles the universe,
+  That beauty in which all things work and move,"
+
+was an impassioned sentiment, a glorious intoxication; to Browning it
+was a conviction, reasoned and willed, possessing the whole man, and
+held in the sober moments when the heart is silent. "The heavy and the
+weary weight of all this unintelligible world" was lightened for
+Wordsworth, only when he was far from the haunts of men, and free from
+the "dreary intercourse of daily life"; but Browning weaved his song of
+hope right amidst the wail and woe of man's sin and wretchedness. For
+Wordsworth "sensations sweet, felt in the blood and felt along the
+heart, passed into his purer mind with tranquil restoration," and issued
+"in a serene and blessed mood"; but Browning's poetry is not merely the
+poetry of the emotions however sublimated. He starts with the hard
+repellent fact, crushes by sheer force of thought its stubborn rind,
+presses into it, and brings forth the truth at its heart. The greatness
+of Browning's poetry is in its perceptive grip: and in nothing is he
+more original than in the manner in which he takes up his task, and
+assumes his artistic function. In his postponement of feeling to thought
+we recognize a new poetic method, the significance of which we cannot
+estimate as yet. But, although we may fail to apprehend the meaning of
+the new method he employs, we cannot fail to perceive the fact, which is
+not less striking, that the region from which he quarries his material
+is new.
+
+And yet he does not break away abruptly from his predecessors. His
+kinship with them, in that he recognizes the presence of God in nature,
+is everywhere evident. We quote one passage, scarcely to be surpassed by
+any of our poets, as indicative of his power of dealing with the
+supernaturalism of nature.
+
+  "The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,
+  And the earth changes like a human face;
+  The molten ore burst up among the rocks,
+  Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright
+  In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds,
+  Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask--
+  God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged
+  With foam, white as the bitter lip of hate,
+  When, in the solitary waste, strange groups
+  Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like,
+  Staring together with their eyes on flame--
+  God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride.
+  Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod:
+  But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes
+  Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure
+  Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between
+  The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost,
+  Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark
+  Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;
+  Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls
+  Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe
+  Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek
+  Their loves in wood and plain--and God renews
+  His ancient rapture. Thus 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]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus._]
+
+Such passages as these contain neither the rapt, reflective calm of
+Wordsworth's solemn tones, nor the ethereal intoxication of Shelley's
+spirit-music; but there is in them the same consciousness of the
+infinite meaning of natural facts. And beyond this, there is also, in
+the closing lines, a hint of a new region for art. Shelley and
+Wordsworth were the poets of Nature, as all truly say; Browning was the
+poet of the human soul. For Shelley, the beauty in which all things work
+and move was well-nigh "quenched by the eclipsing curse of the birth of
+man"; and Wordsworth lived beneath the habitual sway of fountains,
+meadows, hills and groves, while he kept grave watch o'er man's
+mortality, and saw the shades of the prison-house gather round him. From
+the life of man they garnered nought but mad indignation, or mellowed
+sadness. It was a foolish and furious strife with unknown powers fought
+in the dark, from which the poet kept aloof, for he could not see that
+God dwelt amidst the chaos. But Browning found "harmony in immortal
+souls, spite of the muddy vesture of decay." He found nature crowned in
+man, though man was mean and miserable. At the heart of the most
+wretched abortion of wickedness there was the mark of the loving touch
+of God. Shelley turned away from man; Wordsworth paid him rare visits,
+like those of a being from a strange world, made wise and sad with
+looking at him from afar; Browning dwelt with him. He was a comrade in
+the fight, and ever in the van of man's endeavour bidding him be of good
+cheer. He was a witness for God in the midmost dark, where meet in
+deathless struggle the elemental powers of right and wrong. For God is
+present for him, not only in the order and beauty of nature, but in the
+world of will and thought. Beneath the caprice and wilful lawlessness of
+individual action, he saw a beneficent purpose which cannot fail, but
+"has its way with man, not he with it."
+
+Now this was a new world for poetry to enter into; a new depth to
+penetrate with hope; and Browning was the first of modern poets to
+
+                              "Stoop
+  Into the vast and unexplored abyss,
+                 Strenuously beating
+  The silent boundless regions of the sky."
+
+It is also a new world for religion and morality; and to understand it
+demands a deeper insight into the fundamental elements of human life.
+
+To show this in a proximately adequate manner, we should be obliged, as
+already hinted, to connect the poet's work, not merely with that of his
+English predecessors, but with the deeper and more comprehensive
+movement of the thought of Germany since the time of Kant. It would be
+necessary to indicate how, by breaking a way through the narrow creeds
+and equally narrow scepticism of the previous age, the new spirit
+extended the horizon of man's active and contemplative life, and made
+him free of the universe, and the repository of the past conquests of
+his race. It proposed to man the great task of solving the problem of
+humanity, but it strengthened him with its past achievement, and
+inspired him with the conviction of its boundless progress. It is not
+that the significance of the individual or the meaning of his endeavour
+is lost. Under this new view, man has still to fight for his own hand,
+and it is still recognized that spirit is always burdened with its own
+fate and cannot share its responsibility. Morality does not give way to
+religion or pass into it, and there is a sense in which the individual
+is always alone in the sphere of duty.
+
+But from this new point of view the individual is re-explained for us,
+and we begin to understand that he is the focus of a light which is
+universal, "one more incarnation of the mind of God." His moral task is
+no longer to seek his own in the old sense, but to elevate humanity; for
+it is only by taking this circuit that he can come to his own. Such a
+task as this is a sufficiently great one to occupy all time; but it is
+to humanity in him that the task belongs, and it will therefore be
+achieved. This is no new one-sidedness. It does not mean, to those who
+comprehend it, the supplanting of the individual thought by the
+collective thought, or the substitution of humanity for man. The
+universal is _in_ the particular, the fact _is_ the law. There is no
+collision between the whole and the part, for the whole lives in the
+part. As each individual plant has its own life and beauty and worth,
+although the universe has conspired to bring it into being; so also, and
+in a far higher degree, man has his own duty and his own dignity,
+although he is but the embodiment of forces, natural and spiritual,
+which have come from the endless past. Like a letter in a word, or a
+word in a sentence, he gets his meaning from his context; _but the
+sentence is meaningless without him_. "Rays from all round converge in
+him," and he has no power except that which has been lent to him; but
+all the same, nay, all the more, he must
+
+  "Think as if man never thought before!
+  Act as if all creation hung attent
+  On the acting of such faculty as his."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
+
+His responsibility, his individuality, is not less, but greater, in that
+he can, in his thought and moral action, command the forces that the
+race has stored for him. The great man speaks the thought of his people,
+and his invocations as their priest are just the expression of their
+dumb yearnings. And even the mean and insignificant man is what he is,
+in virtue of the humanity which is blurred and distorted within him; and
+he can shed his insignificance and meanness, only by becoming a truer
+vehicle for that humanity.
+
+Thus, when spirit is spiritually discerned, it is seen that man is bound
+to man in a union closer than any physical organism can show; while "the
+individual," in the old sense of a being _opposed_ to society and
+_opposed_ to the world, is found to be a fiction of abstract thought,
+not discoverable anywhere, because not real. And, on the other hand,
+society is no longer "collective," but so organic that the whole is
+potentially in every part--an organism _of_ organisms.
+
+The influence of this organic idea in every department of thought which
+concerns itself with man is not to be measured. It is already fast
+changing all the practical sciences of man--economics, politics, ethics
+and religion. The material, being newly interpreted, is wrought into a
+new purpose, and revelation is once more bringing about a reformation.
+But human action in its ethical aspect is, above all, charged with a new
+significance. The idea of duty has received an expansion almost
+illimitable, and man himself has thereby attained new worth and
+dignity--for what is duty except a dignity and opportunity, man's chance
+of being good? When we contrast this view of the life of man as the life
+of humanity in him, with the old individualism, we may say that morality
+also has at last, in Bacon's phrase, passed from the narrow seas into
+the open ocean. And after all, the greatest achievement of our age may
+be not that it has established the sciences of nature, but that it has
+made possible the science of man. We have, at length, reached a point of
+view from which we may hope to understand ourselves. Law, order,
+continuity, in human action--the essential pre-conditions of a moral
+science--were beyond the reach of an individualistic theory. It left to
+ethical writers no choice but that of either sacrificing man to law, or
+law to man; of denying either the particular or the universal element in
+his nature. Naturalism did the first. Intuitionism, the second. The
+former made human action the _re_action of a natural agent on the
+incitement of natural forces. It made man a mere object, a _thing_
+capable of being affected by other things through his faculty of being
+pained or pleased; an object acting in obedience to motives that had an
+external origin, just like any other object. The latter theory cut man
+free from the world and his fellows, endowed him with a will that had no
+law, and a conscience that was dogmatic; and thereby succeeded in
+stultifying both law and morality.
+
+But this new consciousness of the relation of man to mankind and the
+world takes him out of his isolation and still leaves him free. It
+relates men to one another in a humanity, which is incarnated anew in
+each of them. It elevates the individual above the distinctions of time;
+it treasures up the past in him as the active energy of his knowledge
+and morality in the present, and also as the potency of the ideal life
+of the future. On this view, the individual and the race are possible
+only through each other.
+
+This fundamental change in our way of looking at the life of man is
+bound to abolish the ancient landmarks and bring confusion for a time.
+Out of the new conception, _i.e.,_ out of the idea of evolution, has
+sprung the tumult as well as the strength of our time. The present age
+is moved with thoughts beyond the reach of its powers: great aspirations
+for the well-being of the people and high ideals of social welfare flash
+across its mind, to be followed again by thicker darkness. There is
+hardly any limit to its despair or hope. It has a far larger faith in
+the destiny of man than any of its predecessors, and yet it is _sure_ of
+hardly anything--except that the ancient rules of human life are false.
+Individualism is now detected as scepticism and moral chaos in disguise.
+We know that the old methods are no longer of use. We cannot now cut
+ourselves free of the fate of others. The confused cries for help that
+are heard on every hand are recognized as the voices of our brethren;
+and we now know that our fate is involved in theirs, and that the
+problem of their welfare is also ours. We grapple with social questions
+at last, and recognize that the issues of life and death lie in the
+solution of these enigmas. Legislators and economists, teachers of
+religion and socialists, are all alike social reformers. Philanthropy
+has taken a deeper meaning; and all sects bear its banner. But their
+forces are beaten back by the social wretchedness, for they have not
+found the sovereign remedy of a great idea; and the result is in many
+ways sad enough. Our social remedies often work mischief; for we degrade
+those whom we would elevate, and in our charity forget justice. We
+insist on the rights of the people and the duties of the privileged
+classes, and thereby tend to teach greed to those for whom we labour,
+and goodness to those whom we condemn. The task that lies before us is
+plain: we want the welfare of the people as a whole. But we fail to
+grasp the complex social elements together, and our very remedies tend
+to sunder them. We know that the public good will not be obtained by
+separating man from man, securing each unit in a charmed circle of
+personal rights, and protecting it from others by isolation. We must
+find a place for the individual within the social organism, and we know
+now that this organism has not, as our fathers seemed to think, the
+simple constitution of a wooden doll. Society is not put together
+mechanically, and the individual cannot be outwardly attached to it, if
+he is to be helped, He must rather share its life, be the heir of the
+wealth it has garnered for him in the past, and participate in its
+onward movement. Between this new social ideal and our attainment,
+between the magnitude of our social duties and the resources of
+intellect and will at our command, there lies a chasm which we despair
+of bridging over.
+
+The characteristics of this epoch faithfully reflect themselves in the
+pages of Carlyle, with whose thoughts those of Browning are immediately
+connected. It was Carlyle who first effectively revealed to England the
+continuity of human life, and the magnitude of the issues of individual
+action. Seeing the infinite in the finite, living under a continued
+sense of the mystery that surrounds man, he flung explosive negations
+amidst the narrow formulae of the social and religious orthodoxy of his
+day, blew down the blinding walls of ethical individualism, and, amidst
+much smoke and din, showed his English readers something of the
+greatness of the moral world. He gave us a philosophy of clothes,
+penetrated through symbols to the immortal ideas, condemned all
+shibboleths, and revealed the soul of humanity behind the external modes
+of man's activity. He showed us, in a word, that the world is spiritual,
+that loyalty to duty is the foundation of all human good, and that
+national welfare rests on character. After reading him, it is impossible
+for any one who reflects on the nature of duty to ask, "Am I my
+brother's keeper?" He not only imagined, but knew, how "all things the
+minutest that man does, minutely influence all men, and the very look of
+his face blesses or curses whom-so it lights on, and so generates ever
+new blessing or new cursing. I say, there is not a Red Indian, hunting
+by Lake Winnipeg, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must
+smart for it: will not the price of beaver rise? It is a mathematical
+fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of
+gravity of the universe." Carlyle dealt the deathblow to the
+"laissez-faire" theory rampant in his day, and made each individual
+responsible for the race. He has demonstrated that the sphere of duty
+does not terminate with ourselves and our next-door neighbours. There
+will be no pure air for the correctest Levite to breathe, till the laws
+of sanitation have been applied to the moral slums. "Ye are my
+brethren," said he, and he adds, as if conscious of his too denunciatory
+way of dealing with them, "hence my rage and sorrow."
+
+But his consciousness of brotherhood with all men brought only despair
+for him. He saw clearly the responsibility of man, but not the dignity
+which that implies; he felt the weight of the burden of humanity upon
+his own soul, and it crushed him, for he forgot that all the good of the
+world was there to help him bear it, and that "One with God is a
+majority." He taught only the half-truth, that all men are united on the
+side of duty, and that the spiritual life of each is conditional on
+striving to save all. But he neglected the complement of this truth, and
+forgot the greatness of the beings on whom so great a duty could be
+laid. He therefore dignifies humanity only to degrade it again. The
+"twenty millions" each must try to save "are mostly fools." But how
+fools, when they can have such a task? Is it not true, on the contrary,
+that no man ever saw a duty beyond his strength, and that "man can
+because he ought" and ought only because he can? The evils an individual
+cannot overcome are the moral opportunities of his fellows. The good are
+not lone workers of God's purposes, and there is no need of despair.
+Carlyle, like the ancient prophet, was too conscious of his own mission,
+and too forgetful of that of others. "I have been very jealous for the
+Lord God of hosts; because the children of Israel have forgotten Thy
+covenant, thrown down Thine alters, and slain Thy prophets, and I, even
+I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away." He needed,
+beside the consciousness of his prophetic function, a consciousness of
+brotherhood with humbler workers. "Yet I have left Me seven thousand in
+Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth
+which hath not kissed him." It would have helped him had he remembered,
+that there were on all sides other workers engaged on the temple not
+made with hands, although he could not hear the sound of their hammers
+for the din he made himself. It would have changed his despair into joy,
+and his pity into a higher moral quality, had he been able to believe
+that, amidst all the millions against whom he hurled his anathemas,
+there is no one who, let him do what he will, is not constrained to
+illustrate either the folly and wretchedness of sin, or the glory of
+goodness. It is not given to any one, least of all to the wicked, to
+hold back the onward movement of the race, or to destroy the impulse for
+good which is planted within it.
+
+But Carlyle saw only one side of the truth about man's moral nature and
+destiny. He knew, as the ancient prophets did, that evil is potential
+wreck; and he taxed the power of metaphor to the utmost to indicate, how
+wrong gradually takes root, and ripens into putrescence and
+self-combustion, in obedience to a necessity which is absolute. That
+morality is the essence of things, that wrong _must_ prove its
+weakness, that right is the only might, is reiterated and illustrated on
+all his pages; they are now commonplaces of speculation on matters of
+history, if not conscious practical principles which guide its makers.
+But Carlyle never inquired into the character of this moral necessity,
+and he overlooked the beneficence which places death at the heart of
+sin. He never saw wrong except on its way to execution, or in the death
+throes; but he did not look in the face of the gentle power that led it
+on to death. He saw the necessity which rules history, but not the
+beneficent character of that necessity.
+
+The same limitations marred his view of duty, which was his greatest
+revelation to his age. He felt its categorical authority and its binding
+force. But the power which imposed the duty was an alien power, awful in
+majesty, infinite in might, a "great task-master"; and the duty itself
+was an outer law, written in letters of flame across the high heavens,
+in comparison with which man's action at its best sank into failure. His
+only virtue is obedience, and his last rendering even of himself is
+"unprofitable servant." In this he has much of the combined strength and
+weakness of the old Scottish Calvinism. "He stands between the
+individual and the Infinite without hope or guide. He has a constant
+disposition to crush the human being by comparing him with God," said
+Mazzini, with marvellous penetration. "From his lips, at times so
+daring, we seem to hear every instant the cry of the Breton Mariner--'My
+God protect me! My bark is so small, and Thy ocean so vast.'" His
+reconciliation of God and man was incomplete: God seemed to him to have
+manifested Himself _to_ man but not _in_ man. He did not see that "the
+Eternity which is before and behind us is also within us."
+
+But the moral law which commands is just the reflection of the
+aspirations of progressive man, who always creates his own horizon. The
+extension of duty is the objective counterpart of man's growth; a proof
+of victory and not of failure, a sign that man is mounting upwards. And,
+if so, it is irrational to infer the impossibility of success from the
+magnitude of the demands of a moral law, which is itself the promise of
+a better future. The hard problems set for us by our social environment
+are recognized as set by ourselves; for, in matters of morality, the eye
+sees only what the heart prompts. The very statement of the difficulty
+contains the potency of its solution; for evil, when understood, is on
+the way towards being overcome, and the good, when seen, contains the
+promise of its own fulfilment. It is ignorance which is ruinous, as when
+the cries of humanity beat against a deaf ear; and we can take a
+comfort, denied to Carlyle, from the fact that he has made us awake to
+our social duties. He has let loose the confusion upon us, and it is
+only natural that we should at first be overcome by a sense of
+bewildered helplessness. But this very sense contains the germ of hope,
+and England is struggling to its feet to wrestle with its wrongs.
+Carlyle has brought us within sight of our future, and we are now taking
+a step into it. He has been our guide in the wilderness; but he died
+there, and was denied the view from Pisgah.
+
+Now, this view was given to Robert Browning, and he broke out into a
+song of victory, whose strains will give strength and comfort to many in
+the coming time. That his solution of the evils of life is not final,
+may at once be admitted. There are elements in the problem of which he
+has taken no account, and which will force those who seek light on the
+deeper mysteries of man's moral nature, to go beyond anything that the
+poet has to say. Even the poet himself grows, at least in some
+directions, less confident of the completeness of his triumph as he
+grows older. His faith in the good does not fail, but it is the faith of
+one who confesses to ignorance, and links himself to his finitude.
+Still, so thorough is his conviction of the moral purpose of life, of
+the certainty of the good towards which man is moving, and of the
+beneficence of the power which is at work everywhere in the world, that
+many of his poems ring like the triumphant songs of Luther.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+BROWNING'S OPTIMISM.
+
+
+  "Gladness be with thee, Helper of the World!
+  I think this is the authentic sign and seal
+  Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad,
+  And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts
+  Into a rage to suffer for mankind,
+  And recommence at sorrow."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Balaustion's Adventure_.]
+
+I have tried to show that one of the distinctive features of the present
+era is the stress it lays on the worth of the moral life of man, and the
+new significance it has given to that life by its view of the continuity
+of history. This view finds expression, on its social and ethical side,
+in the pages of Carlyle and Browning: both of whom are interested
+exclusively, one may almost say, in the evolution of human character;
+and both of whom, too, regard that evolution as the realization by man
+of the purposes, greater than man's, which rule in the world. And,
+although neither of them developed the organic view of humanity, which
+is implied in their doctrines, into an explicit philosophy, still the
+moral life of the individual is for each of them the infinite life in
+the finite. The meaning of the universe is moral, its last might is
+rightness; and the task of man is to catch up that meaning, convert it
+into his own motive, and thereby make it the source of his actions, the
+inmost principle of his life. This, fully grasped, will bring the finite
+and the infinite, morality and religion, together, and reconcile them.
+
+But the reconciliation which Carlyle sought to effect was incomplete on
+every side--even within the sphere of duty, with which alone, as
+moralist, he specially concerned himself. The moral law was imposed upon
+man by a higher power, in the presence of whom man was awed and crushed;
+for that power had stinted man's endowment, and set him to fight a
+hopeless battle against endless evil. God was everywhere around man, and
+the universe was just the expression of His will--a will inexorably bent
+on the good, so that evil could not prevail; but God was not _within_
+man, except as a voice of conscience issuing imperatives and threats. An
+infinite duty was laid upon a finite being, and its weight made him
+break out into a cry of despair.
+
+Browning, however, not only sought to bring about the reconciliation,
+but succeeded, in so far as that is possible _in terms of mere feeling_.
+His poetry contains suggestions that the moral will without is also a
+force within man; that the power which makes for righteousness in the
+world has penetrated into, or rather manifests itself _as_, man.
+Intelligence and will, the reason which apprehends the nature of things,
+and the original impulse of self-conscious life which issues in action,
+are God's power in man; so that God is realizing Himself in the deeds of
+man, and human history is just His return to Himself. Outer law and
+inner motive are, for the poet, manifestations of the same beneficent
+purpose; and instead of duty in the sense of an autocratic imperative,
+or beneficent tyranny, he finds, deep beneath man's foolishness and sin,
+a constant tendency towards the good which is bound up with the very
+nature of man's reason and will. If man could only understand himself he
+would find without him no limiting necessity, but the manifestation of a
+law which is one with his own essential being. A beneficent power has
+loaded the dice, according to the epigram, so that the chances of
+failure and victory are not even; for man's nature is itself a divine
+endowment, one with the power that rules his life, and man must finally
+reach through error to truth, and through sin to holiness. In the
+language of theology, it may be said that the moral process is the
+spiritual incarnation of God; it is God's goodness as love, effecting
+itself in human action. Hence Carlyle's cry of despair is turned by
+Browning into a song of victory. While the former regards the struggle
+between good and evil as a fixed battle, in which the forces are
+immovably interlocked, the latter has the consciousness of battling
+against a retreating foe; and the conviction of coming triumph gives
+joyous vigour to every stroke. Browning lifted morality into an
+optimism, and translated its battle into song. This was the distinctive
+mark and mission which give to him such power of moral inspiration.
+
+In order, however, to estimate the value of this feature of the poet's
+work, it is necessary to look more closely into the character of his
+faith in the good. Merely to attribute to him an optimistic creed is to
+say very little; for the worth, or worthlessness, of such a creed
+depends upon its content--upon its fidelity to the facts of human life,
+the clearness of its consciousness of the evils it confronts, and the
+intensity of its realism.
+
+There is a sense, and that a true one, in which it may be said that all
+men are optimists; for such a faith is implied in every conscious and
+deliberate action of man. There is no deed which is not an attempt to
+realize an ideal; whenever man acts he seeks a good, however ruinously
+he may misunderstand its nature. Final and absolute disbelief in an
+ultimate good in the sphere of morals, like absolute scepticism in the
+sphere of knowledge, is a disguised self-contradiction, and therefore an
+impossibility in fact. The one stultifies action, and asserts an effect
+without any cause, or even contrary to the cause; the other stultifies
+intellectual activity: and both views imply that the critic has so
+escaped the conditions of human life, as to be able to pass a
+condemnatory judgment upon them. The belief that a harmonious relation
+between the self-conscious agent and the supreme good is possible,
+underlies the practical activity of man; just as the belief in the unity
+of thought and being underlies his intellectual activity. A moral
+order--that is, an order of rational ends--is postulated in all human
+actions, and we act at all only in virtue of it,--just as truly as we
+move and work only in virtue of the forces which make the spheres
+revolve, or think by help of the meaning which presses upon us from the
+thought-woven world, through all the pores of sense. A true ethics, like
+a true psychology, or a true science of nature, must lean upon
+metaphysics, and it cannot pretend to start _ab initio_. We live in the
+Copernican age, which puts the individual in a system, in obedience to
+whose laws he finds his welfare. And this is simply the assertion of an
+optimistic creed, for it implies a harmonious world.
+
+But, though this is true, it must be remembered that this faith is a
+prophetic anticipation, rather than acquired knowledge. We are only on
+the way towards reconstructing in thought the fact which we are, or
+towards bringing into clear knowledge the elemental power which
+manifests itself within us as thought, desire, and deed. And, until this
+is achieved, we have no full right to an optimistic creed. The
+revelation of the unity which pervades all things, even in the natural
+world, will be the last attainment of science; and the reconciliation of
+nature and man and God is still further in the future, and will be the
+last triumph of philosophy. During all the interval the world will be a
+scene of warring elements; and poetry, religion, and philosophy can only
+hold forth a promise, and give to man a foretaste of ultimate victory.
+And in this state of things even _their_ assurance often falters. Faith
+lapses into doubt, poetry becomes a wail for a lost god, and its votary
+exhibits, "through Europe to the AEtolian shore, the pageant of his
+bleeding heart." The optimistic faith is, as a rule, only a hope and a
+desire, a "Grand Perhaps," which knows no defence against the critical
+understanding, and sinks dumb when questioned. If, in the form of a
+religious conviction, its assurance is more confident, then, too often,
+it rests upon the treacherous foundations of authoritative ignorance,
+which crumble into dust beneath the blows of awakened and liberated
+reason. Nay, if by the aid of philosophy we turn our optimism into a
+faith held by reason, a fact before which the intellect, as well as the
+heart, worships and grows glad, it still is for most of us only a
+general hypothesis, a mere leap to God which spurns the intermediate
+steps, a universal without content, a bare form that lacks reality.
+
+Such an optimism, such a plunge into the pure blue and away from facts,
+was Emerson's. Caroline Fox tells a story of him and Carlyle which
+reveals this very pointedly. It seems that Carlyle once led the serene
+philosopher through the abominations of the streets of London at
+midnight, asking him with grim humour at every few steps, "Do you
+believe in the devil _now_?" Emerson replied that the more he saw of the
+English people the greater and better he thought them. This little
+incident lays bare the limits of both these great men. Where the one
+saw, the other was blind. To the one there was the misery and the
+universal mirk; to the other, the pure white beam was scarcely broken.
+Carlyle believed in the good, beyond all doubt: he fought his great
+battle in its strength and won, but "he was sorely wounded." Emerson was
+Sir Galahad, blind to all but the Holy Grail, his armour spotless-white,
+his virtue cloistered and unbreathed, his race won without the dust and
+heat. But his optimism was too easy to be satisfactory. His victory was
+not won in the enemy's citadel, where sin sits throned amidst the chaos,
+but in the placid upper air of poetic imagination. And, in consequence,
+Emerson can only convince the converted; and his song is not heard in
+the dark, nor does it cheer the wayfarer on the muddy highway, along
+which burthened humanity meanly toils.
+
+But Browning's optimism is more earnest and real than any pious hope, or
+dogmatic belief, or benevolent theory held by a placid philosopher,
+protected against contact with the sins and sorrows of man as by an
+invisible garment of contemplative holiness. It is a conviction which
+has sustained shocks of criticism and the test of facts; and it
+therefore, both for the poet and his readers, fulfils a mission beyond
+the reach of any easy trust in a mystic good. Its power will be felt and
+its value recognized by those who have themselves confronted the
+contradictions of human life and known their depths.
+
+No lover of Browning's poetry can miss the vigorous manliness of the
+poet's own bearing, or fail to recognize the strength that flows from
+his joyous, fearless personality, and the might of his intellect and
+heart. "When British literature," said Carlyle of Scott and Cobbett,
+"lay all puking and sprawling in Wertherism, Byronism and other
+Sentimentalisms, nature was kind enough to send us two healthy men." And
+he breaks out into a eulogy of mere health, of "the just balance of
+faculties that radiates a glad light outwards, enlightening and
+embellishing all things." But he finds it easy to account for the health
+of these men: they had never faced the mystery of existence. Such
+healthiness we find in Browning, although he wrote with Carlyle at his
+side, and within earshot of the infinite wail of this moral fatalist.
+And yet, the word health is inadequate to convey the depth of the joyous
+meaning which the poet found in the world. His optimism was not a
+constitutional and irreflective hopefulness, to be accounted for on the
+ground that "the great mystery of existence was not great to him: did
+not drive him into rocky solitudes to wrestle with it for an answer, to
+be answered or to perish." There are, indeed, certain rash and foolish
+persons who pretend to trace Browning's optimism to his mixed descent;
+but there is a "pause in the leading and the light" of those wiseacres,
+who pretend to trace moral and mental characteristics to physiological
+antecedents. They cannot quite catch a great man in the making, nor,
+even by the help of evolution, say anything wiser about genius than that
+"the wind bloweth where it listeth." No doubt the poet's optimism
+indicates a native sturdiness of head and heart. He had the invaluable
+endowment of a pre-disposition to see the sunny side of life, and a
+native tendency to revolt against that subjectivity, which is the root
+of our misery in all its forms. He had little respect for the
+_Welt-schmerz,_ and can scarcely be civil to the hero of the bleeding
+heart.
+
+  "Sinning, sorrowing, despairing,
+    Body-ruined, spirit-wrecked--
+  Should I give my woes an airing,--
+    Where's one plague that claims respect?
+
+  "Have you found your life distasteful?
+    My life did, and does, smack sweet.
+  Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
+    Mine I saved and hold complete.
+  Do your joys with age diminish?
+    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 God'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 God'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 passed, 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 passed 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 God'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 nobler 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 shine."
+
+In such passages 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 God'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 God. 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 kinship. 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
+God, 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
+God--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 God. 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-à-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 noble 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 assume. 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-Schwangau._]
+
+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 God, 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 illustrates 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 God, 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 surpassed
+  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 God, 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
+passages, or in the assertion that,--
+
+      "The acknowledgment of God 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 attitude.
+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 passion, 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 God'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 transmuting," 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.
+
+  "And still, as the day wore, the trouble grew,
+  Whereby I guessed there would be born a star."
+
+He goes forth in the might of his faith in the power of good, as if he
+wished once for all to try the resources of evil at their uttermost, and
+pass upon it a complete and final condemnation. With this view, he seeks
+evil in its own haunts. He creates Guido, the subtlest and most powerful
+compound of vice in our literature--except Iago, perhaps--merely in
+order that we may see evil at its worst; and he places him in an
+environment suited to his nature, as if he was carrying out an
+_experimentum crucis_. The
+
+        "Midmost blotch of black
+  Discernible in the group of clustered crimes
+  Huddling together in the cave they call
+  Their palace."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 869-872.]
+
+Beside him are his brothers, each with his own "tint of hell"; his
+mistress, on whose face even Pompilia saw the glow of the nether pit
+"flash and fade"; and his mother--
+
+  "The gaunt grey nightmare in the furthest smoke,
+  The hag that gave these three abortions birth,
+  Unmotherly mother and unwomanly
+  Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame,
+  Womanliness to loathing"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 911-915.]
+
+Such "denizens o' the cave now cluster round Pompilia and heat the
+furnace sevenfold." While she
+
+              "Sent prayer like incense up
+  To God the strong, God the beneficent,
+  God ever mindful in all strife and strait,
+  Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme,
+  Till at the last He puts forth might and saves."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_Pompilia_, 1384-1388.]
+
+In these lines we feel the poet's purpose, constant throughout the whole
+poem. We know all the while that with him at our side we can travel
+safely through the depths of the Inferno--for the flames bend back from
+him; and it is only what we expect as the result of it all, that there
+should come
+
+  "A bolt from heaven to cleave roof and clear place,
+                   . . . . then flood
+  And purify the scene with outside day--
+  Which yet, in the absolutest drench of dark,
+  Ne'er wants its witness, some stray beauty-beam
+  To the despair of hell."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 996-1003.]
+
+The superabundant strength of Browning's conviction in the supremacy of
+the good, which led him in _The Ring and the Book_ to depict criminals
+at their worst, forced him later on in his life to exhibit evil in
+another form. The real meaning and value of such poems as _Fifine at the
+Fair, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Red Cotton Nightcap Country,
+Ferishtah's Francies_, and others, can only be determined by a careful
+and complete analysis of each of them. But they have one characteristic
+so prominent, and so new in poetry, that the most careless reader cannot
+fail to detect it. Action and dramatic treatment give place to a
+discussion which is metaphysical; instead of the conflict of motives
+within a character, the stress and strain of passion and will in
+collision with circumstances, there is reflection on action after it has
+passed, and the conflict of subtle arguments on the ethical value of
+motives and ways of conduct, which the ordinary moral consciousness
+condemns without hesitation. All agree that these poems represent a new
+departure in poetry, and some consider that in them the poet, in thus
+dealing with metaphysical abstractions, has overleapt the boundaries of
+the poetic art. To such critics, this later period seems the period of
+his decadence, in which the casuistical tendencies, which had already
+appeared in _Bishop Blougram's Apology, Mr. Sludge the Medium_, and
+other poems, have overwhelmed his art, and his intellect, in its pride
+of strength, has grown wanton. _Fifine at the Fair is_ said to be "a
+defence of inconstancy, or of the right of experiment in love." Its
+hero, who is "a modern gentleman, a refined, cultured, musical, artistic
+and philosophic person, of high attainments, lofty aspirations, strong
+emotions, and capricious will," produces arguments "wide in range, of
+profound significance and infinite ingenuity," to defend and justify
+immoral intercourse with a gipsy trull. The poem consists of the
+speculations of a libertine, who coerces into his service truth and
+sophistry, and "a superabounding wealth of thought and imagery," and
+with no further purpose on the poet's part than the dramatic delineation
+of character. _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ is spoken of in a similar
+manner as the justification, by reference to the deepest principles of
+morality, of compromise, hypocrisy, lying, and a selfishness that
+betrays every cause to the individual's meanest welfare. The object of
+the poet is "by no means to prove black white, or white black, or to
+make the worse appear the better reason, but to bring a seeming monster
+and perplexing anomaly under the common laws of nature, by showing how
+it has grown to be what it is, and how it can with more or less
+self-delusion reconcile itself to itself."
+
+I am not able to accept this as a complete explanation of the intention
+of the poet, except with reference to _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._ The
+_Prince_ is a psychological study, like _Mr. Sludge the Medium,_ and
+_Bishop Blougram_. No doubt he had the interest of a dramatist in the
+hero of _Fifine at the Fair_ and in the hero of _Red Cotton Nightcap
+Country;_ but, in these poems, his dramatic interest is itself
+determined by an ethical purpose, which is equally profound. His meeting
+with the gipsy at Pornic, and the spectacle of her unscrupulous audacity
+in vice, not only "sent his fancy roaming," but opened out before him
+the fundamental problems of life. What I would find, therefore, in
+_Fifine at the Fair_ is not the casuistic defence of an artistic and
+speculative libertine, but an earnest attempt on the part of the poet to
+prove,
+
+  "That, through the outward sign, the inward grace allures,
+  And sparks from heaven transpierce earth's coarsest covertures,--
+  All by demonstrating the value of Fifine."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xxviii.]
+
+Within his scheme of the universal good he seeks to find a place even
+for this gipsy creature, who traffics "in just what we most pique us
+that we keep." Having, in the _Ring and the Book_, challenged evil at
+its worst as it manifests itself practically in concrete characters and
+external action, and having wrung from it the victory of the good, in
+_Fifine_ and in his other later poems he meets it again in the region of
+dialectic. In this sphere of metaphysical ethics, evil has assumed a
+more dangerous form, especially for an artist. His optimistic faith has
+driven the poet into a realm into which poetry never ventured before.
+His battle is now, not with flesh and blood, but with the subtler powers
+of darkness grown vocal and argumentative, and threatening to turn the
+poet's faith in good into a defence of immorality, and to justify the
+worst evil by what is highest of all. Having indicated in outward fact
+"the need," as well as the "transiency of sin and death," he seeks here
+to prove that need, and seems, thereby, to degrade the highest truth of
+religion into a defence of the worst wickedness.
+
+No doubt the result is sufficiently repulsive to the abstract moralist,
+who is apt to find in _Fifine_ nothing but a casuistical and shameless
+justification of evil, which is blasphemy against goodness itself. We
+are made to "discover," for instance, that
+
+                           "There was just
+  Enough and not too much of hate, love, greed and lust,
+  Could one discerningly but hold the balance, shift
+  The weight from scale to scale, do justice to the drift
+  Of nature, and explain the glories by the shames
+  Mixed up in man, one stuff miscalled by different names."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, cviii.]
+
+We are told that--
+
+  "Force, guile were arms which earned
+  My praise, not blame at all."
+
+Confronted with such utterances as these, it is only natural that,
+rather than entangle the poet in them, we should regard them as the
+sophistries of a philosophical Don Juan, powerful enough, under the
+stress of self-defence, to confuse the distinctions of right and wrong.
+But, as we shall try to show in the next chapter, such an apparent
+justification of evil cannot be avoided by a reflective optimist; and it
+is implicitly contained even in those religious utterances of _Rabbi Ben
+Ezra, Christmas Eve_, and _A Death in the Desert_, with which we not
+only identify the poet but ourselves, in so far as we share his faith
+that
+
+  "God's in His heaven,--
+  All's right with the world."
+
+The poet had far too much speculative acumen to be ignorant of this, and
+too much boldness and strength of conviction in the might of the good,
+to refuse to confront the issues that sprang from it. In his later
+poems, as in his earlier ones, he is endeavouring to justify the ways of
+God to man; and the difficulties which surround him are not those of a
+casuist, but the stubborn questionings of a spirit, whose religious
+faith is thoroughly earnest and fearless. To a spirit so loyal to the
+truth, and so bold to follow its leading, the suppression of such
+problems is impossible; and, consequently, it was inevitable that he
+should use the whole strength of his dialectic to try those fundamental
+principles, on which the moral life of man is based. And it is this, I
+believe, which we find in _Fifine_, as in _Ferishtah's Fancies_ and the
+_Parleyings_; not an exhibition of the argumentative subtlety of a mind
+whose strength has become lawless, and which spends itself in
+intellectual gymnastics, that have no place within the realm of either
+the beautiful or the true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+OPTIMISM AND ETHICS: THEIR CONTRADICTION.
+
+
+  "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
+  Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky
+  Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
+  Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "But most it is presumption in us, when
+  The help of heaven we count the act of men."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _All's Well that Ends Well_.]
+
+I have tried to show that one of the ruling conceptions of Browning's
+view of life is that the Good is absolute, and that it reveals itself in
+all the events of human life. By means of this conception, he
+endeavoured to bring together the elements which had fallen asunder in
+the sensational and moral pessimism of Byron and Carlyle. In other
+words, through the re-interpreting power which lies in this fundamental
+thought when it is soberly held and fearlessly applied, he sought to
+reconcile man with the world and with God, and thereby with himself. And
+the governing motive, whether the conscious motive or not, of Browning's
+poetry, the secret impulse which led him to dramatise the conflicts and
+antagonisms of human life, was the necessity of finding in them evidence
+of the presence of this absolute Good.
+
+Browning's optimism was deep and comprehensive enough to reject all
+compromise. His faith in the good seemed to rise with the demands that
+were made upon it by the misery and wickedness of man, and the
+apparently purposeless waste of life and its resources. There was in it
+a deliberate earnestness which led him to grapple, not only with the
+concrete difficulties of individual life, but with those also that
+spring from reflection and theory.
+
+The test of a philosophic optimism, as of any optimism which is more
+than a pious sentiment, must finally lie in its power to reveal the
+presence of the good in actual individual evils. But there are
+difficulties still nearer than those presented by concrete facts,
+difficulties arising out of the very suggestion that evil is a form of
+good. Such speculative difficulties must be met by a reflective mind,
+before it can follow out the application of an optimistic theory to
+particular facts. Now, Browning's creed, at least as he held it in his
+later years, was not merely the allowable exaggeration of an ecstatic
+religious sentiment, the impassioned conviction of a God-intoxicated
+man. It was deliberately presented as a solution of moral problems, and
+was intended to serve as a theory of the spiritual nature of things. It
+is, therefore, justly open to the same kind of criticism as that to
+which a philosophic doctrine is exposed. The poet deprived himself of
+the refuge, legitimate enough to the intuitive method of art, when, in
+his later works, he not only offered a dramatic solution of the problem
+of life, but definitely attempted to meet the difficulties of
+speculative ethics.
+
+In this chapter I shall point out some of these difficulties, and then
+proceed to show how the poet proposed to solve them.
+
+A thorough-going optimism, in that it subdues all things to the idea of
+the supreme Good, and denies to evil the right even to dispute the
+absoluteness of its sway, naturally seems to imply a pantheistic theory
+of the world. And Browning's insistence on the presence of the highest
+in all things may easily be regarded as a mere revival of the oldest and
+crudest attempts at finding their unity in God. For if _all_, as he
+says, is for the best, there seems to be no room left for the
+differences apparent in the world, and the variety which gives it beauty
+and worth. Particular existences would seem to be illusory and
+evanescent phenomena, the creations of human imagination, itself a
+delusive appearance. The infinite, on this view, stands over against the
+finite, and it overpowers and consumes it; and the optimism, implied in
+the phrase that "God is all," turns at once into a pessimism. For, as
+soon as we inquire into the meaning of this "all," we find that it is
+only a negation of everything we can know or be. Such a pantheism as
+this is self-contradictory; for, while seeming to level all things
+upwards to a manifestation of the divine, it really levels all downwards
+to the level of mere unqualified being, a stagnant and empty unknowable.
+It leaves only a choice between akosmism and atheism, and, at the same
+time, it makes each of the alternatives impossible. For, in explaining
+the world it abolishes it, and in abolishing the world it empties itself
+of all signification; so that the Godhood which it attempts to establish
+throughout the whole realm of being, is found to mean nothing. "It is
+the night, in which all cows are black."
+
+The optimistic creed, which the poet strove to teach, must, therefore,
+not only establish the immanence of God, but show in some way how such
+immanence is consistent with the existence of particular things. His
+doctrine that there is no failure, or folly, or wickedness, or misery,
+but conceals within it, at its heart, a divine element; that there is no
+incident in human history which is not a pulsation of the life of the
+highest, and which has not its place in a scheme of universal good, must
+leave room for the moral life of man, and all the risks which morality
+brings with it. Otherwise, optimism is impossible. For a God who, in
+filling the universe with His presence, encroaches on the freedom and
+extinguishes the independence of man, precludes the possibility of all
+that is best for man--namely, moral achievement. Life, deprived of its
+moral purpose, is worthless to the poet, and so, in consequence, is all
+that exists in order to maintain that life. Optimism and ethics seem
+thus to come into immediate collision. The former, finding the presence
+of God in all things, seems to leave no room for man; and the latter
+seems to set man to work out his own destiny in solitude, and to give
+him supreme and absolute authority over his own life; so that any
+character which he forms, be it good or bad, is entirely the product of
+his own activity. So far as his life is culpable or praiseworthy, in
+other words, so far as we pass any moral judgment upon it, we
+necessarily think of it as the revelation of a self, that is, of an
+independent will, which cannot divide its responsibility. There may be,
+and indeed there always is for every individual, a hereditary
+predisposition and a soliciting environment, tendencies which are his
+inheritance from a remote past, and which rise to the surface in his own
+life; in other words, the life of the individual is always led within
+the larger sweep of the life of humanity. He is part of a whole, and has
+his place fixed, and his function predetermined, by a power which is
+greater than his own. But, if we are to call him good or evil, if he is
+to aspire and repent and strive, in a word, if he is to have any _moral_
+character, he cannot be merely a part of a system; there must be
+something within him which is superior to circumstances, and which
+makes him master of his own fate. His natural history may begin with the
+grey dawn of primal being, but his moral history begins with himself,
+from the time when he first reacted upon the world in which he is
+placed, and transformed his natural relations into will and character.
+For who can be responsible for what he did not will? What could a moral
+imperative mean, what could an "ought" signify, to a being who was only
+a temporary embodiment of forces, who are prior to, and independent of
+himself? It would seem, therefore, as if morality were irreconcilable
+with optimism. The moral life of man cannot be the manifestation of a
+divine benevolence whose purpose is necessary; it is a trust laid upon
+himself, which he may either violate or keep. It surpasses divine
+goodness, "tho' matched with equal power" to _make_ man good, as it has
+made the flowers beautiful. From this point of view, spiritual
+attainment, whether intellectual or moral, is man's own, a spontaneous
+product. Just as God is conceived as all in all in the universe, so man
+is all in all within the sphere of duty; for the kingdom of heaven is
+within. In both cases alike, there is absolute exclusion of external
+interference.
+
+For this reason, it has often seemed both to philosophers and
+theologians, as if the world were too confined to hold within it both
+God and man. In the East, the consciousness of the infinite seemed at
+times to leave no room for the finite; and in the West, where the
+consciousness of the finite and interest therein is strongest, and man
+strives and aspires, a Deism arose which set God at a distance, and
+allowed Him to interfere in the fate of man only by a benevolent
+miracle. Nor is this collision of pantheism and freedom, nay of religion
+and morality, confined to the theoretical region. This difficulty is not
+merely the punishment of an over-bold and over-ambitious philosophy,
+which pries too curiously into the mystery of being. It lies at the very
+threshold of all reflection on the facts of the moral life. Even
+children feel the mystery of God's permitting sin, and embarrass their
+helpless parents with the contradiction between absolute benevolence and
+the miseries and cruelties of life. "A vain interminable controversy,"
+says Teufels-dröckh, "which arises in every soul since the beginning of
+the world: and in every soul, that would pass from idle suffering into
+actual endeavouring, must be put an end to. The most, in our own time,
+have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough Suppression of this
+controversy: to a few Solution of it is indispensable."
+
+Solution, and not Suppression, is what Browning sought; he did, in fact,
+propound a solution, which, whether finally satisfactory or not, at
+least carries us beyond the easy compromises of ordinary religious and
+ethical teaching. He does not deny the universality of God's beneficence
+or power, and divide the realm of being between Him and the adversary:
+nor, on the other hand, does he limit man's freedom, and stultify ethics
+by extracting the sting of reality from sin. To limit God, he knew, was
+to deny Him; and, whatever the difficulties he felt in regarding the
+absolute Spirit as realising itself in man, he could not be content to
+reduce man into a temporary phantom, an evanescent embodiment of
+"spiritual" or natural forces, that take a fleeting form in him as they
+pursue their onward way.
+
+Browning held with equal tenacity to the idea of a universal benevolent
+order, and to the idea of the moral freedom of man within it. He was
+driven in opposite directions by two beliefs, both of which he knew to
+be essential to the life of man as spirit, and both of which he
+illustrates throughout his poems with an endless variety of poetic
+expression. He endeavoured to find God in man and still to leave man
+free. His optimistic faith sought reconciliation with morality. The
+vigour of his ethical doctrine is as pre-eminent, as the fulness of his
+conviction of the absolute sway of the Good. Side by side with his
+doctrine that there is no failure, no wretchedness of corruption that
+does not conceal within it a germ of goodness, is his sense of the evil
+of sin, of the infinite earnestness of man's moral warfare, and of the
+surpassing magnitude of the issues at stake for each individual soul. So
+powerful is his interest in man as a moral agent, that he sees nought
+else in the world of any deep concern. "My stress lay," he said in his
+preface to _Sordello_ (1863), "on the incidents in the development of a
+soul: little else is worth study. I, at least, always thought so--you,
+with many known and unknown to me, think so--others may one day think
+so." And this development of a soul is not at any time regarded by the
+poet as a peaceful process, like the growth of a plant or animal.
+Although he thinks of the life of man as the gradual realization of a
+divine purpose within him, he does not suppose it to take place in
+obedience to a tranquil necessity. Man advances morally by fighting his
+way inch by inch, and he gains nothing except through conflict. He does
+not become good as the plant grows into maturity. "The kingdom of heaven
+suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."
+
+  "No, when the fight begins within himself,
+  A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head,
+  Satan looks up between his feet,--both tug--
+  He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul awakes
+  And grows. Prolong that battle through this life!
+  Never leave growing till the life to come."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Bishop Blougram_.]
+
+Man is no idle spectator of the conflict of the forces of right and
+wrong; Browning never loses the individual in the throng, or sinks him
+into his age or race. And although the poet ever bears within him the
+certainty of victory for the good, he calls his fellows to the fight as
+if the fate of all hung on the valour of each. The struggle is always
+personal, individual like the duels of the Homeric heroes.
+
+It is under the guise of warfare that morality always presents itself to
+Browning. It is not a mere equilibrium of qualities--the measured,
+self-contained, statuesque ethics of the Greeks, nor the asceticism and
+self-restraint of Puritanism, nor the peaceful evolution of Goethe's
+artistic morality: it is valour in the battle of life. His code contains
+no negative commandments, and no limitations; but he bids each man let
+out all the power that is within him, and throw himself upon life with
+the whole energy of his being. It is better even to seek evil with one's
+whole mind, than to be lukewarm in goodness. Whether you seek good or
+evil, and play for the counter or the coin, stake it boldly!
+
+  "Let a man contend to the uttermost
+  For his life's set prize, be it what it will!
+
+  "The counter our lovers staked was lost
+  As surely as if it were lawful coin:
+  And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
+
+  "Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin
+  Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
+  You, of the virtue (we issue join)
+  How strive you?--'_De te fabula!_'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Statue and the Bust_.]
+
+Indifference and spiritual lassitude are, to the poet, the worst of
+sins. "Go!" says the Pope to Pompilia's pseudo-parents,
+
+  "Never again elude the choice of tints!
+  White shall not neutralize the black, nor good
+  Compensate bad in man, absolve him so:
+  Life's business being just the terrible choice."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1235-1238.]
+
+In all the greater characters of _The Ring and the Book_, this intensity
+of vigour in good and evil flashes out upon us. Even Pompilia, the most
+gentle of all his creations, at the first prompting of the instinct of
+motherhood, rises to the law demanding resistance, and casts off the old
+passivity.
+
+  "Dutiful to the foolish parents first,
+  Submissive next to the bad husband,--nay,
+  Tolerant of those meaner miserable
+  That did his hests, eked out the dole of pain ";[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_., 1052-1055.]
+
+she is found
+
+  "Sublime in new impatience with the foe."
+
+  "I did for once see right, do right, give tongue
+  The adequate protest: for a worm must turn
+  If it would have its wrong observed by God.
+  I did spring up, attempt to thrust aside
+  That ice-block 'twixt the sun and me, lay low
+  The neutralizer of all good and truth."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Pompilia_, 1591-1596.]
+
+  "Yet, shame thus rank and patent, I struck, bare,
+  At foe from head to foot in magic mail,
+  And off it withered, cobweb armoury
+  Against the lightning! 'Twas truth singed the lies
+  And saved me."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_., 1637-1641.]
+
+Beneath the mature wisdom of the Pope, amidst the ashes of old age,
+there sleeps the same fire. He is as truly a warrior priest as
+Caponsacchi himself, and his matured experience only muffles his vigour.
+Wearied with his life-long labour, we see him gather himself together
+"in God's name," to do His will on earth once more with concentrated
+might.
+
+                                    "I smite
+  With my whole strength once more, ere end my part,
+  Ending, so far as man may, this offence."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1958-1960.]
+
+Nor, spite of doubts, the promptings of mercy, the friends plucking his
+sleeve to stay his arm, does he fear "to handle a lie roughly"; or
+shrink from sending the criminal to his account, though it be but one
+day before he himself is called before the judgment seat. The same
+energy, the same spirit of bold conflict, animates Guido's adoption of
+evil for his good. At all but the last moment of his life of monstrous
+crime, just before he hears the echo of the feet of the priests, who
+descend the stair to lead him to his death, "he repeats his evil deed in
+will."
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 prompts
+  While pulling back, refuses yet concedes,--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Surely, one should bid pack that mountebank!"
+
+In him, even
+
+               "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 give _himself_ to anything, wreak _himself_ on
+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 lie
+  Redounded to the praise of man, was victory
+  Man's nature had both right to get and might to gain."[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 disappointment of utter failure;
+the sinner is thrown back upon himself empty-handed. He finds himself
+subjected, even when sinning,
+
+                                         "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]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, cxxviii.]
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 of _Red 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]
+
+In the same spirit he finds Miranda's suicidal leap the best deed
+possible for _him_.
+
+                       "'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]
+
+[Footnote 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 set
+  Himself to Satan; who would spend
+  A minute's mistrust on the end?"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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]
+
+[Footnote 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."
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote A: Epilogue to _Asolande_.]
+
+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 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]
+
+[Footnote B: _Apparent Failure_.]
+
+It is the poet himself and not merely the sophistic aesthete of _Fifine_
+that speaks:--
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 supplies
+  The incentive to humanity, no strength
+  Absolute, irresistible comforts.
+  How can man love but what he yearns to help?"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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. It is 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]
+
+[Footnote 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 realization
+of 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_ "on the
+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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 steps
+  Offered the feet which rashly spurned their help.
+  That I call Hell; why further punishment?"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 towards the 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 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 from _his_ clutch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 more
+  I' the coming course, the new path I must tread,
+  My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 existence of 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 Ezra_ bids 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 turn
+  If it would have its wrong observed by God."[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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 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 achievement within
+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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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 this_ how _far away_
+  Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream!"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 short at 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" _must_ stand
+above _all_ human 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 idea _of_ something 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 a _true_
+idea; 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 an _idea_
+of 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 is something 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 as unwilling 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 better for 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 the world 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 word _but 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, to return 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 of perfect 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 "_the_ good," 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 that unity 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
+within him. 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 religion
+impossible. 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.
+
+  "I never realized God's birth before--
+  How He grew likest God in being born."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Pompilia_, 1690-1691.]
+
+The intense love of the young mother drew the divine and the human
+together, and set at nought the contrast which prose ever draws between
+them. This thought of the unity of God and man is one which has frequent
+utterance from the poet when his religious spirit is most deeply moved;
+for it is the characteristic of religious feeling that it abolishes all
+sense of separation. It removes all the limitations of finitude and
+lifts man into rapturous unity with the God he adores; and it gives such
+completeness to his life that it seems to him to be a joyous pulse of
+the life that is absolute. The feeling of unity may be an illusion. This
+we cannot discuss here; but, in any case, it is a feeling essential to
+religion. And the philosophy which seeks to lift this feeling into clear
+consciousness and to account for its existence, cannot but recognize
+that it implies and presupposes the essential affinity of the divine
+nature with the nature of man.
+
+Thus, both from the side of morality and from that of religion, we are
+brought to recognize the unity of God with man as a spiritual being. The
+moral ideal is man's idea of perfection, that is, his idea of God. While
+theology and philosophy are often occupied with the vain task of
+bridging a chasm between the finite and the infinite, which they assume
+to be separated, the supreme facts of the life of man as a spirit spring
+from their unity. In other words, morality and religion are but
+different manifestations of the same principle. The good that man
+effects is, at the same time, the working of God within him. The
+activity that man is,
+
+                                "tending up,
+  Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man
+  Upward in that dread point of intercourse
+  Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+                              "God, perchance,
+  Grants each new man, by some as new a mode,
+  Inter-communication with Himself
+  Wreaking on finiteness infinitude."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
+
+And while man's moral endeavour is thus recognized as the activity of
+God within him, it is also implied that the divine being can be known
+only as revealed, and incarnated, if one may so say, in a perfect human
+character. It was a permanent conviction of Browning, that
+
+      "the acknowledgment of God in Christ
+  Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
+  All questions in the earth and out of it."
+
+So far from regarding the Power in the world which makes for
+righteousness, as "not-ourselves," as Matthew Arnold did in his haste,
+that Power is known to be the man's true self and more, and morality is
+the gradual process whereby its content is evolved. And man's state of
+perfection, which is symbolized for the intelligent by the term Heaven,
+is, for Browning,
+
+  "The equalizing, ever and anon,
+  In momentary rapture, great with small,
+  Omniscience with intelligency, God
+  With man--the thunder glow from pole to pole
+  Abolishing, a blissful moment-space,
+  Great cloud alike and small cloud, in one fire--
+  As sure to ebb as sure again to flow
+  When the new receptivity deserves
+  The new completion."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_.]
+
+Thus, therefore, does the poet wed the divine strength with human
+weakness; and the principle of unity, thus conceived, gives him at once
+his moral strenuousness and that ever present foretaste of victory,
+which we may call his religious optimism.
+
+Whether this principle receives adequate expression from the poet, we
+shall inquire in the next chapter. For on this depends its worth as a
+solution of the enigma of man's moral life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+BROWNING'S TREATMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE OF LOVE.
+
+
+  "God! Thou art Love! I build my faith on that!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_]
+
+It may be well before going further to gather together the results so
+far reached.
+
+Browning was aware of the conflict of the religious and moral
+consciousness, but he did not hesitate to give to each of them its most
+uncompromising utterance. And it is on this account that he is
+instructive; for, whatever may be the value of compromise in practical
+affairs, there is no doubt that it has never done anything to advance
+human thought. His religion is an optimistic faith, a peaceful
+consciousness of the presence of the highest in man, and therefore in
+all other things. Yet he does not hesitate to represent the moral life
+as a struggle with evil, and a movement through error towards a highest
+good which is never finally realized. He sees that the contradiction is
+not an absolute one, but that a good man is always both moral and
+religious, and, in every good act he does, transcends their difference.
+He knew that the ideal apart from the process is nothing, and that "a
+God beyond the stars" is simply the unknowable. But he knew, too, that
+the ideal is not _merely_ the process, but also that which starts the
+process, guides it, and comes to itself through it. God, emptied of
+human elements, is a mere name; but, at the same time, the process of
+human evolution does not exhaust the idea of God. The process by itself,
+_i.e._, mere morality, is a conception of a fragment, a fiction of
+abstract thought; it is a movement which has no beginning or end; and in
+it neither the head nor the heart of man could find contentment. He is
+driven by ethics into philosophy, and by morality into religion.
+
+It was in this way that Browning found himself compelled to trace back
+the moral process to its origin, and to identify the moral law with the
+nature of God. It is this that gives value to his view of moral
+progress, as reaching beyond death to a higher stage of being, for which
+man's attainments in this life are only preliminary.
+
+  "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes,
+  Man has Forever."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Grammarian's Funeral_.]
+
+There are other "adventures brave and new" for man, "more lives yet,"
+other ways of warfare, other depths of goodness and heights of love. The
+poet lifts the moral ideal into infinitude, and removes all limits to
+the possibility and necessity of being good. Nay, the process itself is
+good. Moral activity is its own bountiful reward; for moral progress,
+which means struggle, is the best thing in the world or out of it. To
+end such a process, to stop that activity, were therefore evil. But it
+cannot end, for it is the self-manifestation of the divine life. There
+is plenty of way to make, for the ideal is absolute goodness. The
+process cannot exhaust the absolute, and it is impossible that man
+should be God. And yet this process is the process of the absolute, the
+working of the ideal, the presence of the highest in man as a living
+power realizing itself in his acts and in his thoughts. And the absolute
+cannot fail; not in man, for the process is the evolution of his
+essential nature; and not in the world, for that is but the necessary
+instrument of the evolution. By lifting the moral ideal of man to
+infinitude, the poet has identified it with the nature of God, and made
+it the absolute law of things.
+
+Now, this idea of the identity of the human and the divine is a
+perfectly familiar Christian idea.
+
+  "Thence shall I, approved
+  A man, for aye removed
+  From the developed brute; a God though in the germ."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Rabbi Ben Ezra._]
+
+This idea is involved in the ordinary expressions of religious thought.
+But, nevertheless, both theology and philosophy shrink from giving to it
+a clear and unembarrassed utterance. Instead of rising to the sublime
+boldness of the Nazarene Teacher, they set up prudential differences
+between God and man--differences not of degree only but of nature; and,
+in consequence, God is reduced into an unknowable absolute, and man is
+made incapable not only of moral, but also of intellectual life. The
+poet himself has proved craven-hearted in this, as we shall see. He,
+too, sets up insurmountable barriers between the divine and the human,
+and thereby weakens both his religious and his moral convictions. His
+moral inspiration is greatest just where his religious enthusiasm is
+most intense. In _Rabbi Ben Ezra, The Death in the Desert_, and _The
+Ring and the Book_, there prevails a constant sense of the community of
+God and man within the realm of goodness; and the world itself, "with
+its dread machinery of sin and sorrow," is made to join the great
+conspiracy, whose purpose is at once the evolution of man's character,
+and the realization of the will of God.
+
+  "So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too--
+  So, through the thunder comes a human voice
+  Saying, 'O heart I made, a heart beats here!
+  Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
+  Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine,
+  But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
+  And thou must love Me who have died for thee.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _An Epistle from Karshish_.]
+
+But, if we follow Browning's thoughts in his later and more reflective
+poems, such as _Ferishtah's_ _Fancies_ for instance, it will not be
+possible to hold that the poet altogether realized the importance for
+both morality and religion alike, of the idea of the actual immanence of
+God in man. In these poems he seems to have abandoned it in favour of
+the hypotheses of a more timid philosophy. But, if his religious faith
+had not been embarrassed by certain dogmatic presuppositions of which he
+could not free himself, he might have met more successfully some of the
+difficulties which later reflection revealed to him, and might have been
+able to set a true value on that "philosophy," which betrayed his faith
+while appearing to support it.
+
+But, before trying to criticize the principle by means of which Browning
+sought to reconcile the moral and religious elements of human life, it
+may be well to give it a more explicit and careful statement.
+
+What, then, is that principle of unity between the divine and the human?
+How can we interpret the life of man as God's life in man, so that man,
+in attaining the moral ideal proper to his own nature, is at the same
+time fulfilling ends which may justly be called divine?
+
+The poet, in early life and in late life alike, has one answer to this
+question--an answer given with the confidence of complete conviction.
+The meeting-point of God and man is love. Love, in other words, is, for
+the poet, the supreme principle both of morality and religion. Love,
+once for all, solves that contradiction between them which, both in
+theory and in practice, has embarrassed the world for so many ages. Love
+is the sublimest conception attainable by man; a life inspired by it is
+the most perfect form of goodness he can conceive; therefore, love is,
+at the same moment, man's moral ideal, and the very essence of Godhood.
+A life actuated by love is divine, whatever other limitations it may
+have. Such is the perfection and glory of this emotion, when it has been
+translated into a self-conscious motive, and become the energy of an
+intelligent will, that it lifts him who owns it to the sublimest height
+of being.
+
+  "For the loving worm within its clod,
+  Were diviner than a loveless God
+  Amid his worlds, I will dare to say."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas Eve_.]
+
+So excellent is this emotion that, if man, who has this power to love,
+did not find the same power in God, then man would excel Him, and the
+creature and Creator change parts.
+
+  "Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift,
+  That I doubt His own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift?
+  Here, the creature surpass the Creator,--the end what Began?"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Saul_.]
+
+Not so, says David, and with him no doubt the poet himself. God is
+Himself the source and fulness of love.
+
+        "Tis Thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive:
+  In the first is the last, in Thy will is my power to believe.
+  All's one gift."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Would I suffer for him that I love? So would'st Thou,--so wilt Thou!
+  So shall crown Thee, the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown--
+  And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
+  One spot for the creature to stand in!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Saul_.]
+
+And this same love not only constitutes the nature of God and the moral
+ideal of man, but it is also the purpose and essence of all created
+being, both animate and inanimate.
+
+                          "This world's no blot for us,
+  Nor blank; it means intensely and means good."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Fra Lippo Lippi_.]
+
+  "O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:
+  And knowing this is love, and love is duty,
+  What further may be sought for or declared?"
+
+In this world then "all's love, yet all's law." God permits nothing to
+break through its universal sway, even the very wickedness and misery of
+life are brought into the scheme of good, and, when rightly understood,
+reveal themselves as its means.
+
+  "I can believe this dread machinery
+  Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else,
+  Devised--all pain, at most expenditure
+  Of pain by Who devised pain--to evolve,
+  By new machinery in counterpart,
+  The moral qualities of man--how else?--
+  To make him love in turn and be beloved,
+  Creative and self-sacrificing too,
+  And thus eventually Godlike."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1375-1383.]
+
+The poet thus brings the natural world, the history of man, and the
+nature of God, within the limits of the same conception. The idea of
+love solves for Browning all the enigmas of human life and thought.
+
+          "The thing that seems
+  Mere misery, under human schemes,
+  Becomes, regarded by the light
+  Of love, as very near, or quite
+  As good a gift as joy before."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Easter Day_.]
+
+Taking Browning's work as a whole, it is scarcely possible to deny that
+this is at once the supreme motive of his art, and the principle on
+which his moral and religious doctrine rests. He is always strong and
+convincing when he is dealing with this theme. It was evidently his own
+deepest conviction, and it gave him the courage to face the evils of the
+world, and the power as an artist to "contrive his music from its
+moans." It plays, in his philosophy of life, the part that Reason fills
+for Hegel, or the Blind Will for Schopenhauer; and he is as fearless as
+they are in reducing all phenomena into forms of the activity of his
+first principle. Love not only gave him firm footing amid the wash and
+welter of the present world, where time spins fast, life fleets, and all
+is change, but it made him look forward with joy to "the immortal
+course"; for, to him, all the universe is love-woven. All life is but
+treading the "love-way," and no wanderer can finally lose it. "The
+way-faring men, though fools, shall not err therein."
+
+Since love has such an important place in Browning's theory of life, it
+is necessary to see what he means by it. For love has had for different
+individuals, ages and nations, a very different significance; and almost
+every great poet has given it a different interpretation. And this is
+not unnatural. For love is a passion which, beginning with youth and the
+hey-day of the blood, expands with the expanding life, and takes new
+forms of beauty and goodness at every stage. And this is equally true,
+whether we speak of the individual or of the human race.
+
+Love is no accident in man's history, nor a passing emotion. It is
+rather a constitutive element of man's nature, fundamental and necessary
+as his intelligence. And, like everything native and constitutive, it is
+obedient to the law of evolution, which is the law of man's being; and
+it passes, therefore, through ever varying forms. To it--if we may for
+the moment make a distinction between the theoretical and practical
+life, or between ideas and their causative potency--must be attributed
+the constructive power which has built the world of morality, with its
+intangible but most real relations which bind man to man and age to age.
+It is the author of the organic institutions which, standing between the
+individual and the rudeness of nature, awaken in him the need, and give
+him the desire and the faculty, of attaining higher things than physical
+satisfaction. Man is meant to act as well as to think, to be virtuous as
+well as to have knowledge. It is possible that reverence for the
+intellect may have led men, at times, to attribute the evolution of the
+race too exclusively to the theoretic consciousness, forgetting that,
+along with reason, there co-operates a twin power in all that is wisest
+and best in us, and that a heart which can love, is as essential a
+pre-condition of all worthy attainment, as an intellect which can see.
+Love and reason[A] are equally primal powers in man, and they reflect
+might into each other: for love increases knowledge, and knowledge love.
+It is their combined power that gives interest and meaning to the facts
+of life, and transmutes them into a moral and intellectual order. They,
+together, are lifting man out of the isolation and chaos of subjectivity
+into membership in a spiritual kingdom, where collision and exclusion
+are impossible, and all are at once kings and subjects.
+
+[Footnote A: It would be more correct to say the reason that is loving
+or the love that is rational; for, though there is distinction, there is
+no dualism.]
+
+And, just as reason is present as a transmuting power in the sensational
+life of the infancy of the individual and race, so is love present
+amidst the confused and chaotic activity of the life that knows no law
+other than its own changing emotions. Both make for order, and both grow
+with it. Both love and reason have travelled a long way in the history
+of man. The patriot's passion for his country, the enthusiasm of pity
+and helpfulness towards all suffering which marks the man of God, are as
+far removed from the physical attraction of sex for sex, and the mere
+liking of the eye and ear, as is the intellectual power of the sage from
+the vulpine cunning of the savage. "For," as Emerson well said, "it is a
+fire that, kindling its first embers in the narrow nook of a private
+bosom, caught from a wandering spark out of another heart, glows and
+enlarges until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and women, upon
+the universal heart of all, and so lights up the world and all nature
+with its generous flames." Both love and reason alike pass through stage
+after stage, always away from the particularity of selfishness and
+ignorance, into larger and larger cycles of common truth and goodness,
+towards the full realization of knowledge and benevolence, which is the
+inheritance of emancipated man. In this transition, the sensuous play of
+feeling within man, and the sensitive responses to external stimuli, are
+made more and more organic to ends which are universal, that is, to
+spiritual ends. Love, which in its earliest form, seems to be the
+natural yearning of brute for brute, appearing and disappearing at the
+suggestion of physical needs, passes into an idealized sentiment, into
+an emotion of the soul, into a principle of moral activity which
+manifests itself in a permanent outflow of helpful deeds for man. It
+represents, when thus sublimated, one side at least of the expansion of
+the self, which culminates when the world beats in the pulse of the
+individual, and the joys and sorrows, the defeats and victories of
+mankind are felt by him as his own. It is no longer dependent merely on
+the incitement of youth, grace, beauty, whether of body or character; it
+transcends all limitations of sex and age, and finds objects on which it
+can spend itself in all that God has made, even in that which has
+violated its own law of life and become mean and pitiful. It becomes a
+love of fallen humanity, and an ardour to save it by becoming the
+conscious and permanent motive of all men. The history of this evolution
+of love has been written by the poets. Every phase through which this
+ever-deepening emotion has passed, every form which this primary power
+has taken in its growth, has received from them its own proper
+expression. They have made even the grosser instincts lyric with beauty;
+and, ascending with their theme, they have sung the pure passion of soul
+for soul, its charm and its strength, its idealism and heroism, up to
+the point at which, in Browning, it transcends the limits of finite
+existence, sheds all its earthly vesture, and becomes a spiritual
+principle of religious aspiration and self-surrender to God.
+
+Browning nowhere shows his native strength more clearly than in his
+treatment of love. He has touched this world-old theme--which almost
+every poet has handled, and handled in his highest manner--with that
+freshness and insight, which is possible only to the inborn originality
+of genius. Other poets have, in some ways, given to love a more
+exquisite utterance, and rendered its sweetness, and tenderness, and
+charm with a lighter grace. It may even be admitted that there are poets
+whose verses have echoed more faithfully the fervour and intoxication of
+passion, and who have shown greater power of interpreting it in the
+light of a mystic idealism. But, in one thing, Browning stands alone. He
+has given to love a moral significance, a place and power amongst those
+substantial elements on which rest the dignity of man's being and the
+greatness of his destiny, in a way which is, I believe, without example
+in any other poet. And he has done this by means of that moral and
+religious earnestness, which pervades all his poetry. The one object of
+supreme interest to him is the development of the soul, and his
+penetrative insight revealed to him the power to love as the paramount
+fact in that development. To love, he repeatedly tells us, is the sole
+and supreme object of man's life; it is the one lesson which he has to
+learn on earth; and, love once learnt, in what way matters little, "it
+leaves completion in the soul." Love we dare not, and, indeed, cannot
+absolutely miss. No man can be absolutely selfish and be man.
+
+  "Beneath the veriest ash, there hides a spark of soul
+  Which, quickened by love's breath, may yet pervade the whole
+  O' the grey, and, free again, be fire; of worth the same,
+  Howe'er produced, for, great or little, flame is flame."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xliii.]
+
+Love, once evoked, once admitted into the soul,
+
+                          "adds worth to worth,
+  As wine enriches blood, and straightway sends it forth,
+  Conquering and to conquer, through all eternity,
+  That's battle without end."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_. liv.]
+
+This view of the significance of love grew on Browning as his knowledge
+of man's nature and destiny became fuller and deeper, while, at the same
+time, his trust in the intellect became less. Even in _Paracelsus_ he
+reveals love, not as a sentiment or intoxicating passion, as one might
+expect from a youthful poet, but as one of the great fundamental
+"faculties" of man. Love, "blind, oft-failing, half-enlightened,
+often-chequered trust," though it be, still makes man
+
+  "The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false."
+
+In that poem, love is definitely lifted by the poet to the level of
+knowledge. Intellectual gain, apart from love, is folly and futility,
+worthless for the individual and worthless to the race. "Mind is nothing
+but disease," Paracelsus cries in the bitterness of his disappointment,
+"and natural health is ignorance"; and he asks of the mad poet who
+"loved too rashly,"
+
+  "Are we not halves of one dissevered world,
+  Whom this strange chance unites once more? Part? Never!
+  Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower,
+  Love--until both are saved."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
+
+And, at the end of the poem, Paracelsus, coming to an understanding with
+himself as to the gain and loss of life, proclaims with his last
+strength the truth he had missed throughout his great career, namely,
+the supreme worth of love.
+
+  "I saw Aprile--my Aprile there!
+  And as the poor melodious wretch disburthened
+  His heart, and moaned his weakness in my ear,
+  I learned my own deep error; love's undoing
+  Taught me the worth of love in man's estate,
+  And what proportion love should hold with power
+  In his right constitution; love preceding
+  Power, and with much power, always much more love;
+  Love still too straitened in his present means,
+  And earnest for new power to set love free."
+
+As long as he hated men, or, in his passionate pursuit of truth, was
+indifferent to their concerns, it was not strange that he saw no good in
+men and failed to help them. Knowledge without love is not _true_
+knowledge, but folly and weakness.
+
+But, great as is the place given to love in _Paracelsus_, it is far less
+than that given to it in the poet's later works. In _Ferishtah's
+Fancies_ and _La Saisiaz_ it is no longer rivalled by knowledge; nor
+even in _Easter Day_, where the voice beside the poet proclaiming that
+
+  "Life is done,
+  Time ends, Eternity's begun,"
+
+gives a final pronouncement upon the purposes of the life of man. The
+world of sense--of beauty and art, of knowledge and truth, are given to
+man, but none of them satisfy his spirit; they merely sting with hunger
+for something better. "Deficiency gapes every side," till love is known
+as the essence and worth of all things.
+
+                  "Is this thy final choice?
+  Love is the best? 'Tis somewhat late!
+  And all thou dost enumerate
+  Of power and beauty in the world,
+  The righteousness of love was curled
+  Inextricably round about.
+  Love lay within it and without,
+  To clasp thee,--but in vain! Thy soul
+  Still shrunk from Him who made the whole,
+  Still set deliberate aside
+  His love!--Now take love! Well betide
+  Thy tardy conscience!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Easter Day._]
+
+In his later reflective poems, in which he deals with the problems of
+life in the spirit of a metaphysician, seeking a definite answer to the
+questions of the intelligence, he declares the reason for his preference
+of love to knowledge. In _La Saisiaz_ he states that man's love is God's
+too, a spark from His central fire; but man's knowledge is man's only.
+Knowledge is finite, limited and tinged with sense. The truth we reach
+at best is only truth _for us_, relative, distorted. We are for ever
+kept from the fact which is supposed to be given; our intellects play
+about it; sense and even intellect itself are interposing media, which
+we must use, and yet, in using them, we only fool ourselves with
+semblances. The poet has now grown so cautious that he will not declare
+his own knowledge to be valid for any other man. David Hume could
+scarcely be more suspicious of the human intellect; nor Berkeley more
+surely persuaded of the purely subjective nature of its attainments. In
+fact, the latter relied on human knowledge in a way impossible to
+Browning, for he regarded it as the language of spirit speaking to
+spirit. Out of his experience, Browning says,
+
+                            "There crowds 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."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+Thought itself, for aught he knows, may be afflicted with a kind of
+colour-blindness; and he knows no appeal when one affirms "green as
+grass," and another contradicts him with "red as grass." Under such
+circumstances, it is not strange that Browning should decline to speak
+except for himself, and that he will
+
+  "Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers strong or weak,"
+
+or that he will far less presume to pronounce for God, and pretend that
+the truth finds utterance from lips of clay--
+
+  "Pass off human lisp as echo of the sphere-song out of reach."
+
+  "Have I knowledge? Confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare!
+  Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew
+  (With that stoop of the soul, which in bending upraises it too)
+  The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete,
+  As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to His feet."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Saul_, III.]
+
+But David finds in himself one faculty so supreme in worth that he keeps
+it in abeyance--
+
+  "Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst
+  E'en the Giver in one gift.--Behold, I could love if I durst!
+  But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake
+  God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love's sake."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Saul_, III.]
+
+This faculty of love, so far from being tainted with finitude, like
+knowledge; so far from being mere man's, or a temporary and deceptive
+power given to man for temporary uses, by a Creator who has another
+ineffably higher way of loving, as He has of truth, is itself divine. In
+contrast with the activity of love, Omnipotence itself dwindles into
+insignificance, and creation sinks into a puny exercise of power. Love,
+in a word, is the highest good; and, as such, it has all its worth in
+itself, and gives to all other things what worth they have. God Himself
+gains the "ineffable crown" by showing love and saving the weak. It is
+the power divine, the central energy of God's being.
+
+Browning never forgets this moral or religious quality of love. So pure
+is this emotion to the poet, "so perfect in whiteness, that it will not
+take pollution; but, ermine-like, is armed from dishonour by its own
+soft snow." In the corruptest hearts, amidst the worst sensuality, love
+is still a power divine, making for all goodness. Even when it is
+kindled into flame by an illicit touch, and wars against the life of the
+family, which is its own product, its worth is supreme. He who has
+learned to love in any way, has "caught God's secret." How he has caught
+it, whom he loves, whether or not he is loved in return, all these
+things matter little. The paramount question on which hangs man's fate
+is, has he learned to love another, any other, Fifine or Elvire. "She
+has lost me," said the unloved lover; "I have gained her. Her soul's
+mine."
+
+The supreme worth of love, the mere emotion itself, however called into
+activity, secures it against all taint. No one who understands Browning
+in the least, can accuse him of touching with a rash hand the sanctity
+of the family; rather he places it on the basis of its own principle,
+and thereby makes for it the strongest defence. Such love as he speaks
+of, however irregular its manifestation or sensuous its setting, can
+never be confounded with lust--"hell's own blue tint." It is further
+removed from lust even than asceticism. It has not even a negative
+attitude towards the flesh; but finds the flesh to be "stuff for
+transmuting," and reduces it to the uses of the spirit. The love which
+is sung by Browning is more pure and free, and is set in a higher
+altitude than anything that can be reached by the way of negation. It is
+a consecration of the undivided self, so that "soul helps not flesh
+more, than flesh helps soul." It is not only a spiritual and divine
+emotion, but it also "shows a heart within blood-tinctured with a veined
+humanity."
+
+  "Be a God and hold me
+    With a charm!
+  Be a man and hold me
+    With thine arm!
+
+  "Teach me, only teach, Love!
+    As I ought
+  I will speak thy speech, Love!
+    Think thy thought--
+
+  "Meet, if thou require it,
+    Both demands,
+  Laying flesh and spirit
+    In thy hands."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Woman's Last Word_.]
+
+True love is always an infinite giving, which holds nothing back. It is
+a spendthrift, magnificent in its recklessness, squandering the very
+essence of the self upon its object, and by doing so, in the end
+enriching the self beyond all counting. For in loving, the individual
+becomes re-impersonated in another; the distinction of Me and Thee is
+swept away, and there pulses in two individuals one warm life.
+
+  "If two lives join, there is oft a scar
+    They are one and one with a shadowy third;
+  One near one is too far.
+
+  "A moment after, and hands unseen
+    Were hanging the night around us fast;
+  But we knew that a bar was broken between
+    Life and life: we were mixed at last
+  In spite of the mortal screen."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _By the Fireside_.]
+
+The throwing down of the limits that wall a man within himself, the
+mingling of his own deepest interests with those of others, always marks
+love; be it love of man for maid, parent for child, or patriot for his
+country. It opens an outlet into the pure air of the world of objects,
+and enables man to escape from the stuffed and poisonous atmosphere of
+his narrow self. It is a streaming outwards of the inmost treasures of
+the spirit, a consecration of its best activities to the welfare of
+others. And when this is known to be the native quality and quintessence
+of love, no one can regard it anywhere, or at any time, as out of place.
+"Prize-lawful or prize-lawless" it is ever a flower, even though it
+grow, like the love of the hero of _Turf and Towers_, in slime. Lust,
+fleshly desire, which has been too often miscalled love, is its worst
+perversion. Love spends itself for another, and seeks satisfaction only
+in another's good. But last uses up others for its own worst purposes,
+wastes its object, and turns the current of life back inwards, into the
+slush and filth of selfish pleasure. The distinction between love and
+its perversion, which is impossible in the naive life of an animal,
+ought to be clear enough to all, and probably is. Nor should the sexual
+impulse in human beings be confused with fleshly desire, and treated as
+if it were merely natural, "the mere lust of life" common to all living
+things,--"that strive," as Spinoza put it, "to persevere in existing."
+For there is no purely natural impulse in man; all that he is, is
+transfused with spirit, whether he will or no. He cannot act as a mere
+animal, because he cannot leave his rational nature behind him.
+
+He cannot desire as an innocent brute desires: his desire is always love
+or lust. We have as little right to say that the wisdom of the sage is
+_nothing but_ the purblind savagery of a Terra del Fuegian, as we have
+to assert that love is _nothing but_ a sexual impulse. That impulse
+rather, when its potency is set free, will show itself, at first
+confusedly, but with more and more clearness as it expands, to be the
+yearning of soul for soul. It puts us "in training for a love which
+knows not sex, nor person, nor partiality; but which seeks virtue and
+wisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom." The
+height to which this passion lifts man, is just what makes possible the
+fall into a sensuality and excess of brutishness, in comparison with
+which animal life is a paradise of innocence.
+
+If this is clearly recognized, many of the idle questions of casuistry
+that are sometimes raised regarding sexual love and marriage will cease
+to trouble. For these questions generally presuppose the lowest possible
+view of this passion. Browning shows us how to follow with serene
+security the pure light of the emotion of love, amidst all the confused
+lawlessness of lustful passion, and through all the intricacies of human
+character. Love, he thinks, is never illicit, never unwise, except when
+it is disloyal to itself; it never ruins, but always strives to enrich
+its object. Bacon quotes with approval a saying "That it is impossible
+to love, and to be wise." Browning asserts that it is impossible to love
+and _not_ be wise. It is a power that, according to the Christian idea
+which the poet adopts, has infinite goodness for its source, and that,
+even in its meanest expression, is always feeling its way back to its
+origin, flowing again into the ocean whence it came.
+
+So sparklingly pure is this passion that it could exorcise the evil and
+turn old to new, even in the case of Léonce Miranda. At least Browning,
+in this poem, strives to show that, being true love, though the love of
+an unclean man for an unclean woman, it was a power at war with the
+sordid elements of that sordid life. Love has always the same potency,
+flame is always flame,
+
+      "no matter whence flame sprung,
+  From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness."[A]
+
+[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, assimilates
+  All other passions 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 passions 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 God'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 God 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 God.
+
+"I think," says the heroine of the _Inn Album_,
+
+  "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 Album_.]
+
+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 _Ivàn Ivànovitch_,
+
+                                  "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 assault her whelp."
+
+The betrayal of the mother's trust is the "unexampled sin," which scares
+the world and shames God.
+
+  "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: _Ivàn Ivànovitch_.]
+
+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 phosphorescent, "and sparks from heaven transpierce earth's
+coarsest 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_. xxxi.]
+
+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 God is, what we are,
+  What life is--how God 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 God."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+For man, being intelligent, flings back his light on all that went
+before,
+
+  "Illustrates 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.
+The magnificent failure of Paracelsus came from missing this last step.
+His transcendent hunger for knowledge was not satisfied, not because
+human knowledge is essentially an illusion or mind disease, but because
+his knowledge did not reach the final truth of things, which is love.
+For love alone makes the heart wise, to know the secret of all being.
+This is the ultimate hypothesis in the light of which alone man can
+catch a glimpse of the general direction and intent of the universal
+movement in the world and man. Dying, Paracelsus, taught by Aprile,
+caught a glimpse of this elemental "love-force," in which alone lies the
+clue to every problem, and the promise of the final satisfaction of the
+human spirit. Failing in this knowledge, man may know many things, but
+nothing truly; for all such knowledge stays with outward shows. It is
+love alone that puts man in the right relation to his fellows and to the
+world, and removes the distortion which fills life with sorrow, and
+makes it
+
+            "Only a scene
+  Of degradation, ugliness and tears,
+  The record of disgraces best forgotten,
+  A sullen page in human chronicles
+  Fit to erase."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
+
+But in the light of love, man "sees a good in evil, and a hope in ill
+success," and recognizes that mankind are
+
+  "All with a touch of nobleness, despite
+  Their error, upward tending all though weak;
+  Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,
+  But dream of him, and guess where he may be,
+  And do their best to climb and get to him."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+"All this I knew not," adds Paracelsus, "and I failed. Let men take the
+lesson and press this lamp of love, 'God's lamp, close to their
+breasts'; its splendour, soon or late, will pierce the gloom," and show
+that the universe is a transparent manifestation of His beneficence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+BROWNING'S IDEALISM, AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION.
+
+
+  "Master, explain this incongruity!
+  When I dared question, 'It is beautiful,
+  But is it true?' thy answer was, 'In truth
+  Lives Beauty.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Shah Abbas_.]
+
+We have now seen how Browning sought to explain all things as
+manifestations of the principle of love; how he endeavoured to bring all
+the variety of finite existence, and even the deep discrepancies of good
+and evil, under the sway of one idea. I have already tried to show that
+all human thought is occupied with the same task: science, art,
+philosophy, and even the most ordinary common-sense, are all, in their
+different ways, seeking for constant laws amongst changing facts. Nay,
+we may even go so far as to say that all the activity of man, the
+practical as well as the theoretical, is an attempt to establish a
+_modus vivendi_ between his environment and himself. And such an attempt
+rests on the assumption that there is some ground common to both of the
+struggling powers within and without, some principle that manifests
+itself both in man and in nature. So that all men are philosophers to
+the extent of postulating a unity, which is deeper than all differences;
+and all are alike trying to discover, in however limited or ignorant a
+way, what that unity is. If this fact were more constantly kept in view,
+the effort of philosophers to bring the ultimate colligating principles
+of thought into clear consciousness would not, at the outset at least,
+be regarded with so much suspicion. For the philosopher differs from the
+practical man of the world, not so much in the nature of the task which
+he is trying to accomplish, as in the distinct and conscious purpose
+with which he enters upon it.
+
+Now, I think that those, who, like Browning, offer an explicitly
+optimistic idea of the relation between man and the world, have a
+special right to a respectful hearing; for it can scarcely be denied
+that their optimistic explanation is invaluable, _if it is true_--
+
+  "So might we safely mock at what unnerves
+  Faith now, be spared the sapping fear's increase
+  That haply evil's strife with good shall cease
+  Never on earth."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville_.]
+
+Despair is a great clog to good work for the world, and pessimists, as a
+rule, have shown much more readiness than optimists to let evil have its
+unimpeded way. Having found, like Schopenhauer, that "Life is an awkward
+business," they "determine to spend life in reflecting on it," or at
+least in moaning about it. The world's helpers have been men of another
+mould; and the contrast between Fichte and Schopenhauer is suggestive of
+a general truth:--"Fichte, in the bright triumphant flight of his
+idealism, supported by faith in a moral order of the world which works
+for righteousness, turning his back on the darker ethics of self-torture
+and mortification, and rushing into the political and social fray,
+proclaiming the duties of patriotism, idealizing the soldier,
+calling to and exercising an active philanthrophy, living with
+his nation, and continually urging it upwards to higher levels of
+self-realization--Schopenhauer recurring to the idea of asceticism,
+preaching the blessedness of the quiescence of all will, disparaging
+efforts to save the nation or elevate the masses, and holding that each
+has enough to do in raising his own self from its dull engrossment in
+lower things to an absorption in that pure, passionless being which lies
+far beyond all, even the so-called highest, pursuits of practical
+life."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Schopenhauer_, by Prof. Wallace.]
+
+A pessimism, which is nothing more than flippant fault-finding,
+frequently gains a cheap reputation for wisdom; and, on the other hand,
+an optimism, which is really the result of much reflection and
+experience, may be regarded as the product of a superficial spirit that
+has never known the deeper evils of life. But, if pessimism be true, it
+differs from other truths by its uselessness; for, even if it saves man
+from the bitterness of petty disappointments, it does so only by making
+the misery universal. There is no need to specify, when "_All_ is
+vanity." The drowning man does not feel the discomfort of being wet. But
+yet, if we reflect on the problem of evil, we shall find that there is
+no neutral ground, and shall ultimately be driven to choose between
+pessimism and its opposite. Nor, on the other hand, is the suppression
+of the problem of evil possible, except at a great cost. It presents
+itself anew in the mind of every thinking man; and some kind of solution
+of it, or at least some definite way of meeting its difficulty, is
+involved in the attitude which every man assumes towards life and its
+tasks.
+
+It is not impossible that there may be as much to be said for Browning's
+joy in life and his love of it, as there is for his predecessor's rage
+and sorrow. Browning certainly thought that there was; and he held his
+view consistently to the end. We cannot, therefore, do justice to the
+poet without dealing critically with the principle on which he has based
+his faith, and observing how far it is applicable to the facts of human
+life. As I have previously said, he strives hard to come into fair
+contact with the misery of man in all its sadness; and, after doing so,
+he claims, not as a matter of poetic sentiment, but as a matter of
+strict truth, that good is the heart and reality of it all. It is true
+that he cannot demonstrate the truth of his principle by reference to
+all the facts, any more than the scientific man can justify his
+hypothesis in every detail; but he holds it as a faith which reason can
+justify and experience establish, although not in every isolated
+phenomenon. The good may, he holds, be seen actually at work in the
+world, and its process will be more fully known, as human life advances
+towards its goal.
+
+                    "Though Master keep aloof,
+  Signs of His presence multiply from roof
+  To basement of the building."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+Thus Browning bases his view upon experience, and finds firm footing for
+his faith in the present; although he acknowledges that the "profound of
+ignorance surges round his rockspit of self-knowledge."
+
+                              "Enough that now,
+  Here where I stand, this moment's me and mine,
+  Shows me what is, permits me to divine
+  What shall be."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+"Since we know love we know enough"; for in love, he confidently thinks
+we have the key to all the mystery of being.
+
+Now, what is to be made of an optimism of this kind, which is based upon
+love and which professes to start from experience, or to be legitimately
+and rationally derived from it?
+
+If such a view be taken seriously, as I propose doing, we must be
+prepared to meet at the outset with some very grave difficulties. The
+first of these is that it is an interpretation of facts by a human
+emotion. To say that love blushes in the rose, or breaks into beauty in
+the clouds, that it shows its strength in the storm, and sets the stars
+in the sky, and that it is in all things the source of order and law,
+may imply a principle of supreme worth both to poetry and religion; but
+when we are asked to take it as a metaphysical explanation of facts, we
+are prone, like the judges of Caponsacchi, not to "levity, or to
+anything indecorous"--
+
+  "Only--I think I apprehend the mood:
+  There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk,
+  The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth,
+  The titter stifled in the hollow palm
+  Which rubbed the eye-brow and caressed the nose,
+  When I first told my tale; they meant, you know--
+  'The sly one, all this we are bound believe!
+  Well, he can say no other than what he says.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Canon Caponsacchi_, 14-20.]
+
+We are sufficiently willing to let the doctrine be held as a pious
+opinion. The faith that "all's love yet all's law," like many another
+illusion, if not hugged too closely, may comfort man's nakedness. But if
+we are asked to substitute this view for that which the sciences
+suggest,--if we are asked to put "Love" in the place of physical energy,
+and, by assuming it as a principle, to regard as unreal all the infinite
+misery of humanity and the degradation of intellect and character from
+which it arises, common-sense seems at once to take the side of the
+doleful sage of Chelsea. When the optimist postulates that the state of
+the world, were it rightly understood, is completely satisfactory,
+reason seems to be brought to a stand; and if poetry and religion
+involve such a postulate, they are taken to be ministering to the
+emotions at the expense of the intellect.
+
+Browning, however, was not a mere sentimentalist who could satisfy his
+heart without answering the questions of his intellect. Nor is his view
+without support--at least, as regards the substance of it. The presence
+of an idealistic element in things is recognized even by ordinary
+thought; and no man's world is so poor that it would not be poorer still
+for him, if it were reduced by the abstract sciences of nature into a
+mere manifestation of physical force. Such a world Richter compares to
+an empty eye-socket.
+
+The great result of speculation since the time of Kant is to teach us to
+recognize that objects are essentially related to mind, and that the
+principles which rule our thought enter, so to speak, into the
+constitution of the things we know. A very slight acquaintance with the
+history even of psychology, especially in modern times, shows that facts
+are more and more retracted into thought. This science, which began with
+a sufficiently common-sense view, not only of the reality and solidity
+of the things of the outer world, but of their opposition to, or
+independence of thought, is now thinning that world down into a mere
+shadow--a something which excites sensation. It shows that external
+things as we know them, and we are not concerned in any others, are, to
+a very great extent, the product of our thinking activities. No one will
+now subscribe to the Lockian or Humean view, of images impressed by
+objects on mind: the object which "impresses" has first to be made by
+mind, out of the results of nervous excitation. In a word, modern
+psychology as well as modern metaphysics, is demonstrating more and more
+fully the dependence of the world, as it is known, on the nature and
+activity of man's mind. Every explanation of the world is found to be,
+in this sense, idealistic; and in this respect, there is no difference
+whatsoever between the interpretation given by science and that of
+poetry, or religion, or philosophy. If we say that a thing is a
+"substance," or has "a cause"; if, with the physicist, we assert the
+principle of the transmutation of energy, or make use of the idea of
+evolution with the biologist or geologist; nay, if we speak of time and
+space with the mathematician, we use principles of unity derived from
+self-consciousness, and interpret nature in terms of ourselves, just as
+truly as the poet or philosopher, who makes love, or reason, the
+constitutive element in things. If the practical man of the world
+charges the poet and philosopher with living amidst phantoms, he can be
+answered with a "_Tu quoque_." "How easy," said Emerson, "it is to show
+the materialist that he also is a phantom walking and working amid
+phantoms, and that he need only ask a question or two beyond his daily
+questions to find his solid universe proving dim and impalpable before
+his sense."
+
+"Sense," which seems to show directly that the world is a solid reality,
+not dependent in any way on thought, is found not to be reliable. All
+science is nothing but an appeal to thought from ordinary sensuous
+opinion. It is an attempt to find the reality of things by thinking
+about them; and this reality, when it is found, turns out to be a law.
+But laws are ideas; though, if they are true ideas, they represent not
+merely thoughts in the mind, but also real principles, which manifest
+themselves in the objects of the outer world, as well as in the
+thinker's mind.
+
+It is not possible in such a work as this, to give a carefully reasoned
+proof of this view of the relation of thought and things, or to repeat
+the argument of Kant. I must be content with merely referring to it, as
+showing that the principles in virtue of which we think, are the
+principles in virtue of which objects as we know them exist; and we
+cannot be concerned with any other objects. The laws which scientific
+investigation discovers are not only ideas that can be written in books,
+but also principles which explain the nature of things. In other words,
+the hypotheses of the natural sciences, or their categories, are points
+of view in the light of which the external world can be regarded as
+governed by uniform laws. And these constructive principles, which lift
+the otherwise disconnected world into an intelligible system, are
+revelations of the nature of intelligence, and only on that account
+principles for explaining the world.
+
+                           "To know,
+  Rather consists in opening out a way
+  Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
+  Than in effecting entry for a light
+  Supposed to be without."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
+
+In this sense, it may be said that all knowledge is anthropomorphic; and
+in this respect there is no difference between the physics, which speaks
+of energy as the essence of things, and the poetry, which speaks of love
+as the ultimate principle of reality. Between such scientific and
+idealistic explanations there is not even the difference that the one
+begins without and the other within, or that the one is objective and
+the other subjective. The true distinction is that the principles upon
+which the latter proceed are less abstract than those of science.
+"Reason" and "love" are higher principles for the explanation of the
+nature of things than "substance" or "cause"; but both are forms of the
+unity of thought. And if the latter seem to have nothing to do with the
+self, it is only because they are inadequate to express its full
+character. On the other hand, the higher categories, or ideas of reason,
+seem to be merely anthropomorphic, and, therefore, ill-suited to explain
+nature, because the relation of nature to intelligence is habitually
+neglected by ordinary thought, which has not pressed its problems far
+enough to know that such higher categories can alone satisfy the demand
+for truth.
+
+But natural science is gradually driven from the lower to the higher
+categories, or, in other words, it is learning to take a more and more
+idealistic view of nature. It is moving very slowly, because it is a
+long labour to exhaust the uses of an instrument of thought; and it is
+only at great intervals in the history of the human intellect, that we
+find the need of a change of categories. But, as already hinted, there
+is no doubt that science is becoming increasingly aware of the
+conditions, under which alone its results may be held as valid. At
+first, it drove "mind" out of the realm of nature, and offered to
+explain both it and man in physical and mathematical terms. But, in our
+day, the man of science has become too cautious to make such rash
+extensions of the principles he uses. He is more inclined to limit
+himself to his special field, and he refuses to make any declaration as
+to the ultimate nature of things. He holds himself apart from
+materialism, as he does from idealism. I think I may even go further,
+and say that the fatal flaw of materialism has been finally detected,
+and that the essential relativity of all objects to thought is all but
+universally acknowledged.
+
+The common notion that science gives a complete view of truth, to which
+we may appeal as refuting idealism, is untenable. Science itself will
+not support the appeal, but will direct the appellant to another court.
+Perhaps, rather, it would be truer to say that its attitude is one of
+doubt whether or not any court, philosophical or other, can give any
+valid decision on the matter. Confining themselves to the region of
+material phenomena, scientific men generally leave to common ignorance,
+or to moral and theological tradition, all the interests and activities
+of man, other than those which are physical or physiological. And some
+of them are even aware, that if they could find the physical equation of
+man, or, through their knowledge of physiology, actually produce in man
+the sensations, thoughts, and notions now ascribed to the intelligent
+life within him, the question of the spiritual or material nature of man
+and the world, would remain precisely where it was. The explanation
+would still begin with mind and end there. The principles of the
+materialistic explanation of the world would still be derived from
+intelligence; mind would still underlie all it explained, and completed
+science would still be, in this sense, anthropomorphic. The charge of
+anthropomorphism thus falls to the ground, because it would prove too
+much. It is a weapon which cuts the hand that wields it. And, as
+directed against idealism, it only shows that he who uses it has
+inadequate notions both of the nature of the self and of the world, and
+is not aware that each gets meaning, only as an exponent of the other.
+
+On the whole, we may say that it is not men of science who now assail
+philosophy, because it gives an idealistic explanation of the world, so
+much as unsystematic dabblers in matters of thought. The best men of
+science, rather, show a tendency to acquiesce in a kind of dualism of
+matter and spirit, and to leave morality and religion, art and
+philosophy to pursue their own ends undisturbed. Mr. Huxley, for
+instance, and some others, offer two philosophical solutions, one
+proceeding from the material world and the other from the sensations and
+other "facts of consciousness." They say that we may either explain man
+as a natural phenomenon, or the world as a mental one.
+
+But it is a little difficult not to ask which of these explanations is
+true. Both of them cannot well be, seeing that they are different. And
+neither of them can be adopted without very serious consequences. It
+would require considerable hardihood to suggest that natural science
+should be swept away in favour of psychology, which would be done if the
+one view held by Mr. Huxley were true. And, in my opinion, it requires
+quite as much hardihood to suggest the adoption of a theory that makes
+morality and religion illusory, which would be done were the other view
+valid.
+
+As a matter of fact, however, such an attitude can scarcely be held by
+any one who is interested _both_ in the success of natural science and
+in the spiritual development of mankind. We are constrained rather to
+say that, if these rival lines of thought lead us to deny either the
+outer world of things, or the world of thought and morality, then they
+must both be wrong. They are not "explanations" but false theories, if
+they lead to such conclusions as these. And, instead of holding them up
+to the world as the final triumph of human thought, we should sweep them
+into the dust-bin, and seek for some better explanation from a new point
+of view.
+
+And, indeed, a better explanation is sought, and sought not only by
+idealists, but by scientific men themselves,--did they only comprehend
+their own main tendency and method. The impulse towards unity, which is
+the very essence of thought, if it is baulked in one direction by a
+hopeless dualism, just breaks out in another. Subjective idealism, that
+is, the theory that things are nothing but phenomena of the individual's
+consciousness, that the world is really all inside the philosopher, is
+now known by most people to end in self-contradiction; and materialism
+is also known to begin with it. And there are not many people sanguine
+enough to believe with Mr. Huxley and Mr. Herbert Spencer, that, if we
+add two self-contradictory theories together, or hold them alternately,
+we shall find the truth. Modern science, that is, the science which does
+not philosophize, and modern philosophy are with tolerable unanimity
+denying this absolute dualism. They do not know of any thought that is
+not of things, or of any things that are not for thought. It is
+necessarily assumed that, in some way or other, the gap between things
+and thought is got over by knowledge. How the connection is brought
+about may not be known; but, that there is the connection between real
+things and true thoughts, no one can well deny. It is an ill-starred
+perversity which leads men to deny such a connection, merely because
+they have not found out how it is established.
+
+A new category of thought has taken possession of the thought of our
+time--a category which is fatal to dualism. The idea of development is
+breaking down the division between mind and matter, as it is breaking
+down all other absolute divisions. Geology, astronomy, and physics at
+one extreme, biology, psychology, and philosophy at the other, combine
+in asserting the idea of the universe as a unity which is always
+evolving its content, and bringing its secret potencies to the light. It
+is true that these sciences have not linked hands as yet. We cannot get
+from chemistry to biology without a leap, or from physiology to
+psychology without another. But no one will postulate a rift right
+through being. The whole tendency of modern science implies the opposite
+of such a conception. History is striving to trace continuity between
+the civilized man and the savage. Psychology is making towards a
+junction with physiology and general biology, biology with chemistry,
+and chemistry with physics. That there is an unbroken continuity in
+existence is becoming a postulate of modern science, almost as truly as
+the "universality of law" or "the uniformity of nature." Nor is the
+postulate held less firmly because the evidence for the continuity of
+nature is not yet complete. Chemistry has not yet quite lapsed into
+physics; biology at present shows no sign of giving up its
+characteristic conception of life, and the former science is as yet
+quite unable to deal with that peculiar phenomenon. The facts of
+consciousness have not been resolved into nervous action, and, so far,
+mind has not been shown to be a secretion of brain. Nevertheless, all
+these sciences are beating against the limits which separate them, and
+new suggestions of connection between natural life and its inorganic
+environment are continually discovered. The sciences are boring towards
+each other, and the dividing strata are wearing thin; so that it seems
+reasonable to expect that, with the growth of knowledge, an unbroken way
+upwards may be discovered, from the lowest and simplest stages of
+existence to the highest and most complex forms of self-conscious life.
+
+Now, to those persons who are primarily interested in the ethical and
+religious phenomena of man's life, the idea of abolishing the chasm
+between spirit and nature is viewed with no little apprehension. It is
+supposed that if evolution were established as a universal law, and the
+unity of being were proved, the mental and moral life of man would be
+degraded into a complex manifestation of mere physical force. And we
+even find religious men rejoicing at the failure of science to bridge
+the gap between the inorganic and the organic, and between natural and
+self-conscious life; as if the validity of religion depended upon the
+maintenance of their separating boundaries. But no religion that is free
+from superstitious elements has anything to gain from the failure of
+knowledge to relate things to each other. It is difficult to see how
+breaks in the continuity of being can be established, when every living
+plant confutes the absolute difference between the organic and
+inorganic, and, by the very fact of living, turns the latter into the
+former; and it is difficult to deny the continuity of "mind and matter,"
+when every human being is relating himself to the outer world in all his
+thoughts and actions. And religion is the very last form of thought
+which could profit from such a proof of absolute distinctions, were it
+possible. In fact, as we have seen, religion, in so far as it demands a
+perfect and absolute being as the object of worship, is vitally
+concerned in maintaining the unity of the world. It must assume that
+matter, in its degree, reveals the same principle which, in a higher
+form, manifests itself in spirit.
+
+But closer investigation will show that the real ground for such
+apprehension does not lie in the continuity of existence, which
+evolution implies; for religion itself postulates the same thing. The
+apprehension springs, rather, from the idea that the continuity asserted
+by evolution, is obtained by resolving the higher forms of existence
+into the lower. It is believed that, if the application of development
+to facts were successfully carried out, the organic would be shown to be
+nothing but complex inorganic forces, mental life nothing but a
+physiological process, and religion, morality, and art, nothing but
+products of the highly complex motion of highly complex aggregates of
+physical atoms.
+
+It seems to me quite natural that science should be regarded as tending
+towards such a materialistic conclusion. This is the view which many
+scientific investigators have themselves taken of their work; and some
+of their philosophical exponents, notably Mr. Herbert Spencer, have,
+with more or less inconsistency, interpreted the idea of evolution in
+this manner. But, it may be well to bear in mind that science is
+generally far more successful in employing its constructive ideas, than
+it is in rendering an account of them. In fact, it is not its business
+to examine its categories: that task properly belongs to philosophy, and
+it is not a superfluous one. But, so long as the employment of the
+categories in the special province of a particular science yields valid
+results, scientific explorers and those who attach, and rightly attach,
+so much value to their discoveries, are very unwilling to believe that
+these categories are not valid universally. The warning voice of
+philosophy is not heeded, when it charges natural science with applying
+its conceptions to materials to which they are inadequate; and its
+examination of the categories of thought is regarded as an innocent, but
+also a useless, activity. For, it is argued, what good can arise from
+the analysis of our working ideas? The world looked for causes, and
+found them, when it was very young; but, up to the time of David Hume,
+no one had shown what causality meant, and the explanation which he
+offered is now rejected by modern science, as definitely as it is
+rejected by philosophy. Meantime, while philosophy is still engaged in
+exposing the fallacies of the theory of association as held by Hume,
+science has gone beyond this category altogether; it is now establishing
+a theory of the conservation of energy, which supplants the law of
+causality by tracing it into a deeper law of nature.
+
+There is some force in this argument, but it cuts both ways. For, even
+if it be admitted that the category was successfully applied in the
+past, it is also admitted that it was applied without being understood;
+and it cannot now be questioned that the philosophers were right in
+rejecting it as the final explanation of the relation of objects to each
+other, and in pointing to other and higher connecting ideas. And this
+consideration should go some way towards convincing evolutionists that,
+though they may be able successfully to apply the idea of development to
+particular facts, this does not guarantee the soundness of their view of
+it as an instrument of thought, or of the nature of the final results
+which it is destined to achieve. Hence, without any disparagement to the
+new extension which science has received by the use of this new idea, it
+may be maintained that the ordinary view of its tendency and mission is
+erroneous.
+
+"The prevailing method of explaining the world," says Professor Caird,
+"may be described as an attempt to level 'downwards.' The doctrine of
+development, interpreted as that idea usually is interpreted, supports
+this view, as making it necessary to trace back higher and more complex
+to lower or simpler forms of being; for the most obvious way of
+accomplishing this task is to show analytically that there is really
+nothing more in the former than in the latter."[A] "Divorced from
+matter," asks Professor Tyndall, "where is life to be found? Whatever
+our _faith_ may say our _knowledge_ shows them to be indissolubly
+joined. Every meal we eat, and every cup we drink, illustrates the
+mysterious _control of Mind by Matter_. Trace the line of life backwards
+and see it approaching more and more to what we call the _purely
+physical condition_."[B] And then, rising to the height of his subject,
+or even above it, he proclaims, "By an intellectual necessity I cross
+the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter
+which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our
+professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with
+opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life."[C] A
+little further on, speaking in the name of science, and on behalf of his
+scientific fellow-workers (with what right is a little doubtful), he
+adds--"We claim, and we shall wrest, from theology, the entire domain of
+cosmological theory. All schemes and systems which thus infringe upon
+the domain of science, must, _in so far as they do this,_ submit to its
+control, and relinquish all thought of controlling it." But if science
+is to control the knowable world, he generously leaves the remainder for
+religion. He will not deprive it of a faith in "a Power absolutely
+inscrutable to the intellect of man. As little in our days as in the
+days of Job can a man by searching find this Power out." And, now that
+he has left this empty sphere of the unknown to religion, he feels
+justified in adding, "There is, you will observe, no very rank
+materialism here."
+
+[Footnote A: _The Critical Philosophy of Kant_, Vol. I. p. 34]
+
+[Footnote B: _Address to the British Association_, 1874, p. 54.]
+
+[Footnote C: _Belfast Address_, 1874.]
+
+  "Yet they did not abolish the gods, but they sent them well out
+  of the way,
+  With the rarest of nectar to drink, and blue fields of nothing
+  to sway."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Clerk Maxwell: "_Notes of the President's Address,_"
+British Association, 1874.]
+
+Now these declarations of Mr. Tyndall are, to say the least, somewhat
+ambiguous and shadowy. Yet, when he informs us that eating and drinking
+"illustrate the control of mind by matter," and "that the line of life
+traced backwards leads towards a purely physical condition," it is a
+little difficult to avoid the conclusion that he regards science as
+destined.
+
+  "To tread the world
+  Into a paste, and thereof make a smooth
+  Uniform mound, whereon to plant its flag."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
+
+For the conclusion of the whole argument seems to be, that all _we know
+as facts_ are mere forms of matter; although the stubborn refusal of
+consciousness to be resolved into natural force, and its power of
+constructing for itself a world of symbols, gives science no little
+trouble, and forces it to acknowledge complete ignorance of the nature
+of the power from which all comes.
+
+  "So roll things to the level which you love,
+  That you could stand at ease there and survey
+  The universal Nothing undisgraced
+  By pert obtrusion of some old church-spire
+  I' the distance! "[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_.]
+
+Some writers on ethics and religion have adopted the same view of the
+goal of the idea of evolution. In consistency with this supposed
+tendency of science, to resolve all things into their simplest, and
+earliest forms, religion has been traced back to the superstition and
+ghost-worship of savages; and then it has been contended that it is, in
+essence, nothing more than superstition and ghost-worship. And, in like
+manner, morality, with its categorical imperative of duty, has been
+traced back, without a break, to the ignorant fear of the vengeance of a
+savage chief. A similar process in the same direction reduces the love
+divine, of which our poet speaks, into brute lust; somewhat sublimated,
+it is true, in its highest forms, but not fundamentally changed.
+
+  "Philosophers deduce you chastity
+  Or shame, from just the fact that at the first
+  Whoso embraced a woman in the field,
+  Threw club down and forewent his brains beside;
+  So, stood a ready victim in the reach
+  Of any brother-savage, club in hand.
+  Hence saw the use of going out of sight
+  In wood or cave to prosecute his loves."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Bishop Blouhram's Apology_.]
+
+And when the sacred things of life are treated in this manner--when
+moral conduct is showed to be evolved by a continuous process from
+"conduct in general," the conduct of an "infusorium or a cephalopod," or
+even of wind-mills or water-wheels, it is not surprising if the
+authority of the moral law seems to be undermined, and that "devout
+souls" are apprehensive of the results of science. "Does law so analyzed
+coerce you much?" asks Browning.
+
+The derivation of spiritual from natural laws thus appears to be fatal
+to the former; and religious teachers naturally think that it is
+necessary for their cause to snap the links of the chain of evolution,
+and, like Professor Drummond, to establish absolute gaps, not only
+between the inorganic and the organic worlds, but also between the
+self-conscious life of man and the mysterious, spiritual life of Christ,
+or God. But it seems to me that, in their antagonism to evolution,
+religious teachers are showing the same incapacity to distinguish
+between their friends and their foes, which they previously manifested
+in their acceptance of the Kantian doctrine of "things in
+themselves,"--a doctrine which placed God and the soul beyond the power
+of speculative reason either to prove or disprove. It is, however,
+already recognized that the attempt of Mansel and Hamilton to degrade
+human reason for the behoof of faith was really a veiled agnosticism;
+and a little reflection must show that the idea of evolution, truly
+interpreted, in no wise threatens the degradation of man, or the
+overthrow of his spiritual interests. On the contrary, this idea is, in
+all the history of thought, the first constructive hypothesis which is
+adequate to the uses of ethics and religion. By means of it, we may hope
+to solve many of the problems arising from the nature of knowledge and
+moral conduct, which the lower category of cause turned into pure
+enigmas. It seems, indeed, to contain the promise of establishing the
+science of man, as intelligent, on a firm basis; on which we may raise a
+superstructure, comparable in strength and superior in worth, to that of
+the science of nature. And, even if the moral science must, like
+philosophy, always return to the beginning--must, that is, from the
+necessity of its nature, and not from any complete failure--it will
+still begin again at a higher level now that the idea of evolution is in
+the field.
+
+It now remains to show in what way the idea of evolution leaves room for
+religion and morality; or, in other words, to show how, so far from
+degrading man to the level of the brute condition, and running life down
+into "purely physical conditions," it contains the promise of
+establishing that idealistic view of the world, which is maintained by
+art and religion.
+
+In order to show this, it is necessary that the idea of evolution should
+be used fearlessly, and applied to all facts that can in any way come
+under it. It must, in other words, be used as a category of thought,
+whose application is universal; so that, if it is valid at all as a
+theory, it is valid of all finite things. For the question we are
+dealing with is not the truth of the hypothesis of a particular science,
+but the truth of a hypothesis as to the relation of all objects in the
+world, including man himself. We must not be deterred from this
+universal application by the fact that we cannot, as yet, prove its
+truth in every detail. No scientific hypothesis ever has exhausted its
+details. I consider, therefore, that Mr. Tyndall had a complete right to
+"cross the boundary of the experimental evidence by an intellectual
+necessity"; for the necessity comes from the assumption of a possible
+explanation by the aid of the hypothesis. It is no argument against such
+a procedure to insist that, as yet, there is no proof of the absolute
+continuity of matter and physical life, or that the dead begets the
+living. The hypothesis is not disproved by the absence of evidence; it
+is only not proved. The connection may be there, although we have not,
+as yet, been able to find it. In the face of such difficulties as these,
+the scientific investigator has always a right to claim more time; and
+his attitude is impregnable as long as he remembers, as Mr. Tyndall did
+on the whole, that his hypothesis is a hypothesis.
+
+But Mr. Tyndall has himself given up this right. He, like Mr. Huxley,
+has placed the phenomena of self-consciousness outside of the developing
+process, and confined the sphere in which evolution is applicable, to
+natural objects. Between objects and the subject, even when both subject
+and object are man himself, there lies "an impassable gulf."
+
+Even to try "to comprehend the connection between thought and thing is
+absurd, like the effort of a man trying to lift himself by his own
+waist-band." Our states of self-consciousness are symbols only--symbols
+of an outside entity, whose real nature we can never know. We know only
+these states; we only _infer_ "that anything answering to our
+impressions exists outside of ourselves." And it is impossible to
+justify even that inference; for, if we can only know states of
+consciousness, we cannot say that they are symbols of anything, or that
+there is anything to be symbolized. The external world, on this theory,
+ceases to exist even as an unknown entity. In triumphantly pointing out
+that, in virtue of this psychological view, "There is, you will observe,
+no very rank materialism here," Mr. Tyndall forgets that he has
+destroyed the basis of all natural science, and reduced evolution into a
+law of "an outside entity," of which we can never know anything, and any
+inference regarding which violates every law of thought.
+
+It seems to me quite plain that either this psychological theory, which
+Mr. Tyndall has mistaken for a philosophy, is invalid; or else it is
+useless to endeavour to propound any view regarding a "nature which is
+the phantom of the individual's mind." I prefer the science of Mr.
+Tyndall (and of Mr. Huxley, too) to his philosophy; and he would have
+escaped materialism more effectively, if he had remained faithful to his
+theory of evolution. It is a disloyalty, not only to science, but to
+thought, to cast away our categories when they seem to imply
+inconvenient consequences. They must be valid universally, if they are
+valid at all.
+
+Mr. Tyndall contends that nature makes man, and he finds evidence in the
+fact that we eat and drink, "of the control of mind by matter." Now, it
+seems to me, that _if_ nature makes man, then nature makes man's
+thoughts also. His sensations, feelings, ideas, notions, being those of
+a naturally-evolved agent, are revelations of the potency of the primal
+matter, just as truly as are the buds, flowers, and fruits of a tree. No
+doubt, we cannot as yet "comprehend the connection" between nervous
+action and sensation, any more than we can comprehend the connection
+between inorganic and organic existence. But, if the absence of
+"experimental evidence" does not disprove the hypothesis in the one
+case, it can not disprove it in the other. There are two crucial points
+in which the theory has not been established.
+
+But, in both cases alike, there is the same kind of evidence that the
+connection exists; although in neither case can we, as yet, discover
+what it is. Plants live by changing inorganic elements into organic
+structure; and man is intelligent only in so far as he crosses over the
+boundary between subject and object, and knows the world without him.
+There is no "impassable gulf separating the subject and object"; if
+there were we could not know anything of either. There are not two
+worlds--the one of thoughts, the other of things--which are absolutely
+exclusive of each other, but one universe in which thought and reality
+meet. Mr. Tyndall thinks that it is an inference (and an inference over
+an impassable gulf!) that anything answering to our impressions exists
+outside ourselves. "The question of the external world is the great
+battleground of metaphysics," he quotes approvingly from Mr. J.S. Mill.
+But the question of the external world is not whether that world exists;
+it is, how are we to account for our knowledge that it does exist. The
+inference is not from thoughts to things, nor from things to thoughts,
+but from a partially known world to a systematic theory of that world.
+Philosophy is not engaged on the foolish enterprise of trying to
+discover whether the world exists, or whether we know that it exists;
+its problem is how to account for our knowledge. It asks what must the
+nature of things be, seeing that they are known; and what is the nature
+of thought, seeing that it knows facts?
+
+There is no hope whatsoever for ethics, or religion, or philosophy--no
+hope even for science--in a theory which would apply evolution all the
+way up from inorganic matter to life, but which would postulate an
+absolute break at consciousness. The connection between thought and
+things is there to begin with, whether we can account for it or not; if
+it were not, then natural science would be impossible. It would be
+palpably irrational even to try to find out the nature of things by
+thinking. The only science would be psychology, and even that would be
+the science of "symbols of an unknown entity." What symbols of an
+unknown can signify, or how an unknown can produce symbols of itself
+across an impassable gulf--Mr. Spencer, Mr. Huxley, and Mr. Tyndall have
+yet to inform us.
+
+It is the more necessary to insist on this, because the division between
+thought and matter, which is admitted by these writers, is often grasped
+at by their opponents, as a means of warding off the results which they
+draw from the theory of evolution. When science breaks its sword,
+religion assails it, with the fragment. It is not at once evident that
+if this chasm were shown to exist, knowledge would be a chimera; for
+there would be no outer world at all, not even a phenomenal one, to
+supply an object for it. We _must_ postulate the ultimate unity of all
+beings with each other and with the mind that knows them, just because
+we are intellectual and moral beings; and to destroy this unity is to
+"kill reason itself, as it were, in the eye," as Milton said.
+
+Now, evolution not only postulates unity, or the unbroken continuity of
+all existence, but it also negates all differences, except those which
+are expressions of that unity. It is not the mere assertion of a
+substratum under qualities; but it implies that the substratum
+penetrates into the qualities, and manifests itself in them. That which
+develops--be it plant, child, or biological kingdom--is, at every stage
+from lowest to highest, a concrete unity of all its differences; and in
+the whole history of its process its actual content is always the same.
+The environment of the plant evokes that content, but it adds nothing to
+it. No addition of anything absolutely new, no external aggregation, no
+insertion of anything alien into a growing thing, is possible. What it
+is now, it was in the beginning; and what it will be, it is now.
+Granting the hypothesis of evolution, there can be no quarrel with the
+view that the crude beginnings of things, matter in its most nebulous
+state, contains potentially all the rich variety of both natural and
+spiritual life.
+
+But this continuity of all existence may be interpreted in two very
+different ways. It may lead us either to radically change our notions of
+mind and its activities, or "to radically change our notions of matter."
+We may take as the principle of explanation, either the beginning, or
+the end of the process of development. We may say of the simple and
+crass, "There is all that your rich universe really means"; or we may
+say of the spiritual activities of man, "This is what your crude
+beginning really was." We may explain the complex by the simple, or the
+simple by the complex. We may analyze the highest back into the lowest,
+or we may follow the lowest, by a process of synthesis, up to the
+highest.
+
+And one of the most important of all questions for morality and religion
+is the question, which of these two methods is valid. If out of crass
+matter is evolved all animal and spiritual life, does that prove life to
+be nothing but matter; or does it not rather show that what we, in our
+ignorance, took to be mere matter was really something much greater? If
+"crass matter" contains all this promise and potency, by what right do
+we still call it "crass"? It is manifestly impossible to treat the
+potencies, assumed to lie in a thing that grows, as if they were of no
+significance; first, to assert that such potencies exist, in saying that
+the object develops; and then, to neglect them, and to regard the effect
+as constituted merely of its simplest elements. Either these potencies
+are not in the object, or else the object has in it, and is, at the
+first, more than it appears to be. Either the object does not grow, or
+the lowest stage of its being is no explanation of its true nature.
+
+If we wish to know what the forms of natural life mean, we look in vain
+to their primary state. We must watch the evolution and revelation of
+the secret hid in natural life, as it moves through the ascending cycles
+of the biological kingdom. The idea of evolution, when it is not
+muddled, is synthetic--not analytic; it explains the simplest in the
+light of the complex, the beginning in the light of the end, and not
+_vice versa_. In a word, it follows the ways of nature, the footsteps of
+fact, instead of inventing a wilful backward path of its own. And nature
+explains by gradually expanding. If we hearken to nature, and not to the
+voice of illusory preconceptions, we shall hear her proclaim at the last
+stage, "Here is the meaning of the seedling. Now it is clear what it
+really was; for the power which lay dormant has pushed itself into
+light, through bud and flower and leaf and fruit." The reality of a
+growing thing is its highest form of being. The last explains the first,
+but not the first the last. The first is abstract, incomplete, not yet
+actual, but mere potency; and we could never know even the potency,
+except in the light of its own actualization.
+
+From this correction of the abstract view of development momentous
+consequences follow. If the universe is, as science pronounces, an
+organic totality, which is ever converting its promise and potency into
+actuality, then we must add that the ultimate interpretation even of
+the lowest existence in the world cannot be given except on principles
+which are adequate to explain the highest. We must "level up and not
+level down": we must not only deny that matter can explain spirit, but
+we must say that even matter itself cannot be fully understood, except
+as an element in a spiritual world."[A]
+
+[Footnote 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
+were established, 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 justify
+_in detail_ the 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 stage
+  You shuffle through your part as best you can."[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 yet
+  I' the backwardness, repine if tree and flower,
+  Mountain or streamlet were my dwelling-place
+  Before I gained enlargement, grew mollusc."[C]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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
+perverted and 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 last
+  To man--the consummation of this scheme
+  Of being, the completion of this sphere
+  Of life."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
+
+"All tended to mankind," he said, after reviewing the whole process of
+nature in _Paracelsus_,
+
+  "And, man produced, all has its end thus far:
+  But in completed man begins anew
+  A tendency to God."[B]
+
+[Footnote 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, explains
+  Each back step in the circle."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+Nature is retracted into thought, built again in mind.
+
+    "Man, once descried, imprints for ever
+  His presence on all lifeless things."[D]
+
+[Footnote 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 a kosmos 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 finds
+_itself_.
+
+  "Striving to be man, the worm
+  Mounts through all the spires of form."[A]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 for Browning 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,
+_must_ seek 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 is a 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,--the _prius_ of all things, the
+active energy _in_ all things, and the _reality_ of 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 seem to 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
+conceptions are 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+BROWNING'S SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL.
+
+
+    "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 establishing an 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 in _The 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 more than 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."
+
+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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 learns
+  Because he lives, which is to be a man,
+  Set to instruct himself by his past self."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+             "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]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+It were easy to multiply passages which show that 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 soul
+  There, where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+But as long as he is man, he has
+
+  "Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become."
+
+In _Paracelsus_, _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 process of
+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 is _becoming_ good, 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 spring from 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 is _either_ good or evil, _either_ rational or irrational, _either_
+free 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 express
+  Heart's satisfaction that the Past indeed
+  Is past, gives way before Life's best and last,
+  The all-including Future!"[A]
+
+[Footnote 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 life
+  Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife
+  Through the ambiguous Present to the goal
+  Of some all-reconciling Future?"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 a _moral 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 discovers
+and 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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 reaction
+against 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 the old 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 means
+  Ever-renewed assurance by defeat
+  That victory is somehow still to reach."[A]
+
+[Footnote 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 effects
+  When exercised on earth's least atom, Son!
+  What was, what is, what may such atom be?
+  No answer!"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 in _La Saisiaz_, _Ferishtah's Fancies, The Parleyings_, and
+_Asolando_--in all his later and more reflective poems, in fact. It
+must, I think, 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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
+consciousness that 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 force
+  Actual e'er its own beginning, operative thro' its course,
+  Unaffected by its end."[A]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+If there were only they two on earth as tenants, there would be no way
+of deciding between them; for, according to his argument, the truth is
+apparently decided by majority of opinions. Each individual, equipped
+with his own particular kind of senses and reason, gets his own
+particular experience, and draws his own particular conclusions from it.
+If it be asked whether these conclusions are true or not, the only
+answer is that the question is absurd; for, under such conditions, there
+cannot be either truth or error. Every one's opinion is its own
+criterion. Each man is the measure of all things; "His own world for
+every mortal," as the poet puts it.
+
+  "To each mortal peradventure earth becomes a new machine,
+  Pain and pleasure no more tally in our sense than red and green."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+The first result of this subjective view of knowledge is clearly enough
+seen by the poet. He is well aware that his convictions regarding the
+high matters of human destiny are valid only for himself.
+
+            "Only for myself I speak,
+  Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers strong and weak."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+Experience, as he interprets it, that is, present consciousness, "this
+moment's me and mine," is too narrow a basis for any universal or
+objective conclusion. So far as his own inner experience of pain and
+pleasure goes,
+
+  "All--for myself--seems ordered wise and well
+  Inside it,--what reigns outside, who can tell?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+But as to the actual world, he can have no opinion, nor, from the good
+and evil that apparently play around him, can he deduce either
+
+  "Praise or blame of its contriver, shown a niggard or profuse
+  In each good or evil issue."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+The moral government of the world is a subject, regarding which we are
+doomed to absolute ignorance. A theory that it is ruled by the "prince
+of the power of the air" has just as much, and just as little, validity
+as the more ordinary view held by religious people. Who needs be told
+
+            "The space
+  Which yields thee knowledge--do its bounds embrace
+  Well-willing and wise-working, each at height?
+  Enough: beyond thee lies the infinite--
+  Back to thy circumscription!"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+And our ignorance of God, and the world, and ourselves is matched by a
+similar ignorance regarding moral matters.
+
+  "Ignorance overwraps his moral sense,
+  Winds him about, relaxing, as it wraps,
+  So much and no more than lets through perhaps
+  The murmured knowledge--' Ignorance exists.'"[D]
+
+[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]
+
+We cannot be certain even of the distinction and conflict of good and
+evil in the world. They, too, and the apparent choice between them to
+which man is continually constrained, may be mere illusions--phenomena
+of the individual consciousness. What remains, then? Nothing but to
+"wait."
+
+  "Take the joys and bear the sorrows--neither with extreme concern!
+  Living here means nescience simply: 'tis next life that helps to
+        learn."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+It is hardly necessary to enter upon any detailed criticism of such a
+theory of knowledge as this, which is proffered by the poet. It is well
+known by all those who are in some degree acquainted with the history of
+philosophy--and it will be easily seen by all who have any critical
+acumen--that it leads directly into absolute scepticism. And absolute
+scepticism is easily shown to be self-contradictory. For a theory of
+nescience, in condemning all knowledge and the faculty of knowledge,
+condemns itself. If nothing is true, or if nothing is known, then this
+theory itself is not true, or its truth cannot be known. And if this
+theory is true, then nothing is true; for this theory, like all others,
+is the product of a defective intelligence. In whatsoever way the matter
+is put, there is left no standing-ground for the human critic who
+condemns human thought. And he cannot well pretend to a footing in a
+sphere above man's, or below it. There is thus one presupposition which
+every one must make, if he is to propound any doctrine whatsoever, even
+if that doctrine be that no doctrine can be valid; it is the
+presupposition that knowledge is possible, and that truth can be known.
+And this presupposition fills, for modern philosophy, the place of the
+_Cogito ergo sum_ of Descartes. It is the starting-point and criterion
+of all knowledge.
+
+It is, at first sight, a somewhat difficult task to account for the
+fact, that so keen an intellect as the poet's did not perceive the
+conclusion to which his theory of knowledge so directly and necessarily
+leads. It is probable, however, that he never critically examined it,
+but simply accepted it as equivalent to the common doctrine of the
+relativity of knowledge, which, in some form or other, all the schools
+of philosophy adopt. But the main reason will be found to lie in the
+fact that knowledge was not, to Browning, its own criterion or end. The
+primary fact of his philosophy is that human life is a moral process.
+His interest in the evolution of character was his deepest interest, as
+he informs us; he was an ethical teacher rather than a metaphysician. He
+is ever willing to asperse man's intelligence. But that man is a moral
+agent he will in no wise doubt. This is his
+
+            "Solid standing-place amid
+  The wash and welter, whence all doubts are bid
+  Back to the ledge they break against in foam."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+His practical maxim was
+
+  "Wholly distrust thy knowledge, then, and trust
+  As wholly love allied to ignorance!
+  There lies thy truth and safety."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Pillar of Sebzevar_.]
+
+All phenomena must, in some way or other, be reconciled by the poet with
+the fundamental and indubitable fact of the progressive moral life of
+man. For the fundamental presupposition which a man makes, is
+necessarily his criterion of knowledge, and it determines the truth or
+illusoriness of all other opinions whatsoever.
+
+Now, Browning held, not only that no certain knowledge is attainable by
+man, but also that such certainty is incompatible with moral life.
+Absolute knowledge would, he contends, lift man above the need and the
+possibility of making the moral choice, which is our supreme business on
+earth. Man can be good or evil, only on condition of being in absolute
+uncertainty regarding the true meaning of the facts of nature and the
+phenomena of life.
+
+This somewhat strange doctrine finds the most explicit and full
+expression in _La Saisiaz_. "Fancy," amongst the concessions it demands
+from "Reason," claims that man should know--not merely surmise or
+fear--that every action done in this life awaits its proper and
+necessary meed in the next.
+
+                "I also will that man become aware
+  Life has worth incalculable, every moment that he spends
+  So much gain or loss for that next life which on this life depends."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+But Reason refuses the concession, upon the ground that such sure
+knowledge would be destructive of the very distinction between right and
+wrong, which the demand implies. The "promulgation of this decree," by
+Fancy, "makes both good and evil to cease." Prior to it "earth was man's
+probation-place"; but under this decree man is no longer free; for
+certain knowledge makes action necessary.
+
+  "Once lay down the law, with Nature's simple 'Such effects succeed
+  Causes such, and heaven or hell depends upon man's earthly deed
+  Just as surely as depends the straight or else the crooked line
+  On his making point meet point or with or else without incline,'
+  Thenceforth neither good nor evil does man, doing what he must."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_, 195.]
+
+If we presuppose that "man, addressed this mode, be sound and sane" (and
+we must stipulate sanity, if his actions are to be morally judged at
+all)--then a law which binds punishment and reward to action in a
+necessary manner, and is known so to bind them, would "obtain prompt and
+absolute obedience." There are some "edicts, now styled God's own
+nature's," "which to hear means to obey." All the laws relating to the
+preservation of life are of this character. And, if the law--"Would'st
+thou live again, be just"--were in all ways as stringent as the other
+law--
+
+  "Would'st thou live now, regularly draw thy breath!
+  For, suspend the operation, straight law's breach results in death"--[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+then no one would disobey it, nor could. "It is the liberty of doing
+evil that gives the doing good a grace." And that liberty would be taken
+away by complete assurance, that effects follow actions in the moral
+world with the necessity seen in the natural sphere. Since, therefore,
+man is made to grow, and earth is the place wherein he is to pass
+probation and prove his powers, there must remain a certain doubt as to
+the issues of his actions; conviction must not be so strong as to carry
+with it man's whole nature. "The best I both see and praise, the worst I
+follow," is the adage rife in man's mouth regarding his moral conduct.
+But, spite of his seeing and praising,
+
+            "he disbelieves
+  In the heart of him that edict which for truth his head receives."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+He has a dim consciousness of ways whereby he may elude the consequences
+of his wickedness, and of the possibility of making amends to law.
+
+  "And now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin',
+  A certain Bardie's rantin', drinkin',
+  Some luckless hour will send him linkin'
+    To your black pit;
+  But, faith, he'll turn a corner jinkin',
+    And cheat you yet."
+
+The more orthodox and less generous individual is prone to agree, as
+regards himself, with Burns; but, he sees, most probably, that such an
+escape is impossible to others. He has secret solacement in a latent
+belief that he himself is an exception. There will be a special method
+of dealing with him. He is a "chosen sample"; and "God will think twice
+before He damns a man of his quality." It is just because there is such
+doubt as to the universality and necessity of the law which connects
+actions and consequences in the moral sphere, that man's deeds have an
+ethical character; while, to disperse doubt and ignorance by the
+assurance of complete knowledge, would take the good from goodness and
+the ill from evil.
+
+In this ingenious manner, the poet turns the imperfect intellect and
+delusive knowledge of man to a moral use. Ordinarily, the intellectual
+impotence of man is regarded as carrying with it moral incapacity as
+well, and the delusiveness of knowledge is one of the strongest
+arguments for pessimism. To persons pledged to the support of no theory,
+and to those who have the _naïveté_, so hard to maintain side by side
+with strong doctrinal convictions, it seems amongst the worst of evils
+that man should be endowed with fallacious faculties, and cursed with a
+futile desire for true knowledge which is so strong, that it cannot be
+quenched even in those who believe that truth can never be attained. It
+is the very best men of the world who cry
+
+            "Oh, this false for real,
+  This emptiness which feigns solidity,--
+  Ever some grey that's white, and dun that's black,--
+  When shall we rest upon the thing itself,
+  Not on its semblance? Soul--too weak, forsooth,
+  To cope with fact--wants fiction everywhere!
+  Mine tires of falsehood: truth at any cost!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_.]
+
+The poet himself was burdened in no small degree with this vain desire
+for knowing the truth; and he recognized, too, that he was placed in a
+world which seems both real and beautiful, and so well worth knowing.
+Yet, it is this very failure of knowledge--a failure which, be it
+remembered, is complete and absolute, because, as he thinks, all facts
+must turn into phantoms by mere contact with our "relative
+intelligences,"--which he constitutes into the basis of his optimistic
+faith.
+
+So high is the dignity and worth of the moral life to Browning, that no
+sacrifice is too great to secure it. And, indeed, if it were once
+clearly recognized that there is no good thing but goodness, nothing of
+supreme worth, except the realization of a loving will, then doubt,
+ignorance, and every other form of apparent evil would be fully
+justified--provided they were conditions whereby this highest good is
+attained. And, to Browning, ignorance was one of the conditions. And
+consequently, the dread pause in the music which agnosticism brings, is
+only "silence implying sound"; and the vain cry for truth, arising from
+the heart of the earth's best men, is only a discord moving towards
+resolution into a more rapturous harmony.
+
+I do not stay here to inquire whether sure knowledge would really have
+this disastrous effect of destroying morality, or whether its failure
+does not rather imply the impossibility of a moral life. I return to the
+question asked at the beginning of this chapter, and which it is now
+possible to answer. That question was: How does Browning reconcile his
+hypothesis of universal love with the natural and moral evils existing
+in the world?
+
+His answer is quite explicit. The poet solves the problem by casting
+doubt upon the facts which threaten his hypothesis. He reduces them into
+phenomena, in the sense of phantoms begotten by the human intellect upon
+unknown and unknowable realities.
+
+  "Thus much at least is clearly understood--
+  Of power does Man possess no particle:
+  Of knowledge--just so much as shows that still
+  It ends in ignorance on every side."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+He is aware of the phenomena of his own consciousness,
+
+  "My soul, and my soul's home,
+  This body ";
+
+but he knows not whether "things outside are fact or feigning." And he
+heeds little, for in either case they
+
+            "Teach
+  What good is and what evil,--just the same,
+  Be feigning or be fact the teacher."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+It is the mixture, or rather the apparent mixture, of shade and light in
+life, the conflict of seeming good with seeming evil in the world, that
+constitutes the world a probation-place. It is a kind of moral
+gymnasium, crowded with phantoms, wherein by exercise man makes moral
+muscle. And the vigour of the athlete's struggle is not in the least
+abated by the consciousness that all he deals with are phantoms.
+
+ "I have lived, then, done and suffered, loved and hated, learnt and taught
+  This--there is no reconciling wisdom with a world distraught,
+  Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the aim,
+  If--(to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the same!)--
+  If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil's place,
+  And life, time--with all their chances, changes,--just probation-space,
+  Mine, for me."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+And the world would not be such a probation-space did we once penetrate
+into its inmost secret, and know its phenomena as veritably either good
+or evil. There is the need of playing something perilously like a trick
+on the human intellect if man is to strive and grow.
+
+            "Here and there a touch
+  Taught me, betimes, the artifice of things--
+  That all about, external to myself,
+  Was meant to be suspected,--not revealed
+  Demonstrably a cheat--but half seen through."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Bean-Stripe._]
+
+To know objects as they veritably are, might reveal all things as locked
+together in a scheme of universal good, so that "white would rule
+unchecked along the line." But this would be the greatest of disasters;
+for, as moral agents, we cannot do without
+
+            "the constant shade
+  Cast on life's shine,--the tremor that intrudes
+  When firmest seems my faith in white."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+The intellectual insight that would penetrate through the vari-colour of
+events into the actual presence of the incandescent white of love, which
+glows, as hope tells us, in all things, would stultify itself, and lose
+its knowledge even of the good.
+
+                                "Think!
+  Could I see plain, be somehow certified
+  All was illusion--evil far and wide
+  Was good disguised,--why, out with one huge wipe
+  Goes knowledge from me. Type needs antitype:
+  As night needs day, as shine needs shade, so good
+  Needs evil: how were pity understood
+  Unless by pain? "[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+Good and evil are relative to each other, and each is known only through
+its contrary.
+
+                                    "For me
+  (Patience, beseech you!) Knowledge can but be
+  Of good by knowledge of good's opposite--
+  Evil."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+The extinction of one of the terms would be the extinction of the other.
+And, in a similar manner, clear knowledge that evil is illusion and that
+all things have their place in an infinite divine order would paralyze
+all moral effort, as well as stultify itself.
+
+            "Make evident that pain
+  Permissibly masks pleasure--you abstain
+  From out-stretch of the finger-tip that saves
+  A drowning fly."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+Certainty on either side, either that evil is evil for evermore,
+irredeemable and absolute, a drench of utter dark not illuminable by
+white; or that it is but mere show and semblance, which the good takes
+upon itself, would alike be ruinous to man. For both alternatives would
+render all striving folly. The right attitude for man is that of
+ignorance, complete uncertainty, the equipoise of conflicting
+alternatives. He must take his stand on the contradiction. Hope he may
+have that all things work together for good. It is right that he should
+nourish the faith that the antagonism of evil with good in the world is
+only an illusion; but that faith must stop short of the complete
+conviction that knowledge would bring. When, therefore, the hypothesis
+of universal love is confronted with the evils of life, and we ask how
+it can be maintained in the face of the manifold miseries everywhere
+apparent, the poet answers, "You do not know, and cannot know, whether
+they are evils or not. Your knowledge remains at the surface of things.
+You cannot fit them into their true place, or pronounce upon their true
+purpose and character; for you see only a small arc of the complete
+circle of being. Wait till you see more, and, in the meantime, hope!"
+
+  "Why faith--but to lift the load,
+    To leaven the lump, where lies
+  Mind prostrate through knowledge owed
+    To the loveless Power it tries
+  To withstand, how vain!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Reverie_--_Asolando_.]
+
+And, if we reply in turn, that this necessary ignorance leaves as little
+room for his scheme of love as it does for its opposite, he again
+answers: "Not so! I appeal from the intellect, which is detected as
+incompetent, to the higher court of the moral consciousness. And there I
+find the ignorance to be justified: for it is the instrument of a higher
+purpose, a means whereby what is best is gained, namely, _Love_."
+
+    "My curls were crowned
+  In youth with knowledge,--off, alas, crown slipped
+  Next moment, pushed by better knowledge still
+  Which nowise proved more constant; gain, to-day,
+  Was toppling loss to-morrow, lay at last
+  --Knowledge, the golden?--lacquered ignorance!
+  As gain--mistrust it! Not as means to gain:
+  Lacquer we learn by: ...
+  The prize is in the process: knowledge means
+  Ever-renewed assurance by defeat
+  That victory is somehow still to reach,
+  But love is victory, the prize itself:
+  Love--trust to! Be rewarded for the trust
+  In trust's mere act."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]
+
+Now, in order to complete our examination of this theory, we must follow
+the poet in his attempt to escape from the testimony of the intellect to
+that of the heart. In order to make the most of the latter, we find that
+Browning, especially in his last work, tends to withdraw his accusation
+of utter incompetence on the part of the intellect. He only tends to do
+so, it is true. He is tolerably consistent in asserting that we know our
+own emotions and the phenomena of our own consciousness; but he is not
+consistent in his account of our knowledge, or ignorance, of external
+things. On the whole, he asserts that we know nothing of them. But in
+_Asolando_ he seems to imply that the evidence of a loveless power in
+the world, permitting evil, is irresistible.[A] To say the least, the
+testimony of the intellect, such as it is, is more clear and convincing
+with regard to evil than it is with regard to good. Within the sphere of
+phenomena, to which the intellect is confined, there seems to be,
+instead of a benevolent purpose, a world ruled by a power indifferent to
+the triumph of evil over good, and either "loveless" or unintelligent.
+
+[Footnote A: _See passage just quoted._]
+
+            "Life, from birth to death,
+  Means--either looking back on harm escaped,
+  Or looking forward to that harm's return
+  With tenfold power of harming."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Bean-Stripe._]
+
+And it is not possible for man to contravene this evidence of faults and
+omissions: for, in doing so, he would remove the facts in reaction
+against which his moral nature becomes active. What proof is there,
+then, that the universal love is no mere dream? None! from the side of
+the intellect, answers the poet. Man, who has the will to remove the
+ills of life,
+
+  "Stop change, avert decay,
+  Fix life fast, banish death,"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Reverie_--_Asolando_.]
+
+has not the power to effect his will; while the Power, whose
+limitlessness he recognizes everywhere around him, merely maintains the
+world in its remorseless course, and puts forth no helping hand when
+good is prone and evil triumphant. "God does nothing."
+
+              "'No sign,'--groaned he,--
+  No stirring of God's finger to denote
+  He wills that right should have supremacy
+  On earth, not wrong! How helpful could we quote
+  But one poor instance when He interposed
+  Promptly and surely and beyond mistake
+  Between oppression and its victim, closed
+  Accounts with sin for once, and bade us wake
+  From our long dream that justice bears no sword,
+  Or else forgets whereto its sharpness serves.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville._]
+
+But he tells us in his later poems, that there is no answer vouchsafed
+to man's cry to the Power, that it should reveal
+
+       "What heals all harm,
+  Nay, hinders the harm at first,
+  Saves earth."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Reverie--Asolando._]
+
+And yet, so far as man can see, there were no bar to the remedy, if
+"God's all-mercy" did really "mate His all-potency."
+
+  "How easy it seems,--to sense
+    Like man's--if somehow met
+  Power with its match--immense
+    Love, limitless, unbeset
+  By hindrance on every side!"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+But that love nowhere makes itself evident. "Power," we recognize,
+
+                 "finds nought too hard,
+    Fulfilling itself all ways,
+  Unchecked, unchanged; while barred,
+    Baffled, what good began
+  Ends evil on every side."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Reverie--Asolando_.]
+
+Thus, the conclusion to which knowledge inevitably leads us is that mere
+power rules.
+
+  "No more than the passive clay
+    Disputes the potter's act,
+  Could the whelmed mind disobey
+    Knowledge, the cataract."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+But if the intellect is thus overwhelmed, so as to be almost passive to
+the pessimistic conclusion borne in upon it by "resistless fact," the
+heart of man is made of another mould. It revolts against the conclusion
+of the intellect, and climbs
+
+  "Through turbidity all between,
+    From the known to the unknown here,
+  Heaven's 'Shall be,' from earth's 'Has been.'"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+It grasps a fact beyond the reach of knowledge, namely, the possibility,
+or even the certainty, that "power is love." At present there is no
+substantiating by knowledge the testimony of the heart; and man has no
+better anchorage for his optimism than faith. But the closer view will
+come, when even our life on earth will be seen to have within it the
+working of love, no less manifest than that of power.
+
+  "When see? When there dawns a day,
+    If not on the homely earth,
+  Then, yonder, worlds away,
+    Where the strange and new have birth,
+  And Power comes full in play."[D]
+
+[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]
+
+Now, what is this evidence of the heart, which is sufficiently cogent
+and valid to counterpoise that of the mind; and which gives to "faith,"
+or "hope," a firm foothold in the very face of the opposing "resistless"
+testimony of knowledge?
+
+Within our experience, to which the poet knows we are entirely confined,
+there is a fact, the significance of which we have not as yet examined.
+For, plain and irresistible as is the evidence of evil, so plain and
+constant is man's recognition of it as evil, and his desire to annul it.
+If man's mind is made to acknowledge evil, his moral nature is made so
+as to revolt against it.
+
+    "Man's heart is _made_ to judge
+  Pain deserved nowhere by the common flesh
+  Our birth-right--bad and good deserve alike
+  No pain, to human apprehension."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Mihrab Shah_--_Ferishtah's Fancies_.]
+
+Owing to the limitation of our intelligence, we cannot deny but that
+
+            "In the eye of God
+  Pain may have purpose and be justified."
+
+But whether it has its purpose for the supreme intelligence or not,
+
+  "Man's sense avails to only see, in pain,
+  A hateful chance no man but would avert
+  Or, failing, needs must pity."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+Man must condemn evil, he cannot acquiesce in its permanence, but is,
+spite of his consciousness of ignorance and powerlessness, roused into
+constant revolt against it.
+
+  "True, he makes nothing, understands no whit:
+  Had the initiator-spasm seen fit
+  Thus doubly to endow him, none the worse
+  And much the better were the universe.
+  What does Man see or feel or apprehend
+  Here, there, and everywhere, but faults to mend,
+  Omissions to supply,--one wide disease
+  Of things that are, which Man at once would ease
+  Had will but power and knowledge?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+But the moral worth of man does not suffer the least detraction from his
+inability to effect his benevolent purpose. "Things must take will for
+deed," as Browning tells us. David is not at all distressed by the
+consciousness of his weakness.
+
+            "Why is it I dare
+  Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?
+  This;--'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Saul_.]
+
+The fact that "his wishes fall through," that he cannot, although
+willing, help Saul, "grow poor to enrich him, fill up his life by
+starving his own," does not prevent him from regarding his "service as
+perfect." The will was there, although it lacked power to effect itself.
+The moral worth of an action is complete, if it is willed; and it is
+nowise affected by its outer consequences, as both Browning and Kant
+teach. The loving will, the inner act of loving, though it can bear no
+outward fruit, being debarred by outward impediment, is still a complete
+and highest good.
+
+  "But Love is victory, the prize itself:
+  Love--trust to! Be rewarded for the trust
+  In trust's mere act. In love success is sure,
+  Attainment--no delusion, whatso'er
+  The prize be: apprehended as a prize,
+  A prize it is."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]
+
+Whatever the evil in the world and the impotence of man, his duty and
+his dignity in willing to perform it, are ever the same. Though God
+neglect the world
+
+            "Man's part
+  Is plain--to send love forth,--astray, perhaps:
+  No matter, he has done his part."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Sun_.]
+
+Now, this fact of inner experience, which the poet thinks
+incontrovertible--the fact that man, every man, necessarily regards
+evil, whether natural or moral, as something to be annulled, were it
+only possible--is an immediate proof of the indwelling of that which is
+highest in man. On this basis, Browning is able to re-establish the
+optimism which, from the side of knowledge, he had utterly abandoned.
+
+The very fact that the world is condemned by man is proof that there
+dwells in man something better than the world, whose evidence the
+pessimist himself cannot escape. All is not wrong, as long as wrong
+_seems_ wrong. The pessimist, in condemning the world, must except
+himself. In his very charge against God of having made man in His anger,
+there lies a contradiction; for he himself fronts and defies the
+outrage. There is no depth of despair which this good cannot illumine
+with joyous light, for the despair is itself the reflex of the good.
+
+            "Were earth and all it holds illusions mere,
+  Only a machine for teaching love and hate, and hope and fear,
+
+            "If this life's conception new life fail to realize--
+  Though earth burst and proved a bubble glassing hues of hell, one huge
+  Reflex of the devil's doings--God's work by no subterfuge,"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+still, good is good, and love is its own exceeding great reward. Alone,
+in a world abandoned to chaos and infinite night, man is still not
+without God, if he loves. In virtue of his love, he himself would be
+crowned as God, as the poet often argues, were there no higher love
+elsewhere.
+
+            "If he believes
+  Might can exist with neither will nor love,
+  In God's case--what he names now Nature's Law--
+  While in himself he recognizes love
+  No less than might and will,"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Death in the Desert_.]
+
+man takes, and rightly takes, the title of being "First, last, and best
+of things."
+
+  "Since if man prove the sole existent thing
+  Where these combine, whatever their degree,
+  However weak the might or will or love,
+  So they be found there, put in evidence--
+  He is as surely higher in the scale
+  Than any might with neither love nor will,
+  As life, apparent in the poorest midge,
+  Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas' self,
+  Given to the nobler midge for resting-place!
+  Thus, man proves best and highest--God, in fine."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+To any one capable of spiritually discerning things, there can be no
+difficulty in regarding goodness, however limited and mated with
+weakness, as infinitely above all natural power. Divinity will be known
+to consist, not in any senseless might, however majestic and miraculous,
+but in moral or spiritual perfection. If God were indifferent to the
+evil of the world, acquiesced in it without reason, and let it ripen
+into all manner of wretchedness, then man, in condemning the world,
+though without power to remove the least of its miseries, would be
+higher than God. But we have still to account for the possibility of
+man's assuming an attitude implied in the consciousness that, while he
+is without power, God is without pity, and in the despair which springs
+from his hate of evil. How comes it that human nature rises above its
+origin, and is able--nay, obliged--to condemn the evil which God
+permits? Is man finite in power, a mere implement of a mocking will so
+far as knowledge goes, the plaything of remorseless forces, and yet
+author and first source of something in himself which invests him with a
+dignity that God Himself cannot share? Is the moral consciousness which,
+by its very nature, must bear witness against the Power, although it
+cannot arrest its pitiless course, or remove the least evil,
+
+  "Man's own work, his birth of heart and brain,
+  His native grace, no alien gift at all?"
+
+We are thus caught between the horns of a final dilemma. Either the pity
+and love, which make man revolt against all suffering, are man's own
+creation; or else God, who made man's heart to love, has given to man
+something higher than He owns Himself. But both of these alternatives
+are impossible.
+
+  "Here's the touch that breaks the bubble."
+
+The first alternative is impossible, because man is by definition
+powerless, a mere link in the endless chain of causes, incapable of
+changing the least part of the scheme of things which he condemns, and
+therefore much more unable to initiate, or to bring into a loveless
+world abandoned to blind power, the noble might of love.
+
+            "Will of man create?
+  No more than this my hand, which strewed the beans
+  Produced them also from its finger-tips."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_.]
+
+All that man is and has is a mere loan; his love no less than his finite
+intellect and limited power, has had its origin elsewhere.
+
+  "Back goes creation to its source, source prime
+  And ultimate, the single and the sole."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+The argument ends by bringing us back
+
+    "To the starting-point,--
+  Man's impotency, God's omnipotence,
+  These stop my answer."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_.]
+
+I shall not pause at present to examine the value of this new form of
+the old argument, "_Ex contingentia mundi_." But I may point out in
+passing, that the reference of human love to a divine creative source is
+accomplished by means of the idea of cause, one of the categories of the
+thought which Browning has aspersed. And it is a little difficult to
+show why, if we are constrained to doubt our thought, when by the aid of
+causality it establishes a connection between finite and finite, we
+should regard it as worthy of trust when it connects the finite and the
+infinite. In fact, it is all too evident that the poet assumes or denies
+the possibility of knowledge, according as it helps or hinders his
+ethical doctrine.
+
+But, if we grant the ascent from the finite to the infinite and regard
+man's love as a divine gift--which it may well be although the poet's
+argument is invalid--then a new light is thrown upon the being who gave
+man this power to love. The "necessity," "the mere power," which alone
+could be discerned by observation of the irresistible movement of the
+world's events, acquires a new character. Prior to this discovery of
+love in man as the work of God--
+
+  "Head praises, but heart refrains
+    From loving's acknowledgment.
+  Whole losses outweigh half-gains:
+    Earth's good is with evil blent:
+  Good struggles but evil reigns."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Reverie_--_Asolando_.]
+
+But love in man is a suggestion of a love without; a proof, in fact,
+that God is love, for man's love is God's love in man. The source of the
+pity that man shows, and of the apparent evils in the world which excite
+it, is the same. The power which called man into being, itself rises up
+in man against the wrongs in the world. The voice of the moral
+consciousness, approving the good, condemning evil, and striving to
+annul it, is the voice of God, and has, therefore, supreme authority. We
+do wrong, therefore, in thinking that it is the weakness of man which is
+matched against the might of evil in the world, and that we are fighting
+a losing battle. It is an incomplete, abstract, untrue view of the facts
+of life which puts God as irresistible Power in the outer world, and
+forgets that the same irresistible Power works, under the higher form of
+love, in the human heart.
+
+  "Is not God now i' the world His power first made?
+  Is not His love at issue still with sin,
+  Visibly when a wrong is done on earth?
+  Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around?"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+In this way, therefore, the poet argues back from the moral
+consciousness of man to the goodness of God. And he finds the ultimate
+proof of this goodness in the very pessimism and scepticism and despair,
+that come with the view of the apparently infinite waste in the world
+and the endless miseries of humanity. The source of this despair,
+namely, the recognition of evil and wrong, is just the Godhood in man.
+There is no way of accounting for the fact that "Man hates what is and
+loves what should be," except by "blending the quality of man with the
+quality of God." And "the quality of God" is the fundamental fact in
+man's history. Love is the last reality the poet always reaches. Beneath
+the pessimism is love: without love of the good there were no
+recognition of evil, no condemnation of it, and no despair.
+
+But the difficulty still remains as to the permission of evil, even
+though it should prove in the end to be merely apparent.
+
+  "Wherefore should any evil hap to man--
+  From ache of flesh to agony of soul--
+  Since God's All-mercy mates All-potency?
+  Nay, why permits He evil to Himself--
+  Man's sin, accounted such? Suppose a world
+  Purged of all pain, with fit inhabitant--
+  Man pure of evil in thought, word, and deed--
+  Were it not well? Then, wherefore otherwise?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Mihrab Shah_.]
+
+The poet finds an answer to this difficulty in the very nature of moral
+goodness, which, as we have seen, he regards as a progressive
+realization of an infinitely high ideal. The demand for a world purged
+of all pain and sin is really, he teaches us, a demand for a sphere
+where
+
+            "Time brings
+  No hope, no fear: as to-day, shall be
+  To-morrow: advance or retreat need we
+  At our stand-still through eternity?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Rephan_--_Asolando_.]
+
+What were there to "bless or curse, in such a uniform universe,"
+
+            "Where weak and strong,
+  The wise and the foolish, right and wrong,
+  Are merged alike in a neutral Best."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+There is a better way of life, thinks Browning, than such a state of
+stagnation.
+
+  "Why should I speak? You divine the test.
+  When the trouble grew in my pregnant breast
+  A voice said, So would'st thou strive, not rest,
+
+  "Burn and not smoulder, win by worth,
+  Not rest content with a wealth that's dearth,
+  Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Earth."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+The discontent of man, the consciousness of sin, evil, pain, is a symbol
+of promotion. The peace of the state of nature has been broken for him;
+and, although the first consequence be
+
+  "Brow-furrowed old age, youth's hollow cheek,--
+  Diseased in the body, sick in soul,
+  Pinched poverty, satiate wealth,--your whole
+  Array of despairs,"[D]
+
+[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]
+
+still, without them, the best is impossible. They are the conditions of
+the moral life, which is essentially progressive. They are the
+consequences of the fact that man has been "startled up"
+
+            "by an Infinite
+  Discovered above and below me--height
+  And depth alike to attract my flight,
+
+  "Repel my descent: by hate taught love.
+  Oh, gain were indeed to see above
+  Supremacy ever--to move, remove,
+
+  "Not reach--aspire yet never attain
+  To the object aimed at."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Rephan_--_Asolando_.]
+
+He who places rest above effort, Rephan above the earth, places a
+natural good above a moral good, stagnation above progress. The demand
+for the absolute extinction of evil betrays ignorance of the nature of
+the highest good. For right and wrong are relative. "Type need
+antitype." The fact that goodness is best, and that goodness is not a
+stagnant state but a progress, a gradual realization, though never
+complete, of an infinite ideal, of the perfection of God by a finite
+being, necessarily implies the consciousness of sin and evil. As a moral
+agent man must set what should be above what is. If he is to aspire and
+attain, the actual present must seem to him inadequate, imperfect,
+wrong, a state to be abolished in favour of a better. And therefore it
+follows that
+
+            "Though wrong were right
+  Could we but know--still wrong must needs seem wrong
+  To do right's service, prove men weak or strong,
+  Choosers of evil or good."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+The apparent existence of evil is the condition of goodness. And yet it
+must only be apparent. For if evil be regarded as veritably evil, it
+must remain so for all that man can do; he cannot annihilate any fact
+nor change its nature, and all effort would, therefore, be futile. And,
+on the other hand, if evil were known as unreal, then there were no need
+of moral effort, no quarrel with the present and therefore no
+aspiration, and no achievement. That which is man's highest and
+best,--namely, a moral life which is a progress--would thus be
+impossible, and his existence would be bereft of all meaning and
+purpose. And if the highest is impossible then all is wrong, "the goal
+being a ruin, so is all the rest."
+
+The hypothesis of the moral life as progressive is essential to
+Browning.
+
+But if this hypothesis be granted, then all difficulties disappear. The
+conception of the endless acquirement of goodness at once postulates the
+consciousness of evil, and the consciousness of it as existing in order
+to be overcome. Hence the consciousness of it as illusion comes nearest
+to the truth. And such a conception is essentially implied by the idea
+of morality. To speculative reason, however, it is impossible, as the
+poet believes, that evil should thus be at the same time regarded as
+both real and unreal. Knowledge leads to despair on every side; for,
+whether it takes the evil in the world as seeming or actual, it
+stultifies effort, and proves that moral progress, which is best of all
+things, is impossible. But the moral consciousness derives its vitality
+from this contradiction. It is the meeting-point and conflict of actual
+and ideal; and its testimony is indisputable, however inconsistent it
+may be with that of knowledge. Acknowledging absolute ignorance of the
+outer world, the poet has still a retreat within himself, safe from all
+doubt. He has in his own inner experience irrefragable proof
+
+    "How things outside, fact or feigning, teach
+  What good is and what evil--just the same,
+  Be feigning or be fact the teacher."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+The consciousness of being taught goodness by interaction with the
+outside unknown is sufficient; it is "a point of vantage" whence he will
+not be moved by any contradictions that the intellect may conjure up
+against it. And this process of learning goodness, this gradual
+realization by man of an ideal infinitely high and absolute in worth,
+throws back a light which illumines all the pain and strife and despair,
+and shows them all to be steps in the endless "love-way." The
+consciousness of evil is thus at once the effect and the condition of
+goodness. The unrealized, though ever-realizing good, which brings
+despair, is the best fact in man's history; and it should rightly bring,
+not despair, but endless joy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A CRITICISM OF BROWNING'S VIEW OF THE FAILURE OF KNOWLEDGE.
+
+
+    "Der Mensch, da er Geist ist, darf und soll sich selbst
+    des höchsten würdig achten, von der Grösse und Macht
+    seines Geistes kann er nicht gross genug denken; und mit
+    diesem Glauben wird nichts so spröde und hart seyn, das
+    sich ihm nicht eröffnete. Das zuerst verborgene und
+    verschlossene Wesen des Universums hat keine Kraft, die
+    dem Muthe des Erkennens Widerstand leisten könnte: es muss
+    sich vor ihm aufthun, und seinen Reichthum und seine
+    Tiefen ihm vor Augen legen und zum Genusse geben."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Hegel's Inaugural Address at Heidelberg_.]
+
+Before entering upon a criticism of Browning's theory, as represented in
+the last chapter, it may be well to give a brief summary of it.
+
+The most interesting feature of Browning's proof of his optimistic faith
+is his appeal from the intelligence to the moral consciousness. To show
+theoretically that evil is merely phenomenal is, in his view, both
+impossible and undesirable. It is impossible, because the human
+intellect is incapable of knowing anything as it really is, or of
+pronouncing upon the ultimate nature of any phenomenon. It is
+undesirable, because a theoretical proof of the evanescence of evil
+would itself give rise to the greatest of all evils. The best thing in
+the world is moral character. Man exists in order to grow better, and
+the world exists in order to help him. But moral growth is possible only
+through conflict against evil, or what seems to be evil; hence, to
+disprove the existence of evil would be to take away the possibility of
+learning goodness, to stultify all human effort, and to deprive the
+world of its meaning.
+
+But, if an optimistic doctrine cannot be reached by way of speculative
+thought, if the intellect of man cannot see the good in things evil, his
+moral consciousness guarantees that all is for the best, and that "the
+good is all in all." For, in distinguishing between good and evil, the
+moral consciousness sets up an ideal over against the actual. It
+conceives of a scheme of goodness which is not realized in the world,
+and it condemns the world as it is. Man, as moral being, is so
+constituted that he cannot but regard the evil in the world as something
+to be annulled. If he had only the power, there would be no pain, no
+sorrow, no weakness, no failure, no death. Is man, then, better than the
+Power which made the world and let woe gain entrance into it? No!
+answers the poet; for man himself is part of that world and the product
+of that Power. The Power that made the world also made the moral
+consciousness which condemns the world; if it is the source of the evil
+in the world, it is also the source of that love in man, which, by
+self-expenditure, seeks to remedy it. If the external world is merely an
+expression of a remorseless Power, whence comes the love which is the
+principle of the moral life in man? The same Power brings the antidote
+as well as the bane. And, further, the bane exists for the sake of the
+antidote, the wrong for the sake of the remedy. The evil in the world is
+means to a higher good, and the only means possible; for it calls into
+activity the divine element in man, and thereby contributes to its
+realization in his character. It gives the necessary opportunity for the
+exercise of love.
+
+Hence, evil cannot be regarded as ultimately real. It is real only as a
+stage in growth, as means to an end; and the means necessarily perishes,
+or is absorbed in, the attainment of the end. It has no significance
+except by reference to that end. From this point of view, evil is the
+resistance which makes progress possible, the negative which gives
+meaning to the positive, the darkness that makes day beautiful. This
+must not, however, be taken to mean that evil is nothing. It is
+resistance; it is negative; it does oppose the good; although its
+opposition is finally overcome. If it did not, if evil were unreal,
+there would be no possibility of calling forth the moral potency of man,
+and the moral life would be a figment. But these two conditions of the
+moral life--on the one hand, that the evil of the world must be capable
+of being overcome and is there for the purpose of being overcome, and
+that it is unreal except as a means to the good; and, on the other hand,
+that evil must be actually opposed to the good, if the good is to have
+any meaning,--cannot, Browning thinks, be reconciled with each other. It
+is manifest that the intellect of man cannot, at the same time, regard
+evil as both real and unreal. It must assert the one and deny the other;
+or else we must regard its testimony as altogether untrustworthy. But
+the first alternative is destructive of the moral consciousness. Moral
+life is alike impossible whether we deny or assert the real existence of
+evil. The latter alternative stultifies knowledge, and leaves all the
+deeper concerns of life--the existence of good and evil, the reality of
+the distinction between them, the existence of God, the moral governance
+of the world, the destiny of man--in a state of absolute uncertainty. We
+must reject the testimony either of the heart or of the head.
+
+Browning, as we have seen, unhesitatingly adopts the latter alternative.
+He remains loyal to the deliverances of his moral consciousness and
+accepts as equally valid, beliefs which the intellect finds to be
+self-contradictory: holding that knowledge on such matters is
+impossible. And he rejects this knowledge, not only because our thoughts
+are self-contradictory in themselves, but because the failure of a
+speculative solution of these problems is necessary to morality. Clear,
+convincing, demonstrative knowledge would destroy morality; and the fact
+that the power to attain such knowledge has been withheld from us is to
+be regarded rather as an indication of the beneficence of God, who has
+not held even ignorance to be too great a price for man to pay for
+goodness.
+
+Knowledge is not the fit atmosphere for morality. It is faith and not
+reason, hope and trust but not certainty, that lend vigour to the good
+life. We may believe, and rejoice in the belief, that the absolute good
+is fulfilling itself in all things, and that even the miseries of life
+are really its refracted rays--the light that gains in splendour by
+being broken. But we must not, and, indeed, cannot ascend from faith to
+knowledge. The heart may trust, and must trust, if it faithfully listens
+to its own natural voice; but reason must not demonstrate. Ignorance on
+the side of intellect, faith on the side of the emotions; distrust of
+knowledge, absolute confidence in love; such is the condition of man's
+highest welfare: it is only thus that the purpose of his life, and of
+the world which is his instrument, can be achieved.
+
+No final estimate of the value of this theory of morals and religion can
+be made, without examining its philosophical presuppositions. Nor is
+such an examination in any way unfair; for it is obvious that Browning
+explicitly offers us a philosophical doctrine. He appeals to argument
+and not to artistic intuition; he offers a definite theory to which he
+claims attention, not on account of any poetic beauty that may lie
+within it, but on the ground that it is a true exposition of the moral
+nature of man. Kant's _Metaphysic of Ethics_ is not more metaphysical in
+intention than the poet's later utterances on the problems of morality.
+In _La Saisiaz_, in _Ferishtah's Fancies_, in the _Parleyings_, and,
+though less explicitly, in _Asolando_, _Fifine at the Fair_, and _Red
+Cotton Nightcap Country_, Browning definitely states, and endeavours to
+demonstrate a theory of knowledge, a theory of the relation of knowledge
+to morality, and a theory of the nature of evil; and he discusses the
+arguments for the immortality of the soul. In these poems his artistic
+instinct avails him, not as in his earlier ones, for the discovery of
+truth by way of intuition, but for the adornment of doctrines already
+derived from a metaphysical repository. His art is no longer free, no
+longer its own end, but coerced into an alien service. It has become
+illustrative and argumentative, and in being made to subserve
+speculative purposes, it has ceased to be creative. Browning has
+appealed to philosophy, and philosophy must try his cause.
+
+Such, then, is Browning's theory; and I need make no further apology for
+discussing at some length the validity of the division which it involves
+between the intellectual and the moral life of man. Is it possible to
+combine the weakness of man's intelligence with the strength of his
+moral and religious life, and to find in the former the condition of the
+latter? Does human knowledge fail, as the poet considers it to fail? Is
+the intelligence of man absolutely incapable of arriving at knowledge of
+things as they are? If it does, if man cannot know the truth, can he
+attain goodness? These are the questions that must now be answered.
+
+It is one of the characteristics of recent thought that it distrusts its
+own activity: the ancient philosophical "Scepticism" has been revived
+and strengthened. Side by side with the sense of the triumphant progress
+of natural science, there is a conviction, shared even by scientific
+investigators themselves, as well as by religious teachers and by many
+students of philosophy, that our knowledge has only limited and relative
+value, and that it always stops short of the true nature of things. The
+reason of this general conviction lies in the fact that thought has
+become aware of its own activity; men realize more clearly than they did
+in former times that the apparent constitution of things depends
+directly on the character of the intelligence which apprehends them.
+
+This relativity of things to thought has, not unnaturally, suggested the
+idea that the objects of our knowledge are different from objects as
+they are. "That the real nature of things is very different from what we
+make of them, that thought and thing are divorced, that there is a
+fundamental antithesis between them," is, as Hegel said, "the hinge on
+which modern philosophy turns." Educated opinion in our day has lost its
+naive trust in itself. "The natural belief of man, it is true, ever
+gives the lie" to the doctrine that we do not know things. "In common
+life," adds Hegel, "we reflect without particularly noting that this is
+the process of arriving at the truth, and we think without hesitation
+and in the firm belief that thought coincides with things."[A] But, as
+soon as attention is directed to the process of thinking, and to the way
+in which the process affects our consciousness of the object, it is at
+once concluded that thought will never reach reality, that things are
+not given to us as they are, but distorted by the medium of sense and
+our intelligence, through which they pass. The doctrine of the
+relativity of knowledge is thus very generally regarded as equivalent to
+the doctrine that there is no true knowledge whatsoever. We know only
+phenomena, or appearances; and it is these, and not veritable facts,
+that we systematize into sciences. "We can arrange the appearances--the
+shadows of our cave--and that, for the practical purposes of the cave,
+is all that we require."[B] Not even "earth's least atom" can ever be
+known to us as it really is; it is for us, at the best,
+
+[Footnote A: Wallace's _Translation of Hegel's Logic_, p. 36.]
+
+[Footnote B: Caird's _Comte_.]
+
+  "An atom with some certain properties
+  Known about, thought of as occasion needs."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _A Bean-Stripe_.]
+
+In this general distrust of knowledge, however, there are, as might be
+expected, many different degrees. Its origin in modern times was, no
+doubt, the doctrine of Kant. "This divorce of thing and thought," says
+Hegel, "is mainly the work of the critical philosophy and runs counter
+to the conviction of all previous ages." And the completeness of the
+divorce corresponds, with tolerable accuracy, to the degree in which the
+critical philosophy has been understood; for Kant's writings, like those
+of all great thinkers, are capable of many interpretations, varying in
+depth with the intelligence of the interpreters.
+
+The most common and general form of this view of the limitation of the
+human intelligence is that which places the objects of religious faith
+beyond the reach of human knowledge. We find traces of it in much of the
+popular theology of our day. The great facts of religion are often
+spoken of as lying in an extra-natural sphere, beyond experience, into
+which men cannot enter by the native right of reason. It is asserted
+that the finite cannot know the infinite, that the nature of God is
+unknowable--except by means of a supernatural interference, which gives
+to men a new power of spiritual discernment, and "reveals" to them
+things which are "above reason," although not contrary to it. The
+theologian often shields certain of his doctrines from criticism, on the
+ground, as he contends, that there are facts which we must believe, but
+which it would be presumptuous for us to pretend to understand or to
+demonstrate. They are the proper objects of "faith."
+
+But this view of the weakness of the intelligence when applied to
+supersensuous facts, is held along with an undisturbed conviction of the
+validity of our knowledge of ordinary objects. It is believed, in a
+word, that there are two kinds of realities,--natural and supernatural;
+and that the former is knowable and the latter not.
+
+It requires, however, no great degree of intellectual acumen to discover
+that this denial of the validity of our knowledge of these matters
+involves its denial in all its applications. The ordinary knowledge of
+natural objects, which we begin by regarding as valid, or, rather, whose
+validity is taken for granted without being questioned, depends upon our
+ideas of these supersensible objects. In other words, those fundamental
+difficulties which pious opinion discovers in the region of theology,
+and which, as is thought, fling the human intellect back upon itself
+into a consciousness of frailty and finitude, are found to lurk beneath
+our ordinary knowledge. Whenever, for instance, we endeavour to know any
+object, we find that we are led back along the line of its conditions to
+that which unconditionally determines it. For we cannot find the reason
+for a particular object in a particular object. We are driven back
+endlessly from one to another along the chain of causes; and we can
+neither discover the first link nor do without it. The first link must
+be a cause of itself, and experience yields none such. Such a cause
+would be the unconditioned, and the unconditioned we cannot know. The
+final result of thinking is thus to lead us to an unknown; and, in
+consequence, all our seeming knowledge is seen to have no intelligible
+basis, and, therefore, to be merely hypothetical. If we cannot know God,
+we cannot know anything.
+
+This view is held by the Positivists, and the most popular English
+exponent of it is, perhaps, Mr. Herbert Spencer. Its characteristic is
+its repudition of both theology and metaphysics as pseudo-sciences, and
+its high esteem for science. That esteem is not disturbed by the
+confession that "noumenal causes,"--that is, the actual reality of
+things,--are unknown; for we can still lay claim to valid knowledge of
+the laws of phenomena. Having acknowledged that natural things as known
+are merely phenomena, positivism treats them in all respects as if they
+were realities; and it rejoices in the triumphant progress of the
+natural sciences as if it were a veritable growth of knowledge. It does
+not take to heart the phenomenal nature of known objects. But, having
+paid its formal compliments to the doctrine of the relativity of all
+knowledge, it neglects it altogether.
+
+Those who understand Kant better carry his scepticism further, and they
+complete the divorce between man's knowledge and reality. The process of
+knowing, they hold, instead of leading us towards facts, as it was so
+long supposed to do, takes us away from them: _i.e._, if either
+"towards" or "away from" can have any meaning when applied to two realms
+which are absolutely severed from one another. Knowledge is always
+concerned with the relations between things; with their likeness, or
+unlikeness, their laws, or connections; but these are universals, and
+things are individuals. Science knows the laws of things, but not the
+things; it reveals how one object affects another, how it is connected
+with it; but what are the things themselves, which are connected, it
+does not know. The laws are mere forms of thought, "bloodless
+categories," and not facts. They may somehow be regarded as explaining
+facts, but they must not be identified with the facts. Knowledge is the
+sphere of man's thoughts, and is made up of ideas; real things are in
+another sphere, which man's thoughts cannot reach. We must distinguish
+more clearly than has hitherto been done, between logic as the science
+of knowledge, and metaphysics as a science which pretends to reveal the
+real nature of things. In a word, we can know thoughts or universals,
+but not things or particular existences. "When existence is in question
+it is the individual, not the universal, that is real; and the real
+individual is not a composite of species and accidents, but is
+individual to the inmost fibre of its being." Each object keeps its own
+real being to itself. Its inmost secret, its reality, is something that
+cannot appear in knowledge. We can only know its manifestations; but
+these manifestations are not its reality, nor connected with it. These
+belong to the sphere of knowledge, they are parts in a system of
+abstract thoughts; they do not exist in that system, or no-system, of
+individual realities, each of which, in its veritable being, is itself
+only, and connected with nought beside.
+
+Now, this view of the absolute impossibility of knowing any reality, on
+account of the fundamental difference between things and our thoughts
+about things, contains a better promise of a true view both of reality
+and of knowledge, than any of the previously mentioned half-hearted
+theories. It forces us explicitly either to regard every effort to know
+as futile, or else to regard it as futile _on this theory of it_. In
+other words, we must either give up knowledge or else give up the
+account of knowledge advanced by these philosophers. Hitherto, however,
+every philosophy that has set itself against the possibility of the
+knowledge of reality has had to give way. It has failed to shake the
+faith of mankind in its own intellectual endowment, or to arrest, even
+for a moment, the attempt by thinking to know things as they are. The
+view held by Berkeley, that knowledge is merely subjective, because the
+essence of things consists in their being perceived by the individual,
+and that they are nothing but his ideas, was refuted by Kant, when he
+showed that the very illusion of seeming knowledge was impossible on
+that theory. And this later view, which represents knowledge as merely
+subjective, on the ground that it is the product of the activity of the
+thought of mankind, working according to universal laws, is capable of
+being refuted in the same manner. The only difference between the
+Berkeleian and this modern speculative theory is that, on the former
+view, each individual constructed his own subjective entities or
+illusions; while, on the latter, all men, by reason of the universality
+of the laws of thought governing their minds, create the same illusion,
+the same subjective scheme of ideas. Instead of each having his own
+private unreality, as the product of his perceiving activity, they have
+all the same, or at least a similar, phantom-world of ideas, as the
+result of their thinking. But, in both cases alike, the reality of the
+world without is out of reach, and knowledge is a purely subjective
+apprehension of a world within. Thoughts are quite different from
+things, and no effort of human reason can reveal any community between
+them.
+
+Now, there are certain difficulties which, so far as I know, those who
+hold this view have scarcely attempted to meet. The first of these lies
+in the obvious fact, that all men at all times consider that this very
+process of thinking, which the theory condemns as futile, is the only
+way we have of finding out what the reality of things is. Why do we
+reflect and think, except in order to pass beyond the illusions of
+sensuous appearances to the knowledge of things as they are? Nay, why do
+these philosophers themselves reflect, when reflection, instead of
+leading to truth, which is knowledge of reality, leads only to ideas,
+which, being universal, cannot represent the realities that are said to
+be "individual."
+
+The second is, that the knowledge of "the laws" of things gives to us
+practical command over them; although, according to this view, laws are
+not things, nor any part of the reality of things, nor even true
+representations of things. Our authority over things seems to grow _pari
+passu_ with our knowledge. The natural sciences seem to prove by their
+practical efficiency, that they are not building up a world of
+apparitions, like the real world; but gradually getting inside nature,
+learning more and more to wield her powers, and to make them the
+instruments of the purposes of man, and the means of his welfare. To
+common-sense,--which frequently "divines" truths that it cannot prove,
+and, like ballast in a ship, has often given steadiness to human
+progress although it is only a dead weight,--the assertion that man
+knows nothing is as incredible as that he knows all things. If it is
+replied, that the "things" which we seem to dominate by the means of
+knowledge are themselves only phenomena, the question arises, what then
+are the real things to which they are opposed? What right has any
+philosophy to say that there is any reality which no one can in any
+sense know? The knowledge that such reality is, is surely a relation
+between that reality and consciousness, and, if so, the assertion of an
+unknowable reality is self-contradictory. For the conception of it is
+the conception of something that is, and at the same time is not, out of
+relation to consciousness.
+
+To say what kind of thing reality is, is a still more remarkable feat,
+if reality is unknowable. Reality, being beyond knowledge, why is it
+called particular or individual, rather than universal? How is it known
+that the true being of things is different from ideas? Surely both of
+the terms must be regarded as known to some extent, if they are called
+like or unlike, contrasted or compared, opposed or identified.
+
+But, lastly, this theory has to account for the fact that it constitutes
+what is not only unreal, but impossible, into the criterion of what is
+actual. If knowledge of reality is altogether different from human
+knowledge, how does it come to be its criterion? That knowledge is
+inadequate or imperfect can be known, only by contrasting it with its
+own proper ideal, whatever that may be. A criticism by reference to a
+foreign or irrelevant criterion, or the condemnation of a theory as
+imperfect because it does not realize an impossible end, is
+unreasonable. All true criticism of an object implies a reference to a
+more perfect state of itself.
+
+We must, then, regard the knowledge of objects as they are, which is
+opposed to human knowledge, as, only a completer and fuller form of that
+knowledge; or else we must cease to contrast it with our human
+knowledge, as valid with invalid, true with phenomenal. Either knowledge
+of reality is complete knowledge, or else it is a chimera. And, in
+either case, the sharp distinction between the real and the phenomenal
+vanishes; and what remains, is not a reality outside of consciousness,
+or different from ideas, but a reality related to consciousness, or, in
+other words, a knowable reality. "The distinction of objects into
+phenomena and noumena, _i.e._, into things that for us exist, and things
+that for us do not exist, is an Irish bull in philosophy," said Heine.
+To speak of reality as unknowable, or to speak of anything as
+unknowable, is to utter a direct self-contradiction; it is to negate in
+the predicate what is asserted in the subject. It is a still more
+strange perversion to erect this knowable emptiness into a criterion of
+knowledge, and to call the latter phenomenal by reference to it.
+
+These difficulties are so fundamental and so obvious, that the theory of
+the phenomenal nature of human knowledge, which, being interpreted,
+means that we know nothing, could scarcely maintain its hold, were it
+not confused with another fact of human experience, that is apparently
+inconsistent with the doctrine that man can know the truth. Side by side
+with the faith of ordinary consciousness, that in order to know anything
+we must think, or, in other words, that knowledge shows us what things
+really are, there is a conviction, strengthened by constant experience,
+that we never know things fully. Every investigation into the nature of
+an object soon brings us to an enigma, a something more we do not know.
+Failing to know this something more, we generally consider that we have
+fallen short of reaching the reality of the object. We recognize, as it
+has been expressed, that we have been brought to a stand, and we
+therefore conclude that we are also brought to the end. We arrive at
+what we do not know, and we pronounce that unknown to be unknowable;
+that is, we regard it as something different in nature from what we do
+know. So far as I can see, the attitude of ordinary thought in regard to
+this matter might be fairly represented by saying, that it always begins
+by considering objects as capable of being known in their reality, or as
+they are, and that experience always proves the attempt to know them as
+they are to be a failure. The effort is continued although failure is
+the result, and even although that failure be exaggerated and
+universalized into that despair of knowledge which we have described. We
+are thus confronted with what seems to be a contradiction; a trust and
+distrust in knowledge. It can only be solved by doing full justice to
+both of the conflicting elements; and then, if possible, by showing that
+they are elements, and not the complete, concrete fact, except when held
+together.
+
+From one point of view, it is undeniable that in every object of
+perception, we come upon problems that we cannot solve. Science at its
+best, and even when dealing with the simplest of things, is forced to
+stop short of its final secret. Even when it has discovered its law,
+there is still apparently something over and above which science cannot
+grasp, and which seems to give to the object its reality. All the
+natural sciences concentrated on a bit of iron ore fail to exhaust the
+truth in it: there is always a "beyond" in it, something still more
+fundamental which is not yet understood. And that something beyond, that
+inner essence, that point in which the laws meet and which the sciences
+fail to lift into knowledge, is regarded as just the reality of the
+thing. Thus the reality is supposed, at the close of every
+investigation, to lie outside of knowledge; and conversely, all that we
+do know, seeing that it lacks this last element, seems to be only
+apparent knowledge, or knowledge of phenomena.
+
+In this way the process of knowing seems always to stop short at the
+critical moment, when the truth is just about to be reached. And those
+who dwell on this aspect alone are apt to conclude that man's intellect
+is touched with a kind of impotence, which makes it useless when it gets
+near the reality. It is like a weapon that snaps at the hilt just when
+the battle is hottest. For we seem to be able to know everything but the
+reality, and yet apart from the real essence all knowledge seems to be
+merely apparent. Physical science penetrates through the outer
+appearances of things to their laws, analyzes them into forms of energy,
+calculates their action and predicts their effects with certainty. Its
+practical power over the forces of nature is so great that it seems to
+have got inside her secrets. And yet science will itself acknowledge
+that in every simplest object there is an unknown. Its triumphant course
+of explaining seems to be always arrested at the threshold of reality.
+It has no theory, scarcely an hypothesis, of the actual nature of
+things, or of what that is in each object, which constitutes it a real
+existence. Natural science, with a scarcely concealed sneer, hands over
+to the metaphysician all questions as to the real being of things; and
+itself makes the more modest pretension of showing how things behave,
+not what they are; what effects follow the original noumenal causes, but
+not the veritable nature of these causes. Nor can the metaphysician, in
+his turn, do more than suggest a hypothesis as to the nature of the
+ultimate reality in things. He cannot detect or demonstrate it in any
+particular fact. In a word, every minutest object in the world baffles
+the combined powers of all forms of human thought, and holds back its
+essence or true being from them. And as long as this true being, or
+reality is not known, the knowledge which we seem to have cannot be held
+as ultimately true, but is demonstrably a makeshift.
+
+Having made this confession, there seems to be no alternative but to
+postulate an utter discrepancy between human thought and real existence,
+or between human knowledge and truth, which is the correspondence of
+thing and thought. For, at no point is knowledge found to be in touch
+with real being; it is everywhere demonstrably conditioned and relative,
+and inadequate to express the true reality of its objects. What remains,
+then, except to regard human knowledge as completely untrustworthy, as
+merely of phenomena? If we cannot know _any_ reality, does not knowledge
+completely fail?
+
+Now, in dealing with the moral life of man, we saw that the method of
+hard alternatives is invalid. The moral life, being progressive, was
+shown to be the meeting--point of the ideal and the actual; and the
+ideal of perfect goodness was regarded as manifesting itself in actions
+which, nevertheless, were never adequate to express it. The good when
+achieved was ever condemned as unworthy, and the ideal when attained
+ever pressed for more adequate expression in a better character. The
+ideal was present as potency, as realizing itself, but it was never
+completely realized. The absolute good was never reached in the best
+action, and never completely missed in the worst.
+
+The same conflict of real and unreal was shown to be essential to every
+natural life. As long as anything grows it neither completely attains,
+nor completely falls away from its ideal. The growing acorn is not an
+oak tree, and yet it is not a mere acorn. The child is not the man; and
+yet the man is in the child, and only needs to be evolved by interaction
+with circumstances. The process of growth is one wherein the ideal is
+always present, as a reconstructive power gradually changing its whole
+vehicle, or organism, into a more perfect expression of itself. The
+ideal is reached in the end, just because it is present in the
+beginning; and there is no end as long as growth continues.
+
+Now, it is evident that knowledge, whether it be that of the individual
+man or of the human race, is a thing that grows. The process by means of
+which natural science makes progress, or by which the consciousness of
+the child expands and deepens into the consciousness of the man, is best
+made intelligible from the point of view of evolution. It is like an
+organic process, in which each new acquirement finds its place in an old
+order, each new fact is brought under the permanent principles of
+experience, and absorbed into an intellectual life, which itself, in
+turn, grows richer and fuller with every new acquisition. No knowledge
+worthy of the name is an aggregation of facts. Wisdom comes by growth.
+
+Hence, the assertion that knowledge never attains reality, does not
+imply that it always misses it. In morals we do not say that a man is
+entirely evil, although he never, even in his best actions, attains the
+true good. And if the process of knowing is one that presses onward
+towards an ideal, that ideal is never completely missed even in the
+poorest knowledge. If it grows, the method of fixed alternatives must be
+inapplicable to it. The ideal, whatever it may be, must be considered as
+active in the present, guiding the whole movement, and gradually
+manifesting itself in each of the passing forms, which are used up as
+the raw material of new acquirement; and yet no passing form completely
+expresses the ideal.
+
+Nor is it difficult to say what that ideal of knowledge is, although we
+cannot define it in any adequate manner. We know that the end of
+morality is the _summum bonum_, although we cannot, as long as we are
+progressive, define its whole content, or find it fully realized in any
+action. Every failure brings new truth, every higher grade of moral
+character reveals some new height of goodness to be scaled; the moral
+ideal acquires definiteness and content as humanity moves upwards. And
+yet the ideal is not entirely unknown even at the first; even to the
+most ignorant, it presents itself as a criterion which enables him to
+distinguish between right and wrong, evil and goodness, and which guides
+his practical life. The same truth holds with regard to knowledge. Its
+growth receives its impulse from, and is directed and determined by,
+what is conceived as the real world of facts. This truth, namely, that
+the ideal knowledge is knowledge of reality, the most subjective
+philosopher cannot but acknowledge. It is implied in his condemnation of
+knowledge as merely phenomenal, that there is possible a knowledge of
+real being. That thought and reality can be brought together, or rather,
+that they are always together, is presupposed in all knowledge and in
+all experience. The effort to know is the effort to _explain_ the
+relation of thought and reality, not to create it. The ideal of perfect
+knowledge is present from the first; it generates the effort, directs
+it, distinguishes between truth and error. And that which man ever aims
+at, whether in the ordinary activities of daily thought, or through the
+patient labour of scientific investigation, or in the reflective
+self-torture of philosophic thought, is to know the world as it is. No
+failure damps the ardour of this endeavour. Relativists, phenomenalists,
+agnostics, sceptics, Kantians or Neo-Kantians--all the crowd of thinkers
+who cry down the human intellect, and draw a charmed circle around
+reality so as to make it unapproachable to the mind of man--ply this
+useless labour. They are seeking to penetrate beneath the shows of sense
+and the outer husk of phenomena to the truth, which is the meeting-point
+of knowledge and reality; they are endeavouring to translate into an
+intellectual possession the powers that play within and around them; or,
+in other words, to make these powers express themselves in their
+thoughts, and supply the content of their spiritual life. The irony,
+latent in their endeavour, gives them no pause; they are in some way
+content to pursue what they call phantoms, and to try to satisfy their
+thirst with the waters of a mirage. This comes from the presence of the
+ideal within them, that is, of the implicit unity of reality and
+thought, which seeks for explicit and complete manifestation in
+knowledge. The reality is present in them as thinking activity, working
+towards complete revelation of itself by means of knowledge. And its
+presence is real, although the process is never complete.
+
+In knowledge, as in morals, it is necessary to remember both of the
+truths implied in the pursuit of an ideal--that a growing thing not only
+always fails to attain, but also always succeeds. The distinction
+between truth and error in knowledge is present at every stage in the
+effort to attain truth, as the distinction between right and wrong is
+present in every phase of the moral life. It is the source of the
+intellectual effort. But that distinction cannot be drawn except by
+reference to a criterion of truth, which condemns our actual knowledge;
+as it is the absolute good, which condemns the present character. The
+ideal may be indefinite, and its content confused and poor; but it is
+always sufficient for its purpose, always better than the actual
+achievement. And, in this sense, reality, the truth, the veritable being
+of things, is always reached by the poorest knowledge. As there is no
+starved and distorted sapling which is not the embodiment of the
+principle of natural life, so the meanest character is the product of an
+ideal of goodness, and the most confused opinion of ignorant mankind is
+an expression of the reality of things. Without it there would not be
+even the semblance of knowledge, not even error and untruth.
+
+Those who, like Browning, make a division between man's thought and real
+things, and regard the sphere of knowledge as touching at no point the
+sphere of actual existence, are attributing to the bare human intellect
+much more power than it has. They regard mind as creating its phenomenal
+knowledge, or the apparent world. For, having separated mind from
+reality, it is evident that they cannot avail themselves of any doctrine
+of sensations or impressions as a medium between them, or postulate any
+other form of connection or means of communication. Connection of any
+kind must, in the end, imply some community of nature, and must put the
+unity of thought and being--here denied--beneath their difference.
+Hence, the world of phenomena which we know, and which as known, does
+not seem to consist of realities, must be the product of the unaided
+human mind. The intellect, isolated from all real being, has
+manufactured the apparent universe, in all its endless wealth. It is a
+creative intellect, although it can only create illusions. It evolves
+all its products from itself.
+
+But thought, set to revolve upon its own axis in an empty region, can
+produce nothing, not even illusions. And, indeed, those who deny that it
+is possible for thought and reality to meet in a unity, have,
+notwithstanding, to bring over "something" to the aid of thought. There
+must be some effluence from the world of reality, some manifestations of
+the thing (though they are not the reality of the thing, nor any part of
+the reality, nor connected with the reality!) to assist the mind and
+supply it with data. The "phenomenal world" is a hybrid, generated by
+thought and "something"--which yet is not reality; for the real world is
+a world of things in themselves, altogether beyond thought. By bringing
+in these data, it is virtually admitted that the human mind reaches down
+into itself in vain for a world, even for a phenomenal one.
+
+Thought apart from things is quite empty, just as things apart from
+thought are blind. Such thought and such reality are mere abstractions,
+hypostasized by false metaphysics; they are elements of truth rent
+asunder, and destroyed in the rending. The dependence of the
+intelligence of man upon reality is direct and complete. The foolishest
+dream, that ever played out its panorama beneath a night-cap, came
+through the gates of the senses from the actual world. Man is limited to
+his material in all that he knows, just as he is ruled by the laws of
+thought. He cannot go one step beyond it. To transcend "experience" is
+impossible. We have no wings to sustain us in an empty region, and no
+need of any. It is as impossible for man to create new ideas, as it is
+for him to create new atoms. Our thought is essentially connected with
+reality. There is no _mauvais pas_ from thought to things. We do not
+need to leap out of ourselves in order to get into the world. We are in
+it from the first, both as physical and moral agents, and as thinking
+beings. Our thoughts are expressions of the real nature of things, so
+far as they go. They may be and are imperfect; they may be and are
+confused and inadequate, and express only the superficial aspects and
+not "the inmost fibres"; still, they are what they are, in virtue of
+"the reality," which finds itself interpreted in them. Severed from that
+reality, they would be nothing.
+
+Thus, the distinction between thought and reality is a distinction
+within a deeper unity. And that unity must not be regarded as something
+additional to both, or as a third something. It _is_ their unity. It is
+both reality and thought: it is existing thought, or reality knowing
+itself and existing through its knowledge of self; it is
+self-consciousness. The distinguished elements have no existence or
+meaning except in their unity. Like the actual and ideal, they have
+significance and being, only in their reference to each other.
+
+There is one more difficulty connected with this matter which I must
+touch upon, although the discussion may already be regarded as prolix.
+It is acknowledged by every one that the knowledge of the individual,
+and his apparent world of realities, grow _pari passu_. Beyond his
+sphere of knowledge there is no reality _for him_, not even apparent
+reality. But, on the other hand, the real world of existing things
+exists all the same whether he knows it or not. It did not begin to be
+with any knowledge he may have of it, it does not cease to be with his
+extinction, and it is not in any way affected by his valid, or invalid,
+reconstruction of it in thought. The world which depends on his thought
+is his world, and not the world of really existing things. And this is
+true alike of every individual. The world is independent of all human
+minds. It existed before them, and will, very possibly, exist after
+them. Can we not, therefore, conclude that the real world is independent
+of thought, and that it exists without relation to it?
+
+A short reference to the moral consciousness may suggest the answer to
+this difficulty. In morality (as also is the case in knowledge) the
+moral ideal, or the objective law of goodness, grows in richness and
+fulness of content with the individual who apprehends it. _His_ moral
+world is the counterpart of _his_ moral growth as a character. Goodness
+_for him_ directly depends upon his recognition of it. Animals,
+presumably, have no moral ideal, because they have not the power to
+constitute it. In morals, as in knowledge, the mind of man constructs
+its own world. And yet, in both alike, the world of truth or of goodness
+exists all the same whether the individual knows it or not. He does not
+call the moral law into being, but finds it without, and then realizes
+it in his own life. The moral law does not vanish and reappear with its
+recognition by mankind. It is not subject to the chances and changes of
+its life, but a good in itself that is eternal.
+
+Is it therefore independent of all intelligence? Can goodness be
+anything but the law of a self-conscious being? Is it the quality or
+motive or ideal of a mere thing? Manifestly not. Its relation to
+self-consciousness is essential. With the extinction of
+self-consciousness all moral goodness is extinguished.
+
+The same holds true of reality. The question of the reality or unreality
+of things cannot arise except in an intelligence. Animals have neither
+illusions nor truths--unless they are self-conscious. The reality, which
+man sets over against his own inadequate knowledge, is posited by him;
+and it has no meaning whatsoever except in this contrast. And to
+endeavour to conceive a reality which no one knows, is to assert a
+relative term without its correlative, which is absurd; it is to posit
+an ideal which is opposed to nothing actual.
+
+In this view, so commonly held in our day, that knowledge is subjective
+and reality unknowable, we have another example of the falseness and
+inconsistency of abstract thinking. If this error be committed, there is
+no fundamental gain in saying with Kant, that things are relative to the
+thought of all, instead of asserting, with Berkeley or Browning, that
+they are relative to the thought of each. The final result is the same.
+Things as known, are reduced into mere creations of thought; things as
+they are, are regarded as not thoughts, and as partaking in no way of
+the nature of thought. And yet "reality" is virtually assumed to be
+given at the beginning of knowledge; for the sensations are supposed to
+be emanations from it, or roused in consciousness by it. These
+sensations, it is said, man does not make, but receives, and receives
+from the concealed reality. They flow from it, and are the
+manifestations of its activity. Then, in the next moment, reality is
+regarded as not given in any way, but as something to be discovered by
+the effort of thought; for we always strive to know things, and not
+phantoms. Lastly, the knowledge thus acquired being regarded as
+imperfect, and experience showing to us continually that every object
+has more in it than we know, the reality is pronounced to be unknowable,
+and all knowledge is regarded as failure, as acquaintance with mere
+phantoms. Thus, in thought, as in morality, the ideal is present at the
+beginning, it is an effort after explicit realization, and its process
+is never complete.
+
+Now, all these aspects of the ideal of knowledge, that is, of reality,
+are held by the unsophisticated intelligence of man; and abstract
+philosophy is not capable of finally getting rid of any one of them. It,
+too, holds them _alternately_. Its denial of the possibility of knowing
+reality is refuted by its own starting-point; for it begins with a given
+something, regarded as real, and its very effort to know is an attempt
+to know that reality by thinking. But it forgets these facts, when it is
+discovered that knowledge at the best is incomplete. It is thus tossed
+from assertion to denial, and from denial to assertion; from one
+abstract or one-sided view of reality, to the other.
+
+When these different aspects of truth are grasped together from the
+point of view of evolution, there seems to be a way of escaping the
+difficulties to which they give rise. For the ideal must be present at
+the beginning, and cannot be present in its fulness till the process is
+complete. What is here required is to lift our theory of man's knowledge
+to the level of our theory of his moral life, and to treat it frankly as
+the process whereby reality manifests itself in the mind of man. In that
+way, we shall avoid the absurdities of both of the abstract schools of
+philosophy, to both of which alike the native intelligence of man gives
+the lie. We shall say neither that man knows nothing, nor that he knows
+all; we shall regard his knowledge, neither as purely phenomenal and out
+of all contact with reality, nor as an actual identification with the
+real being of things in all their complex variety. For, in morality, we
+do not say either that the individual is absolutely evil, because his
+actions never realize the supreme ideal of goodness; nor, that he is at
+the last term of development, and "taking the place of God," because he
+lives as "ever in his great Taskmaster's eye." Just as every moral
+action, however good, leaves something still to be desiderated,
+something that may become a stepping-stone for new movement towards the
+ideal which it has failed to actualize; so all our knowledge of an
+object leaves something over that we have not apprehended, which is
+truer and more real than anything we know, and which in all future
+effort we strive to master. And, just as the very effort, to be good
+derives its impulse and direction from the ideal of goodness which is
+present, and striving for realization; so the effort to know derives its
+impulse and direction from the reality which is present, and striving
+for complete realization in the thought of man. We know reality
+confusedly from the first; and it is because we have attained so much
+knowledge, that we strive for greater clearness and fulness. It is by
+planting his foot on the world that man travels. It is by opposing his
+power to the given reality that his knowledge grows.
+
+When once we recognize that reality is the ideal of knowledge, we are
+able to acknowledge all the truth that is in the doctrine of the
+phenomenalists, without falling into their errors and contradictions. We
+may go as far as the poet in confessing intellectual impotence, and
+roundly call the knowledge of man "lacquered ignorance." "Earth's least
+atom" does veritably remain an enigma. Man is actually flung back into
+his circumscribed sphere by every fact; and he will continue to be so
+flung to the end of time. He will never know reality, nor be able to
+hold up in his hand the very heart of the simplest thing in the world.
+For the world is an organic totality, and its simplest thing will not be
+seen, through and through, till everything is known, till every fact and
+event is related to every other under principles which are universal:
+just as goodness cannot be fully achieved in any act, till the agent is
+in all ways lifted to the level of absolute goodness. Physics cannot
+reveal the forces which keep a stone in its place on the earth, till it
+has traced the forces that maintain the starry systems in their course.
+No fact can be thoroughly known, _i.e._, known in its reality, till the
+light of the universe has been focussed upon it: and, on the other hand,
+to know any subject through and through would be to explain all being.
+The highest law and the essence of the simple fact, the universal and
+the particular, can only be known together, in and through one another.
+"Reality" in "the least atom" will be known, only when knowledge has
+completed its work, and the universe has become a transparent sphere,
+penetrated in every direction by the shafts of intelligence.
+
+But this is only half the truth. If knowledge is never complete, it is
+always _completing_; if reality is never known, it is ever _being
+known_; if the ideal is never actual, it is always _being actualized_.
+The complete failure of knowledge is as impossible as its complete
+success. It is at no time severed from reality; it is never its mere
+adumbration, nor are its contents mere phenomena. On the contrary, it is
+reality partially revealed, the ideal incompletely actualized. Our very
+errors are the working of reality within us, and apart from it they
+would be impossible. The process towards truth by man is the process of
+truth _in_ man; the movement of knowledge towards reality is the movement
+of reality into knowledge. A purely subjective consciousness which knows,
+such as the poet tried to describe, is a self-contradiction: it would be
+a consciousness at once related, and not related, to the actual world.
+But man has no need to relate himself to the world. He is already
+related, and his task is to understand that relation, or, in other words,
+to make both its terms intelligible. Man has no need to go out from
+himself to facts; his relation to facts is prior to his distinction from
+them. The truth is that he cannot entirely lift himself away from them,
+nor suspend his thoughts in the void. In his inmost being he is
+creation's voice, and in his knowledge he confusedly murmurs its deep
+thoughts.
+
+Browning was aware of this truth in its application to man's moral
+nature. In speaking of the principle of love, he was not tempted to
+apply fixed alternatives. On the contrary, he detected in the "poorest
+love that was ever offered" the veritable presence of that which is
+perfect and complete, though never completely actualized. His interest
+in the moral development of man, and his penetrative moral insight,
+acting upon, and guided by the truths of the Christian religion, warned
+him, on this side, against the absolute separation of the ideal and
+actual, the divine and human. Human love, however poor in quality and
+limited in range, was to him God's love in man. It was a wave breaking
+in the individual of that First Love, which is ever flowing back through
+the life of humanity to its primal source. To him all moral endeavour is
+the process of this Primal Love; and every man, as he consciously
+identifies himself with it, may use the language of Scripture, and say,
+"It is not I that live, but Christ lives in me."
+
+But, on the side of knowledge, he was neither so deeply interested, nor
+had he so good a guide to lean upon. Ignorant, according to all
+appearances, of the philosophy which has made the Christian maxim, "Die
+to live,"--which primarily is only a principle of morality--the basis of
+its theory of knowledge, he exaggerated the failure of science to reach
+the whole truth as to any particular object, into a qualitative
+discrepancy between knowledge and truth. Because knowledge is never
+complete, it is always mere lacquered ignorance; and man's apparent
+intellectual victories are only conquests in a land of unrealities, or
+mere phenomena. He occupies in regard to knowledge, a position strictly
+analogous to that of Carlyle, in regard to morality; his intellectual
+pessimism is the counterpart of the moral pessimism of his predecessor,
+and it springs from the same error. He forgot that the ideal without is
+also the power within, which makes for its own manifestation in the mind
+of man.
+
+He opposed the intellect to the world, as Carlyle opposed the weakness
+of man to the law of duty; and he neglected the fact that the world was
+there for him, only because he knew it, just as Carlyle neglected the
+fact that the duty was without, only because it was recognized within.
+He strained the difference between the ideal and actual into an absolute
+distinction; and, as Carlyle condemned man to strive for a goodness
+which he could never achieve, so Browning condemns him to pursue a truth
+which he can never attain. In both, the failure is regarded as absolute.
+"There is no good in us," has for its counterpart "There is no truth in
+us." Both the moralist and the poet dwell on the _negative_ relation of
+the ideal and actual, and forget that the negative has no meaning,
+except as the expression of a deeper affirmative. Carlyle had to learn
+that we know our moral imperfection, only because we are conscious of a
+better within us; and Browning had to learn that we are aware of our
+ignorance, only because we have the consciousness of fuller truth with
+which we contrast our knowledge. Browning, indeed, knew that the
+consciousness of evil was itself evidence of the presence of good, that
+perfection means death, and progress is life, on the side of morals; but
+he has missed the corresponding truth on the side of knowledge. If he
+acknowledges that the highest revealed itself to man, on the practical
+side, as love; he does not see that it has also manifested itself to
+man, on the theoretical side, as reason. The self-communication of the
+Infinite is incomplete love is a quality of God, intelligence a quality
+of man; hence, on one side, there is no limit to achievement, but on the
+other there is impotence. Human nature is absolutely divided against
+itself; and the division, as we have already seen, is not between flesh
+and spirit, but between a love which is God's own and perfect, and an
+intelligence which is merely man's and altogether weak and deceptive.
+
+This is what makes Browning think it impossible to re-establish faith in
+God, except by turning his back on knowledge; but whether it is possible
+for him to appeal to the moral consciousness, we shall inquire in the
+next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE HEART AND THE HEAD.--LOVE AND REASON.
+
+
+    "And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to
+    play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do
+    injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her
+    strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew
+    truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Milton's _Areopagitica_.]
+
+It has been shown that Browning appeals, in defence of his optimistic
+faith, from the intellect to the heart. His theory rests on three main
+assumptions:--namely (1) that knowledge of the true nature of things is
+impossible to man, and that, therefore, it is necessary to find other
+and better evidence than the intellect can give for the victory of good
+over evil; (2) that the failure of knowledge is a necessary condition of
+the moral life, inasmuch as certain knowledge would render all moral
+effort either futile or needless; (3) that after the failure of
+knowledge there still remains possible a faith of the heart, which can
+furnish a sufficient objective basis to morality and religion. The first
+of these assumptions I endeavoured to deal with in the last chapter. I
+now turn to the remaining two.
+
+Demonstrative, or certain, or absolute knowledge of the actual nature of
+things would, Browning asserts, destroy the very possibility of a moral
+life.[A] For such knowledge would show either that evil is evil, or that
+evil is good; and, in both cases alike, the benevolent activity of love
+would be futile. In the first case, it would be thwarted and arrested by
+despair; for, if evil be evil, it must remain evil for aught that man
+can do. Man cannot effect a change in the nature of things, nor create a
+good in a world dominated by evil. In the second case, the saving effect
+of moral love would be unnecessary; for, if evil be only seeming, then
+all things are perfect and complete, and there is no need of
+interference. It is necessary, therefore, that man should be in a
+permanent state of doubt as to the real existence of evil; and, whether
+evil does exist or not, it must seem, and only seem to exist to man, in
+order that he may devote himself to the service of good.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: See Chapter VIII., p. 255.]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+Now, if this view of the poet be taken in the strict sense in which he
+uses it in this argument, it admits of a very easy refutation. It takes
+us beyond the bounds of all possible human experience, into an imaginary
+region, as to which all assertions are equally valueless. It is
+impossible to conceive how the conduct of a being who is moral would be
+affected by absolute knowledge; or, indeed, to conceive the existence of
+such a being. For morality, as the poet insists, is a process in which
+an ideal is gradually realized through conflict with the actual--an
+actual which it both produces and transmutes at every stage of the
+progress. But complete knowledge would be above all process. Hence we
+would have, on Browning's hypothesis, to conceive of a being in whom
+perfect knowledge was combined with an undeveloped will. A being so
+constituted would be an agglomerate of utterly disparate elements, the
+interaction of which in a single character it would be impossible to
+make intelligible.
+
+But, setting aside this point, there is a curious flaw in Browning's
+argument, which indicates that he had not distinguished between two
+forms of optimism which are essentially different from each
+other,--namely, the pantheistic and the Christian.
+
+To know that evil is only apparent, that pain is only pleasure's mask,
+that all forms of wickedness and misery are only illusions of an
+incomplete intelligence, would, he argues, arrest all moral action and
+stultify love. For love--which necessarily implies need in its
+object--is the principle of all right action. In this he argues justly,
+for the moral life is essentially a conflict and progress; and, in a
+world in which "white ruled unchecked along the line," there would be
+neither the need of conflict nor the possibility of progress. And, on
+the other hand, if the good were merely a phantom, and evil the reality,
+the same destruction of moral activity would follow. "White may not
+triumph," in this absolute manner, nor may we "clean abolish, once and
+evermore, white's faintest trace." There must be "the constant shade
+cast on life's shine."
+
+All this is true; but the admission of it in no way militates against
+the conception of absolutely valid knowledge; nor is it any proof that
+we need live in the twilight of perpetual doubt, in order to be moral.
+For the knowledge, of which Browning speaks, would be knowledge of a
+state of things in which morality would be really impossible; that is,
+it would be knowledge of a world in which all was evil or all was good.
+On the other hand, valid knowledge of a world in which good and evil are
+in conflict, and in which the former is realized through victory over
+the latter, would not destroy morality. What is inconsistent with the
+moral life is the conception of a world where there is no movement from
+evil to good, no evolution of character, but merely the stand-still life
+of "Rephan." But absolutely certain knowledge that the good is at issue
+with sin in the world, that there is no way of attaining goodness except
+through conflict with evil, and that moral life, as the poet so
+frequently insists, is a process which converts all actual attainment
+into a dead self, from which we can rise to higher things--a self,
+therefore, which is relatively evil--would, and does, inspire morality.
+It is the deification of evil not negated or overcome, of evil as it is
+in itself and apart from all process, which destroys morality. And the
+same is equally true of a pantheistic optimism, which asserts that all
+things _are_ good. But it is not true of a Christian optimism, which
+asserts that all things are _working together for_ good. For such
+optimism implies that the process of negating or overcoming evil is
+essential to the attainment of goodness; it does not imply that evil, as
+evil, is ever good. Evil is unreal, only in the sense that it cannot
+withstand the power which is set against it. It is not _mere_ semblance,
+a mere negation or absence of being; it is opposed to the good, and its
+opposition can be overcome, only by the moral effort which it calls
+forth. An optimistic faith of this kind can find room for morality; and,
+indeed, it furnishes it with the religious basis it needs. Browning,
+however, has confused these two forms of optimism; and, therefore, he
+has been driven to condemn knowledge, because he knew no alternative but
+that of either making evil eternally real, or making it absolutely
+unreal. A third alternative, however, is supplied by the conception of
+moral evolution. Knowledge of the conditions on which good can be
+attained--a knowledge that amounts to conviction--is the spring of all
+moral effort; whereas an attitude of permanent doubt as to the
+distinction between good and evil would paralyse it. Such a doubt must
+be solved before man can act at all, or choose one end rather than
+another. All action implies belief, and the ardour and vigour of moral
+action can only come from a belief which is whole-hearted.
+
+The further assertion, which the poet makes in _La Saisiaz_, and repeats
+elsewhere, that sure knowledge of the consequences that follow good and
+evil actions would necessarily lead to the choice of good and the
+avoidance of evil, and destroy morality by destroying liberty of choice,
+raises the whole question of the relation of knowledge and conduct, and
+cannot be adequately discussed here. It may be said, however, that it
+rests upon a confusion between two forms of necessity: namely, natural
+and spiritual necessity. In asserting that knowledge of the consequences
+of evil would determine human action in a necessary way, the poet
+virtually treats man as if he were a natural being. But the assumption
+that man is responsible and liable to punishment, involves that he is
+capable of withstanding all such determination. And knowledge does not
+and cannot lead to such necessary determination. Reason brings freedom;
+for reason constitutes the ends of action.
+
+It is the constant desire of the good to attain to such a convincing
+knowledge of the worth and dignity of the moral law that they shall be
+able to make themselves its devoted instruments. Their desire is that
+"the good" shall supplant in them all motives that conflict against it,
+and be the inner principle, or necessity, of all their actions. Such
+complete devotion to the good is expressed, for instance, in the words
+of the Hebrew Psalmist: "Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage for
+ever; for they are the rejoicing of my heart. I have inclined mine heart
+to perform Thy statutes alway, even unto the end. I hate vain thoughts,
+but Thy law do I love." "Nevertheless I live," said the Christian
+apostle, "yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now
+live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God." In these words
+there is expressed that highest form of the moral life, in which the
+individual is so identified in desire with his ideal, that he lives only
+to actualize it in his character. The natural self is represented as
+dead, and the victory of the new principle is viewed as complete. This
+full obedience to the ideal is the service of a necessity; but the
+necessity is within, and the service is, therefore, perfect freedom. The
+authority of the law is absolute, but the law is self-imposed. The whole
+man is convinced of its goodness. He has acquired something even fuller
+than a mere intellectual demonstration of it; for his knowledge has
+ripened into wisdom, possessed his sympathies, and become a disposition
+of his heart. And the fulness and certainty of his knowledge, so far
+from rendering morality impossible, is its very perfection. To bring
+about such a knowledge of the good of goodness and the evil of evil, as
+will engender love of the former and hatred of the latter, is the aim of
+all moral education. Thus, the history of human life, in so far as it is
+progressive, may be concentrated in the saying that it is the ascent
+from the power of a necessity which is natural, to the power of a
+necessity which is moral. And this latter necessity can come only
+through fuller and more convincing knowledge of the law that rules the
+world, and is also the inner principle of man's nature.
+
+There remains now the third element in Browning's view,--namely, that
+the faith in the good, implied in morality and religion, can be firmly
+established, after knowledge has turned out deceptive, upon the
+individual's consciousness of the power of love within himself. In other
+words, I must now try to estimate the value of Browning's appeal from
+the intellect to the heart.
+
+Before doing so, however, it may be well to repeat once more that
+Browning's condemnation of knowledge, in his philosophical poems, is not
+partial or hesitating. On the contrary, he confines it definitely to the
+individual's consciousness of his own inner states.
+
+            "Myself I solely recognize.
+  They, too, may recognize themselves, not me,
+  For aught I know or care."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_. See also _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+Nor does Browning endeavour to correct this limited testimony of the
+intellect as to its own states, by bringing in the miraculous aid of
+revelation, or by postulating an unerring moral faculty. He does not
+assume an intuitive power of knowing right from wrong; but he maintains
+that ignorance enwraps man's moral sense.[B]
+
+[Footnote B: See Chapter VIII.]
+
+And, not only are we unable to know the rule of right and wrong in
+details, but we cannot know whether there _is_ right or wrong. At times
+the poet seems inclined to say that evil is a phenomenon conjured up by
+the frail intelligence of man.
+
+    "Man's fancy makes the fault!
+  Man, with the narrow mind, must cram inside
+  His finite God's infinitude,--earth's vault
+  He bids comprise the heavenly far and wide,
+  Since Man may claim a right to understand
+  What passes understanding."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville_.]
+
+God's ways are past finding out. Nay, God Himself is unknown. At times,
+indeed, the power to love within man seems to the poet to be a clue to
+the nature of the Power without, and God is all but revealed in this
+surpassing emotion of the human heart. But, when philosophizing, he
+withdraws even this amount of knowledge. He is
+
+  "Assured that, whatsoe'er the quality
+  Of love's cause, save that love was caused thereby,
+  This--nigh upon revealment as it seemed
+  A minute since--defies thy longing looks,
+  Withdrawn into the unknowable once more."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]
+
+Thus--to sum up Browning's view of knowledge--we are ignorant of the
+world; we do not know even whether it is good, or evil, or only their
+semblance, that is presented to us in human life; and we know nothing of
+God, except that He is the cause of love in man. What greater depth of
+agnosticism is possible?
+
+When the doctrine is put in this bald form, the moral and religious
+consciousness of man, on behalf of which the theory was invented,
+revolts against it.
+
+Nevertheless, the distinction made by Browning between the intellectual
+and emotional elements of human life is very common in religious
+thought. It is not often, indeed, that either the worth of love, or the
+weakness of knowledge receives such emphatic expression as that which is
+given to them by the poet; but the same general idea of their relation
+is often expressed, and still more often implied. Browning differs from
+our ordinary teachers mainly in the boldness of his affirmatives and
+negatives. They, too, regard the intellect as merely human, and the
+emotion of love as divine. They, too, shrink from identifying the reason
+of man with the reason of God; even though they may recognize that
+morality and religion must postulate some kind of unity between God and
+man. They, too, conceive that human knowledge differs _in nature_ from
+that of God, while they maintain that human goodness is the same in
+nature with that of God, though different in degree and fulness. There
+are two _kinds_ of knowledge, but there is only one kind of justice, or
+mercy, or loving-kindness. Man must be content with a semblance of a
+knowledge of truth; but a semblance of goodness, would be intolerable.
+God really reveals Himself to man in morality and religion, and He
+communicates to man nothing less than "the divine love." But there is no
+such close connection on the side of reason. The religious life of man
+is a divine principle, the indwelling of God in him; but there is a
+final and fatal defect in man's knowledge. The divine love's
+manifestation of itself is ever incomplete, it is true, even in the best
+of men; but there is no defect in its nature.
+
+As a consequence of this doctrine, few religious opinions are more
+common at the present day, than that it is necessary to appeal, on all
+the high concerns of man's moral and religious life, from the intellect
+to the heart. Where we cannot know, we may still feel; and the religious
+man may have, in his own feeling of the divine, a more intimate
+conviction of the reality of that in which he trusts, than could be
+produced by any intellectual process.
+
+              "Enough to say, 'I feel
+  Love's sure effect, and, being loved, must love
+  The love its cause behind,--I can and do.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Piller at Sebzevar_.]
+
+Reason, in trying to scale the heights of truth, falls-back, impotent
+and broken, into doubt and despair; not by that way can we come to that
+which is best and highest.
+
+  "I found Him not in world or sun,
+    Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye;
+    Nor thro' the questions men may try,
+  The petty cobwebs we have spun."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _In Memoriam_.]
+
+But there is another way to find God and to conquer doubt.
+
+  "If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep,
+    I heard a voice 'believe no more,'
+    And heard an ever-breaking-shore
+  That tumbled in the Godless deep;
+
+  "A warmth within the breast would melt
+    The freezing reason's colder part,
+    And like a man in wrath the heart
+  Stood up and answer'd 'I have felt.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _In Memoriam_.]
+
+What, then, I have now to ask, is the meaning and value of this appeal
+to emotion? Can love, or emotion in any of its forms, reveal truths to
+man which his intellect cannot discover? If so, how? If not, how shall
+we account for the general conviction of good men that it can? We have,
+in a word, either to justify the appeal to the heart, by explaining how
+the heart may utter truths that are hidden from reason; or else to
+account for the illusion, by which religious emotion seems to reveal
+such truths.
+
+The first requirement is shown to be unreasonable by the very terms in
+which it is made. The intuitive insight of faith, the immediate
+conviction of the heart, cannot render, and must not try to render, any
+account of itself. Proof is a process; but there is no process in this
+direct conviction of truth. Its assertion is just the denial of process;
+it is a repudiation of all connections; in such a faith of feeling there
+are no cob-web lines relating fact to fact, which doubt could break.
+Feeling is the immediate unity of the subject and object. I am pained,
+because I cannot rid myself of an element which is already within me; I
+am lifted into the emotion of pleasure, or happiness, or bliss, by the
+consciousness that I am already at one with an object that fulfils my
+longings and satisfies my needs. Hence, there seems to be ground for
+saying that, in this instance, the witness cannot lie; for it cannot go
+before the fact, as it is itself the effect of the fact. If the emotion
+is pleasurable it is the consciousness of the unity within; if it is
+painful, of the disunity. In feeling, I am absolutely with myself; and
+there seems, therefore, to be no need of attempting to justify, by means
+of reason, a faith in God which manifests itself in emotion. The emotion
+itself is its own sufficient witness, a direct result of the intimate
+union of man with the object of devotion. Nay, we may go further, and
+say that the demand is an unjust one, which betrays ignorance of the
+true nature of moral intuition and religious feeling.
+
+I am not concerned to deny the truth that lies in the view here stated;
+and no advocate of the dignity of human reason, or of the worth of human
+knowledge, is called upon to deny it. There is a sense in which the
+conviction of "faith" or "feeling" is more intimate and strong than any
+process of proof. But this does not in any wise justify the contention
+of those who maintain that we can feel what we do not in any sense know,
+or that the heart can testify to that of which the intellect is
+absolutely silent.
+
+  "So let us say--not 'Since we know, we love,'
+  But rather, 'Since we love, we know enough.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]
+
+In these two lines there are combined the truth I would acknowledge, and
+the error I would confute. Love is, in one way, sufficient knowledge;
+or, rather, it is the direct testimony of that completest knowledge, in
+which subject and object interpenetrate. For, where love is, all foreign
+elements have been eliminated. There is not "one and one with a shadowy
+third"; but the object is brought within the self as constituting part
+of its very life. This is involved in all the great forms of human
+thought--in science and art, no less than in morality and religion. It
+is the truth that we love, and only that, which is altogether ours. By
+means of love the poet is
+
+  "Made one with Nature. There is heard
+  His voice in all her music, from the moan
+  Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird ";
+
+and it is because he is made one with her that he is able to reveal her
+inmost secrets. "Man," said Fichte, "can will nothing but what he loves;
+his love is the sole and at the same time the infallible spring of his
+volition, and of all his life's striving and movement." It is only when
+we have identified ourselves with an ideal, and made its realization our
+own interest, that we strive to attain it. Love is revelation in
+knowledge, inspiration in art, motive in morality, and the fulness of
+religious joy.
+
+But, although in this sense love is greater than knowledge, it is a
+grave error to separate it from knowledge. In the life of man at least,
+the separation of the emotional and intellectual elements extinguishes
+both. We cannot know that in which we have no interest. The very effort
+to comprehend an object rests on interest, or the feeling of ourselves
+in it; so that knowledge, as well as morality, may be said to begin in
+love. We cannot know except we love; but, on the other hand, we cannot
+love that which we do not in some degree know. Wherever the frontiers of
+knowledge may be it is certain that there is nothing beyond them which
+can either arouse feeling, or be a steadying centre for it. Emotion is
+like a climbing plant. It clings to the tree of knowledge, adding beauty
+to its strength. But, without knowledge, it is impossible for man. There
+is no feeling which is not also incipient knowledge; for feeling is only
+the subjective side of knowledge--that face of the known fact which is
+turned inwards.
+
+If, therefore, the poet's agnosticism were taken literally, and, in his
+philosophical poems he obviously means it to be taken literally, it
+would lead to a denial of the very principles of religion and morality,
+which it was meant to support. His appeal to love would then, strictly
+speaking, be an appeal to the love of nothing known, or knowable; and
+such love is impossible. For love, if it is to be distinguished from the
+organic, impulse of beast towards beast, must have an object. A mere
+instinctive activity of benevolence in man, by means of which he
+lightened the sorrows of his brethren, if not informed with knowledge,
+would have no more moral worth than the grateful warmth of the sun. Such
+love as this there may be in the animal creation. If the bird is not
+rational, we may say that it builds its nest and lines it for its brood,
+pines for its partner and loves it, at the bidding of the returning
+spring, in much the same way as the meadows burst into flower. Without
+knowledge, the whole process is merely a natural one; or, if it be more,
+it is so only in so far as the life of emotion can be regarded as a
+foretaste of the life of thought. But such a natural process is not
+possible to man. Every activity in him is relative to his
+self-consciousness, and takes a new character from that relation. His
+love at the best and worst is the love of something that he knows, and
+in which he seeks to find himself made rich with new sufficiency. Thus
+love can not "ally" itself with ignorance. It is, indeed, an impulse
+pressing for the closer communion of the lover with the object of his
+love.
+
+      "Like two meteors of expanding flame,
+  Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
+  Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still
+  Burning, yet ever inconsumable;
+  In one another's substance finding food."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Shelley's _Epipsychidion_.]
+
+But, for a being such as Browning describes, who is shut up within the
+blind walls of his own self, the self-transcending impulse of love would
+be impossible. If man's inner consciousness is to be conceived as a dark
+room shutting out the world, upon whose shadowy phenomena the candle of
+introspection throws a dim and uncertain light, then he can have no
+interest outside of himself; nor can he ever take that first step in
+goodness, which carries him beyond his narrow individuality to seek and
+find a larger self in others. Morality, even in its lowest form, implies
+knowledge, and knowledge of something better than "those _apparent_
+other mortals." With the first dawn of the moral life comes the
+consciousness of an ideal, which is not actual; and such a break with
+the natural is not possible except to him who has known a better and
+desired it. The ethical endeavour of man is the attempt to convert ideas
+into actuality; and all his activity as moral agent takes place within
+the sphere that is illumined by the light of knowledge. If knowledge
+breaks down, there is no law of action which he can obey. The moral law
+that must be apprehended, and whose authority must be recognized by man,
+either sinks out of being or becomes an illusive phantom, if man is
+doomed to ignorance or false knowledge. To extinguish truth is to
+extinguish goodness.
+
+In like manner, religion, which the poet would fain defend for man by
+means of agnosticism, becomes impossible, if knowledge be denied.
+Religion is not blind emotion; nor can mere feeling, however ecstatic,
+ascend to God. Animals feel, but they are not, and cannot be,
+religious--unless they can know. The love of God implies knowledge. "I
+know Him whom I have believed" is the language of religion. For what is
+religion but a conscious identification of the self with One who is
+known to fulfil its needs and satisfy its aspirations? Agnosticism is
+thus directly destructive of it. We cannot, indeed, prove God as the
+conclusion of a syllogism, for He is the primary hypothesis of all
+proof. But, nevertheless, we cannot reach Him without knowledge. Emotion
+reveals no object, but is consequent upon the revelation of it; feeling
+yields no truth, but is the witness of the worth of a truth for the
+individual. If man were shut up to mere feeling, even the awe of the
+devout agnostic would be impossible. For the Unknowable cannot generate
+any emotion. It appears to do so, only because the Unknowable of the
+agnostic is not altogether unknown to him; but is a vast, abysmal
+"Something," that has occupied with its shadowy presence the field of
+his imagination. It is paganism stricken with the plague, and philosophy
+afflicted with blindness, that build altars to an unknown God. The
+highest and the strongest faith, the deepest trust and the most loving,
+come with the fullest knowledge. Indeed, the distinction between the awe
+of the agnostic, which is the lowest form of religion, and that highest
+form in which perfect love casteth out fear, springs from the fuller
+knowledge of the nature of the object of warship, which the latter
+implies. Thus, religion and morality grow with the growth of knowledge;
+and neither has a worse enemy than ignorance. The human spirit cannot
+grow in a one-sided manner. Devotion to great moral ends is possible,
+only through the deepening and widening of man's knowledge of the nature
+of the world. Those who know God best, render unto Him the purest
+service.
+
+So evident is this, that it seems at first sight to be difficult to
+account for that antagonism to the intellect and distrust of its
+deliverances, which are so emphatically expressed in the writings of
+Browning, and which are marked characteristics of the ordinary religious
+opinion of our day. On closer examination, however, we shall discover
+that it is not pure emotion, or mere feeling, whose authority is set
+above that of reason, but rather the emotion which is the result of
+knowledge. The appeal of the religious man from the doubts and
+difficulties, which reason levels against "the faith," is really an
+appeal to the character that lies behind the emotion. The conviction of
+the heart, that refuses to yield to the arguments of the understanding,
+is not _mere_ feeling; but, rather, the complex experience of the past
+life, that manifests itself in feeling. When an individual, clinging to
+his moral or religious faith, says, "I have felt it," he opposes to the
+doubt, not his feeling as such, but his personality in all the wealth of
+its experience. The appeal to the heart is the appeal to the unproved,
+but not, therefore, unauthorized, testimony of the best men at their
+best moments, when their vision of truth is clearest. No one pretends
+that "the loud and empty voice of untrained passion and prejudice" has
+any authority in matters of moral and religious faith; though, in such
+cases, "feeling" may lack neither depth nor intensity. If the "feelings"
+of the good man were dissociated from his character, and stripped bare
+of all the significance they obtain therefrom, their worthlessness would
+become apparent. The profound error of condemning knowledge in order to
+honour feeling, is hidden only by the fact that the feeling is already
+informed and inspired with knowledge. Religious agnosticism, like all
+other forms of the theory of nescience, derives its plausibility from
+the adventitious help it purloins from the knowledge which it condemns.
+
+That it is to such feeling that Browning really appeals against
+knowledge becomes abundantly evident, when we bear in mind that he
+always calls it "love." For love in man is never ignorant. It knows its
+object, and is a conscious identification of the self with it. And to
+Browning, the object of love, when love is at its best--of that love by
+means of which he refutes intellectual pessimism--is mankind. The revolt
+of the heart against all evil is a desire for the good of all men. In
+other words, his refuge against the assailing doubts which spring from
+the intellect, is in the moral consciousness. But that consciousness is
+no mere emotion; it is a consciousness which knows the highest good, and
+moves in sympathy with it. It is our maturest wisdom; for it is the
+manifestation of the presence and activity of the ideal, the fullest
+knowledge and the surest. Compared with this, the emotion linked to
+ignorance, of which the poet speaks in his philosophic theory, is a very
+poor thing. It is poorer than the lowest human love.
+
+Now, if this higher interpretation of the term "heart" be accepted, it
+is easily seen why its authority should seem higher than that of reason;
+and particularly, if it be remembered that, while the heart is thus
+widened to take in all direct consciousness of the ideal, "the reason"
+is reduced to the power of reflection, or mental analysis. "The heart,"
+in this sense, is the intensest unity of the complex experiences of a
+whole life, while "the reason" is taken merely as a faculty which
+invents arguments, and provides grounds and evidences; it is what is
+called, in the language of German philosophy, the "understanding." Now,
+in this sense, the understanding has, at best, only a borrowed
+authority. It is the faculty of rules rather than of principles. It is
+ever dogmatic, assertive, repellent, hard; and it always advances its
+forces in single line. Its logic never convinced any one of truth or
+error, unless, beneath the arguments which it advanced, there lay some
+deeper principle of concord. Thus, the opposition between "faith and
+reason," rightly interpreted, is that between a concrete experience,
+instinct with life and conviction, and a mechanical arrangement of
+abstract arguments. The quarrel of the heart is not with reason, but
+with reasons. "Evidences of Christianity?" said Coleridge; "I am weary
+of the word." It is this weariness of evidence, of the endless arguments
+_pro_ and _con_, which has caused so many to distrust reason and
+knowledge, and which has sometimes driven believers to the dangerous
+expedient of making their faith dogmatic and absolute. Nor have the
+opponents of "the faith" been slow to seize the opportunity thus offered
+them. "From the moment that a religion solicits the aid of philosophy,
+its ruin is inevitable," said Heine. "In the attempt at defence, it
+prates itself into destruction. Religion, like every absolutism, must
+not seek to justify itself. Prometheus is bound to the rock by a silent
+force. Yea, Aeschylus permits not personified power to utter a single
+word. It must remain mute. The moment that a religion ventures to print
+a catechism supported by arguments, the moment that a political
+absolutism publishes an official newspaper, both are near their end. But
+therein consists our triumph: we have brought our adversaries to speech,
+and they must reckon with us."[A] But, we may answer, religion is _not_
+an absolutism; and, therefore, it is _not_ near its end when it ventures
+to justify itself. On the contrary, no spiritual power, be it moral or
+religious, can maintain its authority, if it assumes a despotic
+attitude; for the human spirit inevitably moves towards freedom, and
+that movement is the deepest necessity of its nature, which it cannot
+escape. "Religion, on the ground of its sanctity, and law, on the ground
+of its majesty, often resist the sifting of their claims. But in so
+doing, they inevitably awake a not unjust suspicion that their claims
+are ill-founded. They can command the unfeigned homage of man, only when
+they have shown themselves able to stand the test of free inquiry."
+
+[Footnote A: _Religion and Philosophy in Germany_.]
+
+And if it is an error to suppose, with Browning, that the primary truths
+of the moral and religious consciousness belong to a region which is
+higher than knowledge, and can, from that side, be neither assailed nor
+defended; it is also an error to suppose that reason is essentially
+antagonistic to them. The facts of morality and religion are precisely
+the richest facts of knowledge; and that faith is the most secure which
+is most completely illumined by reason. Religion at its best is not a
+dogmatic despotism, nor is reason a merely critical and destructive
+faculty. If reason is loyal to the truth of religion on which it is
+exercised, it will reach beneath all the conflict and clamour of
+disputation, to the principle of unity, on which, as we have seen, both
+reason and religion rest.
+
+The "faith" to which religious spirits appeal against all the attacks of
+doubt, "the love" of Browning, is really implicit reason; it is
+"abbreviated" or concentrated knowledge; it is the manifold experiences
+of life focussed into an intense unity. And, on the other hand, the
+"reason" which they condemn is what Carlyle calls the logic-chopping
+faculty. In taking the side of faith when troubled with difficulties
+which they cannot lay, they are really defending the cause of reason
+against that of the understanding. For it is quite true that the
+understanding, that is, the reason as reflective or critical, can never
+bring about either a moral or religious life. It cannot create a
+religion, any more than physiology can produce men. The reflection which
+brings doubt is always secondary; it can only exercise itself on a given
+material. As Hegel frequently pointed out, it is not the function of
+moral philosophy to create or to institute a morality or religion, but
+to understand them. The facts must first be given; they must be actual
+experiences of the human spirit. Moral philosophy and theology differ
+from the moral or religious life, in the same way as geology differs
+from the earth, or astronomy from the heavenly bodies. The latter are
+facts; the former are theories about the facts. Religion is an attitude
+of the human spirit towards the highest; morality is the realization of
+character; and these are not to be confused with their reflective
+interpretations. Much of the difficulty in these matters comes from the
+lack of a clear distinction between _beliefs_ and _creeds_.
+
+Further, not only are the utterances of the heart prior to the
+deliverances of the intellect in this sense, but it may also be admitted
+that the latter can never do full justice to the contents of the former.
+So rich is character in content and so complex is spiritual life, that
+we can never, by means of reflection, lift into clear consciousness all
+the elements that enter into it. Into the organism of our experience,
+which is our faith, there is continually absorbed the subtle influences
+of our complex natural and social environment. We grow by means of them,
+as the plant grows by feeding on the soil and the sunshine and dew. It
+is as impossible for us to set forth, one by one, the truths and errors
+which we have thus worked into our mental and moral life, as it is to
+keep a reckoning of the physical atoms with which the natural life
+builds up the body. Hence, every attempt to justify these truths seems
+inadequate; and the defence which the understanding sets up for the
+faith, always seems partial and cold. Who ever fully expressed his
+deepest convictions? The consciousness of the dignity of the moral law
+affected Kant like the view of the starry firmament, and generated a
+feeling of the sublime which words could not express; and the religious
+ecstasy of the saints cannot be confined within the channels of speech,
+but floods the soul with overmastering power, possessing all its
+faculties. In this respect, it will always remain true that the greatest
+facts of human experience reach beyond all knowledge. Nay, we may add
+further, that in this respect the simplest of these facts passes all
+understanding. Still, as we have already seen, it is reason that
+constitutes them; that which is presented to reason for explanation, in
+knowledge and morality and religion, is itself the product of reason.
+Reason is the power which, by interaction with our environment, has
+generated the whole of our experience. And, just as natural science
+interprets the phenomena given to it by ordinary opinion, _i.e._,
+interprets and purifies a lower form of knowledge by converting it into
+a higher; so the task of reason when it is exercised upon morality and
+religion, is simply to evolve, and amplify the meaning of its own
+products. The movement from morality and religion to moral philosophy
+and the philosophy of religion, is thus a movement from reason to
+reason, from the implicit to the explicit, from the germ to the
+developed fulness of life and structure. In this matter, as in all
+others wherein the human spirit is concerned, that which is first by
+nature is last in genesis--[Greek: nika d' ho prôtos kai teleutaios
+dramôn.] The whole history of the moral and religious experience of
+mankind is comprised in the statement, that the implicit reason which we
+call "faith" is ever developing towards full consciousness of itself;
+and that, at its first beginning, and throughout the whole ascending
+process of this development, the highest is present in it as a
+self-manifesting power.
+
+But this process from the almost instinctive intuitions of the heart
+towards the morality and religion of freedom, being a process of
+evolution, necessarily involves conflict. There are men, it is true, the
+unity of whose moral and religious faith is never completely broken by
+doubt; just as there are men who are not forced by the contradictions in
+the first interpretation of the world by ordinary experience to attempt
+to re-interpret it by means of science and philosophy.
+
+Throughout their lives they may say like Pompilia--
+
+        "I know the right place by foot's feel,
+  I took it and tread firm there; wherefore change?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1886-1887.]
+
+Jean Paul Richter said that he knew another way of being happy, beside
+that of soaring away so far above the clouds of life, that its miseries
+looked small, and the whole external world shrunk into a little child's
+garden. It was, "Simply to sink down into this little garden; and there
+to nestle yourself so snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, that in
+looking out from your warm lark-nest, you likewise can discern no
+wolf-dens, charnel-houses, or thunder-rods, but only blades and ears,
+every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a tree, and a sun-screen, and
+rain-screen." There is a similar way of being good, with a goodness
+which, though limited, is pure and perfect in nature. Nay, we may even
+admit that such lives are frequently the most complete and beautiful,
+just as the fairest flowers grow, not on the tallest trees, but on the
+fragile plants at their foot. Nevertheless, even in the case of those
+persons who have never broken from the traditional faith of the past, or
+felt it to be inadequate, that faith has been silently reconstructed in
+a new synthesis of knowledge. Spiritual life cannot come by inheritance;
+but every individual must acquire a faith for himself, and turn his
+spiritual environment into personal experience. "A man may be a heretic
+in the truth," said Milton, "and if he believe things only because his
+pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other
+reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes
+his heresy." It is truth to another but tradition to him; it is a creed
+and not a conviction. Browning fully recognizes the need of this
+conflict--
+
+  "Is it not this ignoble confidence,
+  Cowardly hardihood, that dulls and damps,
+  Makes the old heroism impossible?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1848-1850.]
+
+asks the Pope. The stream of truth when it ceases to flow onward,
+becomes a malarious swamp. Movement is the law of life; and knowledge of
+the principles of morality and religion, as of all other principles,
+must, in order to grow, be felt from time to time as inadequate and
+untrue. There are men and ages whose mission is--
+
+                  "to shake
+  This torpor of assurance from our creed,
+  Re-introduce the doubt discarded, bring
+  That formidable danger back, we drove
+  Long ago to the distance and the dark."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid._, 1853-1856.]
+
+Such a spirit of criticism seems to many to exercise a merely
+destructive power, and those who have not felt the inadequacy of the
+inherited faith defend themselves against it, as the enemy of their
+lives. But no logic, or assailing doubt, could have power against the
+testimony of "the heart," unless it was rooted in deeper and truer
+principles than those which it attacked. Nothing can overpower truth
+except a larger truth; and, in such a conflict, the truth in the old
+view will ultimately take the side of the new, and find its subordinate
+position within it. It has happened, not infrequently, as in the case of
+the Encyclopædists, that the explicit truths of reason were more
+abstract, that is, less true, than the implicit "faith" which they
+assailed. The central truths of religion have often proved themselves to
+possess some stubborn, though semi-articulate power, which could
+ultimately overcome or subordinate the more partial and explicit truths
+of abstract science. It is this that gives plausibility to the idea,
+that the testimony of the heart is more reliable than that of the
+intellect. But, in this case also, it was really reason that triumphed.
+It was the truth which proved itself to be immortal, and not any mere
+emotion. The insurrection of the intellect against the heart is quelled,
+only when the untruth, or abstract character, of the principle of the
+assailants has been made manifest, and when the old faith has yielded up
+its unjust gains, and proved its vitality and strength by absorbing the
+truth that gave vigour to the attack. Just as in morality it is the
+ideal, or the unity of the whole moral life, that breaks up into
+differences, so also here it is the implicit faith which, as it grows,
+breaks forth into doubts. In both cases alike, the negative movement
+which induces despair, is only a phase of a positive process--the
+process of reason towards a fuller, a more articulate and complex,
+realization of itself.
+
+Hence it follows that the value and strength of a faith corresponds
+accurately to the doubts it has overcome. Those who never went forth to
+battle cannot come home heroes. It is only when the earthquake has tried
+the towers, and destroyed the sense of security, that
+
+  "Man stands out again, pale, resolute,
+  Prepared to die,--that is, alive at last.
+  As we broke up that old faith of the world,
+  Have we, next age, to break up this the new--
+  Faith, in the thing, grown faith in the report--
+  Whence need to bravely disbelieve report
+  Through increased faith i' the thing reports belie?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1862-1868.]
+
+"Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrive
+by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion."
+
+It was, thus, I conclude, a deep speculative error into which Browning
+fell, when, in order to substantiate his optimistic faith, he
+stigmatized human knowledge as merely apparent. Knowledge does not fail,
+except in the sense in which morality also fails; it does not at any
+time attain to the ultimate truth, any more than the moral life is in
+any of its activities[B] a complete embodiment of the absolute good. It
+is not given to man, who is essentially progressive, to reach the
+ultimate term of development. For there is no ultimate term: life never
+stands still. But, for the same reason, there is no ultimate failure.
+The whole history of man is a history of growth. If, however, knowledge
+did fail, then morality too must fail; and the appeal which the poet
+makes from the intellect to the heart, would be an appeal to mere
+emotion. Finally, even if we take a generous view of the poet's meaning,
+and put out of consideration the theory he expresses when he is
+deliberately philosophizing, there is still no appeal from the reason to
+an alien and higher authority. The appeal to "the heart" is, at best,
+only an appeal from the understanding to the reason, from a conscious
+logic to the more concrete fact constituted by reason, which reflection
+has failed to comprehend in its completeness; at its worst, it is an
+appeal from truth to prejudice, from belief to dogma.
+
+[Footnote B: See Chapter IX., p. 291.]
+
+And in both cases alike, the appeal is futile; for, whether "the heart
+be wiser than the head," or not, whether the faith which is assailed be
+richer or poorer, truer or more false, than the logic which is directed
+against it, an appeal to the heart cannot any longer restore the unity
+of the broken life. Once reflection has set in, there is no way of
+turning away its destructive might, except by deeper reflection. The
+implicit faith of the heart must become the explicit faith of reason.
+"There is no final and satisfactory issue from such an endless internal
+debate and conflict, until the 'heart' has learnt to speak the language
+of the head--_i.e._, until the permanent principles, which underlay and
+gave strength to faith, have been brought into the light of distinct
+consciousness."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Caird's _Comte_.]
+
+I conclude, therefore, that the poet was right in saying that, in order
+to comprehend human character,
+
+  "I needs must blend the quality of man
+  With quality of God, and so assist
+  Mere human sight to understand my Life."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_--_Ferishtah's Fancies_.]
+
+But it was a profound error, which contained in it the destruction of
+morality and religion, as well as of knowledge, to make "the quality of
+God" a love that excludes reason, and the quality of man an intellect
+incapable of knowing truth. Such in-congruous elements could never be
+combined into the unity of a character. A love that was mere emotion
+could not yield a motive for morality, or a principle of religion. A
+philosophy of life which is based on agnosticism is an explicit
+self-contradiction, which can help no one. We must appeal from Browning
+the philosopher to Browning the poet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+  "Well, I can fancy how he did it all,
+  Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,
+  Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,
+  Above and through his art--for it gives way;
+  That arm is wrongly put--and there again--
+  A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines,
+  Its body, so to speak: its soul is right,
+  He means right--that, a child may understand."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Andrea del Sarto_.]
+
+I have tried to show that Browning's theory of life, in so far as it is
+expressed in his philosophical poems, rests on agnosticism; and that
+such a theory is inconsistent with the moral and religious interests of
+man. The idea that truth is unattainable was represented by Browning as
+a bulwark of the faith, but it proved on examination to be treacherous.
+His optimism was found to have no better foundation than personal
+conviction, which any one was free to deny, and which the poet could in
+no wise prove. The evidence of the heart, to which he appealed, was the
+evidence of an emotion severed from intelligence, and, therefore,
+without any content whatsoever. "The faith," which he professed, was not
+the faith that anticipates and invites proof, but a faith which is
+incapable of proof. In casting doubt upon the validity of knowledge, he
+degraded the whole spiritual nature of man; for a love that is ignorant
+of its object is a blind impulse, and a moral consciousness that does
+not know the law is an impossible phantom--a self-contradiction.
+
+But, although Browning's explicitly philosophical theory of life fails,
+there appears in his earlier poems, where his poetical freedom was not
+yet trammelled, nor his moral enthusiasm restrained by the stubborn
+difficulties of reflective thought, a far truer and richer view. In this
+period of pure poetry, his conception of man was less abstract than in
+his later works, and his inspiration was more direct and full. The
+poet's dialectical ingenuity increased with the growth of his reflective
+tendencies; but his relation to the great principles of spiritual life
+seemed to become less intimate, and his expression of them more halting.
+What we find in his earlier works are vigorous ethical convictions, a
+glowing optimistic faith, achieving their fitting expression in
+impassioned poetry; what we find in his later works are arguments,
+which, however richly adorned with poetic metaphors, have lost the
+completeness and energy of life. His poetic fancies are like chaplets
+which crown the dead. Lovers of the poet, who seek in his poems for
+inspiring expressions of their hope and faith, will always do well in
+turning from his militant metaphysics to his art.
+
+In his case, as in that of many others, spiritual experience was far
+richer than the theory which professed to explain it. The task of
+lifting his moral convictions into the clear light of conscious
+philosophy was beyond his power. The theory of the failure of knowledge,
+which he seems to have adopted far too easily from the current doctrine
+of the schools, was fundamentally inconsistent with his generous belief
+in the moral progress of man; and it maimed the expression of that
+belief. The result of his work as a philosopher is a confession of
+complete ignorance and the helpless asseveration of a purely dogmatic
+faith.
+
+The fundamental error of the poet's philosophy lies, I believe, in that
+severance of feeling and intelligence, love and reason, which finds
+expression in _La Saisiaz_, _Ferishtah's Fancies_, _The Parleyings_, and
+_Asolando_. Such an absolute division is not to be found in
+_Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day_, _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, _A Death in the
+Desert_, or in _The Ring and the Book_; nor even in _Fifine at the
+Fair_. In these works we are not perplexed by the strange combination of
+a nature whose principle is love, and which is capable of infinite
+progress, with an intelligence whose best efforts end in ignorance.
+Rather, the spirit of man is regarded as one, in all its manifestations;
+and, therefore, as progressive on all sides of its activity. The
+widening of his knowledge, which is brought about by increasing
+experience, is parallel with the deepening and purifying of his moral
+life. In all Browning's works, indeed, with the possible exception of
+_Paracelsus_, love is conceived as having a place and function of
+supreme importance in the development of the soul. Its divine origin and
+destiny are never obscured; but knowledge is regarded as merely human,
+and, therefore, as falling short of the truth. In _Easter-Day_ it is
+definitely contrasted with love, and shown to be incapable of satisfying
+the deepest wants of man. It is, at the best, only a means to the higher
+purposes of moral activity, and, except in the _Grammarian's Funeral_,
+it is nowhere regarded as in itself a worthy end.
+
+  "'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.
+  And thence I conclude that the real God-function
+  Is to furnish a motive and injunction
+  For practising what we know already."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day_.]
+
+Even here, there is implied that the motive comes otherwise than by
+knowledge; still, taking these earlier poems as a whole, we may say that
+in them knowledge is regarded as means to morality and not as in any
+sense contrasted with or destructive of it. Man's motives are rational
+motives; the ends he seeks are ends conceived and even constituted by
+his intelligence, and not purposes blindly followed as by instinct and
+impulse.
+
+                        "Why live,
+  Except for love--how love, unless they know?"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1327-1328.]
+
+asks the Pope. Moral progress is not secured apart from, or in spite of
+knowledge. We are not exhorted to reject the verdict of the latter as
+illusive, in order to confide in a faith which not only fails to receive
+support from the defective intelligence, but maintains its own integrity
+only by repudiating the testimony of the reason. In the distinction
+between knowledge as means and love as end, it is easy, indeed, to
+detect a tendency to degrade the former into a mere temporary expedient,
+whereby moral ends may be served. The poet speaks of "such knowledge as
+is possible to man." The attitude he assumes towards it is apologetic,
+and betrays a keen consciousness of its limitation, and particularly of
+its utter inadequacy to represent the infinite. In the speech of the
+Pope---which can scarcely be regarded otherwise than as the poet's own
+maturest utterance on the great moral and religious questions raised by
+the tragedy of Pompilia's death--we find this view vividly expressed:--
+
+  "O Thou--as represented here to me
+  In such conception as my soul allows,--
+  Under Thy measureless, my atom width!--
+  Man's mind, what is it but a convex glass
+  Wherein are gathered all the scattered points
+  Picked out of the immensity of sky,
+  To reunite there, be our heaven for earth,
+  Our known unknown, our God revealed to man?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1308-1315.]
+
+God is "appreciable in His absolute immensity solely by Himself," while,
+"by the little mind of man, He is reduced to littleness that suits man's
+faculty." In these words, and others that might be quoted, the poet
+shows that he is profoundly impressed with the distinction between human
+knowledge, and that knowledge which is adequate to the whole nature and
+extent of being. And in _Christmas-Eve_ he repudiates with a touch of
+scorn, the absolute idealism, which is supposed to identify altogether
+human reason with divine reason; and he commends the German critic for
+not making
+
+           "The important stumble
+  Of adding, he, the sage and humble,
+  Was also one with the Creator."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+Nowhere in Browning, unless we except _Paracelsus_, is there any sign of
+an inclination to treat man's knowledge in the same spirit as he deals
+with man's love--namely, as a direct emanation from the inmost nature of
+God, a divine element that completes and crowns man's life on earth. On
+the contrary, he shows a persistent tendency to treat love as a power
+higher in nature than reason, and to give to it a supreme place in the
+formation of character; and, as he grows older, that tendency grows in
+strength. The philosophical poems, in which love is made all in all, and
+knowledge is reduced to nescience follow by logical evolution from
+principles, the influence of which we can detect even in his earlier
+works. Still, in the latter, these principles are only latent, and are
+far from holding undisputed sway. Browning was, at first, restrained
+from exclusive devotion to abstract views, by the suggestions which the
+artistic spirit receives through its immediate contact with the facts of
+life. That contact it is very difficult for philosophy to maintain as it
+pursues its effort after universal truth. Philosophy is obliged to
+analyze in order to define, and, in that process, it is apt to lose
+something of that completeness of representation, which belongs to art.
+For art is always engaged in presenting the universal in the form of a
+particular object of beauty. Its product is a "known unknown," but the
+unknown is the unexhausted reality of a fact of intuition. Nor can
+analysis ever exhaust it; theory can never catch up art, or explain all
+that is in it. On similar grounds, it may be shown that it is impossible
+for reason to lay bare all the elements that enter into its first
+complex product, which we call faith. In religion, as in art, man is
+aware of more than he knows; his articulate logic cannot do justice to
+all the truths of the "heart." "The supplementary reflux of light" of
+philosophy cannot "illustrate all the inferior grades" of knowledge. Man
+will never completely understand himself.
+
+  "I knew, I felt, (perception unexpressed,
+  Uncomprehended by our narrow thought,
+  But somehow felt and known in every shift
+  And change in the spirit,--nay, in every pore
+  Of the body, even,)--what God is, what we are,
+  What life is--how God tastes an infinite joy
+  In infinite ways--one everlasting bliss,
+  From whom all being emanates, all power
+  Proceeds."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
+
+I believe that it is possible, by the help of the intuitions of
+Browning's highest artistic period, to bring together again the elements
+of his broken faith, and to find in them suggestions of a truer
+philosophy of life than anything which the poet himself achieved.
+Perhaps, indeed, it is not easy, nor altogether fair, to press the
+passionate utterances of his religious rapture into the service of
+metaphysics, and to treat the unmeasured language of emotion as the
+expression of a definite doctrine. Nevertheless, rather than set forth a
+new defence of the faith, which his agnosticism left exposed to the
+assaults of doubt and denial, it is better to make Browning correct his
+own errors, and to appeal from the metaphysician to the poet, from the
+sobriety of the logical understanding to the inspiration of poetry.
+
+I have already indicated what seems to me to be the defective element in
+the poet's philosophy of life. His theory of knowledge is in need of
+revision; and what he asserts of human love, should be applied point by
+point to human reason. As man is ideally united with the absolute on the
+side of moral emotion (if the phrase may be pardoned), so he is ideally
+united with the absolute on the side of the intellect. As there is no
+difference of _nature_ between God's goodness and man's goodness, so
+there is no difference of nature between God's truth and man's truth.
+There are not two kinds of righteousness or mercy; there are not two
+kinds of truth. Human nature is not "cut in two with a hatchet," as the
+poet implies that it is. There is in man a lower and a higher element,
+ever at war with each other; still he is not a mixture, or agglomerate,
+of the finite and the infinite. A love perfect in nature cannot be
+linked to an intelligence imperfect in nature; if it were, the love
+would be either a blind impulse or an erring one. Both morality and
+religion demand the presence in man of a perfect ideal, which is at war
+with his imperfections; but an ideal is possible, only to a being
+endowed with a capacity for knowing the truth. In degrading human
+knowledge, the poet is disloyal to the fundamental principle of the
+Christian faith which he professed--that God can and does manifest
+himself in man.
+
+On the other hand, we are not to take the unity of man with God, of
+man's moral ideal with the All-perfect, as implying, on the moral side,
+an absolute identification of the finite with the infinite; nor can we
+do so on the side of knowledge. Man's moral life and rational activity
+in knowledge are the process of the highest. But man is neither first,
+nor last; he is not the original author of his love, any more than of
+his reason; he is not the divine principle of the whole to which he
+belongs, although he is potentially in harmony with it. Both sides of
+his being are equally touched with imperfection--his love, no less than
+his reason. Perfect love would imply perfect wisdom, as perfect wisdom,
+perfect love. But absolute terms are not applicable to man, who is ever
+_on the way_ to goodness and truth, progressively manifesting the power
+of the ideal that dwells in him, and whose very life is conflict and
+acquirement.
+
+  "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
+  Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey
+  Placid and perfect with my art: the worse."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Andrea del Sarto_.]
+
+Hardly any conception is more prominent in Browning's writings than
+this, of endless progress towards an infinite ideal; although he
+occasionally manifests a desire to have done with effort.
+
+            "When a soul has seen
+    By the means of Evil that Good is best,
+  And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene,--
+    When our faith in the same has stood the test--
+  Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod,
+    The uses of labour are surely done,
+  There remaineth a rest for the people of God,
+    And I have had troubles enough, for one."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Old Pictures in Florence_.]
+
+It is the sense of endless onward movement, the outlook towards an
+immortal course, "the life after life in unlimited series," which is so
+inspiring in his early poetry. He conceives that we are here, on this
+lower earth, just to learn one form, the elementary lesson and alphabet
+of goodness, namely, "the uses of the flesh": in other lives, other
+achievements. The separation of the soul from its instrument has very
+little significance to the poet; for it does not arrest the course of
+moral development.
+
+  "No work begun shall ever pause for death."
+
+The spirit pursues its lone way, on other "adventures brave and new,"
+but ever towards a good which is complete.
+
+  "Delayed it may be for more lives yet,
+    Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few:
+  Much is to learn, much to forget
+    Ere the time be come for taking you."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Evelyn Hope_.]
+
+Still the time will come when the awakened need shall be satisfied; for
+the need was created in order to be satisfied.
+
+  "Wherefore did I contrive for thee that ear
+  Hungry for music, and direct thine eye
+  To where I hold a seven-stringed instrument,
+  Unless I meant thee to beseech me play?"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Two Camels_.]
+
+The movement onward is thus a movement in knowledge, as well as in every
+other form of good. The lover of Evelyn Hope, looking back in
+imagination on the course he has travelled on earth and after,
+exclaims--
+
+  "I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,
+    Given up myself so many times,
+  Gained me the gains of various men,
+    Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Evelyn Hope_.]
+
+In these earlier poems, there is not, as in the later ones, a maimed, or
+one-sided, evolution--a progress towards perfect love on the side of the
+heart, and towards an illusive ideal on the side of the intellect.
+Knowledge, too, has its value, and he who lived to settle "_Hoti's_
+business, properly based _Oun_," and who "gave us the doctrine of the
+enclitic _De_," was, to the poet,
+
+  "Still loftier than the world suspects,
+    Living and dying.
+
+  "Here's the top-peak; the multitude below
+    Live, for they can, there:
+  This man decided not to Live but Know--
+    Bury this man there?
+  Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
+    Lightnings are loosened,
+  Stars come and go."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Grammarian's Funeral_.]
+
+No human effort goes to waste, no gift is delusive; but every gift and
+every effort has its proper place as a stage in the endless process. The
+soul bears in it _all_ its conquests.
+
+  "There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;
+    The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
+  What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, _so_ much good more;
+    On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Abt Vogler_.]
+
+The "apparent failure" of knowledge, like every apparent failure, is "a
+triumph's evidence for the fulness of the days." The doubts that
+knowledge brings, instead of implying a defective intelligence doomed to
+spend itself on phantom phenomena, sting to progress towards the truth.
+He bids us "Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe."
+
+  "Rather I prize the doubt
+  Low kinds exist without,
+  Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Rabbi Ben Ezra_.]
+
+Similarly, defects in art, like defects in character, contain the
+promise of further achievement.
+
+  "Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?
+    In both, of such lower types are we
+  Precisely because of our wider nature;
+    For time, their's--ours, for eternity.
+
+  "To-day's brief passion limits their range;
+    It seethes with the morrow for us and more.
+  They are perfect--how else? They shall never change:
+    We are faulty--why not? We have time in store."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Old Pictures in Florence_.]
+
+Prior to the period when a sceptical philosophy came down like a blight,
+and destroyed the bloom of his art and faith, he thus recognized that
+growing knowledge was an essential condition of growing goodness.
+Pompilia shone with a glory that mere knowledge could not give (if there
+were such a thing as _mere_ knowledge).
+
+                "Everywhere
+  I see in the world the intellect of man,
+  That sword, the energy his subtle spear,
+  The knowledge which defends him like a shield--
+  Everywhere; but they make not up, I think,
+  The marvel of a soul like thine, earth's flower
+  She holds up to the softened gaze of God."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1013-1019.]
+
+But yet she recognized with patient pain the loss she had sustained for
+want of knowledge.
+
+  "The saints must bear with me, impute the fault
+  To a soul i' the bud, so starved by ignorance,
+  Stinted of warmth, it will not blow this year
+  Nor recognize the orb which Spring-flowers know."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_Pompilia_, 1515-1518.]
+
+Further on in the Pope's soliloquy, the poet shows that, at that time,
+he fully recognized the risk of entrusting the spiritual interests of
+man to the enthusiasm of elevated feeling, or to the mere intuitions of
+a noble heart. Such intuitions will sometimes guide a man happily, as in
+the case of Caponsacchi:
+
+              "Since ourselves allow
+  He has danced, in gaiety of heart, i' the main
+  The right step through the maze we bade him foot."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1915-1917.]
+
+But, on the other hand, such impulses, not instructed by knowledge of
+the truth, and made steadfast to the laws of the higher life by a
+reasoned conviction, lead man rightly only by accident. In such a career
+there is no guarantee of constancy; other impulses might lead to other
+ways of life.
+
+  "But if his heart had prompted to break loose
+  And mar the measure? Why, we must submit,
+  And thank the chance that brought him safe so far.
+  Will he repeat the prodigy? Perhaps.
+  Can he teach others how to quit themselves,
+  Show why this step was right while that were wrong?
+  How should he? 'Ask your hearts as I asked mine,
+  And get discreetly through the morrice too;
+  If your hearts misdirect you,--quit the stage,
+  And make amends,--be there amends to make.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1916-1927.]
+
+If the heart proved to Caponsacchi a guide to all that is good and
+glorious, "the Abate, second in the suite," puts in the testimony of
+another experience: "His heart answered to another tune."
+
+  "I have my taste too, and tread no such step!
+  You choose the glorious life, and may for me!
+  I like the lowest of life's appetites,--
+  So you judge--but the very truth of joy
+  To my own apprehension which decides."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid._, 1932-1936.]
+
+Mere emotion is thus an insecure guide to conduct, for its authority can
+be equally cited in support of every course of life. No one can say to
+his neighbour, "Thou art wrong." Every impulse is right to the
+individual who has it, and so long as he has it. _De gustibus non
+disputandum_. Without a universal criterion there is no praise or blame.
+
+  "Call me knave and you get yourself called fool!
+  I live for greed, ambition, lust, revenge;
+  Attain these ends by force, guile: hypocrite,
+  To-day, perchance to-morrow recognized
+  The rational man, the type of common-sense."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid._, 1937-1941.]
+
+This poem which, both in its moral wisdom and artistic worth, marks the
+high tide of Browning's poetic insight, while he is not as yet concerned
+with the defence of any theory or the discussion of any abstract
+question, contrasts strongly with the later poems, where knowledge is
+dissembling ignorance, faith is blind trust, and love is a mere impulse
+of the heart. Having failed to meet the difficulties of reflection, the
+poet turned upon the intellect. Knowledge becomes to him an offence, and
+to save his faith he plucked out his right eye and entered into the
+kingdom maimed. In _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ the ascent into another life is
+triumphant, like that of a conqueror bearing with him the spoils of
+earth; but in the later poems he escapes with a bare belief, and the
+loss of all his rich possessions of knowledge, like a shipwrecked
+mariner whose goods have been thrown overboard. His philosophy was a
+treacherous ally to his faith.
+
+But there is another consideration which shows that the poet, as artist,
+recognized the need of giving to reason a larger function than seems to
+be possible according to the theory in his later works. In the early
+poems there is no hint of the doctrine that demonstrative knowledge of
+the good, and of the necessity of its law, would destroy freedom. On the
+contrary, there are suggestions which point to the opposite doctrine,
+according to which knowledge is the condition of freedom.
+
+While in his later poems the poet speaks of love as an impulse--either
+blind or bound to erring knowledge--and of the heart as made to love, in
+his earlier ones he seems to treat man as free to work out his own
+purposes, and act out his own ideals. Browning here finds himself able
+to maintain the dependence of man upon God without destroying morality.
+He regards man's impulses not as blind instincts, but as falling
+_within_ his rational nature, and constituting the forms of its
+activity. He recognizes the distinction between a mere impulse, in the
+sense of a tendency to act, which is directed by a foreign power, and an
+impulse informed, that is, directed by reason. According to this view,
+it is reason which at once gives man the independence of foreign
+authority, which is implied in morality, and constitutes that affinity
+between man and God, which is implied by religion. No doubt, the impulse
+to know, like the impulse to love, was put into man: his whole nature is
+a gift, and he is therefore, in this sense, completely dependent upon
+God--"God's all, man's nought." But, on the other hand, it _is_ a
+rational nature which has been put into him, and not an irrational
+impulse. Or, rather, the impulse that constitutes his life as man, is
+the self-evolving activity of reason.
+
+  "Who speaks of man, then, must not sever
+  Man's very elements from man."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+However the rational nature of man has come to be, whether by emanation
+or creation, it necessarily brings freedom with it, and all its risks
+and possibilities. It is of the very essence of reason that it should
+find its law within itself.
+
+         "God's all, man's nought:
+  But also, God, whose pleasure brought
+  Man into being, stands away
+  As it were a hand-breadth off, to give
+  Room for the newly-made to live,
+  And look at Him from a place apart,
+  And use his gifts of brain and heart,
+  Given, indeed, but to keep for ever."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+Thus, while insisting on the absolute priority of God, and the original
+receptivity of man; while recognizing that love, reason, and every inner
+power and outer opportunity are lent to man, Browning does not forget
+what these powers are. Man can only act as man; he must obey his nature,
+as the stock or stone or plant obeys its nature. But to act as man is to
+act freely, and man's nature is not that of a stock or stone. He is
+rational, and cannot but be rational. Hence he can neither be ruled, as
+dead matter is ruled, by natural law; nor live, like a bird, the life of
+innocent impulse or instinct. He is placed, from the very first, on "the
+table land whence life upsprings aspiring to be immortality." He is a
+spirit,--responsible because he is free, and free because he is
+rational.
+
+  "Man, therefore, stands on his own stock
+  Of love and power as a pin-point rock,
+  And, looks to God who ordained divorce
+  Of the rock from His boundless continent."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid._]
+
+The divorce is real, although ordained, but it is possible only in so
+far as man, by means of reason, constitutes his own ends of action.
+Impulse cannot bring it about. It is reason that enables man to free
+himself from the despotic authority of outer law, to relate himself to
+an inner law, and by reconciling inner and outer to attain to goodness.
+Thus reason is the source of all morality. And it also is the principle
+of religion, for it implies the highest and fullest manifestation of the
+absolute.
+
+Although the first aspect of self-consciousness is its independence,
+which is, in turn, the first condition of morality, still this is only
+the first aspect. The rational being plants himself on his own
+individuality, stands aloof and alone in the rights of his freedom, _in
+order that_ he may set out from thence to take possession, by means of
+knowledge and action, of the world in which he is placed. Reason is
+potentially absolute, capable of finding itself everywhere. So that in
+it man is "honour-clothed and glory-crowned."
+
+  "This is the honour,--that no thing I know,
+  Feel or conceive, but I can make my own
+  Somehow, by use of hand, or head, or heart."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
+
+Man, by his knowledge, overcomes the resistance and hostility of the
+world without him, or rather, discovers that there is not hostility, but
+affinity between it and himself.
+
+  "This is the glory,--that in all conceived,
+  Or felt or known, I recognize a mind
+  Not mine but like mine,--for the double joy,--
+  Making all things for me and me for Him."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_.]
+
+That which is finite is hemmed in by other things, as well as determined
+by them; but the infinite is all-inclusive. There exists for it no other
+thing to limit or determine it. There is nothing finally alien or
+foreign to reason. Freedom and infinitude, self-determination and
+absoluteness, imply each other. In so far as man is free, he is lifted
+above the finite. It was God's plan to make man on His own image:--
+
+        "To create man and then leave him
+  Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him,
+  But able to glorify Him too,
+  As a mere machine could never do,
+  That prayed or praised, all unaware
+  Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer,
+  Made perfect as a thing of course."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+Man must find his law within himself, be the source of his own activity,
+not passive or receptive, but outgoing and effective.
+
+  "Rejoice we are allied
+  To That which doth provide
+  And not partake, effect and not receive!
+  A spark disturbs our clod;
+  Nearer we hold of God
+  Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Rabbi Ben Ezra_.]
+
+This near affinity between the divine and human is just what Browning
+seems to repudiate in his later poems, when he speaks as if the
+absolute, in order to maintain its own supremacy over man, had to stint
+its gifts and endow him only with a defective reason. In the earlier
+period of the poet there is far less timidity. He then saw that the
+greater the gift, the greater the Giver; that only spirit can reveal
+spirit; that "God is glorified in man," and that love is at its fullest
+only when it gives itself.
+
+In insisting on such identity of the human spirit with the divine, our
+poet does not at any time run the risk of forgetting that the identity
+is not absolute. Absolute identity would be pantheism, which leaves God
+lonely and loveless, and extinguishes man, as well as his morality.
+
+  "Man is not God, but hath God's end to serve,
+  A Master to obey, a course to take,
+  Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+Man, at best, only moves _towards_ his ideal: God is conceived as the
+ever-existing ideal. God, in short, is the term which signifies for us
+the Being who is eternally all in all, and who, therefore, is hidden
+from us who are only moving _towards_ perfection, in the excess of the
+brightness of His own glory. Nevertheless, as Browning recognizes, the
+grandeur of God's perfection is just His outflowing love. And that love
+is never complete in its manifestation, till it has given itself. Man's
+life, as spirit, is thus one in nature with that of the absolute. But
+the unity is not complete, because man is only potentially perfect. He
+is the process _of_ the ideal; his life is the divine activity within
+him. Still, it is also man's activity. For the process, being the
+process of spirit, is a _free_ process--one in which man himself
+energizes; so that, in doing God's will, he is doing his own highest
+will, and, in obeying the law of his own deepest nature, he is obeying
+God. The unity of divine and human within the spiritual life of man is a
+real unity, just because man is free; the identity manifests itself
+through the difference, and the difference is possible through the
+unity.
+
+Thus, in the light of an ideal which is moral, and therefore perfect--an
+ideal gradually realizing itself in a process which is endless--the poet
+is able to maintain at once the community between man and God, which is
+necessary to religion, and their independence, which is necessary to
+morality. The conception of God as giving, which is the main doctrine of
+Christianity, and of man as akin with God, is applied by him to the
+whole spiritual nature of man, and not merely to his emotion. The
+process of evolution is thus a process towards truth, as well as
+goodness; in fact, goodness and truth are known as inseparable.
+Knowledge, too, is a Divine endowment. "What gift of man is not from God
+descended?" What gift of God can be deceptive?
+
+  "Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast
+  Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed:
+  Though He is so bright and we so dim,
+  We are made in His image to witness Him."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+The Pope recognizes clearly the inadequacy of human knowledge; but he
+also recognizes that it has a Divine source.
+
+  "Yet my poor spark had for its source, the sun;
+  Thither I sent the great looks which compel
+  Light from its fount: all that I do and am
+  Comes from the truth, or seen or else surmised,
+  Remembered or divined, as mere man may."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1285-1289.]
+
+The last words indicate a suspicion of a certain defect in knowledge,
+which is not recognized in human love; nevertheless, in these earlier
+poems, the poet does not analyze human nature into a finite and
+infinite, or seek to dispose of his difficulties by the deceptive
+solvent of a dualistic agnosticism. He treats spirit as a unity, and
+refuses to set love and reason against each other. Man's _life_, for the
+poet, and not merely man's love, begins with God, and returns back to
+God in the rapt recognition of God's perfect being by reason, and in the
+identification of man's purposes with His by means of will and love.
+
+  "What is left for us, save, in growth
+  Of soul, to rise up, far past both,
+  From the gift looking to the giver,
+  And from the cistern to the river,
+  And from the finite to infinity
+  And from man's dust to God's divinity?"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+It is this movement of the absolute in man, this aspiration towards the
+full knowledge and perfect goodness which can never be completely
+attained, that constitutes man.
+
+  "Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect
+  He could not, what he knows now, know at first:
+  What he considers that he knows to-day,
+  Come but to-morrow, he will find mis-known;
+  Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns
+  Because he lives, which is to be a man,
+  Set to instruct himself by his past self:
+  First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn,
+  Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind,
+  Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.
+  God's gift was that man shall conceive of truth
+  And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake,
+  As midway help till he reach fact indeed?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+"Progress," the poet says, is "man's distinctive mark alone." The
+endlessness of the progress, the fact that every truth known to-day
+seems misknown to-morrow, that every ideal once achieved only points to
+another and becomes itself a stepping stone, does not, as in his later
+days, bring despair to him. For the consciousness of failure is possible
+in knowledge, as in morality, only because there has come a fuller
+light. Browning does not, as yet, dwell exclusively on the negative
+element in progress, or forget that it is possible only through a deeper
+positive. He does not think that, because we turn our backs on what we
+have gained, we are therefore not going forward; nay, he asserts the
+contrary. Failure, even the failure of knowledge, is triumph's evidence
+in these earlier days; and complete failure, the unchecked rule of evil
+in any form, is therefore impossible. We deny
+
+  "Recognized truths, obedient to some truth
+  Unrecognized yet, but perceptible,--
+  Correct the portrait by the living face,
+  Man's God, by God's God in the mind of man."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1871-1874.]
+
+Thus the poet ever returns to the conception of God in the mind of man.
+God is the beginning and the end; and man is the self-conscious worker
+of God's will, the free process whereby the last which is first, returns
+to itself. The process, the growth, is man's life and being; and it
+falls within the ideal, which is eternal and all in all. The spiritual
+life of man, which is both intellectual and moral, is a dying into the
+eternal, not to cease to be in it, but to live in it more fully; for
+spirits necessarily commune. He dies to the temporal interests and
+narrow ends of the exclusive self, and lives an ever-expanding life in
+the life of others, manifesting more and more that spiritual principle
+which is the life of God, who lives and loves in all things. "God is a
+being in whom we exist; with whom we are in principle one; with whom the
+human spirit is identical, in the sense that He _is_ all which the human
+spirit is capable of becoming."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: Green's _Prolegomena to Ethics_, p. 198.]
+
+From this point of view, and in so far as Browning is loyal to the
+conception of the community of the divine and human, he is able to
+maintain his faith in God, not in spite of knowledge, but through the
+very movement of knowledge within him. He is not obliged, as in his
+later works, to look for proofs, either in nature, or elsewhere; nor to
+argue from the emotion of love in man, to a cause of that emotion. He
+needs no syllogistic process to arrive at God; for the very activity of
+his own spirit as intelligence, as the reason which thinks and acts, is
+the activity of God within him. Scepticism, is impossible, for the very
+act of doubting is the activity of reason, and a profession of the
+knowledge of the truth.
+
+                                "I
+  Put no such dreadful question to myself,
+  Within whose circle of experience burns
+  The central truth, Power, Wisdom, Goodness,--God:
+  I must outlive a thing ere know it dead:
+  When I outlive the faith there is a sun,
+  When I lie, ashes to the very soul,--
+  Someone, not I, must wail above the heap,
+  'He died in dark whence never morn arose.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1631-1639.]
+
+And this view of God as immanent in man's experience also forecloses all
+possibility of failure. Beneath the failure, the possibility of which is
+involved in a moral life, lies the divine element, working through
+contradiction to its own fulfilment. Failure is necessary for man,
+because he grows: but, for the same reason, the failure is not final.
+Thus, the poet, instead of denying the evidence of his intellect as to
+the existence of evil, or casting doubt on the distinction between right
+and wrong, or reducing the chequered course of human history into a
+phantasmagoria of mere mental appearances, can regard the conflict
+between good and evil as real and earnest. He can look evil in the face,
+recognize its stubborn resistance to the good, and still regard the
+victory of the latter as sure and complete. He has not to reduce it into
+a phantom, or mere appearance, in order to give it a place within the
+divine order. He sees the night, but he also sees the day succeed it.
+Man falls into sin, but he cannot rest in it. It is contradictory to his
+nature, he cannot content himself with it, and he is driven through it.
+Mephistopheles promised more than he could perform, when he undertook to
+make Faust declare himself satisfied. There is not within the kingdom of
+evil what will satisfy the spirit of man, whose last law is goodness,
+whose nature, however obscured, is God's gift of Himself.
+
+  "While I see day succeed the deepest night--
+  How can I speak but as I know?--my speech
+  Must be, throughout the darkness. It will end:
+  'The light that did burn, will burn!' Clouds obscure--
+  But for which obscuration all were bright?
+  Too hastily concluded! Sun--suffused,
+  A cloud may soothe the eye made blind by blaze,--
+  Better the very clarity of heaven:
+  The soft streaks are the beautiful and dear.
+  What but the weakness in a faith supplies
+  The incentive to humanity, no strength
+  Absolute, irresistible, comports?
+  How can man love but what he yearns to help?
+  And that which men think weakness within strength,
+  But angels know for strength and stronger yet--
+  What were it else but the first things made new,
+  But repetition of the miracle,
+  The divine instance of self-sacrifice
+  That never ends and aye begins for man?
+  So, never I miss footing in the maze,
+  No,--I have light nor fear the dark at all."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1640-1660.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13561 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13561 ***</div>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Browning as a Philosophical and Religious
+Teacher, by Henry Jones</h1>
+<center><hr class="pg" /></center>
+<br />
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgii" id="pgii">ii</a></span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter">
+    <img src="images/image001.png" alt="Robert Browning" title="Robert Browning" width="300" />
+  </div>
+
+  <h2>ROBERT BROWNING</h2>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgiii" id="pgiii">iii</a></span>
+
+  <h1>BROWNING</h1>
+
+  <h2>AS A PHILOSOPHICAL</h2>
+
+  <h2>AND RELIGIOUS</h2>
+
+  <h2>TEACHER</h2>
+
+  <h4>BY</h4>
+
+  <h2>HENRY JONES</h2>
+
+  <h5>PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY</h5>
+
+  <h5>OF GLASGOW</h5>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pgiv" id=
+  "pgiv">iv</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgv" id="pgv">v</a></span>
+
+  <h5>THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO</h5>
+
+  <h5>MY DEAR FRIENDS</h5>
+
+  <h3>MISS HARRIET MACARTHUR</h3>
+
+  <h5>AND</h5>
+
+  <h3>MISS JANE MACARTHUR.</h3><span class="pagenum"><a name="pgvi" id=
+  "pgvi">vi</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgvii" id="pgvii">vii</a></span>
+
+  <h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <p>The purpose of this book is to deal with Browning, not simply as a
+  poet, but rather as the exponent of a system of ideas on moral and
+  religious subjects, which may fairly be called a philosophy. I am
+  conscious that it is a wrong to a poet to neglect, or even to
+  subordinate, the artistic aspect of his work. At least, it would be a
+  wrong, if our final judgment on his poetry were to be determined on
+  such a method. But there is a place for everything; and, even in the
+  case of a great poet, there is sometimes an advantage in attempting
+  to estimate the value of what he has said, apart from the form in
+  which he has said it. And of all modern poets, Browning is the one
+  who most obviously invites and justifies such a method of treatment.
+  For, in the first place, he is clearly one of that class of poets who
+  are also prophets. He was never merely "the idle singer of an empty
+  day," but one for whom poetic enthusiasm was intimately bound up
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgviii" id="pgviii">viii</a></span>
+  with religious faith, and who spoke "in numbers," not merely "because
+  the numbers came," but because they were for him the necessary
+  vehicle of an inspiring thought. If it is the business of philosophy
+  to analyze and interpret all the great intellectual forces that mould
+  the thought of an age, it cannot neglect the works of one who has
+  exercised, and is exercising so powerful an influence on the moral
+  and religious life of the present generation.</p>
+
+  <p>In the second place, as will be seen in the sequel, Browning has
+  himself led the way towards such a philosophical interpretation of
+  his work. For, even in his earlier poems, he not seldom crossed the
+  line that divides the poet from the philosopher, and all but broke
+  through the strict limits of art in the effort to express&mdash;and
+  we might even say to preach&mdash;his own idealistic faith. In his
+  later works he did this almost without any disguise, raising
+  philosophical problems, and discussing all the <i>pros</i> and
+  <i>cons</i> of their solution, with no little subtlety and
+  dialectical skill. In some of these poems we might even seem to be
+  receiving a philosophical lesson, in place of a poetic inspiration,
+  if it were not for those powerful imaginative utterances, those
+  winged words, which Browning has always in reserve, to close the
+  ranks of his argument. If the question is stated in a prosaic form,
+  the final answer, as in <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgix" id=
+  "pgix">ix</a></span> the ancient oracle, is in the poetic language of
+  the gods.</p>
+
+  <p>From this point of view I have endeavoured to give a connected
+  account of Browning's ideas, especially of his ideas on religion and
+  morality, and to estimate their value. In order to do so, it was
+  necessary to discuss the philosophical validity of the principles on
+  which his doctrine is more or less consciously based. The more
+  immediately philosophical chapters are the second, seventh, and
+  ninth; but they will not be found unintelligible by those who have
+  reflected on the difficulties of the moral and religious life, even
+  although they may be unacquainted with the methods and language of
+  the schools.</p>
+
+  <p>I have received much valuable help in preparing this work for the
+  press from my colleague, Professor G.B. Mathews, and still more from
+  Professor Edward Caird. I owe them both a deep debt of gratitude.</p>
+
+  <p>HENRY JONES.</p>
+
+  <p>1891.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pgx" id="pgx">x</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgxi" id="pgxi">xi</a></span>
+
+  <h2><i>CONTENTS</i>.</h2>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <div class="toc">
+  <h3><a href="#ch01">CHAPTER I.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>INTRODUCTION</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch02">CHAPTER II.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>ON THE NEED OF A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch03">CHAPTER III.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>BROWNING'S PLACE IN ENGLISH POETRY</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch04">CHAPTER IV.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>BROWNING'S OPTIMISM</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch05">CHAPTER V.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>OPTIMISM AND ETHICS: THEIR CONTRADICTION</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch06">CHAPTER VI.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>BROWNING'S TREATMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE OF LOVE</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pgxii" id="pgxii">xii</a></span>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch07">CHAPTER VII.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>BROWNING'S IDEALISM, AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch08">CHAPTER VIII.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>BROWNING'S SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch09">CHAPTER IX.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>A CRITICISM OF BROWNING'S VIEW OF THE FAILURE OF KNOWLEDGE</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch10">CHAPTER X.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>THE HEART AND THE HEAD.&mdash;LOVE AND REASON</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch11">CHAPTER XI.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>CONCLUSION</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg013" id="pg013">013</a></span>
+
+  <h1>ROBERT BROWNING.</h1>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch01" id="ch01">CHAPTER I.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>INTRODUCTION.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,</p>
+
+    <p>Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum." (<i>Faust</i>.)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There is a saying of Hegel's, frequently quoted, that "a great man
+  condemns the world to the task of explaining him." The condemnation
+  is a double one, and it generally falls heaviest on the great man
+  himself, who has to submit to explanation; and, probably, the last
+  refinement of this species of cruelty is to expound a poet. I
+  therefore begin with an apology in both senses of the term. I
+  acknowledge that no commentator on art has a right to be heard, if he
+  is not aware of the subordinate and temporary nature of his office.
+  At the very best he is only a guide to the beautiful object, and he
+  must fall back in silence so soon as he has led his company into its
+  presence. He may perhaps suggest "the line of vision," or fix the
+  point of view, from which we can best hope to do justice to the
+  artist's work, by appropriating his intention and comprehending his
+  idea; but if <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg014" id=
+  "pg014">014</a></span> he seeks to serve the ends of art, he will not
+  attempt to do anything more.</p>
+
+  <p>In order to do even this successfully, it is essential that every
+  judgment passed should be exclusively ruled by the principles which
+  govern art. "Fine art is not real art till it is free"; that is, till
+  its value is recognized as lying wholly within itself. And it is not,
+  unfortunately, altogether unnecessary to insist that, so far from
+  enhancing the value of an artist's work, we only degrade it into mere
+  means, subordinate it to uses alien, and therefore antagonistic to
+  its perfection, if we try to show that it gives pleasure, or
+  refinement, or moral culture. There is no doubt that great poetry has
+  all these uses, but the reader can enjoy them only on condition of
+  forgetting them; for they are effects that follow the sense of its
+  beauty. Art, morality, religion, is each supreme in its own sphere;
+  the beautiful is not more beautiful because it is also moral, nor is
+  a painting great because its subject is religious. It is true that
+  their spheres overlap, and art is never at its best except when it is
+  a beautiful representation of the good; nevertheless the points of
+  view of the artist and of the ethical teacher are quite different,
+  and consequently also the elements within which they work and the
+  truth they reveal.</p>
+
+  <p>In attempting, therefore, to discover Robert Browning's philosophy
+  of life, I do not pretend that my treatment of him is adequate.
+  Browning is, first of all, a poet; it is only as a poet that he can
+  be finally judged; and the greatness of a poet is to <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg015" id="pg015">015</a></span> be measured by
+  the extent to which his writings are a revelation of what is
+  beautiful.</p>
+
+  <p>I undertake a different and a humbler task, conscious of its
+  limitations, and aware that I can hardly avoid doing some violence to
+  the artist. What I shall seek in the poet's writings is not beauty,
+  but truth; and although truth is beautiful, and beauty is truth,
+  still the poetic and philosophic interpretation of life are not to be
+  confused. Philosophy must separate the matter from the form. Its
+  synthesis comes through analysis, and analysis is destructive of
+  beauty, as it is of all life. Art, therefore, resists the violence of
+  the critical methods of philosophy, and the feud between them, of
+  which Plato speaks, will last through all time. The beauty of form
+  and the music of speech which criticism destroys, and to which
+  philosophy is, at the best, indifferent, are essential to poetry.
+  When we leave them out of account we miss the ultimate secret of
+  poetry, for they cling to the meaning and penetrate it with their
+  charm. Thought and its expression are inseparable in poetry, as they
+  never are in philosophy; hence, in the former, the loss of the
+  expression is the loss of truth. The pure idea that dwells in a poem
+  is suffused in the poetic utterance, as sunshine breaks into beauty
+  in the mist, as life beats and blushes in the flesh, or as an
+  impassioned thought breathes in a thinker's face.</p>
+
+  <p>But, although art and philosophy are supreme, each in its own
+  realm, and neither can be subordinated to the uses of the other, they
+  may help each <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg016" id=
+  "pg016">016</a></span> other. They are independent, but not rival
+  powers of the world of mind. Not only is the interchange of truth
+  possible between them; but each may show and give to the other all
+  its treasures, and be none the poorer itself. "It is in works of art
+  that some nations have deposited the profoundest intuitions and ideas
+  of their hearts." Job and Isaiah, Æschylus and Sophocles, Shakespeare
+  and Goethe, were first of all poets. Mankind is indebted to them in
+  the first place for revealing beauty; but it also owes to them much
+  insight into the facts and principles of the moral world. It would be
+  an unutterable loss to the ethical thinker and the philosopher, if
+  this region were closed against them, so that they could no longer
+  seek in the poets the inspiration and light that lead to goodness and
+  truth. In our own day, almost above all others, we need the poets for
+  these ethical and religious purposes. For the utterances of the
+  dogmatic teacher of religion have been divested of much of their
+  ancient authority; and the moral philosopher is often regarded either
+  as a vendor of commonplaces or as the votary of a discredited
+  science, whose primary principles are matter of doubt and debate.
+  There are not a few educated Englishmen who find in the poets, and in
+  the poets alone, the expression of their deepest convictions
+  concerning the profoundest interests of life. They read the poets for
+  fresh inspiration, partly, no doubt, because the passion and rapture
+  of poetry lull criticism and soothe the questioning spirit into
+  acquiescence.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg017" id=
+  "pg017">017</a></span>
+
+  <p>But there are further reasons; for the poets of England are
+  greater than its moral philosophers; and it is of the nature of the
+  poetic art that, while eschewing system, it presents the strife
+  between right and wrong in concrete character, and therefore with a
+  fulness and truth impossible to the abstract thought of science.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"A poet never dreams:</p>
+
+    <p>We prose folk do: we miss the proper duct</p>
+
+    <p>For thoughts on things unseen."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, lxxxviii.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is true that philosophy endeavours to correct this
+  fragmentariness by starting from the unity of the whole. But it can
+  never quite get rid of an element of abstraction and reach down to
+  the concrete individual.</p>
+
+  <p>The making of character is so complex a process that the poetic
+  representation of it, with its subtle suggestiveness, is always more
+  complete and realistic than any possible philosophic analysis.
+  Science can deal only with aspects and abstractions, and its method
+  becomes more and more inadequate as its matter grows more concrete,
+  unless it proceeds from the unity in which all the aspects are held
+  together. In the case of life, and still more so in that of human
+  conduct, the whole must precede the part, and the moral science must,
+  therefore, more than any other, partake of the nature of poetry; for
+  it must start from living spirit, go from the heart outwards, in
+  order to detect the meaning of the actions of man.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg018" id="pg018">018</a></span>
+
+  <p>On this account, poetry is peculiarly helpful to the ethical
+  investigator, because it always treats the particular thing as a
+  microcosm. It is the great corrective of the onesidedness of science
+  with its harsh method of analysis and distinction. It is a witness to
+  the unity of man and the world. Every object which art touches into
+  beauty, becomes in the very act a whole. The thing that is beautiful
+  is always complete, the embodiment of something absolutely valuable,
+  the product and the source of love; and the beloved object is all the
+  world for the lover&mdash;beyond all praise, because it is above all
+  comparison.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Then why not witness, calmly gazing,</p>
+
+    <p>If earth holds aught&mdash;speak truth&mdash;above her?</p>
+
+    <p>Above this tress, and this, I touch</p>
+
+    <p>But cannot praise, I love so much!" <sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Song</i> (Dramatic Lyrics).</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This characteristic of the work of art brings with it an important
+  practical consequence, because being complete, it appeals to the
+  whole man.</p>
+
+  <p>"Poetry," it has been well said, is "the idealized and monumental
+  utterance of the deepest feelings." And poetic feelings, it must not
+  be forgotten, <i>are</i> deepest; that is, they are the afterglow of
+  the fullest activity of a complete soul, and not shallow
+  titillations, or surface pleasures, such as the palate knows. Led by
+  poetry, the intellect so sees truth that it glows with it, and the
+  will is stirred to deeds of heroism. For there is hardly any fact so
+  mean, but that when intensified by emotion, it grows poetic; as
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg019" id="pg019">019</a></span> there
+  is hardly any man so unimaginative, but that when struck with a great
+  sorrow, or moved by a great passion, he is endowed for a moment with
+  the poet's speech. A poetic fact, one may almost say, is just any
+  fact at its best. Art, it is true, looks at its object through a
+  medium, but it always seems its inmost meaning. In Lear, Othello,
+  Hamlet, in Falstaff and Touchstone, there is a revelation of the
+  inner truth of human life beyond the power of moral science to
+  bestow. We do well to seek philosophy in the poets, for though they
+  teach only by hints and parables, they nevertheless reflect the
+  concrete truth of life, as it is half revealed and half concealed in
+  facts. On the other hand, the reflective process of philosophy may
+  help poetry; for, as we shall show, there is a near kinship between
+  them. Even the critical analyst, while severing element from element,
+  may help art and serve the poet's ends, provided he does not in his
+  analysis of parts forget the whole. His function, though humble and
+  merely preliminary to full poetic enjoyment, is not unimportant. To
+  appreciate the grandeur of the unity of the work of art, there must
+  be knowledge of the parts combined. It is quite true that the guide
+  in the gallery is prone to be too talkative, and there are many who
+  can afford to turn the commentator out of doors, especially if he
+  moralizes. But, after all, man is not pure sensibility, any more than
+  he is pure reason. And the aesthete will not lose if he occasionally
+  allows those whom he may think less sensitive than himself to the
+  charm of rhythmic phrase, to direct sober <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg020" id="pg020">020</a></span> attention to the
+  principles which lie embedded in all great poetry. At the worst, to
+  seek for truth in poetry is a protest against the constant tendency
+  to read it for the sake of the emotions which it stirs, the tendency
+  to make it a refined amusement and nothing more. That is a deeper
+  wrong to art than any which the theoretical moralist can inflict. Of
+  the two, it is better to read poetry for ethical doctrines than for
+  fine sensations; for poetry purifies the passions only when it lifts
+  the reader into the sphere of truths that are universal.</p>
+
+  <p>The task of interpreting a poet may be undertaken in different
+  ways. One of these, with which we have been made familiar by critics
+  of Shakespeare and of Browning himself, is to analyze each poem by
+  itself and regard it as the artistic embodiment of some central idea;
+  the other is to attempt, without dealing separately with each poem,
+  to reach the poet's own point of view, and to reveal the sovereign
+  truths which rule his mind. It is this latter way that I shall try to
+  follow.</p>
+
+  <p>Such dominant or even despotic thoughts it is possible to discover
+  in all our great poets, except perhaps Shakespeare, whose
+  universality baffles every classifier. As a rule, the English poets
+  have been caught up, and inspired, by the exceeding grandeur of some
+  single idea, in whose service they spend themselves with that
+  prodigal thrift which finds life in giving it. Such an idea gives
+  them a fresh way of looking at the world, so that the world grows
+  young again with their new interpretation. <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg021" id="pg021">021</a></span> In the highest
+  instances, poets may become makers of epochs; they reform as well as
+  reveal; for ideas are never dead things, "but grow in the hand that
+  grasps them." In them lies the energy of a nation's life, and we
+  comprehend that life only when we make clear to ourselves the
+  thoughts which inspire it. It is thus true, in the deepest sense,
+  that those who make the songs of a people make its history. In all
+  true poets there are hints for a larger philosophy of life. But, in
+  order to discover it, we must know the truths which dominate them,
+  and break into music in their poems.</p>
+
+  <p>Whether it is always possible, and whether it is at any time fair
+  to a poet to define the idea which inspires him, I shall not inquire
+  at present. No doubt, the interpretation of a poet from first
+  principles carries us beyond the limits of art; and by insisting on
+  the unity of his work, more may be attributed to him, or demanded
+  from him, than he properly owns. To make such a demand is to require
+  that poetry should be philosophy as well, which, owing to its method
+  of intuition, it can never be. Nevertheless, among English poets
+  there is no one who lends himself so easily, or so justly, to this
+  way of treatment as Browning. Much of his poetry trembles on the
+  verge of the abyss which is supposed to separate art from philosophy;
+  and, as I shall try to show, there was in the poet a growing tendency
+  to turn the power of dialectic on the pre-suppositions of his art.
+  Yet, even Browning puts great difficulties in the way of a critic,
+  who seeks to draw a philosophy <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg022"
+  id="pg022">022</a></span> of life from his poems. It is not by any
+  means an easy task to lift the truths he utters under the stress of
+  poetic emotion into the region of placid contemplation, or to connect
+  them into a system, by means of the principle from which he makes his
+  departure.</p>
+
+  <p>The first of these difficulties arises from the extent and variety
+  of his work. He was prodigal of poetic ideas, and wrote for fifty
+  years on nature, art, and man, like a magnificent spendthrift of
+  spiritual treasures. So great a store of knowledge lay at his hand,
+  so real and informed with sympathy, that we can scarcely find any
+  great literature which he has not ransacked, any phase of life which
+  is not represented in his poems. All kinds of men and women, in every
+  station in life, and at every stage of evil and goodness, crowd his
+  pages. There are few forms of human character he has not studied, and
+  each individual he has so caught at the supreme moment of his life,
+  and in the hardest stress of circumstance, that the inmost working of
+  his nature is revealed. The wealth is bewildering, and it is hard to
+  follow the central thought, "the imperial chord, which steadily
+  underlies the accidental mists of music springing thence."<sup>A</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>A second and still graver difficulty lies in the fact that his
+  poetry, as he repeatedly insisted, is "always dramatic in principle,
+  and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine."<sup>B</sup> In
+  his earlier works, especially, Browning is creative rather than
+  reflective, a Maker rather than a Seer; and his <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg023" id="pg023">023</a></span> creations stand
+  aloof from him, working out their fate in an outer world. We often
+  lose the poet in the imaginative characters, into whom he penetrates
+  with his keen artistic intuition, and within whom he lies as a
+  necessity revealing itself in their actions and words. It is not easy
+  anywhere to separate the elements, so that we can say with certainty,
+  "Here I catch the poet, there lies his material." The identification
+  of the work and worker is too intimate, and the realization of the
+  imaginary personage is too complete.</p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: Pref. to <i>Pauline</i>, 1888.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In regard to the dramatic interpretation of his poetry, Browning
+  has manifested a peculiar sensitiveness. In his Preface to
+  <i>Pauline</i> and in several of his poems&mdash;notably <i>The
+  Mermaid</i>, the <i>House</i>, and the <i>Shop</i>&mdash;he
+  explicitly cuts himself free from his work. He knew that direct
+  self-revealment on the part of the poet violates the spirit of the
+  drama. "With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart," said
+  Wordsworth; "Did Shakespeare?" characteristically answers Browning,
+  "If so, the less Shakespeare he!" And of himself he asks:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Which of you did I enable</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Once to slip inside my breast,</p>
+
+    <p>There to catalogue and label</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">What I like least, what love best,</p>
+
+    <p>Hope and fear, believe and doubt of,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Seek and shun, respect&mdash;deride?</p>
+
+    <p>Who has right to make a rout of</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Rarities he found inside?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>At the Mermaid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He repudiates all kinship with Byron and his subjective
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg024" id="pg024">024</a></span> ways,
+  and refuses to be made king by the hands which anointed him. "He will
+  not give his woes an airing, and has no plague that claims respect."
+  Both as man and poet, in virtue of the native, sunny, outer-air
+  healthiness of his character, every kind of subjectivity is repulsive
+  to him. He hands to his readers "his work, his scroll, theirs to take
+  or leave: his soul he proffers not." For him "shop was shop only";
+  and though he dealt in gems, and throws</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"You choice of jewels, every one,</p>
+
+    <p>Good, better, best, star, moon, and sun,"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Shop</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>he still <i>lived</i> elsewhere, and had "stray thoughts and
+  fancies fugitive" not meant for the open market. The poems in which
+  Browning has spoken without the disguise of another character are
+  very few. There are hardly more than two or three of much importance
+  which can be considered as directly reflecting his own ideas, namely,
+  <i>Christmas Eve</i> and <i>Easter Day, La Saisiaz</i>, and <i>One
+  Word More</i>&mdash;unless, spite of the poet's warning, we add
+  <i>Pauline</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>But, although the dramatic element in Browning's poetry renders it
+  difficult to construct his character from his works, while this is
+  comparatively easy in the case of Wordsworth or Byron; and although
+  it throws a shade of uncertainty on every conclusion we might draw as
+  to any specific doctrine held by him, still Browning lives in a
+  certain atmosphere, and looks at his characters through a medium,
+  whose subtle influence makes all his work indisputably <i>his</i>.
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg025" id="pg025">025</a></span> The
+  light he throws on his men and women is not the unobtrusive light of
+  day, which reveals objects, but not itself. Though a true dramatist,
+  he is not objective like Shakespeare and Scott, whose characters seem
+  never to have had an author. The reader feels, rather, that Browning
+  himself attends him through all the sights and wonders of the world
+  of man; he never escapes the sense of the presence of the poet's
+  powerful personality, or of the great convictions on which he has
+  based his life. Browning has, at bottom, only one way of looking at
+  the world, and one way of treating his objects; one point of view,
+  and one artistic method. Nay, further, he has one supreme interest,
+  which he pursues everywhere with a constancy shown by hardly any
+  other poet; and, in consequence, his works have a unity and a certain
+  originality, which make them in many ways a unique contribution to
+  English literature.</p>
+
+  <p>This characteristic, which no critic has missed, and which
+  generally goes by the name of "the metaphysical element" in his
+  poetry, makes it the more imperative to form a clear view of his
+  ruling conceptions. No poet, least of all a dramatic poet, goes about
+  seeking concrete vehicles for ready-made ideas, or attempts to dress
+  a philosophy in metaphors; and Browning, as an artist, is interested
+  first of all in the object which he renders beautiful for its own
+  sole sake, and not in any abstract idea it illustrates. Still, it is
+  true in a peculiar sense in his case, that the eye of the poet brings
+  with it what it sees. He is, as a rule, conscious of no theory, and
+  does not <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg026" id=
+  "pg026">026</a></span> construct a poem for its explication; he
+  rather strikes his ideas out of his material, as the sculptor reveals
+  the breathing life in the stone. Nevertheless, it may be shown that a
+  theory rules him from behind, and that profound convictions arise in
+  the heart and rush along the blood at the moment of creation, using
+  his soul as an instrument of expression to his age and people.</p>
+
+  <p>Of no English poet, except Shakespeare, can we say with
+  approximate truth that he is the poet of all times. The subjective
+  breath of their own epoch dims the mirror which they hold up to
+  nature. Missing by their limitation the highest universality, they
+  can only be understood in their setting. It adds but little to our
+  knowledge of Shakespeare's work to regard him as the great
+  Elizabethan; there is nothing temporary in his dramas, except petty
+  incidents and external trappings&mdash;so truly did he dwell amidst
+  the elements constituting man in every age and clime. But this cannot
+  be said of any other poet, not even of Chaucer or Spenser, far less
+  of Milton, or Pope or Wordsworth. In their case, the artistic form
+  and the material, the idea and its expression, the beauty and the
+  truth, are to some extent separable. We can distinguish in Milton
+  between the Puritanic theology which is perishable, and the art whose
+  beauty can never pass away. The former fixes his kinship with his own
+  age, gives him a definite place in the evolution of English life; the
+  latter is independent of time, a thing which has supreme worth in
+  itself.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg027" id=
+  "pg027">027</a></span>
+
+  <p>Nor can it be doubted that the same holds good of Browning. He
+  also is ruled by the ideas of his own age. It may not be altogether
+  possible for us, "who are partners of his motion and mixed up with
+  his career," to allow for the influence of these ideas, and to
+  distinguish between that which is evanescent and that which is
+  permanent in his work; still I must try to do so; for it is the
+  condition of comprehending him, and of appropriating the truth and
+  beauty he came to reveal. And if his nearness to ourselves makes this
+  more difficult, it also makes it more imperative. For there is no
+  doubt that, with Carlyle, he is the interpreter of our time,
+  reflecting its confused strength and chaotic wealth. He is the high
+  priest of our age, standing at the altar for us, and giving utterance
+  to our needs and aspirations, our fears and faith. By understanding
+  him, we shall, to some degree, understand ourselves and the power
+  which is silently moulding us to its purposes.</p>
+
+  <p>It is because I thus regard Browning as not merely a poet but a
+  prophet, that I think I am entitled to seek in him, as in Isaiah or
+  Aeschylus, a solution, or a help to the solution, of the problems
+  that press upon us when we reflect upon man, his place in the world
+  and his destiny. He has given us indirectly, and as a poet gives, a
+  philosophy of life; he has interpreted the world anew in the light of
+  a dominant idea; and it will be no little gain if we can make clear
+  to ourselves those constitutive principles on which his view of the
+  world rests.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg028" id=
+  "pg028">028</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch02" id="ch02">CHAPTER II.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>ON THE NEED OF A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Art,&mdash;which I may style the love of loving, rage</p>
+
+    <p>Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things</p>
+
+    <p>For truth's sake, whole and sole, not any good, truth brings</p>
+
+    <p>The knower, seer, feeler, beside,&mdash;instinctive Art</p>
+
+    <p>Must fumble for the whole, once fixing on a part</p>
+
+    <p>However poor, surpass the fragment, and aspire</p>
+
+    <p>To reconstruct thereby the ultimate entire." <sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, xliv.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>No English poet has spoken more impressively than Browning on the
+  weightier matters of morality and religion, or sought with more
+  earnestness to meet the difficulties which arise when we try to
+  penetrate to their ultimate principles. His way of poetry is, I
+  think, fundamentally different from that of any other of our great
+  writers. He often seems to be roused into speech, rather by the
+  intensity of his spiritual convictions than by the subtle incitements
+  of poetic sensibility. His convictions caught fire, and truth became
+  beauty for him; not beauty, truth, as with Keats or Shelley. He is
+  swayed by ideas, rather than by sublime moods. Beneath the endless
+  variety of his poems, there are permanent principles, or <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg029" id="pg029">029</a></span> "colligating
+  conceptions," as science calls them; and although these are expressed
+  by the way of emotion, they are held by him with all the resources of
+  his reason.</p>
+
+  <p>His work, though intuitive and perceptive as to form, "gaining God
+  by first leap" as all true art must do, leaves the impression, when
+  regarded as a whole, of an articulated system. It is a view of man's
+  life and destiny that can be maintained, not only during the
+  impassioned moods of poetry, but in the very presence of criticism
+  and doubt. His faith, like Pompilia's, is held fast "despite the
+  plucking fiend." He has given to us something more than intuitive
+  glimpses into, the mysteries of man's character. Throughout his life
+  he held up the steady light of an optimistic conception of the world,
+  and by its means injected new vigour into English ethical thought. In
+  his case, therefore, it is not an immaterial question, but one almost
+  forced upon us, whether we are to take his ethical doctrine and
+  inspiring optimism as valid truths, or to regard them merely as
+  subjective opinions held by a religious poet. Are they creations of a
+  powerful imagination, and nothing more? Do they give to the hopes and
+  aspirations that rise so irrepressibly in the heart of man anything
+  better than an appearance of validity, which will prove illusory the
+  moment the cold light of critical inquiry is turned upon them?</p>
+
+  <p>It is to this unity of his work that I would attribute, in the
+  main, the impressiveness of his <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg030"
+  id="pg030">030</a></span> deliverances on morality and religion. And
+  this unity justifies us, I think, in applying to Browning's view of
+  life methods of criticism that would be out of place with any other
+  English poet. It is one of his unique characteristics, as already
+  hinted, that he has endeavoured to give us a complete and reasoned
+  view of the ethical nature of man, and of his relation to the
+  world&mdash;has sought, in fact, to establish a philosophy of life.
+  In his case, not without injustice, it is true, but with less
+  injustice than in the case of any other poet, we may disregard,
+  <i>for our purposes</i>, the artistic method of his thought, and lay
+  stress on its content only. He has a right to a place amongst
+  philosophers, as Plato has to a place amongst poets. There is such
+  deliberate earnestness and systematic consistency in his teaching,
+  that Hegel can scarcely be said to have maintained that "The Rational
+  is the Real" with greater intellectual tenacity, than Browning held
+  to his view of life. He sought, in fact, to establish an Idealism;
+  and that Idealism, like Kant's and Fichte's, has its last basis in
+  the moral consciousness.</p>
+
+  <p>But, even if it be considered that it is not altogether just to
+  apply these critical tests to the poet's teaching, and to make him
+  pay the penalty for assuming a place amongst philosophers, it is
+  certain that what he says of man's spiritual life cannot be rightly
+  valued, till it is regarded in the light of his guiding principles.
+  We shall miss much of what is best in him, even as a poet, if, for
+  instance, we <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg031" id=
+  "pg031">031</a></span> regard his treatment of love merely as the
+  expression of elevated passion, or his optimism as based upon mere
+  hope. Love was to him rather an indwelling element in the world,
+  present, like power, in everything.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"From the first, Power was&mdash;I knew.</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Life has made clear to me</p>
+
+    <p>That, strive but for closer view,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Love were as plain to see." <sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    A: <i>Reverie&mdash;Asolando</i>.
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Love yielded to him, as Reason did to Hegel, a fundamental
+  exposition of the nature of things. Or, to express the same thing in
+  another way, it was a deliberate hypothesis, which he sought to apply
+  to facts and to test by their means, almost in the same manner as
+  that in which natural science applies and tests its principles.</p>
+
+  <p>That Browning's ethical and religious ideas were for him something
+  different from, and perhaps more than, mere poetic sentiments, will,
+  I believe, be scarcely denied. That he held a deliberate theory, and
+  held it with greater and greater difficulty as he became older, and
+  as his dialectical tendencies grew and threatened to wreck his
+  artistic freedom, is evident to any one who regards his work as a
+  whole. But it will not be admitted so readily that anything other
+  than harm can issue from an attempt to deal with him as if he were a
+  philosopher. Even if it be allowed that he held and expressed a
+  definite theory, will it retain any value if we take it out of the
+  region of poetry and impassioned religious faith, into the
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg032" id="pg032">032</a></span>
+  frigid zone of philosophical inquiry? Could any one maintain, apart
+  from the intoxication of religious and poetic sentiment, that the
+  essence of existence is love? As long as we remain within the realm
+  of imagination, it may be argued, we may find in our poet's great
+  sayings both solacement and strength, both rest and an impulse
+  towards higher moral endeavour; but if we seek to treat them as
+  theories of facts, and turn upon them the light of the understanding,
+  will they not inevitably prove to be hallucinations? Poetry, we
+  think, has its own proper place and function. It is an invaluable
+  anodyne to the cark and care of reflective thought; an opiate which,
+  by steeping the critical intellect in slumber, sets the soul free to
+  rise on the wings of religious faith. But reason breaks the spell;
+  and the world of poetry, and religion&mdash;a world which to them is
+  always beautiful and good with God's presence&mdash;becomes a system
+  of inexorable laws, dead, mechanical, explicable in strict truth, as
+  an equipoise of constantly changing forms of energy.</p>
+
+  <p>There is, at the present time, a widespread belief that we had
+  better keep poetry and religion beyond the reach of critical
+  investigation, if we set any store by them. Faith and reason are
+  thought to be finally divorced. It is an article of the common creed
+  that every attempt which the world has made to bring them together
+  has resulted in denial, or at the best in doubt, regarding all
+  supersensuous facts. The one condition of leading a full life, of
+  maintaining a living relation between ourselves and both the
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg033" id="pg033">033</a></span>
+  spiritual and material elements of our existence, is to make our
+  lives an alternating rhythm of the head and heart, to distinguish
+  with absolute clearness between the realm of reason and that of
+  faith.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, such an assumption would be fatal to any attempt like the
+  present, to find truth in poetry; and I must, therefore, try to meet
+  it before entering upon a statement and criticism of Browning's view
+  of life. I cannot admit that the difficulties of placing the facts of
+  man's spiritual life on a rational basis are so great as to justify
+  the assertion that there is no such basis, or that it is not
+  discoverable by man. Surely, it is unreasonable to make intellectual
+  death the condition of spiritual life. If such a condition were
+  imposed on man, it must inevitably defeat its own purpose; for man
+  cannot possibly continue to live a divided life, and persist in
+  believing that for which his reason knows no defence. We must, in the
+  long run, either rationalize our faith in morality and religion, or
+  abandon them as illusions. And we should at least hesitate to deny
+  that reason&mdash;in spite of its apparent failure in the past to
+  justify our faith in the principles of spiritual life&mdash;may yet,
+  as it becomes aware of its own nature and the might which dwells in
+  it, find beauty and goodness, nay, God himself, in the world. We
+  should at least hesitate to condemn man to choose between
+  irreflective ignorance and irreligion, or to lock the intellect and
+  the highest emotions of our nature and principles of our life, in a
+  mortal struggle. Poetry and religion may, after all, be truer then
+  prose, and have something to <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg034"
+  id="pg034">034</a></span> tell the world that science, which is often
+  ignorant of its own limits, cannot teach.</p>
+
+  <p>The failure of philosophy in the past, even if it were as complete
+  as is believed by persons ignorant of its history, is no argument
+  against its success in the future. Such persons have never known that
+  the world of thought like that of action makes a stepping stone of
+  its dead self. He who presumes to decide what passes the power of
+  man's thought, or to prescribe absolute limits to human knowledge, is
+  rash, to say the least; and he has neither caught the most important
+  of the lessons of modern science, nor been lifted to the level of its
+  inspiration. For science has done one thing greater than to unlock
+  the secrets of nature. It has revealed something of the might of
+  reason, and given new grounds for the faith, which in all ages has
+  inspired the effort to know,&mdash;the faith that the world is an
+  intelligible structure, meant to be penetrated by the thought of man.
+  Can it be that nature is an "open secret," but that man, and he
+  alone, must remain an enigma? Or does he not rather bear within
+  himself the key to every problem which he solves, and is it not
+  <i>his</i> thought which penetrates the secrets of nature? The
+  success of science, in reducing to law the most varied and apparently
+  unconnected facts, should dispel any suspicion which attaches to the
+  attempt to gather these laws under still wider ones, and to interpret
+  the world in the light of the highest principles. And this is
+  precisely what poetry and religion and philosophy do, each in its own
+  way. They carry <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg035" id=
+  "pg035">035</a></span> the work of the sciences into wider regions,
+  and that, as I shall try to show, by methods which, in spite of many
+  external differences, are fundamentally at one with those which the
+  sciences employ.</p>
+
+  <p>There is only one way of giving the quietus to the metaphysics of
+  poets and philosophers, and of showing the futility of a philosophy
+  of life, or of any scientific explanation of religion and morals. It
+  is to show that there is some radical absurdity in the very attempt.
+  Till this is done, the human mind will not give up problems of
+  weighty import, however hard it may be to solve them. The world
+  refused to believe Socrates when he pronounced a science of nature
+  impossible, and centuries of failure did not break man's courage.
+  Science, it is true, has given up some problems as insoluble; it will
+  not now try to construct a perpetually moving machine, or to square
+  the circle. But it has given them up, not because they are difficult,
+  but because they are unreasonable tasks. The problems have a surd or
+  irrational element in them; and to solve them would be to bring
+  reason into collision with itself.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, whatever may be the difficulties of establishing a theory of
+  life, or a philosophy, it has never been shown to be an unreasonable
+  task to attempt it. One might, on the contrary, expect, <i>prima
+  facie</i>, that in a world progressively proved to be intelligible to
+  man, man himself would be no exception. It is impossible that the
+  "light in him should be darkness," or that the thought which reveals
+  the order of the world should be itself chaotic.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg036" id="pg036">036</a></span>
+
+  <p>The need for philosophy is just the ultimate form of the need for
+  knowledge; and the truths which philosophy brings to light are
+  implied in every rational explanation of things. The only choice we
+  can have is between a conscious metaphysics and an unconscious one,
+  between hypotheses which we have examined and whose limitations we
+  know, and hypotheses which rule us from behind, as pure prejudices
+  do. It is because of this that the empiric is so dogmatic, and the
+  ignorant man so certain of the truth of his opinion. They do not know
+  their postulates, nor are they aware that there is no interpretation
+  of an object which does not finally point to a theory of being. We
+  understand no joint or ligament, except in relation to the whole
+  organism, and no fact, or event, except by finding a place for it in
+  the context of our experience. The history of the pebble can be
+  given, only in the light of the story of the earth, as it is told by
+  the whole of geology. We must begin very far back, and bring our
+  widest principles to bear upon the particular thing, if we wish
+  really to know what it is. It is a law that explains, and laws are
+  always universal. All our knowledge, even the most broken and
+  inconsistent, streams from some fundamental conception, in virtue of
+  which all the variety of objects constitute one world, one orderly
+  kosmos, even to the meanest mind. It is true that the central
+  thought, be it rich or poor, must, like the sun's light, be broken
+  against particular facts. But there is no need of forgetting the real
+  source of knowledge, or of deeming that its progress is a
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg037" id="pg037">037</a></span>
+  synthesis without law, or an addition of fact to fact without any
+  guiding principles.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, it is the characteristic of poetry and philosophy that they
+  keep alive our consciousness of these primary, uniting principles.
+  They always dwell in the presence of the idea which makes their
+  object <i>one</i>. To them the world is always, and necessarily, a
+  harmonious whole, as it is also to the religious spirit. It is
+  because of this that the universe is a thing of beauty for the poet,
+  a revelation of God's goodness to the devout soul, and a
+  manifestation of absolute reason to the philosopher. Art, religion,
+  and philosophy fail or flourish together. The age of prose and
+  scepticism appears when the sense of the presence of the whole in the
+  particular facts of the world and of life has been dulled. And there
+  is a necessity in this; for if the conception of the world as a whole
+  is held to be impossible, if philosophy is a futility, then poetry
+  will be a vain sentiment and religion a delusion.</p>
+
+  <p>Nor will the failure of thought, when once demonstrated in these
+  upper regions, be confined to them. On the contrary, it will spread
+  downwards to science and ordinary knowledge, as mountain mists blot
+  out the valleys. For every synthesis of fact to fact, every attempt
+  to know, however humble and limited, is inspired by a secret faith in
+  the unity of the world. Each of the sciences works within its own
+  region, and colligates its details in the light of its own
+  hypothesis; and all the sciences taken together presuppose the
+  presence in the world of a principle <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg038" id="pg038">038</a></span> that binds it into an orderly
+  totality. Scientific explorers know that they are all working towards
+  the same centre. And, ever and anon, as the isolated thinker presses
+  home his own hypothesis, he finds his thought beating on the limits
+  of his science, and suggesting some wider hypothesis. The walls that
+  separate the sciences are wearing thin, and at times light penetrates
+  from one to the other. So that to their votaries, at least, the faith
+  is progressively justified, that there is a meeting point for the
+  sciences, a central truth in which the dispersed rays will again be
+  gathered together. In fact, all the sciences are working together
+  under the guidance of a principle common to them all, although it may
+  not be consciously known and no attempt is made to define it. In
+  science, as in philosophy and art and religion, there is a principle
+  of unity, which, though latent, is really prior to all explanation of
+  particular matters of fact.</p>
+
+  <p>In truth, man has only one way of knowing. There is no fundamental
+  difference between scientific and philosophic procedure. We always
+  light up facts by means of general laws. The fall of the stone was a
+  perfect enigma, a universally unintelligible bit of experience, till
+  the majestic imagination of Newton conceived the idea of universal
+  gravitation. Wherever mind successfully invades the realm of chaos,
+  poetry, the sense of the whole, comes first. There is the intuitive
+  flash, the penetrative glimpse, got no one knows exactly
+  whence&mdash;though we do know that it comes neither from
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg039" id="pg039">039</a></span> the
+  dead facts nor from the vacant region of <i>a priori</i> thought, but
+  somehow from the interaction of both these elements of knowledge.
+  After the intuitive flash comes the slow labour of proof, the
+  application of the principle to details. And that application
+  transforms both the principle and the details, so that the former is
+  enriched with content and the latter are made intelligible&mdash;a
+  veritable conquest and valid possession for mankind. And in this
+  labour of proof, science and philosophy alike take their share.</p>
+
+  <p>Philosophy may be said to come midway between poetry and science,
+  and to partake of the nature of both. On the one side it deals, like
+  poetry, with ideals of knowledge, and announces truths which it does
+  not completely verify; on the other, it leaves to science the task of
+  articulating its principles in facts, though it begins the
+  articulation itself. It reveals subsidiary principles, and is, at the
+  same time, a witness for the unity of the categories of science. We
+  may say, if we wish, that its principles are mere hypotheses. But so
+  are the ideas which underlie the most practical of the sciences; so
+  is every forecast of genius by virtue of which knowledge is extended;
+  so is every principle of knowledge not completely worked out. To say
+  that philosophy is hypothetical implies no charge, other than that
+  which can be levelled, in the same sense, against the most solid body
+  of scientific knowledge in the world. The fruitful question in each
+  case alike is, how far, if <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg040" id=
+  "pg040">040</a></span> at all, does the hypothesis enable us to
+  understand particular facts.</p>
+
+  <p>The more careful of our scientific thinkers are well aware of the
+  limits under which they work and of the hypothetical character of
+  their results. "I take Euclidean space, and the existence of material
+  particles and elemental energy for granted," says the physicist;
+  "deny them, and I am helpless; grant them, and I shall establish
+  quantitative relations between the different forms of this elemental
+  energy, and make it tractable and tame to man's uses. All I teach
+  depends upon my hypothesis. In it is the secret of all the power I
+  wield. I do not pretend to say what this elemental energy is. I make
+  no declaration regarding the actual nature of things; and all
+  questions as to the ultimate origin or final destination of the world
+  are beyond the scope of my inquiry. I am ruled by my hypothesis; I
+  regard phenomena <i>from my point of view</i>; and my right to do so
+  I substantiate by the practical and theoretical results which
+  follow." The language of geology, chemistry, zoology, and even
+  mathematics is the same. They all start from a hypothesis; they are
+  all based on an imaginative conception, and in this sense their
+  votaries are poets, who see the unity of being throb in the
+  particular fact.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, so far as the particular sciences are concerned, I presume
+  that no one will deny the supreme power of these colligating ideas.
+  The sciences do not grow by a process of empiricism, which rambles
+  tentatively and blindly from fact to fact, unguided of <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg041" id="pg041">041</a></span> any hypothesis.
+  But if they do not, if, on the contrary, each science is ruled by its
+  own hypothesis, and uses that hypothesis to bind its facts together,
+  then the question arises, are there no wider colligating principles
+  amongst these hypotheses themselves? Are the sciences independent of
+  each other, or is their independence only surface appearance? This is
+  the question which philosophy asks, and the sciences themselves by
+  their progress suggest a positive answer to it.</p>
+
+  <p>The knowledge of the world which the sciences are building is not
+  a chaotic structure. By their apparently independent efforts, the
+  outer kosmos is gradually reproduced in the mind of man, and the
+  temple of truth is silently rising. We may not as yet be able to
+  connect wing with wing, or to declare definitely the law of the
+  whole. The logical order of the hypotheses of the various sciences,
+  the true connection of these categories of constructive thought, may
+  yet be uncertain. But, still, there <i>is</i> such an order and
+  connection: the whole building has its plan, which becomes more and
+  more intelligible as it approaches to its completion. Beneath all the
+  differences, there are fundamental principles which give to human
+  thought a definite unity of movement and direction. There are
+  architectonic conceptions which are guiding, not only the different
+  sciences, but all the modes of thought of an age. There are
+  intellectual media, "working hypotheses," by means of which
+  successive centuries observe all that they see; and these
+  far-reaching constructive principles <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg042" id="pg042">042</a></span> divide the history of mankind into
+  distinct stages. In a word, there are dynasties of great ideas, such
+  as the idea of development in our own day; and these successively
+  ascend the throne of mind, and hold a sway over human thought which
+  is well-nigh absolute.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, if this is so, is it certain that all <i>knowledge</i> of
+  these ruling conceptions is impossible? In other words, is the
+  attempt to construct a philosophy absurd? To say that it is, to deny
+  the possibility of catching any glimpse of those regulative ideas,
+  which determine the main tendencies of human thought, is to place the
+  supreme directorate of the human intelligence in the hands of a
+  necessity which, <i>for us</i>, is blind. For, an order that is
+  hidden is equivalent to chance, so far as knowledge is concerned; and
+  if we believe it to exist, we do so in the face of the fact that all
+  we see, and all we <i>can</i> see, is the opposite of order, namely
+  lawlessness. Human knowledge, on this view, would be subjected to law
+  in its details and compartments, but to disorder as a whole. Thinking
+  men would be organized into regiments; but the regiments would not
+  constitute an army, nor would there be any unity of movement in the
+  attack on the realm of ignorance.</p>
+
+  <p>But, such is not the conclusion to which the study of human
+  history leads, especially when we observe its movements on a large
+  scale. On the contrary, it is found that history falls into great
+  epochs, each of which has its own peculiar characteristics. Ages,
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg043" id="pg043">043</a></span> as
+  well as nations and individuals, have features of their own, special
+  and definite modes of thinking and acting. The movement of thought in
+  each age has its own direction, which is determined by some
+  characteristic and fundamental idea, that fulfils for it the part of
+  a working hypothesis in a particular science. It is the prerogative
+  of the greatest leaders of thought in an age to catch a glimpse of
+  this ruling idea when it first makes its appearance; and it is their
+  function, not only to discover it, but also to reveal it to others.
+  And, in this way, they are at once the exponents of their time, and
+  its prophets. They reveal that which is already a latent but active
+  power&mdash;"a tendency"; but they reveal it to a generation which
+  will see the truth for itself, only after the potency which lies in
+  it has manifested itself in national institutions and habits of
+  thought and action. <i>After</i> the prophets have left us, we
+  believe what they have said; as long as they are with us, they are
+  voices crying in the wilderness.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, these great ideas, these harmonies of the world of mind,
+  first strike upon the ear of the poet. They seem to break into the
+  consciousness of man by the way of emotion. They possess the seer; he
+  is divinely mad, and he utters words whose meaning passes his own
+  calmer comprehension. What we find in Goethe, we find also in a
+  manner in Browning: an insight which is also foresight, a dim and
+  partial consciousness of the truth about to be, sending its light
+  before it, and anticipating all systematic reflection. It is an
+  insight which appears <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg044" id=
+  "pg044">044</a></span> to be independent of all method; but it is in
+  nature, though not in sweep and expanse, akin to the intuitive leap
+  by which the scientific explorer lights upon his new hypothesis. We
+  can find no other law for it, than that sensitiveness to the beauty
+  and truth hidden in facts, which much reflection on them generates
+  for genius. For these great minds the "muddy vesture" is worn thin by
+  thought, and they hear the immortal music.</p>
+
+  <p>The poet soon passes his glowing torch into the hands of the
+  philosopher. After Aeschylus and Sophocles, come Plato and Aristotle.
+  The intuitive flash grows into a fixed light, which rules the day.
+  The great idea, when reflected upon, becomes a system. When the light
+  of such an idea is steadily held on human affairs, it breaks into
+  endless forms of beauty and truth. The content of the idea is
+  gradually evolved; hypotheses spring out of it, which are accepted as
+  principles, rule the mind of an age, and give it its work and its
+  character. In this way, Hobbes and Locke laid down, or at least
+  defined, the boundaries within which moved the thought of the
+  eighteenth century; and no one acquainted with the poetic and
+  philosophic thought of Germany, from Lessing to Goethe and from Kant
+  to Hegel, can fail to find therein the source and spring of the
+  constitutive principles of our own intellectual, social, political,
+  and religious life. The virtues and the vices of the aristocracy of
+  the world of mind penetrate downwards. The works of the poets and
+  philosophers, so far from being filled with <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg045" id="pg045">045</a></span> impracticable
+  dreams, are repositories of great suggestions which the world adopts
+  for its guidance. The poets and philosophers lay no railroads and
+  invent no telephones; but they, nevertheless, bring about that
+  attitude towards nature, man and God, and generate those moods of the
+  general mind, from which issue, not only the scientific, but also the
+  social, political and religious forces of the age.</p>
+
+  <p>It is mainly on this account that I cannot treat the supreme
+  utterances of Browning lightly, or think it an idle task to try to
+  connect them into a philosophy of life. In his optimism of love, in
+  his supreme confidence in man's destiny and sense of the infinite
+  height of the moral horizon of humanity, in his courageous faith in
+  the good, and his profound conviction of the evanescence of evil,
+  there lies a vital energy whose inspiring power we are yet destined
+  to feel. Until a spirit kindred to his own arises, able to push the
+  battle further into the same region, much of the practical task of
+  the age that is coming will consist in living out in detail the ideas
+  to which he has given expression.</p>
+
+  <p>I contend, then, not merely for a larger charity, but for a truer
+  view of the facts of history than is evinced by those who set aside
+  the poets and philosophers as mere dreamers, and conceive that the
+  sciences alone occupy the region of valid thought in all its extent.
+  There is a universal brotherhood of which all who think are members.
+  Not only do they all contribute to man's victory over his environment
+  and himself, but they contribute in a manner <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg046" id="pg046">046</a></span> which is
+  substantially the same. There are many points of superficial
+  distinction between the processes of philosophy and science, and
+  between both and the method of poetry; but the inner movement, if one
+  may so express it, is identical in all. It is time to have done with
+  the notion that philosophers occupy a transcendent region beyond
+  experience, or spin spiritual cocoons by <i>a priori</i> methods, and
+  with the view that scientific men are mere empirics, building their
+  structures from below by an <i>a posteriori</i> way of thought,
+  without the help of any ruling conceptions. All alike endeavour to
+  interpret experience, but none of them get their principles from
+  it.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i10">"But, friends,</p>
+
+    <p>Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise</p>
+
+    <p>From outward things, whate'er you may believe."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There is room and need for the higher synthesis of philosophy and
+  poetry, as well as for the more palpable and, at the same time, more
+  narrow colligating conceptions of the systematic sciences. The
+  quantitative relations between material objects, which are
+  investigated by mathematics and physics, do not exhaust the realm of
+  the knowable, so as to leave no place for the poet's, or the
+  philosopher's view of the world. The scientific investigator who,
+  like Mr. Tyndall, so far forgets the limitations of his province as
+  to use his natural data as premises for religious or irreligious
+  conclusions, is as illogical as the popular preacher, who attacks
+  scientific conclusions because they are not consistent with his
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg047" id="pg047">047</a></span>
+  theological presuppositions. Looking only at their primary aspects,
+  we cannot say that religious presuppositions and the scientific
+  interpretation of facts are either consistent or inconsistent: they
+  are simply different. Their harmony or discord can come only when the
+  higher principles of philosophy have been fully developed, and when
+  the departmental ideas of the various sciences are organized into a
+  view of the world as a whole. And this is a task which has not as yet
+  been accomplished. The forces from above and below have not met. When
+  they do meet, they will assuredly find that they are friends, and not
+  foes. For philosophy can articulate its supreme conception only by
+  interaction with the sciences; and, on the other hand, the progress
+  of science, and the effectiveness of its division of labour, are
+  ultimately conditioned by its sensitiveness to the hints, given by
+  poets and philosophers, of those wider principles in virtue of which
+  the world is conceived as a unity. There are many, indeed, who cannot
+  see the wood for the trees, as there are others who cannot see the
+  trees for the wood. Carlyle cared nothing though science were able to
+  turn a sunbeam on its axis; Ruskin sees little in the advance of
+  invention except more slag-hills. And scientific men have not been
+  slow to return with interest the scorn of the moralists. But a more
+  comprehensive view of the movement of human knowledge will show that
+  none labour in vain. For its movement is that of a thing which
+  <i>grows</i>! and in growth there is always movement <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg048" id="pg048">048</a></span> towards both
+  unity and difference. Science, in pursuing truth into greater and
+  greater detail, is constrained by its growing consciousness of the
+  unlimited wealth of its material, to divide and isolate its interests
+  more and more; and thus, at the same time, the need for the poets and
+  philosophers is growing deeper, their task is becoming more difficult
+  of achievement, and a greater triumph in so far as it is achieved.
+  Both science and philosophy are working towards a more concrete view
+  of the world as an articulated whole. If we cannot quite say with
+  Browning that "poets never dream," we may yet admit with gratitude
+  that their dreams are an inspiration.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear.</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal
+    and woe:</p>
+
+    <p>But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians
+    know."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Abt Vogler</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And side by side with the poetry that grasps the truth in
+  immediate intuition, there is also the uniting activity of
+  philosophy, which, catching up its hints, carries "back our scattered
+  knowledge of the facts and laws of nature to the principle upon which
+  they rest; and, on the other hand, develops that principle so as to
+  fill all the details of knowledge with a significance which they
+  cannot have in themselves, but only as seen <i>sub specie
+  aeternitatis</i>."<sup>B</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Problem of Philosophy at the Present Time</i>, by
+    Professor Caird.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>So far we have spoken of the function of philosophy <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg049" id="pg049">049</a></span> in the
+  interpretation of the phenomena of the outer world. It bears witness
+  to the unity of knowledge, and strives by the constructive criticism
+  of the categories of science to render that unity explicit. Its
+  function is, no doubt, valid and important, for it is evident that
+  man cannot rest content with fragmentary knowledge. But still, it
+  might be objected that it is premature at present to endeavour to
+  formulate that unity. Physics, chemistry, biology, and the other
+  sciences, while they necessarily presuppose the unity of knowledge,
+  and attempt in their own way and in their own sphere to discover it,
+  are making very satisfactory headway without raising any of the
+  desperate questions of metaphysics as to its ultimate nature. For
+  them it is not likely to matter for a long time to come whether
+  Optimism or Pessimism, Materialism or Idealism, or none of them, be
+  true. In any case the principles they establish are valid. Physical
+  relations always remain true; "ginger will be hot i' the mouth, and
+  there will be more cakes and ale." It is only when the sciences break
+  down beneath the weight of knowledge and prove themselves inadequate,
+  that it becomes necessary or advantageous to seek for more
+  comprehensive principles. At present is it not better to persevere in
+  the way of science, than to be seduced from it by the desire to solve
+  ultimate problems, which, however reasonable and pressing, seem to be
+  beyond our power to answer?</p>
+
+  <p>Such reasonings are not convincing; still, so far as natural
+  science is concerned, they seem to <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg050" id="pg050">050</a></span> indicate that there might be no
+  great harm in ignoring, for a time, its dependence on the wider
+  aspects of human thought. There is no department of nature so
+  limited, but that it may more than satisfy the largest ambition of
+  the individual for knowledge. But this attitude of indifference to
+  ultimate questions is liable at any moment to be disturbed.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,</p>
+
+    <p>A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,</p>
+
+    <p>A chorus-ending from Euripides,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears</p>
+
+    <p>As old and new at once as nature's self,</p>
+
+    <p>To rap and knock and enter in our soul,</p>
+
+    <p>Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,</p>
+
+    <p>Round the ancient idol, on his base again,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.</p>
+
+    <p>There the old misgivings, crooked questions are."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Bishop Blougram's Apology.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Amongst the facts of our experience which cry most loudly for some
+  kind of solution, are those of our own inner life. We are in pressing
+  need of a "working hypothesis" wherewith to understand ourselves, as
+  well as of a theory which will explain the revolution of the planets,
+  or the structure of an oyster. And this self of ours intrudes
+  everywhere. It is only by resolutely shutting our eyes, that we can
+  forget the part it plays even in the outer world of natural science.
+  So active is it in the constitution of things, so dependent is their
+  nature on the nature of our knowing faculties, that scientific men
+  themselves admit that their surest <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg051" id="pg051">051</a></span> results are only hypothetical.
+  Their truth depends on laws of thought which natural science does not
+  investigate.</p>
+
+  <p>But quite apart from this doctrine of the relativity of knowledge,
+  which is generally first acknowledged and then ignored, every man,
+  the worst and the best alike, is constrained to take some
+  <i>practical</i> attitude towards his fellows. Man is never alone
+  with nature, and the connections with his fellows which sustain his
+  intelligent life, are liable to bring him into trouble, if they are
+  not to some degree understood.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"There's power in me," said Bishop Blougram, "and will to
+    dominate</p>
+
+    <p>Which I must exercise, they hurt me else."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The impulse to know is only a phase of the more general impulse to
+  act and to be. The specialist's devotion to his science is his answer
+  to a demand, springing from his practical need, that he realize
+  himself through action. He does not construct his edifice of
+  knowledge, as the bird is supposed to build its nest, without any
+  consciousness of an end to be attained thereby. Even if, like
+  Lessing, he values the pursuit of truth for its own sake, still what
+  stings him into effort is the sense that in truth only can he find
+  the means of satisfying and realizing himself. Beneath all man's
+  activities, as their very spring and source, there lies some dim
+  conception of an end to be attained. This is his moral consciousness,
+  which no neglect will utterly suppress. <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg052" id="pg052">052</a></span> All human effort,
+  the effort to know like every other, conceals within it a reference
+  to some good, conceived at the time as supreme and complete; and
+  this, in turn, contains a theory both of man's self and of the
+  universe on which he must impress his image. Every man must have his
+  philosophy of life, simply because he must act; though, in many
+  cases, that philosophy may be latent and unconscious, or, at least,
+  not a definite object of reflection. The most elementary question
+  directed at his moral consciousness will at once elicit the universal
+  element. We cannot ask whether an action be right or wrong without
+  awakening all the echoes of metaphysics. As there is no object on the
+  earth's surface whose equilibrium is not fixed by its relation to the
+  earth's centre, so the most elementary moral judgment, the simplest
+  choice, the most irrational vagaries of a will calling itself free
+  and revelling in its supposed lawlessness, are dominated by the
+  conception of a universal good. Everything that a man does is an
+  attempt to articulate his view of this good, with a particular
+  content. Hence, man as a moral agent is always the centre of his own
+  horizon, and stands right beneath the zenith. Little as he may be
+  aware of it, his relation between himself and his supreme good is
+  direct. And he orders his whole world from his point of view, just as
+  he regards East and West as meeting at the spot on which he stands.
+  Whether he will or not, he cannot but regard the universe of men and
+  objects as the instrument of his purposes. He extracts <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg053" id="pg053">053</a></span> all its interest
+  and meaning from himself. His own shadow falls upon it all. If he is
+  selfish, that is, if he interprets the self that is in him as
+  vulturous, then the whole outer world and his fellow-men fall for him
+  into the category of carrion, or not-carrion. If he knows himself as
+  spirit, as the energy of love or reason, if the prime necessity he
+  recognizes within himself is the necessity to be good, then the
+  universe becomes for him an instrument wherewith moral character is
+  evolved. In all cases alike, his life-work is an effort to rob the
+  world of its alien character, and to translate it into terms of
+  himself.</p>
+
+  <p>We are in the habit of fixing a chasm between a man's deeds and
+  his metaphysical, moral, and religious creed; and even of thinking
+  that he can get on "in a sufficiently prosperous manner," without any
+  such creed. Can we not digest without a theory of peptics, or do
+  justice without constructing an ideal state? The truest answer,
+  though it is an answer easily misunderstood, is that we cannot. In
+  the sphere of morality, at least, action, depends on knowledge:
+  Socrates was right in saying that virtuous conduct ignorant of its
+  end is accidental. Man's action, so far as it is good or evil, is
+  shot through and through with his intelligence. And once we clearly
+  distinguish between belief and profession, between the motives which
+  really impel our actions and the psychological account of them with
+  which we may deceive ourselves and others, we shall be obliged to
+  confess that we always act our creed. A man's conduct, just because
+  he is man, is generated by his view of himself and <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg054" id="pg054">054</a></span> his world. He who
+  cheats his neighbour believes in tortuosity, and, as Carlyle says,
+  has the Supreme Quack for his God. No one ever acted without some
+  dim, though perhaps foolish enough, half-belief that the world was at
+  his back; whether he plots good or evil he always has God as an
+  accomplice. And this is why character cannot be really bettered by
+  any peddling process. Moralists and preachers are right in insisting
+  on the need of a new life, that is, of a new principle, as the basis
+  of any real improvement; and such a principle necessarily carries in
+  it a new attitude towards men, and a new interpretation of the moral
+  agent himself and of his world.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, wherever we touch the practical life of man, we are at once
+  referred to a metaphysic. His creed is the heart of his character,
+  and it beats as a pulse in every action. Hence, when we deal with
+  moral life, we <i>must</i> start from the centre. In our intellectual
+  life, it is not obviously unreasonable to suppose that there is no
+  need of endeavouring to reach upward to a constructive idea, which
+  makes the universe one, but when we act, such self-deception is not
+  possible. As a moral agent, and a moral agent man always is, he not
+  only may, but must have his working hypothesis, and that hypothesis
+  must be all-inclusive. As there are natural laws which connect man's
+  physical movements with the whole system of nature, so there are
+  spiritual relations which connect him with the whole spiritual
+  universe; and spiritual relations are always direct.</p>
+
+  <p>Now it follows from this, that, whenever we consider <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg055" id="pg055">055</a></span> man as a moral
+  agent, that is, as an agent who converts ideas into actual things,
+  the need of a philosophy becomes evident. Instead of condemning ideal
+  interpretations of the universe as useless dreams, the foolish
+  products of an ambition of thought which refuses to respect the
+  limits of the human intellect, we shall understand that philosophers
+  and poets are really striving with greater clearness of vision, and
+  in a more sustained manner, to perform the task which all men are
+  obliged to perform in some way or other. Man subsists as a natural
+  being only on condition of comprehending, to some degree, the
+  conditions of his natural life, and the laws of his natural
+  environment. From earliest youth upwards, he is learning that fire
+  will burn and water drown, and that he can play with the elements
+  with safety only within the sphere lit up by his intelligence. Nature
+  will not pardon the blunders of ignorance, nor tamely submit to every
+  hasty construction. And this truth is still more obvious in relation
+  to man's moral life. Here, too, and in a pre-eminent degree, conduct
+  waits on intelligence. Deep will only answer unto deep; and great
+  characters only come with much meditation on the things that are
+  highest. And, on the other hand, the misconstruction of life's
+  meaning flings man back upon himself, and makes his action nugatory.
+  Byronism was driven "howling home again," says the poet. The universe
+  will not be interpreted in terms of sense, nor be treated as carrion,
+  as Carlyle said. There is no rest in the "Everlasting No," because it
+  is a <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg056" id="pg056">056</a></span>
+  wrong view of man and of the world. Or rather, the negative is not
+  everlasting; and man is driven onwards by despair, through the
+  "Centre of Indifference," till he finds a "Universal Yea"&mdash;a
+  true view of his relation to the universe.</p>
+
+  <p>There is given to men the largest choice to do or to let alone, at
+  every step in life. But there is one necessity which they cannot
+  escape, because they carry it within them. They absolutely must try
+  to make the world their home, find some kind of reconciling idea
+  between themselves and the forces amidst which they move, have some
+  kind of working hypothesis of life. Nor is it possible to admit that
+  they will find rest till they discover a true hypothesis. If they do
+  not seek it by reflection&mdash;if, in their ardour to penetrate into
+  the secrets of nature, they forget themselves; if they allow the
+  supreme facts of their moral life to remain in the confusion of
+  tradition, and seek to compromise the demands of their spirit by
+  sacrificing to the idols of their childhood's faith; if they fortify
+  themselves in the indifference of agnosticism,&mdash;they must reap
+  the harvest of their irreflection. Ignorance is not harmless in
+  matters of character any more than in the concerns of our outer life.
+  There are in national and in individual history seasons of despair,
+  and that despair, when it is deepest, is ever found to be the shadow
+  of moral failure&mdash;the result of going out into action with a
+  false view of the purpose of human life, and a wrong conception of
+  man's destiny. At such times, the people have not understood
+  themselves <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg057" id=
+  "pg057">057</a></span> or their environment, and, in consequence,
+  they come into collision with their own welfare. There is no
+  experiment so dangerous to an age or people, as that of relegating to
+  the common ignorance of unreasoning faith the deep concerns of moral
+  conduct; and there is no attitude more pitiable than that which leads
+  it to turn a deaf ear and the lip of contempt towards those
+  philosophers who carry the spirit of scientific inquiry into these
+  higher regions, and endeavour to establish for mankind, by the
+  irrefragable processes of reason, those principles on which rest all
+  the great elements of man's destiny. We cannot act without a theory
+  of life; and to whom shall we look for such a theory, except to those
+  who, undaunted by the difficulties of the task, ask once more, and
+  strive to answer, those problems which man cannot entirely escape, as
+  long as he continues to think and act?</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg058" id="pg058">058</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch03" id="ch03">CHAPTER III.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>BROWNING'S PLACE IN ENGLISH POETRY.</h3>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    "But there's a great contrast between him and me. He seems very
+    content with life, and takes much satisfaction in the world. It's a
+    very strange and curious spectacle to behold a man in these days so
+    confidently cheerful." (<i>Carlyle</i>.)
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>It has been said of Carlyle, who may for many reasons be
+  considered as our poet's twin figure, that he laid the foundations of
+  his world of thought in <i>Sartor Resartus</i>, and never enlarged
+  them. His <i>Orientirung</i> was over before he was forty years
+  old&mdash;as is, indeed, the case with most men. After that period
+  there was no fundamental change in his view of the world; nothing
+  which can be called a new idea disturbed his outline sketch of the
+  universe. He lived afterwards only to fill it in, showing with ever
+  greater detail the relations of man to man in history, and
+  emphasizing with greater grimness the war of good and evil in human
+  action. There is evidence, it is true, that the formulae from which
+  he more or less consciously set forth, ultimately proved too narrow
+  for him, and we find him beating himself in vain against their
+  limitations; still, on the whole, Carlyle speculated within the range
+  and influence of <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg059" id=
+  "pg059">059</a></span> principles adopted early in life, and never
+  abandoned for higher or richer ideas, or substantially changed.</p>
+
+  <p>In these respects, there is considerable resemblance between
+  Carlyle and Browning. Browning, indeed, fixed his point of view and
+  chose his battleground still earlier; and he held it resolutely to
+  his life's close. In his <i>Pauline</i> and in his Epilogue to
+  <i>Asolando</i> we catch the triumphant tone of a single idea, which,
+  during all the long interval, had never sunk into silence. Like</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"The wise thrush, he sings each song twice over,</p>
+
+    <p>Lest you should think he never could recapture</p>
+
+    <p>The first fine careless rapture!" <sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Home Thoughts from Abroad</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Moreover, these two poets, if I may be permitted to call Carlyle a
+  poet, taught the same truth. They were both witnesses to the presence
+  of God in the spirit of man, and looked at this life in the light of
+  another and a higher; or rather, they penetrated through the husk of
+  time and saw that eternity is even here, a tranquil element
+  underlying the noisy antagonisms of man's earthly life. Both of them,
+  like Plato's philosopher, made their home in the sunlight of ideal
+  truth: they were not denizens of the cave taking the things of sense
+  for those of thought, shadows for realities, echoes for the voices of
+  men.</p>
+
+  <p>But, while Carlyle fought his way into this region, Browning found
+  himself in it from the first; while Carlyle bought his freedom with a
+  great sum, the poet "was free born." Carlyle saw the old world
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg060" id="pg060">060</a></span> faith
+  break up around him, and its fragments never ceased to embarrass his
+  path. He was <i>at</i> the point of transition, present at the
+  collision of the old and new, and in the midst of the confusion. He,
+  more than any other English writer, was the instrument of the change
+  from the Deism of the eighteenth century and the despair which
+  followed it, into the larger faith of our own. But, for Browning,
+  there was a new heaven and a new earth, and old things had passed
+  away. This notable contrast between the two men, arising at once from
+  their disposition and their moral environment, had far-reaching
+  effects on their lives and their writings. But their affinity was
+  deeper than the difference, for they are essentially heirs and
+  exponents of the same movement in English thought.</p>
+
+  <p>The main characteristic of that movement is that it is both moral
+  and religious, a devotion to God and the active service of man, a
+  recognition at once of the rights of nature and of spirit. It does
+  not, on the one hand, raise the individual as a natural being to the
+  throne of the universe, and make all forces social, political, and
+  spiritual stoop to his rights; nor does it, on the other hand, deny
+  these rights, or make the individual a mere instrument of society. It
+  at least attempts to reconcile the fundamental facts of human nature,
+  without compromising any of them. It cannot be called either
+  individualistic or socialistic; but it strives to be both at once, so
+  that both man and society mean more to this age than they ever did
+  before. The <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg061" id=
+  "pg061">061</a></span> narrow formulae that cramped the thought of
+  the period which preceded ours have been broken through. No one can
+  pass from the hedonists and individualists to Carlyle and Browning
+  without feeling that these two men are representatives of new forces
+  in politics, in religion, and in literature,&mdash;forces which will
+  undoubtedly effect momentous changes before they are caught again and
+  fixed in creeds.</p>
+
+  <p>That a new epoch in English thought was veritably opened by them
+  is indicated by the surprise and bewilderment they occasioned at
+  their first appearance. Carlyle had Emerson to break his loneliness
+  and Browning had Rossetti; but, to most other men at that day,
+  <i>Sartor</i> and <i>Pauline</i> were all but unintelligible. The
+  general English reader could make little of the strange figures that
+  had broken into the realm of literature; and the value and
+  significance of their work, as well as its originality, will be
+  recognized better by ourselves if we take a hurried glance at the
+  times which lay behind them. Its main worth will be found to lie in
+  the fact that they strove to bring together again certain fundamental
+  elements, on which the moral life of man must always rest, and which
+  had fallen asunder in the ages which preceded their own.</p>
+
+  <p>The whole-hearted, instinctive life of the Elizabethan age was
+  narrowed and deepened into the severe one-sidedness of Puritanism,
+  which cast on the bright earth the sombre shadow of a life to come.
+  England was given up for a time to a magnificent half-truth. It did
+  not</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg062" id=
+  "pg062">062</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Wait</p>
+
+    <p>The slow and sober uprise all around</p>
+
+    <p>O' the building,"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>but</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i10">"Ran up right to roof</p>
+
+    <p>A sudden marvel, piece of perfectness."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>After Puritanism came Charles the Second and the rights of the
+  flesh, which rights were gradually clarified, till they contradicted
+  themselves in the benevolent self-seeking of altruistic hedonism.
+  David Hume led the world out of the shadow of eternity, and showed
+  that it was only an object of the five senses; or of six, if we add
+  that of "hunger." The divine element was explained away, and the
+  proper study of mankind was, not man, as that age thought, but man
+  reduced to his beggarly elements&mdash;a being animated solely by the
+  sensuous springs of pleasure and pain, which should properly, as
+  Carlyle thought, go on all fours, and not lay claim to the dignity of
+  being moral. All things were reduced to what they seemed, robbed of
+  their suggestiveness, changed into definite, sharp-edged, mutually
+  exclusive particulars. The world was an aggregate of isolated facts,
+  or, at the best, a mechanism into which particulars were fitted by
+  force; and society was a gathering of mere individuals, repelling
+  each other by their needs and greed, with a ring of natural necessity
+  to bind them together. It was a fit time for political economy to
+  supplant ethics. There was nowhere an ideal which could lift man
+  above his natural self, and teach him, by losing it, to find a higher
+  life. And, as a necessary <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg063" id=
+  "pg063">063</a></span> consequence, religion gave way to naturalism
+  and poetry to prose.</p>
+
+  <p>After this age of prose came our own day. The new light first
+  flushed the modern world in the writings of the philosopher-poets of
+  Germany: Kant and Lessing, Fichte and Schiller, Goethe and Hegel.
+  They brought about the Copernican change. For them this world of the
+  five senses, of space and time and natural cause, instead of being
+  the fixed centre around which all things revolved, was explicable
+  only in its relation to a system which was spiritual; and man found
+  his meaning in his connection with society, the life of which
+  stretched endlessly far back into the past and forward into the
+  future. Psychology gave way to metaphysics. The universal element in
+  the thought of man was revealed. Instead of mechanism there was life.
+  A new spirit of poetry and philosophy brought God back into the
+  world, revealed his incarnation in the mind of man, and changed
+  nature into a pellucid garment within which throbbed the love divine.
+  The antagonism of hard alternatives was at an end; the universe was
+  spirit-woven and every smallest object was "filled full of magical
+  music, as they freight a star with light." There were no longer two
+  worlds, but one; for "the other" world penetrated this, and was
+  revealed in it: thought and sense, spirit and nature, were
+  reconciled. These thinkers made room for man, as against the
+  Puritans, and for God, as against their successors. Instead of the
+  hopeless struggle of ascetic morality, which divides man against
+  himself, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg064" id=
+  "pg064">064</a></span> they awakened him to that sense of his
+  reconciliation with his ideal which religion gives: "Psyche drinks
+  its stream and forgets her sorrows."</p>
+
+  <p>Now, this is just the soil where art blooms. For what is beauty
+  but the harmony of thought and sense, a universal meaning caught and
+  tamed in the particular? To the poet each little flower that blooms
+  has endless worth, and is regarded as perfect and complete; for he
+  sees that the spirit of the whole dwells in it. It whispers to him
+  the mystery of the infinite; it is a pulse in which beats the
+  universal heart. The true poet finds God everywhere; for the ideal is
+  actual wherever beauty dwells. And there is the closest affinity
+  between art and religion, as its history proves, from Job and Isaiah,
+  Homer and Aeschylus, to our own poet; for both art and religion lift
+  us, each in its own way, above one-sidedness and limitation, to the
+  region of the universal. The one draws God to man, brings perfection
+  <i>here</i>, and reaches its highest form in the joyous life of
+  Greece, where the natural world was clothed with almost supernatural
+  beauty; the other lifts man to God, and finds this life good because
+  it reflects and suggests the greater life that is to be. Both poetry
+  and religion are a reconciliation and a satisfaction; both lift man
+  above the contradictions of limited existence, and place him in the
+  region of peace&mdash;where,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"with an eye made quiet by the power</p>
+
+    <p>Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,</p>
+
+    <p>He sees into the life of things."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Tintern Abbey.</i></p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg065" id="pg065">065</a></span>
+
+  <p>In this sense, it will be always true of the poet, as it is of the
+  religious man, that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"the world,</p>
+
+    <p>The beauty and the wonder and the power,</p>
+
+    <p>The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades,</p>
+
+    <p>Changes, surprises,"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fra Lippo Lippi</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>lead him back to God, who made it all.</p>
+
+  <p>He is essentially a witness to the divine element in the
+  world.</p>
+
+  <p>It is the rediscovery of this divine element, after its expulsion
+  by the age of Deism and doubt, that has given to this century its
+  poetic grandeur. Unless we regard Burke as the herald of the new era,
+  we may say that England first felt the breath of the returning spirit
+  in the poems of Shelley and Wordsworth.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"The One remains, the many change and pass;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows
+    fly;</p>
+
+    <p>Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Stains the white radiance of eternity,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Until death tramples it to fragments."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Adonais</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"And I have felt," says Wordsworth,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"A presence that disturbs me with the joy</p>
+
+    <p>Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime</p>
+
+    <p>Of something far more deeply interfused,</p>
+
+    <p>Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,</p>
+
+    <p>And the round ocean and the living air,</p>
+
+    <p>And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:</p>
+
+    <p>A motion and a spirit, that impels</p>
+
+    <p>All thinking things, all objects of all thought,</p>
+
+    <p>And rolls through all things."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Tintern Abbey</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg066" id="pg066">066</a></span>
+
+  <p>Such notes as these could not be struck by Pope, nor be understood
+  by the age of prose. Still they are only the prelude of the fuller
+  song of Browning. Whether he be a greater poet than these or
+  not,&mdash;a question whose answer can benefit nothing, for each poet
+  has his own worth, and reflects by his own facet the universal
+  truth&mdash;his poetry contains in it larger elements, and the
+  promise of a deeper harmony from the harsher discords of his more
+  stubborn material. Even where their spheres touch, Browning held by
+  the artistic truth in a different manner. To Shelley, perhaps the
+  most intensely spiritual of all our poets,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"That light whose smile kindles the universe,</p>
+
+    <p>That beauty in which all things work and move,"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>was an impassioned sentiment, a glorious intoxication; to Browning
+  it was a conviction, reasoned and willed, possessing the whole man,
+  and held in the sober moments when the heart is silent. "The heavy
+  and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world" was lightened
+  for Wordsworth, only when he was far from the haunts of men, and free
+  from the "dreary intercourse of daily life"; but Browning weaved his
+  song of hope right amidst the wail and woe of man's sin and
+  wretchedness. For Wordsworth "sensations sweet, felt in the blood and
+  felt along the heart, passed into his purer mind with tranquil
+  restoration," and issued "in a serene and blessed mood"; but
+  Browning's poetry is not merely the poetry of the emotions however
+  sublimated. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg067" id=
+  "pg067">067</a></span> He starts with the hard repellent fact,
+  crushes by sheer force of thought its stubborn rind, presses into it,
+  and brings forth the truth at its heart. The greatness of Browning's
+  poetry is in its perceptive grip: and in nothing is he more original
+  than in the manner in which he takes up his task, and assumes his
+  artistic function. In his postponement of feeling to thought we
+  recognize a new poetic method, the significance of which we cannot
+  estimate as yet. But, although we may fail to apprehend the meaning
+  of the new method he employs, we cannot fail to perceive the fact,
+  which is not less striking, that the region from which he quarries
+  his material is new.</p>
+
+  <p>And yet he does not break away abruptly from his predecessors. His
+  kinship with them, in that he recognizes the presence of God in
+  nature, is everywhere evident. We quote one passage, scarcely to be
+  surpassed by any of our poets, as indicative of his power of dealing
+  with the supernaturalism of nature.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,</p>
+
+    <p>And the earth changes like a human face;</p>
+
+    <p>The molten ore burst up among the rocks,</p>
+
+    <p>Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright</p>
+
+    <p>In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds,</p>
+
+    <p>Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged</p>
+
+    <p>With foam, white as the bitter lip of hate,</p>
+
+    <p>When, in the solitary waste, strange groups</p>
+
+    <p>Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like,</p>
+
+    <p>Staring together with their eyes on flame&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride.</p>
+
+    <p>Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod:</p><span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg068" id="pg068">068</a></span>
+
+    <p>But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes</p>
+
+    <p>Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure</p>
+
+    <p>Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between</p>
+
+    <p>The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost,</p>
+
+    <p>Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>"Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark</p>
+
+    <p>Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;</p>
+
+    <p>Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls</p>
+
+    <p>Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe</p>
+
+    <p>Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek</p>
+
+    <p>Their loves in wood and plain&mdash;and God renews</p>
+
+    <p>His ancient rapture. Thus He dwells in all,</p>
+
+    <p>From life's minute beginnings, up at last</p>
+
+    <p>To man&mdash;the consummation of this scheme</p>
+
+    <p>Of being, the completion of this sphere of life."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Such passages as these contain neither the rapt, reflective calm
+  of Wordsworth's solemn tones, nor the ethereal intoxication of
+  Shelley's spirit-music; but there is in them the same consciousness
+  of the infinite meaning of natural facts. And beyond this, there is
+  also, in the closing lines, a hint of a new region for art. Shelley
+  and Wordsworth were the poets of Nature, as all truly say; Browning
+  was the poet of the human soul. For Shelley, the beauty in which all
+  things work and move was well-nigh "quenched by the eclipsing curse
+  of the birth of man"; and Wordsworth lived beneath the habitual sway
+  of fountains, meadows, hills and groves, while he kept grave watch
+  o'er man's mortality, and saw the shades of the prison-house gather
+  round him. From the life of man they garnered nought but mad
+  indignation, or mellowed sadness. It was a foolish and furious strife
+  with <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg069" id="pg069">069</a></span>
+  unknown powers fought in the dark, from which the poet kept aloof,
+  for he could not see that God dwelt amidst the chaos. But Browning
+  found "harmony in immortal souls, spite of the muddy vesture of
+  decay." He found nature crowned in man, though man was mean and
+  miserable. At the heart of the most wretched abortion of wickedness
+  there was the mark of the loving touch of God. Shelley turned away
+  from man; Wordsworth paid him rare visits, like those of a being from
+  a strange world, made wise and sad with looking at him from afar;
+  Browning dwelt with him. He was a comrade in the fight, and ever in
+  the van of man's endeavour bidding him be of good cheer. He was a
+  witness for God in the midmost dark, where meet in deathless struggle
+  the elemental powers of right and wrong. For God is present for him,
+  not only in the order and beauty of nature, but in the world of will
+  and thought. Beneath the caprice and wilful lawlessness of individual
+  action, he saw a beneficent purpose which cannot fail, but "has its
+  way with man, not he with it."</p>
+
+  <p>Now this was a new world for poetry to enter into; a new depth to
+  penetrate with hope; and Browning was the first of modern poets
+  to</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Stoop</p>
+
+    <p>Into the vast and unexplored abyss,</p>
+
+    <p class="i8">Strenuously beating</p>
+
+    <p>The silent boundless regions of the sky."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is also a new world for religion and morality; <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg070" id="pg070">070</a></span> and to understand
+  it demands a deeper insight into the fundamental elements of human
+  life.</p>
+
+  <p>To show this in a proximately adequate manner, we should be
+  obliged, as already hinted, to connect the poet's work, not merely
+  with that of his English predecessors, but with the deeper and more
+  comprehensive movement of the thought of Germany since the time of
+  Kant. It would be necessary to indicate how, by breaking a way
+  through the narrow creeds and equally narrow scepticism of the
+  previous age, the new spirit extended the horizon of man's active and
+  contemplative life, and made him free of the universe, and the
+  repository of the past conquests of his race. It proposed to man the
+  great task of solving the problem of humanity, but it strengthened
+  him with its past achievement, and inspired him with the conviction
+  of its boundless progress. It is not that the significance of the
+  individual or the meaning of his endeavour is lost. Under this new
+  view, man has still to fight for his own hand, and it is still
+  recognized that spirit is always burdened with its own fate and
+  cannot share its responsibility. Morality does not give way to
+  religion or pass into it, and there is a sense in which the
+  individual is always alone in the sphere of duty.</p>
+
+  <p>But from this new point of view the individual is re-explained for
+  us, and we begin to understand that he is the focus of a light which
+  is universal, "one more incarnation of the mind of God." His moral
+  task is no longer to seek his own in the old sense, but to elevate
+  humanity; for it is only by <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg071" id=
+  "pg071">071</a></span> taking this circuit that he can come to his
+  own. Such a task as this is a sufficiently great one to occupy all
+  time; but it is to humanity in him that the task belongs, and it will
+  therefore be achieved. This is no new one-sidedness. It does not
+  mean, to those who comprehend it, the supplanting of the individual
+  thought by the collective thought, or the substitution of humanity
+  for man. The universal is <i>in</i> the particular, the fact
+  <i>is</i> the law. There is no collision between the whole and the
+  part, for the whole lives in the part. As each individual plant has
+  its own life and beauty and worth, although the universe has
+  conspired to bring it into being; so also, and in a far higher
+  degree, man has his own duty and his own dignity, although he is but
+  the embodiment of forces, natural and spiritual, which have come from
+  the endless past. Like a letter in a word, or a word in a sentence,
+  he gets his meaning from his context; <i>but the sentence is
+  meaningless without him</i>. "Rays from all round converge in him,"
+  and he has no power except that which has been lent to him; but all
+  the same, nay, all the more, he must</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Think as if man never thought before!</p>
+
+    <p>Act as if all creation hung attent</p>
+
+    <p>On the acting of such faculty as his."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His responsibility, his individuality, is not less, but greater,
+  in that he can, in his thought and moral action, command the forces
+  that the race has stored for him. The great man speaks the thought of
+  his <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg072" id="pg072">072</a></span>
+  people, and his invocations as their priest are just the expression
+  of their dumb yearnings. And even the mean and insignificant man is
+  what he is, in virtue of the humanity which is blurred and distorted
+  within him; and he can shed his insignificance and meanness, only by
+  becoming a truer vehicle for that humanity.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, when spirit is spiritually discerned, it is seen that man is
+  bound to man in a union closer than any physical organism can show;
+  while "the individual," in the old sense of a being <i>opposed</i> to
+  society and <i>opposed</i> to the world, is found to be a fiction of
+  abstract thought, not discoverable anywhere, because not real. And,
+  on the other hand, society is no longer "collective," but so organic
+  that the whole is potentially in every part&mdash;an organism
+  <i>of</i> organisms.</p>
+
+  <p>The influence of this organic idea in every department of thought
+  which concerns itself with man is not to be measured. It is already
+  fast changing all the practical sciences of man&mdash;economics,
+  politics, ethics and religion. The material, being newly interpreted,
+  is wrought into a new purpose, and revelation is once more bringing
+  about a reformation. But human action in its ethical aspect is, above
+  all, charged with a new significance. The idea of duty has received
+  an expansion almost illimitable, and man himself has thereby attained
+  new worth and dignity&mdash;for what is duty except a dignity and
+  opportunity, man's chance of being good? When we contrast this view
+  of the life of man as the life of humanity in him, with the old
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg073" id="pg073">073</a></span>
+  individualism, we may say that morality also has at last, in Bacon's
+  phrase, passed from the narrow seas into the open ocean. And after
+  all, the greatest achievement of our age may be not that it has
+  established the sciences of nature, but that it has made possible the
+  science of man. We have, at length, reached a point of view from
+  which we may hope to understand ourselves. Law, order, continuity, in
+  human action&mdash;the essential pre-conditions of a moral
+  science&mdash;were beyond the reach of an individualistic theory. It
+  left to ethical writers no choice but that of either sacrificing man
+  to law, or law to man; of denying either the particular or the
+  universal element in his nature. Naturalism did the first.
+  Intuitionism, the second. The former made human action the
+  <i>re</i>action of a natural agent on the incitement of natural
+  forces. It made man a mere object, a <i>thing</i> capable of being
+  affected by other things through his faculty of being pained or
+  pleased; an object acting in obedience to motives that had an
+  external origin, just like any other object. The latter theory cut
+  man free from the world and his fellows, endowed him with a will that
+  had no law, and a conscience that was dogmatic; and thereby succeeded
+  in stultifying both law and morality.</p>
+
+  <p>But this new consciousness of the relation of man to mankind and
+  the world takes him out of his isolation and still leaves him free.
+  It relates men to one another in a humanity, which is incarnated anew
+  in each of them. It elevates the individual above the <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg074" id="pg074">074</a></span> distinctions of
+  time; it treasures up the past in him as the active energy of his
+  knowledge and morality in the present, and also as the potency of the
+  ideal life of the future. On this view, the individual and the race
+  are possible only through each other.</p>
+
+  <p>This fundamental change in our way of looking at the life of man
+  is bound to abolish the ancient landmarks and bring confusion for a
+  time. Out of the new conception, <i>i.e.,</i> out of the idea of
+  evolution, has sprung the tumult as well as the strength of our time.
+  The present age is moved with thoughts beyond the reach of its
+  powers: great aspirations for the well-being of the people and high
+  ideals of social welfare flash across its mind, to be followed again
+  by thicker darkness. There is hardly any limit to its despair or
+  hope. It has a far larger faith in the destiny of man than any of its
+  predecessors, and yet it is <i>sure</i> of hardly
+  anything&mdash;except that the ancient rules of human life are false.
+  Individualism is now detected as scepticism and moral chaos in
+  disguise. We know that the old methods are no longer of use. We
+  cannot now cut ourselves free of the fate of others. The confused
+  cries for help that are heard on every hand are recognized as the
+  voices of our brethren; and we now know that our fate is involved in
+  theirs, and that the problem of their welfare is also ours. We
+  grapple with social questions at last, and recognize that the issues
+  of life and death lie in the solution of these enigmas. Legislators
+  and economists, teachers of religion and socialists, are all alike
+  social reformers. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg075" id=
+  "pg075">075</a></span> Philanthropy has taken a deeper meaning; and
+  all sects bear its banner. But their forces are beaten back by the
+  social wretchedness, for they have not found the sovereign remedy of
+  a great idea; and the result is in many ways sad enough. Our social
+  remedies often work mischief; for we degrade those whom we would
+  elevate, and in our charity forget justice. We insist on the rights
+  of the people and the duties of the privileged classes, and thereby
+  tend to teach greed to those for whom we labour, and goodness to
+  those whom we condemn. The task that lies before us is plain: we want
+  the welfare of the people as a whole. But we fail to grasp the
+  complex social elements together, and our very remedies tend to
+  sunder them. We know that the public good will not be obtained by
+  separating man from man, securing each unit in a charmed circle of
+  personal rights, and protecting it from others by isolation. We must
+  find a place for the individual within the social organism, and we
+  know now that this organism has not, as our fathers seemed to think,
+  the simple constitution of a wooden doll. Society is not put together
+  mechanically, and the individual cannot be outwardly attached to it,
+  if he is to be helped, He must rather share its life, be the heir of
+  the wealth it has garnered for him in the past, and participate in
+  its onward movement. Between this new social ideal and our
+  attainment, between the magnitude of our social duties and the
+  resources of intellect and will at our command, there lies a chasm
+  which we despair of bridging over.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg076" id="pg076">076</a></span>
+
+  <p>The characteristics of this epoch faithfully reflect themselves in
+  the pages of Carlyle, with whose thoughts those of Browning are
+  immediately connected. It was Carlyle who first effectively revealed
+  to England the continuity of human life, and the magnitude of the
+  issues of individual action. Seeing the infinite in the finite,
+  living under a continued sense of the mystery that surrounds man, he
+  flung explosive negations amidst the narrow formulae of the social
+  and religious orthodoxy of his day, blew down the blinding walls of
+  ethical individualism, and, amidst much smoke and din, showed his
+  English readers something of the greatness of the moral world. He
+  gave us a philosophy of clothes, penetrated through symbols to the
+  immortal ideas, condemned all shibboleths, and revealed the soul of
+  humanity behind the external modes of man's activity. He showed us,
+  in a word, that the world is spiritual, that loyalty to duty is the
+  foundation of all human good, and that national welfare rests on
+  character. After reading him, it is impossible for any one who
+  reflects on the nature of duty to ask, "Am I my brother's keeper?" He
+  not only imagined, but knew, how "all things the minutest that man
+  does, minutely influence all men, and the very look of his face
+  blesses or curses whom-so it lights on, and so generates ever new
+  blessing or new cursing. I say, there is not a Red Indian, hunting by
+  Lake Winnipeg, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must
+  smart for it: will not the price of beaver rise? It is a mathematical
+  fact <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg077" id="pg077">077</a></span>
+  that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of
+  gravity of the universe." Carlyle dealt the deathblow to the
+  "laissez-faire" theory rampant in his day, and made each individual
+  responsible for the race. He has demonstrated that the sphere of duty
+  does not terminate with ourselves and our next-door neighbours. There
+  will be no pure air for the correctest Levite to breathe, till the
+  laws of sanitation have been applied to the moral slums. "Ye are my
+  brethren," said he, and he adds, as if conscious of his too
+  denunciatory way of dealing with them, "hence my rage and
+  sorrow."</p>
+
+  <p>But his consciousness of brotherhood with all men brought only
+  despair for him. He saw clearly the responsibility of man, but not
+  the dignity which that implies; he felt the weight of the burden of
+  humanity upon his own soul, and it crushed him, for he forgot that
+  all the good of the world was there to help him bear it, and that
+  "One with God is a majority." He taught only the half-truth, that all
+  men are united on the side of duty, and that the spiritual life of
+  each is conditional on striving to save all. But he neglected the
+  complement of this truth, and forgot the greatness of the beings on
+  whom so great a duty could be laid. He therefore dignifies humanity
+  only to degrade it again. The "twenty millions" each must try to save
+  "are mostly fools." But how fools, when they can have such a task? Is
+  it not true, on the contrary, that no man ever saw a duty beyond his
+  strength, and that "man can because he <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg078" id="pg078">078</a></span> ought" and ought only because he
+  can? The evils an individual cannot overcome are the moral
+  opportunities of his fellows. The good are not lone workers of God's
+  purposes, and there is no need of despair. Carlyle, like the ancient
+  prophet, was too conscious of his own mission, and too forgetful of
+  that of others. "I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts;
+  because the children of Israel have forgotten Thy covenant, thrown
+  down Thine alters, and slain Thy prophets, and I, even I only, am
+  left; and they seek my life, to take it away." He needed, beside the
+  consciousness of his prophetic function, a consciousness of
+  brotherhood with humbler workers. "Yet I have left Me seven thousand
+  in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every
+  mouth which hath not kissed him." It would have helped him had he
+  remembered, that there were on all sides other workers engaged on the
+  temple not made with hands, although he could not hear the sound of
+  their hammers for the din he made himself. It would have changed his
+  despair into joy, and his pity into a higher moral quality, had he
+  been able to believe that, amidst all the millions against whom he
+  hurled his anathemas, there is no one who, let him do what he will,
+  is not constrained to illustrate either the folly and wretchedness of
+  sin, or the glory of goodness. It is not given to any one, least of
+  all to the wicked, to hold back the onward movement of the race, or
+  to destroy the impulse for good which is planted within
+  it.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg079" id=
+  "pg079">079</a></span>
+
+  <p>But Carlyle saw only one side of the truth about man's moral
+  nature and destiny. He knew, as the ancient prophets did, that evil
+  is potential wreck; and he taxed the power of metaphor to the utmost
+  to indicate, how wrong gradually takes root, and ripens into
+  putrescence and self-combustion, in obedience to a necessity which is
+  absolute. That morality is the essence of things, that wrong
+  <i>must</i> prove its weakness, that right is the only might, is
+  reiterated and illustrated on all his pages; they are now
+  commonplaces of speculation on matters of history, if not conscious
+  practical principles which guide its makers. But Carlyle never
+  inquired into the character of this moral necessity, and he
+  overlooked the beneficence which places death at the heart of sin. He
+  never saw wrong except on its way to execution, or in the death
+  throes; but he did not look in the face of the gentle power that led
+  it on to death. He saw the necessity which rules history, but not the
+  beneficent character of that necessity.</p>
+
+  <p>The same limitations marred his view of duty, which was his
+  greatest revelation to his age. He felt its categorical authority and
+  its binding force. But the power which imposed the duty was an alien
+  power, awful in majesty, infinite in might, a "great task-master";
+  and the duty itself was an outer law, written in letters of flame
+  across the high heavens, in comparison with which man's action at its
+  best sank into failure. His only virtue is obedience, and his last
+  rendering even of himself is <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg080"
+  id="pg080">080</a></span> "unprofitable servant." In this he has much
+  of the combined strength and weakness of the old Scottish Calvinism.
+  "He stands between the individual and the Infinite without hope or
+  guide. He has a constant disposition to crush the human being by
+  comparing him with God," said Mazzini, with marvellous penetration.
+  "From his lips, at times so daring, we seem to hear every instant the
+  cry of the Breton Mariner&mdash;'My God protect me! My bark is so
+  small, and Thy ocean so vast.'" His reconciliation of God and man was
+  incomplete: God seemed to him to have manifested Himself <i>to</i>
+  man but not <i>in</i> man. He did not see that "the Eternity which is
+  before and behind us is also within us."</p>
+
+  <p>But the moral law which commands is just the reflection of the
+  aspirations of progressive man, who always creates his own horizon.
+  The extension of duty is the objective counterpart of man's growth; a
+  proof of victory and not of failure, a sign that man is mounting
+  upwards. And, if so, it is irrational to infer the impossibility of
+  success from the magnitude of the demands of a moral law, which is
+  itself the promise of a better future. The hard problems set for us
+  by our social environment are recognized as set by ourselves; for, in
+  matters of morality, the eye sees only what the heart prompts. The
+  very statement of the difficulty contains the potency of its
+  solution; for evil, when understood, is on the way towards being
+  overcome, and the good, when seen, contains the promise of its own
+  fulfilment. It is ignorance which is ruinous, as when the cries of
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg081" id="pg081">081</a></span>
+  humanity beat against a deaf ear; and we can take a comfort, denied
+  to Carlyle, from the fact that he has made us awake to our social
+  duties. He has let loose the confusion upon us, and it is only
+  natural that we should at first be overcome by a sense of bewildered
+  helplessness. But this very sense contains the germ of hope, and
+  England is struggling to its feet to wrestle with its wrongs. Carlyle
+  has brought us within sight of our future, and we are now taking a
+  step into it. He has been our guide in the wilderness; but he died
+  there, and was denied the view from Pisgah.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, this view was given to Robert Browning, and he broke out into
+  a song of victory, whose strains will give strength and comfort to
+  many in the coming time. That his solution of the evils of life is
+  not final, may at once be admitted. There are elements in the problem
+  of which he has taken no account, and which will force those who seek
+  light on the deeper mysteries of man's moral nature, to go beyond
+  anything that the poet has to say. Even the poet himself grows, at
+  least in some directions, less confident of the completeness of his
+  triumph as he grows older. His faith in the good does not fail, but
+  it is the faith of one who confesses to ignorance, and links himself
+  to his finitude. Still, so thorough is his conviction of the moral
+  purpose of life, of the certainty of the good towards which man is
+  moving, and of the beneficence of the power which is at work
+  everywhere in the world, that many of his poems ring like the
+  triumphant songs of Luther.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg082"
+  id="pg082">082</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch04" id="ch04">CHAPTER IV.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>BROWNING'S OPTIMISM.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Gladness be with thee, Helper of the World!</p>
+
+    <p>I think this is the authentic sign and seal</p>
+
+    <p>Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad,</p>
+
+    <p>And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts</p>
+
+    <p>Into a rage to suffer for mankind,</p>
+
+    <p>And recommence at sorrow."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Balaustion's Adventure</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>I have tried to show that one of the distinctive features of the
+  present era is the stress it lays on the worth of the moral life of
+  man, and the new significance it has given to that life by its view
+  of the continuity of history. This view finds expression, on its
+  social and ethical side, in the pages of Carlyle and Browning: both
+  of whom are interested exclusively, one may almost say, in the
+  evolution of human character; and both of whom, too, regard that
+  evolution as the realization by man of the purposes, greater than
+  man's, which rule in the world. And, although neither of them
+  developed the organic view of humanity, which is implied in their
+  doctrines, into an explicit philosophy, still the moral life of the
+  individual is for each of them the infinite life in the finite. The
+  meaning of the universe is <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg083" id=
+  "pg083">083</a></span> moral, its last might is rightness; and the
+  task of man is to catch up that meaning, convert it into his own
+  motive, and thereby make it the source of his actions, the inmost
+  principle of his life. This, fully grasped, will bring the finite and
+  the infinite, morality and religion, together, and reconcile
+  them.</p>
+
+  <p>But the reconciliation which Carlyle sought to effect was
+  incomplete on every side&mdash;even within the sphere of duty, with
+  which alone, as moralist, he specially concerned himself. The moral
+  law was imposed upon man by a higher power, in the presence of whom
+  man was awed and crushed; for that power had stinted man's endowment,
+  and set him to fight a hopeless battle against endless evil. God was
+  everywhere around man, and the universe was just the expression of
+  His will&mdash;a will inexorably bent on the good, so that evil could
+  not prevail; but God was not <i>within</i> man, except as a voice of
+  conscience issuing imperatives and threats. An infinite duty was laid
+  upon a finite being, and its weight made him break out into a cry of
+  despair.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning, however, not only sought to bring about the
+  reconciliation, but succeeded, in so far as that is possible <i>in
+  terms of mere feeling</i>. His poetry contains suggestions that the
+  moral will without is also a force within man; that the power which
+  makes for righteousness in the world has penetrated into, or rather
+  manifests itself <i>as</i>, man. Intelligence and will, the reason
+  which apprehends the nature of things, and the original impulse of
+  self-conscious life which issues in action, are God's power in man;
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg084" id="pg084">084</a></span> so
+  that God is realizing Himself in the deeds of man, and human history
+  is just His return to Himself. Outer law and inner motive are, for
+  the poet, manifestations of the same beneficent purpose; and instead
+  of duty in the sense of an autocratic imperative, or beneficent
+  tyranny, he finds, deep beneath man's foolishness and sin, a constant
+  tendency towards the good which is bound up with the very nature of
+  man's reason and will. If man could only understand himself he would
+  find without him no limiting necessity, but the manifestation of a
+  law which is one with his own essential being. A beneficent power has
+  loaded the dice, according to the epigram, so that the chances of
+  failure and victory are not even; for man's nature is itself a divine
+  endowment, one with the power that rules his life, and man must
+  finally reach through error to truth, and through sin to holiness. In
+  the language of theology, it may be said that the moral process is
+  the spiritual incarnation of God; it is God's goodness as love,
+  effecting itself in human action. Hence Carlyle's cry of despair is
+  turned by Browning into a song of victory. While the former regards
+  the struggle between good and evil as a fixed battle, in which the
+  forces are immovably interlocked, the latter has the consciousness of
+  battling against a retreating foe; and the conviction of coming
+  triumph gives joyous vigour to every stroke. Browning lifted morality
+  into an optimism, and translated its battle into song. This was the
+  distinctive mark and mission which give to him such power of moral
+  inspiration.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg085" id=
+  "pg085">085</a></span>
+
+  <p>In order, however, to estimate the value of this feature of the
+  poet's work, it is necessary to look more closely into the character
+  of his faith in the good. Merely to attribute to him an optimistic
+  creed is to say very little; for the worth, or worthlessness, of such
+  a creed depends upon its content&mdash;upon its fidelity to the facts
+  of human life, the clearness of its consciousness of the evils it
+  confronts, and the intensity of its realism.</p>
+
+  <p>There is a sense, and that a true one, in which it may be said
+  that all men are optimists; for such a faith is implied in every
+  conscious and deliberate action of man. There is no deed which is not
+  an attempt to realize an ideal; whenever man acts he seeks a good,
+  however ruinously he may misunderstand its nature. Final and absolute
+  disbelief in an ultimate good in the sphere of morals, like absolute
+  scepticism in the sphere of knowledge, is a disguised
+  self-contradiction, and therefore an impossibility in fact. The one
+  stultifies action, and asserts an effect without any cause, or even
+  contrary to the cause; the other stultifies intellectual activity:
+  and both views imply that the critic has so escaped the conditions of
+  human life, as to be able to pass a condemnatory judgment upon them.
+  The belief that a harmonious relation between the self-conscious
+  agent and the supreme good is possible, underlies the practical
+  activity of man; just as the belief in the unity of thought and being
+  underlies his intellectual activity. A moral order&mdash;that is, an
+  order of rational ends&mdash;is postulated in all human <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg086" id="pg086">086</a></span> actions, and we
+  act at all only in virtue of it,&mdash;just as truly as we move and
+  work only in virtue of the forces which make the spheres revolve, or
+  think by help of the meaning which presses upon us from the
+  thought-woven world, through all the pores of sense. A true ethics,
+  like a true psychology, or a true science of nature, must lean upon
+  metaphysics, and it cannot pretend to start <i>ab initio</i>. We live
+  in the Copernican age, which puts the individual in a system, in
+  obedience to whose laws he finds his welfare. And this is simply the
+  assertion of an optimistic creed, for it implies a harmonious
+  world.</p>
+
+  <p>But, though this is true, it must be remembered that this faith is
+  a prophetic anticipation, rather than acquired knowledge. We are only
+  on the way towards reconstructing in thought the fact which we are,
+  or towards bringing into clear knowledge the elemental power which
+  manifests itself within us as thought, desire, and deed. And, until
+  this is achieved, we have no full right to an optimistic creed. The
+  revelation of the unity which pervades all things, even in the
+  natural world, will be the last attainment of science; and the
+  reconciliation of nature and man and God is still further in the
+  future, and will be the last triumph of philosophy. During all the
+  interval the world will be a scene of warring elements; and poetry,
+  religion, and philosophy can only hold forth a promise, and give to
+  man a foretaste of ultimate victory. And in this state of things even
+  <i>their</i> assurance often <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg087"
+  id="pg087">087</a></span> falters. Faith lapses into doubt, poetry
+  becomes a wail for a lost god, and its votary exhibits, "through
+  Europe to the AEtolian shore, the pageant of his bleeding heart." The
+  optimistic faith is, as a rule, only a hope and a desire, a "Grand
+  Perhaps," which knows no defence against the critical understanding,
+  and sinks dumb when questioned. If, in the form of a religious
+  conviction, its assurance is more confident, then, too often, it
+  rests upon the treacherous foundations of authoritative ignorance,
+  which crumble into dust beneath the blows of awakened and liberated
+  reason. Nay, if by the aid of philosophy we turn our optimism into a
+  faith held by reason, a fact before which the intellect, as well as
+  the heart, worships and grows glad, it still is for most of us only a
+  general hypothesis, a mere leap to God which spurns the intermediate
+  steps, a universal without content, a bare form that lacks
+  reality.</p>
+
+  <p>Such an optimism, such a plunge into the pure blue and away from
+  facts, was Emerson's. Caroline Fox tells a story of him and Carlyle
+  which reveals this very pointedly. It seems that Carlyle once led the
+  serene philosopher through the abominations of the streets of London
+  at midnight, asking him with grim humour at every few steps, "Do you
+  believe in the devil <i>now</i>?" Emerson replied that the more he
+  saw of the English people the greater and better he thought them.
+  This little incident lays bare the limits of both these great men.
+  Where the one saw, the other was blind. To the <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg088" id="pg088">088</a></span> one there was the
+  misery and the universal mirk; to the other, the pure white beam was
+  scarcely broken. Carlyle believed in the good, beyond all doubt: he
+  fought his great battle in its strength and won, but "he was sorely
+  wounded." Emerson was Sir Galahad, blind to all but the Holy Grail,
+  his armour spotless-white, his virtue cloistered and unbreathed, his
+  race won without the dust and heat. But his optimism was too easy to
+  be satisfactory. His victory was not won in the enemy's citadel,
+  where sin sits throned amidst the chaos, but in the placid upper air
+  of poetic imagination. And, in consequence, Emerson can only convince
+  the converted; and his song is not heard in the dark, nor does it
+  cheer the wayfarer on the muddy highway, along which burthened
+  humanity meanly toils.</p>
+
+  <p>But Browning's optimism is more earnest and real than any pious
+  hope, or dogmatic belief, or benevolent theory held by a placid
+  philosopher, protected against contact with the sins and sorrows of
+  man as by an invisible garment of contemplative holiness. It is a
+  conviction which has sustained shocks of criticism and the test of
+  facts; and it therefore, both for the poet and his readers, fulfils a
+  mission beyond the reach of any easy trust in a mystic good. Its
+  power will be felt and its value recognized by those who have
+  themselves confronted the contradictions of human life and known
+  their depths.</p>
+
+  <p>No lover of Browning's poetry can miss the vigorous manliness of
+  the poet's own bearing, or fail <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg089"
+  id="pg089">089</a></span> to recognize the strength that flows from
+  his joyous, fearless personality, and the might of his intellect and
+  heart. "When British literature," said Carlyle of Scott and Cobbett,
+  "lay all puking and sprawling in Wertherism, Byronism and other
+  Sentimentalisms, nature was kind enough to send us two healthy men."
+  And he breaks out into a eulogy of mere health, of "the just balance
+  of faculties that radiates a glad light outwards, enlightening and
+  embellishing all things." But he finds it easy to account for the
+  health of these men: they had never faced the mystery of existence.
+  Such healthiness we find in Browning, although he wrote with Carlyle
+  at his side, and within earshot of the infinite wail of this moral
+  fatalist. And yet, the word health is inadequate to convey the depth
+  of the joyous meaning which the poet found in the world. His optimism
+  was not a constitutional and irreflective hopefulness, to be
+  accounted for on the ground that "the great mystery of existence was
+  not great to him: did not drive him into rocky solitudes to wrestle
+  with it for an answer, to be answered or to perish." There are,
+  indeed, certain rash and foolish persons who pretend to trace
+  Browning's optimism to his mixed descent; but there is a "pause in
+  the leading and the light" of those wiseacres, who pretend to trace
+  moral and mental characteristics to physiological antecedents. They
+  cannot quite catch a great man in the making, nor, even by the help
+  of evolution, say anything wiser about genius than that "the
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg090" id="pg090">090</a></span> wind
+  bloweth where it listeth." No doubt the poet's optimism indicates a
+  native sturdiness of head and heart. He had the invaluable endowment
+  of a pre-disposition to see the sunny side of life, and a native
+  tendency to revolt against that subjectivity, which is the root of
+  our misery in all its forms. He had little respect for the
+  <i>Welt-schmerz,</i> and can scarcely be civil to the hero of the
+  bleeding heart.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Sinning, sorrowing, despairing,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Body-ruined, spirit-wrecked&mdash;</p>
+
+      <p>Should I give my woes an airing,&mdash;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Where's one plague that claims respect?</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Have you found your life distasteful?</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">My life did, and does, smack sweet.</p>
+
+      <p>Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Mine I saved and hold complete.</p>
+
+      <p>Do your joys with age diminish?</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">When mine fail me I'll complain.</p>
+
+      <p>Must in death your daylight finish?</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">My sun sets to rise again.</p>
+      <hr />
+
+      <p>"I find earth not grey but rosy,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Heaven not grim but fair of hue.</p>
+
+      <p>Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Do I stand and stare? All's blue."<sup>A</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>At the Mermaid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 God'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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg091"
+  id="pg091">091</a></span> mind, as it did beyond a mere sentiment of
+  God'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 <i>in feeling</i> 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,&mdash;that it comes after criticism,
+  after the condemnation which Byron and Carlyle had passed, each from
+  his own point of view, on the world and on man.</p>
+
+  <p>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.
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg092" id="pg092">092</a></span> Both
+  are a judgment passed 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 <i>Sans-culotte</i> 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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Expend</p>
+
+    <p>Eternity upon its shows,</p>
+
+    <p>Flung them as freely as one rose</p>
+
+    <p>Out of a summer's opulence."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Easter Day</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But the very discovery that man is spirit, which is the source of
+  all his rights, is also an implicit <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg093" id="pg093">093</a></span> 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 <i>to eat,</i> and
+  shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? Close
+  thy Byron, open thy Goethe."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Huntsman Common Sense</p>
+
+    <p>Came to the rescue, bade prompt thwack of thong dispense</p>
+
+    <p>Quiet i' the kennel: taught that ocean might be blue,</p>
+
+    <p>And rolling and much more, and yet the soul have, too,</p>
+
+    <p>Its touch of God's own flame, which He may so expand</p>
+
+    <p>'Who measured the waters i' the hollow of His hand'</p>
+
+    <p>That ocean's self shall dry, turn dew-drop in respect</p>
+
+    <p>Of all-triumphant fire, matter with intellect</p>
+
+    <p>Once fairly matched."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, lxvii.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg094" id="pg094">094</a></span>
+  <i>Entsagung</i>, 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 <i>thou</i> shouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou
+  hadst no right to <i>be</i> 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 nobler 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 shine."</p>
+
+  <p>In such passages as these, there is far deeper pessimism than in
+  anything which Byron could experience or express. Scepticism is
+  directed by <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg095" id=
+  "pg095">095</a></span> Carlyle, not against the natural elements of
+  life&mdash;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 God'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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg096" id="pg096">096</a></span>
+  menace&mdash;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 <i>his</i> 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 God. And consequently, he can draw little strength from
+  religion; for it is only love that can cast out fear.</p>
+
+  <p>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
+  kinship. 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&mdash;not the infinite, because it is too great, not
+  the finite, because it is too little; not God, 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"&mdash;the World, Self, and God&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, these evils which reflection has revealed, and which are so
+  much deeper than those of mere sensuous <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg097" id="pg097">097</a></span> 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&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"In thine own soul, build it up again."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 God. 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, I am prepared to admit the force of this objection, and I
+  shall endeavour in the sequel to <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg098" id="pg098">098</a></span> 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,&mdash;for
+  instance, in <i>La Saisiaz, Ferishtatis Fancies</i> and the
+  <i>Parleyings</i>, Browning sought to advance definite proofs of the
+  theories which he held. He appears before us at times armed
+  <i>cap-à-pie,</i> 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 noble lie" and "the truth beneath the veil" seem no longer to
+  help. He <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg099" id=
+  "pg099">099</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;for all principles of
+  reconciliation, even those of the sciences, as long as knowledge is
+  incomplete, must be regarded as hypotheses&mdash;but also as a
+  hypothesis which he had no right to assume. It may be that in the end
+  we shall be obliged to say of him, as of so many others&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"See the sage, with the hunger for the truth,</p>
+
+    <p>And see his system that's all true, except</p>
+
+    <p>The one weak place, that's stanchioned by a lie!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg100" id="pg100">100</a></span>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>For Browning not only advanced a principle, whereby, as he
+  conceived, man might again be reconciled to the world and God, 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 illustrates 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 <i>all</i> facts; one fact, ultimately
+  irreconcilable with his hypothesis, will, he knows, destroy
+  it.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg101" id=
+  "pg101">101</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"All the same,</p>
+
+    <p>Of absolute and irretrievable black,&mdash;black's soul of
+    black</p>
+
+    <p>Beyond white's power to disintensify,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Of that I saw no sample: such may wreck</p>
+
+    <p>My life and ruin my philosophy</p>
+
+    <p>Tomorrow, doubtless."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Bean Stripe</i>&mdash;<i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He knew that, to justify God, he had to justify <i>all</i> His
+  ways to man; that if the good rules at all, it rules absolutely; and
+  that a single exception would confute his optimism.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"So, gazing up, in my youth, at love</p>
+
+    <p>As seen through power, ever above</p>
+
+    <p>All modes which make it manifest,</p>
+
+    <p>My soul brought all to a single test&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>That He, the Eternal First and Last,</p>
+
+    <p>Who, in His power, had so surpassed</p>
+
+    <p>All man conceives of what is might,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;Would prove as infinitely good;</p>
+
+    <p>Would never, (my soul understood,)</p>
+
+    <p>With power to work all love desires,</p>
+
+    <p>Bestow e'en less than man requires."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p><i>B: Christmas Eve.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,</p>
+
+    <p>Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,</p>
+
+    <p>The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it,</p>
+
+    <p>Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it.</p>
+
+    <p>And I shall behold Thee, face to face,</p>
+
+    <p>O God, and in Thy light retrace</p>
+
+    <p>How in all I loved here, still wast Thou!"<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>We can scarcely miss the emphasis of the poet's own conviction in
+  these passages, or in the assertion that,&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"The acknowledgment of God in Christ</p>
+
+    <p>Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee</p><span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg102" id="pg102">102</a></span>
+
+    <p>All questions in the earth and out of it,</p>
+
+    <p>And has so far advanced thee to be wise."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Consequently, there is a defiant and aggressive element in his
+  attitude. 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 passion, 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&mdash;in malice, cruelty, ignorance,
+  brutishness, meanness, the irrational perversity of a corrupt
+  disposition, and the subtleties of philosophic and aesthetic
+  falsehood&mdash;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 God'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 transmuting," and that there is nought in the
+  world.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg103" id=
+  "pg103">103</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"But, touched aright, prompt yields each particle its tongue</p>
+
+    <p>Of elemental flame&mdash;no matter whence flame sprung,</p>
+
+    <p>From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>All we want is&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"The power to make them burn, express</p>
+
+    <p>What lights and warms henceforth, leaves only ash behind,</p>
+
+    <p>Howe'er the chance."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He had Pompilia's faith.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"And still, as the day wore, the trouble grew,</p>
+
+    <p>Whereby I guessed there would be born a star."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He goes forth in the might of his faith in the power of good, as
+  if he wished once for all to try the resources of evil at their
+  uttermost, and pass upon it a complete and final condemnation. With
+  this view, he seeks evil in its own haunts. He creates Guido, the
+  subtlest and most powerful compound of vice in our
+  literature&mdash;except Iago, perhaps&mdash;merely in order that we
+  may see evil at its worst; and he places him in an environment suited
+  to his nature, as if he was carrying out an <i>experimentum
+  crucis.</i> The</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Midmost blotch of black</p>
+
+    <p>Discernible in the group of clustered crimes</p>
+
+    <p>Huddling together in the cave they call</p>
+
+    <p>Their palace."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 869-872.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Beside him are his brothers, each with his own "tint of hell"; his
+  mistress, on whose face even Pompilia saw the glow of the nether pit
+  "flash and fade"; and his mother&mdash;</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg104" id="pg104">104</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"The gaunt grey nightmare in the furthest smoke,</p>
+
+    <p>The hag that gave these three abortions birth,</p>
+
+    <p>Unmotherly mother and unwomanly</p>
+
+    <p>Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame,</p>
+
+    <p>Womanliness to loathing"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 911-915.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Such "denizens o' the cave now cluster round Pompilia and heat the
+  furnace sevenfold." While she</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Sent prayer like incense up</p>
+
+    <p>To God the strong, God the beneficent,</p>
+
+    <p>God ever mindful in all strife and strait,</p>
+
+    <p>Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme,</p>
+
+    <p>Till at the last He puts forth might and saves."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>Pompilia</i>,
+    1384-1388.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In these lines we feel the poet's purpose, constant throughout the
+  whole poem. We know all the while that with him at our side we can
+  travel safely through the depths of the Inferno&mdash;for the flames
+  bend back from him; and it is only what we expect as the result of it
+  all, that there should come</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"A bolt from heaven to cleave roof and clear place,</p>
+
+    <p class="i10">. . . . then flood</p>
+
+    <p>And purify the scene with outside day&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Which yet, in the absolutest drench of dark,</p>
+
+    <p>Ne'er wants its witness, some stray beauty-beam</p>
+
+    <p>To the despair of hell."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    996-1003.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The superabundant strength of Browning's conviction in the
+  supremacy of the good, which led him in <i>The Ring and the Book</i>
+  to depict criminals at their worst, forced him later on in his life
+  to exhibit evil in another form. The real meaning <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg105" id="pg105">105</a></span> and value of such
+  poems as <i>Fifine at the Fair, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Red
+  Cotton Nightcap Country, Ferishtah's Francies</i>, and others, can
+  only be determined by a careful and complete analysis of each of
+  them. But they have one characteristic so prominent, and so new in
+  poetry, that the most careless reader cannot fail to detect it.
+  Action and dramatic treatment give place to a discussion which is
+  metaphysical; instead of the conflict of motives within a character,
+  the stress and strain of passion and will in collision with
+  circumstances, there is reflection on action after it has passed, and
+  the conflict of subtle arguments on the ethical value of motives and
+  ways of conduct, which the ordinary moral consciousness condemns
+  without hesitation. All agree that these poems represent a new
+  departure in poetry, and some consider that in them the poet, in thus
+  dealing with metaphysical abstractions, has overleapt the boundaries
+  of the poetic art. To such critics, this later period seems the
+  period of his decadence, in which the casuistical tendencies, which
+  had already appeared in <i>Bishop Blougram's Apology, Mr. Sludge the
+  Medium</i>, and other poems, have overwhelmed his art, and his
+  intellect, in its pride of strength, has grown wanton. <i>Fifine at
+  the Fair is</i> said to be "a defence of inconstancy, or of the right
+  of experiment in love." Its hero, who is "a modern gentleman, a
+  refined, cultured, musical, artistic and philosophic person, of high
+  attainments, lofty aspirations, strong emotions, and capricious
+  will," produces arguments "wide in range, of profound <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg106" id="pg106">106</a></span> significance and
+  infinite ingenuity," to defend and justify immoral intercourse with a
+  gipsy trull. The poem consists of the speculations of a libertine,
+  who coerces into his service truth and sophistry, and "a
+  superabounding wealth of thought and imagery," and with no further
+  purpose on the poet's part than the dramatic delineation of
+  character. <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i> is spoken of in a
+  similar manner as the justification, by reference to the deepest
+  principles of morality, of compromise, hypocrisy, lying, and a
+  selfishness that betrays every cause to the individual's meanest
+  welfare. The object of the poet is "by no means to prove black white,
+  or white black, or to make the worse appear the better reason, but to
+  bring a seeming monster and perplexing anomaly under the common laws
+  of nature, by showing how it has grown to be what it is, and how it
+  can with more or less self-delusion reconcile itself to itself."</p>
+
+  <p>I am not able to accept this as a complete explanation of the
+  intention of the poet, except with reference to <i>Prince
+  Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i> The <i>Prince</i> is a psychological study,
+  like <i>Mr. Sludge the Medium,</i> and <i>Bishop Blougram</i>. No
+  doubt he had the interest of a dramatist in the hero of <i>Fifine at
+  the Fair</i> and in the hero of <i>Red Cotton Nightcap Country;</i>
+  but, in these poems, his dramatic interest is itself determined by an
+  ethical purpose, which is equally profound. His meeting with the
+  gipsy at Pornic, and the spectacle of her unscrupulous audacity in
+  vice, not only "sent his fancy roaming," but opened <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg107" id="pg107">107</a></span> out before him
+  the fundamental problems of life. What I would find, therefore, in
+  <i>Fifine at the Fair</i> is not the casuistic defence of an artistic
+  and speculative libertine, but an earnest attempt on the part of the
+  poet to prove,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"That, through the outward sign, the inward grace allures,</p>
+
+    <p>And sparks from heaven transpierce earth's coarsest
+    covertures,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>All by demonstrating the value of Fifine."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, xxviii.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Within his scheme of the universal good he seeks to find a place
+  even for this gipsy creature, who traffics "in just what we most
+  pique us that we keep." Having, in the <i>Ring and the Book</i>,
+  challenged evil at its worst as it manifests itself practically in
+  concrete characters and external action, and having wrung from it the
+  victory of the good, in <i>Fifine</i> and in his other later poems he
+  meets it again in the region of dialectic. In this sphere of
+  metaphysical ethics, evil has assumed a more dangerous form,
+  especially for an artist. His optimistic faith has driven the poet
+  into a realm into which poetry never ventured before. His battle is
+  now, not with flesh and blood, but with the subtler powers of
+  darkness grown vocal and argumentative, and threatening to turn the
+  poet's faith in good into a defence of immorality, and to justify the
+  worst evil by what is highest of all. Having indicated in outward
+  fact "the need," as well as the "transiency of sin and death," he
+  seeks here to prove that need, and seems, thereby, to degrade the
+  highest truth of religion into a defence of the worst
+  wickedness.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg108" id=
+  "pg108">108</a></span>
+
+  <p>No doubt the result is sufficiently repulsive to the abstract
+  moralist, who is apt to find in <i>Fifine</i> nothing but a
+  casuistical and shameless justification of evil, which is blasphemy
+  against goodness itself. We are made to "discover," for instance,
+  that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"There was just</p>
+
+    <p>Enough and not too much of hate, love, greed and lust,</p>
+
+    <p>Could one discerningly but hold the balance, shift</p>
+
+    <p>The weight from scale to scale, do justice to the drift</p>
+
+    <p>Of nature, and explain the glories by the shames</p>
+
+    <p>Mixed up in man, one stuff miscalled by different names."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>We are told that&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Force, guile were arms which earned</p>
+
+    <p>My praise, not blame at all."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, cviii.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Confronted with such utterances as these, it is only natural that,
+  rather than entangle the poet in them, we should regard them as the
+  sophistries of a philosophical Don Juan, powerful enough, under the
+  stress of self-defence, to confuse the distinctions of right and
+  wrong. But, as we shall try to show in the next chapter, such an
+  apparent justification of evil cannot be avoided by a reflective
+  optimist; and it is implicitly contained even in those religious
+  utterances of <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra, Christmas Eve</i>, and <i>A Death in
+  the Desert</i>, with which we not only identify the poet but
+  ourselves, in so far as we share his faith that</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg109" id="pg109">109</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"God's in His heaven,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>All's right with the world."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The poet had far too much speculative acumen to be ignorant of
+  this, and too much boldness and strength of conviction in the might
+  of the good, to refuse to confront the issues that sprang from it. In
+  his later poems, as in his earlier ones, he is endeavouring to
+  justify the ways of God to man; and the difficulties which surround
+  him are not those of a casuist, but the stubborn questionings of a
+  spirit, whose religious faith is thoroughly earnest and fearless. To
+  a spirit so loyal to the truth, and so bold to follow its leading,
+  the suppression of such problems is impossible; and, consequently, it
+  was inevitable that he should use the whole strength of his dialectic
+  to try those fundamental principles, on which the moral life of man
+  is based. And it is this, I believe, which we find in <i>Fifine</i>,
+  as in <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i> and the <i>Parleyings</i>; not an
+  exhibition of the argumentative subtlety of a mind whose strength has
+  become lawless, and which spends itself in intellectual gymnastics,
+  that have no place within the realm of either the beautiful or the
+  true.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg110" id=
+  "pg110">110</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch05" id="ch05">CHAPTER V.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>OPTIMISM AND ETHICS: THEIR CONTRADICTION.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,</p>
+
+    <p>Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky</p>
+
+    <p>Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull</p>
+
+    <p>Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>"But most it is presumption in us, when</p>
+
+    <p>The help of heaven we count the act of men."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>All's Well that Ends Well</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>I have tried to show that one of the ruling conceptions of
+  Browning's view of life is that the Good is absolute, and that it
+  reveals itself in all the events of human life. By means of this
+  conception, he endeavoured to bring together the elements which had
+  fallen asunder in the sensational and moral pessimism of Byron and
+  Carlyle. In other words, through the re-interpreting power which lies
+  in this fundamental thought when it is soberly held and fearlessly
+  applied, he sought to reconcile man with the world and with God, and
+  thereby with himself. And the governing motive, whether the conscious
+  motive or not, of Browning's poetry, the secret impulse which led him
+  to dramatise the conflicts and antagonisms of human life, was the
+  necessity of finding in them evidence of the presence of this
+  absolute Good.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg111" id=
+  "pg111">111</a></span>
+
+  <p>Browning's optimism was deep and comprehensive enough to reject
+  all compromise. His faith in the good seemed to rise with the demands
+  that were made upon it by the misery and wickedness of man, and the
+  apparently purposeless waste of life and its resources. There was in
+  it a deliberate earnestness which led him to grapple, not only with
+  the concrete difficulties of individual life, but with those also
+  that spring from reflection and theory.</p>
+
+  <p>The test of a philosophic optimism, as of any optimism which is
+  more than a pious sentiment, must finally lie in its power to reveal
+  the presence of the good in actual individual evils. But there are
+  difficulties still nearer than those presented by concrete facts,
+  difficulties arising out of the very suggestion that evil is a form
+  of good. Such speculative difficulties must be met by a reflective
+  mind, before it can follow out the application of an optimistic
+  theory to particular facts. Now, Browning's creed, at least as he
+  held it in his later years, was not merely the allowable exaggeration
+  of an ecstatic religious sentiment, the impassioned conviction of a
+  God-intoxicated man. It was deliberately presented as a solution of
+  moral problems, and was intended to serve as a theory of the
+  spiritual nature of things. It is, therefore, justly open to the same
+  kind of criticism as that to which a philosophic doctrine is exposed.
+  The poet deprived himself of the refuge, legitimate enough to the
+  intuitive method of art, when, in his later works, he not only
+  offered a dramatic solution of the problem of life, but <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg112" id="pg112">112</a></span> definitely
+  attempted to meet the difficulties of speculative ethics.</p>
+
+  <p>In this chapter I shall point out some of these difficulties, and
+  then proceed to show how the poet proposed to solve them.</p>
+
+  <p>A thorough-going optimism, in that it subdues all things to the
+  idea of the supreme Good, and denies to evil the right even to
+  dispute the absoluteness of its sway, naturally seems to imply a
+  pantheistic theory of the world. And Browning's insistence on the
+  presence of the highest in all things may easily be regarded as a
+  mere revival of the oldest and crudest attempts at finding their
+  unity in God. For if <i>all</i>, as he says, is for the best, there
+  seems to be no room left for the differences apparent in the world,
+  and the variety which gives it beauty and worth. Particular
+  existences would seem to be illusory and evanescent phenomena, the
+  creations of human imagination, itself a delusive appearance. The
+  infinite, on this view, stands over against the finite, and it
+  overpowers and consumes it; and the optimism, implied in the phrase
+  that "God is all," turns at once into a pessimism. For, as soon as we
+  inquire into the meaning of this "all," we find that it is only a
+  negation of everything we can know or be. Such a pantheism as this is
+  self-contradictory; for, while seeming to level all things upwards to
+  a manifestation of the divine, it really levels all downwards to the
+  level of mere unqualified being, a stagnant and empty unknowable. It
+  leaves only a choice <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg113" id=
+  "pg113">113</a></span> between akosmism and atheism, and, at the same
+  time, it makes each of the alternatives impossible. For, in
+  explaining the world it abolishes it, and in abolishing the world it
+  empties itself of all signification; so that the Godhood which it
+  attempts to establish throughout the whole realm of being, is found
+  to mean nothing. "It is the night, in which all cows are black."</p>
+
+  <p>The optimistic creed, which the poet strove to teach, must,
+  therefore, not only establish the immanence of God, but show in some
+  way how such immanence is consistent with the existence of particular
+  things. His doctrine that there is no failure, or folly, or
+  wickedness, or misery, but conceals within it, at its heart, a divine
+  element; that there is no incident in human history which is not a
+  pulsation of the life of the highest, and which has not its place in
+  a scheme of universal good, must leave room for the moral life of
+  man, and all the risks which morality brings with it. Otherwise,
+  optimism is impossible. For a God who, in filling the universe with
+  His presence, encroaches on the freedom and extinguishes the
+  independence of man, precludes the possibility of all that is best
+  for man&mdash;namely, moral achievement. Life, deprived of its moral
+  purpose, is worthless to the poet, and so, in consequence, is all
+  that exists in order to maintain that life. Optimism and ethics seem
+  thus to come into immediate collision. The former, finding the
+  presence of God in all things, seems to leave no room for man; and
+  the latter seems to set man to <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg114"
+  id="pg114">114</a></span> work out his own destiny in solitude, and
+  to give him supreme and absolute authority over his own life; so that
+  any character which he forms, be it good or bad, is entirely the
+  product of his own activity. So far as his life is culpable or
+  praiseworthy, in other words, so far as we pass any moral judgment
+  upon it, we necessarily think of it as the revelation of a self, that
+  is, of an independent will, which cannot divide its responsibility.
+  There may be, and indeed there always is for every individual, a
+  hereditary predisposition and a soliciting environment, tendencies
+  which are his inheritance from a remote past, and which rise to the
+  surface in his own life; in other words, the life of the individual
+  is always led within the larger sweep of the life of humanity. He is
+  part of a whole, and has his place fixed, and his function
+  predetermined, by a power which is greater than his own. But, if we
+  are to call him good or evil, if he is to aspire and repent and
+  strive, in a word, if he is to have any <i>moral</i> character, he
+  cannot be merely a part of a system; there must be something within
+  him which is superior to circumstances, and which makes him master of
+  his own fate. His natural history may begin with the grey dawn of
+  primal being, but his moral history begins with himself, from the
+  time when he first reacted upon the world in which he is placed, and
+  transformed his natural relations into will and character. For who
+  can be responsible for what he did not will? What could a moral
+  imperative mean, what could an "ought" signify, to a being who was
+  only a <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg115" id=
+  "pg115">115</a></span> temporary embodiment of forces, who are prior
+  to, and independent of himself? It would seem, therefore, as if
+  morality were irreconcilable with optimism. The moral life of man
+  cannot be the manifestation of a divine benevolence whose purpose is
+  necessary; it is a trust laid upon himself, which he may either
+  violate or keep. It surpasses divine goodness, "tho' matched with
+  equal power" to <i>make</i> man good, as it has made the flowers
+  beautiful. From this point of view, spiritual attainment, whether
+  intellectual or moral, is man's own, a spontaneous product. Just as
+  God is conceived as all in all in the universe, so man is all in all
+  within the sphere of duty; for the kingdom of heaven is within. In
+  both cases alike, there is absolute exclusion of external
+  interference.</p>
+
+  <p>For this reason, it has often seemed both to philosophers and
+  theologians, as if the world were too confined to hold within it both
+  God and man. In the East, the consciousness of the infinite seemed at
+  times to leave no room for the finite; and in the West, where the
+  consciousness of the finite and interest therein is strongest, and
+  man strives and aspires, a Deism arose which set God at a distance,
+  and allowed Him to interfere in the fate of man only by a benevolent
+  miracle. Nor is this collision of pantheism and freedom, nay of
+  religion and morality, confined to the theoretical region. This
+  difficulty is not merely the punishment of an over-bold and
+  over-ambitious philosophy, which pries too curiously into the mystery
+  of being. It lies <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg116" id=
+  "pg116">116</a></span> at the very threshold of all reflection on the
+  facts of the moral life. Even children feel the mystery of God's
+  permitting sin, and embarrass their helpless parents with the
+  contradiction between absolute benevolence and the miseries and
+  cruelties of life. "A vain interminable controversy," says
+  Teufels-dröckh, "which arises in every soul since the beginning of
+  the world: and in every soul, that would pass from idle suffering
+  into actual endeavouring, must be put an end to. The most, in our own
+  time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough Suppression
+  of this controversy: to a few Solution of it is indispensable."</p>
+
+  <p>Solution, and not Suppression, is what Browning sought; he did, in
+  fact, propound a solution, which, whether finally satisfactory or
+  not, at least carries us beyond the easy compromises of ordinary
+  religious and ethical teaching. He does not deny the universality of
+  God's beneficence or power, and divide the realm of being between Him
+  and the adversary: nor, on the other hand, does he limit man's
+  freedom, and stultify ethics by extracting the sting of reality from
+  sin. To limit God, he knew, was to deny Him; and, whatever the
+  difficulties he felt in regarding the absolute Spirit as realising
+  itself in man, he could not be content to reduce man into a temporary
+  phantom, an evanescent embodiment of "spiritual" or natural forces,
+  that take a fleeting form in him as they pursue their onward way.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning held with equal tenacity to the idea of a <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg117" id="pg117">117</a></span> universal
+  benevolent order, and to the idea of the moral freedom of man within
+  it. He was driven in opposite directions by two beliefs, both of
+  which he knew to be essential to the life of man as spirit, and both
+  of which he illustrates throughout his poems with an endless variety
+  of poetic expression. He endeavoured to find God in man and still to
+  leave man free. His optimistic faith sought reconciliation with
+  morality. The vigour of his ethical doctrine is as pre-eminent, as
+  the fulness of his conviction of the absolute sway of the Good. Side
+  by side with his doctrine that there is no failure, no wretchedness
+  of corruption that does not conceal within it a germ of goodness, is
+  his sense of the evil of sin, of the infinite earnestness of man's
+  moral warfare, and of the surpassing magnitude of the issues at stake
+  for each individual soul. So powerful is his interest in man as a
+  moral agent, that he sees nought else in the world of any deep
+  concern. "My stress lay," he said in his preface to <i>Sordello</i>
+  (1863), "on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else
+  is worth study. I, at least, always thought so&mdash;you, with many
+  known and unknown to me, think so&mdash;others may one day think so."
+  And this development of a soul is not at any time regarded by the
+  poet as a peaceful process, like the growth of a plant or animal.
+  Although he thinks of the life of man as the gradual realization of a
+  divine purpose within him, he does not suppose it to take place in
+  obedience to a tranquil necessity. Man advances morally by fighting
+  his way inch by inch, and he gains nothing except <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg118" id="pg118">118</a></span> through conflict.
+  He does not become good as the plant grows into maturity. "The
+  kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by
+  force."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"No, when the fight begins within himself,</p>
+
+    <p>A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head,</p>
+
+    <p>Satan looks up between his feet,&mdash;both tug&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul awakes</p>
+
+    <p>And grows. Prolong that battle through this life!</p>
+
+    <p>Never leave growing till the life to come."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Bishop Blougram</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Man is no idle spectator of the conflict of the forces of right
+  and wrong; Browning never loses the individual in the throng, or
+  sinks him into his age or race. And although the poet ever bears
+  within him the certainty of victory for the good, he calls his
+  fellows to the fight as if the fate of all hung on the valour of
+  each. The struggle is always personal, individual like the duels of
+  the Homeric heroes.</p>
+
+  <p>It is under the guise of warfare that morality always presents
+  itself to Browning. It is not a mere equilibrium of
+  qualities&mdash;the measured, self-contained, statuesque ethics of
+  the Greeks, nor the asceticism and self-restraint of Puritanism, nor
+  the peaceful evolution of Goethe's artistic morality: it is valour in
+  the battle of life. His code contains no negative commandments, and
+  no limitations; but he bids each man let out all the power that is
+  within him, and throw himself upon life with the whole energy of his
+  being. It is better even to seek evil with one's whole mind, than to
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg119" id="pg119">119</a></span> be
+  lukewarm in goodness. Whether you seek good or evil, and play for the
+  counter or the coin, stake it boldly!</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Let a man contend to the uttermost</p>
+
+      <p>For his life's set prize, be it what it will!</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"The counter our lovers staked was lost</p>
+
+      <p>As surely as if it were lawful coin:</p>
+
+      <p>And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin</p>
+
+      <p>Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.</p>
+
+      <p>You, of the virtue (we issue join)</p>
+
+      <p>How strive you?&mdash;'<i>De te fabula!</i>'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p><i>A: The Statue and the Bust.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Indifference and spiritual lassitude are, to the poet, the worst
+  of sins. "Go!" says the Pope to Pompilia's pseudo-parents,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Never again elude the choice of tints!</p>
+
+    <p>White shall not neutralize the black, nor good</p>
+
+    <p>Compensate bad in man, absolve him so:</p>
+
+    <p>Life's business being just the terrible choice."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1235-1238.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In all the greater characters of <i>The Ring and the Book</i>,
+  this intensity of vigour in good and evil flashes out upon us. Even
+  Pompilia, the most gentle of all his creations, at the first
+  prompting of the instinct of motherhood, rises to the law demanding
+  resistance, and casts off the old passivity.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Dutiful to the foolish parents first,</p>
+
+    <p>Submissive next to the bad husband,&mdash;nay,</p>
+
+    <p>Tolerant of those meaner miserable</p>
+
+    <p>That did his hests, eked out the dole of pain ";<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>., 1052-1055.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg120" id="pg120">120</a></span>
+
+  <p>she is found</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Sublime in new impatience with the foe."</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"I did for once see right, do right, give tongue</p>
+
+      <p>The adequate protest: for a worm must turn</p>
+
+      <p>If it would have its wrong observed by God.</p>
+
+      <p>I did spring up, attempt to thrust aside</p>
+
+      <p>That ice-block 'twixt the sun and me, lay low</p>
+
+      <p>The neutralizer of all good and truth."<sup>A</sup></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Yet, shame thus rank and patent, I struck, bare,</p>
+
+      <p>At foe from head to foot in magic mail,</p>
+
+      <p>And off it withered, cobweb armoury</p>
+
+      <p>Against the lightning! 'Twas truth singed the lies</p>
+
+      <p>And saved me."<sup>B</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;Pompilia</i>, 1591-1596.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>., 1637-1641.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Beneath the mature wisdom of the Pope, amidst the ashes of old
+  age, there sleeps the same fire. He is as truly a warrior priest as
+  Caponsacchi himself, and his matured experience only muffles his
+  vigour. Wearied with his life-long labour, we see him gather himself
+  together "in God's name," to do His will on earth once more with
+  concentrated might.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"I smite</p>
+
+    <p>With my whole strength once more, ere end my part,</p>
+
+    <p>Ending, so far as man may, this offence."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1958-1960.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Nor, spite of doubts, the promptings of mercy, the friends
+  plucking his sleeve to stay his arm, does he fear "to handle a lie
+  roughly"; or shrink from sending the criminal to his account, though
+  it be but one day before he himself is called before <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg121" id="pg121">121</a></span> the judgment
+  seat. The same energy, the same spirit of bold conflict, animates
+  Guido's adoption of evil for his good. At all but the last moment of
+  his life of monstrous crime, just before he hears the echo of the
+  feet of the priests, who descend the stair to lead him to his death,
+  "he repeats his evil deed in will."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Nor is it in me to unhate my hates,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>I use up my last strength to strike once more</p>
+
+    <p>Old Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face,</p>
+
+    <p>To trample underfoot the whine and wile</p>
+
+    <p>Of beast Violante,&mdash;and I grow one gorge</p>
+
+    <p>To loathingly reject Pompilia's pale</p>
+
+    <p>Poison my hasty hunger took for food."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>Guido</i>,
+    2400-2406.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Saint Eldobert&mdash;I much approve his mode;</p>
+
+    <p>With sinner Vertgalant I sympathize;</p>
+
+    <p>But histrionic Sganarelle, who prompts</p>
+
+    <p>While pulling back, refuses yet concedes,&mdash;</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>"Surely, one should bid pack that mountebank!"</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg122" id="pg122">122</a></span>
+
+  <p>In him, even</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"thickheads ought to recognize</p>
+
+    <p>The Devil, that old stager, at his trick</p>
+
+    <p>Of general utility, who leads</p>
+
+    <p>Downward, perhaps, but fiddles all the way!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Red Cotton Nightcap Country.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 give <i>himself</i> to
+  anything, wreak <i>himself</i> on 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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Each lie</p>
+
+    <p>Redounded to the praise of man, was victory</p>
+
+    <p>Man's nature had both right to get and might to gain." <sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, cxxviii.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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
+  disappointment <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg123" id=
+  "pg123">123</a></span> of utter failure; the sinner is thrown back
+  upon himself empty-handed. He finds himself subjected, even when
+  sinning,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"To the reign</p>
+
+    <p>Of other quite as real a nature, that saw fit</p>
+
+    <p>To have its way with man, not man his way with it."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, cxxviii.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Poor pabulum for pride when the first love is found</p>
+
+    <p>Last also! and, so far from realizing gain,</p>
+
+    <p>Each step aside just proves divergency in vain.</p>
+
+    <p>The wanderer brings home no profit from his quest</p>
+
+    <p>Beyond the sad surmise that keeping house were best</p>
+
+    <p>Could life begin anew."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>. cxxix.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 of <i>Red Cotton Nightcap Country</i>. The
+  sordid hero of the poem is gradually driven to choose between the
+  alternatives. The best of his luck, the poet thinks, was the</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Rough but wholesome shock,</p>
+
+    <p>An accident which comes to kill or cure,</p>
+
+    <p>A jerk which mends a dislocated joint!"<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Red Cotton Nightcap Country</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The continuance of disguise and subterfuge, and the retention of
+  "the first falsehood," are ultimately made impossible to Léonce
+  Miranda:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Thus by a rude in seeming&mdash;rightlier judged</p>
+
+    <p>Beneficent surprise, publicity</p>
+
+    <p>Stopped further fear and trembling, and what tale</p>
+
+    <p>Cowardice thinks a covert: one bold splash</p>
+
+    <p>Into the mid-shame, and the shiver ends,</p>
+
+    <p>Though cramp and drowning may begin perhaps."<sup>D</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>D: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg124" id="pg124">124</a></span>
+
+  <p>In the same spirit he finds Miranda's suicidal leap the best deed
+  possible for <i>him</i>.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"'Mad!' 'No! sane, I say.</p>
+
+    <p>Such being the conditions of his life,</p>
+
+    <p>Such end of life was not irrational.</p>
+
+    <p>Hold a belief, you only half-believe,</p>
+
+    <p>With all-momentous issues either way,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>And I advise you imitate this leap,</p>
+
+    <p>Put faith to proof, be cured or killed at once!'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Red Cotton Nightcap Country</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"I felt quite sure that God had set</p>
+
+    <p>Himself to Satan; who would spend</p>
+
+    <p>A minute's mistrust on the end?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Count Gismond</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg125" id=
+  "pg125">125</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"We shall march prospering,&mdash;not thro' his presence;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Songs may inspirit us,&mdash;not from his lyre;</p>
+
+    <p>Deeds will be done,&mdash;while he boasts his quiescence,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:</p>
+
+    <p><i>Blot out his name</i>, then, record one lost soul more,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,</p>
+
+    <p>One more devil's triumph and sorrow for angels,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">One wrong more to man, one more insult to
+    God!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The List Leader</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 '<i>Pecca fortiter</i>' 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</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Never doubted clouds would break,</p>
+
+    <p>Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would
+    triumph,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight
+    better,</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">Sleep to wake."</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg126" id="pg126">126</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"No, at noon-day in the bustle of man's work-time</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Greet the unseen with a cheer!</p>
+
+    <p>Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">'Strive and thrive'! cry 'Speed!&mdash;fight on, fare
+    ever</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">There as here.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: Epilogue to <i>Asolande</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"My own hope is, a sun will pierce</p>
+
+    <p>The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">That, after Last, returns the First,</p>
+
+    <p>Though a wide compass round be fetched;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">That what began best, can't end worst.</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Apparent Failure</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is the poet himself and not merely the sophistic aesthete of
+  <i>Fifine</i> that speaks:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Partake my confidence! No creature's made so mean</p>
+
+    <p>But that, some way, it boasts, could we investigate,</p>
+
+    <p>Its supreme worth: fulfils, by ordinance of
+    fate,</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg127" id=
+    "pg127">127</a></span>
+
+    <p>Its momentary task, gets glory all its own,</p>
+
+    <p>Tastes triumph in the world, pre-eminent, alone."</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>"As firm is my belief, quick sense perceives the same</p>
+
+    <p>Self-vindicating flash illustrate every man</p>
+
+    <p>And woman of our mass, and prove, throughout the plan,</p>
+
+    <p>No detail but, in place allotted it, was prime</p>
+
+    <p>And perfect." <sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, xxix.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But if so,&mdash;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&mdash;but an illusion all the same?</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"What but the weakness in a Faith supplies</p>
+
+    <p>The incentive to humanity, no strength</p>
+
+    <p>Absolute, irresistible comforts.</p>
+
+    <p>How can man love but what he yearns to help?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1649-1652.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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. It <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg128" id="pg128">128</a></span> is easy for the
+  religious conscience to admit with Pippa that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"All service ranks the same with God&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>With God, whose puppets, best and worst,</p>
+
+    <p>Are we: there is no last or first."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Pippa Passes</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"God's in His heaven&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>All's right with the world!"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 realization
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg129" id="pg129">129</a></span> of 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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?</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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"&mdash;<i>only</i> "on <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg130"
+  id="pg130">130</a></span> the 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"This doctrine, which one healthy view of things,</p>
+
+    <p>One sane sight of the general ordinance&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Nature,&mdash;and its particular object,&mdash;man,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Which one mere eyecast at the character</p>
+
+    <p>Of Who made these and gave man sense to boot,</p>
+
+    <p>Had dissipated once and evermore,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>This doctrine I have dosed our flock withal.</p>
+
+    <p>Why? Because none believed it."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Inn Album</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"However near I stand in His regard,</p>
+
+    <p>So much the nearer had I stood by steps</p>
+
+    <p>Offered the feet which rashly spurned their help.</p>
+
+    <p>That I call Hell; why further punishment?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Camel-Driver.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 towards
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg131" id="pg131">131</a></span> the
+  chaos, which is lower then created existence. He observes him</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Not to die so much as slide out of life,</p>
+
+    <p>Pushed by the general horror and common hate</p>
+
+    <p>Low, lower,&mdash;left o' the very ledge of things,</p>
+
+    <p>I seem to see him catch convulsively,</p>
+
+    <p>One by one at all honest forms of life,</p>
+
+    <p>At reason, order, decency and use,</p>
+
+    <p>To cramp him and get foothold by at least;</p>
+
+    <p>And still they disengage them from <i>his</i> clutch.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>"And thus I see him slowly and surely edged</p>
+
+    <p>Off all the table-land whence life upsprings</p>
+
+    <p>Aspiring to be immortality."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There he loses him in the loneliness, silence and dusk&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"At the horizontal line, creation's verge.</p>
+
+    <p>From what just is to absolute nothingness."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;Giuseppe Caponsacchi</i>,
+    1911-1931.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>
+    "'Abate,&mdash;Cardinal,&mdash;Christ,&mdash;Maria,&mdash;God&mdash;'</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"and then the light breaks through the blackest gloom:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"'Pompilia! will you let them murder me?'</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg132" id="pg132">132</a></span>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>But even beyond this hope, which is the last for most men, the
+  Pope had still another.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Else I avert my face, nor follow him</p>
+
+    <p>Into that sad obscure sequestered state</p>
+
+    <p>Where God unmakes but to remake the soul</p>
+
+    <p>He else made first in vain: <i>which must not be</i>."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 2129-2132.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,</p>
+
+    <p>No work begun shall ever pause for death!</p>
+
+    <p>Love will be helpful to me more and more</p>
+
+    <p>I' the coming course, the new path I must tread,</p>
+
+    <p>My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Seek&mdash;Pompilia</i>, 1786-1790.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;to wit, that every soul shall learn the lesson
+  of goodness, and reflect the devine life in desire, intelligence, and
+  will.</p>
+
+  <p>Equally emphatic, on some sides at least, is Browning's rejection
+  of those compromises, with which the one-sided religious
+  consciousness threatens the existence <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg133" id="pg133">133</a></span> of 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. <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i> bids
+  us feel</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay";</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and his prayer is,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"So, take and use Thy work:</p>
+
+    <p>Amend what flaws may lurk,</p>
+
+    <p>What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!</p>
+
+    <p>My times be in Thy hand!</p>
+
+    <p>Perfect the cup as planned!</p>
+
+    <p>Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;"Have you the will!"</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"For a worm must turn</p>
+
+    <p>If it would have its wrong observed by God."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;Pompilia,</i> 1592-1593.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg134" id="pg134">134</a></span>
+
+  <p>The root of Browning's joy is in the need of progress towards an
+  infinitely high goal. He rejoices</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"that man is hurled</p>
+
+    <p>From change to change unceasingly,</p>
+
+    <p>His soul's wings never furled."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Then, welcome each rebuff</p>
+
+    <p>That turns earth's smoothness rough,</p>
+
+    <p>Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!</p>
+
+    <p>Be our joys three-parts pain!</p>
+
+    <p>Strive, and hold cheap the strain;</p>
+
+    <p>Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the
+    throe!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Other heights in other lives, God willing."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Death is the summing up of this life's meaning, stored strength
+  for new adventure.</p>
+
+  <p>"The future I may face now I have proved the past;" and, in view
+  of it, Browning is</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Fearless and unperplexed</p>
+
+    <p>When I wage battle next,</p>
+
+    <p>What weapons to select, what armour to indue."</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg135" id="pg135">135</a></span>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Strive and Thrive! cry 'Speed,' fight on, fare ever</p>
+
+    <p>There as here,"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>are the last words which came from his pen.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 achievement <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg136" id="pg136">136</a></span> within 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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."</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg137" id="pg137">137</a></span>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>This is well illustrated in Browning's account of Caponsacchi;
+  from the time when Pompilia's smile first "glowed" upon him, and set
+  him&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Thinking how my life</p>
+
+    <p>Had shaken under me&mdash;broken short indeed</p>
+
+    <p>And showed the gap 'twixt what is, what should be&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>And into what abysm the soul may slip"&mdash;<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>Giuseppe
+    Caponsacchi</i>, 485-488.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"To have to do with nothing but the true,</p>
+
+    <p>The good, the eternal&mdash;and these, not alone</p>
+
+    <p>In the main current of the general life,</p>
+
+    <p>But small experiences of every day,</p>
+
+    <p>Concerns of the particular hearth and home:</p>
+
+    <p>To learn not only by a comet's rush</p>
+
+    <p>But a rose's birth&mdash;not by the grandeur, God,</p>
+
+    <p>But the comfort, Christ. <i>All this</i> how <i>far away</i>
+    /</p>
+
+    <p>Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream!"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid.</i> 2089-2097.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>So illimitably beyond his strength is such a life, that he finds
+  himself like the drudging student who</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Trims his lamp,</p>
+
+    <p>Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place</p><span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg138" id="pg138">138</a></span>
+
+    <p>Of Roman, Grecian; draws the patched gown close,</p>
+
+    <p>Dreams, 'Thus should I fight, save or rule the
+    world!'&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes</p>
+
+    <p>To the old solitary nothingness."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>Giuseppe
+    Caponsacchi</i>, 2098-2103.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"O great, just, good God! Miserable Me!"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 short
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg139" id="pg139">139</a></span> at
+  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" <i>must</i> stand above <i>all</i> human
+  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?</p>
+
+  <p>"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?</p>
+
+  <p>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. <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg140" id="pg140">140</a></span> It must be an
+  idea <i>of</i> something 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&mdash;an ideal
+  which is a valid criterion&mdash;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,&mdash;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 a <i>true</i> idea;
+  for no mere knowledge, however true, <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg141" id="pg141">141</a></span> 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
+  an <i>idea</i> of 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 is
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg142" id="pg142">142</a></span>
+  something 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>i.e.</i>, till the spirit has, out of
+  its environment, created a body adequate to itself.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;both the
+  criterion and the fact which is condemned by it&mdash;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 as <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg143" id=
+  "pg143">143</a></span> unwilling 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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 better <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg144" id="pg144">144</a></span> for 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg145" id=
+  "pg145">145</a></span> world 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 word <i>but one</i>, regarding man is
+  "failure."</p>
+
+  <p>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, to <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg146" id="pg146">146</a></span> return 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 of <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg147" id="pg147">147</a></span> perfect 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 "<i>the</i> good," 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 that
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg148" id="pg148">148</a></span> unity
+  as a fact. There is no true or false amongst merely apparent
+  facts.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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. <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg149" id="pg149">149</a></span> Morality, in other words, rests
+  upon, and is the self-evolution of the religious principle in
+  man.</p>
+
+  <p>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,&mdash;the outflow of the universe
+  from God as its source, and its return to Him through the salvation
+  of mankind,&mdash;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
+  within <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg150" id=
+  "pg150">150</a></span> him. 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&mdash;the moral activity&mdash;is its
+  own reward; "the only jewel that shines in its own light."</p>
+
+  <p>It may seem to some to be presumptuous thus to identify the divine
+  and the human; but to separate them makes both morality and religion
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg151" id="pg151">151</a></span>
+  impossible. 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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I never realized God's birth before&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>How He grew likest God in being born."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;Pompilia</i>, 1690-1691.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The intense love of the young mother drew the divine and the human
+  together, and set at nought the contrast which prose ever draws
+  between them. This thought of the unity of God and man is one which
+  has frequent utterance from the poet when his religious spirit is
+  most deeply moved; for it is the characteristic of religious feeling
+  that it abolishes all sense of separation. It removes all the
+  limitations of finitude and lifts man into rapturous unity with the
+  God he adores; and it gives such <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg152" id="pg152">152</a></span> completeness to his life that it
+  seems to him to be a joyous pulse of the life that is absolute. The
+  feeling of unity may be an illusion. This we cannot discuss here;
+  but, in any case, it is a feeling essential to religion. And the
+  philosophy which seeks to lift this feeling into clear consciousness
+  and to account for its existence, cannot but recognize that it
+  implies and presupposes the essential affinity of the divine nature
+  with the nature of man.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, both from the side of morality and from that of religion, we
+  are brought to recognize the unity of God with man as a spiritual
+  being. The moral ideal is man's idea of perfection, that is, his idea
+  of God. While theology and philosophy are often occupied with the
+  vain task of bridging a chasm between the finite and the infinite,
+  which they assume to be separated, the supreme facts of the life of
+  man as a spirit spring from their unity. In other words, morality and
+  religion are but different manifestations of the same principle. The
+  good that man effects is, at the same time, the working of God within
+  him. The activity that man is,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"tending up,</p>
+
+    <p>Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man</p>
+
+    <p>Upward in that dread point of intercourse</p>
+
+    <p>Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him<sup>A</sup>."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"God, perchance,</p>
+
+    <p>Grants each new man, by some as new a mode,</p>
+
+    <p>Inter-communication with Himself</p>
+
+    <p>Wreaking on finiteness infinitude<sup>B</sup>."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg153" id="pg153">153</a></span>
+
+  <p>And while man's moral endeavour is thus recognized as the activity
+  of God within him, it is also implied that the divine being can be
+  known only as revealed, and incarnated, if one may so say, in a
+  perfect human character. It was a permanent conviction of Browning,
+  that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"the acknowledgment of God in Christ</p>
+
+    <p>Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee</p>
+
+    <p>All questions in the earth and out of it."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>So far from regarding the Power in the world which makes for
+  righteousness, as "not-ourselves," as Matthew Arnold did in his
+  haste, that Power is known to be the man's true self and more, and
+  morality is the gradual process whereby its content is evolved. And
+  man's state of perfection, which is symbolized for the intelligent by
+  the term Heaven, is, for Browning,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"The equalizing, ever and anon,</p>
+
+    <p>In momentary rapture, great with small,</p>
+
+    <p>Omniscience with intelligency, God</p>
+
+    <p>With man&mdash;the thunder glow from pole to pole</p>
+
+    <p>Abolishing, a blissful moment-space,</p>
+
+    <p>Great cloud alike and small cloud, in one fire&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>As sure to ebb as sure again to flow</p>
+
+    <p>When the new receptivity deserves</p>
+
+    <p>The new completion<sup>A</sup>."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thus, therefore, does the poet wed the divine strength with human
+  weakness; and the principle of unity, thus conceived, gives him at
+  once his <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg154" id=
+  "pg154">154</a></span> moral strenuousness and that ever present
+  foretaste of victory, which we may call his religious optimism.</p>
+
+  <p>Whether this principle receives adequate expression from the poet,
+  we shall inquire in the next chapter. For on this depends its worth
+  as a solution of the enigma of man's moral life.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg155" id="pg155">155</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch06" id="ch06">CHAPTER VI.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>BROWNING'S TREATMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE OF LOVE.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"God! Thou art Love! I build my faith on that<sup>A</sup>!"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It may be well before going further to gather together the results
+  so far reached.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning was aware of the conflict of the religious and moral
+  consciousness, but he did not hesitate to give to each of them its
+  most uncompromising utterance. And it is on this account that he is
+  instructive; for, whatever may be the value of compromise in
+  practical affairs, there is no doubt that it has never done anything
+  to advance human thought. His religion is an optimistic faith, a
+  peaceful consciousness of the presence of the highest in man, and
+  therefore in all other things. Yet he does not hesitate to represent
+  the moral life as a struggle with evil, and a movement through error
+  towards a highest good which is never finally realized. He sees that
+  the contradiction is not an absolute one, but that a good man is
+  always <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg156" id=
+  "pg156">156</a></span> both moral and religious, and, in every good
+  act he does, transcends their difference. He knew that the ideal
+  apart from the process is nothing, and that "a God beyond the stars"
+  is simply the unknowable. But he knew, too, that the ideal is not
+  <i>merely</i> the process, but also that which starts the process,
+  guides it, and comes to itself through it. God, emptied of human
+  elements, is a mere name; but, at the same time, the process of human
+  evolution does not exhaust the idea of God. The process by itself,
+  <i>i.e.</i>, mere morality, is a conception of a fragment, a fiction
+  of abstract thought; it is a movement which has no beginning or end;
+  and in it neither the head nor the heart of man could find
+  contentment. He is driven by ethics into philosophy, and by morality
+  into religion.</p>
+
+  <p>It was in this way that Browning found himself compelled to trace
+  back the moral process to its origin, and to identify the moral law
+  with the nature of God. It is this that gives value to his view of
+  moral progress, as reaching beyond death to a higher stage of being,
+  for which man's attainments in this life are only preliminary.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes,</p>
+
+    <p>Man has Forever."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Grammarian's Funeral</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There are other "adventures brave and new" for man, "more lives
+  yet," other ways of warfare, other depths of goodness and heights of
+  love. The poet lifts the moral ideal into infinitude, and removes
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg157" id="pg157">157</a></span> all
+  limits to the possibility and necessity of being good. Nay, the
+  process itself is good. Moral activity is its own bountiful reward;
+  for moral progress, which means struggle, is the best thing in the
+  world or out of it. To end such a process, to stop that activity,
+  were therefore evil. But it cannot end, for it is the
+  self-manifestation of the divine life. There is plenty of way to
+  make, for the ideal is absolute goodness. The process cannot exhaust
+  the absolute, and it is impossible that man should be God. And yet
+  this process is the process of the absolute, the working of the
+  ideal, the presence of the highest in man as a living power realizing
+  itself in his acts and in his thoughts. And the absolute cannot fail;
+  not in man, for the process is the evolution of his essential nature;
+  and not in the world, for that is but the necessary instrument of the
+  evolution. By lifting the moral ideal of man to infinitude, the poet
+  has identified it with the nature of God, and made it the absolute
+  law of things.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, this idea of the identity of the human and the divine is a
+  perfectly familiar Christian idea.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Thence shall I, approved</p>
+
+    <p>A man, for aye removed</p>
+
+    <p>From the developed brute; a God though in the germ<sup>A</sup>."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This idea is involved in the ordinary expressions of religious
+  thought. But, nevertheless, both theology and philosophy shrink from
+  giving to <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg158" id=
+  "pg158">158</a></span> it a clear and unembarrassed utterance.
+  Instead of rising to the sublime boldness of the Nazarene Teacher,
+  they set up prudential differences between God and
+  man&mdash;differences not of degree only but of nature; and, in
+  consequence, God is reduced into an unknowable absolute, and man is
+  made incapable not only of moral, but also of intellectual life. The
+  poet himself has proved craven-hearted in this, as we shall see. He,
+  too, sets up insurmountable barriers between the divine and the
+  human, and thereby weakens both his religious and his moral
+  convictions. His moral inspiration is greatest just where his
+  religious enthusiasm is most intense. In <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra, The Death
+  in the Desert</i>, and <i>The Ring and the Book</i>, there prevails a
+  constant sense of the community of God and man within the realm of
+  goodness; and the world itself, "with its dread machinery of sin and
+  sorrow," is made to join the great conspiracy, whose purpose is at
+  once the evolution of man's character, and the realization of the
+  will of God.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>So, through the thunder comes a human voice</p>
+
+    <p>Saying, 'O heart I made, a heart beats here!</p>
+
+    <p>Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!</p>
+
+    <p>Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine,</p>
+
+    <p>But love I gave thee, with myself to love,</p>
+
+    <p>And thou must love Me who have died for thee<sup>A</sup>.'"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>An Epistle from Karshish</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But, if we follow Browning's thoughts in his later and more
+  reflective poems, such as <i>Ferishtah's</i> <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg159" id="pg159">159</a></span> <i>Fancies</i>
+  for instance, it will not be possible to hold that the poet
+  altogether realized the importance for both morality and religion
+  alike, of the idea of the actual immanence of God in man. In these
+  poems he seems to have abandoned it in favour of the hypotheses of a
+  more timid philosophy. But, if his religious faith had not been
+  embarrassed by certain dogmatic presuppositions of which he could not
+  free himself, he might have met more successfully some of the
+  difficulties which later reflection revealed to him, and might have
+  been able to set a true value on that "philosophy," which betrayed
+  his faith while appearing to support it.</p>
+
+  <p>But, before trying to criticize the principle by means of which
+  Browning sought to reconcile the moral and religious elements of
+  human life, it may be well to give it a more explicit and careful
+  statement.</p>
+
+  <p>What, then, is that principle of unity between the divine and the
+  human? How can we interpret the life of man as God's life in man, so
+  that man, in attaining the moral ideal proper to his own nature, is
+  at the same time fulfilling ends which may justly be called
+  divine?</p>
+
+  <p>The poet, in early life and in late life alike, has one answer to
+  this question&mdash;an answer given with the confidence of complete
+  conviction. The meeting-point of God and man is love. Love, in other
+  words, is, for the poet, the supreme principle both of morality and
+  religion. Love, once for all, solves that contradiction between them
+  which, both in <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg160" id=
+  "pg160">160</a></span> theory and in practice, has embarrassed the
+  world for so many ages. Love is the sublimest conception attainable
+  by man; a life inspired by it is the most perfect form of goodness he
+  can conceive; therefore, love is, at the same moment, man's moral
+  ideal, and the very essence of Godhood. A life actuated by love is
+  divine, whatever other limitations it may have. Such is the
+  perfection and glory of this emotion, when it has been translated
+  into a self-conscious motive, and become the energy of an intelligent
+  will, that it lifts him who owns it to the sublimest height of
+  being.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"For the loving worm within its clod,</p>
+
+    <p>Were diviner than a loveless God</p>
+
+    <p>Amid his worlds, I will dare to say."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Christmas Eve</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>So excellent is this emotion that, if man, who has this power to
+  love, did not find the same power in God, then man would excel Him,
+  and the creature and Creator change parts.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift,</p>
+
+    <p>That I doubt His own love can compete with it? Here, the parts
+    shift?</p>
+
+    <p>Here, the creature surpass the Creator,&mdash;the end what
+    Began<sup>B</sup>?"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Saul</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Not so, says David, and with him no doubt the poet himself. God is
+  Himself the source and fulness of love.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Tis Thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive:</p>
+
+    <p>In the first is the last, in Thy will is my power to
+    believe.</p>
+
+    <p>All's one gift."</p>
+    <hr />
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg161" id="pg161">161</a></span>
+
+    <p>"Would I suffer for him that I love? So would'st Thou,&mdash;so
+    wilt Thou!</p>
+
+    <p>So shall crown Thee, the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost
+    crown&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down</p>
+
+    <p>One spot for the creature to stand in!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Saul</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And this same love not only constitutes the nature of God and the
+  moral ideal of man, but it is also the purpose and essence of all
+  created being, both animate and inanimate.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"This world's no blot for us,</p>
+
+    <p>Nor blank; it means intensely and means good."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Fra Lippo Lippi</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:</p>
+
+    <p>And knowing this is love, and love is duty,</p>
+
+    <p>What further may be sought for or declared?"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In this world then "all's love, yet all's law." God permits
+  nothing to break through its universal sway, even the very wickedness
+  and misery of life are brought into the scheme of good, and, when
+  rightly understood, reveal themselves as its means.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I can believe this dread machinery</p>
+
+    <p>Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else,</p>
+
+    <p>Devised&mdash;all pain, at most expenditure</p>
+
+    <p>Of pain by Who devised pain&mdash;to evolve,</p>
+
+    <p>By new machinery in counterpart,</p>
+
+    <p>The moral qualities of man&mdash;how else?&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>To make him love in turn and be beloved,</p>
+
+    <p>Creative and self-sacrificing too,</p>
+
+    <p>And thus eventually Godlike."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1375-1383.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The poet thus brings the natural world, the history of man, and
+  the nature of God, within the limits of the same conception. The idea
+  of love <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg162" id=
+  "pg162">162</a></span> solves for Browning all the enigmas of human
+  life and thought.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"The thing that seems</p>
+
+    <p>Mere misery, under human schemes,</p>
+
+    <p>Becomes, regarded by the light</p>
+
+    <p>Of love, as very near, or quite</p>
+
+    <p>As good a gift as joy before."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Easter Day</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Taking Browning's work as a whole, it is scarcely possible to deny
+  that this is at once the supreme motive of his art, and the principle
+  on which his moral and religious doctrine rests. He is always strong
+  and convincing when he is dealing with this theme. It was evidently
+  his own deepest conviction, and it gave him the courage to face the
+  evils of the world, and the power as an artist to "contrive his music
+  from its moans." It plays, in his philosophy of life, the part that
+  Reason fills for Hegel, or the Blind Will for Schopenhauer; and he is
+  as fearless as they are in reducing all phenomena into forms of the
+  activity of his first principle. Love not only gave him firm footing
+  amid the wash and welter of the present world, where time spins fast,
+  life fleets, and all is change, but it made him look forward with joy
+  to "the immortal course"; for, to him, all the universe is
+  love-woven. All life is but treading the "love-way," and no wanderer
+  can finally lose it. "The way-faring men, though fools, shall not err
+  therein."</p>
+
+  <p>Since love has such an important place in Browning's theory of
+  life, it is necessary to see what he means by it. For love has had
+  for different <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg163" id=
+  "pg163">163</a></span> individuals, ages and nations, a very
+  different significance; and almost every great poet has given it a
+  different interpretation. And this is not unnatural. For love is a
+  passion which, beginning with youth and the hey-day of the blood,
+  expands with the expanding life, and takes new forms of beauty and
+  goodness at every stage. And this is equally true, whether we speak
+  of the individual or of the human race.</p>
+
+  <p>Love is no accident in man's history, nor a passing emotion. It is
+  rather a constitutive element of man's nature, fundamental and
+  necessary as his intelligence. And, like everything native and
+  constitutive, it is obedient to the law of evolution, which is the
+  law of man's being; and it passes, therefore, through ever varying
+  forms. To it&mdash;if we may for the moment make a distinction
+  between the theoretical and practical life, or between ideas and
+  their causative potency&mdash;must be attributed the constructive
+  power which has built the world of morality, with its intangible but
+  most real relations which bind man to man and age to age. It is the
+  author of the organic institutions which, standing between the
+  individual and the rudeness of nature, awaken in him the need, and
+  give him the desire and the faculty, of attaining higher things than
+  physical satisfaction. Man is meant to act as well as to think, to be
+  virtuous as well as to have knowledge. It is possible that reverence
+  for the intellect may have led men, at times, to attribute the
+  evolution of the race too exclusively to <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg164" id="pg164">164</a></span> the theoretic
+  consciousness, forgetting that, along with reason, there co-operates
+  a twin power in all that is wisest and best in us, and that a heart
+  which can love, is as essential a pre-condition of all worthy
+  attainment, as an intellect which can see. Love and reason <sup>A</sup> are
+  equally primal powers in man, and they reflect might into each other:
+  for love increases knowledge, and knowledge love. It is their
+  combined power that gives interest and meaning to the facts of life,
+  and transmutes them into a moral and intellectual order. They,
+  together, are lifting man out of the isolation and chaos of
+  subjectivity into membership in a spiritual kingdom, where collision
+  and exclusion are impossible, and all are at once kings and
+  subjects.</p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: It would be more correct to say the reason that is loving or
+    the love that is rational; for, though there is distinction, there
+    is no dualism.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And, just as reason is present as a transmuting power in the
+  sensational life of the infancy of the individual and race, so is
+  love present amidst the confused and chaotic activity of the life
+  that knows no law other than its own changing emotions. Both make for
+  order, and both grow with it. Both love and reason have travelled a
+  long way in the history of man. The patriot's passion for his
+  country, the enthusiasm of pity and helpfulness towards all suffering
+  which marks the man of God, are as far removed from the physical
+  attraction of sex for sex, and the mere liking of the eye and ear, as
+  is the intellectual power of the sage from the vulpine <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg165" id="pg165">165</a></span> cunning of the
+  savage. "For," as Emerson well said, "it is a fire that, kindling its
+  first embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, caught from a
+  wandering spark out of another heart, glows and enlarges until it
+  warms and beams upon multitudes of men and women, upon the universal
+  heart of all, and so lights up the world and all nature with its
+  generous flames." Both love and reason alike pass through stage after
+  stage, always away from the particularity of selfishness and
+  ignorance, into larger and larger cycles of common truth and
+  goodness, towards the full realization of knowledge and benevolence,
+  which is the inheritance of emancipated man. In this transition, the
+  sensuous play of feeling within man, and the sensitive responses to
+  external stimuli, are made more and more organic to ends which are
+  universal, that is, to spiritual ends. Love, which in its earliest
+  form, seems to be the natural yearning of brute for brute, appearing
+  and disappearing at the suggestion of physical needs, passes into an
+  idealized sentiment, into an emotion of the soul, into a principle of
+  moral activity which manifests itself in a permanent outflow of
+  helpful deeds for man. It represents, when thus sublimated, one side
+  at least of the expansion of the self, which culminates when the
+  world beats in the pulse of the individual, and the joys and sorrows,
+  the defeats and victories of mankind are felt by him as his own. It
+  is no longer dependent merely on the incitement of youth, grace,
+  beauty, whether of body or character; it transcends all limitations
+  of <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg166" id="pg166">166</a></span>
+  sex and age, and finds objects on which it can spend itself in all
+  that God has made, even in that which has violated its own law of
+  life and become mean and pitiful. It becomes a love of fallen
+  humanity, and an ardour to save it by becoming the conscious and
+  permanent motive of all men. The history of this evolution of love
+  has been written by the poets. Every phase through which this
+  ever-deepening emotion has passed, every form which this primary
+  power has taken in its growth, has received from them its own proper
+  expression. They have made even the grosser instincts lyric with
+  beauty; and, ascending with their theme, they have sung the pure
+  passion of soul for soul, its charm and its strength, its idealism
+  and heroism, up to the point at which, in Browning, it transcends the
+  limits of finite existence, sheds all its earthly vesture, and
+  becomes a spiritual principle of religious aspiration and
+  self-surrender to God.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning nowhere shows his native strength more clearly than in
+  his treatment of love. He has touched this world-old
+  theme&mdash;which almost every poet has handled, and handled in his
+  highest manner&mdash;with that freshness and insight, which is
+  possible only to the inborn originality of genius. Other poets have,
+  in some ways, given to love a more exquisite utterance, and rendered
+  its sweetness, and tenderness, and charm with a lighter grace. It may
+  even be admitted that there are poets whose verses have echoed more
+  faithfully the fervour and intoxication of passion, and who have
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg167" id="pg167">167</a></span> shown
+  greater power of interpreting it in the light of a mystic idealism.
+  But, in one thing, Browning stands alone. He has given to love a
+  moral significance, a place and power amongst those substantial
+  elements on which rest the dignity of man's being and the greatness
+  of his destiny, in a way which is, I believe, without example in any
+  other poet. And he has done this by means of that moral and religious
+  earnestness, which pervades all his poetry. The one object of supreme
+  interest to him is the development of the soul, and his penetrative
+  insight revealed to him the power to love as the paramount fact in
+  that development. To love, he repeatedly tells us, is the sole and
+  supreme object of man's life; it is the one lesson which he has to
+  learn on earth; and, love once learnt, in what way matters little,
+  "it leaves completion in the soul." Love we dare not, and, indeed,
+  cannot absolutely miss. No man can be absolutely selfish and be
+  man.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Beneath the veriest ash, there hides a spark of soul</p>
+
+    <p>Which, quickened by love's breath, may yet pervade the whole</p>
+
+    <p>O' the grey, and, free again, be fire; of worth the same,</p>
+
+    <p>Howe'er produced, for, great or little, flame is flame."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, xliii.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Love, once evoked, once admitted into the soul,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i10">"adds worth to worth,</p>
+
+    <p>As wine enriches blood, and straightway sends it forth,</p>
+
+    <p>Conquering and to conquer, through all eternity,</p>
+
+    <p>That's battle without end."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid.</i> liv.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This view of the significance of love grew on Browning
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg168" id="pg168">168</a></span> as
+  his knowledge of man's nature and destiny became fuller and deeper,
+  while, at the same time, his trust in the intellect became less. Even
+  in <i>Paracelsus</i> he reveals love, not as a sentiment or
+  intoxicating passion, as one might expect from a youthful poet, but
+  as one of the great fundamental "faculties" of man. Love, "blind,
+  oft-failing, half-enlightened, often-chequered trust," though it be,
+  still makes man</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In that poem, love is definitely lifted by the poet to the level
+  of knowledge. Intellectual gain, apart from love, is folly and
+  futility, worthless for the individual and worthless to the race.
+  "Mind is nothing but disease," Paracelsus cries in the bitterness of
+  his disappointment, "and natural health is ignorance"; and he asks of
+  the mad poet who "loved too rashly,"</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Are we not halves of one dissevered world,</p>
+
+    <p>Whom this strange chance unites once more? Part? Never!</p>
+
+    <p>Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower,</p>
+
+    <p>Love&mdash;until both are saved."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And, at the end of the poem, Paracelsus, coming to an
+  understanding with himself as to the gain and loss of life, proclaims
+  with his last strength the truth he had missed throughout his great
+  career, namely, the supreme worth of love.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg169" id="pg169">169</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I saw Aprile&mdash;my Aprile there!</p>
+
+    <p>And as the poor melodious wretch disburthened</p>
+
+    <p>His heart, and moaned his weakness in my ear,</p>
+
+    <p>I learned my own deep error; love's undoing</p>
+
+    <p>Taught me the worth of love in man's estate,</p>
+
+    <p>And what proportion love should hold with power</p>
+
+    <p>In his right constitution; love preceding</p>
+
+    <p>Power, and with much power, always much more love;</p>
+
+    <p>Love still too straitened in his present means,</p>
+
+    <p>And earnest for new power to set love free."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>As long as he hated men, or, in his passionate pursuit of truth,
+  was indifferent to their concerns, it was not strange that he saw no
+  good in men and failed to help them. Knowledge without love is not
+  <i>true</i> knowledge, but folly and weakness.</p>
+
+  <p>But, great as is the place given to love in <i>Paracelsus</i>, it
+  is far less than that given to it in the poet's later works. In
+  <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i> and <i>La Saisiaz</i> it is no longer
+  rivalled by knowledge; nor even in <i>Easter Day</i>, where the voice
+  beside the poet proclaiming that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Life is done,</p>
+
+    <p>Time ends, Eternity's begun,"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>gives a final pronouncement upon the purposes of the life of man.
+  The world of sense&mdash;of beauty and art, of knowledge and truth,
+  are given to man, but none of them satisfy his spirit; they merely
+  sting with hunger for something better. "Deficiency gapes every
+  side," till love is known as the essence and worth of all things.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Is this thy final choice?</p>
+
+    <p>Love is the best? 'Tis somewhat late!</p>
+
+    <p>And all thou dost enumerate</p><span class="pagenum"><a name=
+    "pg170" id="pg170">170</a></span>
+
+    <p>Of power and beauty in the world,</p>
+
+    <p>The righteousness of love was curled</p>
+
+    <p>Inextricably round about.</p>
+
+    <p>Love lay within it and without,</p>
+
+    <p>To clasp thee,&mdash;but in vain! Thy soul</p>
+
+    <p>Still shrunk from Him who made the whole,</p>
+
+    <p>Still set deliberate aside</p>
+
+    <p>His love!&mdash;Now take love! Well betide</p>
+
+    <p>Thy tardy conscience!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Easter Day.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In his later reflective poems, in which he deals with the problems
+  of life in the spirit of a metaphysician, seeking a definite answer
+  to the questions of the intelligence, he declares the reason for his
+  preference of love to knowledge. In <i>La Saisiaz</i> he states that
+  man's love is God's too, a spark from His central fire; but man's
+  knowledge is man's only. Knowledge is finite, limited and tinged with
+  sense. The truth we reach at best is only truth <i>for us</i>,
+  relative, distorted. We are for ever kept from the fact which is
+  supposed to be given; our intellects play about it; sense and even
+  intellect itself are interposing media, which we must use, and yet,
+  in using them, we only fool ourselves with semblances. The poet has
+  now grown so cautious that he will not declare his own knowledge to
+  be valid for any other man. David Hume could scarcely be more
+  suspicious of the human intellect; nor Berkeley more surely persuaded
+  of the purely subjective nature of its attainments. In fact, the
+  latter relied on human knowledge in a way impossible to Browning, for
+  he regarded it as the language of <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg171" id="pg171">171</a></span> spirit speaking to spirit. Out of
+  his experience, Browning says,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i10">"There crowds conjecture manifold.</p>
+
+    <p>But, as knowledge, this comes only,&mdash;things may be as I
+    behold</p>
+
+    <p>Or may not be, but, without me and above me, things there
+    are;</p>
+
+    <p>I myself am what I know not&mdash;ignorance which proves no
+    bar</p>
+
+    <p>To the knowledge that I am, and, since I am, can recognize</p>
+
+    <p>What to me is pain and pleasure: this is sure, the
+    rest&mdash;surmise."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thought itself, for aught he knows, may be afflicted with a kind
+  of colour-blindness; and he knows no appeal when one affirms "green
+  as grass," and another contradicts him with "red as grass." Under
+  such circumstances, it is not strange that Browning should decline to
+  speak except for himself, and that he will</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers strong or
+    weak,"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>or that he will far less presume to pronounce for God, and pretend
+  that the truth finds utterance from lips of clay&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Pass off human lisp as echo of the sphere-song out of
+      reach."</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Have I knowledge? Confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid
+      bare!</p>
+
+      <p>Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite
+      Care!</p>
+      <hr />
+
+      <p>"And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew</p>
+
+      <p>(With that stoop of the soul, which in bending upraises it
+      too)</p>
+
+      <p>The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's
+      all-complete,</p>
+
+      <p>As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to His
+      feet."<sup>B</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Saul</i>, III.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg172" id="pg172">172</a></span>
+
+  <p>But David finds in himself one faculty so supreme in worth that he
+  keeps it in abeyance&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst</p>
+
+    <p>E'en the Giver in one gift.&mdash;Behold, I could love if I
+    durst!</p>
+
+    <p>But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake</p>
+
+    <p>God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love's
+    sake."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Saul</i>, III.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This faculty of love, so far from being tainted with finitude,
+  like knowledge; so far from being mere man's, or a temporary and
+  deceptive power given to man for temporary uses, by a Creator who has
+  another ineffably higher way of loving, as He has of truth, is itself
+  divine. In contrast with the activity of love, Omnipotence itself
+  dwindles into insignificance, and creation sinks into a puny exercise
+  of power. Love, in a word, is the highest good; and, as such, it has
+  all its worth in itself, and gives to all other things what worth
+  they have. God Himself gains the "ineffable crown" by showing love
+  and saving the weak. It is the power divine, the central energy of
+  God's being.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning never forgets this moral or religious quality of love. So
+  pure is this emotion to the poet, "so perfect in whiteness, that it
+  will not take pollution; but, ermine-like, is armed from dishonour by
+  its own soft snow." In the corruptest hearts, amidst the worst
+  sensuality, love is still a power divine, making for all goodness.
+  Even when it is kindled into flame by an illicit touch, and wars
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg173" id="pg173">173</a></span>
+  against the life of the family, which is its own product, its worth
+  is supreme. He who has learned to love in any way, has "caught God's
+  secret." How he has caught it, whom he loves, whether or not he is
+  loved in return, all these things matter little. The paramount
+  question on which hangs man's fate is, has he learned to love
+  another, any other, Fifine or Elvire. "She has lost me," said the
+  unloved lover; "I have gained her. Her soul's mine."</p>
+
+  <p>The supreme worth of love, the mere emotion itself, however called
+  into activity, secures it against all taint. No one who understands
+  Browning in the least, can accuse him of touching with a rash hand
+  the sanctity of the family; rather he places it on the basis of its
+  own principle, and thereby makes for it the strongest defence. Such
+  love as he speaks of, however irregular its manifestation or sensuous
+  its setting, can never be confounded with lust&mdash;"hell's own blue
+  tint." It is further removed from lust even than asceticism. It has
+  not even a negative attitude towards the flesh; but finds the flesh
+  to be "stuff for transmuting," and reduces it to the uses of the
+  spirit. The love which is sung by Browning is more pure and free, and
+  is set in a higher altitude than anything that can be reached by the
+  way of negation. It is a consecration of the undivided self, so that
+  "soul helps not flesh more, than flesh helps soul." It is not only a
+  spiritual and divine emotion, but it also "shows a heart within
+  blood-tinctured with a veined humanity."</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg174" id="pg174">174</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Be a God and hold me</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">With a charm!</p>
+
+      <p>Be a man and hold me</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">With thine arm!</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Teach me, only teach, Love!</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">As I ought</p>
+
+      <p>I will speak thy speech, Love!</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Think thy thought&mdash;</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Meet, if thou require it,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Both demands,</p>
+
+      <p>Laying flesh and spirit</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">In thy hands." <sup>A</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Woman's Last Word</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>True love is always an infinite giving, which holds nothing back.
+  It is a spendthrift, magnificent in its recklessness, squandering the
+  very essence of the self upon its object, and by doing so, in the end
+  enriching the self beyond all counting. For in loving, the individual
+  becomes re-impersonated in another; the distinction of Me and Thee is
+  swept away, and there pulses in two individuals one warm life.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"If two lives join, there is oft a scar</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">They are one and one with a shadowy third;</p>
+
+      <p>One near one is too far.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"A moment after, and hands unseen</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Were hanging the night around us fast;</p>
+
+      <p>But we knew that a bar was broken between</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Life and life: we were mixed at last</p>
+
+      <p>In spite of the mortal screen."<sup>B</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>By the Fireside</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The throwing down of the limits that wall a man within himself,
+  the mingling of his own deepest interests with those of others,
+  always marks love; <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg175" id=
+  "pg175">175</a></span> be it love of man for maid, parent for child,
+  or patriot for his country. It opens an outlet into the pure air of
+  the world of objects, and enables man to escape from the stuffed and
+  poisonous atmosphere of his narrow self. It is a streaming outwards
+  of the inmost treasures of the spirit, a consecration of its best
+  activities to the welfare of others. And when this is known to be the
+  native quality and quintessence of love, no one can regard it
+  anywhere, or at any time, as out of place. "Prize-lawful or
+  prize-lawless" it is ever a flower, even though it grow, like the
+  love of the hero of <i>Turf and Towers</i>, in slime. Lust, fleshly
+  desire, which has been too often miscalled love, is its worst
+  perversion. Love spends itself for another, and seeks satisfaction
+  only in another's good. But last uses up others for its own worst
+  purposes, wastes its object, and turns the current of life back
+  inwards, into the slush and filth of selfish pleasure. The
+  distinction between love and its perversion, which is impossible in
+  the naive life of an animal, ought to be clear enough to all, and
+  probably is. Nor should the sexual impulse in human beings be
+  confused with fleshly desire, and treated as if it were merely
+  natural, "the mere lust of life" common to all living
+  things,&mdash;"that strive," as Spinoza put it, "to persevere in
+  existing." For there is no purely natural impulse in man; all that he
+  is, is transfused with spirit, whether he will or no. He cannot act
+  as a mere animal, because he cannot leave his rational nature behind
+  him. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg176" id="pg176">176</a></span>
+  He cannot desire as an innocent brute desires: his desire is always
+  love or lust. We have as little right to say that the wisdom of the
+  sage is <i>nothing but</i> the purblind savagery of a Terra del
+  Fuegian, as we have to assert that love is <i>nothing but</i> a
+  sexual impulse. That impulse rather, when its potency is set free,
+  will show itself, at first confusedly, but with more and more
+  clearness as it expands, to be the yearning of soul for soul. It puts
+  us "in training for a love which knows not sex, nor person, nor
+  partiality; but which seeks virtue and wisdom everywhere, to the end
+  of increasing virtue and wisdom." The height to which this passion
+  lifts man, is just what makes possible the fall into a sensuality and
+  excess of brutishness, in comparison with which animal life is a
+  paradise of innocence.</p>
+
+  <p>If this is clearly recognized, many of the idle questions of
+  casuistry that are sometimes raised regarding sexual love and
+  marriage will cease to trouble. For these questions generally
+  presuppose the lowest possible view of this passion. Browning shows
+  us how to follow with serene security the pure light of the emotion
+  of love, amidst all the confused lawlessness of lustful passion, and
+  through all the intricacies of human character. Love, he thinks, is
+  never illicit, never unwise, except when it is disloyal to itself; it
+  never ruins, but always strives to enrich its object. Bacon quotes
+  with approval a saying "That it is impossible to love, and to be
+  wise." Browning <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg177" id=
+  "pg177">177</a></span> asserts that it is impossible to love and
+  <i>not</i> be wise. It is a power that, according to the Christian
+  idea which the poet adopts, has infinite goodness for its source, and
+  that, even in its meanest expression, is always feeling its way back
+  to its origin, flowing again into the ocean whence it came.</p>
+
+  <p>So sparklingly pure is this passion that it could exorcise the
+  evil and turn old to new, even in the case of Léonce Miranda. At
+  least Browning, in this poem, strives to show that, being true love,
+  though the love of an unclean man for an unclean woman, it was a
+  power at war with the sordid elements of that sordid life. Love has
+  always the same potency, flame is always flame,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"no matter whence flame sprung,</p>
+
+    <p>From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Let her but love you,</p>
+
+    <p>All else you disregard! what else can be?</p>
+
+    <p>You know how love is incompatible</p>
+
+    <p>With falsehood&mdash;purifies, assimilates</p>
+
+    <p>All other passions to itself."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Ne'er wrong yourself so far as quote the world</p>
+
+    <p>And say, love can go unrequited here!</p>
+
+    <p>You will have blessed him to his whole life's end&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Low passions hindered, baser cares kept back,</p>
+
+    <p>All goodness cherished where you dwelt&mdash;and dwell."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, lv.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Colombe's Birthday.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg178" id="pg178">178</a></span>
+  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 God's own energy;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"Who never is dishonoured in the spark</p>
+
+    <p>He gave us from His fire of fires, and bade</p>
+
+    <p>Remember whence it sprang, nor be afraid</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">While that burns on, though all the rest grow dark."
+    <sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Any Wife to Any Husband</i>, III.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>But it remains to follow briefly our poet's treatment of love in
+  another direction&mdash;as a principle present, not only in God 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
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg179" id="pg179">179</a></span> as if
+  he had caught the meaning of the language, and believes that all
+  things speak of love&mdash;the love of God.</p>
+
+  <p>"I think," says the heroine of the <i>Inn Album</i>,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Womanliness means only motherhood;</p>
+
+    <p>All love begins and ends there,&mdash;roams enough,</p>
+
+    <p>But, having run the circle, rests at home."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Inn Album</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And Browning detects something of this motherhood everywhere. He
+  finds it as</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Some cause</p>
+
+    <p>Such as is put into a tree, which turns</p>
+
+    <p>Away from the north wind with what nest it holds."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;Canon Caponsacchi</i>,
+    1374-1376.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The Pope&mdash;who, if any one, speaks for Browning&mdash;declares
+  that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Brute and bird, reptile and the fly,</p>
+
+    <p>Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant</p>
+
+    <p>And flower o' the field, are all in a common pact</p>
+
+    <p>To worthily defend the trust of trusts,</p>
+
+    <p>Life from the Ever Living."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1076-1081.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"Because of motherhood," said the minor pope in <i>Ivàn
+  Ivànovitch</i>,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"each male</p>
+
+    <p>Yields to his partner place, sinks proudly in the scale:</p>
+
+    <p>His strength owned weakness, wit&mdash;folly, and
+    courage&mdash;fear,</p>
+
+    <p>Beside the female proved males's mistress&mdash;only here</p>
+
+    <p>The fox-dam, hunger-pined, will slay the felon sire</p>
+
+    <p>Who dares assault her whelp."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The betrayal of the mother's trust is the "unexampled <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg180" id="pg180">180</a></span> sin," which
+  scares the world and shames God.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I hold that, failing human sense,</p>
+
+    <p>The very earth had oped, sky fallen, to efface</p>
+
+    <p>Humanity's new wrong, motherhood's first disgrace."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Ivàn Ivànovitch</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus Browning regards love as an omnipresent good. There is
+  nothing, he tells us in <i>Fifine</i>, which cannot reflect it; even
+  moral putridity becomes phosphorescent, "and sparks from heaven
+  transpierce earth's coarsest covertures."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"There is no good of life but love&mdash;but love!</p>
+
+    <p>What else looks good, is some shade flung from love,</p>
+
+    <p>Love gilds it, gives it worth."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>In a balcony</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There is no fact which, if seen to the heart, will <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg181" id="pg181">181</a></span> 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</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"No detail but, in place allotted it, was prime</p>
+
+    <p>And perfect."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>. xxxi.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"What God is, what we are,</p>
+
+    <p>What life is&mdash;how God tastes an infinite joy</p>
+
+    <p>In finite ways&mdash;one everlasting bliss,</p>
+
+    <p>From whom all being emanates, all power</p>
+
+    <p>Proceeds: in whom is life for evermore,</p>
+
+    <p>Yet whom existence in its lowest form</p>
+
+    <p>Includes."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The scheme of love does not begin with man, he is rather its
+  consummation.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Whose attributes had here and there</p>
+
+    <p>Been scattered o'er the visible world before,</p>
+
+    <p>Asking to be combined, dim fragments meant</p>
+
+    <p>To be united in some wondrous whole,</p>
+
+    <p>Imperfect qualities throughout creation,</p>
+
+    <p>Suggesting some one creature yet to make,</p>
+
+    <p>Some point where all those scattered rays should meet</p>
+
+    <p>Convergent in the faculties of man.</p>
+    <hr />
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg182" id="pg182">182</a></span>
+
+    <p>"Hints and previsions of which faculties,</p>
+
+    <p>Are strewn confusedly everywhere about</p>
+
+    <p>The inferior natures, and all lead up higher,</p>
+
+    <p>All shape out divinely the superior race,</p>
+
+    <p>The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false,</p>
+
+    <p>And man appears at last."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Power, knowledge, love, all these are found in the world, in
+  which</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"All tended to mankind,</p>
+
+    <p>And, man produced, all has its end thus far:</p>
+
+    <p>But, in completed man begins anew</p>
+
+    <p>A tendency to God."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>For man, being intelligent, flings back his light on all that went
+  before,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains</p>
+
+    <p>Each back step in the circle."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>. 189.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He gives voice to the mute significance of Nature, and lets in the
+  light on its blind groping.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"Man, once descried, imprints for ever</p>
+
+    <p>His presence on all lifeless things."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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. The magnificent failure of Paracelsus came from
+  missing this last step. His transcendent hunger for knowledge was not
+  satisfied, not because human knowledge is essentially an illusion or
+  mind disease, but because his knowledge <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg183" id="pg183">183</a></span> did not reach the
+  final truth of things, which is love. For love alone makes the heart
+  wise, to know the secret of all being. This is the ultimate
+  hypothesis in the light of which alone man can catch a glimpse of the
+  general direction and intent of the universal movement in the world
+  and man. Dying, Paracelsus, taught by Aprile, caught a glimpse of
+  this elemental "love-force," in which alone lies the clue to every
+  problem, and the promise of the final satisfaction of the human
+  spirit. Failing in this knowledge, man may know many things, but
+  nothing truly; for all such knowledge stays with outward shows. It is
+  love alone that puts man in the right relation to his fellows and to
+  the world, and removes the distortion which fills life with sorrow,
+  and makes it</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Only a scene</p>
+
+    <p>Of degradation, ugliness and tears,</p>
+
+    <p>The record of disgraces best forgotten,</p>
+
+    <p>A sullen page in human chronicles</p>
+
+    <p>Fit to erase."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But in the light of love, man "sees a good in evil, and a hope in
+  ill success," and recognizes that mankind are</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"All with a touch of nobleness, despite</p>
+
+    <p>Their error, upward tending all though weak;</p>
+
+    <p>Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,</p>
+
+    <p>But dream of him, and guess where he may be,</p>
+
+    <p>And do their best to climb and get to him."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"All this I knew not," adds Paracelsus, "and I <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg184" id="pg184">184</a></span> failed. Let men
+  take the lesson and press this lamp of love, 'God's lamp, close to
+  their breasts'; its splendour, soon or late, will pierce the gloom,"
+  and show that the universe is a transparent manifestation of His
+  beneficence.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg185" id=
+  "pg185">185</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch07" id="ch07">CHAPTER VII.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>BROWNING'S IDEALISM, AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Master, explain this incongruity!</p>
+
+    <p>When I dared question, 'It is beautiful,</p>
+
+    <p>But is it true?' thy answer was, 'In truth</p>
+
+    <p>Lives Beauty.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Shah Abbas</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>We have now seen how Browning sought to explain all things as
+  manifestations of the principle of love; how he endeavoured to bring
+  all the variety of finite existence, and even the deep discrepancies
+  of good and evil, under the sway of one idea. I have already tried to
+  show that all human thought is occupied with the same task: science,
+  art, philosophy, and even the most ordinary common-sense, are all, in
+  their different ways, seeking for constant laws amongst changing
+  facts. Nay, we may even go so far as to say that all the activity of
+  man, the practical as well as the theoretical, is an attempt to
+  establish a <i>modus vivendi</i> between his environment and himself.
+  And such an attempt rests on the assumption that there is some ground
+  common to both of the struggling <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg186" id="pg186">186</a></span> powers within and without, some
+  principle that manifests itself both in man and in nature. So that
+  all men are philosophers to the extent of postulating a unity, which
+  is deeper than all differences; and all are alike trying to discover,
+  in however limited or ignorant a way, what that unity is. If this
+  fact were more constantly kept in view, the effort of philosophers to
+  bring the ultimate colligating principles of thought into clear
+  consciousness would not, at the outset at least, be regarded with so
+  much suspicion. For the philosopher differs from the practical man of
+  the world, not so much in the nature of the task which he is trying
+  to accomplish, as in the distinct and conscious purpose with which he
+  enters upon it.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, I think that those, who, like Browning, offer an explicitly
+  optimistic idea of the relation between man and the world, have a
+  special right to a respectful hearing; for it can scarcely be denied
+  that their optimistic explanation is invaluable, <i>if it is
+  true</i>&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"So might we safely mock at what unnerves</p>
+
+    <p>Faith now, be spared the sapping fear's increase</p>
+
+    <p>That haply evil's strife with good shall cease</p>
+
+    <p>Never on earth."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Bernard de Mandeville</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Despair is a great clog to good work for the world, and
+  pessimists, as a rule, have shown much more readiness than optimists
+  to let evil have its unimpeded way. Having found, like Schopenhauer,
+  that "Life is an awkward business," they "determine to <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg187" id="pg187">187</a></span> spend life in
+  reflecting on it," or at least in moaning about it. The world's
+  helpers have been men of another mould; and the contrast between
+  Fichte and Schopenhauer is suggestive of a general
+  truth:&mdash;"Fichte, in the bright triumphant flight of his
+  idealism, supported by faith in a moral order of the world which
+  works for righteousness, turning his back on the darker ethics of
+  self-torture and mortification, and rushing into the political and
+  social fray, proclaiming the duties of patriotism, idealizing the
+  soldier, calling to and exercising an active philanthrophy, living
+  with his nation, and continually urging it upwards to higher levels
+  of self-realization&mdash;Schopenhauer recurring to the idea of
+  asceticism, preaching the blessedness of the quiescence of all will,
+  disparaging efforts to save the nation or elevate the masses, and
+  holding that each has enough to do in raising his own self from its
+  dull engrossment in lower things to an absorption in that pure,
+  passionless being which lies far beyond all, even the so-called
+  highest, pursuits of practical life."<sup>A</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Schopenhauer</i>, by Prof. Wallace.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>A pessimism, which is nothing more than flippant fault-finding,
+  frequently gains a cheap reputation for wisdom; and, on the other
+  hand, an optimism, which is really the result of much reflection and
+  experience, may be regarded as the product of a superficial spirit
+  that has never known the deeper evils of life. But, if pessimism be
+  true, it differs from other truths by its uselessness; for, even if
+  it <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg188" id="pg188">188</a></span>
+  saves man from the bitterness of petty disappointments, it does so
+  only by making the misery universal. There is no need to specify,
+  when "<i>All</i> is vanity." The drowning man does not feel the
+  discomfort of being wet. But yet, if we reflect on the problem of
+  evil, we shall find that there is no neutral ground, and shall
+  ultimately be driven to choose between pessimism and its opposite.
+  Nor, on the other hand, is the suppression of the problem of evil
+  possible, except at a great cost. It presents itself anew in the mind
+  of every thinking man; and some kind of solution of it, or at least
+  some definite way of meeting its difficulty, is involved in the
+  attitude which every man assumes towards life and its tasks.</p>
+
+  <p>It is not impossible that there may be as much to be said for
+  Browning's joy in life and his love of it, as there is for his
+  predecessor's rage and sorrow. Browning certainly thought that there
+  was; and he held his view consistently to the end. We cannot,
+  therefore, do justice to the poet without dealing critically with the
+  principle on which he has based his faith, and observing how far it
+  is applicable to the facts of human life. As I have previously said,
+  he strives hard to come into fair contact with the misery of man in
+  all its sadness; and, after doing so, he claims, not as a matter of
+  poetic sentiment, but as a matter of strict truth, that good is the
+  heart and reality of it all. It is true that he cannot demonstrate
+  the truth of his principle by reference to all the facts, any more
+  than the scientific man can <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg189" id=
+  "pg189">189</a></span> justify his hypothesis in every detail; but he
+  holds it as a faith which reason can justify and experience
+  establish, although not in every isolated phenomenon. The good may,
+  he holds, be seen actually at work in the world, and its process will
+  be more fully known, as human life advances towards its goal.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Though Master keep aloof,</p>
+
+    <p>Signs of His presence multiply from roof</p>
+
+    <p>To basement of the building."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thus Browning bases his view upon experience, and finds firm
+  footing for his faith in the present; although he acknowledges that
+  the "profound of ignorance surges round his rockspit of
+  self-knowledge."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Enough that now,</p>
+
+    <p>Here where I stand, this moment's me and mine,</p>
+
+    <p>Shows me what is, permits me to divine</p>
+
+    <p>What shall be."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"Since we know love we know enough"; for in love, he confidently
+  thinks we have the key to all the mystery of being.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, what is to be made of an optimism of this kind, which is
+  based upon love and which professes to start from experience, or to
+  be legitimately and rationally derived from it?</p>
+
+  <p>If such a view be taken seriously, as I propose doing, we must be
+  prepared to meet at the outset with some very grave difficulties. The
+  first of these is that it is an interpretation of facts by a human
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg190" id="pg190">190</a></span>
+  emotion. To say that love blushes in the rose, or breaks into beauty
+  in the clouds, that it shows its strength in the storm, and sets the
+  stars in the sky, and that it is in all things the source of order
+  and law, may imply a principle of supreme worth both to poetry and
+  religion; but when we are asked to take it as a metaphysical
+  explanation of facts, we are prone, like the judges of Caponsacchi,
+  not to "levity, or to anything indecorous"&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Only&mdash;I think I apprehend the mood:</p>
+
+    <p>There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk,</p>
+
+    <p>The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth,</p>
+
+    <p>The titter stifled in the hollow palm</p>
+
+    <p>Which rubbed the eye-brow and caressed the nose,</p>
+
+    <p>When I first told my tale; they meant, you know&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>'The sly one, all this we are bound believe!</p>
+
+    <p>Well, he can say no other than what he says.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;Canon Caponsacchi</i>,
+    14-20.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>We are sufficiently willing to let the doctrine be held as a pious
+  opinion. The faith that "all's love yet all's law," like many another
+  illusion, if not hugged too closely, may comfort man's nakedness. But
+  if we are asked to substitute this view for that which the sciences
+  suggest,&mdash;if we are asked to put "Love" in the place of physical
+  energy, and, by assuming it as a principle, to regard as unreal all
+  the infinite misery of humanity and the degradation of intellect and
+  character from which it arises, common-sense seems at once to take
+  the side of the doleful sage of Chelsea. When the optimist postulates
+  that the state of the world, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg191"
+  id="pg191">191</a></span> were it rightly understood, is completely
+  satisfactory, reason seems to be brought to a stand; and if poetry
+  and religion involve such a postulate, they are taken to be
+  ministering to the emotions at the expense of the intellect.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning, however, was not a mere sentimentalist who could satisfy
+  his heart without answering the questions of his intellect. Nor is
+  his view without support&mdash;at least, as regards the substance of
+  it. The presence of an idealistic element in things is recognized
+  even by ordinary thought; and no man's world is so poor that it would
+  not be poorer still for him, if it were reduced by the abstract
+  sciences of nature into a mere manifestation of physical force. Such
+  a world Richter compares to an empty eye-socket.</p>
+
+  <p>The great result of speculation since the time of Kant is to teach
+  us to recognize that objects are essentially related to mind, and
+  that the principles which rule our thought enter, so to speak, into
+  the constitution of the things we know. A very slight acquaintance
+  with the history even of psychology, especially in modern times,
+  shows that facts are more and more retracted into thought. This
+  science, which began with a sufficiently common-sense view, not only
+  of the reality and solidity of the things of the outer world, but of
+  their opposition to, or independence of thought, is now thinning that
+  world down into a mere shadow&mdash;a something which excites
+  sensation. It shows that external things as we know them, and we are
+  not concerned in any others, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg192"
+  id="pg192">192</a></span> are, to a very great extent, the product of
+  our thinking activities. No one will now subscribe to the Lockian or
+  Humean view, of images impressed by objects on mind: the object which
+  "impresses" has first to be made by mind, out of the results of
+  nervous excitation. In a word, modern psychology as well as modern
+  metaphysics, is demonstrating more and more fully the dependence of
+  the world, as it is known, on the nature and activity of man's mind.
+  Every explanation of the world is found to be, in this sense,
+  idealistic; and in this respect, there is no difference whatsoever
+  between the interpretation given by science and that of poetry, or
+  religion, or philosophy. If we say that a thing is a "substance," or
+  has "a cause"; if, with the physicist, we assert the principle of the
+  transmutation of energy, or make use of the idea of evolution with
+  the biologist or geologist; nay, if we speak of time and space with
+  the mathematician, we use principles of unity derived from
+  self-consciousness, and interpret nature in terms of ourselves, just
+  as truly as the poet or philosopher, who makes love, or reason, the
+  constitutive element in things. If the practical man of the world
+  charges the poet and philosopher with living amidst phantoms, he can
+  be answered with a "<i>Tu quoque</i>." "How easy," said Emerson, "it
+  is to show the materialist that he also is a phantom walking and
+  working amid phantoms, and that he need only ask a question or two
+  beyond his daily questions to find his solid universe proving dim and
+  impalpable before his sense." <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg193"
+  id="pg193">193</a></span> "Sense," which seems to show directly that
+  the world is a solid reality, not dependent in any way on thought, is
+  found not to be reliable. All science is nothing but an appeal to
+  thought from ordinary sensuous opinion. It is an attempt to find the
+  reality of things by thinking about them; and this reality, when it
+  is found, turns out to be a law. But laws are ideas; though, if they
+  are true ideas, they represent not merely thoughts in the mind, but
+  also real principles, which manifest themselves in the objects of the
+  outer world, as well as in the thinker's mind.</p>
+
+  <p>It is not possible in such a work as this, to give a carefully
+  reasoned proof of this view of the relation of thought and things, or
+  to repeat the argument of Kant. I must be content with merely
+  referring to it, as showing that the principles in virtue of which we
+  think, are the principles in virtue of which objects as we know them
+  exist; and we cannot be concerned with any other objects. The laws
+  which scientific investigation discovers are not only ideas that can
+  be written in books, but also principles which explain the nature of
+  things. In other words, the hypotheses of the natural sciences, or
+  their categories, are points of view in the light of which the
+  external world can be regarded as governed by uniform laws. And these
+  constructive principles, which lift the otherwise disconnected world
+  into an intelligible system, are revelations of the nature of
+  intelligence, and only on that account principles for explaining the
+  world.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg194" id=
+  "pg194">194</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i10">"To know,</p>
+
+    <p>Rather consists in opening out a way</p>
+
+    <p>Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,</p>
+
+    <p>Than in effecting entry for a light</p>
+
+    <p>Supposed to be without."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In this sense, it may be said that all knowledge is
+  anthropomorphic; and in this respect there is no difference between
+  the physics, which speaks of energy as the essence of things, and the
+  poetry, which speaks of love as the ultimate principle of reality.
+  Between such scientific and idealistic explanations there is not even
+  the difference that the one begins without and the other within, or
+  that the one is objective and the other subjective. The true
+  distinction is that the principles upon which the latter proceed are
+  less abstract than those of science. "Reason" and "love" are higher
+  principles for the explanation of the nature of things than
+  "substance" or "cause"; but both are forms of the unity of thought.
+  And if the latter seem to have nothing to do with the self, it is
+  only because they are inadequate to express its full character. On
+  the other hand, the higher categories, or ideas of reason, seem to be
+  merely anthropomorphic, and, therefore, ill-suited to explain nature,
+  because the relation of nature to intelligence is habitually
+  neglected by ordinary thought, which has not pressed its problems far
+  enough to know that such higher categories can alone satisfy the
+  demand for truth.</p>
+
+  <p>But natural science is gradually driven from the lower to the
+  higher categories, or, in other <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg195"
+  id="pg195">195</a></span> words, it is learning to take a more and
+  more idealistic view of nature. It is moving very slowly, because it
+  is a long labour to exhaust the uses of an instrument of thought; and
+  it is only at great intervals in the history of the human intellect,
+  that we find the need of a change of categories. But, as already
+  hinted, there is no doubt that science is becoming increasingly aware
+  of the conditions, under which alone its results may be held as
+  valid. At first, it drove "mind" out of the realm of nature, and
+  offered to explain both it and man in physical and mathematical
+  terms. But, in our day, the man of science has become too cautious to
+  make such rash extensions of the principles he uses. He is more
+  inclined to limit himself to his special field, and he refuses to
+  make any declaration as to the ultimate nature of things. He holds
+  himself apart from materialism, as he does from idealism. I think I
+  may even go further, and say that the fatal flaw of materialism has
+  been finally detected, and that the essential relativity of all
+  objects to thought is all but universally acknowledged.</p>
+
+  <p>The common notion that science gives a complete view of truth, to
+  which we may appeal as refuting idealism, is untenable. Science
+  itself will not support the appeal, but will direct the appellant to
+  another court. Perhaps, rather, it would be truer to say that its
+  attitude is one of doubt whether or not any court, philosophical or
+  other, can give any valid decision on the matter. Confining
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg196" id="pg196">196</a></span>
+  themselves to the region of material phenomena, scientific men
+  generally leave to common ignorance, or to moral and theological
+  tradition, all the interests and activities of man, other than those
+  which are physical or physiological. And some of them are even aware,
+  that if they could find the physical equation of man, or, through
+  their knowledge of physiology, actually produce in man the
+  sensations, thoughts, and notions now ascribed to the intelligent
+  life within him, the question of the spiritual or material nature of
+  man and the world, would remain precisely where it was. The
+  explanation would still begin with mind and end there. The principles
+  of the materialistic explanation of the world would still be derived
+  from intelligence; mind would still underlie all it explained, and
+  completed science would still be, in this sense, anthropomorphic. The
+  charge of anthropomorphism thus falls to the ground, because it would
+  prove too much. It is a weapon which cuts the hand that wields it.
+  And, as directed against idealism, it only shows that he who uses it
+  has inadequate notions both of the nature of the self and of the
+  world, and is not aware that each gets meaning, only as an exponent
+  of the other.</p>
+
+  <p>On the whole, we may say that it is not men of science who now
+  assail philosophy, because it gives an idealistic explanation of the
+  world, so much as unsystematic dabblers in matters of thought. The
+  best men of science, rather, show a tendency to acquiesce in a kind
+  of dualism of <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg197" id=
+  "pg197">197</a></span> matter and spirit, and to leave morality and
+  religion, art and philosophy to pursue their own ends undisturbed.
+  Mr. Huxley, for instance, and some others, offer two philosophical
+  solutions, one proceeding from the material world and the other from
+  the sensations and other "facts of consciousness." They say that we
+  may either explain man as a natural phenomenon, or the world as a
+  mental one.</p>
+
+  <p>But it is a little difficult not to ask which of these
+  explanations is true. Both of them cannot well be, seeing that they
+  are different. And neither of them can be adopted without very
+  serious consequences. It would require considerable hardihood to
+  suggest that natural science should be swept away in favour of
+  psychology, which would be done if the one view held by Mr. Huxley
+  were true. And, in my opinion, it requires quite as much hardihood to
+  suggest the adoption of a theory that makes morality and religion
+  illusory, which would be done were the other view valid.</p>
+
+  <p>As a matter of fact, however, such an attitude can scarcely be
+  held by any one who is interested <i>both</i> in the success of
+  natural science and in the spiritual development of mankind. We are
+  constrained rather to say that, if these rival lines of thought lead
+  us to deny either the outer world of things, or the world of thought
+  and morality, then they must both be wrong. They are not
+  "explanations" but false theories, if they lead to such conclusions
+  as these. And, instead of holding them up <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg198" id="pg198">198</a></span> to the world as
+  the final triumph of human thought, we should sweep them into the
+  dust-bin, and seek for some better explanation from a new point of
+  view.</p>
+
+  <p>And, indeed, a better explanation is sought, and sought not only
+  by idealists, but by scientific men themselves,&mdash;did they only
+  comprehend their own main tendency and method. The impulse towards
+  unity, which is the very essence of thought, if it is baulked in one
+  direction by a hopeless dualism, just breaks out in another.
+  Subjective idealism, that is, the theory that things are nothing but
+  phenomena of the individual's consciousness, that the world is really
+  all inside the philosopher, is now known by most people to end in
+  self-contradiction; and materialism is also known to begin with it.
+  And there are not many people sanguine enough to believe with Mr.
+  Huxley and Mr. Herbert Spencer, that, if we add two
+  self-contradictory theories together, or hold them alternately, we
+  shall find the truth. Modern science, that is, the science which does
+  not philosophize, and modern philosophy are with tolerable unanimity
+  denying this absolute dualism. They do not know of any thought that
+  is not of things, or of any things that are not for thought. It is
+  necessarily assumed that, in some way or other, the gap between
+  things and thought is got over by knowledge. How the connection is
+  brought about may not be known; but, that there is the connection
+  between real things and true thoughts, no one can well deny. It is an
+  ill-starred perversity which <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg199"
+  id="pg199">199</a></span> leads men to deny such a connection, merely
+  because they have not found out how it is established.</p>
+
+  <p>A new category of thought has taken possession of the thought of
+  our time&mdash;a category which is fatal to dualism. The idea of
+  development is breaking down the division between mind and matter, as
+  it is breaking down all other absolute divisions. Geology, astronomy,
+  and physics at one extreme, biology, psychology, and philosophy at
+  the other, combine in asserting the idea of the universe as a unity
+  which is always evolving its content, and bringing its secret
+  potencies to the light. It is true that these sciences have not
+  linked hands as yet. We cannot get from chemistry to biology without
+  a leap, or from physiology to psychology without another. But no one
+  will postulate a rift right through being. The whole tendency of
+  modern science implies the opposite of such a conception. History is
+  striving to trace continuity between the civilized man and the
+  savage. Psychology is making towards a junction with physiology and
+  general biology, biology with chemistry, and chemistry with physics.
+  That there is an unbroken continuity in existence is becoming a
+  postulate of modern science, almost as truly as the "universality of
+  law" or "the uniformity of nature." Nor is the postulate held less
+  firmly because the evidence for the continuity of nature is not yet
+  complete. Chemistry has not yet quite lapsed into physics; biology at
+  present shows no sign of giving up its characteristic conception of
+  life, and the former science is as yet quite unable to deal with that
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg200" id="pg200">200</a></span>
+  peculiar phenomenon. The facts of consciousness have not been
+  resolved into nervous action, and, so far, mind has not been shown to
+  be a secretion of brain. Nevertheless, all these sciences are beating
+  against the limits which separate them, and new suggestions of
+  connection between natural life and its inorganic environment are
+  continually discovered. The sciences are boring towards each other,
+  and the dividing strata are wearing thin; so that it seems reasonable
+  to expect that, with the growth of knowledge, an unbroken way upwards
+  may be discovered, from the lowest and simplest stages of existence
+  to the highest and most complex forms of self-conscious life.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, to those persons who are primarily interested in the ethical
+  and religious phenomena of man's life, the idea of abolishing the
+  chasm between spirit and nature is viewed with no little
+  apprehension. It is supposed that if evolution were established as a
+  universal law, and the unity of being were proved, the mental and
+  moral life of man would be degraded into a complex manifestation of
+  mere physical force. And we even find religious men rejoicing at the
+  failure of science to bridge the gap between the inorganic and the
+  organic, and between natural and self-conscious life; as if the
+  validity of religion depended upon the maintenance of their
+  separating boundaries. But no religion that is free from
+  superstitious elements has anything to gain from the failure of
+  knowledge to relate things to each other. It is difficult to see how
+  breaks in the continuity of being <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg201" id="pg201">201</a></span> can be established, when every
+  living plant confutes the absolute difference between the organic and
+  inorganic, and, by the very fact of living, turns the latter into the
+  former; and it is difficult to deny the continuity of "mind and
+  matter," when every human being is relating himself to the outer
+  world in all his thoughts and actions. And religion is the very last
+  form of thought which could profit from such a proof of absolute
+  distinctions, were it possible. In fact, as we have seen, religion,
+  in so far as it demands a perfect and absolute being as the object of
+  worship, is vitally concerned in maintaining the unity of the world.
+  It must assume that matter, in its degree, reveals the same principle
+  which, in a higher form, manifests itself in spirit.</p>
+
+  <p>But closer investigation will show that the real ground for such
+  apprehension does not lie in the continuity of existence, which
+  evolution implies; for religion itself postulates the same thing. The
+  apprehension springs, rather, from the idea that the continuity
+  asserted by evolution, is obtained by resolving the higher forms of
+  existence into the lower. It is believed that, if the application of
+  development to facts were successfully carried out, the organic would
+  be shown to be nothing but complex inorganic forces, mental life
+  nothing but a physiological process, and religion, morality, and art,
+  nothing but products of the highly complex motion of highly complex
+  aggregates of physical atoms.</p>
+
+  <p>It seems to me quite natural that science should be regarded as
+  tending towards such a materialistic <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg202" id="pg202">202</a></span> conclusion. This is the view which
+  many scientific investigators have themselves taken of their work;
+  and some of their philosophical exponents, notably Mr. Herbert
+  Spencer, have, with more or less inconsistency, interpreted the idea
+  of evolution in this manner. But, it may be well to bear in mind that
+  science is generally far more successful in employing its
+  constructive ideas, than it is in rendering an account of them. In
+  fact, it is not its business to examine its categories: that task
+  properly belongs to philosophy, and it is not a superfluous one. But,
+  so long as the employment of the categories in the special province
+  of a particular science yields valid results, scientific explorers
+  and those who attach, and rightly attach, so much value to their
+  discoveries, are very unwilling to believe that these categories are
+  not valid universally. The warning voice of philosophy is not heeded,
+  when it charges natural science with applying its conceptions to
+  materials to which they are inadequate; and its examination of the
+  categories of thought is regarded as an innocent, but also a useless,
+  activity. For, it is argued, what good can arise from the analysis of
+  our working ideas? The world looked for causes, and found them, when
+  it was very young; but, up to the time of David Hume, no one had
+  shown what causality meant, and the explanation which he offered is
+  now rejected by modern science, as definitely as it is rejected by
+  philosophy. Meantime, while philosophy is still engaged in exposing
+  the fallacies of the theory of association as held by <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg203" id="pg203">203</a></span> Hume, science has
+  gone beyond this category altogether; it is now establishing a theory
+  of the conservation of energy, which supplants the law of causality
+  by tracing it into a deeper law of nature.</p>
+
+  <p>There is some force in this argument, but it cuts both ways. For,
+  even if it be admitted that the category was successfully applied in
+  the past, it is also admitted that it was applied without being
+  understood; and it cannot now be questioned that the philosophers
+  were right in rejecting it as the final explanation of the relation
+  of objects to each other, and in pointing to other and higher
+  connecting ideas. And this consideration should go some way towards
+  convincing evolutionists that, though they may be able successfully
+  to apply the idea of development to particular facts, this does not
+  guarantee the soundness of their view of it as an instrument of
+  thought, or of the nature of the final results which it is destined
+  to achieve. Hence, without any disparagement to the new extension
+  which science has received by the use of this new idea, it may be
+  maintained that the ordinary view of its tendency and mission is
+  erroneous.</p>
+
+  <p>"The prevailing method of explaining the world," says Professor
+  Caird, "may be described as an attempt to level 'downwards.' The
+  doctrine of development, interpreted as that idea usually is
+  interpreted, supports this view, as making it necessary to trace back
+  higher and more complex to lower or simpler forms of being; for the
+  most obvious way of accomplishing this task is to show analytically
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg204" id="pg204">204</a></span> that
+  there is really nothing more in the former than in the latter."<sup>A</sup>
+  "Divorced from matter," asks Professor Tyndall, "where is life to be
+  found? Whatever our <i>faith</i> may say our <i>knowledge</i> shows
+  them to be indissolubly joined. Every meal we eat, and every cup we
+  drink, illustrates the mysterious <i>control of Mind by Matter</i>.
+  Trace the line of life backwards and see it approaching more and more
+  to what we call the <i>purely physical condition</i>."<sup>B</sup> And then,
+  rising to the height of his subject, or even above it, he proclaims,
+  "By an intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the
+  experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter which we, in our
+  ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed
+  reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the
+  promise and potency of all terrestrial life."<sup>C</sup> A little further on,
+  speaking in the name of science, and on behalf of his scientific
+  fellow-workers (with what right is a little doubtful), he
+  adds&mdash;"We claim, and we shall wrest, from theology, the entire
+  domain of cosmological theory. All schemes and systems which thus
+  infringe upon the domain of science, must, <i>in so far as they do
+  this,</i> submit to its control, and relinquish all thought of
+  controlling it." But if science is to control the knowable world, he
+  generously leaves the remainder for religion. He will not deprive it
+  of a faith in "a Power absolutely inscrutable to the intellect
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg205" id="pg205">205</a></span> of
+  man. As little in our days as in the days of Job can a man by
+  searching find this Power out." And, now that he has left this empty
+  sphere of the unknown to religion, he feels justified in adding,
+  "There is, you will observe, no very rank materialism here."</p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Critical Philosophy of Kant</i>, Vol. I. p. 34</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Address to the British Association</i>, 1874, p. 54.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Belfast Address</i>, 1874.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Yet they did not abolish the gods, but they sent them well out
+    of the way,</p>
+
+    <p>With the rarest of nectar to drink, and blue fields of nothing
+    to sway."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: Clerk Maxwell: "<i>Notes of the President's Address,</i>"
+    British Association, 1874.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Now these declarations of Mr. Tyndall are, to say the least,
+  somewhat ambiguous and shadowy. Yet, when he informs us that eating
+  and drinking "illustrate the control of mind by matter," and "that
+  the line of life traced backwards leads towards a purely physical
+  condition," it is a little difficult to avoid the conclusion that he
+  regards science as destined.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"To tread the world</p>
+
+    <p>Into a paste, and thereof make a smooth</p>
+
+    <p>Uniform mound, whereon to plant its flag."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>For the conclusion of the whole argument seems to be, that all
+  <i>we know as facts</i> are mere forms of matter; although the
+  stubborn refusal of consciousness to be resolved into natural force,
+  and its power of constructing for itself a world of symbols, gives
+  science no little trouble, and forces it to acknowledge complete
+  ignorance of the nature of the power from which all
+  comes.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg206" id=
+  "pg206">206</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"So roll things to the level which you love,</p>
+
+    <p>That you could stand at ease there and survey</p>
+
+    <p>The universal Nothing undisgraced</p>
+
+    <p>By pert obtrusion of some old church-spire</p>
+
+    <p>I' the distance! "<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Some writers on ethics and religion have adopted the same view of
+  the goal of the idea of evolution. In consistency with this supposed
+  tendency of science, to resolve all things into their simplest, and
+  earliest forms, religion has been traced back to the superstition and
+  ghost-worship of savages; and then it has been contended that it is,
+  in essence, nothing more than superstition and ghost-worship. And, in
+  like manner, morality, with its categorical imperative of duty, has
+  been traced back, without a break, to the ignorant fear of the
+  vengeance of a savage chief. A similar process in the same direction
+  reduces the love divine, of which our poet speaks, into brute lust;
+  somewhat sublimated, it is true, in its highest forms, but not
+  fundamentally changed.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Philosophers deduce you chastity</p>
+
+    <p>Or shame, from just the fact that at the first</p>
+
+    <p>Whoso embraced a woman in the field,</p>
+
+    <p>Threw club down and forewent his brains beside;</p>
+
+    <p>So, stood a ready victim in the reach</p>
+
+    <p>Of any brother-savage, club in hand.</p>
+
+    <p>Hence saw the use of going out of sight</p>
+
+    <p>In wood or cave to prosecute his loves."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Bishop Blouhram's Apology</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And when the sacred things of life are treated in this
+  manner&mdash;when moral conduct is showed to <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg207" id="pg207">207</a></span> be evolved by a
+  continuous process from "conduct in general," the conduct of an
+  "infusorium or a cephalopod," or even of wind-mills or water-wheels,
+  it is not surprising if the authority of the moral law seems to be
+  undermined, and that "devout souls" are apprehensive of the results
+  of science. "Does law so analyzed coerce you much?" asks
+  Browning.</p>
+
+  <p>The derivation of spiritual from natural laws thus appears to be
+  fatal to the former; and religious teachers naturally think that it
+  is necessary for their cause to snap the links of the chain of
+  evolution, and, like Professor Drummond, to establish absolute gaps,
+  not only between the inorganic and the organic worlds, but also
+  between the self-conscious life of man and the mysterious, spiritual
+  life of Christ, or God. But it seems to me that, in their antagonism
+  to evolution, religious teachers are showing the same incapacity to
+  distinguish between their friends and their foes, which they
+  previously manifested in their acceptance of the Kantian doctrine of
+  "things in themselves," &mdash;a doctrine which placed God and the
+  soul beyond the power of speculative reason either to prove or
+  disprove. It is, however, already recognized that the attempt of
+  Mansel and Hamilton to degrade human reason for the behoof of faith
+  was really a veiled agnosticism; and a little reflection must show
+  that the idea of evolution, truly interpreted, in no wise threatens
+  the degradation of man, or the overthrow of his spiritual interests.
+  On the contrary, this idea is, in all the history of <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg208" id="pg208">208</a></span> thought, the
+  first constructive hypothesis which is adequate to the uses of ethics
+  and religion. By means of it, we may hope to solve many of the
+  problems arising from the nature of knowledge and moral conduct,
+  which the lower category of cause turned into pure enigmas. It seems,
+  indeed, to contain the promise of establishing the science of man, as
+  intelligent, on a firm basis; on which we may raise a superstructure,
+  comparable in strength and superior in worth, to that of the science
+  of nature. And, even if the moral science must, like philosophy,
+  always return to the beginning&mdash;must, that is, from the
+  necessity of its nature, and not from any complete failure&mdash;it
+  will still begin again at a higher level now that the idea of
+  evolution is in the field.</p>
+
+  <p>It now remains to show in what way the idea of evolution leaves
+  room for religion and morality; or, in other words, to show how, so
+  far from degrading man to the level of the brute condition, and
+  running life down into "purely physical conditions," it contains the
+  promise of establishing that idealistic view of the world, which is
+  maintained by art and religion.</p>
+
+  <p>In order to show this, it is necessary that the idea of evolution
+  should be used fearlessly, and applied to all facts that can in any
+  way come under it. It must, in other words, be used as a category of
+  thought, whose application is universal; so that, if it is valid at
+  all as a theory, it is valid of all finite things. For the question
+  we are dealing with <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg209" id=
+  "pg209">209</a></span> is not the truth of the hypothesis of a
+  particular science, but the truth of a hypothesis as to the relation
+  of all objects in the world, including man himself. We must not be
+  deterred from this universal application by the fact that we cannot,
+  as yet, prove its truth in every detail. No scientific hypothesis
+  ever has exhausted its details. I consider, therefore, that Mr.
+  Tyndall had a complete right to "cross the boundary of the
+  experimental evidence by an intellectual necessity"; for the
+  necessity comes from the assumption of a possible explanation by the
+  aid of the hypothesis. It is no argument against such a procedure to
+  insist that, as yet, there is no proof of the absolute continuity of
+  matter and physical life, or that the dead begets the living. The
+  hypothesis is not disproved by the absence of evidence; it is only
+  not proved. The connection may be there, although we have not, as
+  yet, been able to find it. In the face of such difficulties as these,
+  the scientific investigator has always a right to claim more time;
+  and his attitude is impregnable as long as he remembers, as Mr.
+  Tyndall did on the whole, that his hypothesis is a hypothesis.</p>
+
+  <p>But Mr. Tyndall has himself given up this right. He, like Mr.
+  Huxley, has placed the phenomena of self-consciousness outside of the
+  developing process, and confined the sphere in which evolution is
+  applicable, to natural objects. Between objects and the subject, even
+  when both subject and object are man himself, there lies "an
+  impassable gulf." <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg210" id=
+  "pg210">210</a></span> Even to try "to comprehend the connection
+  between thought and thing is absurd, like the effort of a man trying
+  to lift himself by his own waist-band." Our states of
+  self-consciousness are symbols only&mdash;symbols of an outside
+  entity, whose real nature we can never know. We know only these
+  states; we only <i>infer</i> "that anything answering to our
+  impressions exists outside of ourselves." And it is impossible to
+  justify even that inference; for, if we can only know states of
+  consciousness, we cannot say that they are symbols of anything, or
+  that there is anything to be symbolized. The external world, on this
+  theory, ceases to exist even as an unknown entity. In triumphantly
+  pointing out that, in virtue of this psychological view, "There is,
+  you will observe, no very rank materialism here," Mr. Tyndall forgets
+  that he has destroyed the basis of all natural science, and reduced
+  evolution into a law of "an outside entity," of which we can never
+  know anything, and any inference regarding which violates every law
+  of thought.</p>
+
+  <p>It seems to me quite plain that either this psychological theory,
+  which Mr. Tyndall has mistaken for a philosophy, is invalid; or else
+  it is useless to endeavour to propound any view regarding a "nature
+  which is the phantom of the individual's mind." I prefer the science
+  of Mr. Tyndall (and of Mr. Huxley, too) to his philosophy; and he
+  would have escaped materialism more effectively, if he had remained
+  faithful to his theory of evolution. It is a disloyalty, not only to
+  science, but to thought, to cast away <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg211" id="pg211">211</a></span> our categories when they seem to
+  imply inconvenient consequences. They must be valid universally, if
+  they are valid at all.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyndall contends that nature makes man, and he finds evidence
+  in the fact that we eat and drink, "of the control of mind by
+  matter." Now, it seems to me, that <i>if</i> nature makes man, then
+  nature makes man's thoughts also. His sensations, feelings, ideas,
+  notions, being those of a naturally-evolved agent, are revelations of
+  the potency of the primal matter, just as truly as are the buds,
+  flowers, and fruits of a tree. No doubt, we cannot as yet "comprehend
+  the connection" between nervous action and sensation, any more than
+  we can comprehend the connection between inorganic and organic
+  existence. But, if the absence of "experimental evidence" does not
+  disprove the hypothesis in the one case, it can not disprove it in
+  the other. There are two crucial points in which the theory has not
+  been established.</p>
+
+  <p>But, in both cases alike, there is the same kind of evidence that
+  the connection exists; although in neither case can we, as yet,
+  discover what it is. Plants live by changing inorganic elements into
+  organic structure; and man is intelligent only in so far as he
+  crosses over the boundary between subject and object, and knows the
+  world without him. There is no "impassable gulf separating the
+  subject and object"; if there were we could not know anything of
+  either. There are not two worlds&mdash;the one of thoughts, the other
+  of things&mdash;which <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg212" id=
+  "pg212">212</a></span> are absolutely exclusive of each other, but
+  one universe in which thought and reality meet. Mr. Tyndall thinks
+  that it is an inference (and an inference over an impassable gulf!)
+  that anything answering to our impressions exists outside ourselves.
+  "The question of the external world is the great battleground of
+  metaphysics," he quotes approvingly from Mr. J.S. Mill. But the
+  question of the external world is not whether that world exists; it
+  is, how are we to account for our knowledge that it does exist. The
+  inference is not from thoughts to things, nor from things to
+  thoughts, but from a partially known world to a systematic theory of
+  that world. Philosophy is not engaged on the foolish enterprise of
+  trying to discover whether the world exists, or whether we know that
+  it exists; its problem is how to account for our knowledge. It asks
+  what must the nature of things be, seeing that they are known; and
+  what is the nature of thought, seeing that it knows facts?</p>
+
+  <p>There is no hope whatsoever for ethics, or religion, or
+  philosophy&mdash;no hope even for science&mdash;in a theory which
+  would apply evolution all the way up from inorganic matter to life,
+  but which would postulate an absolute break at consciousness. The
+  connection between thought and things is there to begin with, whether
+  we can account for it or not; if it were not, then natural science
+  would be impossible. It would be palpably irrational even to try to
+  find out the nature of things by thinking. The only science
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg213" id="pg213">213</a></span> would
+  be psychology, and even that would be the science of "symbols of an
+  unknown entity." What symbols of an unknown can signify, or how an
+  unknown can produce symbols of itself across an impassable
+  gulf&mdash;Mr. Spencer, Mr. Huxley, and Mr. Tyndall have yet to
+  inform us.</p>
+
+  <p>It is the more necessary to insist on this, because the division
+  between thought and matter, which is admitted by these writers, is
+  often grasped at by their opponents, as a means of warding off the
+  results which they draw from the theory of evolution. When science
+  breaks its sword, religion assails it, with the fragment. It is not
+  at once evident that if this chasm were shown to exist, knowledge
+  would be a chimera; for there would be no outer world at all, not
+  even a phenomenal one, to supply an object for it. We <i>must</i>
+  postulate the ultimate unity of all beings with each other and with
+  the mind that knows them, just because we are intellectual and moral
+  beings; and to destroy this unity is to "kill reason itself, as it
+  were, in the eye," as Milton said.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, evolution not only postulates unity, or the unbroken
+  continuity of all existence, but it also negates all differences,
+  except those which are expressions of that unity. It is not the mere
+  assertion of a substratum under qualities; but it implies that the
+  substratum penetrates into the qualities, and manifests itself in
+  them. That which develops&mdash;be it plant, child, or biological
+  kingdom&mdash;is, at every stage from lowest to highest, a concrete
+  unity <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg214" id="pg214">214</a></span>
+  of all its differences; and in the whole history of its process its
+  actual content is always the same. The environment of the plant
+  evokes that content, but it adds nothing to it. No addition of
+  anything absolutely new, no external aggregation, no insertion of
+  anything alien into a growing thing, is possible. What it is now, it
+  was in the beginning; and what it will be, it is now. Granting the
+  hypothesis of evolution, there can be no quarrel with the view that
+  the crude beginnings of things, matter in its most nebulous state,
+  contains potentially all the rich variety of both natural and
+  spiritual life.</p>
+
+  <p>But this continuity of all existence may be interpreted in two
+  very different ways. It may lead us either to radically change our
+  notions of mind and its activities, or "to radically change our
+  notions of matter." We may take as the principle of explanation,
+  either the beginning, or the end of the process of development. We
+  may say of the simple and crass, "There is all that your rich
+  universe really means"; or we may say of the spiritual activities of
+  man, "This is what your crude beginning really was." We may explain
+  the complex by the simple, or the simple by the complex. We may
+  analyze the highest back into the lowest, or we may follow the
+  lowest, by a process of synthesis, up to the highest.</p>
+
+  <p>And one of the most important of all questions for morality and
+  religion is the question, which of these two methods is valid. If out
+  of crass matter <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg215" id=
+  "pg215">215</a></span> is evolved all animal and spiritual life, does
+  that prove life to be nothing but matter; or does it not rather show
+  that what we, in our ignorance, took to be mere matter was really
+  something much greater? If "crass matter" contains all this promise
+  and potency, by what right do we still call it "crass"? It is
+  manifestly impossible to treat the potencies, assumed to lie in a
+  thing that grows, as if they were of no significance; first, to
+  assert that such potencies exist, in saying that the object develops;
+  and then, to neglect them, and to regard the effect as constituted
+  merely of its simplest elements. Either these potencies are not in
+  the object, or else the object has in it, and is, at the first, more
+  than it appears to be. Either the object does not grow, or the lowest
+  stage of its being is no explanation of its true nature.</p>
+
+  <p>If we wish to know what the forms of natural life mean, we look in
+  vain to their primary state. We must watch the evolution and
+  revelation of the secret hid in natural life, as it moves through the
+  ascending cycles of the biological kingdom. The idea of evolution,
+  when it is not muddled, is synthetic&mdash;not analytic; it explains
+  the simplest in the light of the complex, the beginning in the light
+  of the end, and not <i>vice versa</i>. In a word, it follows the ways
+  of nature, the footsteps of fact, instead of inventing a wilful
+  backward path of its own. And nature explains by gradually expanding.
+  If we hearken to nature, and not to the voice of illusory
+  preconceptions, we shall hear her proclaim at the last <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg216" id="pg216">216</a></span> stage, "Here is
+  the meaning of the seedling. Now it is clear what it really was; for
+  the power which lay dormant has pushed itself into light, through bud
+  and flower and leaf and fruit." The reality of a growing thing is its
+  highest form of being. The last explains the first, but not the first
+  the last. The first is abstract, incomplete, not yet actual, but mere
+  potency; and we could never know even the potency, except in the
+  light of its own actualization.</p>
+
+  <p>From this correction of the abstract view of development momentous
+  consequences follow. If the universe is, as science pronounces, an
+  organic totality, which is ever converting its promise and potency
+  into actuality, then we must add that the ultimate interpretation
+  even of the lowest existence in the world cannot be given except on
+  principles which are adequate to explain the highest. We must "level
+  up and not level down": we must not only deny that matter can explain
+  spirit, but we must say that even matter itself cannot be fully
+  understood, except as an element in a spiritual world."<sup>A</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: Professor Caird, <i>The Critical Philosophy of Kant</i>, p.
+    35.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 were <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg217" id="pg217">217</a></span> established, 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 justify <i>in detail</i> the
+  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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg218" id=
+  "pg218">218</a></span> "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.</p>
+
+  <p>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:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"'Will you have why and wherefore, and the fact</p>
+
+    <p>Made plain as pike-staff?' modern Science asks.</p>
+
+    <p>'That mass man sprung from was a jelly-lump</p>
+
+    <p>Once on a time; he kept an after course</p>
+
+    <p>Through fish and insect, reptile, bird and beast,</p>
+
+    <p>Till he attained to be an ape at last,</p>
+
+    <p>Or last but one. And if this doctrine shock</p>
+
+    <p>In aught the natural pride.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"Not at all," the poet interrupts the man of science: "Friend,
+  banish fear!"</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I like the thought He should have lodged me once</p>
+
+    <p>I' the hole, the cave, the hut, the tenement,</p>
+
+    <p>The mansion and the palace; made me learn</p>
+
+    <p>The feel o' the first, before I found myself</p>
+
+    <p>Loftier i' the last."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg219" id="pg219">219</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"But grant me time, give me the management</p>
+
+    <p>And manufacture of a model me,</p>
+
+    <p>Me fifty-fold, a prince without a flaw,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Why, there's no social grade, the sordidest,</p>
+
+    <p>My embryo potentate should brink and scape.</p>
+
+    <p>King, all the better he was cobbler once,</p>
+
+    <p>He should know, sitting on the throne, how tastes</p>
+
+    <p>Life to who sweeps the doorway."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But then, unfortunately, we have no time to make our kings in this
+  way,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"You cut probation short,</p>
+
+    <p>And, being half-instructed, on the stage</p>
+
+    <p>You shuffle through your part as best you can."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>God, however, "takes time." He makes man pass his apprenticeship
+  in all the forms of being. Nor does the poet</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Refuse to follow farther yet</p>
+
+    <p>I' the backwardness, repine if tree and flower,</p>
+
+    <p>Mountain or streamlet were my dwelling-place</p>
+
+    <p>Before I gained enlargement, grew mollusc."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is, indeed, only on the supposition of having been thus evolved
+  from inanimate being that he is able to account</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"For many a thrill</p>
+
+    <p>Of kinship, I confess to, with the powers</p>
+
+    <p>Called Nature: animate, inanimate,</p>
+
+    <p>In parts or in the whole, there's something there</p>
+
+    <p>Man-like that somehow meets the man in me."<sup>D</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>D: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 perverted <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg220" id=
+  "pg220">220</a></span> and 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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"From first to last of lodging, I was I,</p>
+
+    <p>And not at all the place that harboured me."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>Nor does the poet shrink from calling this highest, this last
+  which is also first, by its highest name,&mdash;God.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"He dwells in all,</p>
+
+    <p>From, life's minute beginnings, up at last</p>
+
+    <p>To man&mdash;the consummation of this scheme</p><span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg221" id="pg221">221</a></span>
+
+    <p>Of being, the completion of this sphere</p>
+
+    <p>Of life."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"All tended to mankind," he said, after reviewing the whole
+  process of nature in <i>Paracelsus</i>,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"And, man produced, all has its end thus far:</p>
+
+    <p>But in completed man begins anew</p>
+
+    <p>A tendency to God."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"A supplementary reflux of light,</p>
+
+    <p>Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains</p>
+
+    <p>Each back step in the circle."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Nature is retracted into thought, built again in mind.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"Man, once descried, imprints for ever</p>
+
+    <p>His presence on all lifeless things."<sup>D</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>D: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 a <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg222" id=
+  "pg222">222</a></span> kosmos by the activity of intelligence. In its
+  light, the forces of nature are found to be, not blind nor
+  purposeless, but "hints and previsions"</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Strewn confusedly everywhere about</p>
+
+    <p>The inferior natures, and all lead up higher,</p>
+
+    <p>All shape out dimly the superior race,</p>
+
+    <p>The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false,</p>
+
+    <p>And man appears at last."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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,&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Youth ended, I shall try</p>
+
+    <p>My gain or loss thereby;</p>
+
+    <p>Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:</p>
+
+    <p>And I shall weigh the same,</p>
+
+    <p>Give life its praise or blame:</p>
+
+    <p>Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>As youth attains its meaning in age, so does the unconscious
+  process of nature come to its meaning in man. And old age,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"Still within this life</p>
+
+    <p>Though lifted o'er its strife,"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>is able to</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Discern, compare, pronounce at last,</p>
+
+    <p>This rage was right i' the main,</p>
+
+    <p>That acquiescence vain";<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg223" id="pg223">223</a></span>
+
+  <p>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 finds <i>itself</i>.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Striving to be man, the worm</p>
+
+    <p>Mounts through all the spires of form."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Emerson</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg224" id="pg224">224</a></span>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"The winds</p>
+
+    <p>Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout,</p>
+
+    <p>A querulous mutter, or a quick gay laugh,</p>
+
+    <p>Never a senseless gust now man is born.</p>
+
+    <p>The herded pines commune and have deep thoughts,</p>
+
+    <p>A secret they assemble to discuss</p>
+
+    <p>When the sun drops behind their trunks.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>"The morn has enterprise, deep quiet droops</p>
+
+    <p>With evening, triumph takes the sunset hour,</p>
+
+    <p>Voluptuous transport ripens with the corn</p>
+
+    <p>Beneath a warm moon like a happy face."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 for <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg225" id="pg225">225</a></span> Browning 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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, <i>must</i> seek 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&mdash;say rather the finish&mdash;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 is <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg226" id="pg226">226</a></span> a 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,&mdash;the
+  <i>prius</i> of all things, the active energy <i>in</i> all things,
+  and the <i>reality</i> of 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."</p>
+
+  <p>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 seem <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg227" id="pg227">227</a></span> to 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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
+  conceptions <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg228" id=
+  "pg228">228</a></span> are 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.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg229" id=
+  "pg229">229</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch08" id="ch08">CHAPTER VIII.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>BROWNING'S SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL.</h3>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    "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."<sup>A</sup>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Novalis</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>In propounding this theory of love, and establishing <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg230" id="pg230">230</a></span> an 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg231"
+  id="pg231">231</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 in <i>The
+  Ring and the Book</i>, 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.</p>
+
+  <p>To the critic of a philosophy, there is hardly more <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg232" id="pg232">232</a></span> than 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Denn das Leben ist die Liebe,</p>
+
+    <p>Und des Lebens Leben Geist."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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,
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg233" id="pg233">233</a></span> and,
+  therefore, the true meaning of all existence.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"I search but cannot see</p>
+
+    <p>What purpose serves the soul that strives, or world it tries</p>
+
+    <p>Conclusions with, unless the fruit of victories</p>
+
+    <p>Stay, one and all, stored up and guaranteed its own</p>
+
+    <p>For ever, by some mode whereby shall be made known</p>
+
+    <p>The gain of every life. Death reads the title clear&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>What each soul for itself conquered from out things here:</p>
+
+    <p>Since, in the seeing soul, all worth lies, I assert."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, lv.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In this passage, Browning gives expression to an idea which
+  continually reappears in his pages&mdash;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."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns</p>
+
+    <p>Because he lives, which is to be a man,</p>
+
+    <p>Set to instruct himself by his past self."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"By such confession straight he falls</p>
+
+    <p>Into man's place, a thing nor God nor beast,</p>
+
+    <p>Made to know that he can know and not more:</p>
+
+    <p>Lower than God who knows all and can all,</p>
+
+    <p>Higher than beasts which know and can so far</p>
+
+    <p>As each beast's limit, perfect to an end,</p>
+
+    <p>Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more;</p>
+
+    <p>While man knows partly but conceives beside,</p>
+
+    <p>Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact,</p>
+
+    <p>And in this striving, this converting air</p>
+
+    <p>Into a solid he may grasp and use,</p>
+
+    <p>Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone,</p>
+
+    <p>Not God's and not the beasts': God is, they are,</p>
+
+    <p>Man partly is and wholly hopes to be."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It were easy to multiply passages which show <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg234" id="pg234">234</a></span> that 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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Man must pass from old to new,</p>
+
+    <p>From vain to real, from mistake to fact,</p>
+
+    <p>From what once seemed good, to what now proves best."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Indulging every instinct of the soul</p>
+
+    <p>There, where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But as long as he is man, he has</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In <i>Paracelsus</i>, <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, <i>Red Cotton
+  Nightcap Country</i>, 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 process <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg235"
+  id="pg235">235</a></span> of 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 is <i>becoming</i> good, 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."</p>
+
+  <p>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 spring
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg236" id="pg236">236</a></span> from
+  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,&mdash;what cannot be true of man, if he grows in
+  intellectual power and moral goodness&mdash;that he is <i>either</i>
+  good or evil, <i>either</i> rational or irrational, <i>either</i>
+  free 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&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Some fitter way express</p>
+
+    <p>Heart's satisfaction that the Past indeed</p>
+
+    <p>Is past, gives way before Life's best and last,</p>
+
+    <p>The all-including Future!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Gerard de Lairesse</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"What were life</p>
+
+    <p>Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife</p>
+
+    <p>Through the ambiguous Present to the goal</p>
+
+    <p>Of some all-reconciling Future?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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."</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg237" id=
+  "pg237">237</a></span>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;a view which finds its exponents in
+  Herbert Spencer, and other so-called evolutionists&mdash;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 a <i>moral ideal</i>, 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 discovers <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg238" id=
+  "pg238">238</a></span> and 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</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"There is no good of life but love&mdash;but love!</p>
+
+    <p>What else looks good, is some shade flung from love.</p>
+
+    <p>Love gilds it, gives it worth. Be warned by me,</p>
+
+    <p>Never you cheat yourself one instant! Love,</p>
+
+    <p>Give love, ask only love, and leave the rest!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>In a Balcony</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"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</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Yearning to dispense,</p>
+
+    <p>Each one its own amount of gain thro' its own mode</p>
+
+    <p>Of practising with life."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 reaction <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg239" id=
+  "pg239">239</a></span> against 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg240" id=
+  "pg240">240</a></span> old 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&mdash;even "the
+  poorest love that was ever offered"&mdash;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,"</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg241"
+  id="pg241">241</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Knowledge means</p>
+
+    <p>Ever-renewed assurance by defeat</p>
+
+    <p>That victory is somehow still to reach."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Pillar at Sebzevar</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>A radical flaw runs through our knowing faculty. Human knowledge
+  is not only incomplete&mdash;no one can be so foolish as to deny
+  that&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"To know of, think about,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Is all man's sum of faculty effects</p>
+
+    <p>When exercised on earth's least atom, Son!</p>
+
+    <p>What was, what is, what may such atom be?</p>
+
+    <p>No answer!"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Bean-Stripe</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>This theory of knowledge, or rather of nescience or no-knowledge,
+  he gives in <i>La Saisiaz</i>, <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i>, <i>The
+  Parleyings</i>, and <i>Asolando</i>&mdash;in all his later and more
+  reflective poems, in fact. It must, I <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg242" id="pg242">242</a></span> think, be held to be his deliberate
+  and final view&mdash;and all the more so, because, by a peculiar
+  process, he gets from it his defence of his ethical and religious
+  faith.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>He finds himself to be "a midway point, between a cause before and
+  an effect behind&mdash;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&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"Conjecture manifold,</p>
+
+    <p>But, as knowledge, this comes only&mdash;things may be as I
+    behold,</p>
+
+    <p>Or may not be, but, without me and above me, things there
+    are;</p>
+
+    <p>I myself am what I know not&mdash;ignorance which proves no
+    bar</p>
+
+    <p>To the knowledge that I am, and, since I am, can recognize</p>
+
+    <p>What to me is pain and pleasure: this is sure, the
+    rest&mdash;surmise.</p>
+
+    <p>If my fellows are or are not, what may please them and what
+    pain,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Mere surmise: my own experience&mdash;that is knowledge once
+    again."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Experience, then, within which he (and every one else)
+  acknowledges that all his knowledge is confined, yields him as
+  certain facts&mdash;the consciousness <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg243" id="pg243">243</a></span> that 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,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"A force</p>
+
+    <p>Actual e'er its own beginning, operative thro' its course,</p>
+
+    <p>Unaffected by its end."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"All outside its narrow hem,</p>
+
+    <p>Free surmise may sport and welcome! Pleasures, pains affect
+    mankind</p>
+
+    <p>Just as they affect myself? Why, here's my neighbour
+    colour-blind,</p>
+
+    <p>Eyes like mine to all appearance: 'green as grass' do I
+    affirm?</p>
+
+    <p>'Red as grass' he contradicts me: which employs the proper
+    term?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg244" id="pg244">244</a></span>
+
+  <p>If there were only they two on earth as tenants, there would be no
+  way of deciding between them; for, according to his argument, the
+  truth is apparently decided by majority of opinions. Each individual,
+  equipped with his own particular kind of senses and reason, gets his
+  own particular experience, and draws his own particular conclusions
+  from it. If it be asked whether these conclusions are true or not,
+  the only answer is that the question is absurd; for, under such
+  conditions, there cannot be either truth or error. Every one's
+  opinion is its own criterion. Each man is the measure of all things;
+  "His own world for every mortal," as the poet puts it.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"To each mortal peradventure earth becomes a new machine,</p>
+
+    <p>Pain and pleasure no more tally in our sense than red and
+    green."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The first result of this subjective view of knowledge is clearly
+  enough seen by the poet. He is well aware that his convictions
+  regarding the high matters of human destiny are valid only for
+  himself.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"Only for myself I speak,</p>
+
+    <p>Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers strong and
+    weak."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Experience, as he interprets it, that is, present consciousness,
+  "this moment's me and mine," is too narrow a basis for any universal
+  or objective conclusion. So far as his own inner experience of pain
+  and pleasure goes,</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg245" id=
+  "pg245">245</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"All&mdash;for myself&mdash;seems ordered wise and well</p>
+
+    <p>Inside it,&mdash;what reigns outside, who can tell?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But as to the actual world, he can have no opinion, nor, from the
+  good and evil that apparently play around him, can he deduce
+  either</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Praise or blame of its contriver, shown a niggard or
+    profuse</p>
+
+    <p>In each good or evil issue."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The moral government of the world is a subject, regarding which we
+  are doomed to absolute ignorance. A theory that it is ruled by the
+  "prince of the power of the air" has just as much, and just as
+  little, validity as the more ordinary view held by religious people.
+  Who needs be told</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"The space</p>
+
+    <p>Which yields thee knowledge&mdash;do its bounds embrace</p>
+
+    <p>Well-willing and wise-working, each at height?</p>
+
+    <p>Enough: beyond thee lies the infinite&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Back to thy circumscription!"<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And our ignorance of God, and the world, and ourselves is matched
+  by a similar ignorance regarding moral matters.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Ignorance overwraps his moral sense,</p>
+
+    <p>Winds him about, relaxing, as it wraps,</p>
+
+    <p>So much and no more than lets through perhaps</p>
+
+    <p>The murmured knowledge&mdash;' Ignorance exists.'"<sup>D</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>D: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>We cannot be certain even of the distinction and conflict of good
+  and evil in the world. They, too, <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg246" id="pg246">246</a></span> and the apparent choice between
+  them to which man is continually constrained, may be mere
+  illusions&mdash;phenomena of the individual consciousness. What
+  remains, then? Nothing but to "wait."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Take the joys and bear the sorrows&mdash;neither with extreme
+    concern!</p>
+
+    <p>Living here means nescience simply: 'tis next life that helps to
+    learn."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is hardly necessary to enter upon any detailed criticism of
+  such a theory of knowledge as this, which is proffered by the poet.
+  It is well known by all those who are in some degree acquainted with
+  the history of philosophy&mdash;and it will be easily seen by all who
+  have any critical acumen&mdash;that it leads directly into absolute
+  scepticism. And absolute scepticism is easily shown to be
+  self-contradictory. For a theory of nescience, in condemning all
+  knowledge and the faculty of knowledge, condemns itself. If nothing
+  is true, or if nothing is known, then this theory itself is not true,
+  or its truth cannot be known. And if this theory is true, then
+  nothing is true; for this theory, like all others, is the product of
+  a defective intelligence. In whatsoever way the matter is put, there
+  is left no standing-ground for the human critic who condemns human
+  thought. And he cannot well pretend to a footing in a sphere above
+  man's, or below it. There is thus one presupposition which every one
+  must make, if he is to propound any doctrine whatsoever, even if that
+  doctrine be that no doctrine can be <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg247" id="pg247">247</a></span> valid; it is the presupposition
+  that knowledge is possible, and that truth can be known. And this
+  presupposition fills, for modern philosophy, the place of the
+  <i>Cogito ergo sum</i> of Descartes. It is the starting-point and
+  criterion of all knowledge.</p>
+
+  <p>It is, at first sight, a somewhat difficult task to account for
+  the fact, that so keen an intellect as the poet's did not perceive
+  the conclusion to which his theory of knowledge so directly and
+  necessarily leads. It is probable, however, that he never critically
+  examined it, but simply accepted it as equivalent to the common
+  doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, which, in some form or
+  other, all the schools of philosophy adopt. But the main reason will
+  be found to lie in the fact that knowledge was not, to Browning, its
+  own criterion or end. The primary fact of his philosophy is that
+  human life is a moral process. His interest in the evolution of
+  character was his deepest interest, as he informs us; he was an
+  ethical teacher rather than a metaphysician. He is ever willing to
+  asperse man's intelligence. But that man is a moral agent he will in
+  no wise doubt. This is his</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Solid standing-place amid</p>
+
+    <p>The wash and welter, whence all doubts are bid</p>
+
+    <p>Back to the ledge they break against in foam."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His practical maxim was</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Wholly distrust thy knowledge, then, and trust</p>
+
+    <p>As wholly love allied to ignorance!</p>
+
+    <p>There lies thy truth and safety."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Pillar of Sebzevar</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg248" id="pg248">248</a></span>
+
+  <p>All phenomena must, in some way or other, be reconciled by the
+  poet with the fundamental and indubitable fact of the progressive
+  moral life of man. For the fundamental presupposition which a man
+  makes, is necessarily his criterion of knowledge, and it determines
+  the truth or illusoriness of all other opinions whatsoever.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, Browning held, not only that no certain knowledge is
+  attainable by man, but also that such certainty is incompatible with
+  moral life. Absolute knowledge would, he contends, lift man above the
+  need and the possibility of making the moral choice, which is our
+  supreme business on earth. Man can be good or evil, only on condition
+  of being in absolute uncertainty regarding the true meaning of the
+  facts of nature and the phenomena of life.</p>
+
+  <p>This somewhat strange doctrine finds the most explicit and full
+  expression in <i>La Saisiaz</i>. "Fancy," amongst the concessions it
+  demands from "Reason," claims that man should know&mdash;not merely
+  surmise or fear&mdash;that every action done in this life awaits its
+  proper and necessary meed in the next.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"I also will that man become aware</p>
+
+    <p>Life has worth incalculable, every moment that he spends</p>
+
+    <p>So much gain or loss for that next life which on this life
+    depends."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But Reason refuses the concession, upon the ground that such sure
+  knowledge would be destructive of <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg249" id="pg249">249</a></span> the very distinction between right
+  and wrong, which the demand implies. The "promulgation of this
+  decree," by Fancy, "makes both good and evil to cease." Prior to it
+  "earth was man's probation-place"; but under this decree man is no
+  longer free; for certain knowledge makes action necessary.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Once lay down the law, with Nature's simple 'Such effects
+    succeed</p>
+
+    <p>Causes such, and heaven or hell depends upon man's earthly
+    deed</p>
+
+    <p>Just as surely as depends the straight or else the crooked
+    line</p>
+
+    <p>On his making point meet point or with or else without
+    incline,'</p>
+
+    <p>Thenceforth neither good nor evil does man, doing what he
+    must."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>, 195.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>If we presuppose that "man, addressed this mode, be sound and
+  sane" (and we must stipulate sanity, if his actions are to be morally
+  judged at all)&mdash;then a law which binds punishment and reward to
+  action in a necessary manner, and is known so to bind them, would
+  "obtain prompt and absolute obedience." There are some "edicts, now
+  styled God's own nature's," "which to hear means to obey." All the
+  laws relating to the preservation of life are of this character. And,
+  if the law&mdash;"Would'st thou live again, be just"&mdash;were in
+  all ways as stringent as the other law&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Would'st thou live now, regularly draw thy breath!</p>
+
+    <p>For, suspend the operation, straight law's breach results in
+    death"&mdash;<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>then no one would disobey it, nor could. "It is <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg250" id="pg250">250</a></span> the liberty of
+  doing evil that gives the doing good a grace." And that liberty would
+  be taken away by complete assurance, that effects follow actions in
+  the moral world with the necessity seen in the natural sphere. Since,
+  therefore, man is made to grow, and earth is the place wherein he is
+  to pass probation and prove his powers, there must remain a certain
+  doubt as to the issues of his actions; conviction must not be so
+  strong as to carry with it man's whole nature. "The best I both see
+  and praise, the worst I follow," is the adage rife in man's mouth
+  regarding his moral conduct. But, spite of his seeing and
+  praising,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"he disbelieves</p>
+
+    <p>In the heart of him that edict which for truth his head
+    receives."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He has a dim consciousness of ways whereby he may elude the
+  consequences of his wickedness, and of the possibility of making
+  amends to law.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"And now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin',</p>
+
+    <p>A certain Bardie's rantin', drinkin',</p>
+
+    <p>Some luckless hour will send him linkin'</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">To your black pit;</p>
+
+    <p>But, faith, he'll turn a corner jinkin',</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">And cheat you yet."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The more orthodox and less generous individual is prone to agree,
+  as regards himself, with Burns; but, he sees, most probably, that
+  such an escape is impossible to others. He has secret solacement in a
+  latent belief that he himself is an exception. There will be a
+  special method of dealing with <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg251"
+  id="pg251">251</a></span> him. He is a "chosen sample"; and "God will
+  think twice before He damns a man of his quality." It is just because
+  there is such doubt as to the universality and necessity of the law
+  which connects actions and consequences in the moral sphere, that
+  man's deeds have an ethical character; while, to disperse doubt and
+  ignorance by the assurance of complete knowledge, would take the good
+  from goodness and the ill from evil.</p>
+
+  <p>In this ingenious manner, the poet turns the imperfect intellect
+  and delusive knowledge of man to a moral use. Ordinarily, the
+  intellectual impotence of man is regarded as carrying with it moral
+  incapacity as well, and the delusiveness of knowledge is one of the
+  strongest arguments for pessimism. To persons pledged to the support
+  of no theory, and to those who have the <i>naïveté</i>, so hard to
+  maintain side by side with strong doctrinal convictions, it seems
+  amongst the worst of evils that man should be endowed with fallacious
+  faculties, and cursed with a futile desire for true knowledge which
+  is so strong, that it cannot be quenched even in those who believe
+  that truth can never be attained. It is the very best men of the
+  world who cry</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Oh, this false for real,</p>
+
+    <p>This emptiness which feigns solidity,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Ever some grey that's white, and dun that's black,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>When shall we rest upon the thing itself,</p>
+
+    <p>Not on its semblance? Soul&mdash;too weak, forsooth,</p>
+
+    <p>To cope with fact&mdash;wants fiction everywhere!</p>
+
+    <p>Mine tires of falsehood: truth at any cost!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Bean-Stripe</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg252" id="pg252">252</a></span>
+
+  <p>The poet himself was burdened in no small degree with this vain
+  desire for knowing the truth; and he recognized, too, that he was
+  placed in a world which seems both real and beautiful, and so well
+  worth knowing. Yet, it is this very failure of knowledge&mdash;a
+  failure which, be it remembered, is complete and absolute, because,
+  as he thinks, all facts must turn into phantoms by mere contact with
+  our "relative intelligences,"&mdash;which he constitutes into the
+  basis of his optimistic faith.</p>
+
+  <p>So high is the dignity and worth of the moral life to Browning,
+  that no sacrifice is too great to secure it. And, indeed, if it were
+  once clearly recognized that there is no good thing but goodness,
+  nothing of supreme worth, except the realization of a loving will,
+  then doubt, ignorance, and every other form of apparent evil would be
+  fully justified&mdash;provided they were conditions whereby this
+  highest good is attained. And, to Browning, ignorance was one of the
+  conditions. And consequently, the dread pause in the music which
+  agnosticism brings, is only "silence implying sound"; and the vain
+  cry for truth, arising from the heart of the earth's best men, is
+  only a discord moving towards resolution into a more rapturous
+  harmony.</p>
+
+  <p>I do not stay here to inquire whether sure knowledge would really
+  have this disastrous effect of destroying morality, or whether its
+  failure does not rather imply the impossibility of a moral life. I
+  return to the question asked at the beginning of this chapter, and
+  which it is now possible to <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg253" id=
+  "pg253">253</a></span> answer. That question was: How does Browning
+  reconcile his hypothesis of universal love with the natural and moral
+  evils existing in the world?</p>
+
+  <p>His answer is quite explicit. The poet solves the problem by
+  casting doubt upon the facts which threaten his hypothesis. He
+  reduces them into phenomena, in the sense of phantoms begotten by the
+  human intellect upon unknown and unknowable realities.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Thus much at least is clearly understood&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Of power does Man possess no particle:</p>
+
+    <p>Of knowledge&mdash;just so much as shows that still</p>
+
+    <p>It ends in ignorance on every side."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He is aware of the phenomena of his own consciousness,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"My soul, and my soul's home,</p>
+
+    <p>This body ";</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>but he knows not whether "things outside are fact or feigning."
+  And he heeds little, for in either case they</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"Teach</p>
+
+    <p>What good is and what evil,&mdash;just the same,</p>
+
+    <p>Be feigning or be fact the teacher."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is the mixture, or rather the apparent mixture, of shade and
+  light in life, the conflict of seeming good with seeming evil in the
+  world, that constitutes the world a probation-place. It is a kind of
+  moral gymnasium, crowded with phantoms, wherein by exercise man makes
+  moral muscle. And the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg254" id=
+  "pg254">254</a></span> vigour of the athlete's struggle is not in the
+  least abated by the consciousness that all he deals with are
+  phantoms.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I have lived, then, done and suffered, loved and hated, learnt
+    and taught</p>
+
+    <p>This&mdash;there is no reconciling wisdom with a world
+    distraught,</p>
+
+    <p>Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the
+    aim,</p>
+
+    <p>If&mdash;(to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the
+    same!)&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil's place,</p>
+
+    <p>And life, time&mdash;with all their chances, changes,&mdash;just
+    probation-space,</p>
+
+    <p>Mine, for me."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And the world would not be such a probation-space did we once
+  penetrate into its inmost secret, and know its phenomena as veritably
+  either good or evil. There is the need of playing something
+  perilously like a trick on the human intellect if man is to strive
+  and grow.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Here and there a touch</p>
+
+    <p>Taught me, betimes, the artifice of things&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>That all about, external to myself,</p>
+
+    <p>Was meant to be suspected,&mdash;not revealed</p>
+
+    <p>Demonstrably a cheat&mdash;but half seen through."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Bean-Stripe.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>To know objects as they veritably are, might reveal all things as
+  locked together in a scheme of universal good, so that "white would
+  rule unchecked along the line." But this would be the greatest of
+  disasters; for, as moral agents, we cannot do without</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"the constant shade</p>
+
+    <p>Cast on life's shine,&mdash;the tremor that intrudes</p>
+
+    <p>When firmest seems my faith in white."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg255" id="pg255">255</a></span>
+
+  <p>The intellectual insight that would penetrate through the
+  vari-colour of events into the actual presence of the incandescent
+  white of love, which glows, as hope tells us, in all things, would
+  stultify itself, and lose its knowledge even of the good.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Think!</p>
+
+    <p>Could I see plain, be somehow certified</p>
+
+    <p>All was illusion&mdash;evil far and wide</p>
+
+    <p>Was good disguised,&mdash;why, out with one huge wipe</p>
+
+    <p>Goes knowledge from me. Type needs antitype:</p>
+
+    <p>As night needs day, as shine needs shade, so good</p>
+
+    <p>Needs evil: how were pity understood</p>
+
+    <p>Unless by pain? "<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Good and evil are relative to each other, and each is known only
+  through its contrary.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"For me</p>
+
+    <p>(Patience, beseech you!) Knowledge can but be</p>
+
+    <p>Of good by knowledge of good's opposite&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Evil."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The extinction of one of the terms would be the extinction of the
+  other. And, in a similar manner, clear knowledge that evil is
+  illusion and that all things have their place in an infinite divine
+  order would paralyze all moral effort, as well as stultify
+  itself.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Make evident that pain</p>
+
+    <p>Permissibly masks pleasure&mdash;you abstain</p>
+
+    <p>From out-stretch of the finger-tip that saves</p>
+
+    <p>A drowning fly."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Certainty on either side, either that evil is evil for
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg256" id="pg256">256</a></span>
+  evermore, irredeemable and absolute, a drench of utter dark not
+  illuminable by white; or that it is but mere show and semblance,
+  which the good takes upon itself, would alike be ruinous to man. For
+  both alternatives would render all striving folly. The right attitude
+  for man is that of ignorance, complete uncertainty, the equipoise of
+  conflicting alternatives. He must take his stand on the
+  contradiction. Hope he may have that all things work together for
+  good. It is right that he should nourish the faith that the
+  antagonism of evil with good in the world is only an illusion; but
+  that faith must stop short of the complete conviction that knowledge
+  would bring. When, therefore, the hypothesis of universal love is
+  confronted with the evils of life, and we ask how it can be
+  maintained in the face of the manifold miseries everywhere apparent,
+  the poet answers, "You do not know, and cannot know, whether they are
+  evils or not. Your knowledge remains at the surface of things. You
+  cannot fit them into their true place, or pronounce upon their true
+  purpose and character; for you see only a small arc of the complete
+  circle of being. Wait till you see more, and, in the meantime,
+  hope!"</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Why faith&mdash;but to lift the load,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">To leaven the lump, where lies</p>
+
+    <p>Mind prostrate through knowledge owed</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">To the loveless Power it tries</p>
+
+    <p>To withstand, how vain!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Reverie</i>&mdash;<i>Asolando</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And, if we reply in turn, that this necessary ignorance
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg257" id="pg257">257</a></span>
+  leaves as little room for his scheme of love as it does for its
+  opposite, he again answers: "Not so! I appeal from the intellect,
+  which is detected as incompetent, to the higher court of the moral
+  consciousness. And there I find the ignorance to be justified: for it
+  is the instrument of a higher purpose, a means whereby what is best
+  is gained, namely, <i>Love</i>."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"My curls were crowned</p>
+
+    <p>In youth with knowledge,&mdash;off, alas, crown slipped</p>
+
+    <p>Next moment, pushed by better knowledge still</p>
+
+    <p>Which nowise proved more constant; gain, to-day,</p>
+
+    <p>Was toppling loss to-morrow, lay at last</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;Knowledge, the golden?&mdash;lacquered ignorance!</p>
+
+    <p>As gain&mdash;mistrust it! Not as means to gain:</p>
+
+    <p>Lacquer we learn by: ...</p>
+
+    <p>The prize is in the process: knowledge means</p>
+
+    <p>Ever-renewed assurance by defeat</p>
+
+    <p>That victory is somehow still to reach,</p>
+
+    <p>But love is victory, the prize itself:</p>
+
+    <p>Love&mdash;trust to! Be rewarded for the trust</p>
+
+    <p>In trust's mere act."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Pillar at Sebzevar</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Now, in order to complete our examination of this theory, we must
+  follow the poet in his attempt to escape from the testimony of the
+  intellect to that of the heart. In order to make the most of the
+  latter, we find that Browning, especially in his last work, tends to
+  withdraw his accusation of utter incompetence on the part of the
+  intellect. He only tends to do so, it is true. He is tolerably
+  consistent in asserting that we know our own emotions and the
+  phenomena of our own consciousness; but he is not consistent in his
+  account of our knowledge, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg258" id=
+  "pg258">258</a></span> or ignorance, of external things. On the
+  whole, he asserts that we know nothing of them. But in
+  <i>Asolando</i> he seems to imply that the evidence of a loveless
+  power in the world, permitting evil, is irresistible.<sup>A</sup> To say the
+  least, the testimony of the intellect, such as it is, is more clear
+  and convincing with regard to evil than it is with regard to good.
+  Within the sphere of phenomena, to which the intellect is confined,
+  there seems to be, instead of a benevolent purpose, a world ruled by
+  a power indifferent to the triumph of evil over good, and either
+  "loveless" or unintelligent.</p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>See passage just quoted.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Life, from birth to death,</p>
+
+    <p>Means&mdash;either looking back on harm escaped,</p>
+
+    <p>Or looking forward to that harm's return</p>
+
+    <p>With tenfold power of harming."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Bean-Stripe.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And it is not possible for man to contravene this evidence of
+  faults and omissions: for, in doing so, he would remove the facts in
+  reaction against which his moral nature becomes active. What proof is
+  there, then, that the universal love is no mere dream? None! from the
+  side of the intellect, answers the poet. Man, who has the will to
+  remove the ills of life,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Stop change, avert decay,</p>
+
+    <p>Fix life fast, banish death,"<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Reverie</i>&mdash;<i>Asolando</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>has not the power to effect his will; while the Power, whose
+  limitlessness he recognizes everywhere <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg259" id="pg259">259</a></span> around him, merely maintains the
+  world in its remorseless course, and puts forth no helping hand when
+  good is prone and evil triumphant. "God does nothing."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"'No sign,'&mdash;groaned he,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>No stirring of God's finger to denote</p>
+
+    <p>He wills that right should have supremacy</p>
+
+    <p>On earth, not wrong! How helpful could we quote</p>
+
+    <p>But one poor instance when He interposed</p>
+
+    <p>Promptly and surely and beyond mistake</p>
+
+    <p>Between oppression and its victim, closed</p>
+
+    <p>Accounts with sin for once, and bade us wake</p>
+
+    <p>From our long dream that justice bears no sword,</p>
+
+    <p>Or else forgets whereto its sharpness serves.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Bernard de Mandeville.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But he tells us in his later poems, that there is no answer
+  vouchsafed to man's cry to the Power, that it should reveal</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"What heals all harm,</p>
+
+    <p>Nay, hinders the harm at first,</p>
+
+    <p>Saves earth."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Reverie&mdash;Asolando.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And yet, so far as man can see, there were no bar to the remedy,
+  if "God's all-mercy" did really "mate His all-potency."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"How easy it seems,&mdash;to sense</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Like man's&mdash;if somehow met</p>
+
+    <p>Power with its match&mdash;immense</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Love, limitless, unbeset</p>
+
+    <p>By hindrance on every side!"<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But that love nowhere makes itself evident. "Power," we
+  recognize,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"finds nought too hard,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Fulfilling itself all ways,</p>
+
+    <p>Unchecked, unchanged; while barred,</p><span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg260" id="pg260">260</a></span>
+
+    <p class="i2">Baffled, what good began</p>
+
+    <p>Ends evil on every side."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Reverie&mdash;Asolando</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thus, the conclusion to which knowledge inevitably leads us is
+  that mere power rules.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"No more than the passive clay</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Disputes the potter's act,</p>
+
+    <p>Could the whelmed mind disobey</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Knowledge, the cataract."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But if the intellect is thus overwhelmed, so as to be almost
+  passive to the pessimistic conclusion borne in upon it by "resistless
+  fact," the heart of man is made of another mould. It revolts against
+  the conclusion of the intellect, and climbs</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Through turbidity all between,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">From the known to the unknown here,</p>
+
+    <p>Heaven's 'Shall be,' from earth's 'Has been.'"<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It grasps a fact beyond the reach of knowledge, namely, the
+  possibility, or even the certainty, that "power is love." At present
+  there is no substantiating by knowledge the testimony of the heart;
+  and man has no better anchorage for his optimism than faith. But the
+  closer view will come, when even our life on earth will be seen to
+  have within it the working of love, no less manifest than that of
+  power.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"When see? When there dawns a day,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">If not on the homely earth,</p>
+
+    <p>Then, yonder, worlds away,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Where the strange and new have birth,</p>
+
+    <p>And Power comes full in play."<sup>D</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>D: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg261" id="pg261">261</a></span>
+
+  <p>Now, what is this evidence of the heart, which is sufficiently
+  cogent and valid to counterpoise that of the mind; and which gives to
+  "faith," or "hope," a firm foothold in the very face of the opposing
+  "resistless" testimony of knowledge?</p>
+
+  <p>Within our experience, to which the poet knows we are entirely
+  confined, there is a fact, the significance of which we have not as
+  yet examined. For, plain and irresistible as is the evidence of evil,
+  so plain and constant is man's recognition of it as evil, and his
+  desire to annul it. If man's mind is made to acknowledge evil, his
+  moral nature is made so as to revolt against it.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"Man's heart is <i>made</i> to judge</p>
+
+    <p>Pain deserved nowhere by the common flesh</p>
+
+    <p>Our birth-right&mdash;bad and good deserve alike</p>
+
+    <p>No pain, to human apprehension."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Mihrab Shah</i>&mdash;<i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Owing to the limitation of our intelligence, we cannot deny but
+  that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"In the eye of God</p>
+
+    <p>Pain may have purpose and be justified."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But whether it has its purpose for the supreme intelligence or
+  not,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Man's sense avails to only see, in pain,</p>
+
+    <p>A hateful chance no man but would avert</p>
+
+    <p>Or, failing, needs must pity."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Man must condemn evil, he cannot acquiesce in its permanence, but
+  is, spite of his consciousness <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg262"
+  id="pg262">262</a></span> of ignorance and powerlessness, roused into
+  constant revolt against it.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"True, he makes nothing, understands no whit:</p>
+
+    <p>Had the initiator-spasm seen fit</p>
+
+    <p>Thus doubly to endow him, none the worse</p>
+
+    <p>And much the better were the universe.</p>
+
+    <p>What does Man see or feel or apprehend</p>
+
+    <p>Here, there, and everywhere, but faults to mend,</p>
+
+    <p>Omissions to supply,&mdash;one wide disease</p>
+
+    <p>Of things that are, which Man at once would ease</p>
+
+    <p>Had will but power and knowledge?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But the moral worth of man does not suffer the least detraction
+  from his inability to effect his benevolent purpose. "Things must
+  take will for deed," as Browning tells us. David is not at all
+  distressed by the consciousness of his weakness.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"Why is it I dare</p>
+
+    <p>Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my
+    despair?</p>
+
+    <p>This;&mdash;'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what
+    man Would do."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Saul</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The fact that "his wishes fall through," that he cannot, although
+  willing, help Saul, "grow poor to enrich him, fill up his life by
+  starving his own," does not prevent him from regarding his "service
+  as perfect." The will was there, although it lacked power to effect
+  itself. The moral worth of an action is complete, if it is willed;
+  and it is nowise affected by its outer consequences, as both Browning
+  and Kant teach. The loving will, the inner act of loving, though it
+  can bear no outward fruit, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg263" id=
+  "pg263">263</a></span>being debarred by outward impediment, is still
+  a complete and highest good.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"But Love is victory, the prize itself:</p>
+
+    <p>Love&mdash;trust to! Be rewarded for the trust</p>
+
+    <p>In trust's mere act. In love success is sure,</p>
+
+    <p>Attainment&mdash;no delusion, whatso'er</p>
+
+    <p>The prize be: apprehended as a prize,</p>
+
+    <p>A prize it is."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Pillar at Sebzevar</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Whatever the evil in the world and the impotence of man, his duty
+  and his dignity in willing to perform it, are ever the same. Though
+  God neglect the world</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Man's part</p>
+
+    <p>Is plain&mdash;to send love forth,&mdash;astray, perhaps:</p>
+
+    <p>No matter, he has done his part."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Sun</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Now, this fact of inner experience, which the poet thinks
+  incontrovertible&mdash;the fact that man, every man, necessarily
+  regards evil, whether natural or moral, as something to be annulled,
+  were it only possible&mdash;is an immediate proof of the indwelling
+  of that which is highest in man. On this basis, Browning is able to
+  re-establish the optimism which, from the side of knowledge, he had
+  utterly abandoned.</p>
+
+  <p>The very fact that the world is condemned by man is proof that
+  there dwells in man something better than the world, whose evidence
+  the pessimist himself cannot escape. All is not wrong, as long as
+  wrong <i>seems</i> wrong. The pessimist, in condemning the world,
+  must except himself. In his <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg264" id=
+  "pg264">264</a></span> very charge against God of having made man in
+  His anger, there lies a contradiction; for he himself fronts and
+  defies the outrage. There is no depth of despair which this good
+  cannot illumine with joyous light, for the despair is itself the
+  reflex of the good.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i4">"Were earth and all it holds illusions mere,</p>
+
+      <p>Only a machine for teaching love and hate, and hope and
+      fear,</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i4">"If this life's conception new life fail to
+      realize&mdash;</p>
+
+      <p>Though earth burst and proved a bubble glassing hues of hell,
+      one huge</p>
+
+      <p>Reflex of the devil's doings&mdash;God's work by no
+      subterfuge,"<sup>A</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>still, good is good, and love is its own exceeding great reward.
+  Alone, in a world abandoned to chaos and infinite night, man is still
+  not without God, if he loves. In virtue of his love, he himself would
+  be crowned as God, as the poet often argues, were there no higher
+  love elsewhere.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"If he believes</p>
+
+    <p>Might can exist with neither will nor love,</p>
+
+    <p>In God's case&mdash;what he names now Nature's Law&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>While in himself he recognizes love</p>
+
+    <p>No less than might and will,"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>man takes, and rightly takes, the title of being "First, last, and
+  best of things."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Since if man prove the sole existent thing</p>
+
+    <p>Where these combine, whatever their degree,</p>
+
+    <p>However weak the might or will or love,</p>
+
+    <p>So they be found there, put in evidence&mdash;</p><span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg265" id="pg265">265</a></span>
+
+    <p>He is as surely higher in the scale</p>
+
+    <p>Than any might with neither love nor will,</p>
+
+    <p>As life, apparent in the poorest midge,</p>
+
+    <p>Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas' self,</p>
+
+    <p>Given to the nobler midge for resting-place!</p>
+
+    <p>Thus, man proves best and highest&mdash;God, in fine."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>To any one capable of spiritually discerning things, there can be
+  no difficulty in regarding goodness, however limited and mated with
+  weakness, as infinitely above all natural power. Divinity will be
+  known to consist, not in any senseless might, however majestic and
+  miraculous, but in moral or spiritual perfection. If God were
+  indifferent to the evil of the world, acquiesced in it without
+  reason, and let it ripen into all manner of wretchedness, then man,
+  in condemning the world, though without power to remove the least of
+  its miseries, would be higher than God. But we have still to account
+  for the possibility of man's assuming an attitude implied in the
+  consciousness that, while he is without power, God is without pity,
+  and in the despair which springs from his hate of evil. How comes it
+  that human nature rises above its origin, and is able&mdash;nay,
+  obliged&mdash;to condemn the evil which God permits? Is man finite in
+  power, a mere implement of a mocking will so far as knowledge goes,
+  the plaything of remorseless forces, and yet author and first source
+  of something in himself which invests him with a dignity that God
+  Himself cannot share? Is the moral consciousness which, by its very
+  nature, must <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg266" id=
+  "pg266">266</a></span> bear witness against the Power, although it
+  cannot arrest its pitiless course, or remove the least evil,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Man's own work, his birth of heart and brain,</p>
+
+    <p>His native grace, no alien gift at all?"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>We are thus caught between the horns of a final dilemma. Either
+  the pity and love, which make man revolt against all suffering, are
+  man's own creation; or else God, who made man's heart to love, has
+  given to man something higher than He owns Himself. But both of these
+  alternatives are impossible.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Here's the touch that breaks the bubble."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The first alternative is impossible, because man is by definition
+  powerless, a mere link in the endless chain of causes, incapable of
+  changing the least part of the scheme of things which he condemns,
+  and therefore much more unable to initiate, or to bring into a
+  loveless world abandoned to blind power, the noble might of love.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Will of man create?</p>
+
+    <p>No more than this my hand, which strewed the beans</p>
+
+    <p>Produced them also from its finger-tips."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Bean-Stripe</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>All that man is and has is a mere loan; his love no less than his
+  finite intellect and limited power, has had its origin elsewhere.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Back goes creation to its source, source prime</p>
+
+    <p>And ultimate, the single and the sole."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg267" id="pg267">267</a></span>
+
+  <p>The argument ends by bringing us back</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"To the starting-point,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Man's impotency, God's omnipotence,</p>
+
+    <p>These stop my answer."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Bean-Stripe</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>I shall not pause at present to examine the value of this new form
+  of the old argument, "<i>Ex contingentia mundi</i>." But I may point
+  out in passing, that the reference of human love to a divine creative
+  source is accomplished by means of the idea of cause, one of the
+  categories of the thought which Browning has aspersed. And it is a
+  little difficult to show why, if we are constrained to doubt our
+  thought, when by the aid of causality it establishes a connection
+  between finite and finite, we should regard it as worthy of trust
+  when it connects the finite and the infinite. In fact, it is all too
+  evident that the poet assumes or denies the possibility of knowledge,
+  according as it helps or hinders his ethical doctrine.</p>
+
+  <p>But, if we grant the ascent from the finite to the infinite and
+  regard man's love as a divine gift&mdash;which it may well be
+  although the poet's argument is invalid&mdash;then a new light is
+  thrown upon the being who gave man this power to love. The
+  "necessity," "the mere power," which alone could be discerned by
+  observation of the irresistible movement of the world's events,
+  acquires a new character. Prior to this discovery of love in man as
+  the work of God&mdash;</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg268" id=
+  "pg268">268</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Head praises, but heart refrains</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">From loving's acknowledgment.</p>
+
+    <p>Whole losses outweigh half-gains:</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Earth's good is with evil blent:</p>
+
+    <p>Good struggles but evil reigns."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Reverie</i>&mdash;<i>Asolando</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But love in man is a suggestion of a love without; a proof, in
+  fact, that God is love, for man's love is God's love in man. The
+  source of the pity that man shows, and of the apparent evils in the
+  world which excite it, is the same. The power which called man into
+  being, itself rises up in man against the wrongs in the world. The
+  voice of the moral consciousness, approving the good, condemning
+  evil, and striving to annul it, is the voice of God, and has,
+  therefore, supreme authority. We do wrong, therefore, in thinking
+  that it is the weakness of man which is matched against the might of
+  evil in the world, and that we are fighting a losing battle. It is an
+  incomplete, abstract, untrue view of the facts of life which puts God
+  as irresistible Power in the outer world, and forgets that the same
+  irresistible Power works, under the higher form of love, in the human
+  heart.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Is not God now i' the world His power first made?</p>
+
+    <p>Is not His love at issue still with sin,</p>
+
+    <p>Visibly when a wrong is done on earth?</p>
+
+    <p>Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In this way, therefore, the poet argues back from the moral
+  consciousness of man to the goodness of God. And he finds the
+  ultimate proof of this <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg269" id=
+  "pg269">269</a></span> goodness in the very pessimism and scepticism
+  and despair, that come with the view of the apparently infinite waste
+  in the world and the endless miseries of humanity. The source of this
+  despair, namely, the recognition of evil and wrong, is just the
+  Godhood in man. There is no way of accounting for the fact that "Man
+  hates what is and loves what should be," except by "blending the
+  quality of man with the quality of God." And "the quality of God" is
+  the fundamental fact in man's history. Love is the last reality the
+  poet always reaches. Beneath the pessimism is love: without love of
+  the good there were no recognition of evil, no condemnation of it,
+  and no despair.</p>
+
+  <p>But the difficulty still remains as to the permission of evil,
+  even though it should prove in the end to be merely apparent.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Wherefore should any evil hap to man&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>From ache of flesh to agony of soul&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Since God's All-mercy mates All-potency?</p>
+
+    <p>Nay, why permits He evil to Himself&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Man's sin, accounted such? Suppose a world</p>
+
+    <p>Purged of all pain, with fit inhabitant&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Man pure of evil in thought, word, and deed&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Were it not well? Then, wherefore otherwise?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Mihrab Shah</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The poet finds an answer to this difficulty in the very nature of
+  moral goodness, which, as we have seen, he regards as a progressive
+  realization of an infinitely high ideal. The demand for a world
+  purged of all pain and sin is really, he teaches us, a demand for a
+  sphere where</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg270" id=
+  "pg270">270</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Time brings</p>
+
+    <p>No hope, no fear: as to-day, shall be</p>
+
+    <p>To-morrow: advance or retreat need we</p>
+
+    <p>At our stand-still through eternity?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Rephan</i>&mdash;<i>Asolando</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>What were there to "bless or curse, in such a uniform
+  universe,"</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Where weak and strong,</p>
+
+    <p>The wise and the foolish, right and wrong,</p>
+
+    <p>Are merged alike in a neutral Best."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There is a better way of life, thinks Browning, than such a state
+  of stagnation.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Why should I speak? You divine the test.</p>
+
+      <p>When the trouble grew in my pregnant breast</p>
+
+      <p>A voice said, So would'st thou strive, not rest,</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Burn and not smoulder, win by worth,</p>
+
+      <p>Not rest content with a wealth that's dearth,</p>
+
+      <p>Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Earth."<sup>C</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The discontent of man, the consciousness of sin, evil, pain, is a
+  symbol of promotion. The peace of the state of nature has been broken
+  for him; and, although the first consequence be</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Brow-furrowed old age, youth's hollow cheek,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Diseased in the body, sick in soul,</p>
+
+    <p>Pinched poverty, satiate wealth,&mdash;your whole</p>
+
+    <p>Array of despairs,"<sup>D</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>D: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>still, without them, the best is impossible. They are the
+  conditions of the moral life, which is essentially progressive. They
+  are the consequences of the fact that man has been "startled
+  up"</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg271" id=
+  "pg271">271</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">"by an Infinite</p>
+
+      <p>Discovered above and below me&mdash;height</p>
+
+      <p>And depth alike to attract my flight,</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Repel my descent: by hate taught love.</p>
+
+      <p>Oh, gain were indeed to see above</p>
+
+      <p>Supremacy ever&mdash;to move, remove,</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Not reach&mdash;aspire yet never attain</p>
+
+      <p>To the object aimed at."<sup>A</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Rephan</i>&mdash;<i>Asolando</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He who places rest above effort, Rephan above the earth, places a
+  natural good above a moral good, stagnation above progress. The
+  demand for the absolute extinction of evil betrays ignorance of the
+  nature of the highest good. For right and wrong are relative. "Type
+  need antitype." The fact that goodness is best, and that goodness is
+  not a stagnant state but a progress, a gradual realization, though
+  never complete, of an infinite ideal, of the perfection of God by a
+  finite being, necessarily implies the consciousness of sin and evil.
+  As a moral agent man must set what should be above what is. If he is
+  to aspire and attain, the actual present must seem to him inadequate,
+  imperfect, wrong, a state to be abolished in favour of a better. And
+  therefore it follows that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Though wrong were right</p>
+
+    <p>Could we but know&mdash;still wrong must needs seem wrong</p>
+
+    <p>To do right's service, prove men weak or strong,</p>
+
+    <p>Choosers of evil or good."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The apparent existence of evil is the condition of <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg272" id="pg272">272</a></span> goodness. And yet
+  it must only be apparent. For if evil be regarded as veritably evil,
+  it must remain so for all that man can do; he cannot annihilate any
+  fact nor change its nature, and all effort would, therefore, be
+  futile. And, on the other hand, if evil were known as unreal, then
+  there were no need of moral effort, no quarrel with the present and
+  therefore no aspiration, and no achievement. That which is man's
+  highest and best,&mdash;namely, a moral life which is a
+  progress&mdash;would thus be impossible, and his existence would be
+  bereft of all meaning and purpose. And if the highest is impossible
+  then all is wrong, "the goal being a ruin, so is all the rest."</p>
+
+  <p>The hypothesis of the moral life as progressive is essential to
+  Browning.</p>
+
+  <p>But if this hypothesis be granted, then all difficulties
+  disappear. The conception of the endless acquirement of goodness at
+  once postulates the consciousness of evil, and the consciousness of
+  it as existing in order to be overcome. Hence the consciousness of it
+  as illusion comes nearest to the truth. And such a conception is
+  essentially implied by the idea of morality. To speculative reason,
+  however, it is impossible, as the poet believes, that evil should
+  thus be at the same time regarded as both real and unreal. Knowledge
+  leads to despair on every side; for, whether it takes the evil in the
+  world as seeming or actual, it stultifies effort, and proves that
+  moral progress, which is best of all things, is impossible. But the
+  moral consciousness derives its vitality from this contradiction. It
+  is <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg273" id="pg273">273</a></span>
+  the meeting-point and conflict of actual and ideal; and its testimony
+  is indisputable, however inconsistent it may be with that of
+  knowledge. Acknowledging absolute ignorance of the outer world, the
+  poet has still a retreat within himself, safe from all doubt. He has
+  in his own inner experience irrefragable proof</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"How things outside, fact or feigning, teach</p>
+
+    <p>What good is and what evil&mdash;just the same,</p>
+
+    <p>Be feigning or be fact the teacher."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The consciousness of being taught goodness by interaction with the
+  outside unknown is sufficient; it is "a point of vantage" whence he
+  will not be moved by any contradictions that the intellect may
+  conjure up against it. And this process of learning goodness, this
+  gradual realization by man of an ideal infinitely high and absolute
+  in worth, throws back a light which illumines all the pain and strife
+  and despair, and shows them all to be steps in the endless
+  "love-way." The consciousness of evil is thus at once the effect and
+  the condition of goodness. The unrealized, though ever-realizing
+  good, which brings despair, is the best fact in man's history; and it
+  should rightly bring, not despair, but endless joy.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg274" id="pg274">274</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch09" id="ch09">CHAPTER IX.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>A CRITICISM OF BROWNING'S VIEW OF THE FAILURE OF KNOWLEDGE.</h3>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    "Der Mensch, da er Geist ist, darf und soll sich selbst des
+    höchsten würdig achten, von der Grösse und Macht seines Geistes
+    kann er nicht gross genug denken; und mit diesem Glauben wird
+    nichts so spröde und hart seyn, das sich ihm nicht eröffnete. Das
+    zuerst verborgene und verschlossene Wesen des Universums hat keine
+    Kraft, die dem Muthe des Erkennens Widerstand leisten könnte: es
+    muss sich vor ihm aufthun, und seinen Reichthum und seine Tiefen
+    ihm vor Augen legen und zum Genusse geben."<sup>A</sup>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Hegel's Inaugural Address at Heidelberg</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Before entering upon a criticism of Browning's theory, as
+  represented in the last chapter, it may be well to give a brief
+  summary of it.</p>
+
+  <p>The most interesting feature of Browning's proof of his optimistic
+  faith is his appeal from the intelligence to the moral consciousness.
+  To show theoretically that evil is merely phenomenal is, in his view,
+  both impossible and undesirable. It is impossible, because the human
+  intellect is incapable of knowing anything as it really is, or of
+  pronouncing upon the ultimate nature of any phenomenon. It is
+  undesirable, because a theoretical proof of the <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg275" id="pg275">275</a></span> evanescence of
+  evil would itself give rise to the greatest of all evils. The best
+  thing in the world is moral character. Man exists in order to grow
+  better, and the world exists in order to help him. But moral growth
+  is possible only through conflict against evil, or what seems to be
+  evil; hence, to disprove the existence of evil would be to take away
+  the possibility of learning goodness, to stultify all human effort,
+  and to deprive the world of its meaning.</p>
+
+  <p>But, if an optimistic doctrine cannot be reached by way of
+  speculative thought, if the intellect of man cannot see the good in
+  things evil, his moral consciousness guarantees that all is for the
+  best, and that "the good is all in all." For, in distinguishing
+  between good and evil, the moral consciousness sets up an ideal over
+  against the actual. It conceives of a scheme of goodness which is not
+  realized in the world, and it condemns the world as it is. Man, as
+  moral being, is so constituted that he cannot but regard the evil in
+  the world as something to be annulled. If he had only the power,
+  there would be no pain, no sorrow, no weakness, no failure, no death.
+  Is man, then, better than the Power which made the world and let woe
+  gain entrance into it? No! answers the poet; for man himself is part
+  of that world and the product of that Power. The Power that made the
+  world also made the moral consciousness which condemns the world; if
+  it is the source of the evil in the world, it is also the source of
+  that love in man, which, by self-expenditure, <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg276" id="pg276">276</a></span> seeks to remedy
+  it. If the external world is merely an expression of a remorseless
+  Power, whence comes the love which is the principle of the moral life
+  in man? The same Power brings the antidote as well as the bane. And,
+  further, the bane exists for the sake of the antidote, the wrong for
+  the sake of the remedy. The evil in the world is means to a higher
+  good, and the only means possible; for it calls into activity the
+  divine element in man, and thereby contributes to its realization in
+  his character. It gives the necessary opportunity for the exercise of
+  love.</p>
+
+  <p>Hence, evil cannot be regarded as ultimately real. It is real only
+  as a stage in growth, as means to an end; and the means necessarily
+  perishes, or is absorbed in, the attainment of the end. It has no
+  significance except by reference to that end. From this point of
+  view, evil is the resistance which makes progress possible, the
+  negative which gives meaning to the positive, the darkness that makes
+  day beautiful. This must not, however, be taken to mean that evil is
+  nothing. It is resistance; it is negative; it does oppose the good;
+  although its opposition is finally overcome. If it did not, if evil
+  were unreal, there would be no possibility of calling forth the moral
+  potency of man, and the moral life would be a figment. But these two
+  conditions of the moral life&mdash;on the one hand, that the evil of
+  the world must be capable of being overcome and is there for the
+  purpose of being overcome, and that it is unreal except as a means to
+  the good; and, on <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg277" id=
+  "pg277">277</a></span> the other hand, that evil must be actually
+  opposed to the good, if the good is to have any
+  meaning,&mdash;cannot, Browning thinks, be reconciled with each
+  other. It is manifest that the intellect of man cannot, at the same
+  time, regard evil as both real and unreal. It must assert the one and
+  deny the other; or else we must regard its testimony as altogether
+  untrustworthy. But the first alternative is destructive of the moral
+  consciousness. Moral life is alike impossible whether we deny or
+  assert the real existence of evil. The latter alternative stultifies
+  knowledge, and leaves all the deeper concerns of life&mdash;the
+  existence of good and evil, the reality of the distinction between
+  them, the existence of God, the moral governance of the world, the
+  destiny of man&mdash;in a state of absolute uncertainty. We must
+  reject the testimony either of the heart or of the head.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning, as we have seen, unhesitatingly adopts the latter
+  alternative. He remains loyal to the deliverances of his moral
+  consciousness and accepts as equally valid, beliefs which the
+  intellect finds to be self-contradictory: holding that knowledge on
+  such matters is impossible. And he rejects this knowledge, not only
+  because our thoughts are self-contradictory in themselves, but
+  because the failure of a speculative solution of these problems is
+  necessary to morality. Clear, convincing, demonstrative knowledge
+  would destroy morality; and the fact that the power to attain such
+  knowledge has been withheld from us is to be regarded rather as an
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg278" id="pg278">278</a></span>
+  indication of the beneficence of God, who has not held even ignorance
+  to be too great a price for man to pay for goodness.</p>
+
+  <p>Knowledge is not the fit atmosphere for morality. It is faith and
+  not reason, hope and trust but not certainty, that lend vigour to the
+  good life. We may believe, and rejoice in the belief, that the
+  absolute good is fulfilling itself in all things, and that even the
+  miseries of life are really its refracted rays&mdash;the light that
+  gains in splendour by being broken. But we must not, and, indeed,
+  cannot ascend from faith to knowledge. The heart may trust, and must
+  trust, if it faithfully listens to its own natural voice; but reason
+  must not demonstrate. Ignorance on the side of intellect, faith on
+  the side of the emotions; distrust of knowledge, absolute confidence
+  in love; such is the condition of man's highest welfare: it is only
+  thus that the purpose of his life, and of the world which is his
+  instrument, can be achieved.</p>
+
+  <p>No final estimate of the value of this theory of morals and
+  religion can be made, without examining its philosophical
+  presuppositions. Nor is such an examination in any way unfair; for it
+  is obvious that Browning explicitly offers us a philosophical
+  doctrine. He appeals to argument and not to artistic intuition; he
+  offers a definite theory to which he claims attention, not on account
+  of any poetic beauty that may lie within it, but on the ground that
+  it is a true exposition of the moral nature of man. Kant's
+  <i>Metaphysic of Ethics</i> is not <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg279" id="pg279">279</a></span> more metaphysical in intention than
+  the poet's later utterances on the problems of morality. In <i>La
+  Saisiaz</i>, in <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i>, in the <i>Parleyings</i>,
+  and, though less explicitly, in <i>Asolando</i>, <i>Fifine at the
+  Fair</i>, and <i>Red Cotton Nightcap Country</i>, Browning definitely
+  states, and endeavours to demonstrate a theory of knowledge, a theory
+  of the relation of knowledge to morality, and a theory of the nature
+  of evil; and he discusses the arguments for the immortality of the
+  soul. In these poems his artistic instinct avails him, not as in his
+  earlier ones, for the discovery of truth by way of intuition, but for
+  the adornment of doctrines already derived from a metaphysical
+  repository. His art is no longer free, no longer its own end, but
+  coerced into an alien service. It has become illustrative and
+  argumentative, and in being made to subserve speculative purposes, it
+  has ceased to be creative. Browning has appealed to philosophy, and
+  philosophy must try his cause.</p>
+
+  <p>Such, then, is Browning's theory; and I need make no further
+  apology for discussing at some length the validity of the division
+  which it involves between the intellectual and the moral life of man.
+  Is it possible to combine the weakness of man's intelligence with the
+  strength of his moral and religious life, and to find in the former
+  the condition of the latter? Does human knowledge fail, as the poet
+  considers it to fail? Is the intelligence of man absolutely incapable
+  of arriving at knowledge of things as they are? If it does, if man
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg280" id="pg280">280</a></span>
+  cannot know the truth, can he attain goodness? These are the
+  questions that must now be answered.</p>
+
+  <p>It is one of the characteristics of recent thought that it
+  distrusts its own activity: the ancient philosophical "Scepticism"
+  has been revived and strengthened. Side by side with the sense of the
+  triumphant progress of natural science, there is a conviction, shared
+  even by scientific investigators themselves, as well as by religious
+  teachers and by many students of philosophy, that our knowledge has
+  only limited and relative value, and that it always stops short of
+  the true nature of things. The reason of this general conviction lies
+  in the fact that thought has become aware of its own activity; men
+  realize more clearly than they did in former times that the apparent
+  constitution of things depends directly on the character of the
+  intelligence which apprehends them.</p>
+
+  <p>This relativity of things to thought has, not unnaturally,
+  suggested the idea that the objects of our knowledge are different
+  from objects as they are. "That the real nature of things is very
+  different from what we make of them, that thought and thing are
+  divorced, that there is a fundamental antithesis between them," is,
+  as Hegel said, "the hinge on which modern philosophy turns." Educated
+  opinion in our day has lost its naive trust in itself. "The natural
+  belief of man, it is true, ever gives the lie" to the doctrine that
+  we do not know things. "In common life," adds Hegel, "we reflect
+  without particularly noting that this is the process <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg281" id="pg281">281</a></span> of arriving at
+  the truth, and we think without hesitation and in the firm belief
+  that thought coincides with things."<sup>A</sup> But, as soon as attention is
+  directed to the process of thinking, and to the way in which the
+  process affects our consciousness of the object, it is at once
+  concluded that thought will never reach reality, that things are not
+  given to us as they are, but distorted by the medium of sense and our
+  intelligence, through which they pass. The doctrine of the relativity
+  of knowledge is thus very generally regarded as equivalent to the
+  doctrine that there is no true knowledge whatsoever. We know only
+  phenomena, or appearances; and it is these, and not veritable facts,
+  that we systematize into sciences. "We can arrange the
+  appearances&mdash;the shadows of our cave&mdash;and that, for the
+  practical purposes of the cave, is all that we require."<sup>B</sup> Not even
+  "earth's least atom" can ever be known to us as it really is; it is
+  for us, at the best,</p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: Wallace's <i>Translation of Hegel's Logic</i>, p. 36.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: Caird's <i>Comte</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"An atom with some certain properties</p>
+
+    <p>Known about, thought of as occasion needs."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>A Bean-Stripe</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In this general distrust of knowledge, however, there are, as
+  might be expected, many different degrees. Its origin in modern times
+  was, no doubt, the doctrine of Kant. "This divorce of thing and
+  thought," says Hegel, "is mainly the work of the critical philosophy
+  and runs counter to the conviction <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg282" id="pg282">282</a></span> of all previous ages." And the
+  completeness of the divorce corresponds, with tolerable accuracy, to
+  the degree in which the critical philosophy has been understood; for
+  Kant's writings, like those of all great thinkers, are capable of
+  many interpretations, varying in depth with the intelligence of the
+  interpreters.</p>
+
+  <p>The most common and general form of this view of the limitation of
+  the human intelligence is that which places the objects of religious
+  faith beyond the reach of human knowledge. We find traces of it in
+  much of the popular theology of our day. The great facts of religion
+  are often spoken of as lying in an extra-natural sphere, beyond
+  experience, into which men cannot enter by the native right of
+  reason. It is asserted that the finite cannot know the infinite, that
+  the nature of God is unknowable&mdash;except by means of a
+  supernatural interference, which gives to men a new power of
+  spiritual discernment, and "reveals" to them things which are "above
+  reason," although not contrary to it. The theologian often shields
+  certain of his doctrines from criticism, on the ground, as he
+  contends, that there are facts which we must believe, but which it
+  would be presumptuous for us to pretend to understand or to
+  demonstrate. They are the proper objects of "faith."</p>
+
+  <p>But this view of the weakness of the intelligence when applied to
+  supersensuous facts, is held along with an undisturbed conviction of
+  the validity of our knowledge of ordinary objects. It is believed,
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg283" id="pg283">283</a></span> in a
+  word, that there are two kinds of realities,&mdash;natural and
+  supernatural; and that the former is knowable and the latter not.</p>
+
+  <p>It requires, however, no great degree of intellectual acumen to
+  discover that this denial of the validity of our knowledge of these
+  matters involves its denial in all its applications. The ordinary
+  knowledge of natural objects, which we begin by regarding as valid,
+  or, rather, whose validity is taken for granted without being
+  questioned, depends upon our ideas of these supersensible objects. In
+  other words, those fundamental difficulties which pious opinion
+  discovers in the region of theology, and which, as is thought, fling
+  the human intellect back upon itself into a consciousness of frailty
+  and finitude, are found to lurk beneath our ordinary knowledge.
+  Whenever, for instance, we endeavour to know any object, we find that
+  we are led back along the line of its conditions to that which
+  unconditionally determines it. For we cannot find the reason for a
+  particular object in a particular object. We are driven back
+  endlessly from one to another along the chain of causes; and we can
+  neither discover the first link nor do without it. The first link
+  must be a cause of itself, and experience yields none such. Such a
+  cause would be the unconditioned, and the unconditioned we cannot
+  know. The final result of thinking is thus to lead us to an unknown;
+  and, in consequence, all our seeming knowledge is seen to have no
+  intelligible basis, and, therefore, to be merely hypothetical. If
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg284" id="pg284">284</a></span> we
+  cannot know God, we cannot know anything.</p>
+
+  <p>This view is held by the Positivists, and the most popular English
+  exponent of it is, perhaps, Mr. Herbert Spencer. Its characteristic
+  is its repudition of both theology and metaphysics as
+  pseudo-sciences, and its high esteem for science. That esteem is not
+  disturbed by the confession that "noumenal causes,"&mdash;that is,
+  the actual reality of things,&mdash;are unknown; for we can still lay
+  claim to valid knowledge of the laws of phenomena. Having
+  acknowledged that natural things as known are merely phenomena,
+  positivism treats them in all respects as if they were realities; and
+  it rejoices in the triumphant progress of the natural sciences as if
+  it were a veritable growth of knowledge. It does not take to heart
+  the phenomenal nature of known objects. But, having paid its formal
+  compliments to the doctrine of the relativity of all knowledge, it
+  neglects it altogether.</p>
+
+  <p>Those who understand Kant better carry his scepticism further, and
+  they complete the divorce between man's knowledge and reality. The
+  process of knowing, they hold, instead of leading us towards facts,
+  as it was so long supposed to do, takes us away from them:
+  <i>i.e.</i>, if either "towards" or "away from" can have any meaning
+  when applied to two realms which are absolutely severed from one
+  another. Knowledge is always concerned with the relations between
+  things; with their likeness, or unlikeness, their laws, or
+  connections; but <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg285" id=
+  "pg285">285</a></span> these are universals, and things are
+  individuals. Science knows the laws of things, but not the things; it
+  reveals how one object affects another, how it is connected with it;
+  but what are the things themselves, which are connected, it does not
+  know. The laws are mere forms of thought, "bloodless categories," and
+  not facts. They may somehow be regarded as explaining facts, but they
+  must not be identified with the facts. Knowledge is the sphere of
+  man's thoughts, and is made up of ideas; real things are in another
+  sphere, which man's thoughts cannot reach. We must distinguish more
+  clearly than has hitherto been done, between logic as the science of
+  knowledge, and metaphysics as a science which pretends to reveal the
+  real nature of things. In a word, we can know thoughts or universals,
+  but not things or particular existences. "When existence is in
+  question it is the individual, not the universal, that is real; and
+  the real individual is not a composite of species and accidents, but
+  is individual to the inmost fibre of its being." Each object keeps
+  its own real being to itself. Its inmost secret, its reality, is
+  something that cannot appear in knowledge. We can only know its
+  manifestations; but these manifestations are not its reality, nor
+  connected with it. These belong to the sphere of knowledge, they are
+  parts in a system of abstract thoughts; they do not exist in that
+  system, or no-system, of individual realities, each of which, in its
+  veritable being, is itself only, and connected with nought
+  beside.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg286" id=
+  "pg286">286</a></span>
+
+  <p>Now, this view of the absolute impossibility of knowing any
+  reality, on account of the fundamental difference between things and
+  our thoughts about things, contains a better promise of a true view
+  both of reality and of knowledge, than any of the previously
+  mentioned half-hearted theories. It forces us explicitly either to
+  regard every effort to know as futile, or else to regard it as futile
+  <i>on this theory of it</i>. In other words, we must either give up
+  knowledge or else give up the account of knowledge advanced by these
+  philosophers. Hitherto, however, every philosophy that has set itself
+  against the possibility of the knowledge of reality has had to give
+  way. It has failed to shake the faith of mankind in its own
+  intellectual endowment, or to arrest, even for a moment, the attempt
+  by thinking to know things as they are. The view held by Berkeley,
+  that knowledge is merely subjective, because the essence of things
+  consists in their being perceived by the individual, and that they
+  are nothing but his ideas, was refuted by Kant, when he showed that
+  the very illusion of seeming knowledge was impossible on that theory.
+  And this later view, which represents knowledge as merely subjective,
+  on the ground that it is the product of the activity of the thought
+  of mankind, working according to universal laws, is capable of being
+  refuted in the same manner. The only difference between the
+  Berkeleian and this modern speculative theory is that, on the former
+  view, each individual constructed his own subjective entities
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg287" id="pg287">287</a></span> or
+  illusions; while, on the latter, all men, by reason of the
+  universality of the laws of thought governing their minds, create the
+  same illusion, the same subjective scheme of ideas. Instead of each
+  having his own private unreality, as the product of his perceiving
+  activity, they have all the same, or at least a similar,
+  phantom-world of ideas, as the result of their thinking. But, in both
+  cases alike, the reality of the world without is out of reach, and
+  knowledge is a purely subjective apprehension of a world within.
+  Thoughts are quite different from things, and no effort of human
+  reason can reveal any community between them.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, there are certain difficulties which, so far as I know, those
+  who hold this view have scarcely attempted to meet. The first of
+  these lies in the obvious fact, that all men at all times consider
+  that this very process of thinking, which the theory condemns as
+  futile, is the only way we have of finding out what the reality of
+  things is. Why do we reflect and think, except in order to pass
+  beyond the illusions of sensuous appearances to the knowledge of
+  things as they are? Nay, why do these philosophers themselves
+  reflect, when reflection, instead of leading to truth, which is
+  knowledge of reality, leads only to ideas, which, being universal,
+  cannot represent the realities that are said to be "individual."</p>
+
+  <p>The second is, that the knowledge of "the laws" of things gives to
+  us practical command over them; although, according to this view,
+  laws are not things, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg288" id=
+  "pg288">288</a></span> nor any part of the reality of things, nor
+  even true representations of things. Our authority over things seems
+  to grow <i>pari passu</i> with our knowledge. The natural sciences
+  seem to prove by their practical efficiency, that they are not
+  building up a world of apparitions, like the real world; but
+  gradually getting inside nature, learning more and more to wield her
+  powers, and to make them the instruments of the purposes of man, and
+  the means of his welfare. To common-sense,&mdash;which frequently
+  "divines" truths that it cannot prove, and, like ballast in a ship,
+  has often given steadiness to human progress although it is only a
+  dead weight,&mdash;the assertion that man knows nothing is as
+  incredible as that he knows all things. If it is replied, that the
+  "things" which we seem to dominate by the means of knowledge are
+  themselves only phenomena, the question arises, what then are the
+  real things to which they are opposed? What right has any philosophy
+  to say that there is any reality which no one can in any sense know?
+  The knowledge that such reality is, is surely a relation between that
+  reality and consciousness, and, if so, the assertion of an unknowable
+  reality is self-contradictory. For the conception of it is the
+  conception of something that is, and at the same time is not, out of
+  relation to consciousness.</p>
+
+  <p>To say what kind of thing reality is, is a still more remarkable
+  feat, if reality is unknowable. Reality, being beyond knowledge, why
+  is it called particular or individual, rather than universal?
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg289" id="pg289">289</a></span> How
+  is it known that the true being of things is different from ideas?
+  Surely both of the terms must be regarded as known to some extent, if
+  they are called like or unlike, contrasted or compared, opposed or
+  identified.</p>
+
+  <p>But, lastly, this theory has to account for the fact that it
+  constitutes what is not only unreal, but impossible, into the
+  criterion of what is actual. If knowledge of reality is altogether
+  different from human knowledge, how does it come to be its criterion?
+  That knowledge is inadequate or imperfect can be known, only by
+  contrasting it with its own proper ideal, whatever that may be. A
+  criticism by reference to a foreign or irrelevant criterion, or the
+  condemnation of a theory as imperfect because it does not realize an
+  impossible end, is unreasonable. All true criticism of an object
+  implies a reference to a more perfect state of itself.</p>
+
+  <p>We must, then, regard the knowledge of objects as they are, which
+  is opposed to human knowledge, as, only a completer and fuller form
+  of that knowledge; or else we must cease to contrast it with our
+  human knowledge, as valid with invalid, true with phenomenal. Either
+  knowledge of reality is complete knowledge, or else it is a chimera.
+  And, in either case, the sharp distinction between the real and the
+  phenomenal vanishes; and what remains, is not a reality outside of
+  consciousness, or different from ideas, but a reality related to
+  consciousness, or, in other words, a knowable reality. "The
+  distinction <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg290" id=
+  "pg290">290</a></span> of objects into phenomena and noumena,
+  <i>i.e.</i>, into things that for us exist, and things that for us do
+  not exist, is an Irish bull in philosophy," said Heine. To speak of
+  reality as unknowable, or to speak of anything as unknowable, is to
+  utter a direct self-contradiction; it is to negate in the predicate
+  what is asserted in the subject. It is a still more strange
+  perversion to erect this knowable emptiness into a criterion of
+  knowledge, and to call the latter phenomenal by reference to it.</p>
+
+  <p>These difficulties are so fundamental and so obvious, that the
+  theory of the phenomenal nature of human knowledge, which, being
+  interpreted, means that we know nothing, could scarcely maintain its
+  hold, were it not confused with another fact of human experience,
+  that is apparently inconsistent with the doctrine that man can know
+  the truth. Side by side with the faith of ordinary consciousness,
+  that in order to know anything we must think, or, in other words,
+  that knowledge shows us what things really are, there is a
+  conviction, strengthened by constant experience, that we never know
+  things fully. Every investigation into the nature of an object soon
+  brings us to an enigma, a something more we do not know. Failing to
+  know this something more, we generally consider that we have fallen
+  short of reaching the reality of the object. We recognize, as it has
+  been expressed, that we have been brought to a stand, and we
+  therefore conclude that we are also brought to the end. We arrive at
+  what we do not know, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg291" id=
+  "pg291">291</a></span> and we pronounce that unknown to be
+  unknowable; that is, we regard it as something different in nature
+  from what we do know. So far as I can see, the attitude of ordinary
+  thought in regard to this matter might be fairly represented by
+  saying, that it always begins by considering objects as capable of
+  being known in their reality, or as they are, and that experience
+  always proves the attempt to know them as they are to be a failure.
+  The effort is continued although failure is the result, and even
+  although that failure be exaggerated and universalized into that
+  despair of knowledge which we have described. We are thus confronted
+  with what seems to be a contradiction; a trust and distrust in
+  knowledge. It can only be solved by doing full justice to both of the
+  conflicting elements; and then, if possible, by showing that they are
+  elements, and not the complete, concrete fact, except when held
+  together.</p>
+
+  <p>From one point of view, it is undeniable that in every object of
+  perception, we come upon problems that we cannot solve. Science at
+  its best, and even when dealing with the simplest of things, is
+  forced to stop short of its final secret. Even when it has discovered
+  its law, there is still apparently something over and above which
+  science cannot grasp, and which seems to give to the object its
+  reality. All the natural sciences concentrated on a bit of iron ore
+  fail to exhaust the truth in it: there is always a "beyond" in it,
+  something still more fundamental which is not yet understood.
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg292" id="pg292">292</a></span> And
+  that something beyond, that inner essence, that point in which the
+  laws meet and which the sciences fail to lift into knowledge, is
+  regarded as just the reality of the thing. Thus the reality is
+  supposed, at the close of every investigation, to lie outside of
+  knowledge; and conversely, all that we do know, seeing that it lacks
+  this last element, seems to be only apparent knowledge, or knowledge
+  of phenomena.</p>
+
+  <p>In this way the process of knowing seems always to stop short at
+  the critical moment, when the truth is just about to be reached. And
+  those who dwell on this aspect alone are apt to conclude that man's
+  intellect is touched with a kind of impotence, which makes it useless
+  when it gets near the reality. It is like a weapon that snaps at the
+  hilt just when the battle is hottest. For we seem to be able to know
+  everything but the reality, and yet apart from the real essence all
+  knowledge seems to be merely apparent. Physical science penetrates
+  through the outer appearances of things to their laws, analyzes them
+  into forms of energy, calculates their action and predicts their
+  effects with certainty. Its practical power over the forces of nature
+  is so great that it seems to have got inside her secrets. And yet
+  science will itself acknowledge that in every simplest object there
+  is an unknown. Its triumphant course of explaining seems to be always
+  arrested at the threshold of reality. It has no theory, scarcely an
+  hypothesis, of the actual nature of things, or of what that is in
+  each object, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg293" id=
+  "pg293">293</a></span> which constitutes it a real existence. Natural
+  science, with a scarcely concealed sneer, hands over to the
+  metaphysician all questions as to the real being of things; and
+  itself makes the more modest pretension of showing how things behave,
+  not what they are; what effects follow the original noumenal causes,
+  but not the veritable nature of these causes. Nor can the
+  metaphysician, in his turn, do more than suggest a hypothesis as to
+  the nature of the ultimate reality in things. He cannot detect or
+  demonstrate it in any particular fact. In a word, every minutest
+  object in the world baffles the combined powers of all forms of human
+  thought, and holds back its essence or true being from them. And as
+  long as this true being, or reality is not known, the knowledge which
+  we seem to have cannot be held as ultimately true, but is
+  demonstrably a makeshift.</p>
+
+  <p>Having made this confession, there seems to be no alternative but
+  to postulate an utter discrepancy between human thought and real
+  existence, or between human knowledge and truth, which is the
+  correspondence of thing and thought. For, at no point is knowledge
+  found to be in touch with real being; it is everywhere demonstrably
+  conditioned and relative, and inadequate to express the true reality
+  of its objects. What remains, then, except to regard human knowledge
+  as completely untrustworthy, as merely of phenomena? If we cannot
+  know <i>any</i> reality, does not knowledge completely
+  fail?</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg294" id=
+  "pg294">294</a></span>
+
+  <p>Now, in dealing with the moral life of man, we saw that the method
+  of hard alternatives is invalid. The moral life, being progressive,
+  was shown to be the meeting&mdash;point of the ideal and the actual;
+  and the ideal of perfect goodness was regarded as manifesting itself
+  in actions which, nevertheless, were never adequate to express it.
+  The good when achieved was ever condemned as unworthy, and the ideal
+  when attained ever pressed for more adequate expression in a better
+  character. The ideal was present as potency, as realizing itself, but
+  it was never completely realized. The absolute good was never reached
+  in the best action, and never completely missed in the worst.</p>
+
+  <p>The same conflict of real and unreal was shown to be essential to
+  every natural life. As long as anything grows it neither completely
+  attains, nor completely falls away from its ideal. The growing acorn
+  is not an oak tree, and yet it is not a mere acorn. The child is not
+  the man; and yet the man is in the child, and only needs to be
+  evolved by interaction with circumstances. The process of growth is
+  one wherein the ideal is always present, as a reconstructive power
+  gradually changing its whole vehicle, or organism, into a more
+  perfect expression of itself. The ideal is reached in the end, just
+  because it is present in the beginning; and there is no end as long
+  as growth continues.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, it is evident that knowledge, whether it be that of the
+  individual man or of the human race, <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg295" id="pg295">295</a></span> is a thing that grows. The process
+  by means of which natural science makes progress, or by which the
+  consciousness of the child expands and deepens into the consciousness
+  of the man, is best made intelligible from the point of view of
+  evolution. It is like an organic process, in which each new
+  acquirement finds its place in an old order, each new fact is brought
+  under the permanent principles of experience, and absorbed into an
+  intellectual life, which itself, in turn, grows richer and fuller
+  with every new acquisition. No knowledge worthy of the name is an
+  aggregation of facts. Wisdom comes by growth.</p>
+
+  <p>Hence, the assertion that knowledge never attains reality, does
+  not imply that it always misses it. In morals we do not say that a
+  man is entirely evil, although he never, even in his best actions,
+  attains the true good. And if the process of knowing is one that
+  presses onward towards an ideal, that ideal is never completely
+  missed even in the poorest knowledge. If it grows, the method of
+  fixed alternatives must be inapplicable to it. The ideal, whatever it
+  may be, must be considered as active in the present, guiding the
+  whole movement, and gradually manifesting itself in each of the
+  passing forms, which are used up as the raw material of new
+  acquirement; and yet no passing form completely expresses the
+  ideal.</p>
+
+  <p>Nor is it difficult to say what that ideal of knowlege is,
+  although we cannot define it in any adequate manner. We know that the
+  end of morality is the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg296" id=
+  "pg296">296</a></span> <i>summum bonum</i>, although we cannot, as
+  long as we are progressive, define its whole content, or find it
+  fully realized in any action. Every failure brings new truth, every
+  higher grade of moral character reveals some new height of goodness
+  to be scaled; the moral ideal acquires definiteness and content as
+  humanity moves upwards. And yet the ideal is not entirely unknown
+  even at the first; even to the most ignorant, it presents itself as a
+  criterion which enables him to distinguish between right and wrong,
+  evil and goodness, and which guides his practical life. The same
+  truth holds with regard to knowledge. Its growth receives its impulse
+  from, and is directed and determined by, what is conceived as the
+  real world of facts. This truth, namely, that the ideal knowledge is
+  knowledge of reality, the most subjective philosopher cannot but
+  acknowledge. It is implied in his condemnation of knowledge as merely
+  phenomenal, that there is possible a knowledge of real being. That
+  thought and reality can be brought together, or rather, that they are
+  always together, is presupposed in all knowledge and in all
+  experience. The effort to know is the effort to <i>explain</i> the
+  relation of thought and reality, not to create it. The ideal of
+  perfect knowledge is present from the first; it generates the effort,
+  directs it, distinguishes between truth and error. And that which man
+  ever aims at, whether in the ordinary activities of daily thought, or
+  through the patient labour of scientific investigation, or in the
+  reflective self-torture of philosophic thought, is to <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg297" id="pg297">297</a></span> know the world as
+  it is. No failure damps the ardour of this endeavour. Relativists,
+  phenomenalists, agnostics, sceptics, Kantians or
+  Neo-Kantians&mdash;all the crowd of thinkers who cry down the human
+  intellect, and draw a charmed circle around reality so as to make it
+  unapproachable to the mind of man&mdash;ply this useless labour. They
+  are seeking to penetrate beneath the shows of sense and the outer
+  husk of phenomena to the truth, which is the meeting-point of
+  knowledge and reality; they are endeavouring to translate into an
+  intellectual possession the powers that play within and around them;
+  or, in other words, to make these powers express themselves in their
+  thoughts, and supply the content of their spiritual life. The irony,
+  latent in their endeavour, gives them no pause; they are in some way
+  content to pursue what they call phantoms, and to try to satisfy
+  their thirst with the waters of a mirage. This comes from the
+  presence of the ideal within them, that is, of the implicit unity of
+  reality and thought, which seeks for explicit and complete
+  manifestation in knowledge. The reality is present in them as
+  thinking activity, working towards complete revelation of itself by
+  means of knowledge. And its presence is real, although the process is
+  never complete.</p>
+
+  <p>In knowledge, as in morals, it is necessary to remember both of
+  the truths implied in the pursuit of an ideal&mdash;that a growing
+  thing not only always fails to attain, but also always succeeds. The
+  distinction between truth and error in knowledge is <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg298" id="pg298">298</a></span> present at every
+  stage in the effort to attain truth, as the distinction between right
+  and wrong is present in every phase of the moral life. It is the
+  source of the intellectual effort. But that distinction cannot be
+  drawn except by reference to a criterion of truth, which condemns our
+  actual knowledge; as it is the absolute good, which condemns the
+  present character. The ideal may be indefinite, and its content
+  confused and poor; but it is always sufficient for its purpose,
+  always better than the actual achievement. And, in this sense,
+  reality, the truth, the veritable being of things, is always reached
+  by the poorest knowledge. As there is no starved and distorted
+  sapling which is not the embodiment of the principle of natural life,
+  so the meanest character is the product of an ideal of goodness, and
+  the most confused opinion of ignorant mankind is an expression of the
+  reality of things. Without it there would not be even the semblance
+  of knowledge, not even error and untruth.</p>
+
+  <p>Those who, like Browning, make a division between man's thought
+  and real things, and regard the sphere of knowledge as touching at no
+  point the sphere of actual existence, are attributing to the bare
+  human intellect much more power than it has. They regard mind as
+  creating its phenomenal knowledge, or the apparent world. For, having
+  separated mind from reality, it is evident that they cannot avail
+  themselves of any doctrine of sensations or impressions as a medium
+  between them, or postulate any other form of connection <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg299" id="pg299">299</a></span> or means of
+  communication. Connection of any kind must, in the end, imply some
+  community of nature, and must put the unity of thought and
+  being&mdash;here denied&mdash;beneath their difference. Hence, the
+  world of phenomena which we know, and which as known, does not seem
+  to consist of realities, must be the product of the unaided human
+  mind. The intellect, isolated from all real being, has manufactured
+  the apparent universe, in all its endless wealth. It is a creative
+  intellect, although it can only create illusions. It evolves all its
+  products from itself.</p>
+
+  <p>But thought, set to revolve upon its own axis in an empty region,
+  can produce nothing, not even illusions. And, indeed, those who deny
+  that it is possible for thought and reality to meet in a unity, have,
+  notwithstanding, to bring over "something" to the aid of thought.
+  There must be some effluence from the world of reality, some
+  manifestations of the thing (though they are not the reality of the
+  thing, nor any part of the reality, nor connected with the reality!)
+  to assist the mind and supply it with data. The "phenomenal world" is
+  a hybrid, generated by thought and "something"&mdash;which yet is not
+  reality; for the real world is a world of things in themselves,
+  altogether beyond thought. By bringing in these data, it is virtually
+  admitted that the human mind reaches down into itself in vain for a
+  world, even for a phenomenal one.</p>
+
+  <p>Thought apart from things is quite empty, just as things apart
+  from thought are blind. Such thought <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg300" id="pg300">300</a></span> and such reality are mere
+  abstractions, hypostasized by false metaphysics; they are elements of
+  truth rent asunder, and destroyed in the rending. The dependence of
+  the intelligence of man upon reality is direct and complete. The
+  foolishest dream, that ever played out its panorama beneath a
+  night-cap, came through the gates of the senses from the actual
+  world. Man is limited to his material in all that he knows, just as
+  he is ruled by the laws of thought. He cannot go one step beyond it.
+  To transcend "experience" is impossible. We have no wings to sustain
+  us in an empty region, and no need of any. It is as impossible for
+  man to create new ideas, as it is for him to create new atoms. Our
+  thought is essentially connected with reality. There is no <i>mauvais
+  pas</i> from thought to things. We do not need to leap out of
+  ourselves in order to get into the world. We are in it from the
+  first, both as physical and moral agents, and as thinking beings. Our
+  thoughts are expressions of the real nature of things, so far as they
+  go. They may be and are imperfect; they may be and are confused and
+  inadequate, and express only the superficial aspects and not "the
+  inmost fibres"; still, they are what they are, in virtue of "the
+  reality," which finds itself interpreted in them. Severed from that
+  reality, they would be nothing.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, the distinction between thought and reality is a distinction
+  within a deeper unity. And that unity must not be regarded as
+  something additional to both, or as a third something. It <i>is</i>
+  their unity. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg301" id=
+  "pg301">301</a></span> It is both reality and thought: it is existing
+  thought, or reality knowing itself and existing through its knowledge
+  of self; it is self-consciousness. The distinguished elements have no
+  existence or meaning except in their unity. Like the actual and
+  ideal, they have significance and being, only in their reference to
+  each other.</p>
+
+  <p>There is one more difficulty connected with this matter which I
+  must touch upon, although the discussion may already be regarded as
+  prolix. It is acknowledged by every one that the knowledge of the
+  individual, and his apparent world of realities, grow <i>pari
+  passu</i>. Beyond his sphere of knowledge there is no reality <i>for
+  him</i>, not even apparent reality. But, on the other hand, the real
+  world of existing things exists all the same whether he knows it or
+  not. It did not begin to be with any knowledge he may have of it, it
+  does not cease to be with his extinction, and it is not in any way
+  affected by his valid, or invalid, reconstruction of it in thought.
+  The world which depends on his thought is his world, and not the
+  world of really existing things. And this is true alike of every
+  individual. The world is independent of all human minds. It existed
+  before them, and will, very possibly, exist after them. Can we not,
+  therefore, conclude that the real world is independent of thought,
+  and that it exists without relation to it?</p>
+
+  <p>A short reference to the moral consciousness may suggest the
+  answer to this difficulty. In morality (as also is the case in
+  knowledge) the moral ideal, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg302" id=
+  "pg302">302</a></span> or the objective law of goodness, grows in
+  richness and fulness of content with the individual who apprehends
+  it. <i>His</i> moral world is the counterpart of <i>his</i> moral
+  growth as a character. Goodness <i>for him</i> directly depends upon
+  his recognition of it. Animals, presumably, have no moral ideal,
+  because they have not the power to constitute it. In morals, as in
+  knowledge, the mind of man constructs its own world. And yet, in both
+  alike, the world of truth or of goodness exists all the same whether
+  the individual knows it or not. He does not call the moral law into
+  being, but finds it without, and then realizes it in his own life.
+  The moral law does not vanish and reappear with its recognition by
+  mankind. It is not subject to the chances and changes of its life,
+  but a good in itself that is eternal.</p>
+
+  <p>Is it therefore independent of all intelligence? Can goodness be
+  anything but the law of a self-conscious being? Is it the quality or
+  motive or ideal of a mere thing? Manifestly not. Its relation to
+  self-consciousness is essential. With the extinction of
+  self-consciousness all moral goodness is extinguished.</p>
+
+  <p>The same holds true of reality. The question of the reality or
+  unreality of things cannot arise except in an intelligence. Animals
+  have neither illusions nor truths&mdash;unless they are
+  self-conscious. The reality, which man sets over against his own
+  inadequate knowledge, is posited by him; and it has no meaning
+  whatsoever except in this contrast. And to endeavour to conceive a
+  reality which no one knows, is to assert a relative term without its
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg303" id="pg303">303</a></span>
+  correlative, which is absurd; it is to posit an ideal which is
+  opposed to nothing actual.</p>
+
+  <p>In this view, so commonly held in our day, that knowledge is
+  subjective and reality unknowable, we have another example of the
+  falseness and inconsistency of abstract thinking. If this error be
+  committed, there is no fundamental gain in saying with Kant, that
+  things are relative to the thought of all, instead of asserting, with
+  Berkeley or Browning, that they are relative to the thought of each.
+  The final result is the same. Things as known, are reduced into mere
+  creations of thought; things as they are, are regarded as not
+  thoughts, and as partaking in no way of the nature of thought. And
+  yet "reality" is virtually assumed to be given at the beginning of
+  knowledge; for the sensations are supposed to be emanations from it,
+  or roused in consciousness by it. These sensations, it is said, man
+  does not make, but receives, and receives from the concealed reality.
+  They flow from it, and are the manifestations of its activity. Then,
+  in the next moment, reality is regarded as not given in any way, but
+  as something to be discovered by the effort of thought; for we always
+  strive to know things, and not phantoms. Lastly, the knowledge thus
+  acquired being regarded as imperfect, and experience showing to us
+  continually that every object has more in it than we know, the
+  reality is pronounced to be unknowable, and all knowledge is regarded
+  as failure, as acquaintance with mere phantoms. Thus, in thought, as
+  in morality, the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg304" id=
+  "pg304">304</a></span> ideal is present at the beginning, it is an
+  effort after explicit realization, and its process is never
+  complete.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, all these aspects of the ideal of knowledge, that is, of
+  reality, are held by the unsophisticated intelligence of man; and
+  abstract philosophy is not capable of finally getting rid of any one
+  of them. It, too, holds them <i>alternately</i>. Its denial of the
+  possibility of knowing reality is refuted by its own starting-point;
+  for it begins with a given something, regarded as real, and its very
+  effort to know is an attempt to know that reality by thinking. But it
+  forgets these facts, when it is discovered that knowledge at the best
+  is incomplete. It is thus tossed from assertion to denial, and from
+  denial to assertion; from one abstract or one-sided view of reality,
+  to the other.</p>
+
+  <p>When these different aspects of truth are grasped together from
+  the point of view of evolution, there seems to be a way of escaping
+  the difficulties to which they give rise. For the ideal must be
+  present at the beginning, and cannot be present in its fulness till
+  the process is complete. What is here required is to lift our theory
+  of man's knowledge to the level of our theory of his moral life, and
+  to treat it frankly as the process whereby reality manifests itself
+  in the mind of man. In that way, we shall avoid the absurdities of
+  both of the abstract schools of philosophy, to both of which alike
+  the native intelligence of man gives the lie. We shall say neither
+  that man knows nothing, nor that he knows all; we shall regard his
+  knowledge, neither as purely <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg305"
+  id="pg305">305</a></span> phenomenal and out of all contact with
+  reality, nor as an actual identification with the real being of
+  things in all their complex variety. For, in morality, we do not say
+  either that the individual is absolutely evil, because his actions
+  never realize the supreme ideal of goodness; nor, that he is at the
+  last term of development, and "taking the place of God," because he
+  lives as "ever in his great Taskmaster's eye." Just as every moral
+  action, however good, leaves something still to be desiderated,
+  something that may become a stepping-stone for new movement towards
+  the ideal which it has failed to actualize; so all our knowledge of
+  an object leaves something over that we have not apprehended, which
+  is truer and more real than anything we know, and which in all future
+  effort we strive to master. And, just as the very effort, to be good
+  derives its impulse and direction from the ideal of goodness which is
+  present, and striving for realization; so the effort to know derives
+  its impulse and direction from the reality which is present, and
+  striving for complete realization in the thought of man. We know
+  reality confusedly from the first; and it is because we have attained
+  so much knowledge, that we strive for greater clearness and fulness.
+  It is by planting his foot on the world that man travels. It is by
+  opposing his power to the given reality that his knowledge grows.</p>
+
+  <p>When once we recognize that reality is the ideal of knowledge, we
+  are able to acknowledge all the truth that is in the doctrine of the
+  phenomenalists, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg306" id=
+  "pg306">306</a></span> without falling into their errors and
+  contradictions. We may go as far as the poet in confessing
+  intellectual impotence, and roundly call the knowledge of man
+  "lacquered ignorance." "Earth's least atom" does veritably remain an
+  enigma. Man is actually flung back into his circumscribed sphere by
+  every fact; and he will continue to be so flung to the end of time.
+  He will never know reality, nor be able to hold up in his hand the
+  very heart of the simplest thing in the world. For the world is an
+  organic totality, and its simplest thing will not be seen, through
+  and through, till everything is known, till every fact and event is
+  related to every other under principles which are universal: just as
+  goodness cannot be fully achieved in any act, till the agent is in
+  all ways lifted to the level of absolute goodness. Physics cannot
+  reveal the forces which keep a stone in its place on the earth, till
+  it has traced the forces that maintain the starry systems in their
+  course. No fact can be thoroughly known, <i>i.e.</i>, known in its
+  reality, till the light of the universe has been focussed upon it:
+  and, on the other hand, to know any subject through and through would
+  be to explain all being. The highest law and the essence of the
+  simple fact, the universal and the particular, can only be known
+  together, in and through one another. "Reality" in "the least atom"
+  will be known, only when knowledge has completed its work, and the
+  universe has become a transparent sphere, penetrated in every
+  direction by the shafts of intelligence.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg307" id="pg307">307</a></span>
+
+  <p>But this is only half the truth. If knowledge is never complete,
+  it is always <i>completing</i>; if reality is never known, it is ever
+  <i>being known</i>; if the ideal is never actual, it is always
+  <i>being actualized</i>. The complete failure of knowledge is as
+  impossible as its complete success. It is at no time severed from
+  reality; it is never its mere adumbration, nor are its contents mere
+  phenomena. On the contrary, it is reality partially revealed, the
+  ideal incompletely actualized. Our very errors are the working of
+  reality within us, and apart from it they would be impossible. The
+  process towards truth by man is the process of truth <i>in</i> man;
+  the movement of knowledge towards reality is the movement of reality
+  into knowledge. A purely subjective consciousness which knows, such
+  as the poet tried to describe, is a self-contradiction: it would be a
+  consciousness at once related, and not related, to the actual world.
+  But man has no need to relate himself to the world. He is already
+  related, and his task is to understand that relation, or, in other
+  words, to make both its terms intelligible. Man has no need to go out
+  from himself to facts; his relation to facts is prior to his
+  distinction from them. The truth is that he cannot entirely lift
+  himself away from them, nor suspend his thoughts in the void. In his
+  inmost being he is creation's voice, and in his knowledge he
+  confusedly murmurs its deep thoughts.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning was aware of this truth in its application to man's moral
+  nature. In speaking of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg308" id=
+  "pg308">308</a></span> principle of love, he was not tempted to apply
+  fixed alternatives. On the contrary, he detected in the "poorest love
+  that was ever offered" the veritable presence of that which is
+  perfect and complete, though never completely actualized. His
+  interest in the moral development of man, and his penetrative moral
+  insight, acting upon, and guided by the truths of the Christian
+  religion, warned him, on this side, against the absolute separation
+  of the ideal and actual, the divine and human. Human love, however
+  poor in quality and limited in range, was to him God's love in man.
+  It was a wave breaking in the individual of that First Love, which is
+  ever flowing back through the life of humanity to its primal source.
+  To him all moral endeavour is the process of this Primal Love; and
+  every man, as he consciously identifies himself with it, may use the
+  language of Scripture, and say, "It is not I that live, but Christ
+  lives in me."</p>
+
+  <p>But, on the side of knowledge, he was neither so deeply
+  interested, nor had he so good a guide to lean upon. Ignorant,
+  according to all appearances, of the philosophy which has made the
+  Christian maxim, "Die to live,"&mdash;which primarily is only a
+  principle of morality&mdash;the basis of its theory of knowledge, he
+  exaggerated the failure of science to reach the whole truth as to any
+  particular object, into a qualitative discrepancy between knowledge
+  and truth. Because knowledge is never complete, it is always mere
+  lacquered ignorance; and man's apparent intellectual victories are
+  only <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg309" id="pg309">309</a></span>
+  conquests in a land of unrealities, or mere phenomena. He occupies in
+  regard to knowledge, a position strictly analogous to that of
+  Carlyle, in regard to morality; his intellectual pessimism is the
+  counterpart of the moral pessimism of his predecessor, and it springs
+  from the same error. He forgot that the ideal without is also the
+  power within, which makes for its own manifestation in the mind of
+  man.</p>
+
+  <p>He opposed the intellect to the world, as Carlyle opposed the
+  weakness of man to the law of duty; and he neglected the fact that
+  the world was there for him, only because he knew it, just as Carlyle
+  neglected the fact that the duty was without, only because it was
+  recognized within. He strained the difference between the ideal and
+  actual into an absolute distinction; and, as Carlyle condemned man to
+  strive for a goodness which he could never achieve, so Browning
+  condemns him to pursue a truth which he can never attain. In both,
+  the failure is regarded as absolute. "There is no good in us," has
+  for its counterpart "There is no truth in us." Both the moralist and
+  the poet dwell on the <i>negative</i> relation of the ideal and
+  actual, and forget that the negative has no meaning, except as the
+  expression of a deeper affirmative. Carlyle had to learn that we know
+  our moral imperfection, only because we are conscious of a better
+  within us; and Browning had to learn that we are aware of our
+  ignorance, only because we have the consciousness of fuller truth
+  with which we contrast <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg310" id=
+  "pg310">310</a></span> our knowledge. Browning, indeed, knew that the
+  consciousness of evil was itself evidence of the presence of good,
+  that perfection means death, and progress is life, on the side of
+  morals; but he has missed the corresponding truth on the side of
+  knowledge. If he acknowledges that the highest revealed itself to
+  man, on the practical side, as love; he does not see that it has also
+  manifested itself to man, on the theoretical side, as reason. The
+  self-communication of the Infinite is incomplete love is a quality of
+  God, intelligence a quality of man; hence, on one side, there is no
+  limit to achievement, but on the other there is impotence. Human
+  nature is absolutely divided against itself; and the division, as we
+  have already seen, is not between flesh and spirit, but between a
+  love which is God's own and perfect, and an intelligence which is
+  merely man's and altogether weak and deceptive.</p>
+
+  <p>This is what makes Browning think it impossible to re-establish
+  faith in God, except by turning his back on knowledge; but whether it
+  is possible for him to appeal to the moral consciousness, we shall
+  inquire in the next chapter.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg311"
+  id="pg311">311</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch10" id="ch10">CHAPTER X.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>THE HEART AND THE HEAD.&mdash;LOVE AND REASON.</h3>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    "And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon
+    the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing
+    and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood
+    grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open
+    encounter."<sup>A</sup>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: Milton's <i>Areopagitica</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It has been shown that Browning appeals, in defence of his
+  optimistic faith, from the intellect to the heart. His theory rests
+  on three main assumptions:&mdash;namely (1) that knowledge of the
+  true nature of things is impossible to man, and that, therefore, it
+  is necessary to find other and better evidence than the intellect can
+  give for the victory of good over evil; (2) that the failure of
+  knowledge is a necessary condition of the moral life, inasmuch as
+  certain knowledge would render all moral effort either futile or
+  needless; (3) that after the failure of knowledge there still remains
+  possible a faith of the heart, which can furnish a sufficient
+  objective basis to morality and religion. The first of these
+  assumptions I endeavoured to deal with in the last chapter. I now
+  turn to the remaining two.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg312"
+  id="pg312">312</a></span>
+
+  <p>Demonstrative, or certain, or absolute knowledge of the actual
+  nature of things would, Browning asserts, destroy the very
+  possibility of a moral life.<sup>A</sup> For such knowledge would show either
+  that evil is evil, or that evil is good; and, in both cases alike,
+  the benevolent activity of love would be futile. In the first case,
+  it would be thwarted and arrested by despair; for, if evil be evil,
+  it must remain evil for aught that man can do. Man cannot effect a
+  change in the nature of things, nor create a good in a world
+  dominated by evil. In the second case, the saving effect of moral
+  love would be unnecessary; for, if evil be only seeming, then all
+  things are perfect and complete, and there is no need of
+  interference. It is necessary, therefore, that man should be in a
+  permanent state of doubt as to the real existence of evil; and,
+  whether evil does exist or not, it must seem, and only seem to exist
+  to man, in order that he may devote himself to the service of
+  good.<sup>B</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: See Chapter VIII., p. <a href="#pg255">255.</a></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Now, if this view of the poet be taken in the strict sense in
+  which he uses it in this argument, it admits of a very easy
+  refutation. It takes us beyond the bounds of all possible human
+  experience, into an imaginary region, as to which all assertions are
+  equally valueless. It is impossible to conceive how the conduct of a
+  being who is moral would be affected by absolute knowledge; or,
+  indeed, to conceive the existence of such a being. For morality, as
+  the poet insists, is a process in which <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg313" id="pg313">313</a></span> an ideal is
+  gradually realized through conflict with the actual&mdash;an actual
+  which it both produces and transmutes at every stage of the progress.
+  But complete knowledge would be above all process. Hence we would
+  have, on Browning's hypothesis, to conceive of a being in whom
+  perfect knowledge was combined with an undeveloped will. A being so
+  constituted would be an agglomerate of utterly disparate elements,
+  the interaction of which in a single character it would be impossible
+  to make intelligible.</p>
+
+  <p>But, setting aside this point, there is a curious flaw in
+  Browning's argument, which indicates that he had not distinguished
+  between two forms of optimism which are essentially different from
+  each other,&mdash;namely, the pantheistic and the Christian.</p>
+
+  <p>To know that evil is only apparent, that pain is only pleasure's
+  mask, that all forms of wickedness and misery are only illusions of
+  an incomplete intelligence, would, he argues, arrest all moral action
+  and stultify love. For love&mdash;which necessarily implies need in
+  its object&mdash;is the principle of all right action. In this he
+  argues justly, for the moral life is essentially a conflict and
+  progress; and, in a world in which "white ruled unchecked along the
+  line," there would be neither the need of conflict nor the
+  possibility of progress. And, on the other hand, if the good were
+  merely a phantom, and evil the reality, the same destruction of moral
+  activity would follow. "White may not triumph," in this absolute
+  manner, nor may we "clean abolish, once <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg314" id="pg314">314</a></span> and evermore,
+  white's faintest trace." There must be "the constant shade cast on
+  life's shine."</p>
+
+  <p>All this is true; but the admission of it in no way militates
+  against the conception of absolutely valid knowledge; nor is it any
+  proof that we need live in the twilight of perpetual doubt, in order
+  to be moral. For the knowledge, of which Browning speaks, would be
+  knowledge of a state of things in which morality would be really
+  impossible; that is, it would be knowledge of a world in which all
+  was evil or all was good. On the other hand, valid knowledge of a
+  world in which good and evil are in conflict, and in which the former
+  is realized through victory over the latter, would not destroy
+  morality. What is inconsistent with the moral life is the conception
+  of a world where there is no movement from evil to good, no evolution
+  of character, but merely the stand-still life of "Rephan." But
+  absolutely certain knowledge that the good is at issue with sin in
+  the world, that there is no way of attaining goodness except through
+  conflict with evil, and that moral life, as the poet so frequently
+  insists, is a process which converts all actual attainment into a
+  dead self, from which we can rise to higher things&mdash;a self,
+  therefore, which is relatively evil&mdash;would, and does, inspire
+  morality. It is the deification of evil not negated or overcome, of
+  evil as it is in itself and apart from all process, which destroys
+  morality. And the same is equally true of a pantheistic optimism,
+  which asserts that all things <i>are</i> good. But it is not true
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg315" id="pg315">315</a></span> of a
+  Christian optimism, which asserts that all things are <i>working
+  together for</i> good. For such optimism implies that the process of
+  negating or overcoming evil is essential to the attainment of
+  goodness; it does not imply that evil, as evil, is ever good. Evil is
+  unreal, only in the sense that it cannot withstand the power which is
+  set against it. It is not <i>mere</i> semblance, a mere negation or
+  absence of being; it is opposed to the good, and its opposition can
+  be overcome, only by the moral effort which it calls forth. An
+  optimistic faith of this kind can find room for morality; and,
+  indeed, it furnishes it with the religious basis it needs. Browning,
+  however, has confused these two forms of optimism; and, therefore, he
+  has been driven to condemn knowledge, because he knew no alternative
+  but that of either making evil eternally real, or making it
+  absolutely unreal. A third alternative, however, is supplied by the
+  conception of moral evolution. Knowledge of the conditions on which
+  good can be attained&mdash;a knowledge that amounts to
+  conviction&mdash;is the spring of all moral effort; whereas an
+  attitude of permanent doubt as to the distinction between good and
+  evil would paralyse it. Such a doubt must be solved before man can
+  act at all, or choose one end rather than another. All action implies
+  belief, and the ardour and vigour of moral action can only come from
+  a belief which is whole-hearted.</p>
+
+  <p>The further assertion, which the poet makes in <i>La Saisiaz</i>,
+  and repeats elsewhere, that sure knowledge <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg316" id="pg316">316</a></span> of the
+  consequences that follow good and evil actions would necessarily lead
+  to the choice of good and the avoidance of evil, and destroy morality
+  by destroying liberty of choice, raises the whole question of the
+  relation of knowledge and conduct, and cannot be adequately discussed
+  here. It may be said, however, that it rests upon a confusion between
+  two forms of necessity: namely, natural and spiritual necessity. In
+  asserting that knowledge of the consequences of evil would determine
+  human action in a necessary way, the poet virtually treats man as if
+  he were a natural being. But the assumption that man is responsible
+  and liable to punishment, involves that he is capable of withstanding
+  all such determination. And knowledge does not and cannot lead to
+  such necessary determination. Reason brings freedom; for reason
+  constitutes the ends of action.</p>
+
+  <p>It is the constant desire of the good to attain to such a
+  convincing knowledge of the worth and dignity of the moral law that
+  they shall be able to make themselves its devoted instruments. Their
+  desire is that "the good" shall supplant in them all motives that
+  conflict against it, and be the inner principle, or necessity, of all
+  their actions. Such complete devotion to the good is expressed, for
+  instance, in the words of the Hebrew Psalmist: "Thy testimonies have
+  I taken as an heritage for ever; for they are the rejoicing of my
+  heart. I have inclined mine heart to perform Thy statutes alway, even
+  unto the end. I hate vain thoughts, <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg317" id="pg317">317</a></span> but Thy law do I love."
+  "Nevertheless I live," said the Christian apostle, "yet not I, but
+  Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I
+  live by the faith of the Son of God." In these words there is
+  expressed that highest form of the moral life, in which the
+  individual is so identified in desire with his ideal, that he lives
+  only to actualize it in his character. The natural self is
+  represented as dead, and the victory of the new principle is viewed
+  as complete. This full obedience to the ideal is the service of a
+  necessity; but the necessity is within, and the service is,
+  therefore, perfect freedom. The authority of the law is absolute, but
+  the law is self-imposed. The whole man is convinced of its goodness.
+  He has acquired something even fuller than a mere intellectual
+  demonstration of it; for his knowledge has ripened into wisdom,
+  possessed his sympathies, and become a disposition of his heart. And
+  the fulness and certainty of his knowledge, so far from rendering
+  morality impossible, is its very perfection. To bring about such a
+  knowledge of the good of goodness and the evil of evil, as will
+  engender love of the former and hatred of the latter, is the aim of
+  all moral education. Thus, the history of human life, in so far as it
+  is progressive, may be concentrated in the saying that it is the
+  ascent from the power of a necessity which is natural, to the power
+  of a necessity which is moral. And this latter necessity can come
+  only through fuller and more convincing knowledge of the law that
+  rules the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg318" id=
+  "pg318">318</a></span> world, and is also the inner principle of
+  man's nature.</p>
+
+  <p>There remains now the third element in Browning's
+  view,&mdash;namely, that the faith in the good, implied in morality
+  and religion, can be firmly established, after knowledge has turned
+  out deceptive, upon the individual's consciousness of the power of
+  love within himself. In other words, I must now try to estimate the
+  value of Browning's appeal from the intellect to the heart.</p>
+
+  <p>Before doing so, however, it may be well to repeat once more that
+  Browning's condemnation of knowledge, in his philosophical poems, is
+  not partial or hesitating. On the contrary, he confines it definitely
+  to the individual's consciousness of his own inner states.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Myself I solely recognize.</p>
+
+    <p>They, too, may recognize themselves, not me,</p>
+
+    <p>For aught I know or care."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Bean-Stripe</i>. See also <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Nor does Browning endeavour to correct this limited testimony of
+  the intellect as to its own states, by bringing in the miraculous aid
+  of revelation, or by postulating an unerring moral faculty. He does
+  not assume an intuitive power of knowing right from wrong; but he
+  maintains that ignorance enwraps man's moral sense.<sup>B</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: See Chapter <a href="#ch08">VIII.</a></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And, not only are we unable to know the rule of right and wrong in
+  details, but we cannot know whether there <i>is</i> right or wrong.
+  At times the poet <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg319" id=
+  "pg319">319</a></span> seems inclined to say that evil is a
+  phenomenon conjured up by the frail intelligence of man.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"Man's fancy makes the fault!</p>
+
+    <p>Man, with the narrow mind, must cram inside</p>
+
+    <p>His finite God's infinitude,&mdash;earth's vault</p>
+
+    <p>He bids comprise the heavenly far and wide,</p>
+
+    <p>Since Man may claim a right to understand</p>
+
+    <p>What passes understanding."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Bernard de Mandeville</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>God's ways are past finding out. Nay, God Himself is unknown. At
+  times, indeed, the power to love within man seems to the poet to be a
+  clue to the nature of the Power without, and God is all but revealed
+  in this surpassing emotion of the human heart. But, when
+  philosophizing, he withdraws even this amount of knowledge. He is</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Assured that, whatsoe'er the quality</p>
+
+    <p>Of love's cause, save that love was caused thereby,</p>
+
+    <p>This&mdash;nigh upon revealment as it seemed</p>
+
+    <p>A minute since&mdash;defies thy longing looks,</p>
+
+    <p>Withdrawn into the unknowable once more."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Pillar at Sebzevar</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thus&mdash;to sum up Browning's view of knowledge&mdash;we are
+  ignorant of the world; we do not know even whether it is good, or
+  evil, or only their semblance, that is presented to us in human life;
+  and we know nothing of God, except that He is the cause of love in
+  man. What greater depth of agnosticism is possible?</p>
+
+  <p>When the doctrine is put in this bald form, the moral and
+  religious consciousness of man, on behalf of which the theory was
+  invented, revolts against it. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg320"
+  id="pg320">320</a></span> Nevertheless, the distinction made by
+  Browning between the intellectual and emotional elements of human
+  life is very common in religious thought. It is not often, indeed,
+  that either the worth of love, or the weakness of knowledge receives
+  such emphatic expression as that which is given to them by the poet;
+  but the same general idea of their relation is often expressed, and
+  still more often implied. Browning differs from our ordinary teachers
+  mainly in the boldness of his affirmatives and negatives. They, too,
+  regard the intellect as merely human, and the emotion of love as
+  divine. They, too, shrink from identifying the reason of man with the
+  reason of God; even though they may recognize that morality and
+  religion must postulate some kind of unity between God and man. They,
+  too, conceive that human knowledge differs <i>in nature</i> from that
+  of God, while they maintain that human goodness is the same in nature
+  with that of God, though different in degree and fulness. There are
+  two <i>kinds</i> of knowledge, but there is only one kind of justice,
+  or mercy, or loving-kindness. Man must be content with a semblance of
+  a knowledge of truth; but a semblance of goodness, would be
+  intolerable. God really reveals Himself to man in morality and
+  religion, and He communicates to man nothing less than "the divine
+  love." But there is no such close connection on the side of reason.
+  The religious life of man is a divine principle, the indwelling of
+  God in him; but there is a final and fatal defect in man's knowledge.
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg321" id="pg321">321</a></span> The
+  divine love's manifestation of itself is ever incomplete, it is true,
+  even in the best of men; but there is no defect in its nature.</p>
+
+  <p>As a consequence of this doctrine, few religious opinions are more
+  common at the present day, than that it is necessary to appeal, on
+  all the high concerns of man's moral and religious life, from the
+  intellect to the heart. Where we cannot know, we may still feel; and
+  the religious man may have, in his own feeling of the divine, a more
+  intimate conviction of the reality of that in which he trusts, than
+  could be produced by any intellectual process.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Enough to say, 'I feel</p>
+
+    <p>Love's sure effect, and, being loved, must love</p>
+
+    <p>The love its cause behind,&mdash;I can and do.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Piller at Sebzevar</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Reason, in trying to scale the heights of truth, falls-back,
+  impotent and broken, into doubt and despair; not by that way can we
+  come to that which is best and highest.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I found Him not in world or sun,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Nor thro' the questions men may try,</p>
+
+    <p>The petty cobwebs we have spun."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>In Memoriam</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But there is another way to find God and to conquer doubt.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">I heard a voice 'believe no more,'</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">And heard an ever-breaking-shore</p>
+
+    <p>That tumbled in the Godless deep;</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg322" id="pg322">322</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"A warmth within the breast would melt</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">The freezing reason's colder part,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">And like a man in wrath the heart</p>
+
+    <p>Stood up and answer'd 'I have felt.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>In Memoriam</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>What, then, I have now to ask, is the meaning and value of this
+  appeal to emotion? Can love, or emotion in any of its forms, reveal
+  truths to man which his intellect cannot discover? If so, how? If
+  not, how shall we account for the general conviction of good men that
+  it can? We have, in a word, either to justify the appeal to the
+  heart, by explaining how the heart may utter truths that are hidden
+  from reason; or else to account for the illusion, by which religious
+  emotion seems to reveal such truths.</p>
+
+  <p>The first requirement is shown to be unreasonable by the very
+  terms in which it is made. The intuitive insight of faith, the
+  immediate conviction of the heart, cannot render, and must not try to
+  render, any account of itself. Proof is a process; but there is no
+  process in this direct conviction of truth. Its assertion is just the
+  denial of process; it is a repudiation of all connections; in such a
+  faith of feeling there are no cob-web lines relating fact to fact,
+  which doubt could break. Feeling is the immediate unity of the
+  subject and object. I am pained, because I cannot rid myself of an
+  element which is already within me; I am lifted into the emotion of
+  pleasure, or happiness, or bliss, by the consciousness that I am
+  already at one with an object that fulfils <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg323" id="pg323">323</a></span> my longings and
+  satisfies my needs. Hence, there seems to be ground for saying that,
+  in this instance, the witness cannot lie; for it cannot go before the
+  fact, as it is itself the effect of the fact. If the emotion is
+  pleasurable it is the consciousness of the unity within; if it is
+  painful, of the disunity. In feeling, I am absolutely with myself;
+  and there seems, therefore, to be no need of attempting to justify,
+  by means of reason, a faith in God which manifests itself in emotion.
+  The emotion itself is its own sufficient witness, a direct result of
+  the intimate union of man with the object of devotion. Nay, we may go
+  further, and say that the demand is an unjust one, which betrays
+  ignorance of the true nature of moral intuition and religious
+  feeling.</p>
+
+  <p>I am not concerned to deny the truth that lies in the view here
+  stated; and no advocate of the dignity of human reason, or of the
+  worth of human knowledge, is called upon to deny it. There is a sense
+  in which the conviction of "faith" or "feeling" is more intimate and
+  strong than any process of proof. But this does not in any wise
+  justify the contention of those who maintain that we can feel what we
+  do not in any sense know, or that the heart can testify to that of
+  which the intellect is absolutely silent.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"So let us say&mdash;not 'Since we know, we love,'</p>
+
+    <p>But rather, 'Since we love, we know enough.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Pillar at Sebzevar</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In these two lines there are combined the truth I <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg324" id="pg324">324</a></span> would
+  acknowledge, and the error I would confute. Love is, in one way,
+  sufficient knowledge; or, rather, it is the direct testimony of that
+  completest knowledge, in which subject and object interpenetrate.
+  For, where love is, all foreign elements have been eliminated. There
+  is not "one and one with a shadowy third"; but the object is brought
+  within the self as constituting part of its very life. This is
+  involved in all the great forms of human thought&mdash;in science and
+  art, no less than in morality and religion. It is the truth that we
+  love, and only that, which is altogether ours. By means of love the
+  poet is</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Made one with Nature. There is heard</p>
+
+    <p>His voice in all her music, from the moan</p>
+
+    <p>Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird ";</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and it is because he is made one with her that he is able to
+  reveal her inmost secrets. "Man," said Fichte, "can will nothing but
+  what he loves; his love is the sole and at the same time the
+  infallible spring of his volition, and of all his life's striving and
+  movement." It is only when we have identified ourselves with an
+  ideal, and made its realization our own interest, that we strive to
+  attain it. Love is revelation in knowledge, inspiration in art,
+  motive in morality, and the fulness of religious joy.</p>
+
+  <p>But, although in this sense love is greater than knowledge, it is
+  a grave error to separate it from knowledge. In the life of man at
+  least, the separation of the emotional and intellectual elements
+  extinguishes both. We cannot know that in which we <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg325" id="pg325">325</a></span> have no interest.
+  The very effort to comprehend an object rests on interest, or the
+  feeling of ourselves in it; so that knowledge, as well as morality,
+  may be said to begin in love. We cannot know except we love; but, on
+  the other hand, we cannot love that which we do not in some degree
+  know. Wherever the frontiers of knowledge may be it is certain that
+  there is nothing beyond them which can either arouse feeling, or be a
+  steadying centre for it. Emotion is like a climbing plant. It clings
+  to the tree of knowledge, adding beauty to its strength. But, without
+  knowledge, it is impossible for man. There is no feeling which is not
+  also incipient knowledge; for feeling is only the subjective side of
+  knowledge&mdash;that face of the known fact which is turned
+  inwards.</p>
+
+  <p>If, therefore, the poet's agnosticism were taken literally, and,
+  in his philosophical poems he obviously means it to be taken
+  literally, it would lead to a denial of the very principles of
+  religion and morality, which it was meant to support. His appeal to
+  love would then, strictly speaking, be an appeal to the love of
+  nothing known, or knowable; and such love is impossible. For love, if
+  it is to be distinguished from the organic, impulse of beast towards
+  beast, must have an object. A mere instinctive activity of
+  benevolence in man, by means of which he lightened the sorrows of his
+  brethren, if not informed with knowledge, would have no more moral
+  worth than the grateful warmth of the sun. Such love as this there
+  may be in the animal <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg326" id=
+  "pg326">326</a></span> creation. If the bird is not rational, we may
+  say that it builds its nest and lines it for its brood, pines for its
+  partner and loves it, at the bidding of the returning spring, in much
+  the same way as the meadows burst into flower. Without knowledge, the
+  whole process is merely a natural one; or, if it be more, it is so
+  only in so far as the life of emotion can be regarded as a foretaste
+  of the life of thought. But such a natural process is not possible to
+  man. Every activity in him is relative to his self-consciousness, and
+  takes a new character from that relation. His love at the best and
+  worst is the love of something that he knows, and in which he seeks
+  to find himself made rich with new sufficiency. Thus love can not
+  "ally" itself with ignorance. It is, indeed, an impulse pressing for
+  the closer communion of the lover with the object of his love.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Like two meteors of expanding flame,</p>
+
+    <p>Those spheres instinct with it become the same,</p>
+
+    <p>Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still</p>
+
+    <p>Burning, yet ever inconsumable;</p>
+
+    <p>In one another's substance finding food."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: Shelley's <i>Epipsychidion</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But, for a being such as Browning describes, who is shut up within
+  the blind walls of his own self, the self-transcending impulse of
+  love would be impossible. If man's inner consciousness is to be
+  conceived as a dark room shutting out the world, upon whose shadowy
+  phenomena the candle of introspection throws a dim and uncertain
+  light, then <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg327" id=
+  "pg327">327</a></span> he can have no interest outside of himself;
+  nor can he ever take that first step in goodness, which carries him
+  beyond his narrow individuality to seek and find a larger self in
+  others. Morality, even in its lowest form, implies knowledge, and
+  knowledge of something better than "those <i>apparent</i> other
+  mortals." With the first dawn of the moral life comes the
+  consciousness of an ideal, which is not actual; and such a break with
+  the natural is not possible except to him who has known a better and
+  desired it. The ethical endeavour of man is the attempt to convert
+  ideas into actuality; and all his activity as moral agent takes place
+  within the sphere that is illumined by the light of knowledge. If
+  knowledge breaks down, there is no law of action which he can obey.
+  The moral law that must be apprehended, and whose authority must be
+  recognized by man, either sinks out of being or becomes an illusive
+  phantom, if man is doomed to ignorance or false knowledge. To
+  extinguish truth is to extinguish goodness.</p>
+
+  <p>In like manner, religion, which the poet would fain defend for man
+  by means of agnosticism, becomes impossible, if knowledge be denied.
+  Religion is not blind emotion; nor can mere feeling, however
+  ecstatic, ascend to God. Animals feel, but they are not, and cannot
+  be, religious&mdash;unless they can know. The love of God implies
+  knowledge. "I know Him whom I have believed" is the language of
+  religion. For what is religion but a conscious identification of the
+  self with One who is <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg328" id=
+  "pg328">328</a></span> known to fulfil its needs and satisfy its
+  aspirations? Agnosticism is thus directly destructive of it. We
+  cannot, indeed, prove God as the conclusion of a syllogism, for He is
+  the primary hypothesis of all proof. But, nevertheless, we cannot
+  reach Him without knowledge. Emotion reveals no object, but is
+  consequent upon the revelation of it; feeling yields no truth, but is
+  the witness of the worth of a truth for the individual. If man were
+  shut up to mere feeling, even the awe of the devout agnostic would be
+  impossible. For the Unknowable cannot generate any emotion. It
+  appears to do so, only because the Unknowable of the agnostic is not
+  altogether unknown to him; but is a vast, abysmal "Something," that
+  has occupied with its shadowy presence the field of his imagination.
+  It is paganism stricken with the plague, and philosophy afflicted
+  with blindness, that build altars to an unknown God. The highest and
+  the strongest faith, the deepest trust and the most loving, come with
+  the fullest knowledge. Indeed, the distinction between the awe of the
+  agnostic, which is the lowest form of religion, and that highest form
+  in which perfect love casteth out fear, springs from the fuller
+  knowledge of the nature of the object of warship, which the latter
+  implies. Thus, religion and morality grow with the growth of
+  knowledge; and neither has a worse enemy than ignorance. The human
+  spirit cannot grow in a one-sided manner. Devotion to great moral
+  ends is possible, only through the deepening and widening of man's
+  knowledge of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg329" id=
+  "pg329">329</a></span> nature of the world. Those who know God best,
+  render unto Him the purest service.</p>
+
+  <p>So evident is this, that it seems at first sight to be difficult
+  to account for that antagonism to the intellect and distrust of its
+  deliverances, which are so emphatically expressed in the writings of
+  Browning, and which are marked characteristics of the ordinary
+  religious opinion of our day. On closer examination, however, we
+  shall discover that it is not pure emotion, or mere feeling, whose
+  authority is set above that of reason, but rather the emotion which
+  is the result of knowledge. The appeal of the religious man from the
+  doubts and difficulties, which reason levels against "the faith," is
+  really an appeal to the character that lies behind the emotion. The
+  conviction of the heart, that refuses to yield to the arguments of
+  the understanding, is not <i>mere</i> feeling; but, rather, the
+  complex experience of the past life, that manifests itself in
+  feeling. When an individual, clinging to his moral or religious
+  faith, says, "I have felt it," he opposes to the doubt, not his
+  feeling as such, but his personality in all the wealth of its
+  experience. The appeal to the heart is the appeal to the unproved,
+  but not, therefore, unauthorized, testimony of the best men at their
+  best moments, when their vision of truth is clearest. No one pretends
+  that "the loud and empty voice of untrained passion and prejudice"
+  has any authority in matters of moral and religious faith; though, in
+  such cases, "feeling" may lack neither depth nor intensity. If the
+  "feelings" of <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg330" id=
+  "pg330">330</a></span> the good man were dissociated from his
+  character, and stripped bare of all the significance they obtain
+  therefrom, their worthlessness would become apparent. The profound
+  error of condemning knowledge in order to honour feeling, is hidden
+  only by the fact that the feeling is already informed and inspired
+  with knowledge. Religious agnosticism, like all other forms of the
+  theory of nescience, derives its plausibility from the adventitious
+  help it purloins from the knowledge which it condemns.</p>
+
+  <p>That it is to such feeling that Browning really appeals against
+  knowledge becomes abundantly evident, when we bear in mind that he
+  always calls it "love." For love in man is never ignorant. It knows
+  its object, and is a conscious identification of the self with it.
+  And to Browning, the object of love, when love is at its
+  best&mdash;of that love by means of which he refutes intellectual
+  pessimism&mdash;is mankind. The revolt of the heart against all evil
+  is a desire for the good of all men. In other words, his refuge
+  against the assailing doubts which spring from the intellect, is in
+  the moral consciousness. But that consciousness is no mere emotion;
+  it is a consciousness which knows the highest good, and moves in
+  sympathy with it. It is our maturest wisdom; for it is the
+  manifestation of the presence and activity of the ideal, the fullest
+  knowledge and the surest. Compared with this, the emotion linked to
+  ignorance, of which the poet speaks in his philosophic theory, is a
+  very poor thing. It is poorer than the lowest human
+  love.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg331" id=
+  "pg331">331</a></span>
+
+  <p>Now, if this higher interpretation of the term "heart" be
+  accepted, it is easily seen why its authority should seem higher than
+  that of reason; and particularly, if it be remembered that, while the
+  heart is thus widened to take in all direct consciousness of the
+  ideal, "the reason" is reduced to the power of reflection, or mental
+  analysis. "The heart," in this sense, is the intensest unity of the
+  complex experiences of a whole life, while "the reason" is taken
+  merely as a faculty which invents arguments, and provides grounds and
+  evidences; it is what is called, in the language of German
+  philosophy, the "understanding." Now, in this sense, the
+  understanding has, at best, only a borrowed authority. It is the
+  faculty of rules rather than of principles. It is ever dogmatic,
+  assertive, repellent, hard; and it always advances its forces in
+  single line. Its logic never convinced any one of truth or error,
+  unless, beneath the arguments which it advanced, there lay some
+  deeper principle of concord. Thus, the opposition between "faith and
+  reason," rightly interpreted, is that between a concrete experience,
+  instinct with life and conviction, and a mechanical arrangement of
+  abstract arguments. The quarrel of the heart is not with reason, but
+  with reasons. "Evidences of Christianity?" said Coleridge; "I am
+  weary of the word." It is this weariness of evidence, of the endless
+  arguments <i>pro</i> and <i>con</i>, which has caused so many to
+  distrust reason and knowledge, and which has sometimes driven
+  believers to the dangerous expedient <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg332" id="pg332">332</a></span> of making their faith dogmatic and
+  absolute. Nor have the opponents of "the faith" been slow to seize
+  the opportunity thus offered them. "From the moment that a religion
+  solicits the aid of philosophy, its ruin is inevitable," said Heine.
+  "In the attempt at defence, it prates itself into destruction.
+  Religion, like every absolutism, must not seek to justify itself.
+  Prometheus is bound to the rock by a silent force. Yea, Aeschylus
+  permits not personified power to utter a single word. It must remain
+  mute. The moment that a religion ventures to print a catechism
+  supported by arguments, the moment that a political absolutism
+  publishes an official newspaper, both are near their end. But therein
+  consists our triumph: we have brought our adversaries to speech, and
+  they must reckon with us."<sup>A</sup> But, we may answer, religion is
+  <i>not</i> an absolutism; and, therefore, it is <i>not</i> near its
+  end when it ventures to justify itself. On the contrary, no spiritual
+  power, be it moral or religious, can maintain its authority, if it
+  assumes a despotic attitude; for the human spirit inevitably moves
+  towards freedom, and that movement is the deepest necessity of its
+  nature, which it cannot escape. "Religion, on the ground of its
+  sanctity, and law, on the ground of its majesty, often resist the
+  sifting of their claims. But in so doing, they inevitably awake a not
+  unjust suspicion that their claims are ill-founded. They can command
+  the unfeigned homage of man, only when they have <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg333" id="pg333">333</a></span> shown themselves
+  able to stand the test of free inquiry."</p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Religion and Philosophy in Germany</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And if it is an error to suppose, with Browning, that the primary
+  truths of the moral and religious consciousness belong to a region
+  which is higher than knowledge, and can, from that side, be neither
+  assailed nor defended; it is also an error to suppose that reason is
+  essentially antagonistic to them. The facts of morality and religion
+  are precisely the richest facts of knowledge; and that faith is the
+  most secure which is most completely illumined by reason. Religion at
+  its best is not a dogmatic despotism, nor is reason a merely critical
+  and destructive faculty. If reason is loyal to the truth of religion
+  on which it is exercised, it will reach beneath all the conflict and
+  clamour of disputation, to the principle of unity, on which, as we
+  have seen, both reason and religion rest.</p>
+
+  <p>The "faith" to which religious spirits appeal against all the
+  attacks of doubt, "the love" of Browning, is really implicit reason;
+  it is "abbreviated" or concentrated knowledge; it is the manifold
+  experiences of life focussed into an intense unity. And, on the other
+  hand, the "reason" which they condemn is what Carlyle calls the
+  logic-chopping faculty. In taking the side of faith when troubled
+  with difficulties which they cannot lay, they are really defending
+  the cause of reason against that of the understanding. For it is
+  quite true that the understanding, that is, the reason as reflective
+  or critical, can never bring about either a <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg334" id="pg334">334</a></span> moral or
+  religious life. It cannot create a religion, any more than physiology
+  can produce men. The reflection which brings doubt is always
+  secondary; it can only exercise itself on a given material. As Hegel
+  frequently pointed out, it is not the function of moral philosophy to
+  create or to institute a morality or religion, but to understand
+  them. The facts must first be given; they must be actual experiences
+  of the human spirit. Moral philosophy and theology differ from the
+  moral or religious life, in the same way as geology differs from the
+  earth, or astronomy from the heavenly bodies. The latter are facts;
+  the former are theories about the facts. Religion is an attitude of
+  the human spirit towards the highest; morality is the realization of
+  character; and these are not to be confused with their reflective
+  interpretations. Much of the difficulty in these matters comes from
+  the lack of a clear distinction between <i>beliefs</i> and
+  <i>creeds</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>Further, not only are the utterances of the heart prior to the
+  deliverances of the intellect in this sense, but it may also be
+  admitted that the latter can never do full justice to the contents of
+  the former. So rich is character in content and so complex is
+  spiritual life, that we can never, by means of reflection, lift into
+  clear consciousness all the elements that enter into it. Into the
+  organism of our experience, which is our faith, there is continually
+  absorbed the subtle influences of our complex natural and social
+  environment. We grow by <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg335" id=
+  "pg335">335</a></span> means of them, as the plant grows by feeding
+  on the soil and the sunshine and dew. It is as impossible for us to
+  set forth, one by one, the truths and errors which we have thus
+  worked into our mental and moral life, as it is to keep a reckoning
+  of the physical atoms with which the natural life builds up the body.
+  Hence, every attempt to justify these truths seems inadequate; and
+  the defence which the understanding sets up for the faith, always
+  seems partial and cold. Who ever fully expressed his deepest
+  convictions? The consciousness of the dignity of the moral law
+  affected Kant like the view of the starry firmament, and generated a
+  feeling of the sublime which words could not express; and the
+  religious ecstasy of the saints cannot be confined within the
+  channels of speech, but floods the soul with overmastering power,
+  possessing all its faculties. In this respect, it will always remain
+  true that the greatest facts of human experience reach beyond all
+  knowledge. Nay, we may add further, that in this respect the simplest
+  of these facts passes all understanding. Still, as we have already
+  seen, it is reason that constitutes them; that which is presented to
+  reason for explanation, in knowledge and morality and religion, is
+  itself the product of reason. Reason is the power which, by
+  interaction with our environment, has generated the whole of our
+  experience. And, just as natural science interprets the phenomena
+  given to it by ordinary opinion, <i>i.e.</i>, interprets and purifies
+  a lower form of knowledge by converting <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg336" id="pg336">336</a></span> it into a higher;
+  so the task of reason when it is exercised upon morality and
+  religion, is simply to evolve, and amplify the meaning of its own
+  products. The movement from morality and religion to moral philosophy
+  and the philosophy of religion, is thus a movement from reason to
+  reason, from the implicit to the explicit, from the germ to the
+  developed fulness of life and structure. In this matter, as in all
+  others wherein the human spirit is concerned, that which is first by
+  nature is last in genesis&mdash;[Greek: nika d' ho prôtos kai
+  teleutaios dramôn.] The whole history of the moral and religious
+  experience of mankind is comprised in the statement, that the
+  implicit reason which we call "faith" is ever developing towards full
+  consciousness of itself; and that, at its first beginning, and
+  throughout the whole ascending process of this development, the
+  highest is present in it as a self-manifesting power.</p>
+
+  <p>But this process from the almost instinctive intuitions of the
+  heart towards the morality and religion of freedom, being a process
+  of evolution, necessarily involves conflict. There are men, it is
+  true, the unity of whose moral and religious faith is never
+  completely broken by doubt; just as there are men who are not forced
+  by the contradictions in the first interpretation of the world by
+  ordinary experience to attempt to re-interpret it by means of science
+  and philosophy.</p>
+
+  <p>Throughout their lives they may say like
+  Pompilia&mdash;</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg337" id=
+  "pg337">337</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"I know the right place by foot's feel,</p>
+
+    <p>I took it and tread firm there; wherefore change?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    1886-1887.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Jean Paul Richter said that he knew another way of being happy,
+  beside that of soaring away so far above the clouds of life, that its
+  miseries looked small, and the whole external world shrunk into a
+  little child's garden. It was, "Simply to sink down into this little
+  garden; and there to nestle yourself so snugly, so homewise, in some
+  furrow, that in looking out from your warm lark-nest, you likewise
+  can discern no wolf-dens, charnel-houses, or thunder-rods, but only
+  blades and ears, every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a tree,
+  and a sun-screen, and rain-screen." There is a similar way of being
+  good, with a goodness which, though limited, is pure and perfect in
+  nature. Nay, we may even admit that such lives are frequently the
+  most complete and beautiful, just as the fairest flowers grow, not on
+  the tallest trees, but on the fragile plants at their foot.
+  Nevertheless, even in the case of those persons who have never broken
+  from the traditional faith of the past, or felt it to be inadequate,
+  that faith has been silently reconstructed in a new synthesis of
+  knowledge. Spiritual life cannot come by inheritance; but every
+  individual must acquire a faith for himself, and turn his spiritual
+  environment into personal experience. "A man may be a heretic in the
+  truth," said Milton, "and if he believe things only because his
+  pastor says so, or the assembly so <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg338" id="pg338">338</a></span> determines, without knowing other
+  reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds
+  becomes his heresy." It is truth to another but tradition to him; it
+  is a creed and not a conviction. Browning fully recognizes the need
+  of this conflict&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Is it not this ignoble confidence,</p>
+
+    <p>Cowardly hardihood, that dulls and damps,</p>
+
+    <p>Makes the old heroism impossible?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1848-1850.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>asks the Pope. The stream of truth when it ceases to flow onward,
+  becomes a malarious swamp. Movement is the law of life; and knowledge
+  of the principles of morality and religion, as of all other
+  principles, must, in order to grow, be felt from time to time as
+  inadequate and untrue. There are men and ages whose mission
+  is&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"to shake</p>
+
+    <p>This torpor of assurance from our creed,</p>
+
+    <p>Re-introduce the doubt discarded, bring</p>
+
+    <p>That formidable danger back, we drove</p>
+
+    <p>Long ago to the distance and the dark."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid.</i>, 1853-1856.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Such a spirit of criticism seems to many to exercise a merely
+  destructive power, and those who have not felt the inadequacy of the
+  inherited faith defend themselves against it, as the enemy of their
+  lives. But no logic, or assailing doubt, could have power against the
+  testimony of "the heart," unless it was rooted in deeper and truer
+  principles than those which it attacked. Nothing can overpower
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg339" id="pg339">339</a></span> truth
+  except a larger truth; and, in such a conflict, the truth in the old
+  view will ultimately take the side of the new, and find its
+  subordinate position within it. It has happened, not infrequently, as
+  in the case of the Encyclop&aelig;dists, that the explicit truths of
+  reason were more abstract, that is, less true, than the implicit
+  "faith" which they assailed. The central truths of religion have
+  often proved themselves to possess some stubborn, though
+  semi-articulate power, which could ultimately overcome or subordinate
+  the more partial and explicit truths of abstract science. It is this
+  that gives plausibility to the idea, that the testimony of the heart
+  is more reliable than that of the intellect. But, in this case also,
+  it was really reason that triumphed. It was the truth which proved
+  itself to be immortal, and not any mere emotion. The insurrection of
+  the intellect against the heart is quelled, only when the untruth, or
+  abstract character, of the principle of the assailants has been made
+  manifest, and when the old faith has yielded up its unjust gains, and
+  proved its vitality and strength by absorbing the truth that gave
+  vigour to the attack. Just as in morality it is the ideal, or the
+  unity of the whole moral life, that breaks up into differences, so
+  also here it is the implicit faith which, as it grows, breaks forth
+  into doubts. In both cases alike, the negative movement which induces
+  despair, is only a phase of a positive process&mdash;the process of
+  reason towards a fuller, a more articulate and complex, realization
+  of itself.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg340" id=
+  "pg340">340</a></span>
+
+  <p>Hence it follows that the value and strength of a faith
+  corresponds accurately to the doubts it has overcome. Those who never
+  went forth to battle cannot come home heroes. It is only when the
+  earthquake has tried the towers, and destroyed the sense of security,
+  that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Man stands out again, pale, resolute,</p>
+
+    <p>Prepared to die,&mdash;that is, alive at last.</p>
+
+    <p>As we broke up that old faith of the world,</p>
+
+    <p>Have we, next age, to break up this the new&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Faith, in the thing, grown faith in the report&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Whence need to bravely disbelieve report</p>
+
+    <p>Through increased faith i' the thing reports belie?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1862-1868.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge
+  thrive by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion."</p>
+
+  <p>It was, thus, I conclude, a deep speculative error into which
+  Browning fell, when, in order to substantiate his optimistic faith,
+  he stigmatized human knowledge as merely apparent. Knowledge does not
+  fail, except in the sense in which morality also fails; it does not
+  at any time attain to the ultimate truth, any more than the moral
+  life is in any of its activities<sup>B</sup> a complete embodiment of the
+  absolute good. It is not given to man, who is essentially
+  progressive, to reach the ultimate term of development. For there is
+  no ultimate term: life never stands still. But, for the same reason,
+  there is no ultimate failure. The whole history of man is a history
+  of growth. If, however, knowledge did <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg341" id="pg341">341</a></span> fail, then morality too must fail;
+  and the appeal which the poet makes from the intellect to the heart,
+  would be an appeal to mere emotion. Finally, even if we take a
+  generous view of the poet's meaning, and put out of consideration the
+  theory he expresses when he is deliberately philosophizing, there is
+  still no appeal from the reason to an alien and higher authority. The
+  appeal to "the heart" is, at best, only an appeal from the
+  understanding to the reason, from a conscious logic to the more
+  concrete fact constituted by reason, which reflection has failed to
+  comprehend in its completeness; at its worst, it is an appeal from
+  truth to prejudice, from belief to dogma.</p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: See Chapter IX., p. <a href="#pg291">291.</a></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And in both cases alike, the appeal is futile; for, whether "the
+  heart be wiser than the head," or not, whether the faith which is
+  assailed be richer or poorer, truer or more false, than the logic
+  which is directed against it, an appeal to the heart cannot any
+  longer restore the unity of the broken life. Once reflection has set
+  in, there is no way of turning away its destructive might, except by
+  deeper reflection. The implicit faith of the heart must become the
+  explicit faith of reason. "There is no final and satisfactory issue
+  from such an endless internal debate and conflict, until the 'heart'
+  has learnt to speak the language of the head&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, until
+  the permanent principles, which underlay and gave strength to faith,
+  have been brought into the light of distinct consciousness."<sup>A</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: Caird's <i>Comte</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg342" id="pg342">342</a></span>
+
+  <p>I conclude, therefore, that the poet was right in saying that, in
+  order to comprehend human character,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I needs must blend the quality of man</p>
+
+    <p>With quality of God, and so assist</p>
+
+    <p>Mere human sight to understand my Life."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Bean-Stripe</i>&mdash;<i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But it was a profound error, which contained in it the destruction
+  of morality and religion, as well as of knowledge, to make "the
+  quality of God" a love that excludes reason, and the quality of man
+  an intellect incapable of knowing truth. Such in-congruous elements
+  could never be combined into the unity of a character. A love that
+  was mere emotion could not yield a motive for morality, or a
+  principle of religion. A philosophy of life which is based on
+  agnosticism is an explicit self-contradiction, which can help no one.
+  We must appeal from Browning the philosopher to Browning the
+  poet.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg343" id=
+  "pg343">343</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch11" id="ch11">CHAPTER XI.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>CONCLUSION.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Well, I can fancy how he did it all,</p>
+
+    <p>Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,</p>
+
+    <p>Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,</p>
+
+    <p>Above and through his art&mdash;for it gives way;</p>
+
+    <p>That arm is wrongly put&mdash;and there again&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines,</p>
+
+    <p>Its body, so to speak: its soul is right,</p>
+
+    <p>He means right&mdash;that, a child may understand."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Andrea del Sarto</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>I have tried to show that Browning's theory of life, in so far as
+  it is expressed in his philosophical poems, rests on agnosticism; and
+  that such a theory is inconsistent with the moral and religious
+  interests of man. The idea that truth is unattainable was represented
+  by Browning as a bulwark of the faith, but it proved on examination
+  to be treacherous. His optimism was found to have no better
+  foundation than personal conviction, which any one was free to deny,
+  and which the poet could in no wise prove. The evidence of the heart,
+  to which he appealed, was the evidence of an emotion severed from
+  intelligence, and, therefore, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg344"
+  id="pg344">344</a></span> without any content whatsoever. "The
+  faith," which he professed, was not the faith that anticipates and
+  invites proof, but a faith which is incapable of proof. In casting
+  doubt upon the validity of knowledge, he degraded the whole spiritual
+  nature of man; for a love that is ignorant of its object is a blind
+  impulse, and a moral consciousness that does not know the law is an
+  impossible phantom&mdash;a self-contradiction.</p>
+
+  <p>But, although Browning's explicitly philosophical theory of life
+  fails, there appears in his earlier poems, where his poetical freedom
+  was not yet trammelled, nor his moral enthusiasm restrained by the
+  stubborn difficulties of reflective thought, a far truer and richer
+  view. In this period of pure poetry, his conception of man was less
+  abstract than in his later works, and his inspiration was more direct
+  and full. The poet's dialectical ingenuity increased with the growth
+  of his reflective tendencies; but his relation to the great
+  principles of spiritual life seemed to become less intimate, and his
+  expression of them more halting. What we find in his earlier works
+  are vigorous ethical convictions, a glowing optimistic faith,
+  achieving their fitting expression in impassioned poetry; what we
+  find in his later works are arguments, which, however richly adorned
+  with poetic metaphors, have lost the completeness and energy of life.
+  His poetic fancies are like chaplets which crown the dead. Lovers of
+  the poet, who seek in his poems for inspiring expressions of their
+  hope <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg345" id="pg345">345</a></span>
+  and faith, will always do well in turning from his militant
+  metaphysics to his art.</p>
+
+  <p>In his case, as in that of many others, spiritual experience was
+  far richer than the theory which professed to explain it. The task of
+  lifting his moral convictions into the clear light of conscious
+  philosophy was beyond his power. The theory of the failure of
+  knowledge, which he seems to have adopted far too easily from the
+  current doctrine of the schools, was fundamentally inconsistent with
+  his generous belief in the moral progress of man; and it maimed the
+  expression of that belief. The result of his work as a philosopher is
+  a confession of complete ignorance and the helpless asseveration of a
+  purely dogmatic faith.</p>
+
+  <p>The fundamental error of the poet's philosophy lies, I believe, in
+  that severance of feeling and intelligence, love and reason, which
+  finds expression in <i>La Saisiaz</i>, <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i>,
+  <i>The Parleyings</i>, and <i>Asolando</i>. Such an absolute division
+  is not to be found in <i>Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day</i>, <i>Rabbi
+  Ben Ezra</i>, <i>A Death in the Desert</i>, or in <i>The Ring and the
+  Book</i>; nor even in <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>. In these works we
+  are not perplexed by the strange combination of a nature whose
+  principle is love, and which is capable of infinite progress, with an
+  intelligence whose best efforts end in ignorance. Rather, the spirit
+  of man is regarded as one, in all its manifestations; and, therefore,
+  as progressive on all sides of its activity. The widening of his
+  knowledge, which is brought about by increasing experience, is
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg346" id="pg346">346</a></span>
+  parallel with the deepening and purifying of his moral life. In all
+  Browning's works, indeed, with the possible exception of
+  <i>Paracelsus</i>, love is conceived as having a place and function
+  of supreme importance in the development of the soul. Its divine
+  origin and destiny are never obscured; but knowledge is regarded as
+  merely human, and, therefore, as falling short of the truth. In
+  <i>Easter-Day</i> it is definitely contrasted with love, and shown to
+  be incapable of satisfying the deepest wants of man. It is, at the
+  best, only a means to the higher purposes of moral activity, and,
+  except in the <i>Grammarian's Funeral</i>, it is nowhere regarded as
+  in itself a worthy end.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.</p>
+
+    <p>And thence I conclude that the real God-function</p>
+
+    <p>Is to furnish a motive and injunction</p>
+
+    <p>For practising what we know already."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Even here, there is implied that the motive comes otherwise than
+  by knowledge; still, taking these earlier poems as a whole, we may
+  say that in them knowledge is regarded as means to morality and not
+  as in any sense contrasted with or destructive of it. Man's motives
+  are rational motives; the ends he seeks are ends conceived and even
+  constituted by his intelligence, and not purposes blindly followed as
+  by instinct and impulse.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Why live,</p>
+
+    <p>Except for love&mdash;how love, unless they know?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    1327-1328.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg347" id="pg347">347</a></span>
+
+  <p>asks the Pope. Moral progress is not secured apart from, or in
+  spite of knowledge. We are not exhorted to reject the verdict of the
+  latter as illusive, in order to confide in a faith which not only
+  fails to receive support from the defective intelligence, but
+  maintains its own integrity only by repudiating the testimony of the
+  reason. In the distinction between knowledge as means and love as
+  end, it is easy, indeed, to detect a tendency to degrade the former
+  into a mere temporary expedient, whereby moral ends may be served.
+  The poet speaks of "such knowledge as is possible to man." The
+  attitude he assumes towards it is apologetic, and betrays a keen
+  consciousness of its limitation, and particularly of its utter
+  inadequacy to represent the infinite. In the speech of the
+  Pope&mdash;-which can scarcely be regarded otherwise than as the
+  poet's own maturest utterance on the great moral and religious
+  questions raised by the tragedy of Pompilia's death&mdash;we find
+  this view vividly expressed:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"O Thou&mdash;as represented here to me</p>
+
+    <p>In such conception as my soul allows,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Under Thy measureless, my atom width!&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Man's mind, what is it but a convex glass</p>
+
+    <p>Wherein are gathered all the scattered points</p>
+
+    <p>Picked out of the immensity of sky,</p>
+
+    <p>To reunite there, be our heaven for earth,</p>
+
+    <p>Our known unknown, our God revealed to man?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    1308-1315.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>God is "appreciable in His absolute immensity <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg348" id="pg348">348</a></span> solely by
+  Himself," while, "by the little mind of man, He is reduced to
+  littleness that suits man's faculty." In these words, and others that
+  might be quoted, the poet shows that he is profoundly impressed with
+  the distinction between human knowledge, and that knowledge which is
+  adequate to the whole nature and extent of being. And in
+  <i>Christmas-Eve</i> he repudiates with a touch of scorn, the
+  absolute idealism, which is supposed to identify altogether human
+  reason with divine reason; and he commends the German critic for not
+  making</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"The important stumble</p>
+
+    <p>Of adding, he, the sage and humble,</p>
+
+    <p>Was also one with the Creator."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Christmas-Eve</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Nowhere in Browning, unless we except <i>Paracelsus</i>, is there
+  any sign of an inclination to treat man's knowledge in the same
+  spirit as he deals with man's love&mdash;namely, as a direct
+  emanation from the inmost nature of God, a divine element that
+  completes and crowns man's life on earth. On the contrary, he shows a
+  persistent tendency to treat love as a power higher in nature than
+  reason, and to give to it a supreme place in the formation of
+  character; and, as he grows older, that tendency grows in strength.
+  The philosophical poems, in which love is made all in all, and
+  knowledge is reduced to nescience follow by logical evolution from
+  principles, the influence of which we can detect even in his earlier
+  works. Still, in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg349" id=
+  "pg349">349</a></span> latter, these principles are only latent, and
+  are far from holding undisputed sway. Browning was, at first,
+  restrained from exclusive devotion to abstract views, by the
+  suggestions which the artistic spirit receives through its immediate
+  contact with the facts of life. That contact it is very difficult for
+  philosophy to maintain as it pursues its effort after universal
+  truth. Philosophy is obliged to analyze in order to define, and, in
+  that process, it is apt to lose something of that completeness of
+  representation, which belongs to art. For art is always engaged in
+  presenting the universal in the form of a particular object of
+  beauty. Its product is a "known unknown," but the unknown is the
+  unexhausted reality of a fact of intuition. Nor can analysis ever
+  exhaust it; theory can never catch up art, or explain all that is in
+  it. On similar grounds, it may be shown that it is impossible for
+  reason to lay bare all the elements that enter into its first complex
+  product, which we call faith. In religion, as in art, man is aware of
+  more than he knows; his articulate logic cannot do justice to all the
+  truths of the "heart." "The supplementary reflux of light" of
+  philosophy cannot "illustrate all the inferior grades" of knowledge.
+  Man will never completely understand himself.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I knew, I felt, (perception unexpressed,</p>
+
+    <p>Uncomprehended by our narrow thought,</p>
+
+    <p>But somehow felt and known in every shift</p>
+
+    <p>And change in the spirit,&mdash;nay, in every pore</p>
+
+    <p>Of the body, even,)&mdash;what God is, what we are,</p>
+
+    <p>What life is&mdash;how God tastes an infinite
+    joy</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg350" id=
+    "pg350">350</a></span>
+
+    <p>In infinite ways&mdash;one everlasting bliss,</p>
+
+    <p>From whom all being emanates, all power</p>
+
+    <p>Proceeds."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>I believe that it is possible, by the help of the intuitions of
+  Browning's highest artistic period, to bring together again the
+  elements of his broken faith, and to find in them suggestions of a
+  truer philosophy of life than anything which the poet himself
+  achieved. Perhaps, indeed, it is not easy, nor altogether fair, to
+  press the passionate utterances of his religious rapture into the
+  service of metaphysics, and to treat the unmeasured language of
+  emotion as the expression of a definite doctrine. Nevertheless,
+  rather than set forth a new defence of the faith, which his
+  agnosticism left exposed to the assaults of doubt and denial, it is
+  better to make Browning correct his own errors, and to appeal from
+  the metaphysician to the poet, from the sobriety of the logical
+  understanding to the inspiration of poetry.</p>
+
+  <p>I have already indicated what seems to me to be the defective
+  element in the poet's philosophy of life. His theory of knowledge is
+  in need of revision; and what he asserts of human love, should be
+  applied point by point to human reason. As man is ideally united with
+  the absolute on the side of moral emotion (if the phrase may be
+  pardoned), so he is ideally united with the absolute on the side of
+  the intellect. As there is no difference of <i>nature</i> between
+  God's goodness and man's goodness, so there is no difference of
+  nature between God's <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg351" id=
+  "pg351">351</a></span> truth and man's truth. There are not two kinds
+  of righteousness or mercy; there are not two kinds of truth. Human
+  nature is not "cut in two with a hatchet," as the poet implies that
+  it is. There is in man a lower and a higher element, ever at war with
+  each other; still he is not a mixture, or agglomerate, of the finite
+  and the infinite. A love perfect in nature cannot be linked to an
+  intelligence imperfect in nature; if it were, the love would be
+  either a blind impulse or an erring one. Both morality and religion
+  demand the presence in man of a perfect ideal, which is at war with
+  his imperfections; but an ideal is possible, only to a being endowed
+  with a capacity for knowing the truth. In degrading human knowledge,
+  the poet is disloyal to the fundamental principle of the Christian
+  faith which he professed&mdash;that God can and does manifest himself
+  in man.</p>
+
+  <p>On the other hand, we are not to take the unity of man with God,
+  of man's moral ideal with the All-perfect, as implying, on the moral
+  side, an absolute identification of the finite with the infinite; nor
+  can we do so on the side of knowledge. Man's moral life and rational
+  activity in knowledge are the process of the highest. But man is
+  neither first, nor last; he is not the original author of his love,
+  any more than of his reason; he is not the divine principle of the
+  whole to which he belongs, although he is potentially in harmony with
+  it. Both sides of his being are equally touched with
+  imperfection&mdash;his love, no less than his reason. <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg352" id="pg352">352</a></span> Perfect love
+  would imply perfect wisdom, as perfect wisdom, perfect love. But
+  absolute terms are not applicable to man, who is ever <i>on the
+  way</i> to goodness and truth, progressively manifesting the power of
+  the ideal that dwells in him, and whose very life is conflict and
+  acquirement.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,</p>
+
+    <p>Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey</p>
+
+    <p>Placid and perfect with my art: the worse."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Andrea del Sarto</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Hardly any conception is more prominent in Browning's writings
+  than this, of endless progress towards an infinite ideal; although he
+  occasionally manifests a desire to have done with effort.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"When a soul has seen</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">By the means of Evil that Good is best,</p>
+
+    <p>And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's
+    serene,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">When our faith in the same has stood the
+    test&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">The uses of labour are surely done,</p>
+
+    <p>There remaineth a rest for the people of God,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">And I have had troubles enough, for one."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Old Pictures in Florence</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is the sense of endless onward movement, the outlook towards an
+  immortal course, "the life after life in unlimited series," which is
+  so inspiring in his early poetry. He conceives that we are here, on
+  this lower earth, just to learn one form, the elementary lesson and
+  alphabet of goodness, namely, "the uses of the flesh": in other
+  lives, other achievements. The separation of the soul from its
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg353" id="pg353">353</a></span>
+  instrument has very little significance to the poet; for it does not
+  arrest the course of moral development.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"No work begun shall ever pause for death."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The spirit pursues its lone way, on other "adventures brave and
+  new," but ever towards a good which is complete.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Delayed it may be for more lives yet,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few:</p>
+
+    <p>Much is to learn, much to forget</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Ere the time be come for taking you."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Evelyn Hope</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Still the time will come when the awakened need shall be
+  satisfied; for the need was created in order to be satisfied.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Wherefore did I contrive for thee that ear</p>
+
+    <p>Hungry for music, and direct thine eye</p>
+
+    <p>To where I hold a seven-stringed instrument,</p>
+
+    <p>Unless I meant thee to beseech me play?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Two Camels</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The movement onward is thus a movement in knowledge, as well as in
+  every other form of good. The lover of Evelyn Hope, looking back in
+  imagination on the course he has travelled on earth and after,
+  exclaims&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Given up myself so many times,</p>
+
+    <p>Gained me the gains of various men,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Evelyn Hope</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In these earlier poems, there is not, as in the later <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg354" id="pg354">354</a></span> ones, a maimed,
+  or one-sided, evolution&mdash;a progress towards perfect love on the
+  side of the heart, and towards an illusive ideal on the side of the
+  intellect. Knowledge, too, has its value, and he who lived to settle
+  "<i>Hoti's</i> business, properly based <i>Oun</i>," and who "gave us
+  the doctrine of the enclitic <i>De</i>," was, to the poet,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Still loftier than the world suspects,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Living and dying.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Here's the top-peak; the multitude below</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Live, for they can, there:</p>
+
+      <p>This man decided not to Live but Know&mdash;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Bury this man there?</p>
+
+      <p>Here&mdash;here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds
+      form,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Lightnings are loosened,</p>
+
+      <p>Stars come and go."<sup>A</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Grammarian's Funeral</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>No human effort goes to waste, no gift is delusive; but every gift
+  and every effort has its proper place as a stage in the endless
+  process. The soul bears in it <i>all</i> its conquests.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as
+    before;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying
+    sound;</p>
+
+    <p>What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, <i>so</i> much
+    good more;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a
+    perfect round."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Abt Vogler</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The "apparent failure" of knowledge, like every apparent failure,
+  is "a triumph's evidence for the fulness of the days." The doubts
+  that knowledge <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg355" id=
+  "pg355">355</a></span> brings, instead of implying a defective
+  intelligence doomed to spend itself on phantom phenomena, sting to
+  progress towards the truth. He bids us "Learn, nor account the pang;
+  dare, never grudge the throe."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Rather I prize the doubt</p>
+
+    <p>Low kinds exist without,</p>
+
+    <p>Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Similarly, defects in art, like defects in character, contain the
+  promise of further achievement.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">In both, of such lower types are we</p>
+
+      <p>Precisely because of our wider nature;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">For time, their's&mdash;ours, for eternity.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"To-day's brief passion limits their range;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">It seethes with the morrow for us and more.</p>
+
+      <p>They are perfect&mdash;how else? They shall never change:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">We are faulty&mdash;why not? We have time in
+      store."<sup>B</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Old Pictures in Florence</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Prior to the period when a sceptical philosophy came down like a
+  blight, and destroyed the bloom of his art and faith, he thus
+  recognized that growing knowledge was an essential condition of
+  growing goodness. Pompilia shone with a glory that mere knowledge
+  could not give (if there were such a thing as <i>mere</i>
+  knowledge).</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Everywhere</p>
+
+    <p>I see in the world the intellect of man,</p>
+
+    <p>That sword, the energy his subtle spear,</p>
+
+    <p>The knowledge which defends him like a
+    shield&mdash;</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg356" id=
+    "pg356">356</a></span>
+
+    <p>Everywhere; but they make not up, I think,</p>
+
+    <p>The marvel of a soul like thine, earth's flower</p>
+
+    <p>She holds up to the softened gaze of God."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    1013-1019.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But yet she recognized with patient pain the loss she had
+  sustained for want of knowledge.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"The saints must bear with me, impute the fault</p>
+
+    <p>To a soul i' the bud, so starved by ignorance,</p>
+
+    <p>Stinted of warmth, it will not blow this year</p>
+
+    <p>Nor recognize the orb which Spring-flowers know."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>Pompilia</i>,
+    1515-1518.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Further on in the Pope's soliloquy, the poet shows that, at that
+  time, he fully recognized the risk of entrusting the spiritual
+  interests of man to the enthusiasm of elevated feeling, or to the
+  mere intuitions of a noble heart. Such intuitions will sometimes
+  guide a man happily, as in the case of Caponsacchi:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Since ourselves allow</p>
+
+    <p>He has danced, in gaiety of heart, i' the main</p>
+
+    <p>The right step through the maze we bade him foot."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    1915-1917.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But, on the other hand, such impulses, not instructed by knowledge
+  of the truth, and made steadfast to the laws of the higher life by a
+  reasoned conviction, lead man rightly only by accident. In such a
+  career there is no guarantee of constancy; other impulses might lead
+  to other ways of life.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"But if his heart had prompted to break loose</p>
+
+    <p>And mar the measure? Why, we must submit,</p><span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg357" id="pg357">357</a></span>
+
+    <p>And thank the chance that brought him safe so far.</p>
+
+    <p>Will he repeat the prodigy? Perhaps.</p>
+
+    <p>Can he teach others how to quit themselves,</p>
+
+    <p>Show why this step was right while that were wrong?</p>
+
+    <p>How should he? 'Ask your hearts as I asked mine,</p>
+
+    <p>And get discreetly through the morrice too;</p>
+
+    <p>If your hearts misdirect you,&mdash;quit the stage,</p>
+
+    <p>And make amends,&mdash;be there amends to make.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    1916-1927.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>If the heart proved to Caponsacchi a guide to all that is good and
+  glorious, "the Abate, second in the suite," puts in the testimony of
+  another experience: "His heart answered to another tune."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I have my taste too, and tread no such step!</p>
+
+    <p>You choose the glorious life, and may for me!</p>
+
+    <p>I like the lowest of life's appetites,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>So you judge&mdash;but the very truth of joy</p>
+
+    <p>To my own apprehension which decides."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid.</i>, 1932-1936.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Mere emotion is thus an insecure guide to conduct, for its
+  authority can be equally cited in support of every course of life. No
+  one can say to his neighbour, "Thou art wrong." Every impulse is
+  right to the individual who has it, and so long as he has it. <i>De
+  gustibus non disputandum</i>. Without a universal criterion there is
+  no praise or blame.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Call me knave and you get yourself called fool!</p>
+
+    <p>I live for greed, ambition, lust, revenge;</p>
+
+    <p>Attain these ends by force, guile: hypocrite,</p>
+
+    <p>To-day, perchance to-morrow recognized</p>
+
+    <p>The rational man, the type of common-sense."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid.</i>, 1937-1941.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg358" id="pg358">358</a></span>
+
+  <p>This poem which, both in its moral wisdom and artistic worth,
+  marks the high tide of Browning's poetic insight, while he is not as
+  yet concerned with the defence of any theory or the discussion of any
+  abstract question, contrasts strongly with the later poems, where
+  knowledge is dissembling ignorance, faith is blind trust, and love is
+  a mere impulse of the heart. Having failed to meet the difficulties
+  of reflection, the poet turned upon the intellect. Knowledge becomes
+  to him an offence, and to save his faith he plucked out his right eye
+  and entered into the kingdom maimed. In <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i> the
+  ascent into another life is triumphant, like that of a conqueror
+  bearing with him the spoils of earth; but in the later poems he
+  escapes with a bare belief, and the loss of all his rich possessions
+  of knowledge, like a shipwrecked mariner whose goods have been thrown
+  overboard. His philosophy was a treacherous ally to his faith.</p>
+
+  <p>But there is another consideration which shows that the poet, as
+  artist, recognized the need of giving to reason a larger function
+  than seems to be possible according to the theory in his later works.
+  In the early poems there is no hint of the doctrine that
+  demonstrative knowledge of the good, and of the necessity of its law,
+  would destroy freedom. On the contrary, there are suggestions which
+  point to the opposite doctrine, according to which knowledge is the
+  condition of freedom.</p>
+
+  <p>While in his later poems the poet speaks of love as an
+  impulse&mdash;either blind or bound to erring <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg359" id="pg359">359</a></span>
+  knowledge&mdash;and of the heart as made to love, in his earlier ones
+  he seems to treat man as free to work out his own purposes, and act
+  out his own ideals. Browning here finds himself able to maintain the
+  dependence of man upon God without destroying morality. He regards
+  man's impulses not as blind instincts, but as falling <i>within</i>
+  his rational nature, and constituting the forms of its activity. He
+  recognizes the distinction between a mere impulse, in the sense of a
+  tendency to act, which is directed by a foreign power, and an impulse
+  informed, that is, directed by reason. According to this view, it is
+  reason which at once gives man the independence of foreign authority,
+  which is implied in morality, and constitutes that affinity between
+  man and God, which is implied by religion. No doubt, the impulse to
+  know, like the impulse to love, was put into man: his whole nature is
+  a gift, and he is therefore, in this sense, completely dependent upon
+  God&mdash;"God's all, man's nought." But, on the other hand, it
+  <i>is</i> a rational nature which has been put into him, and not an
+  irrational impulse. Or, rather, the impulse that constitutes his life
+  as man, is the self-evolving activity of reason.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Who speaks of man, then, must not sever</p>
+
+    <p>Man's very elements from man."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Christmas-Eve</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>However the rational nature of man has come to be, whether by
+  emanation or creation, it necessarily brings freedom with it, and all
+  its risks and <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg360" id=
+  "pg360">360</a></span> possibilities. It is of the very essence of
+  reason that it should find its law within itself.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"God's all, man's nought:</p>
+
+    <p>But also, God, whose pleasure brought</p>
+
+    <p>Man into being, stands away</p>
+
+    <p>As it were a hand-breadth off, to give</p>
+
+    <p>Room for the newly-made to live,</p>
+
+    <p>And look at Him from a place apart,</p>
+
+    <p>And use his gifts of brain and heart,</p>
+
+    <p>Given, indeed, but to keep for ever."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Christmas-Eve</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thus, while insisting on the absolute priority of God, and the
+  original receptivity of man; while recognizing that love, reason, and
+  every inner power and outer opportunity are lent to man, Browning
+  does not forget what these powers are. Man can only act as man; he
+  must obey his nature, as the stock or stone or plant obeys its
+  nature. But to act as man is to act freely, and man's nature is not
+  that of a stock or stone. He is rational, and cannot but be rational.
+  Hence he can neither be ruled, as dead matter is ruled, by natural
+  law; nor live, like a bird, the life of innocent impulse or instinct.
+  He is placed, from the very first, on "the table land whence life
+  upsprings aspiring to be immortality." He is a
+  spirit,&mdash;responsible because he is free, and free because he is
+  rational.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Man, therefore, stands on his own stock</p>
+
+    <p>Of love and power as a pin-point rock,</p>
+
+    <p>And, looks to God who ordained divorce</p>
+
+    <p>Of the rock from His boundless continent."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg361" id="pg361">361</a></span>
+
+  <p>The divorce is real, although ordained, but it is possible only in
+  so far as man, by means of reason, constitutes his own ends of
+  action. Impulse cannot bring it about. It is reason that enables man
+  to free himself from the despotic authority of outer law, to relate
+  himself to an inner law, and by reconciling inner and outer to attain
+  to goodness. Thus reason is the source of all morality. And it also
+  is the principle of religion, for it implies the highest and fullest
+  manifestation of the absolute.</p>
+
+  <p>Although the first aspect of self-consciousness is its
+  independence, which is, in turn, the first condition of morality,
+  still this is only the first aspect. The rational being plants
+  himself on his own individuality, stands aloof and alone in the
+  rights of his freedom, <i>in order that</i> he may set out from
+  thence to take possession, by means of knowledge and action, of the
+  world in which he is placed. Reason is potentially absolute, capable
+  of finding itself everywhere. So that in it man is "honour-clothed
+  and glory-crowned."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"This is the honour,&mdash;that no thing I know,</p>
+
+    <p>Feel or conceive, but I can make my own</p>
+
+    <p>Somehow, by use of hand, or head, or heart."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Man, by his knowledge, overcomes the resistance and hostility of
+  the world without him, or rather, discovers that there is not
+  hostility, but affinity between it and himself.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg362" id="pg362">362</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"This is the glory,&mdash;that in all conceived,</p>
+
+    <p>Or felt or known, I recognize a mind</p>
+
+    <p>Not mine but like mine,&mdash;for the double joy,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Making all things for me and me for Him."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>That which is finite is hemmed in by other things, as well as
+  determined by them; but the infinite is all-inclusive. There exists
+  for it no other thing to limit or determine it. There is nothing
+  finally alien or foreign to reason. Freedom and infinitude,
+  self-determination and absoluteness, imply each other. In so far as
+  man is free, he is lifted above the finite. It was God's plan to make
+  man on His own image:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"To create man and then leave him</p>
+
+    <p>Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him,</p>
+
+    <p>But able to glorify Him too,</p>
+
+    <p>As a mere machine could never do,</p>
+
+    <p>That prayed or praised, all unaware</p>
+
+    <p>Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer,</p>
+
+    <p>Made perfect as a thing of course."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Christmas-Eve</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Man must find his law within himself, be the source of his own
+  activity, not passive or receptive, but outgoing and effective.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Rejoice we are allied</p>
+
+    <p>To That which doth provide</p>
+
+    <p>And not partake, effect and not receive!</p>
+
+    <p>A spark disturbs our clod;</p>
+
+    <p>Nearer we hold of God</p>
+
+    <p>Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg363" id="pg363">363</a></span>
+
+  <p>This near affinity between the divine and human is just what
+  Browning seems to repudiate in his later poems, when he speaks as if
+  the absolute, in order to maintain its own supremacy over man, had to
+  stint its gifts and endow him only with a defective reason. In the
+  earlier period of the poet there is far less timidity. He then saw
+  that the greater the gift, the greater the Giver; that only spirit
+  can reveal spirit; that "God is glorified in man," and that love is
+  at its fullest only when it gives itself.</p>
+
+  <p>In insisting on such identity of the human spirit with the divine,
+  our poet does not at any time run the risk of forgetting that the
+  identity is not absolute. Absolute identity would be pantheism, which
+  leaves God lonely and loveless, and extinguishes man, as well as his
+  morality.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Man is not God, but hath God's end to serve,</p>
+
+    <p>A Master to obey, a course to take,</p>
+
+    <p>Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Man, at best, only moves <i>towards</i> his ideal: God is
+  conceived as the ever-existing ideal. God, in short, is the term
+  which signifies for us the Being who is eternally all in all, and
+  who, therefore, is hidden from us who are only moving <i>towards</i>
+  perfection, in the excess of the brightness of His own glory.
+  Nevertheless, as Browning recognizes, the grandeur of God's
+  perfection is just His outflowing love. And that love is never
+  complete in its manifestation, till <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg364" id="pg364">364</a></span> it has given itself. Man's life, as
+  spirit, is thus one in nature with that of the absolute. But the
+  unity is not complete, because man is only potentially perfect. He is
+  the process <i>of</i> the ideal; his life is the divine activity
+  within him. Still, it is also man's activity. For the process, being
+  the process of spirit, is a <i>free</i> process&mdash;one in which
+  man himself energizes; so that, in doing God's will, he is doing his
+  own highest will, and, in obeying the law of his own deepest nature,
+  he is obeying God. The unity of divine and human within the spiritual
+  life of man is a real unity, just because man is free; the identity
+  manifests itself through the difference, and the difference is
+  possible through the unity.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, in the light of an ideal which is moral, and therefore
+  perfect&mdash;an ideal gradually realizing itself in a process which
+  is endless&mdash;the poet is able to maintain at once the community
+  between man and God, which is necessary to religion, and their
+  independence, which is necessary to morality. The conception of God
+  as giving, which is the main doctrine of Christianity, and of man as
+  akin with God, is applied by him to the whole spiritual nature of
+  man, and not merely to his emotion. The process of evolution is thus
+  a process towards truth, as well as goodness; in fact, goodness and
+  truth are known as inseparable. Knowledge, too, is a Divine
+  endowment. "What gift of man is not from God descended?" What gift of
+  God can be deceptive?</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg365" id=
+  "pg365">365</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast</p>
+
+    <p>Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed:</p>
+
+    <p>Though He is so bright and we so dim,</p>
+
+    <p>We are made in His image to witness Him."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Christmas-Eve</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The Pope recognizes clearly the inadequacy of human knowledge; but
+  he also recognizes that it has a Divine source.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Yet my poor spark had for its source, the sun;</p>
+
+    <p>Thither I sent the great looks which compel</p>
+
+    <p>Light from its fount: all that I do and am</p>
+
+    <p>Comes from the truth, or seen or else surmised,</p>
+
+    <p>Remembered or divined, as mere man may."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    1285-1289.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The last words indicate a suspicion of a certain defect in
+  knowledge, which is not recognized in human love; nevertheless, in
+  these earlier poems, the poet does not analyze human nature into a
+  finite and infinite, or seek to dispose of his difficulties by the
+  deceptive solvent of a dualistic agnosticism. He treats spirit as a
+  unity, and refuses to set love and reason against each other. Man's
+  <i>life</i>, for the poet, and not merely man's love, begins with
+  God, and returns back to God in the rapt recognition of God's perfect
+  being by reason, and in the identification of man's purposes with His
+  by means of will and love.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"What is left for us, save, in growth</p>
+
+    <p>Of soul, to rise up, far past both,</p>
+
+    <p>From the gift looking to the giver,</p>
+
+    <p>And from the cistern to the river,</p>
+
+    <p>And from the finite to infinity</p>
+
+    <p>And from man's dust to God's divinity?"<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Christmas-Eve</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg366" id="pg366">366</a></span>
+
+  <p>It is this movement of the absolute in man, this aspiration
+  towards the full knowledge and perfect goodness which can never be
+  completely attained, that constitutes man.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect</p>
+
+    <p>He could not, what he knows now, know at first:</p>
+
+    <p>What he considers that he knows to-day,</p>
+
+    <p>Come but to-morrow, he will find mis-known;</p>
+
+    <p>Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns</p>
+
+    <p>Because he lives, which is to be a man,</p>
+
+    <p>Set to instruct himself by his past self:</p>
+
+    <p>First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn,</p>
+
+    <p>Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind,</p>
+
+    <p>Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.</p>
+
+    <p>God's gift was that man shall conceive of truth</p>
+
+    <p>And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake,</p>
+
+    <p>As midway help till he reach fact indeed?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"Progress," the poet says, is "man's distinctive mark alone." The
+  endlessness of the progress, the fact that every truth known to-day
+  seems misknown to-morrow, that every ideal once achieved only points
+  to another and becomes itself a stepping stone, does not, as in his
+  later days, bring despair to him. For the consciousness of failure is
+  possible in knowledge, as in morality, only because there has come a
+  fuller light. Browning does not, as yet, dwell exclusively on the
+  negative element in progress, or forget that it is possible only
+  through a deeper positive. He does not think that, because we turn
+  our backs on what we have gained, we are therefore not going forward;
+  nay, he asserts the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg367" id=
+  "pg367">367</a></span> contrary. Failure, even the failure of
+  knowledge, is triumph's evidence in these earlier days; and complete
+  failure, the unchecked rule of evil in any form, is therefore
+  impossible. We deny</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Recognized truths, obedient to some truth</p>
+
+    <p>Unrecognized yet, but perceptible,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Correct the portrait by the living face,</p>
+
+    <p>Man's God, by God's God in the mind of man."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1871-1874.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thus the poet ever returns to the conception of God in the mind of
+  man. God is the beginning and the end; and man is the self-conscious
+  worker of God's will, the free process whereby the last which is
+  first, returns to itself. The process, the growth, is man's life and
+  being; and it falls within the ideal, which is eternal and all in
+  all. The spiritual life of man, which is both intellectual and moral,
+  is a dying into the eternal, not to cease to be in it, but to live in
+  it more fully; for spirits necessarily commune. He dies to the
+  temporal interests and narrow ends of the exclusive self, and lives
+  an ever-expanding life in the life of others, manifesting more and
+  more that spiritual principle which is the life of God, who lives and
+  loves in all things. "God is a being in whom we exist; with whom we
+  are in principle one; with whom the human spirit is identical, in the
+  sense that He <i>is</i> all which the human spirit is capable of
+  becoming."<sup>B</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: Green's <i>Prolegomena to Ethics</i>, p. 198.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>From this point of view, and in so far as Browning <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg368" id="pg368">368</a></span> is loyal to the
+  conception of the community of the divine and human, he is able to
+  maintain his faith in God, not in spite of knowledge, but through the
+  very movement of knowledge within him. He is not obliged, as in his
+  later works, to look for proofs, either in nature, or elsewhere; nor
+  to argue from the emotion of love in man, to a cause of that emotion.
+  He needs no syllogistic process to arrive at God; for the very
+  activity of his own spirit as intelligence, as the reason which
+  thinks and acts, is the activity of God within him. Scepticism, is
+  impossible, for the very act of doubting is the activity of reason,
+  and a profession of the knowledge of the truth.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"I</p>
+
+    <p>Put no such dreadful question to myself,</p>
+
+    <p>Within whose circle of experience burns</p>
+
+    <p>The central truth, Power, Wisdom, Goodness,&mdash;God:</p>
+
+    <p>I must outlive a thing ere know it dead:</p>
+
+    <p>When I outlive the faith there is a sun,</p>
+
+    <p>When I lie, ashes to the very soul,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Someone, not I, must wail above the heap,</p>
+
+    <p>'He died in dark whence never morn arose.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1631-1639.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And this view of God as immanent in man's experience also
+  forecloses all possibility of failure. Beneath the failure, the
+  possibility of which is involved in a moral life, lies the divine
+  element, working through contradiction to its own fulfilment. Failure
+  is necessary for man, because he grows: but, for the same reason, the
+  failure is not final. Thus, the poet, instead of denying the evidence
+  of his intellect as to the existence of evil, or casting <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg369" id="pg369">369</a></span> doubt on the
+  distinction between right and wrong, or reducing the chequered course
+  of human history into a phantasmagoria of mere mental appearances,
+  can regard the conflict between good and evil as real and earnest. He
+  can look evil in the face, recognize its stubborn resistance to the
+  good, and still regard the victory of the latter as sure and
+  complete. He has not to reduce it into a phantom, or mere appearance,
+  in order to give it a place within the divine order. He sees the
+  night, but he also sees the day succeed it. Man falls into sin, but
+  he cannot rest in it. It is contradictory to his nature, he cannot
+  content himself with it, and he is driven through it. Mephistopheles
+  promised more than he could perform, when he undertook to make Faust
+  declare himself satisfied. There is not within the kingdom of evil
+  what will satisfy the spirit of man, whose last law is goodness,
+  whose nature, however obscured, is God's gift of Himself.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"While I see day succeed the deepest night&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>How can I speak but as I know?&mdash;my speech</p>
+
+    <p>Must be, throughout the darkness. It will end:</p>
+
+    <p>'The light that did burn, will burn!' Clouds obscure&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>But for which obscuration all were bright?</p>
+
+    <p>Too hastily concluded! Sun&mdash;suffused,</p>
+
+    <p>A cloud may soothe the eye made blind by blaze,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Better the very clarity of heaven:</p>
+
+    <p>The soft streaks are the beautiful and dear.</p>
+
+    <p>What but the weakness in a faith supplies</p>
+
+    <p>The incentive to humanity, no strength</p>
+
+    <p>Absolute, irresistible, comports?</p>
+
+    <p>How can man love but what he yearns to help?</p>
+
+    <p>And that which men think weakness within strength,</p>
+
+    <p>But angels know for strength and stronger yet&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>What were it else but the first things made new,</p>
+
+    <p>But repetition of the miracle,</p>
+
+    <p>The divine instance of self-sacrifice</p>
+
+    <p>That never ends and aye begins for man?</p>
+
+    <p>So, never I miss footing in the maze,</p>
+
+    <p>No,&mdash;I have light nor fear the dark at all."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1640-1660.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg370" id=
+  "pg370">370</a></span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter">
+    <img src="images/image370.png" alt="publisher emblem" width=
+    "100" />
+  </div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13561 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #13561 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13561)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Browning as a Philosophical and Religious
+Teacher, by Henry Jones
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher
+
+Author: Henry Jones
+
+Release Date: September 30, 2004  [eBook #13561]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING AS A PHILOSOPHICAL AND
+RELIGIOUS TEACHER***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Leonard Johnson, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+BROWNING AS A PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS TEACHER
+
+by
+
+HENRY JONES
+
+Professor of Philosophy in the University of Glasgow
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING.]
+
+
+
+THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
+MY DEAR FRIENDS
+
+MISS HARRIET MACARTHUR
+AND
+MISS JANE MACARTHUR.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The purpose of this book is to deal with Browning, not simply as a poet,
+but rather as the exponent of a system of ideas on moral and religious
+subjects, which may fairly be called a philosophy. I am conscious that
+it is a wrong to a poet to neglect, or even to subordinate, the artistic
+aspect of his work. At least, it would be a wrong, if our final judgment
+on his poetry were to be determined on such a method. But there is a
+place for everything; and, even in the case of a great poet, there is
+sometimes an advantage in attempting to estimate the value of what he
+has said, apart from the form in which he has said it. And of all modern
+poets, Browning is the one who most obviously invites and justifies such
+a method of treatment. For, in the first place, he is clearly one of
+that class of poets who are also prophets. He was never merely "the idle
+singer of an empty day," but one for whom poetic enthusiasm was
+intimately bound up with religious faith, and who spoke "in numbers,"
+not merely "because the numbers came," but because they were for him the
+necessary vehicle of an inspiring thought. If it is the business of
+philosophy to analyze and interpret all the great intellectual forces
+that mould the thought of an age, it cannot neglect the works of one who
+has exercised, and is exercising so powerful an influence on the moral
+and religious life of the present generation.
+
+In the second place, as will be seen in the sequel, Browning has himself
+led the way towards such a philosophical interpretation of his work.
+For, even in his earlier poems, he not seldom crossed the line that
+divides the poet from the philosopher, and all but broke through the
+strict limits of art in the effort to express--and we might even say to
+preach--his own idealistic faith. In his later works he did this almost
+without any disguise, raising philosophical problems, and discussing all
+the _pros_ and _cons_ of their solution, with no little subtlety and
+dialectical skill. In some of these poems we might even seem to be
+receiving a philosophical lesson, in place of a poetic inspiration, if
+it were not for those powerful imaginative utterances, those winged
+words, which Browning has always in reserve, to close the ranks of his
+argument. If the question is stated in a prosaic form, the final answer,
+as in the ancient oracle, is in the poetic language of the gods.
+
+From this point of view I have endeavoured to give a connected account
+of Browning's ideas, especially of his ideas on religion and morality,
+and to estimate their value. In order to do so, it was necessary to
+discuss the philosophical validity of the principles on which his
+doctrine is more or less consciously based. The more immediately
+philosophical chapters are the second, seventh, and ninth; but they will
+not be found unintelligible by those who have reflected on the
+difficulties of the moral and religious life, even although they may be
+unacquainted with the methods and language of the schools.
+
+I have received much valuable help in preparing this work for the press
+from my colleague, Professor G.B. Mathews, and still more from Professor
+Edward Caird. I owe them both a deep debt of gratitude.
+
+HENRY JONES.
+
+1891.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+INTRODUCTION
+
+CHAPTER II.
+ON THE NEED OF A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
+
+CHAPTER III.
+BROWNING'S PLACE IN ENGLISH POETRY
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+BROWNING'S OPTIMISM
+
+CHAPTER V.
+OPTIMISM AND ETHICS: THEIR CONTRADICTION
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+BROWNING'S TREATMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE
+OF LOVE
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+BROWNING'S IDEALISM, AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL
+JUSTIFICATION
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+BROWNING'S SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM
+OF EVIL
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+A CRITICISM OF BROWNING'S VIEW OF
+THE FAILURE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+CHAPTER X.
+THE HEART AND THE HEAD.--LOVE AND
+REASON
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+  "Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
+  Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum." (_Faust_.)
+
+There is a saying of Hegel's, frequently quoted, that "a great man
+condemns the world to the task of explaining him." The condemnation is a
+double one, and it generally falls heaviest on the great man himself,
+who has to submit to explanation; and, probably, the last refinement of
+this species of cruelty is to expound a poet. I therefore begin with an
+apology in both senses of the term. I acknowledge that no commentator on
+art has a right to be heard, if he is not aware of the subordinate and
+temporary nature of his office. At the very best he is only a guide to
+the beautiful object, and he must fall back in silence so soon as he has
+led his company into its presence. He may perhaps suggest "the line of
+vision," or fix the point of view, from which we can best hope to do
+justice to the artist's work, by appropriating his intention and
+comprehending his idea; but if he seeks to serve the ends of art, he
+will not attempt to do anything more.
+
+In order to do even this successfully, it is essential that every
+judgment passed should be exclusively ruled by the principles which
+govern art. "Fine art is not real art till it is free"; that is, till
+its value is recognized as lying wholly within itself. And it is not,
+unfortunately, altogether unnecessary to insist that, so far from
+enhancing the value of an artist's work, we only degrade it into mere
+means, subordinate it to uses alien, and therefore antagonistic to its
+perfection, if we try to show that it gives pleasure, or refinement, or
+moral culture. There is no doubt that great poetry has all these uses,
+but the reader can enjoy them only on condition of forgetting them; for
+they are effects that follow the sense of its beauty. Art, morality,
+religion, is each supreme in its own sphere; the beautiful is not more
+beautiful because it is also moral, nor is a painting great because its
+subject is religious. It is true that their spheres overlap, and art is
+never at its best except when it is a beautiful representation of the
+good; nevertheless the points of view of the artist and of the ethical
+teacher are quite different, and consequently also the elements within
+which they work and the truth they reveal.
+
+In attempting, therefore, to discover Robert Browning's philosophy of
+life, I do not pretend that my treatment of him is adequate. Browning
+is, first of all, a poet; it is only as a poet that he can be finally
+judged; and the greatness of a poet is to be measured by the extent to
+which his writings are a revelation of what is beautiful.
+
+I undertake a different and a humbler task, conscious of its
+limitations, and aware that I can hardly avoid doing some violence to
+the artist. What I shall seek in the poet's writings is not beauty, but
+truth; and although truth is beautiful, and beauty is truth, still the
+poetic and philosophic interpretation of life are not to be confused.
+Philosophy must separate the matter from the form. Its synthesis comes
+through analysis, and analysis is destructive of beauty, as it is of all
+life. Art, therefore, resists the violence of the critical methods of
+philosophy, and the feud between them, of which Plato speaks, will last
+through all time. The beauty of form and the music of speech which
+criticism destroys, and to which philosophy is, at the best,
+indifferent, are essential to poetry. When we leave them out of account
+we miss the ultimate secret of poetry, for they cling to the meaning and
+penetrate it with their charm. Thought and its expression are
+inseparable in poetry, as they never are in philosophy; hence, in the
+former, the loss of the expression is the loss of truth. The pure idea
+that dwells in a poem is suffused in the poetic utterance, as sunshine
+breaks into beauty in the mist, as life beats and blushes in the flesh,
+or as an impassioned thought breathes in a thinker's face.
+
+But, although art and philosophy are supreme, each in its own realm, and
+neither can be subordinated to the uses of the other, they may help each
+other. They are independent, but not rival powers of the world of mind.
+Not only is the interchange of truth possible between them; but each may
+show and give to the other all its treasures, and be none the poorer
+itself. "It is in works of art that some nations have deposited the
+profoundest intuitions and ideas of their hearts." Job and Isaiah,
+Æschylus and Sophocles, Shakespeare and Goethe, were first of all poets.
+Mankind is indebted to them in the first place for revealing beauty; but
+it also owes to them much insight into the facts and principles of the
+moral world. It would be an unutterable loss to the ethical thinker and
+the philosopher, if this region were closed against them, so that they
+could no longer seek in the poets the inspiration and light that lead to
+goodness and truth. In our own day, almost above all others, we need the
+poets for these ethical and religious purposes. For the utterances of
+the dogmatic teacher of religion have been divested of much of their
+ancient authority; and the moral philosopher is often regarded either as
+a vendor of commonplaces or as the votary of a discredited science,
+whose primary principles are matter of doubt and debate. There are not a
+few educated Englishmen who find in the poets, and in the poets alone,
+the expression of their deepest convictions concerning the profoundest
+interests of life. They read the poets for fresh inspiration, partly, no
+doubt, because the passion and rapture of poetry lull criticism and
+soothe the questioning spirit into acquiescence.
+
+
+But there are further reasons; for the poets of England are greater than
+its moral philosophers; and it is of the nature of the poetic art that,
+while eschewing system, it presents the strife between right and wrong
+in concrete character, and therefore with a fulness and truth impossible
+to the abstract thought of science.
+
+                "A poet never dreams:
+  We prose folk do: we miss the proper duct
+  For thoughts on things unseen."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, lxxxviii.]
+
+It is true that philosophy endeavours to correct this fragmentariness by
+starting from the unity of the whole. But it can never quite get rid of
+an element of abstraction and reach down to the concrete individual.
+
+The making of character is so complex a process that the poetic
+representation of it, with its subtle suggestiveness, is always more
+complete and realistic than any possible philosophic analysis. Science
+can deal only with aspects and abstractions, and its method becomes more
+and more inadequate as its matter grows more concrete, unless it
+proceeds from the unity in which all the aspects are held together. In
+the case of life, and still more so in that of human conduct, the whole
+must precede the part, and the moral science must, therefore, more than
+any other, partake of the nature of poetry; for it must start from
+living spirit, go from the heart outwards, in order to detect the
+meaning of the actions of man.
+
+On this account, poetry is peculiarly helpful to the ethical
+investigator, because it always treats the particular thing as a
+microcosm. It is the great corrective of the onesidedness of science
+with its harsh method of analysis and distinction. It is a witness to
+the unity of man and the world. Every object which art touches into
+beauty, becomes in the very act a whole. The thing that is beautiful is
+always complete, the embodiment of something absolutely valuable, the
+product and the source of love; and the beloved object is all the world
+for the lover--beyond all praise, because it is above all comparison.
+
+  "Then why not witness, calmly gazing,
+  If earth holds aught--speak truth--above her?
+  Above this tress, and this, I touch
+  But cannot praise, I love so much!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Song_ (Dramatic Lyrics).]
+
+This characteristic of the work of art brings with it an important
+practical consequence, because being complete, it appeals to the whole
+man.
+
+"Poetry," it has been well said, is "the idealized and monumental
+utterance of the deepest feelings." And poetic feelings, it must not be
+forgotten, _are_ deepest; that is, they are the afterglow of the
+fullest activity of a complete soul, and not shallow titillations, or
+surface pleasures, such as the palate knows. Led by poetry, the
+intellect so sees truth that it glows with it, and the will is stirred
+to deeds of heroism. For there is hardly any fact so mean, but that when
+intensified by emotion, it grows poetic; as there is hardly any man so
+unimaginative, but that when struck with a great sorrow, or moved by a
+great passion, he is endowed for a moment with the poet's speech. A
+poetic fact, one may almost say, is just any fact at its best. Art, it
+is true, looks at its object through a medium, but it always seems its
+inmost meaning. In Lear, Othello, Hamlet, in Falstaff and Touchstone,
+there is a revelation of the inner truth of human life beyond the power
+of moral science to bestow. We do well to seek philosophy in the poets,
+for though they teach only by hints and parables, they nevertheless
+reflect the concrete truth of life, as it is half revealed and half
+concealed in facts. On the other hand, the reflective process of
+philosophy may help poetry; for, as we shall show, there is a near
+kinship between them. Even the critical analyst, while severing element
+from element, may help art and serve the poet's ends, provided he does
+not in his analysis of parts forget the whole. His function, though
+humble and merely preliminary to full poetic enjoyment, is not
+unimportant. To appreciate the grandeur of the unity of the work of art,
+there must be knowledge of the parts combined. It is quite true that the
+guide in the gallery is prone to be too talkative, and there are many
+who can afford to turn the commentator out of doors, especially if he
+moralizes. But, after all, man is not pure sensibility, any more than he
+is pure reason. And the aesthete will not lose if he occasionally allows
+those whom he may think less sensitive than himself to the charm of
+rhythmic phrase, to direct sober attention to the principles which lie
+embedded in all great poetry. At the worst, to seek for truth in poetry
+is a protest against the constant tendency to read it for the sake of
+the emotions which it stirs, the tendency to make it a refined amusement
+and nothing more. That is a deeper wrong to art than any which the
+theoretical moralist can inflict. Of the two, it is better to read
+poetry for ethical doctrines than for fine sensations; for poetry
+purifies the passions only when it lifts the reader into the sphere of
+truths that are universal.
+
+The task of interpreting a poet may be undertaken in different ways. One
+of these, with which we have been made familiar by critics of
+Shakespeare and of Browning himself, is to analyze each poem by itself
+and regard it as the artistic embodiment of some central idea; the other
+is to attempt, without dealing separately with each poem, to reach the
+poet's own point of view, and to reveal the sovereign truths which rule
+his mind. It is this latter way that I shall try to follow.
+
+Such dominant or even despotic thoughts it is possible to discover in
+all our great poets, except perhaps Shakespeare, whose universality
+baffles every classifier. As a rule, the English poets have been caught
+up, and inspired, by the exceeding grandeur of some single idea, in
+whose service they spend themselves with that prodigal thrift which
+finds life in giving it. Such an idea gives them a fresh way of looking
+at the world, so that the world grows young again with their new
+interpretation. In the highest instances, poets may become makers of
+epochs; they reform as well as reveal; for ideas are never dead things,
+"but grow in the hand that grasps them." In them lies the energy of a
+nation's life, and we comprehend that life only when we make clear to
+ourselves the thoughts which inspire it. It is thus true, in the deepest
+sense, that those who make the songs of a people make its history. In
+all true poets there are hints for a larger philosophy of life. But, in
+order to discover it, we must know the truths which dominate them, and
+break into music in their poems.
+
+Whether it is always possible, and whether it is at any time fair to a
+poet to define the idea which inspires him, I shall not inquire at
+present. No doubt, the interpretation of a poet from first principles
+carries us beyond the limits of art; and by insisting on the unity of
+his work, more may be attributed to him, or demanded from him, than he
+properly owns. To make such a demand is to require that poetry should be
+philosophy as well, which, owing to its method of intuition, it can
+never be. Nevertheless, among English poets there is no one who lends
+himself so easily, or so justly, to this way of treatment as Browning.
+Much of his poetry trembles on the verge of the abyss which is supposed
+to separate art from philosophy; and, as I shall try to show, there was
+in the poet a growing tendency to turn the power of dialectic on the
+pre-suppositions of his art. Yet, even Browning puts great difficulties
+in the way of a critic, who seeks to draw a philosophy of life from his
+poems. It is not by any means an easy task to lift the truths he utters
+under the stress of poetic emotion into the region of placid
+contemplation, or to connect them into a system, by means of the
+principle from which he makes his departure.
+
+The first of these difficulties arises from the extent and variety of
+his work. He was prodigal of poetic ideas, and wrote for fifty years on
+nature, art, and man, like a magnificent spendthrift of spiritual
+treasures. So great a store of knowledge lay at his hand, so real and
+informed with sympathy, that we can scarcely find any great literature
+which he has not ransacked, any phase of life which is not represented
+in his poems. All kinds of men and women, in every station in life, and
+at every stage of evil and goodness, crowd his pages. There are few
+forms of human character he has not studied, and each individual he has
+so caught at the supreme moment of his life, and in the hardest stress
+of circumstance, that the inmost working of his nature is revealed. The
+wealth is bewildering, and it is hard to follow the central thought,
+"the imperial chord, which steadily underlies the accidental mists of
+music springing thence."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_.]
+
+A second and still graver difficulty lies in the fact that his poetry,
+as he repeatedly insisted, is "always dramatic in principle, and so many
+utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine."[B] In his earlier
+works, especially, Browning is creative rather than reflective, a Maker
+rather than a Seer; and his creations stand aloof from him, working out
+their fate in an outer world. We often lose the poet in the imaginative
+characters, into whom he penetrates with his keen artistic intuition,
+and within whom he lies as a necessity revealing itself in their actions
+and words. It is not easy anywhere to separate the elements, so that we
+can say with certainty, "Here I catch the poet, there lies his
+material." The identification of the work and worker is too intimate,
+and the realization of the imaginary personage is too complete.
+
+[Footnote B: Pref. to _Pauline_, 1888.]
+
+In regard to the dramatic interpretation of his poetry, Browning has
+manifested a peculiar sensitiveness. In his Preface to _Pauline_ and in
+several of his poems--notably _The Mermaid_, the _House_, and the
+_Shop_--he explicitly cuts himself free from his work. He knew that
+direct self-revealment on the part of the poet violates the spirit of
+the drama. "With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart," said
+Wordsworth; "Did Shakespeare?" characteristically answers Browning, "If
+so, the less Shakespeare he!" And of himself he asks:
+
+  "Which of you did I enable
+    Once to slip inside my breast,
+  There to catalogue and label
+    What I like least, what love best,
+  Hope and fear, believe and doubt of,
+    Seek and shun, respect--deride?
+  Who has right to make a rout of
+    Rarities he found inside?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _At the Mermaid_.]
+
+He repudiates all kinship with Byron and his subjective ways, and
+refuses to be made king by the hands which anointed him. "He will not
+give his woes an airing, and has no plague that claims respect." Both as
+man and poet, in virtue of the native, sunny, outer-air healthiness of
+his character, every kind of subjectivity is repulsive to him. He hands
+to his readers "his work, his scroll, theirs to take or leave: his soul
+he proffers not." For him "shop was shop only"; and though he dealt in
+gems, and throws
+
+  "You choice of jewels, every one,
+  Good, better, best, star, moon, and sun,"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Shop_.]
+
+he still _lived_ elsewhere, and had "stray thoughts and fancies
+fugitive" not meant for the open market. The poems in which Browning has
+spoken without the disguise of another character are very few. There are
+hardly more than two or three of much importance which can be considered
+as directly reflecting his own ideas, namely, _Christmas Eve_ and
+_Easter Day, La Saisiaz_, and _One Word More_--unless, spite of the
+poet's warning, we add _Pauline_.
+
+But, although the dramatic element in Browning's poetry renders it
+difficult to construct his character from his works, while this is
+comparatively easy in the case of Wordsworth or Byron; and although it
+throws a shade of uncertainty on every conclusion we might draw as to
+any specific doctrine held by him, still Browning lives in a certain
+atmosphere, and looks at his characters through a medium, whose subtle
+influence makes all his work indisputably _his_. The light he throws on
+his men and women is not the unobtrusive light of day, which reveals
+objects, but not itself. Though a true dramatist, he is not objective
+like Shakespeare and Scott, whose characters seem never to have had an
+author. The reader feels, rather, that Browning himself attends him
+through all the sights and wonders of the world of man; he never escapes
+the sense of the presence of the poet's powerful personality, or of the
+great convictions on which he has based his life. Browning has, at
+bottom, only one way of looking at the world, and one way of treating
+his objects; one point of view, and one artistic method. Nay, further,
+he has one supreme interest, which he pursues everywhere with a
+constancy shown by hardly any other poet; and, in consequence, his works
+have a unity and a certain originality, which make them in many ways a
+unique contribution to English literature.
+
+This characteristic, which no critic has missed, and which generally
+goes by the name of "the metaphysical element" in his poetry, makes it
+the more imperative to form a clear view of his ruling conceptions. No
+poet, least of all a dramatic poet, goes about seeking concrete vehicles
+for ready-made ideas, or attempts to dress a philosophy in metaphors;
+and Browning, as an artist, is interested first of all in the object
+which he renders beautiful for its own sole sake, and not in any
+abstract idea it illustrates. Still, it is true in a peculiar sense in
+his case, that the eye of the poet brings with it what it sees. He is,
+as a rule, conscious of no theory, and does not construct a poem for its
+explication; he rather strikes his ideas out of his material, as the
+sculptor reveals the breathing life in the stone. Nevertheless, it may
+be shown that a theory rules him from behind, and that profound
+convictions arise in the heart and rush along the blood at the moment of
+creation, using his soul as an instrument of expression to his age and
+people.
+
+Of no English poet, except Shakespeare, can we say with approximate
+truth that he is the poet of all times. The subjective breath of their
+own epoch dims the mirror which they hold up to nature. Missing by their
+limitation the highest universality, they can only be understood in
+their setting. It adds but little to our knowledge of Shakespeare's work
+to regard him as the great Elizabethan; there is nothing temporary in
+his dramas, except petty incidents and external trappings--so truly did
+he dwell amidst the elements constituting man in every age and clime.
+But this cannot be said of any other poet, not even of Chaucer or
+Spenser, far less of Milton, or Pope or Wordsworth. In their case, the
+artistic form and the material, the idea and its expression, the beauty
+and the truth, are to some extent separable. We can distinguish in
+Milton between the Puritanic theology which is perishable, and the art
+whose beauty can never pass away. The former fixes his kinship with his
+own age, gives him a definite place in the evolution of English life;
+the latter is independent of time, a thing which has supreme worth in
+itself.
+
+Nor can it be doubted that the same holds good of Browning. He also is
+ruled by the ideas of his own age. It may not be altogether possible for
+us, "who are partners of his motion and mixed up with his career," to
+allow for the influence of these ideas, and to distinguish between that
+which is evanescent and that which is permanent in his work; still I
+must try to do so; for it is the condition of comprehending him, and of
+appropriating the truth and beauty he came to reveal. And if his
+nearness to ourselves makes this more difficult, it also makes it more
+imperative. For there is no doubt that, with Carlyle, he is the
+interpreter of our time, reflecting its confused strength and chaotic
+wealth. He is the high priest of our age, standing at the altar for us,
+and giving utterance to our needs and aspirations, our fears and faith.
+By understanding him, we shall, to some degree, understand ourselves and
+the power which is silently moulding us to its purposes.
+
+It is because I thus regard Browning as not merely a poet but a prophet,
+that I think I am entitled to seek in him, as in Isaiah or Aeschylus, a
+solution, or a help to the solution, of the problems that press upon us
+when we reflect upon man, his place in the world and his destiny. He has
+given us indirectly, and as a poet gives, a philosophy of life; he has
+interpreted the world anew in the light of a dominant idea; and it will
+be no little gain if we can make clear to ourselves those constitutive
+principles on which his view of the world rests.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ON THE NEED OF A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.
+
+  "Art,--which I may style the love of loving, rage
+  Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things
+  For truth's sake, whole and sole, not any good, truth brings
+  The knower, seer, feeler, beside,--instinctive Art
+  Must fumble for the whole, once fixing on a part
+  However poor, surpass the fragment, and aspire
+  To reconstruct thereby the ultimate entire."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xliv.]
+
+No English poet has spoken more impressively than Browning on the
+weightier matters of morality and religion, or sought with more
+earnestness to meet the difficulties which arise when we try to
+penetrate to their ultimate principles. His way of poetry is, I think,
+fundamentally different from that of any other of our great writers. He
+often seems to be roused into speech, rather by the intensity of his
+spiritual convictions than by the subtle incitements of poetic
+sensibility. His convictions caught fire, and truth became beauty for
+him; not beauty, truth, as with Keats or Shelley. He is swayed by ideas,
+rather than by sublime moods. Beneath the endless variety of his poems,
+there are permanent principles, or "colligating conceptions," as science
+calls them; and although these are expressed by the way of emotion, they
+are held by him with all the resources of his reason.
+
+His work, though intuitive and perceptive as to form, "gaining God by
+first leap" as all true art must do, leaves the impression, when
+regarded as a whole, of an articulated system. It is a view of man's
+life and destiny that can be maintained, not only during the impassioned
+moods of poetry, but in the very presence of criticism and doubt. His
+faith, like Pompilia's, is held fast "despite the plucking fiend." He
+has given to us something more than intuitive glimpses into, the
+mysteries of man's character. Throughout his life he held up the steady
+light of an optimistic conception of the world, and by its means
+injected new vigour into English ethical thought. In his case,
+therefore, it is not an immaterial question, but one almost forced upon
+us, whether we are to take his ethical doctrine and inspiring optimism
+as valid truths, or to regard them merely as subjective opinions held by
+a religious poet. Are they creations of a powerful imagination, and
+nothing more? Do they give to the hopes and aspirations that rise so
+irrepressibly in the heart of man anything better than an appearance of
+validity, which will prove illusory the moment the cold light of
+critical inquiry is turned upon them?
+
+It is to this unity of his work that I would attribute, in the main, the
+impressiveness of his deliverances on morality and religion. And this
+unity justifies us, I think, in applying to Browning's view of life
+methods of criticism that would be out of place with any other English
+poet. It is one of his unique characteristics, as already hinted, that
+he has endeavoured to give us a complete and reasoned view of the
+ethical nature of man, and of his relation to the world--has sought, in
+fact, to establish a philosophy of life. In his case, not without
+injustice, it is true, but with less injustice than in the case of any
+other poet, we may disregard, _for our purposes_, the artistic method of
+his thought, and lay stress on its content only. He has a right to a
+place amongst philosophers, as Plato has to a place amongst poets. There
+is such deliberate earnestness and systematic consistency in his
+teaching, that Hegel can scarcely be said to have maintained that "The
+Rational is the Real" with greater intellectual tenacity, than Browning
+held to his view of life. He sought, in fact, to establish an Idealism;
+and that Idealism, like Kant's and Fichte's, has its last basis in the
+moral consciousness.
+
+But, even if it be considered that it is not altogether just to apply
+these critical tests to the poet's teaching, and to make him pay the
+penalty for assuming a place amongst philosophers, it is certain that
+what he says of man's spiritual life cannot be rightly valued, till it
+is regarded in the light of his guiding principles. We shall miss much
+of what is best in him, even as a poet, if, for instance, we regard his
+treatment of love merely as the expression of elevated passion, or his
+optimism as based upon mere hope. Love was to him rather an indwelling
+element in the world, present, like power, in everything.
+
+  "From the first, Power was--I knew.
+    Life has made clear to me
+  That, strive but for closer view,
+    Love were as plain to see."[A]
+
+[Footnote: A _Reverie--Asolando_.]
+
+Love yielded to him, as Reason did to Hegel, a fundamental exposition of
+the nature of things. Or, to express the same thing in another way, it
+was a deliberate hypothesis, which he sought to apply to facts and to
+test by their means, almost in the same manner as that in which natural
+science applies and tests its principles.
+
+That Browning's ethical and religious ideas were for him something
+different from, and perhaps more than, mere poetic sentiments, will, I
+believe, be scarcely denied. That he held a deliberate theory, and held
+it with greater and greater difficulty as he became older, and as his
+dialectical tendencies grew and threatened to wreck his artistic
+freedom, is evident to any one who regards his work as a whole. But it
+will not be admitted so readily that anything other than harm can issue
+from an attempt to deal with him as if he were a philosopher. Even if it
+be allowed that he held and expressed a definite theory, will it retain
+any value if we take it out of the region of poetry and impassioned
+religious faith, into the frigid zone of philosophical inquiry? Could
+any one maintain, apart from the intoxication of religious and poetic
+sentiment, that the essence of existence is love? As long as we remain
+within the realm of imagination, it may be argued, we may find in our
+poet's great sayings both solacement and strength, both rest and an
+impulse towards higher moral endeavour; but if we seek to treat them as
+theories of facts, and turn upon them the light of the understanding,
+will they not inevitably prove to be hallucinations? Poetry, we think,
+has its own proper place and function. It is an invaluable anodyne to
+the cark and care of reflective thought; an opiate which, by steeping
+the critical intellect in slumber, sets the soul free to rise on the
+wings of religious faith. But reason breaks the spell; and the world of
+poetry, and religion--a world which to them is always beautiful and good
+with God's presence--becomes a system of inexorable laws, dead,
+mechanical, explicable in strict truth, as an equipoise of constantly
+changing forms of energy.
+
+There is, at the present time, a widespread belief that we had better
+keep poetry and religion beyond the reach of critical investigation, if
+we set any store by them. Faith and reason are thought to be finally
+divorced. It is an article of the common creed that every attempt which
+the world has made to bring them together has resulted in denial, or at
+the best in doubt, regarding all supersensuous facts. The one condition
+of leading a full life, of maintaining a living relation between
+ourselves and both the spiritual and material elements of our existence,
+is to make our lives an alternating rhythm of the head and heart, to
+distinguish with absolute clearness between the realm of reason and that
+of faith.
+
+Now, such an assumption would be fatal to any attempt like the present,
+to find truth in poetry; and I must, therefore, try to meet it before
+entering upon a statement and criticism of Browning's view of life. I
+cannot admit that the difficulties of placing the facts of man's
+spiritual life on a rational basis are so great as to justify the
+assertion that there is no such basis, or that it is not discoverable by
+man. Surely, it is unreasonable to make intellectual death the condition
+of spiritual life. If such a condition were imposed on man, it must
+inevitably defeat its own purpose; for man cannot possibly continue to
+live a divided life, and persist in believing that for which his reason
+knows no defence. We must, in the long run, either rationalize our faith
+in morality and religion, or abandon them as illusions. And we should at
+least hesitate to deny that reason--in spite of its apparent failure in
+the past to justify our faith in the principles of spiritual life--may
+yet, as it becomes aware of its own nature and the might which dwells in
+it, find beauty and goodness, nay, God himself, in the world. We should
+at least hesitate to condemn man to choose between irreflective
+ignorance and irreligion, or to lock the intellect and the highest
+emotions of our nature and principles of our life, in a mortal struggle.
+Poetry and religion may, after all, be truer then prose, and have
+something to tell the world that science, which is often ignorant of its
+own limits, cannot teach.
+
+The failure of philosophy in the past, even if it were as complete as is
+believed by persons ignorant of its history, is no argument against its
+success in the future. Such persons have never known that the world of
+thought like that of action makes a stepping stone of its dead self. He
+who presumes to decide what passes the power of man's thought, or to
+prescribe absolute limits to human knowledge, is rash, to say the least;
+and he has neither caught the most important of the lessons of modern
+science, nor been lifted to the level of its inspiration. For science
+has done one thing greater than to unlock the secrets of nature. It has
+revealed something of the might of reason, and given new grounds for the
+faith, which in all ages has inspired the effort to know,--the faith
+that the world is an intelligible structure, meant to be penetrated by
+the thought of man. Can it be that nature is an "open secret," but that
+man, and he alone, must remain an enigma? Or does he not rather bear
+within himself the key to every problem which he solves, and is it not
+_his_ thought which penetrates the secrets of nature? The success of
+science, in reducing to law the most varied and apparently unconnected
+facts, should dispel any suspicion which attaches to the attempt to
+gather these laws under still wider ones, and to interpret the world in
+the light of the highest principles. And this is precisely what poetry
+and religion and philosophy do, each in its own way. They carry the work
+of the sciences into wider regions, and that, as I shall try to show, by
+methods which, in spite of many external differences, are fundamentally
+at one with those which the sciences employ.
+
+There is only one way of giving the quietus to the metaphysics of poets
+and philosophers, and of showing the futility of a philosophy of life,
+or of any scientific explanation of religion and morals. It is to show
+that there is some radical absurdity in the very attempt. Till this is
+done, the human mind will not give up problems of weighty import,
+however hard it may be to solve them. The world refused to believe
+Socrates when he pronounced a science of nature impossible, and
+centuries of failure did not break man's courage. Science, it is true,
+has given up some problems as insoluble; it will not now try to
+construct a perpetually moving machine, or to square the circle. But it
+has given them up, not because they are difficult, but because they are
+unreasonable tasks. The problems have a surd or irrational element in
+them; and to solve them would be to bring reason into collision with
+itself.
+
+Now, whatever may be the difficulties of establishing a theory of life,
+or a philosophy, it has never been shown to be an unreasonable task to
+attempt it. One might, on the contrary, expect, _prima facie_, that in
+a world progressively proved to be intelligible to man, man himself
+would be no exception. It is impossible that the "light in him should be
+darkness," or that the thought which reveals the order of the world
+should be itself chaotic.
+
+The need for philosophy is just the ultimate form of the need for
+knowledge; and the truths which philosophy brings to light are implied
+in every rational explanation of things. The only choice we can have is
+between a conscious metaphysics and an unconscious one, between
+hypotheses which we have examined and whose limitations we know, and
+hypotheses which rule us from behind, as pure prejudices do. It is
+because of this that the empiric is so dogmatic, and the ignorant man so
+certain of the truth of his opinion. They do not know their postulates,
+nor are they aware that there is no interpretation of an object which
+does not finally point to a theory of being. We understand no joint or
+ligament, except in relation to the whole organism, and no fact, or
+event, except by finding a place for it in the context of our
+experience. The history of the pebble can be given, only in the light of
+the story of the earth, as it is told by the whole of geology. We must
+begin very far back, and bring our widest principles to bear upon the
+particular thing, if we wish really to know what it is. It is a law that
+explains, and laws are always universal. All our knowledge, even the
+most broken and inconsistent, streams from some fundamental conception,
+in virtue of which all the variety of objects constitute one world, one
+orderly kosmos, even to the meanest mind. It is true that the central
+thought, be it rich or poor, must, like the sun's light, be broken
+against particular facts. But there is no need of forgetting the real
+source of knowledge, or of deeming that its progress is a synthesis
+without law, or an addition of fact to fact without any guiding
+principles.
+
+Now, it is the characteristic of poetry and philosophy that they keep
+alive our consciousness of these primary, uniting principles. They
+always dwell in the presence of the idea which makes their object _one_.
+To them the world is always, and necessarily, a harmonious whole, as it
+is also to the religious spirit. It is because of this that the universe
+is a thing of beauty for the poet, a revelation of God's goodness to the
+devout soul, and a manifestation of absolute reason to the philosopher.
+Art, religion, and philosophy fail or flourish together. The age of
+prose and scepticism appears when the sense of the presence of the whole
+in the particular facts of the world and of life has been dulled. And
+there is a necessity in this; for if the conception of the world as a
+whole is held to be impossible, if philosophy is a futility, then
+poetry will be a vain sentiment and religion a delusion.
+
+Nor will the failure of thought, when once demonstrated in these upper
+regions, be confined to them. On the contrary, it will spread downwards
+to science and ordinary knowledge, as mountain mists blot out the
+valleys. For every synthesis of fact to fact, every attempt to know,
+however humble and limited, is inspired by a secret faith in the unity
+of the world. Each of the sciences works within its own region, and
+colligates its details in the light of its own hypothesis; and all the
+sciences taken together presuppose the presence in the world of a
+principle that binds it into an orderly totality. Scientific explorers
+know that they are all working towards the same centre. And, ever and
+anon, as the isolated thinker presses home his own hypothesis, he finds
+his thought beating on the limits of his science, and suggesting some
+wider hypothesis. The walls that separate the sciences are wearing thin,
+and at times light penetrates from one to the other. So that to their
+votaries, at least, the faith is progressively justified, that there is
+a meeting point for the sciences, a central truth in which the dispersed
+rays will again be gathered together. In fact, all the sciences are
+working together under the guidance of a principle common to them all,
+although it may not be consciously known and no attempt is made to
+define it. In science, as in philosophy and art and religion, there is a
+principle of unity, which, though latent, is really prior to all
+explanation of particular matters of fact.
+
+In truth, man has only one way of knowing. There is no fundamental
+difference between scientific and philosophic procedure. We always light
+up facts by means of general laws. The fall of the stone was a perfect
+enigma, a universally unintelligible bit of experience, till the
+majestic imagination of Newton conceived the idea of universal
+gravitation. Wherever mind successfully invades the realm of chaos,
+poetry, the sense of the whole, comes first. There is the intuitive
+flash, the penetrative glimpse, got no one knows exactly whence--though
+we do know that it comes neither from the dead facts nor from the vacant
+region of _a priori_ thought, but somehow from the interaction of both
+these elements of knowledge. After the intuitive flash comes the slow
+labour of proof, the application of the principle to details. And that
+application transforms both the principle and the details, so that the
+former is enriched with content and the latter are made intelligible--a
+veritable conquest and valid possession for mankind. And in this labour
+of proof, science and philosophy alike take their share.
+
+Philosophy may be said to come midway between poetry and science, and to
+partake of the nature of both. On the one side it deals, like poetry,
+with ideals of knowledge, and announces truths which it does not
+completely verify; on the other, it leaves to science the task of
+articulating its principles in facts, though it begins the articulation
+itself. It reveals subsidiary principles, and is, at the same time, a
+witness for the unity of the categories of science. We may say, if we
+wish, that its principles are mere hypotheses. But so are the ideas
+which underlie the most practical of the sciences; so is every forecast
+of genius by virtue of which knowledge is extended; so is every
+principle of knowledge not completely worked out. To say that philosophy
+is hypothetical implies no charge, other than that which can be
+levelled, in the same sense, against the most solid body of scientific
+knowledge in the world. The fruitful question in each case alike is, how
+far, if at all, does the hypothesis enable us to understand particular
+facts.
+
+The more careful of our scientific thinkers are well aware of the limits
+under which they work and of the hypothetical character of their
+results. "I take Euclidean space, and the existence of material
+particles and elemental energy for granted," says the physicist; "deny
+them, and I am helpless; grant them, and I shall establish quantitative
+relations between the different forms of this elemental energy, and make
+it tractable and tame to man's uses. All I teach depends upon my
+hypothesis. In it is the secret of all the power I wield. I do not
+pretend to say what this elemental energy is. I make no declaration
+regarding the actual nature of things; and all questions as to the
+ultimate origin or final destination of the world are beyond the scope
+of my inquiry. I am ruled by my hypothesis; I regard phenomena _from my
+point of view_; and my right to do so I substantiate by the practical
+and theoretical results which follow." The language of geology,
+chemistry, zoology, and even mathematics is the same. They all start
+from a hypothesis; they are all based on an imaginative conception, and
+in this sense their votaries are poets, who see the unity of being throb
+in the particular fact.
+
+Now, so far as the particular sciences are concerned, I presume that no
+one will deny the supreme power of these colligating ideas. The sciences
+do not grow by a process of empiricism, which rambles tentatively and
+blindly from fact to fact, unguided of any hypothesis. But if they do
+not, if, on the contrary, each science is ruled by its own hypothesis,
+and uses that hypothesis to bind its facts together, then the question
+arises, are there no wider colligating principles amongst these
+hypotheses themselves? Are the sciences independent of each other, or
+is their independence only surface appearance? This is the question
+which philosophy asks, and the sciences themselves by their progress
+suggest a positive answer to it.
+
+The knowledge of the world which the sciences are building is not a
+chaotic structure. By their apparently independent efforts, the outer
+kosmos is gradually reproduced in the mind of man, and the temple of
+truth is silently rising. We may not as yet be able to connect wing with
+wing, or to declare definitely the law of the whole. The logical order
+of the hypotheses of the various sciences, the true connection of these
+categories of constructive thought, may yet be uncertain. But, still,
+there _is_ such an order and connection: the whole building has its
+plan, which becomes more and more intelligible as it approaches to its
+completion. Beneath all the differences, there are fundamental
+principles which give to human thought a definite unity of movement and
+direction. There are architectonic conceptions which are guiding, not
+only the different sciences, but all the modes of thought of an age.
+There are intellectual media, "working hypotheses," by means of which
+successive centuries observe all that they see; and these far-reaching
+constructive principles divide the history of mankind into distinct
+stages. In a word, there are dynasties of great ideas, such as the idea
+of development in our own day; and these successively ascend the throne
+of mind, and hold a sway over human thought which is well-nigh absolute.
+
+Now, if this is so, is it certain that all _knowledge_ of these ruling
+conceptions is impossible? In other words, is the attempt to construct a
+philosophy absurd? To say that it is, to deny the possibility of
+catching any glimpse of those regulative ideas, which determine the main
+tendencies of human thought, is to place the supreme directorate of the
+human intelligence in the hands of a necessity which, _for us_, is
+blind. For, an order that is hidden is equivalent to chance, so far as
+knowledge is concerned; and if we believe it to exist, we do so in the
+face of the fact that all we see, and all we _can_ see, is the opposite
+of order, namely lawlessness. Human knowledge, on this view, would be
+subjected to law in its details and compartments, but to disorder as a
+whole. Thinking men would be organized into regiments; but the regiments
+would not constitute an army, nor would there be any unity of movement
+in the attack on the realm of ignorance.
+
+But, such is not the conclusion to which the study of human history
+leads, especially when we observe its movements on a large scale. On the
+contrary, it is found that history falls into great epochs, each of
+which has its own peculiar characteristics. Ages, as well as nations and
+individuals, have features of their own, special and definite modes of
+thinking and acting. The movement of thought in each age has its own
+direction, which is determined by some characteristic and fundamental
+idea, that fulfils for it the part of a working hypothesis in a
+particular science. It is the prerogative of the greatest leaders of
+thought in an age to catch a glimpse of this ruling idea when it first
+makes its appearance; and it is their function, not only to discover it,
+but also to reveal it to others. And, in this way, they are at once the
+exponents of their time, and its prophets. They reveal that which is
+already a latent but active power--"a tendency"; but they reveal it to a
+generation which will see the truth for itself, only after the potency
+which lies in it has manifested itself in national institutions and
+habits of thought and action. _After_ the prophets have left us, we
+believe what they have said; as long as they are with us, they are
+voices crying in the wilderness.
+
+Now, these great ideas, these harmonies of the world of mind, first
+strike upon the ear of the poet. They seem to break into the
+consciousness of man by the way of emotion. They possess the seer; he is
+divinely mad, and he utters words whose meaning passes his own calmer
+comprehension. What we find in Goethe, we find also in a manner in
+Browning: an insight which is also foresight, a dim and partial
+consciousness of the truth about to be, sending its light before it, and
+anticipating all systematic reflection. It is an insight which appears
+to be independent of all method; but it is in nature, though not in
+sweep and expanse, akin to the intuitive leap by which the scientific
+explorer lights upon his new hypothesis. We can find no other law for
+it, than that sensitiveness to the beauty and truth hidden in facts,
+which much reflection on them generates for genius. For these great
+minds the "muddy vesture" is worn thin by thought, and they hear the
+immortal music.
+
+The poet soon passes his glowing torch into the hands of the
+philosopher. After Aeschylus and Sophocles, come Plato and Aristotle.
+The intuitive flash grows into a fixed light, which rules the day. The
+great idea, when reflected upon, becomes a system. When the light of
+such an idea is steadily held on human affairs, it breaks into endless
+forms of beauty and truth. The content of the idea is gradually evolved;
+hypotheses spring out of it, which are accepted as principles, rule the
+mind of an age, and give it its work and its character. In this way,
+Hobbes and Locke laid down, or at least defined, the boundaries within
+which moved the thought of the eighteenth century; and no one acquainted
+with the poetic and philosophic thought of Germany, from Lessing to
+Goethe and from Kant to Hegel, can fail to find therein the source and
+spring of the constitutive principles of our own intellectual, social,
+political, and religious life. The virtues and the vices of the
+aristocracy of the world of mind penetrate downwards. The works of the
+poets and philosophers, so far from being filled with impracticable
+dreams, are repositories of great suggestions which the world adopts for
+its guidance. The poets and philosophers lay no railroads and invent no
+telephones; but they, nevertheless, bring about that attitude towards
+nature, man and God, and generate those moods of the general mind, from
+which issue, not only the scientific, but also the social, political and
+religious forces of the age.
+
+It is mainly on this account that I cannot treat the supreme utterances
+of Browning lightly, or think it an idle task to try to connect them
+into a philosophy of life. In his optimism of love, in his supreme
+confidence in man's destiny and sense of the infinite height of the
+moral horizon of humanity, in his courageous faith in the good, and his
+profound conviction of the evanescence of evil, there lies a vital
+energy whose inspiring power we are yet destined to feel. Until a spirit
+kindred to his own arises, able to push the battle further into the same
+region, much of the practical task of the age that is coming will
+consist in living out in detail the ideas to which he has given
+expression.
+
+I contend, then, not merely for a larger charity, but for a truer view
+of the facts of history than is evinced by those who set aside the poets
+and philosophers as mere dreamers, and conceive that the sciences alone
+occupy the region of valid thought in all its extent. There is a
+universal brotherhood of which all who think are members. Not only do
+they all contribute to man's victory over his environment and himself,
+but they contribute in a manner which is substantially the same. There
+are many points of superficial distinction between the processes of
+philosophy and science, and between both and the method of poetry; but
+the inner movement, if one may so express it, is identical in all. It is
+time to have done with the notion that philosophers occupy a
+transcendent region beyond experience, or spin spiritual cocoons by _a
+priori_ methods, and with the view that scientific men are mere
+empirics, building their structures from below by an _a posteriori_ way
+of thought, without the help of any ruling conceptions. All alike
+endeavour to interpret experience, but none of them get their principles
+from it.
+
+                           "But, friends,
+  Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
+  From outward things, whate'er you may believe."
+
+There is room and need for the higher synthesis of philosophy and
+poetry, as well as for the more palpable and, at the same time, more
+narrow colligating conceptions of the systematic sciences. The
+quantitative relations between material objects, which are investigated
+by mathematics and physics, do not exhaust the realm of the knowable, so
+as to leave no place for the poet's, or the philosopher's view of the
+world. The scientific investigator who, like Mr. Tyndall, so far forgets
+the limitations of his province as to use his natural data as premises
+for religious or irreligious conclusions, is as illogical as the popular
+preacher, who attacks scientific conclusions because they are not
+consistent with his theological presuppositions. Looking only at their
+primary aspects, we cannot say that religious presuppositions and the
+scientific interpretation of facts are either consistent or
+inconsistent: they are simply different. Their harmony or discord can
+come only when the higher principles of philosophy have been fully
+developed, and when the departmental ideas of the various sciences are
+organized into a view of the world as a whole. And this is a task which
+has not as yet been accomplished. The forces from above and below have
+not met. When they do meet, they will assuredly find that they are
+friends, and not foes. For philosophy can articulate its supreme
+conception only by interaction with the sciences; and, on the other
+hand, the progress of science, and the effectiveness of its division of
+labour, are ultimately conditioned by its sensitiveness to the hints,
+given by poets and philosophers, of those wider principles in virtue of
+which the world is conceived as a unity. There are many, indeed, who
+cannot see the wood for the trees, as there are others who cannot see
+the trees for the wood. Carlyle cared nothing though science were able
+to turn a sunbeam on its axis; Ruskin sees little in the advance of
+invention except more slag-hills. And scientific men have not been slow
+to return with interest the scorn of the moralists. But a more
+comprehensive view of the movement of human knowledge will show that
+none labour in vain. For its movement is that of a thing which _grows_!
+and in growth there is always movement towards both unity and
+difference. Science, in pursuing truth into greater and greater detail,
+is constrained by its growing consciousness of the unlimited wealth of
+its material, to divide and isolate its interests more and more; and
+thus, at the same time, the need for the poets and philosophers is
+growing deeper, their task is becoming more difficult of achievement,
+and a greater triumph in so far as it is achieved. Both science and
+philosophy are working towards a more concrete view of the world as an
+articulated whole. If we cannot quite say with Browning that "poets
+never dream," we may yet admit with gratitude that their dreams are an
+inspiration.
+
+  "Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear.
+    Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:
+  But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;
+    The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Abt Vogler_.]
+
+And side by side with the poetry that grasps the truth in immediate
+intuition, there is also the uniting activity of philosophy, which,
+catching up its hints, carries "back our scattered knowledge of the
+facts and laws of nature to the principle upon which they rest; and, on
+the other hand, develops that principle so as to fill all the details of
+knowledge with a significance which they cannot have in themselves, but
+only as seen _sub specie aeternitatis_."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Problem of Philosophy at the Present Time_, by
+Professor Caird.]
+
+So far we have spoken of the function of philosophy in the
+interpretation of the phenomena of the outer world. It bears witness to
+the unity of knowledge, and strives by the constructive criticism of the
+categories of science to render that unity explicit. Its function is, no
+doubt, valid and important, for it is evident that man cannot rest
+content with fragmentary knowledge. But still, it might be objected that
+it is premature at present to endeavour to formulate that unity.
+Physics, chemistry, biology, and the other sciences, while they
+necessarily presuppose the unity of knowledge, and attempt in their own
+way and in their own sphere to discover it, are making very satisfactory
+headway without raising any of the desperate questions of metaphysics as
+to its ultimate nature. For them it is not likely to matter for a long
+time to come whether Optimism or Pessimism, Materialism or Idealism, or
+none of them, be true. In any case the principles they establish are
+valid. Physical relations always remain true; "ginger will be hot i' the
+mouth, and there will be more cakes and ale." It is only when the
+sciences break down beneath the weight of knowledge and prove themselves
+inadequate, that it becomes necessary or advantageous to seek for more
+comprehensive principles. At present is it not better to persevere in
+the way of science, than to be seduced from it by the desire to solve
+ultimate problems, which, however reasonable and pressing, seem to be
+beyond our power to answer?
+
+Such reasonings are not convincing; still, so far as natural science is
+concerned, they seem to indicate that there might be no great harm in
+ignoring, for a time, its dependence on the wider aspects of human
+thought. There is no department of nature so limited, but that it may
+more than satisfy the largest ambition of the individual for knowledge.
+But this attitude of indifference to ultimate questions is liable at any
+moment to be disturbed.
+
+  "Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
+  A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
+  A chorus-ending from Euripides,--
+  And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
+  As old and new at once as nature's self,
+  To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
+  Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
+  Round the ancient idol, on his base again,--
+  The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.
+  There the old misgivings, crooked questions are."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Bishop Blougram's Apology._]
+
+Amongst the facts of our experience which cry most loudly for some kind
+of solution, are those of our own inner life. We are in pressing need of
+a "working hypothesis" wherewith to understand ourselves, as well as of
+a theory which will explain the revolution of the planets, or the
+structure of an oyster. And this self of ours intrudes everywhere. It is
+only by resolutely shutting our eyes, that we can forget the part it
+plays even in the outer world of natural science. So active is it in the
+constitution of things, so dependent is their nature on the nature of
+our knowing faculties, that scientific men themselves admit that their
+surest results are only hypothetical. Their truth depends on laws of
+thought which natural science does not investigate.
+
+But quite apart from this doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, which
+is generally first acknowledged and then ignored, every man, the worst
+and the best alike, is constrained to take some _practical_ attitude
+towards his fellows. Man is never alone with nature, and the connections
+with his fellows which sustain his intelligent life, are liable to bring
+him into trouble, if they are not to some degree understood.
+
+  "There's power in me," said Bishop Blougram, "and will to dominate
+  Which I must exercise, they hurt me else."
+
+The impulse to know is only a phase of the more general impulse to act
+and to be. The specialist's devotion to his science is his answer to a
+demand, springing from his practical need, that he realize himself
+through action. He does not construct his edifice of knowledge, as the
+bird is supposed to build its nest, without any consciousness of an end
+to be attained thereby. Even if, like Lessing, he values the pursuit of
+truth for its own sake, still what stings him into effort is the sense
+that in truth only can he find the means of satisfying and realizing
+himself. Beneath all man's activities, as their very spring and source,
+there lies some dim conception of an end to be attained. This is his
+moral consciousness, which no neglect will utterly suppress. All human
+effort, the effort to know like every other, conceals within it a
+reference to some good, conceived at the time as supreme and complete;
+and this, in turn, contains a theory both of man's self and of the
+universe on which he must impress his image. Every man must have his
+philosophy of life, simply because he must act; though, in many cases,
+that philosophy may be latent and unconscious, or, at least, not a
+definite object of reflection. The most elementary question directed at
+his moral consciousness will at once elicit the universal element. We
+cannot ask whether an action be right or wrong without awakening all the
+echoes of metaphysics. As there is no object on the earth's surface
+whose equilibrium is not fixed by its relation to the earth's centre, so
+the most elementary moral judgment, the simplest choice, the most
+irrational vagaries of a will calling itself free and revelling in its
+supposed lawlessness, are dominated by the conception of a universal
+good. Everything that a man does is an attempt to articulate his view of
+this good, with a particular content. Hence, man as a moral agent is
+always the centre of his own horizon, and stands right beneath the
+zenith. Little as he may be aware of it, his relation between himself
+and his supreme good is direct. And he orders his whole world from his
+point of view, just as he regards East and West as meeting at the spot
+on which he stands. Whether he will or not, he cannot but regard the
+universe of men and objects as the instrument of his purposes. He
+extracts all its interest and meaning from himself. His own shadow falls
+upon it all. If he is selfish, that is, if he interprets the self that
+is in him as vulturous, then the whole outer world and his fellow-men
+fall for him into the category of carrion, or not-carrion. If he knows
+himself as spirit, as the energy of love or reason, if the prime
+necessity he recognizes within himself is the necessity to be good, then
+the universe becomes for him an instrument wherewith moral character is
+evolved. In all cases alike, his life-work is an effort to rob the world
+of its alien character, and to translate it into terms of himself.
+
+We are in the habit of fixing a chasm between a man's deeds and his
+metaphysical, moral, and religious creed; and even of thinking that he
+can get on "in a sufficiently prosperous manner," without any such
+creed. Can we not digest without a theory of peptics, or do justice
+without constructing an ideal state? The truest answer, though it is an
+answer easily misunderstood, is that we cannot. In the sphere of
+morality, at least, action, depends on knowledge: Socrates was right in
+saying that virtuous conduct ignorant of its end is accidental. Man's
+action, so far as it is good or evil, is shot through and through with
+his intelligence. And once we clearly distinguish between belief and
+profession, between the motives which really impel our actions and the
+psychological account of them with which we may deceive ourselves and
+others, we shall be obliged to confess that we always act our creed. A
+man's conduct, just because he is man, is generated by his view of
+himself and his world. He who cheats his neighbour believes in
+tortuosity, and, as Carlyle says, has the Supreme Quack for his God. No
+one ever acted without some dim, though perhaps foolish enough,
+half-belief that the world was at his back; whether he plots good or
+evil he always has God as an accomplice. And this is why character
+cannot be really bettered by any peddling process. Moralists and
+preachers are right in insisting on the need of a new life, that is, of
+a new principle, as the basis of any real improvement; and such a
+principle necessarily carries in it a new attitude towards men, and a
+new interpretation of the moral agent himself and of his world.
+
+Thus, wherever we touch the practical life of man, we are at once
+referred to a metaphysic. His creed is the heart of his character, and
+it beats as a pulse in every action. Hence, when we deal with moral
+life, we _must_ start from the centre. In our intellectual life, it is
+not obviously unreasonable to suppose that there is no need of
+endeavouring to reach upward to a constructive idea, which makes the
+universe one, but when we act, such self-deception is not possible. As a
+moral agent, and a moral agent man always is, he not only may, but must
+have his working hypothesis, and that hypothesis must be all-inclusive.
+As there are natural laws which connect man's physical movements with
+the whole system of nature, so there are spiritual relations which
+connect him with the whole spiritual universe; and spiritual relations
+are always direct.
+
+Now it follows from this, that, whenever we consider man as a moral
+agent, that is, as an agent who converts ideas into actual things, the
+need of a philosophy becomes evident. Instead of condemning ideal
+interpretations of the universe as useless dreams, the foolish products
+of an ambition of thought which refuses to respect the limits of the
+human intellect, we shall understand that philosophers and poets are
+really striving with greater clearness of vision, and in a more
+sustained manner, to perform the task which all men are obliged to
+perform in some way or other. Man subsists as a natural being only on
+condition of comprehending, to some degree, the conditions of his
+natural life, and the laws of his natural environment. From earliest
+youth upwards, he is learning that fire will burn and water drown, and
+that he can play with the elements with safety only within the sphere
+lit up by his intelligence. Nature will not pardon the blunders of
+ignorance, nor tamely submit to every hasty construction. And this truth
+is still more obvious in relation to man's moral life. Here, too, and in
+a pre-eminent degree, conduct waits on intelligence. Deep will only
+answer unto deep; and great characters only come with much meditation on
+the things that are highest. And, on the other hand, the misconstruction
+of life's meaning flings man back upon himself, and makes his action
+nugatory. Byronism was driven "howling home again," says the poet. The
+universe will not be interpreted in terms of sense, nor be treated as
+carrion, as Carlyle said. There is no rest in the "Everlasting No,"
+because it is a wrong view of man and of the world. Or rather, the
+negative is not everlasting; and man is driven onwards by despair,
+through the "Centre of Indifference," till he finds a "Universal Yea"--a
+true view of his relation to the universe.
+
+There is given to men the largest choice to do or to let alone, at every
+step in life. But there is one necessity which they cannot escape,
+because they carry it within them. They absolutely must try to make the
+world their home, find some kind of reconciling idea between themselves
+and the forces amidst which they move, have some kind of working
+hypothesis of life. Nor is it possible to admit that they will find rest
+till they discover a true hypothesis. If they do not seek it by
+reflection--if, in their ardour to penetrate into the secrets of nature,
+they forget themselves; if they allow the supreme facts of their moral
+life to remain in the confusion of tradition, and seek to compromise the
+demands of their spirit by sacrificing to the idols of their childhood's
+faith; if they fortify themselves in the indifference of
+agnosticism,--they must reap the harvest of their irreflection.
+Ignorance is not harmless in matters of character any more than in the
+concerns of our outer life. There are in national and in individual
+history seasons of despair, and that despair, when it is deepest, is
+ever found to be the shadow of moral failure--the result of going out
+into action with a false view of the purpose of human life, and a wrong
+conception of man's destiny. At such times, the people have not
+understood themselves or their environment, and, in consequence, they
+come into collision with their own welfare. There is no experiment so
+dangerous to an age or people, as that of relegating to the common
+ignorance of unreasoning faith the deep concerns of moral conduct; and
+there is no attitude more pitiable than that which leads it to turn a
+deaf ear and the lip of contempt towards those philosophers who carry
+the spirit of scientific inquiry into these higher regions, and
+endeavour to establish for mankind, by the irrefragable processes of
+reason, those principles on which rest all the great elements of man's
+destiny. We cannot act without a theory of life; and to whom shall we
+look for such a theory, except to those who, undaunted by the
+difficulties of the task, ask once more, and strive to answer, those
+problems which man cannot entirely escape, as long as he continues to
+think and act?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+BROWNING'S PLACE IN ENGLISH POETRY.
+
+
+    "But there's a great contrast between him and me. He seems
+    very content with life, and takes much satisfaction in the
+    world. It's a very strange and curious spectacle to behold
+    a man in these days so confidently cheerful." (_Carlyle_.)
+
+It has been said of Carlyle, who may for many reasons be considered as
+our poet's twin figure, that he laid the foundations of his world of
+thought in _Sartor Resartus_, and never enlarged them. His _Orientirung_
+was over before he was forty years old--as is, indeed, the case with
+most men. After that period there was no fundamental change in his view
+of the world; nothing which can be called a new idea disturbed his
+outline sketch of the universe. He lived afterwards only to fill it in,
+showing with ever greater detail the relations of man to man in history,
+and emphasizing with greater grimness the war of good and evil in human
+action. There is evidence, it is true, that the formulae from which he
+more or less consciously set forth, ultimately proved too narrow for
+him, and we find him beating himself in vain against their limitations;
+still, on the whole, Carlyle speculated within the range and influence
+of principles adopted early in life, and never abandoned for higher or
+richer ideas, or substantially changed.
+
+In these respects, there is considerable resemblance between Carlyle and
+Browning. Browning, indeed, fixed his point of view and chose his
+battleground still earlier; and he held it resolutely to his life's
+close. In his _Pauline_ and in his Epilogue to _Asolando_ we catch the
+triumphant tone of a single idea, which, during all the long interval,
+had never sunk into silence. Like
+
+  "The wise thrush, he sings each song twice over,
+  Lest you should think he never could recapture
+  The first fine careless rapture!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Home Thoughts from Abroad_.]
+
+Moreover, these two poets, if I may be permitted to call Carlyle a poet,
+taught the same truth. They were both witnesses to the presence of God
+in the spirit of man, and looked at this life in the light of another
+and a higher; or rather, they penetrated through the husk of time and
+saw that eternity is even here, a tranquil element underlying the noisy
+antagonisms of man's earthly life. Both of them, like Plato's
+philosopher, made their home in the sunlight of ideal truth: they were
+not denizens of the cave taking the things of sense for those of
+thought, shadows for realities, echoes for the voices of men.
+
+But, while Carlyle fought his way into this region, Browning found
+himself in it from the first; while Carlyle bought his freedom with a
+great sum, the poet "was free born." Carlyle saw the old world faith
+break up around him, and its fragments never ceased to embarrass his
+path. He was _at_ the point of transition, present at the collision of
+the old and new, and in the midst of the confusion. He, more than any
+other English writer, was the instrument of the change from the Deism of
+the eighteenth century and the despair which followed it, into the
+larger faith of our own. But, for Browning, there was a new heaven and a
+new earth, and old things had passed away. This notable contrast between
+the two men, arising at once from their disposition and their moral
+environment, had far-reaching effects on their lives and their writings.
+But their affinity was deeper than the difference, for they are
+essentially heirs and exponents of the same movement in English thought.
+
+The main characteristic of that movement is that it is both moral and
+religious, a devotion to God and the active service of man, a
+recognition at once of the rights of nature and of spirit. It does not,
+on the one hand, raise the individual as a natural being to the throne
+of the universe, and make all forces social, political, and spiritual
+stoop to his rights; nor does it, on the other hand, deny these rights,
+or make the individual a mere instrument of society. It at least
+attempts to reconcile the fundamental facts of human nature, without
+compromising any of them. It cannot be called either individualistic or
+socialistic; but it strives to be both at once, so that both man and
+society mean more to this age than they ever did before. The narrow
+formulae that cramped the thought of the period which preceded ours have
+been broken through. No one can pass from the hedonists and
+individualists to Carlyle and Browning without feeling that these two
+men are representatives of new forces in politics, in religion, and in
+literature,--forces which will undoubtedly effect momentous changes
+before they are caught again and fixed in creeds.
+
+That a new epoch in English thought was veritably opened by them is
+indicated by the surprise and bewilderment they occasioned at their
+first appearance. Carlyle had Emerson to break his loneliness and
+Browning had Rossetti; but, to most other men at that day, _Sartor_ and
+_Pauline_ were all but unintelligible. The general English reader could
+make little of the strange figures that had broken into the realm of
+literature; and the value and significance of their work, as well as its
+originality, will be recognized better by ourselves if we take a hurried
+glance at the times which lay behind them. Its main worth will be found
+to lie in the fact that they strove to bring together again certain
+fundamental elements, on which the moral life of man must always rest,
+and which had fallen asunder in the ages which preceded their own.
+
+The whole-hearted, instinctive life of the Elizabethan age was narrowed
+and deepened into the severe one-sidedness of Puritanism, which cast on
+the bright earth the sombre shadow of a life to come. England was given
+up for a time to a magnificent half-truth. It did not
+
+    "Wait
+  The slow and sober uprise all around
+  O' the building,"
+
+but
+
+    "Ran up right to roof
+  A sudden marvel, piece of perfectness."[A]
+
+[Footnote A:_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
+
+After Puritanism came Charles the Second and the rights of the flesh,
+which rights were gradually clarified, till they contradicted themselves
+in the benevolent self-seeking of altruistic hedonism. David Hume led
+the world out of the shadow of eternity, and showed that it was only an
+object of the five senses; or of six, if we add that of "hunger." The
+divine element was explained away, and the proper study of mankind was,
+not man, as that age thought, but man reduced to his beggarly
+elements--a being animated solely by the sensuous springs of pleasure
+and pain, which should properly, as Carlyle thought, go on all fours,
+and not lay claim to the dignity of being moral. All things were reduced
+to what they seemed, robbed of their suggestiveness, changed into
+definite, sharp-edged, mutually exclusive particulars. The world was an
+aggregate of isolated facts, or, at the best, a mechanism into which
+particulars were fitted by force; and society was a gathering of mere
+individuals, repelling each other by their needs and greed, with a ring
+of natural necessity to bind them together. It was a fit time for
+political economy to supplant ethics. There was nowhere an ideal which
+could lift man above his natural self, and teach him, by losing it, to
+find a higher life. And, as a necessary consequence, religion gave way
+to naturalism and poetry to prose.
+
+After this age of prose came our own day. The new light first flushed
+the modern world in the writings of the philosopher-poets of Germany:
+Kant and Lessing, Fichte and Schiller, Goethe and Hegel. They brought
+about the Copernican change. For them this world of the five senses, of
+space and time and natural cause, instead of being the fixed centre
+around which all things revolved, was explicable only in its relation to
+a system which was spiritual; and man found his meaning in his
+connection with society, the life of which stretched endlessly far back
+into the past and forward into the future. Psychology gave way to
+metaphysics. The universal element in the thought of man was revealed.
+Instead of mechanism there was life. A new spirit of poetry and
+philosophy brought God back into the world, revealed his incarnation in
+the mind of man, and changed nature into a pellucid garment within which
+throbbed the love divine. The antagonism of hard alternatives was at an
+end; the universe was spirit-woven and every smallest object was "filled
+full of magical music, as they freight a star with light." There were no
+longer two worlds, but one; for "the other" world penetrated this, and
+was revealed in it: thought and sense, spirit and nature, were
+reconciled. These thinkers made room for man, as against the Puritans,
+and for God, as against their successors. Instead of the hopeless
+struggle of ascetic morality, which divides man against himself, they
+awakened him to that sense of his reconciliation with his ideal which
+religion gives: "Psyche drinks its stream and forgets her sorrows."
+
+Now, this is just the soil where art blooms. For what is beauty but the
+harmony of thought and sense, a universal meaning caught and tamed in
+the particular? To the poet each little flower that blooms has endless
+worth, and is regarded as perfect and complete; for he sees that the
+spirit of the whole dwells in it. It whispers to him the mystery of the
+infinite; it is a pulse in which beats the universal heart. The true
+poet finds God everywhere; for the ideal is actual wherever beauty
+dwells. And there is the closest affinity between art and religion, as
+its history proves, from Job and Isaiah, Homer and Aeschylus, to our own
+poet; for both art and religion lift us, each in its own way, above
+one-sidedness and limitation, to the region of the universal. The one
+draws God to man, brings perfection _here_, and reaches its highest form
+in the joyous life of Greece, where the natural world was clothed with
+almost supernatural beauty; the other lifts man to God, and finds this
+life good because it reflects and suggests the greater life that is to
+be. Both poetry and religion are a reconciliation and a satisfaction;
+both lift man above the contradictions of limited existence, and place
+him in the region of peace--where,
+
+    "with an eye made quiet by the power
+  Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
+  He sees into the life of things."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Tintern Abbey._]
+
+In this sense, it will be always true of the poet, as it is of the
+religious man, that
+
+    "the world,
+  The beauty and the wonder and the power,
+  The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades,
+  Changes, surprises,"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fra Lippo Lippi_.]
+
+lead him back to God, who made it all.
+
+He is essentially a witness to the divine element in the world.
+
+It is the rediscovery of this divine element, after its expulsion by the
+age of Deism and doubt, that has given to this century its poetic
+grandeur. Unless we regard Burke as the herald of the new era, we may
+say that England first felt the breath of the returning spirit in the
+poems of Shelley and Wordsworth.
+
+  "The One remains, the many change and pass;
+    Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly;
+  Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
+    Stains the white radiance of eternity,
+    Until death tramples it to fragments."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Adonais_.]
+
+"And I have felt," says Wordsworth,
+
+  "A presence that disturbs me with the joy
+  Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
+  Of something far more deeply interfused,
+  Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
+  And the round ocean and the living air,
+  And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
+  A motion and a spirit, that impels
+  All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
+  And rolls through all things."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Tintern Abbey_.]
+
+Such notes as these could not be struck by Pope, nor be understood by
+the age of prose. Still they are only the prelude of the fuller song of
+Browning. Whether he be a greater poet than these or not,--a question
+whose answer can benefit nothing, for each poet has his own worth, and
+reflects by his own facet the universal truth--his poetry contains in it
+larger elements, and the promise of a deeper harmony from the harsher
+discords of his more stubborn material. Even where their spheres touch,
+Browning held by the artistic truth in a different manner. To Shelley,
+perhaps the most intensely spiritual of all our poets,
+
+  "That light whose smile kindles the universe,
+  That beauty in which all things work and move,"
+
+was an impassioned sentiment, a glorious intoxication; to Browning it
+was a conviction, reasoned and willed, possessing the whole man, and
+held in the sober moments when the heart is silent. "The heavy and the
+weary weight of all this unintelligible world" was lightened for
+Wordsworth, only when he was far from the haunts of men, and free from
+the "dreary intercourse of daily life"; but Browning weaved his song of
+hope right amidst the wail and woe of man's sin and wretchedness. For
+Wordsworth "sensations sweet, felt in the blood and felt along the
+heart, passed into his purer mind with tranquil restoration," and issued
+"in a serene and blessed mood"; but Browning's poetry is not merely the
+poetry of the emotions however sublimated. He starts with the hard
+repellent fact, crushes by sheer force of thought its stubborn rind,
+presses into it, and brings forth the truth at its heart. The greatness
+of Browning's poetry is in its perceptive grip: and in nothing is he
+more original than in the manner in which he takes up his task, and
+assumes his artistic function. In his postponement of feeling to thought
+we recognize a new poetic method, the significance of which we cannot
+estimate as yet. But, although we may fail to apprehend the meaning of
+the new method he employs, we cannot fail to perceive the fact, which is
+not less striking, that the region from which he quarries his material
+is new.
+
+And yet he does not break away abruptly from his predecessors. His
+kinship with them, in that he recognizes the presence of God in nature,
+is everywhere evident. We quote one passage, scarcely to be surpassed by
+any of our poets, as indicative of his power of dealing with the
+supernaturalism of nature.
+
+  "The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,
+  And the earth changes like a human face;
+  The molten ore burst up among the rocks,
+  Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright
+  In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds,
+  Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask--
+  God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged
+  With foam, white as the bitter lip of hate,
+  When, in the solitary waste, strange groups
+  Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like,
+  Staring together with their eyes on flame--
+  God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride.
+  Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod:
+  But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes
+  Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure
+  Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between
+  The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost,
+  Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark
+  Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;
+  Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls
+  Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe
+  Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek
+  Their loves in wood and plain--and God renews
+  His ancient rapture. Thus 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]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus._]
+
+Such passages as these contain neither the rapt, reflective calm of
+Wordsworth's solemn tones, nor the ethereal intoxication of Shelley's
+spirit-music; but there is in them the same consciousness of the
+infinite meaning of natural facts. And beyond this, there is also, in
+the closing lines, a hint of a new region for art. Shelley and
+Wordsworth were the poets of Nature, as all truly say; Browning was the
+poet of the human soul. For Shelley, the beauty in which all things work
+and move was well-nigh "quenched by the eclipsing curse of the birth of
+man"; and Wordsworth lived beneath the habitual sway of fountains,
+meadows, hills and groves, while he kept grave watch o'er man's
+mortality, and saw the shades of the prison-house gather round him. From
+the life of man they garnered nought but mad indignation, or mellowed
+sadness. It was a foolish and furious strife with unknown powers fought
+in the dark, from which the poet kept aloof, for he could not see that
+God dwelt amidst the chaos. But Browning found "harmony in immortal
+souls, spite of the muddy vesture of decay." He found nature crowned in
+man, though man was mean and miserable. At the heart of the most
+wretched abortion of wickedness there was the mark of the loving touch
+of God. Shelley turned away from man; Wordsworth paid him rare visits,
+like those of a being from a strange world, made wise and sad with
+looking at him from afar; Browning dwelt with him. He was a comrade in
+the fight, and ever in the van of man's endeavour bidding him be of good
+cheer. He was a witness for God in the midmost dark, where meet in
+deathless struggle the elemental powers of right and wrong. For God is
+present for him, not only in the order and beauty of nature, but in the
+world of will and thought. Beneath the caprice and wilful lawlessness of
+individual action, he saw a beneficent purpose which cannot fail, but
+"has its way with man, not he with it."
+
+Now this was a new world for poetry to enter into; a new depth to
+penetrate with hope; and Browning was the first of modern poets to
+
+                              "Stoop
+  Into the vast and unexplored abyss,
+                 Strenuously beating
+  The silent boundless regions of the sky."
+
+It is also a new world for religion and morality; and to understand it
+demands a deeper insight into the fundamental elements of human life.
+
+To show this in a proximately adequate manner, we should be obliged, as
+already hinted, to connect the poet's work, not merely with that of his
+English predecessors, but with the deeper and more comprehensive
+movement of the thought of Germany since the time of Kant. It would be
+necessary to indicate how, by breaking a way through the narrow creeds
+and equally narrow scepticism of the previous age, the new spirit
+extended the horizon of man's active and contemplative life, and made
+him free of the universe, and the repository of the past conquests of
+his race. It proposed to man the great task of solving the problem of
+humanity, but it strengthened him with its past achievement, and
+inspired him with the conviction of its boundless progress. It is not
+that the significance of the individual or the meaning of his endeavour
+is lost. Under this new view, man has still to fight for his own hand,
+and it is still recognized that spirit is always burdened with its own
+fate and cannot share its responsibility. Morality does not give way to
+religion or pass into it, and there is a sense in which the individual
+is always alone in the sphere of duty.
+
+But from this new point of view the individual is re-explained for us,
+and we begin to understand that he is the focus of a light which is
+universal, "one more incarnation of the mind of God." His moral task is
+no longer to seek his own in the old sense, but to elevate humanity; for
+it is only by taking this circuit that he can come to his own. Such a
+task as this is a sufficiently great one to occupy all time; but it is
+to humanity in him that the task belongs, and it will therefore be
+achieved. This is no new one-sidedness. It does not mean, to those who
+comprehend it, the supplanting of the individual thought by the
+collective thought, or the substitution of humanity for man. The
+universal is _in_ the particular, the fact _is_ the law. There is no
+collision between the whole and the part, for the whole lives in the
+part. As each individual plant has its own life and beauty and worth,
+although the universe has conspired to bring it into being; so also, and
+in a far higher degree, man has his own duty and his own dignity,
+although he is but the embodiment of forces, natural and spiritual,
+which have come from the endless past. Like a letter in a word, or a
+word in a sentence, he gets his meaning from his context; _but the
+sentence is meaningless without him_. "Rays from all round converge in
+him," and he has no power except that which has been lent to him; but
+all the same, nay, all the more, he must
+
+  "Think as if man never thought before!
+  Act as if all creation hung attent
+  On the acting of such faculty as his."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
+
+His responsibility, his individuality, is not less, but greater, in that
+he can, in his thought and moral action, command the forces that the
+race has stored for him. The great man speaks the thought of his people,
+and his invocations as their priest are just the expression of their
+dumb yearnings. And even the mean and insignificant man is what he is,
+in virtue of the humanity which is blurred and distorted within him; and
+he can shed his insignificance and meanness, only by becoming a truer
+vehicle for that humanity.
+
+Thus, when spirit is spiritually discerned, it is seen that man is bound
+to man in a union closer than any physical organism can show; while "the
+individual," in the old sense of a being _opposed_ to society and
+_opposed_ to the world, is found to be a fiction of abstract thought,
+not discoverable anywhere, because not real. And, on the other hand,
+society is no longer "collective," but so organic that the whole is
+potentially in every part--an organism _of_ organisms.
+
+The influence of this organic idea in every department of thought which
+concerns itself with man is not to be measured. It is already fast
+changing all the practical sciences of man--economics, politics, ethics
+and religion. The material, being newly interpreted, is wrought into a
+new purpose, and revelation is once more bringing about a reformation.
+But human action in its ethical aspect is, above all, charged with a new
+significance. The idea of duty has received an expansion almost
+illimitable, and man himself has thereby attained new worth and
+dignity--for what is duty except a dignity and opportunity, man's chance
+of being good? When we contrast this view of the life of man as the life
+of humanity in him, with the old individualism, we may say that morality
+also has at last, in Bacon's phrase, passed from the narrow seas into
+the open ocean. And after all, the greatest achievement of our age may
+be not that it has established the sciences of nature, but that it has
+made possible the science of man. We have, at length, reached a point of
+view from which we may hope to understand ourselves. Law, order,
+continuity, in human action--the essential pre-conditions of a moral
+science--were beyond the reach of an individualistic theory. It left to
+ethical writers no choice but that of either sacrificing man to law, or
+law to man; of denying either the particular or the universal element in
+his nature. Naturalism did the first. Intuitionism, the second. The
+former made human action the _re_action of a natural agent on the
+incitement of natural forces. It made man a mere object, a _thing_
+capable of being affected by other things through his faculty of being
+pained or pleased; an object acting in obedience to motives that had an
+external origin, just like any other object. The latter theory cut man
+free from the world and his fellows, endowed him with a will that had no
+law, and a conscience that was dogmatic; and thereby succeeded in
+stultifying both law and morality.
+
+But this new consciousness of the relation of man to mankind and the
+world takes him out of his isolation and still leaves him free. It
+relates men to one another in a humanity, which is incarnated anew in
+each of them. It elevates the individual above the distinctions of time;
+it treasures up the past in him as the active energy of his knowledge
+and morality in the present, and also as the potency of the ideal life
+of the future. On this view, the individual and the race are possible
+only through each other.
+
+This fundamental change in our way of looking at the life of man is
+bound to abolish the ancient landmarks and bring confusion for a time.
+Out of the new conception, _i.e.,_ out of the idea of evolution, has
+sprung the tumult as well as the strength of our time. The present age
+is moved with thoughts beyond the reach of its powers: great aspirations
+for the well-being of the people and high ideals of social welfare flash
+across its mind, to be followed again by thicker darkness. There is
+hardly any limit to its despair or hope. It has a far larger faith in
+the destiny of man than any of its predecessors, and yet it is _sure_ of
+hardly anything--except that the ancient rules of human life are false.
+Individualism is now detected as scepticism and moral chaos in disguise.
+We know that the old methods are no longer of use. We cannot now cut
+ourselves free of the fate of others. The confused cries for help that
+are heard on every hand are recognized as the voices of our brethren;
+and we now know that our fate is involved in theirs, and that the
+problem of their welfare is also ours. We grapple with social questions
+at last, and recognize that the issues of life and death lie in the
+solution of these enigmas. Legislators and economists, teachers of
+religion and socialists, are all alike social reformers. Philanthropy
+has taken a deeper meaning; and all sects bear its banner. But their
+forces are beaten back by the social wretchedness, for they have not
+found the sovereign remedy of a great idea; and the result is in many
+ways sad enough. Our social remedies often work mischief; for we degrade
+those whom we would elevate, and in our charity forget justice. We
+insist on the rights of the people and the duties of the privileged
+classes, and thereby tend to teach greed to those for whom we labour,
+and goodness to those whom we condemn. The task that lies before us is
+plain: we want the welfare of the people as a whole. But we fail to
+grasp the complex social elements together, and our very remedies tend
+to sunder them. We know that the public good will not be obtained by
+separating man from man, securing each unit in a charmed circle of
+personal rights, and protecting it from others by isolation. We must
+find a place for the individual within the social organism, and we know
+now that this organism has not, as our fathers seemed to think, the
+simple constitution of a wooden doll. Society is not put together
+mechanically, and the individual cannot be outwardly attached to it, if
+he is to be helped, He must rather share its life, be the heir of the
+wealth it has garnered for him in the past, and participate in its
+onward movement. Between this new social ideal and our attainment,
+between the magnitude of our social duties and the resources of
+intellect and will at our command, there lies a chasm which we despair
+of bridging over.
+
+The characteristics of this epoch faithfully reflect themselves in the
+pages of Carlyle, with whose thoughts those of Browning are immediately
+connected. It was Carlyle who first effectively revealed to England the
+continuity of human life, and the magnitude of the issues of individual
+action. Seeing the infinite in the finite, living under a continued
+sense of the mystery that surrounds man, he flung explosive negations
+amidst the narrow formulae of the social and religious orthodoxy of his
+day, blew down the blinding walls of ethical individualism, and, amidst
+much smoke and din, showed his English readers something of the
+greatness of the moral world. He gave us a philosophy of clothes,
+penetrated through symbols to the immortal ideas, condemned all
+shibboleths, and revealed the soul of humanity behind the external modes
+of man's activity. He showed us, in a word, that the world is spiritual,
+that loyalty to duty is the foundation of all human good, and that
+national welfare rests on character. After reading him, it is impossible
+for any one who reflects on the nature of duty to ask, "Am I my
+brother's keeper?" He not only imagined, but knew, how "all things the
+minutest that man does, minutely influence all men, and the very look of
+his face blesses or curses whom-so it lights on, and so generates ever
+new blessing or new cursing. I say, there is not a Red Indian, hunting
+by Lake Winnipeg, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must
+smart for it: will not the price of beaver rise? It is a mathematical
+fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of
+gravity of the universe." Carlyle dealt the deathblow to the
+"laissez-faire" theory rampant in his day, and made each individual
+responsible for the race. He has demonstrated that the sphere of duty
+does not terminate with ourselves and our next-door neighbours. There
+will be no pure air for the correctest Levite to breathe, till the laws
+of sanitation have been applied to the moral slums. "Ye are my
+brethren," said he, and he adds, as if conscious of his too denunciatory
+way of dealing with them, "hence my rage and sorrow."
+
+But his consciousness of brotherhood with all men brought only despair
+for him. He saw clearly the responsibility of man, but not the dignity
+which that implies; he felt the weight of the burden of humanity upon
+his own soul, and it crushed him, for he forgot that all the good of the
+world was there to help him bear it, and that "One with God is a
+majority." He taught only the half-truth, that all men are united on the
+side of duty, and that the spiritual life of each is conditional on
+striving to save all. But he neglected the complement of this truth, and
+forgot the greatness of the beings on whom so great a duty could be
+laid. He therefore dignifies humanity only to degrade it again. The
+"twenty millions" each must try to save "are mostly fools." But how
+fools, when they can have such a task? Is it not true, on the contrary,
+that no man ever saw a duty beyond his strength, and that "man can
+because he ought" and ought only because he can? The evils an individual
+cannot overcome are the moral opportunities of his fellows. The good are
+not lone workers of God's purposes, and there is no need of despair.
+Carlyle, like the ancient prophet, was too conscious of his own mission,
+and too forgetful of that of others. "I have been very jealous for the
+Lord God of hosts; because the children of Israel have forgotten Thy
+covenant, thrown down Thine alters, and slain Thy prophets, and I, even
+I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away." He needed,
+beside the consciousness of his prophetic function, a consciousness of
+brotherhood with humbler workers. "Yet I have left Me seven thousand in
+Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth
+which hath not kissed him." It would have helped him had he remembered,
+that there were on all sides other workers engaged on the temple not
+made with hands, although he could not hear the sound of their hammers
+for the din he made himself. It would have changed his despair into joy,
+and his pity into a higher moral quality, had he been able to believe
+that, amidst all the millions against whom he hurled his anathemas,
+there is no one who, let him do what he will, is not constrained to
+illustrate either the folly and wretchedness of sin, or the glory of
+goodness. It is not given to any one, least of all to the wicked, to
+hold back the onward movement of the race, or to destroy the impulse for
+good which is planted within it.
+
+But Carlyle saw only one side of the truth about man's moral nature and
+destiny. He knew, as the ancient prophets did, that evil is potential
+wreck; and he taxed the power of metaphor to the utmost to indicate, how
+wrong gradually takes root, and ripens into putrescence and
+self-combustion, in obedience to a necessity which is absolute. That
+morality is the essence of things, that wrong _must_ prove its
+weakness, that right is the only might, is reiterated and illustrated on
+all his pages; they are now commonplaces of speculation on matters of
+history, if not conscious practical principles which guide its makers.
+But Carlyle never inquired into the character of this moral necessity,
+and he overlooked the beneficence which places death at the heart of
+sin. He never saw wrong except on its way to execution, or in the death
+throes; but he did not look in the face of the gentle power that led it
+on to death. He saw the necessity which rules history, but not the
+beneficent character of that necessity.
+
+The same limitations marred his view of duty, which was his greatest
+revelation to his age. He felt its categorical authority and its binding
+force. But the power which imposed the duty was an alien power, awful in
+majesty, infinite in might, a "great task-master"; and the duty itself
+was an outer law, written in letters of flame across the high heavens,
+in comparison with which man's action at its best sank into failure. His
+only virtue is obedience, and his last rendering even of himself is
+"unprofitable servant." In this he has much of the combined strength and
+weakness of the old Scottish Calvinism. "He stands between the
+individual and the Infinite without hope or guide. He has a constant
+disposition to crush the human being by comparing him with God," said
+Mazzini, with marvellous penetration. "From his lips, at times so
+daring, we seem to hear every instant the cry of the Breton Mariner--'My
+God protect me! My bark is so small, and Thy ocean so vast.'" His
+reconciliation of God and man was incomplete: God seemed to him to have
+manifested Himself _to_ man but not _in_ man. He did not see that "the
+Eternity which is before and behind us is also within us."
+
+But the moral law which commands is just the reflection of the
+aspirations of progressive man, who always creates his own horizon. The
+extension of duty is the objective counterpart of man's growth; a proof
+of victory and not of failure, a sign that man is mounting upwards. And,
+if so, it is irrational to infer the impossibility of success from the
+magnitude of the demands of a moral law, which is itself the promise of
+a better future. The hard problems set for us by our social environment
+are recognized as set by ourselves; for, in matters of morality, the eye
+sees only what the heart prompts. The very statement of the difficulty
+contains the potency of its solution; for evil, when understood, is on
+the way towards being overcome, and the good, when seen, contains the
+promise of its own fulfilment. It is ignorance which is ruinous, as when
+the cries of humanity beat against a deaf ear; and we can take a
+comfort, denied to Carlyle, from the fact that he has made us awake to
+our social duties. He has let loose the confusion upon us, and it is
+only natural that we should at first be overcome by a sense of
+bewildered helplessness. But this very sense contains the germ of hope,
+and England is struggling to its feet to wrestle with its wrongs.
+Carlyle has brought us within sight of our future, and we are now taking
+a step into it. He has been our guide in the wilderness; but he died
+there, and was denied the view from Pisgah.
+
+Now, this view was given to Robert Browning, and he broke out into a
+song of victory, whose strains will give strength and comfort to many in
+the coming time. That his solution of the evils of life is not final,
+may at once be admitted. There are elements in the problem of which he
+has taken no account, and which will force those who seek light on the
+deeper mysteries of man's moral nature, to go beyond anything that the
+poet has to say. Even the poet himself grows, at least in some
+directions, less confident of the completeness of his triumph as he
+grows older. His faith in the good does not fail, but it is the faith of
+one who confesses to ignorance, and links himself to his finitude.
+Still, so thorough is his conviction of the moral purpose of life, of
+the certainty of the good towards which man is moving, and of the
+beneficence of the power which is at work everywhere in the world, that
+many of his poems ring like the triumphant songs of Luther.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+BROWNING'S OPTIMISM.
+
+
+  "Gladness be with thee, Helper of the World!
+  I think this is the authentic sign and seal
+  Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad,
+  And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts
+  Into a rage to suffer for mankind,
+  And recommence at sorrow."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Balaustion's Adventure_.]
+
+I have tried to show that one of the distinctive features of the present
+era is the stress it lays on the worth of the moral life of man, and the
+new significance it has given to that life by its view of the continuity
+of history. This view finds expression, on its social and ethical side,
+in the pages of Carlyle and Browning: both of whom are interested
+exclusively, one may almost say, in the evolution of human character;
+and both of whom, too, regard that evolution as the realization by man
+of the purposes, greater than man's, which rule in the world. And,
+although neither of them developed the organic view of humanity, which
+is implied in their doctrines, into an explicit philosophy, still the
+moral life of the individual is for each of them the infinite life in
+the finite. The meaning of the universe is moral, its last might is
+rightness; and the task of man is to catch up that meaning, convert it
+into his own motive, and thereby make it the source of his actions, the
+inmost principle of his life. This, fully grasped, will bring the finite
+and the infinite, morality and religion, together, and reconcile them.
+
+But the reconciliation which Carlyle sought to effect was incomplete on
+every side--even within the sphere of duty, with which alone, as
+moralist, he specially concerned himself. The moral law was imposed upon
+man by a higher power, in the presence of whom man was awed and crushed;
+for that power had stinted man's endowment, and set him to fight a
+hopeless battle against endless evil. God was everywhere around man, and
+the universe was just the expression of His will--a will inexorably bent
+on the good, so that evil could not prevail; but God was not _within_
+man, except as a voice of conscience issuing imperatives and threats. An
+infinite duty was laid upon a finite being, and its weight made him
+break out into a cry of despair.
+
+Browning, however, not only sought to bring about the reconciliation,
+but succeeded, in so far as that is possible _in terms of mere feeling_.
+His poetry contains suggestions that the moral will without is also a
+force within man; that the power which makes for righteousness in the
+world has penetrated into, or rather manifests itself _as_, man.
+Intelligence and will, the reason which apprehends the nature of things,
+and the original impulse of self-conscious life which issues in action,
+are God's power in man; so that God is realizing Himself in the deeds of
+man, and human history is just His return to Himself. Outer law and
+inner motive are, for the poet, manifestations of the same beneficent
+purpose; and instead of duty in the sense of an autocratic imperative,
+or beneficent tyranny, he finds, deep beneath man's foolishness and sin,
+a constant tendency towards the good which is bound up with the very
+nature of man's reason and will. If man could only understand himself he
+would find without him no limiting necessity, but the manifestation of a
+law which is one with his own essential being. A beneficent power has
+loaded the dice, according to the epigram, so that the chances of
+failure and victory are not even; for man's nature is itself a divine
+endowment, one with the power that rules his life, and man must finally
+reach through error to truth, and through sin to holiness. In the
+language of theology, it may be said that the moral process is the
+spiritual incarnation of God; it is God's goodness as love, effecting
+itself in human action. Hence Carlyle's cry of despair is turned by
+Browning into a song of victory. While the former regards the struggle
+between good and evil as a fixed battle, in which the forces are
+immovably interlocked, the latter has the consciousness of battling
+against a retreating foe; and the conviction of coming triumph gives
+joyous vigour to every stroke. Browning lifted morality into an
+optimism, and translated its battle into song. This was the distinctive
+mark and mission which give to him such power of moral inspiration.
+
+In order, however, to estimate the value of this feature of the poet's
+work, it is necessary to look more closely into the character of his
+faith in the good. Merely to attribute to him an optimistic creed is to
+say very little; for the worth, or worthlessness, of such a creed
+depends upon its content--upon its fidelity to the facts of human life,
+the clearness of its consciousness of the evils it confronts, and the
+intensity of its realism.
+
+There is a sense, and that a true one, in which it may be said that all
+men are optimists; for such a faith is implied in every conscious and
+deliberate action of man. There is no deed which is not an attempt to
+realize an ideal; whenever man acts he seeks a good, however ruinously
+he may misunderstand its nature. Final and absolute disbelief in an
+ultimate good in the sphere of morals, like absolute scepticism in the
+sphere of knowledge, is a disguised self-contradiction, and therefore an
+impossibility in fact. The one stultifies action, and asserts an effect
+without any cause, or even contrary to the cause; the other stultifies
+intellectual activity: and both views imply that the critic has so
+escaped the conditions of human life, as to be able to pass a
+condemnatory judgment upon them. The belief that a harmonious relation
+between the self-conscious agent and the supreme good is possible,
+underlies the practical activity of man; just as the belief in the unity
+of thought and being underlies his intellectual activity. A moral
+order--that is, an order of rational ends--is postulated in all human
+actions, and we act at all only in virtue of it,--just as truly as we
+move and work only in virtue of the forces which make the spheres
+revolve, or think by help of the meaning which presses upon us from the
+thought-woven world, through all the pores of sense. A true ethics, like
+a true psychology, or a true science of nature, must lean upon
+metaphysics, and it cannot pretend to start _ab initio_. We live in the
+Copernican age, which puts the individual in a system, in obedience to
+whose laws he finds his welfare. And this is simply the assertion of an
+optimistic creed, for it implies a harmonious world.
+
+But, though this is true, it must be remembered that this faith is a
+prophetic anticipation, rather than acquired knowledge. We are only on
+the way towards reconstructing in thought the fact which we are, or
+towards bringing into clear knowledge the elemental power which
+manifests itself within us as thought, desire, and deed. And, until this
+is achieved, we have no full right to an optimistic creed. The
+revelation of the unity which pervades all things, even in the natural
+world, will be the last attainment of science; and the reconciliation of
+nature and man and God is still further in the future, and will be the
+last triumph of philosophy. During all the interval the world will be a
+scene of warring elements; and poetry, religion, and philosophy can only
+hold forth a promise, and give to man a foretaste of ultimate victory.
+And in this state of things even _their_ assurance often falters. Faith
+lapses into doubt, poetry becomes a wail for a lost god, and its votary
+exhibits, "through Europe to the AEtolian shore, the pageant of his
+bleeding heart." The optimistic faith is, as a rule, only a hope and a
+desire, a "Grand Perhaps," which knows no defence against the critical
+understanding, and sinks dumb when questioned. If, in the form of a
+religious conviction, its assurance is more confident, then, too often,
+it rests upon the treacherous foundations of authoritative ignorance,
+which crumble into dust beneath the blows of awakened and liberated
+reason. Nay, if by the aid of philosophy we turn our optimism into a
+faith held by reason, a fact before which the intellect, as well as the
+heart, worships and grows glad, it still is for most of us only a
+general hypothesis, a mere leap to God which spurns the intermediate
+steps, a universal without content, a bare form that lacks reality.
+
+Such an optimism, such a plunge into the pure blue and away from facts,
+was Emerson's. Caroline Fox tells a story of him and Carlyle which
+reveals this very pointedly. It seems that Carlyle once led the serene
+philosopher through the abominations of the streets of London at
+midnight, asking him with grim humour at every few steps, "Do you
+believe in the devil _now_?" Emerson replied that the more he saw of the
+English people the greater and better he thought them. This little
+incident lays bare the limits of both these great men. Where the one
+saw, the other was blind. To the one there was the misery and the
+universal mirk; to the other, the pure white beam was scarcely broken.
+Carlyle believed in the good, beyond all doubt: he fought his great
+battle in its strength and won, but "he was sorely wounded." Emerson was
+Sir Galahad, blind to all but the Holy Grail, his armour spotless-white,
+his virtue cloistered and unbreathed, his race won without the dust and
+heat. But his optimism was too easy to be satisfactory. His victory was
+not won in the enemy's citadel, where sin sits throned amidst the chaos,
+but in the placid upper air of poetic imagination. And, in consequence,
+Emerson can only convince the converted; and his song is not heard in
+the dark, nor does it cheer the wayfarer on the muddy highway, along
+which burthened humanity meanly toils.
+
+But Browning's optimism is more earnest and real than any pious hope, or
+dogmatic belief, or benevolent theory held by a placid philosopher,
+protected against contact with the sins and sorrows of man as by an
+invisible garment of contemplative holiness. It is a conviction which
+has sustained shocks of criticism and the test of facts; and it
+therefore, both for the poet and his readers, fulfils a mission beyond
+the reach of any easy trust in a mystic good. Its power will be felt and
+its value recognized by those who have themselves confronted the
+contradictions of human life and known their depths.
+
+No lover of Browning's poetry can miss the vigorous manliness of the
+poet's own bearing, or fail to recognize the strength that flows from
+his joyous, fearless personality, and the might of his intellect and
+heart. "When British literature," said Carlyle of Scott and Cobbett,
+"lay all puking and sprawling in Wertherism, Byronism and other
+Sentimentalisms, nature was kind enough to send us two healthy men." And
+he breaks out into a eulogy of mere health, of "the just balance of
+faculties that radiates a glad light outwards, enlightening and
+embellishing all things." But he finds it easy to account for the health
+of these men: they had never faced the mystery of existence. Such
+healthiness we find in Browning, although he wrote with Carlyle at his
+side, and within earshot of the infinite wail of this moral fatalist.
+And yet, the word health is inadequate to convey the depth of the joyous
+meaning which the poet found in the world. His optimism was not a
+constitutional and irreflective hopefulness, to be accounted for on the
+ground that "the great mystery of existence was not great to him: did
+not drive him into rocky solitudes to wrestle with it for an answer, to
+be answered or to perish." There are, indeed, certain rash and foolish
+persons who pretend to trace Browning's optimism to his mixed descent;
+but there is a "pause in the leading and the light" of those wiseacres,
+who pretend to trace moral and mental characteristics to physiological
+antecedents. They cannot quite catch a great man in the making, nor,
+even by the help of evolution, say anything wiser about genius than that
+"the wind bloweth where it listeth." No doubt the poet's optimism
+indicates a native sturdiness of head and heart. He had the invaluable
+endowment of a pre-disposition to see the sunny side of life, and a
+native tendency to revolt against that subjectivity, which is the root
+of our misery in all its forms. He had little respect for the
+_Welt-schmerz,_ and can scarcely be civil to the hero of the bleeding
+heart.
+
+  "Sinning, sorrowing, despairing,
+    Body-ruined, spirit-wrecked--
+  Should I give my woes an airing,--
+    Where's one plague that claims respect?
+
+  "Have you found your life distasteful?
+    My life did, and does, smack sweet.
+  Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
+    Mine I saved and hold complete.
+  Do your joys with age diminish?
+    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 God'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 God'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 passed, 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 passed 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 God'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 nobler 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 shine."
+
+In such passages 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 God'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 God. 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 kinship. 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
+God, 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
+God--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 God. 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-à-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 noble 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 assume. 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-Schwangau._]
+
+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 God, 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 illustrates 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 God, 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 surpassed
+  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 God, 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
+passages, or in the assertion that,--
+
+      "The acknowledgment of God 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 attitude.
+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 passion, 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 God'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 transmuting," 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.
+
+  "And still, as the day wore, the trouble grew,
+  Whereby I guessed there would be born a star."
+
+He goes forth in the might of his faith in the power of good, as if he
+wished once for all to try the resources of evil at their uttermost, and
+pass upon it a complete and final condemnation. With this view, he seeks
+evil in its own haunts. He creates Guido, the subtlest and most powerful
+compound of vice in our literature--except Iago, perhaps--merely in
+order that we may see evil at its worst; and he places him in an
+environment suited to his nature, as if he was carrying out an
+_experimentum crucis_. The
+
+        "Midmost blotch of black
+  Discernible in the group of clustered crimes
+  Huddling together in the cave they call
+  Their palace."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 869-872.]
+
+Beside him are his brothers, each with his own "tint of hell"; his
+mistress, on whose face even Pompilia saw the glow of the nether pit
+"flash and fade"; and his mother--
+
+  "The gaunt grey nightmare in the furthest smoke,
+  The hag that gave these three abortions birth,
+  Unmotherly mother and unwomanly
+  Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame,
+  Womanliness to loathing"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 911-915.]
+
+Such "denizens o' the cave now cluster round Pompilia and heat the
+furnace sevenfold." While she
+
+              "Sent prayer like incense up
+  To God the strong, God the beneficent,
+  God ever mindful in all strife and strait,
+  Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme,
+  Till at the last He puts forth might and saves."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_Pompilia_, 1384-1388.]
+
+In these lines we feel the poet's purpose, constant throughout the whole
+poem. We know all the while that with him at our side we can travel
+safely through the depths of the Inferno--for the flames bend back from
+him; and it is only what we expect as the result of it all, that there
+should come
+
+  "A bolt from heaven to cleave roof and clear place,
+                   . . . . then flood
+  And purify the scene with outside day--
+  Which yet, in the absolutest drench of dark,
+  Ne'er wants its witness, some stray beauty-beam
+  To the despair of hell."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 996-1003.]
+
+The superabundant strength of Browning's conviction in the supremacy of
+the good, which led him in _The Ring and the Book_ to depict criminals
+at their worst, forced him later on in his life to exhibit evil in
+another form. The real meaning and value of such poems as _Fifine at the
+Fair, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Red Cotton Nightcap Country,
+Ferishtah's Francies_, and others, can only be determined by a careful
+and complete analysis of each of them. But they have one characteristic
+so prominent, and so new in poetry, that the most careless reader cannot
+fail to detect it. Action and dramatic treatment give place to a
+discussion which is metaphysical; instead of the conflict of motives
+within a character, the stress and strain of passion and will in
+collision with circumstances, there is reflection on action after it has
+passed, and the conflict of subtle arguments on the ethical value of
+motives and ways of conduct, which the ordinary moral consciousness
+condemns without hesitation. All agree that these poems represent a new
+departure in poetry, and some consider that in them the poet, in thus
+dealing with metaphysical abstractions, has overleapt the boundaries of
+the poetic art. To such critics, this later period seems the period of
+his decadence, in which the casuistical tendencies, which had already
+appeared in _Bishop Blougram's Apology, Mr. Sludge the Medium_, and
+other poems, have overwhelmed his art, and his intellect, in its pride
+of strength, has grown wanton. _Fifine at the Fair is_ said to be "a
+defence of inconstancy, or of the right of experiment in love." Its
+hero, who is "a modern gentleman, a refined, cultured, musical, artistic
+and philosophic person, of high attainments, lofty aspirations, strong
+emotions, and capricious will," produces arguments "wide in range, of
+profound significance and infinite ingenuity," to defend and justify
+immoral intercourse with a gipsy trull. The poem consists of the
+speculations of a libertine, who coerces into his service truth and
+sophistry, and "a superabounding wealth of thought and imagery," and
+with no further purpose on the poet's part than the dramatic delineation
+of character. _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ is spoken of in a similar
+manner as the justification, by reference to the deepest principles of
+morality, of compromise, hypocrisy, lying, and a selfishness that
+betrays every cause to the individual's meanest welfare. The object of
+the poet is "by no means to prove black white, or white black, or to
+make the worse appear the better reason, but to bring a seeming monster
+and perplexing anomaly under the common laws of nature, by showing how
+it has grown to be what it is, and how it can with more or less
+self-delusion reconcile itself to itself."
+
+I am not able to accept this as a complete explanation of the intention
+of the poet, except with reference to _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._ The
+_Prince_ is a psychological study, like _Mr. Sludge the Medium,_ and
+_Bishop Blougram_. No doubt he had the interest of a dramatist in the
+hero of _Fifine at the Fair_ and in the hero of _Red Cotton Nightcap
+Country;_ but, in these poems, his dramatic interest is itself
+determined by an ethical purpose, which is equally profound. His meeting
+with the gipsy at Pornic, and the spectacle of her unscrupulous audacity
+in vice, not only "sent his fancy roaming," but opened out before him
+the fundamental problems of life. What I would find, therefore, in
+_Fifine at the Fair_ is not the casuistic defence of an artistic and
+speculative libertine, but an earnest attempt on the part of the poet to
+prove,
+
+  "That, through the outward sign, the inward grace allures,
+  And sparks from heaven transpierce earth's coarsest covertures,--
+  All by demonstrating the value of Fifine."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xxviii.]
+
+Within his scheme of the universal good he seeks to find a place even
+for this gipsy creature, who traffics "in just what we most pique us
+that we keep." Having, in the _Ring and the Book_, challenged evil at
+its worst as it manifests itself practically in concrete characters and
+external action, and having wrung from it the victory of the good, in
+_Fifine_ and in his other later poems he meets it again in the region of
+dialectic. In this sphere of metaphysical ethics, evil has assumed a
+more dangerous form, especially for an artist. His optimistic faith has
+driven the poet into a realm into which poetry never ventured before.
+His battle is now, not with flesh and blood, but with the subtler powers
+of darkness grown vocal and argumentative, and threatening to turn the
+poet's faith in good into a defence of immorality, and to justify the
+worst evil by what is highest of all. Having indicated in outward fact
+"the need," as well as the "transiency of sin and death," he seeks here
+to prove that need, and seems, thereby, to degrade the highest truth of
+religion into a defence of the worst wickedness.
+
+No doubt the result is sufficiently repulsive to the abstract moralist,
+who is apt to find in _Fifine_ nothing but a casuistical and shameless
+justification of evil, which is blasphemy against goodness itself. We
+are made to "discover," for instance, that
+
+                           "There was just
+  Enough and not too much of hate, love, greed and lust,
+  Could one discerningly but hold the balance, shift
+  The weight from scale to scale, do justice to the drift
+  Of nature, and explain the glories by the shames
+  Mixed up in man, one stuff miscalled by different names."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, cviii.]
+
+We are told that--
+
+  "Force, guile were arms which earned
+  My praise, not blame at all."
+
+Confronted with such utterances as these, it is only natural that,
+rather than entangle the poet in them, we should regard them as the
+sophistries of a philosophical Don Juan, powerful enough, under the
+stress of self-defence, to confuse the distinctions of right and wrong.
+But, as we shall try to show in the next chapter, such an apparent
+justification of evil cannot be avoided by a reflective optimist; and it
+is implicitly contained even in those religious utterances of _Rabbi Ben
+Ezra, Christmas Eve_, and _A Death in the Desert_, with which we not
+only identify the poet but ourselves, in so far as we share his faith
+that
+
+  "God's in His heaven,--
+  All's right with the world."
+
+The poet had far too much speculative acumen to be ignorant of this, and
+too much boldness and strength of conviction in the might of the good,
+to refuse to confront the issues that sprang from it. In his later
+poems, as in his earlier ones, he is endeavouring to justify the ways of
+God to man; and the difficulties which surround him are not those of a
+casuist, but the stubborn questionings of a spirit, whose religious
+faith is thoroughly earnest and fearless. To a spirit so loyal to the
+truth, and so bold to follow its leading, the suppression of such
+problems is impossible; and, consequently, it was inevitable that he
+should use the whole strength of his dialectic to try those fundamental
+principles, on which the moral life of man is based. And it is this, I
+believe, which we find in _Fifine_, as in _Ferishtah's Fancies_ and the
+_Parleyings_; not an exhibition of the argumentative subtlety of a mind
+whose strength has become lawless, and which spends itself in
+intellectual gymnastics, that have no place within the realm of either
+the beautiful or the true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+OPTIMISM AND ETHICS: THEIR CONTRADICTION.
+
+
+  "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
+  Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky
+  Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
+  Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "But most it is presumption in us, when
+  The help of heaven we count the act of men."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _All's Well that Ends Well_.]
+
+I have tried to show that one of the ruling conceptions of Browning's
+view of life is that the Good is absolute, and that it reveals itself in
+all the events of human life. By means of this conception, he
+endeavoured to bring together the elements which had fallen asunder in
+the sensational and moral pessimism of Byron and Carlyle. In other
+words, through the re-interpreting power which lies in this fundamental
+thought when it is soberly held and fearlessly applied, he sought to
+reconcile man with the world and with God, and thereby with himself. And
+the governing motive, whether the conscious motive or not, of Browning's
+poetry, the secret impulse which led him to dramatise the conflicts and
+antagonisms of human life, was the necessity of finding in them evidence
+of the presence of this absolute Good.
+
+Browning's optimism was deep and comprehensive enough to reject all
+compromise. His faith in the good seemed to rise with the demands that
+were made upon it by the misery and wickedness of man, and the
+apparently purposeless waste of life and its resources. There was in it
+a deliberate earnestness which led him to grapple, not only with the
+concrete difficulties of individual life, but with those also that
+spring from reflection and theory.
+
+The test of a philosophic optimism, as of any optimism which is more
+than a pious sentiment, must finally lie in its power to reveal the
+presence of the good in actual individual evils. But there are
+difficulties still nearer than those presented by concrete facts,
+difficulties arising out of the very suggestion that evil is a form of
+good. Such speculative difficulties must be met by a reflective mind,
+before it can follow out the application of an optimistic theory to
+particular facts. Now, Browning's creed, at least as he held it in his
+later years, was not merely the allowable exaggeration of an ecstatic
+religious sentiment, the impassioned conviction of a God-intoxicated
+man. It was deliberately presented as a solution of moral problems, and
+was intended to serve as a theory of the spiritual nature of things. It
+is, therefore, justly open to the same kind of criticism as that to
+which a philosophic doctrine is exposed. The poet deprived himself of
+the refuge, legitimate enough to the intuitive method of art, when, in
+his later works, he not only offered a dramatic solution of the problem
+of life, but definitely attempted to meet the difficulties of
+speculative ethics.
+
+In this chapter I shall point out some of these difficulties, and then
+proceed to show how the poet proposed to solve them.
+
+A thorough-going optimism, in that it subdues all things to the idea of
+the supreme Good, and denies to evil the right even to dispute the
+absoluteness of its sway, naturally seems to imply a pantheistic theory
+of the world. And Browning's insistence on the presence of the highest
+in all things may easily be regarded as a mere revival of the oldest and
+crudest attempts at finding their unity in God. For if _all_, as he
+says, is for the best, there seems to be no room left for the
+differences apparent in the world, and the variety which gives it beauty
+and worth. Particular existences would seem to be illusory and
+evanescent phenomena, the creations of human imagination, itself a
+delusive appearance. The infinite, on this view, stands over against the
+finite, and it overpowers and consumes it; and the optimism, implied in
+the phrase that "God is all," turns at once into a pessimism. For, as
+soon as we inquire into the meaning of this "all," we find that it is
+only a negation of everything we can know or be. Such a pantheism as
+this is self-contradictory; for, while seeming to level all things
+upwards to a manifestation of the divine, it really levels all downwards
+to the level of mere unqualified being, a stagnant and empty unknowable.
+It leaves only a choice between akosmism and atheism, and, at the same
+time, it makes each of the alternatives impossible. For, in explaining
+the world it abolishes it, and in abolishing the world it empties itself
+of all signification; so that the Godhood which it attempts to establish
+throughout the whole realm of being, is found to mean nothing. "It is
+the night, in which all cows are black."
+
+The optimistic creed, which the poet strove to teach, must, therefore,
+not only establish the immanence of God, but show in some way how such
+immanence is consistent with the existence of particular things. His
+doctrine that there is no failure, or folly, or wickedness, or misery,
+but conceals within it, at its heart, a divine element; that there is no
+incident in human history which is not a pulsation of the life of the
+highest, and which has not its place in a scheme of universal good, must
+leave room for the moral life of man, and all the risks which morality
+brings with it. Otherwise, optimism is impossible. For a God who, in
+filling the universe with His presence, encroaches on the freedom and
+extinguishes the independence of man, precludes the possibility of all
+that is best for man--namely, moral achievement. Life, deprived of its
+moral purpose, is worthless to the poet, and so, in consequence, is all
+that exists in order to maintain that life. Optimism and ethics seem
+thus to come into immediate collision. The former, finding the presence
+of God in all things, seems to leave no room for man; and the latter
+seems to set man to work out his own destiny in solitude, and to give
+him supreme and absolute authority over his own life; so that any
+character which he forms, be it good or bad, is entirely the product of
+his own activity. So far as his life is culpable or praiseworthy, in
+other words, so far as we pass any moral judgment upon it, we
+necessarily think of it as the revelation of a self, that is, of an
+independent will, which cannot divide its responsibility. There may be,
+and indeed there always is for every individual, a hereditary
+predisposition and a soliciting environment, tendencies which are his
+inheritance from a remote past, and which rise to the surface in his own
+life; in other words, the life of the individual is always led within
+the larger sweep of the life of humanity. He is part of a whole, and has
+his place fixed, and his function predetermined, by a power which is
+greater than his own. But, if we are to call him good or evil, if he is
+to aspire and repent and strive, in a word, if he is to have any _moral_
+character, he cannot be merely a part of a system; there must be
+something within him which is superior to circumstances, and which
+makes him master of his own fate. His natural history may begin with the
+grey dawn of primal being, but his moral history begins with himself,
+from the time when he first reacted upon the world in which he is
+placed, and transformed his natural relations into will and character.
+For who can be responsible for what he did not will? What could a moral
+imperative mean, what could an "ought" signify, to a being who was only
+a temporary embodiment of forces, who are prior to, and independent of
+himself? It would seem, therefore, as if morality were irreconcilable
+with optimism. The moral life of man cannot be the manifestation of a
+divine benevolence whose purpose is necessary; it is a trust laid upon
+himself, which he may either violate or keep. It surpasses divine
+goodness, "tho' matched with equal power" to _make_ man good, as it has
+made the flowers beautiful. From this point of view, spiritual
+attainment, whether intellectual or moral, is man's own, a spontaneous
+product. Just as God is conceived as all in all in the universe, so man
+is all in all within the sphere of duty; for the kingdom of heaven is
+within. In both cases alike, there is absolute exclusion of external
+interference.
+
+For this reason, it has often seemed both to philosophers and
+theologians, as if the world were too confined to hold within it both
+God and man. In the East, the consciousness of the infinite seemed at
+times to leave no room for the finite; and in the West, where the
+consciousness of the finite and interest therein is strongest, and man
+strives and aspires, a Deism arose which set God at a distance, and
+allowed Him to interfere in the fate of man only by a benevolent
+miracle. Nor is this collision of pantheism and freedom, nay of religion
+and morality, confined to the theoretical region. This difficulty is not
+merely the punishment of an over-bold and over-ambitious philosophy,
+which pries too curiously into the mystery of being. It lies at the very
+threshold of all reflection on the facts of the moral life. Even
+children feel the mystery of God's permitting sin, and embarrass their
+helpless parents with the contradiction between absolute benevolence and
+the miseries and cruelties of life. "A vain interminable controversy,"
+says Teufels-dröckh, "which arises in every soul since the beginning of
+the world: and in every soul, that would pass from idle suffering into
+actual endeavouring, must be put an end to. The most, in our own time,
+have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough Suppression of this
+controversy: to a few Solution of it is indispensable."
+
+Solution, and not Suppression, is what Browning sought; he did, in fact,
+propound a solution, which, whether finally satisfactory or not, at
+least carries us beyond the easy compromises of ordinary religious and
+ethical teaching. He does not deny the universality of God's beneficence
+or power, and divide the realm of being between Him and the adversary:
+nor, on the other hand, does he limit man's freedom, and stultify ethics
+by extracting the sting of reality from sin. To limit God, he knew, was
+to deny Him; and, whatever the difficulties he felt in regarding the
+absolute Spirit as realising itself in man, he could not be content to
+reduce man into a temporary phantom, an evanescent embodiment of
+"spiritual" or natural forces, that take a fleeting form in him as they
+pursue their onward way.
+
+Browning held with equal tenacity to the idea of a universal benevolent
+order, and to the idea of the moral freedom of man within it. He was
+driven in opposite directions by two beliefs, both of which he knew to
+be essential to the life of man as spirit, and both of which he
+illustrates throughout his poems with an endless variety of poetic
+expression. He endeavoured to find God in man and still to leave man
+free. His optimistic faith sought reconciliation with morality. The
+vigour of his ethical doctrine is as pre-eminent, as the fulness of his
+conviction of the absolute sway of the Good. Side by side with his
+doctrine that there is no failure, no wretchedness of corruption that
+does not conceal within it a germ of goodness, is his sense of the evil
+of sin, of the infinite earnestness of man's moral warfare, and of the
+surpassing magnitude of the issues at stake for each individual soul. So
+powerful is his interest in man as a moral agent, that he sees nought
+else in the world of any deep concern. "My stress lay," he said in his
+preface to _Sordello_ (1863), "on the incidents in the development of a
+soul: little else is worth study. I, at least, always thought so--you,
+with many known and unknown to me, think so--others may one day think
+so." And this development of a soul is not at any time regarded by the
+poet as a peaceful process, like the growth of a plant or animal.
+Although he thinks of the life of man as the gradual realization of a
+divine purpose within him, he does not suppose it to take place in
+obedience to a tranquil necessity. Man advances morally by fighting his
+way inch by inch, and he gains nothing except through conflict. He does
+not become good as the plant grows into maturity. "The kingdom of heaven
+suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."
+
+  "No, when the fight begins within himself,
+  A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head,
+  Satan looks up between his feet,--both tug--
+  He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul awakes
+  And grows. Prolong that battle through this life!
+  Never leave growing till the life to come."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Bishop Blougram_.]
+
+Man is no idle spectator of the conflict of the forces of right and
+wrong; Browning never loses the individual in the throng, or sinks him
+into his age or race. And although the poet ever bears within him the
+certainty of victory for the good, he calls his fellows to the fight as
+if the fate of all hung on the valour of each. The struggle is always
+personal, individual like the duels of the Homeric heroes.
+
+It is under the guise of warfare that morality always presents itself to
+Browning. It is not a mere equilibrium of qualities--the measured,
+self-contained, statuesque ethics of the Greeks, nor the asceticism and
+self-restraint of Puritanism, nor the peaceful evolution of Goethe's
+artistic morality: it is valour in the battle of life. His code contains
+no negative commandments, and no limitations; but he bids each man let
+out all the power that is within him, and throw himself upon life with
+the whole energy of his being. It is better even to seek evil with one's
+whole mind, than to be lukewarm in goodness. Whether you seek good or
+evil, and play for the counter or the coin, stake it boldly!
+
+  "Let a man contend to the uttermost
+  For his life's set prize, be it what it will!
+
+  "The counter our lovers staked was lost
+  As surely as if it were lawful coin:
+  And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
+
+  "Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin
+  Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
+  You, of the virtue (we issue join)
+  How strive you?--'_De te fabula!_'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Statue and the Bust_.]
+
+Indifference and spiritual lassitude are, to the poet, the worst of
+sins. "Go!" says the Pope to Pompilia's pseudo-parents,
+
+  "Never again elude the choice of tints!
+  White shall not neutralize the black, nor good
+  Compensate bad in man, absolve him so:
+  Life's business being just the terrible choice."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1235-1238.]
+
+In all the greater characters of _The Ring and the Book_, this intensity
+of vigour in good and evil flashes out upon us. Even Pompilia, the most
+gentle of all his creations, at the first prompting of the instinct of
+motherhood, rises to the law demanding resistance, and casts off the old
+passivity.
+
+  "Dutiful to the foolish parents first,
+  Submissive next to the bad husband,--nay,
+  Tolerant of those meaner miserable
+  That did his hests, eked out the dole of pain ";[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_., 1052-1055.]
+
+she is found
+
+  "Sublime in new impatience with the foe."
+
+  "I did for once see right, do right, give tongue
+  The adequate protest: for a worm must turn
+  If it would have its wrong observed by God.
+  I did spring up, attempt to thrust aside
+  That ice-block 'twixt the sun and me, lay low
+  The neutralizer of all good and truth."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Pompilia_, 1591-1596.]
+
+  "Yet, shame thus rank and patent, I struck, bare,
+  At foe from head to foot in magic mail,
+  And off it withered, cobweb armoury
+  Against the lightning! 'Twas truth singed the lies
+  And saved me."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_., 1637-1641.]
+
+Beneath the mature wisdom of the Pope, amidst the ashes of old age,
+there sleeps the same fire. He is as truly a warrior priest as
+Caponsacchi himself, and his matured experience only muffles his vigour.
+Wearied with his life-long labour, we see him gather himself together
+"in God's name," to do His will on earth once more with concentrated
+might.
+
+                                    "I smite
+  With my whole strength once more, ere end my part,
+  Ending, so far as man may, this offence."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1958-1960.]
+
+Nor, spite of doubts, the promptings of mercy, the friends plucking his
+sleeve to stay his arm, does he fear "to handle a lie roughly"; or
+shrink from sending the criminal to his account, though it be but one
+day before he himself is called before the judgment seat. The same
+energy, the same spirit of bold conflict, animates Guido's adoption of
+evil for his good. At all but the last moment of his life of monstrous
+crime, just before he hears the echo of the feet of the priests, who
+descend the stair to lead him to his death, "he repeats his evil deed in
+will."
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 prompts
+  While pulling back, refuses yet concedes,--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Surely, one should bid pack that mountebank!"
+
+In him, even
+
+               "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 give _himself_ to anything, wreak _himself_ on
+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 lie
+  Redounded to the praise of man, was victory
+  Man's nature had both right to get and might to gain."[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 disappointment of utter failure;
+the sinner is thrown back upon himself empty-handed. He finds himself
+subjected, even when sinning,
+
+                                         "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]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, cxxviii.]
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 of _Red 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]
+
+In the same spirit he finds Miranda's suicidal leap the best deed
+possible for _him_.
+
+                       "'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]
+
+[Footnote 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 set
+  Himself to Satan; who would spend
+  A minute's mistrust on the end?"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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]
+
+[Footnote 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."
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote A: Epilogue to _Asolande_.]
+
+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 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]
+
+[Footnote B: _Apparent Failure_.]
+
+It is the poet himself and not merely the sophistic aesthete of _Fifine_
+that speaks:--
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 supplies
+  The incentive to humanity, no strength
+  Absolute, irresistible comforts.
+  How can man love but what he yearns to help?"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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. It is 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]
+
+[Footnote 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 realization
+of 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_ "on the
+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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 steps
+  Offered the feet which rashly spurned their help.
+  That I call Hell; why further punishment?"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 towards the 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 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 from _his_ clutch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 more
+  I' the coming course, the new path I must tread,
+  My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 existence of 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 Ezra_ bids 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 turn
+  If it would have its wrong observed by God."[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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 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 achievement within
+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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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 this_ how _far away_
+  Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream!"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 short at 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" _must_ stand
+above _all_ human 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 idea _of_ something 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 a _true_
+idea; 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 an _idea_
+of 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 is something 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 as unwilling 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 better for 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 the world 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 word _but 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, to return 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 of perfect 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 "_the_ good," 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 that unity 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
+within him. 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 religion
+impossible. 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.
+
+  "I never realized God's birth before--
+  How He grew likest God in being born."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Pompilia_, 1690-1691.]
+
+The intense love of the young mother drew the divine and the human
+together, and set at nought the contrast which prose ever draws between
+them. This thought of the unity of God and man is one which has frequent
+utterance from the poet when his religious spirit is most deeply moved;
+for it is the characteristic of religious feeling that it abolishes all
+sense of separation. It removes all the limitations of finitude and
+lifts man into rapturous unity with the God he adores; and it gives such
+completeness to his life that it seems to him to be a joyous pulse of
+the life that is absolute. The feeling of unity may be an illusion. This
+we cannot discuss here; but, in any case, it is a feeling essential to
+religion. And the philosophy which seeks to lift this feeling into clear
+consciousness and to account for its existence, cannot but recognize
+that it implies and presupposes the essential affinity of the divine
+nature with the nature of man.
+
+Thus, both from the side of morality and from that of religion, we are
+brought to recognize the unity of God with man as a spiritual being. The
+moral ideal is man's idea of perfection, that is, his idea of God. While
+theology and philosophy are often occupied with the vain task of
+bridging a chasm between the finite and the infinite, which they assume
+to be separated, the supreme facts of the life of man as a spirit spring
+from their unity. In other words, morality and religion are but
+different manifestations of the same principle. The good that man
+effects is, at the same time, the working of God within him. The
+activity that man is,
+
+                                "tending up,
+  Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man
+  Upward in that dread point of intercourse
+  Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+                              "God, perchance,
+  Grants each new man, by some as new a mode,
+  Inter-communication with Himself
+  Wreaking on finiteness infinitude."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
+
+And while man's moral endeavour is thus recognized as the activity of
+God within him, it is also implied that the divine being can be known
+only as revealed, and incarnated, if one may so say, in a perfect human
+character. It was a permanent conviction of Browning, that
+
+      "the acknowledgment of God in Christ
+  Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
+  All questions in the earth and out of it."
+
+So far from regarding the Power in the world which makes for
+righteousness, as "not-ourselves," as Matthew Arnold did in his haste,
+that Power is known to be the man's true self and more, and morality is
+the gradual process whereby its content is evolved. And man's state of
+perfection, which is symbolized for the intelligent by the term Heaven,
+is, for Browning,
+
+  "The equalizing, ever and anon,
+  In momentary rapture, great with small,
+  Omniscience with intelligency, God
+  With man--the thunder glow from pole to pole
+  Abolishing, a blissful moment-space,
+  Great cloud alike and small cloud, in one fire--
+  As sure to ebb as sure again to flow
+  When the new receptivity deserves
+  The new completion."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_.]
+
+Thus, therefore, does the poet wed the divine strength with human
+weakness; and the principle of unity, thus conceived, gives him at once
+his moral strenuousness and that ever present foretaste of victory,
+which we may call his religious optimism.
+
+Whether this principle receives adequate expression from the poet, we
+shall inquire in the next chapter. For on this depends its worth as a
+solution of the enigma of man's moral life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+BROWNING'S TREATMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE OF LOVE.
+
+
+  "God! Thou art Love! I build my faith on that!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_]
+
+It may be well before going further to gather together the results so
+far reached.
+
+Browning was aware of the conflict of the religious and moral
+consciousness, but he did not hesitate to give to each of them its most
+uncompromising utterance. And it is on this account that he is
+instructive; for, whatever may be the value of compromise in practical
+affairs, there is no doubt that it has never done anything to advance
+human thought. His religion is an optimistic faith, a peaceful
+consciousness of the presence of the highest in man, and therefore in
+all other things. Yet he does not hesitate to represent the moral life
+as a struggle with evil, and a movement through error towards a highest
+good which is never finally realized. He sees that the contradiction is
+not an absolute one, but that a good man is always both moral and
+religious, and, in every good act he does, transcends their difference.
+He knew that the ideal apart from the process is nothing, and that "a
+God beyond the stars" is simply the unknowable. But he knew, too, that
+the ideal is not _merely_ the process, but also that which starts the
+process, guides it, and comes to itself through it. God, emptied of
+human elements, is a mere name; but, at the same time, the process of
+human evolution does not exhaust the idea of God. The process by itself,
+_i.e._, mere morality, is a conception of a fragment, a fiction of
+abstract thought; it is a movement which has no beginning or end; and in
+it neither the head nor the heart of man could find contentment. He is
+driven by ethics into philosophy, and by morality into religion.
+
+It was in this way that Browning found himself compelled to trace back
+the moral process to its origin, and to identify the moral law with the
+nature of God. It is this that gives value to his view of moral
+progress, as reaching beyond death to a higher stage of being, for which
+man's attainments in this life are only preliminary.
+
+  "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes,
+  Man has Forever."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Grammarian's Funeral_.]
+
+There are other "adventures brave and new" for man, "more lives yet,"
+other ways of warfare, other depths of goodness and heights of love. The
+poet lifts the moral ideal into infinitude, and removes all limits to
+the possibility and necessity of being good. Nay, the process itself is
+good. Moral activity is its own bountiful reward; for moral progress,
+which means struggle, is the best thing in the world or out of it. To
+end such a process, to stop that activity, were therefore evil. But it
+cannot end, for it is the self-manifestation of the divine life. There
+is plenty of way to make, for the ideal is absolute goodness. The
+process cannot exhaust the absolute, and it is impossible that man
+should be God. And yet this process is the process of the absolute, the
+working of the ideal, the presence of the highest in man as a living
+power realizing itself in his acts and in his thoughts. And the absolute
+cannot fail; not in man, for the process is the evolution of his
+essential nature; and not in the world, for that is but the necessary
+instrument of the evolution. By lifting the moral ideal of man to
+infinitude, the poet has identified it with the nature of God, and made
+it the absolute law of things.
+
+Now, this idea of the identity of the human and the divine is a
+perfectly familiar Christian idea.
+
+  "Thence shall I, approved
+  A man, for aye removed
+  From the developed brute; a God though in the germ."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Rabbi Ben Ezra._]
+
+This idea is involved in the ordinary expressions of religious thought.
+But, nevertheless, both theology and philosophy shrink from giving to it
+a clear and unembarrassed utterance. Instead of rising to the sublime
+boldness of the Nazarene Teacher, they set up prudential differences
+between God and man--differences not of degree only but of nature; and,
+in consequence, God is reduced into an unknowable absolute, and man is
+made incapable not only of moral, but also of intellectual life. The
+poet himself has proved craven-hearted in this, as we shall see. He,
+too, sets up insurmountable barriers between the divine and the human,
+and thereby weakens both his religious and his moral convictions. His
+moral inspiration is greatest just where his religious enthusiasm is
+most intense. In _Rabbi Ben Ezra, The Death in the Desert_, and _The
+Ring and the Book_, there prevails a constant sense of the community of
+God and man within the realm of goodness; and the world itself, "with
+its dread machinery of sin and sorrow," is made to join the great
+conspiracy, whose purpose is at once the evolution of man's character,
+and the realization of the will of God.
+
+  "So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too--
+  So, through the thunder comes a human voice
+  Saying, 'O heart I made, a heart beats here!
+  Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
+  Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine,
+  But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
+  And thou must love Me who have died for thee.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _An Epistle from Karshish_.]
+
+But, if we follow Browning's thoughts in his later and more reflective
+poems, such as _Ferishtah's_ _Fancies_ for instance, it will not be
+possible to hold that the poet altogether realized the importance for
+both morality and religion alike, of the idea of the actual immanence of
+God in man. In these poems he seems to have abandoned it in favour of
+the hypotheses of a more timid philosophy. But, if his religious faith
+had not been embarrassed by certain dogmatic presuppositions of which he
+could not free himself, he might have met more successfully some of the
+difficulties which later reflection revealed to him, and might have been
+able to set a true value on that "philosophy," which betrayed his faith
+while appearing to support it.
+
+But, before trying to criticize the principle by means of which Browning
+sought to reconcile the moral and religious elements of human life, it
+may be well to give it a more explicit and careful statement.
+
+What, then, is that principle of unity between the divine and the human?
+How can we interpret the life of man as God's life in man, so that man,
+in attaining the moral ideal proper to his own nature, is at the same
+time fulfilling ends which may justly be called divine?
+
+The poet, in early life and in late life alike, has one answer to this
+question--an answer given with the confidence of complete conviction.
+The meeting-point of God and man is love. Love, in other words, is, for
+the poet, the supreme principle both of morality and religion. Love,
+once for all, solves that contradiction between them which, both in
+theory and in practice, has embarrassed the world for so many ages. Love
+is the sublimest conception attainable by man; a life inspired by it is
+the most perfect form of goodness he can conceive; therefore, love is,
+at the same moment, man's moral ideal, and the very essence of Godhood.
+A life actuated by love is divine, whatever other limitations it may
+have. Such is the perfection and glory of this emotion, when it has been
+translated into a self-conscious motive, and become the energy of an
+intelligent will, that it lifts him who owns it to the sublimest height
+of being.
+
+  "For the loving worm within its clod,
+  Were diviner than a loveless God
+  Amid his worlds, I will dare to say."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas Eve_.]
+
+So excellent is this emotion that, if man, who has this power to love,
+did not find the same power in God, then man would excel Him, and the
+creature and Creator change parts.
+
+  "Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift,
+  That I doubt His own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift?
+  Here, the creature surpass the Creator,--the end what Began?"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Saul_.]
+
+Not so, says David, and with him no doubt the poet himself. God is
+Himself the source and fulness of love.
+
+        "Tis Thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive:
+  In the first is the last, in Thy will is my power to believe.
+  All's one gift."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Would I suffer for him that I love? So would'st Thou,--so wilt Thou!
+  So shall crown Thee, the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown--
+  And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
+  One spot for the creature to stand in!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Saul_.]
+
+And this same love not only constitutes the nature of God and the moral
+ideal of man, but it is also the purpose and essence of all created
+being, both animate and inanimate.
+
+                          "This world's no blot for us,
+  Nor blank; it means intensely and means good."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Fra Lippo Lippi_.]
+
+  "O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:
+  And knowing this is love, and love is duty,
+  What further may be sought for or declared?"
+
+In this world then "all's love, yet all's law." God permits nothing to
+break through its universal sway, even the very wickedness and misery of
+life are brought into the scheme of good, and, when rightly understood,
+reveal themselves as its means.
+
+  "I can believe this dread machinery
+  Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else,
+  Devised--all pain, at most expenditure
+  Of pain by Who devised pain--to evolve,
+  By new machinery in counterpart,
+  The moral qualities of man--how else?--
+  To make him love in turn and be beloved,
+  Creative and self-sacrificing too,
+  And thus eventually Godlike."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1375-1383.]
+
+The poet thus brings the natural world, the history of man, and the
+nature of God, within the limits of the same conception. The idea of
+love solves for Browning all the enigmas of human life and thought.
+
+          "The thing that seems
+  Mere misery, under human schemes,
+  Becomes, regarded by the light
+  Of love, as very near, or quite
+  As good a gift as joy before."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Easter Day_.]
+
+Taking Browning's work as a whole, it is scarcely possible to deny that
+this is at once the supreme motive of his art, and the principle on
+which his moral and religious doctrine rests. He is always strong and
+convincing when he is dealing with this theme. It was evidently his own
+deepest conviction, and it gave him the courage to face the evils of the
+world, and the power as an artist to "contrive his music from its
+moans." It plays, in his philosophy of life, the part that Reason fills
+for Hegel, or the Blind Will for Schopenhauer; and he is as fearless as
+they are in reducing all phenomena into forms of the activity of his
+first principle. Love not only gave him firm footing amid the wash and
+welter of the present world, where time spins fast, life fleets, and all
+is change, but it made him look forward with joy to "the immortal
+course"; for, to him, all the universe is love-woven. All life is but
+treading the "love-way," and no wanderer can finally lose it. "The
+way-faring men, though fools, shall not err therein."
+
+Since love has such an important place in Browning's theory of life, it
+is necessary to see what he means by it. For love has had for different
+individuals, ages and nations, a very different significance; and almost
+every great poet has given it a different interpretation. And this is
+not unnatural. For love is a passion which, beginning with youth and the
+hey-day of the blood, expands with the expanding life, and takes new
+forms of beauty and goodness at every stage. And this is equally true,
+whether we speak of the individual or of the human race.
+
+Love is no accident in man's history, nor a passing emotion. It is
+rather a constitutive element of man's nature, fundamental and necessary
+as his intelligence. And, like everything native and constitutive, it is
+obedient to the law of evolution, which is the law of man's being; and
+it passes, therefore, through ever varying forms. To it--if we may for
+the moment make a distinction between the theoretical and practical
+life, or between ideas and their causative potency--must be attributed
+the constructive power which has built the world of morality, with its
+intangible but most real relations which bind man to man and age to age.
+It is the author of the organic institutions which, standing between the
+individual and the rudeness of nature, awaken in him the need, and give
+him the desire and the faculty, of attaining higher things than physical
+satisfaction. Man is meant to act as well as to think, to be virtuous as
+well as to have knowledge. It is possible that reverence for the
+intellect may have led men, at times, to attribute the evolution of the
+race too exclusively to the theoretic consciousness, forgetting that,
+along with reason, there co-operates a twin power in all that is wisest
+and best in us, and that a heart which can love, is as essential a
+pre-condition of all worthy attainment, as an intellect which can see.
+Love and reason[A] are equally primal powers in man, and they reflect
+might into each other: for love increases knowledge, and knowledge love.
+It is their combined power that gives interest and meaning to the facts
+of life, and transmutes them into a moral and intellectual order. They,
+together, are lifting man out of the isolation and chaos of subjectivity
+into membership in a spiritual kingdom, where collision and exclusion
+are impossible, and all are at once kings and subjects.
+
+[Footnote A: It would be more correct to say the reason that is loving
+or the love that is rational; for, though there is distinction, there is
+no dualism.]
+
+And, just as reason is present as a transmuting power in the sensational
+life of the infancy of the individual and race, so is love present
+amidst the confused and chaotic activity of the life that knows no law
+other than its own changing emotions. Both make for order, and both grow
+with it. Both love and reason have travelled a long way in the history
+of man. The patriot's passion for his country, the enthusiasm of pity
+and helpfulness towards all suffering which marks the man of God, are as
+far removed from the physical attraction of sex for sex, and the mere
+liking of the eye and ear, as is the intellectual power of the sage from
+the vulpine cunning of the savage. "For," as Emerson well said, "it is a
+fire that, kindling its first embers in the narrow nook of a private
+bosom, caught from a wandering spark out of another heart, glows and
+enlarges until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and women, upon
+the universal heart of all, and so lights up the world and all nature
+with its generous flames." Both love and reason alike pass through stage
+after stage, always away from the particularity of selfishness and
+ignorance, into larger and larger cycles of common truth and goodness,
+towards the full realization of knowledge and benevolence, which is the
+inheritance of emancipated man. In this transition, the sensuous play of
+feeling within man, and the sensitive responses to external stimuli, are
+made more and more organic to ends which are universal, that is, to
+spiritual ends. Love, which in its earliest form, seems to be the
+natural yearning of brute for brute, appearing and disappearing at the
+suggestion of physical needs, passes into an idealized sentiment, into
+an emotion of the soul, into a principle of moral activity which
+manifests itself in a permanent outflow of helpful deeds for man. It
+represents, when thus sublimated, one side at least of the expansion of
+the self, which culminates when the world beats in the pulse of the
+individual, and the joys and sorrows, the defeats and victories of
+mankind are felt by him as his own. It is no longer dependent merely on
+the incitement of youth, grace, beauty, whether of body or character; it
+transcends all limitations of sex and age, and finds objects on which it
+can spend itself in all that God has made, even in that which has
+violated its own law of life and become mean and pitiful. It becomes a
+love of fallen humanity, and an ardour to save it by becoming the
+conscious and permanent motive of all men. The history of this evolution
+of love has been written by the poets. Every phase through which this
+ever-deepening emotion has passed, every form which this primary power
+has taken in its growth, has received from them its own proper
+expression. They have made even the grosser instincts lyric with beauty;
+and, ascending with their theme, they have sung the pure passion of soul
+for soul, its charm and its strength, its idealism and heroism, up to
+the point at which, in Browning, it transcends the limits of finite
+existence, sheds all its earthly vesture, and becomes a spiritual
+principle of religious aspiration and self-surrender to God.
+
+Browning nowhere shows his native strength more clearly than in his
+treatment of love. He has touched this world-old theme--which almost
+every poet has handled, and handled in his highest manner--with that
+freshness and insight, which is possible only to the inborn originality
+of genius. Other poets have, in some ways, given to love a more
+exquisite utterance, and rendered its sweetness, and tenderness, and
+charm with a lighter grace. It may even be admitted that there are poets
+whose verses have echoed more faithfully the fervour and intoxication of
+passion, and who have shown greater power of interpreting it in the
+light of a mystic idealism. But, in one thing, Browning stands alone. He
+has given to love a moral significance, a place and power amongst those
+substantial elements on which rest the dignity of man's being and the
+greatness of his destiny, in a way which is, I believe, without example
+in any other poet. And he has done this by means of that moral and
+religious earnestness, which pervades all his poetry. The one object of
+supreme interest to him is the development of the soul, and his
+penetrative insight revealed to him the power to love as the paramount
+fact in that development. To love, he repeatedly tells us, is the sole
+and supreme object of man's life; it is the one lesson which he has to
+learn on earth; and, love once learnt, in what way matters little, "it
+leaves completion in the soul." Love we dare not, and, indeed, cannot
+absolutely miss. No man can be absolutely selfish and be man.
+
+  "Beneath the veriest ash, there hides a spark of soul
+  Which, quickened by love's breath, may yet pervade the whole
+  O' the grey, and, free again, be fire; of worth the same,
+  Howe'er produced, for, great or little, flame is flame."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xliii.]
+
+Love, once evoked, once admitted into the soul,
+
+                          "adds worth to worth,
+  As wine enriches blood, and straightway sends it forth,
+  Conquering and to conquer, through all eternity,
+  That's battle without end."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_. liv.]
+
+This view of the significance of love grew on Browning as his knowledge
+of man's nature and destiny became fuller and deeper, while, at the same
+time, his trust in the intellect became less. Even in _Paracelsus_ he
+reveals love, not as a sentiment or intoxicating passion, as one might
+expect from a youthful poet, but as one of the great fundamental
+"faculties" of man. Love, "blind, oft-failing, half-enlightened,
+often-chequered trust," though it be, still makes man
+
+  "The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false."
+
+In that poem, love is definitely lifted by the poet to the level of
+knowledge. Intellectual gain, apart from love, is folly and futility,
+worthless for the individual and worthless to the race. "Mind is nothing
+but disease," Paracelsus cries in the bitterness of his disappointment,
+"and natural health is ignorance"; and he asks of the mad poet who
+"loved too rashly,"
+
+  "Are we not halves of one dissevered world,
+  Whom this strange chance unites once more? Part? Never!
+  Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower,
+  Love--until both are saved."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
+
+And, at the end of the poem, Paracelsus, coming to an understanding with
+himself as to the gain and loss of life, proclaims with his last
+strength the truth he had missed throughout his great career, namely,
+the supreme worth of love.
+
+  "I saw Aprile--my Aprile there!
+  And as the poor melodious wretch disburthened
+  His heart, and moaned his weakness in my ear,
+  I learned my own deep error; love's undoing
+  Taught me the worth of love in man's estate,
+  And what proportion love should hold with power
+  In his right constitution; love preceding
+  Power, and with much power, always much more love;
+  Love still too straitened in his present means,
+  And earnest for new power to set love free."
+
+As long as he hated men, or, in his passionate pursuit of truth, was
+indifferent to their concerns, it was not strange that he saw no good in
+men and failed to help them. Knowledge without love is not _true_
+knowledge, but folly and weakness.
+
+But, great as is the place given to love in _Paracelsus_, it is far less
+than that given to it in the poet's later works. In _Ferishtah's
+Fancies_ and _La Saisiaz_ it is no longer rivalled by knowledge; nor
+even in _Easter Day_, where the voice beside the poet proclaiming that
+
+  "Life is done,
+  Time ends, Eternity's begun,"
+
+gives a final pronouncement upon the purposes of the life of man. The
+world of sense--of beauty and art, of knowledge and truth, are given to
+man, but none of them satisfy his spirit; they merely sting with hunger
+for something better. "Deficiency gapes every side," till love is known
+as the essence and worth of all things.
+
+                  "Is this thy final choice?
+  Love is the best? 'Tis somewhat late!
+  And all thou dost enumerate
+  Of power and beauty in the world,
+  The righteousness of love was curled
+  Inextricably round about.
+  Love lay within it and without,
+  To clasp thee,--but in vain! Thy soul
+  Still shrunk from Him who made the whole,
+  Still set deliberate aside
+  His love!--Now take love! Well betide
+  Thy tardy conscience!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Easter Day._]
+
+In his later reflective poems, in which he deals with the problems of
+life in the spirit of a metaphysician, seeking a definite answer to the
+questions of the intelligence, he declares the reason for his preference
+of love to knowledge. In _La Saisiaz_ he states that man's love is God's
+too, a spark from His central fire; but man's knowledge is man's only.
+Knowledge is finite, limited and tinged with sense. The truth we reach
+at best is only truth _for us_, relative, distorted. We are for ever
+kept from the fact which is supposed to be given; our intellects play
+about it; sense and even intellect itself are interposing media, which
+we must use, and yet, in using them, we only fool ourselves with
+semblances. The poet has now grown so cautious that he will not declare
+his own knowledge to be valid for any other man. David Hume could
+scarcely be more suspicious of the human intellect; nor Berkeley more
+surely persuaded of the purely subjective nature of its attainments. In
+fact, the latter relied on human knowledge in a way impossible to
+Browning, for he regarded it as the language of spirit speaking to
+spirit. Out of his experience, Browning says,
+
+                            "There crowds 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."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+Thought itself, for aught he knows, may be afflicted with a kind of
+colour-blindness; and he knows no appeal when one affirms "green as
+grass," and another contradicts him with "red as grass." Under such
+circumstances, it is not strange that Browning should decline to speak
+except for himself, and that he will
+
+  "Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers strong or weak,"
+
+or that he will far less presume to pronounce for God, and pretend that
+the truth finds utterance from lips of clay--
+
+  "Pass off human lisp as echo of the sphere-song out of reach."
+
+  "Have I knowledge? Confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare!
+  Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew
+  (With that stoop of the soul, which in bending upraises it too)
+  The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete,
+  As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to His feet."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Saul_, III.]
+
+But David finds in himself one faculty so supreme in worth that he keeps
+it in abeyance--
+
+  "Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst
+  E'en the Giver in one gift.--Behold, I could love if I durst!
+  But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake
+  God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love's sake."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Saul_, III.]
+
+This faculty of love, so far from being tainted with finitude, like
+knowledge; so far from being mere man's, or a temporary and deceptive
+power given to man for temporary uses, by a Creator who has another
+ineffably higher way of loving, as He has of truth, is itself divine. In
+contrast with the activity of love, Omnipotence itself dwindles into
+insignificance, and creation sinks into a puny exercise of power. Love,
+in a word, is the highest good; and, as such, it has all its worth in
+itself, and gives to all other things what worth they have. God Himself
+gains the "ineffable crown" by showing love and saving the weak. It is
+the power divine, the central energy of God's being.
+
+Browning never forgets this moral or religious quality of love. So pure
+is this emotion to the poet, "so perfect in whiteness, that it will not
+take pollution; but, ermine-like, is armed from dishonour by its own
+soft snow." In the corruptest hearts, amidst the worst sensuality, love
+is still a power divine, making for all goodness. Even when it is
+kindled into flame by an illicit touch, and wars against the life of the
+family, which is its own product, its worth is supreme. He who has
+learned to love in any way, has "caught God's secret." How he has caught
+it, whom he loves, whether or not he is loved in return, all these
+things matter little. The paramount question on which hangs man's fate
+is, has he learned to love another, any other, Fifine or Elvire. "She
+has lost me," said the unloved lover; "I have gained her. Her soul's
+mine."
+
+The supreme worth of love, the mere emotion itself, however called into
+activity, secures it against all taint. No one who understands Browning
+in the least, can accuse him of touching with a rash hand the sanctity
+of the family; rather he places it on the basis of its own principle,
+and thereby makes for it the strongest defence. Such love as he speaks
+of, however irregular its manifestation or sensuous its setting, can
+never be confounded with lust--"hell's own blue tint." It is further
+removed from lust even than asceticism. It has not even a negative
+attitude towards the flesh; but finds the flesh to be "stuff for
+transmuting," and reduces it to the uses of the spirit. The love which
+is sung by Browning is more pure and free, and is set in a higher
+altitude than anything that can be reached by the way of negation. It is
+a consecration of the undivided self, so that "soul helps not flesh
+more, than flesh helps soul." It is not only a spiritual and divine
+emotion, but it also "shows a heart within blood-tinctured with a veined
+humanity."
+
+  "Be a God and hold me
+    With a charm!
+  Be a man and hold me
+    With thine arm!
+
+  "Teach me, only teach, Love!
+    As I ought
+  I will speak thy speech, Love!
+    Think thy thought--
+
+  "Meet, if thou require it,
+    Both demands,
+  Laying flesh and spirit
+    In thy hands."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Woman's Last Word_.]
+
+True love is always an infinite giving, which holds nothing back. It is
+a spendthrift, magnificent in its recklessness, squandering the very
+essence of the self upon its object, and by doing so, in the end
+enriching the self beyond all counting. For in loving, the individual
+becomes re-impersonated in another; the distinction of Me and Thee is
+swept away, and there pulses in two individuals one warm life.
+
+  "If two lives join, there is oft a scar
+    They are one and one with a shadowy third;
+  One near one is too far.
+
+  "A moment after, and hands unseen
+    Were hanging the night around us fast;
+  But we knew that a bar was broken between
+    Life and life: we were mixed at last
+  In spite of the mortal screen."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _By the Fireside_.]
+
+The throwing down of the limits that wall a man within himself, the
+mingling of his own deepest interests with those of others, always marks
+love; be it love of man for maid, parent for child, or patriot for his
+country. It opens an outlet into the pure air of the world of objects,
+and enables man to escape from the stuffed and poisonous atmosphere of
+his narrow self. It is a streaming outwards of the inmost treasures of
+the spirit, a consecration of its best activities to the welfare of
+others. And when this is known to be the native quality and quintessence
+of love, no one can regard it anywhere, or at any time, as out of place.
+"Prize-lawful or prize-lawless" it is ever a flower, even though it
+grow, like the love of the hero of _Turf and Towers_, in slime. Lust,
+fleshly desire, which has been too often miscalled love, is its worst
+perversion. Love spends itself for another, and seeks satisfaction only
+in another's good. But last uses up others for its own worst purposes,
+wastes its object, and turns the current of life back inwards, into the
+slush and filth of selfish pleasure. The distinction between love and
+its perversion, which is impossible in the naive life of an animal,
+ought to be clear enough to all, and probably is. Nor should the sexual
+impulse in human beings be confused with fleshly desire, and treated as
+if it were merely natural, "the mere lust of life" common to all living
+things,--"that strive," as Spinoza put it, "to persevere in existing."
+For there is no purely natural impulse in man; all that he is, is
+transfused with spirit, whether he will or no. He cannot act as a mere
+animal, because he cannot leave his rational nature behind him.
+
+He cannot desire as an innocent brute desires: his desire is always love
+or lust. We have as little right to say that the wisdom of the sage is
+_nothing but_ the purblind savagery of a Terra del Fuegian, as we have
+to assert that love is _nothing but_ a sexual impulse. That impulse
+rather, when its potency is set free, will show itself, at first
+confusedly, but with more and more clearness as it expands, to be the
+yearning of soul for soul. It puts us "in training for a love which
+knows not sex, nor person, nor partiality; but which seeks virtue and
+wisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom." The
+height to which this passion lifts man, is just what makes possible the
+fall into a sensuality and excess of brutishness, in comparison with
+which animal life is a paradise of innocence.
+
+If this is clearly recognized, many of the idle questions of casuistry
+that are sometimes raised regarding sexual love and marriage will cease
+to trouble. For these questions generally presuppose the lowest possible
+view of this passion. Browning shows us how to follow with serene
+security the pure light of the emotion of love, amidst all the confused
+lawlessness of lustful passion, and through all the intricacies of human
+character. Love, he thinks, is never illicit, never unwise, except when
+it is disloyal to itself; it never ruins, but always strives to enrich
+its object. Bacon quotes with approval a saying "That it is impossible
+to love, and to be wise." Browning asserts that it is impossible to love
+and _not_ be wise. It is a power that, according to the Christian idea
+which the poet adopts, has infinite goodness for its source, and that,
+even in its meanest expression, is always feeling its way back to its
+origin, flowing again into the ocean whence it came.
+
+So sparklingly pure is this passion that it could exorcise the evil and
+turn old to new, even in the case of Léonce Miranda. At least Browning,
+in this poem, strives to show that, being true love, though the love of
+an unclean man for an unclean woman, it was a power at war with the
+sordid elements of that sordid life. Love has always the same potency,
+flame is always flame,
+
+      "no matter whence flame sprung,
+  From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness."[A]
+
+[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, assimilates
+  All other passions 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 passions 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 God'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 God 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 God.
+
+"I think," says the heroine of the _Inn Album_,
+
+  "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 Album_.]
+
+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 _Ivàn Ivànovitch_,
+
+                                  "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 assault her whelp."
+
+The betrayal of the mother's trust is the "unexampled sin," which scares
+the world and shames God.
+
+  "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: _Ivàn Ivànovitch_.]
+
+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 phosphorescent, "and sparks from heaven transpierce earth's
+coarsest 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_. xxxi.]
+
+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 God is, what we are,
+  What life is--how God 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 God."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+For man, being intelligent, flings back his light on all that went
+before,
+
+  "Illustrates 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.
+The magnificent failure of Paracelsus came from missing this last step.
+His transcendent hunger for knowledge was not satisfied, not because
+human knowledge is essentially an illusion or mind disease, but because
+his knowledge did not reach the final truth of things, which is love.
+For love alone makes the heart wise, to know the secret of all being.
+This is the ultimate hypothesis in the light of which alone man can
+catch a glimpse of the general direction and intent of the universal
+movement in the world and man. Dying, Paracelsus, taught by Aprile,
+caught a glimpse of this elemental "love-force," in which alone lies the
+clue to every problem, and the promise of the final satisfaction of the
+human spirit. Failing in this knowledge, man may know many things, but
+nothing truly; for all such knowledge stays with outward shows. It is
+love alone that puts man in the right relation to his fellows and to the
+world, and removes the distortion which fills life with sorrow, and
+makes it
+
+            "Only a scene
+  Of degradation, ugliness and tears,
+  The record of disgraces best forgotten,
+  A sullen page in human chronicles
+  Fit to erase."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
+
+But in the light of love, man "sees a good in evil, and a hope in ill
+success," and recognizes that mankind are
+
+  "All with a touch of nobleness, despite
+  Their error, upward tending all though weak;
+  Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,
+  But dream of him, and guess where he may be,
+  And do their best to climb and get to him."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+"All this I knew not," adds Paracelsus, "and I failed. Let men take the
+lesson and press this lamp of love, 'God's lamp, close to their
+breasts'; its splendour, soon or late, will pierce the gloom," and show
+that the universe is a transparent manifestation of His beneficence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+BROWNING'S IDEALISM, AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION.
+
+
+  "Master, explain this incongruity!
+  When I dared question, 'It is beautiful,
+  But is it true?' thy answer was, 'In truth
+  Lives Beauty.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Shah Abbas_.]
+
+We have now seen how Browning sought to explain all things as
+manifestations of the principle of love; how he endeavoured to bring all
+the variety of finite existence, and even the deep discrepancies of good
+and evil, under the sway of one idea. I have already tried to show that
+all human thought is occupied with the same task: science, art,
+philosophy, and even the most ordinary common-sense, are all, in their
+different ways, seeking for constant laws amongst changing facts. Nay,
+we may even go so far as to say that all the activity of man, the
+practical as well as the theoretical, is an attempt to establish a
+_modus vivendi_ between his environment and himself. And such an attempt
+rests on the assumption that there is some ground common to both of the
+struggling powers within and without, some principle that manifests
+itself both in man and in nature. So that all men are philosophers to
+the extent of postulating a unity, which is deeper than all differences;
+and all are alike trying to discover, in however limited or ignorant a
+way, what that unity is. If this fact were more constantly kept in view,
+the effort of philosophers to bring the ultimate colligating principles
+of thought into clear consciousness would not, at the outset at least,
+be regarded with so much suspicion. For the philosopher differs from the
+practical man of the world, not so much in the nature of the task which
+he is trying to accomplish, as in the distinct and conscious purpose
+with which he enters upon it.
+
+Now, I think that those, who, like Browning, offer an explicitly
+optimistic idea of the relation between man and the world, have a
+special right to a respectful hearing; for it can scarcely be denied
+that their optimistic explanation is invaluable, _if it is true_--
+
+  "So might we safely mock at what unnerves
+  Faith now, be spared the sapping fear's increase
+  That haply evil's strife with good shall cease
+  Never on earth."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville_.]
+
+Despair is a great clog to good work for the world, and pessimists, as a
+rule, have shown much more readiness than optimists to let evil have its
+unimpeded way. Having found, like Schopenhauer, that "Life is an awkward
+business," they "determine to spend life in reflecting on it," or at
+least in moaning about it. The world's helpers have been men of another
+mould; and the contrast between Fichte and Schopenhauer is suggestive of
+a general truth:--"Fichte, in the bright triumphant flight of his
+idealism, supported by faith in a moral order of the world which works
+for righteousness, turning his back on the darker ethics of self-torture
+and mortification, and rushing into the political and social fray,
+proclaiming the duties of patriotism, idealizing the soldier,
+calling to and exercising an active philanthrophy, living with
+his nation, and continually urging it upwards to higher levels of
+self-realization--Schopenhauer recurring to the idea of asceticism,
+preaching the blessedness of the quiescence of all will, disparaging
+efforts to save the nation or elevate the masses, and holding that each
+has enough to do in raising his own self from its dull engrossment in
+lower things to an absorption in that pure, passionless being which lies
+far beyond all, even the so-called highest, pursuits of practical
+life."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Schopenhauer_, by Prof. Wallace.]
+
+A pessimism, which is nothing more than flippant fault-finding,
+frequently gains a cheap reputation for wisdom; and, on the other hand,
+an optimism, which is really the result of much reflection and
+experience, may be regarded as the product of a superficial spirit that
+has never known the deeper evils of life. But, if pessimism be true, it
+differs from other truths by its uselessness; for, even if it saves man
+from the bitterness of petty disappointments, it does so only by making
+the misery universal. There is no need to specify, when "_All_ is
+vanity." The drowning man does not feel the discomfort of being wet. But
+yet, if we reflect on the problem of evil, we shall find that there is
+no neutral ground, and shall ultimately be driven to choose between
+pessimism and its opposite. Nor, on the other hand, is the suppression
+of the problem of evil possible, except at a great cost. It presents
+itself anew in the mind of every thinking man; and some kind of solution
+of it, or at least some definite way of meeting its difficulty, is
+involved in the attitude which every man assumes towards life and its
+tasks.
+
+It is not impossible that there may be as much to be said for Browning's
+joy in life and his love of it, as there is for his predecessor's rage
+and sorrow. Browning certainly thought that there was; and he held his
+view consistently to the end. We cannot, therefore, do justice to the
+poet without dealing critically with the principle on which he has based
+his faith, and observing how far it is applicable to the facts of human
+life. As I have previously said, he strives hard to come into fair
+contact with the misery of man in all its sadness; and, after doing so,
+he claims, not as a matter of poetic sentiment, but as a matter of
+strict truth, that good is the heart and reality of it all. It is true
+that he cannot demonstrate the truth of his principle by reference to
+all the facts, any more than the scientific man can justify his
+hypothesis in every detail; but he holds it as a faith which reason can
+justify and experience establish, although not in every isolated
+phenomenon. The good may, he holds, be seen actually at work in the
+world, and its process will be more fully known, as human life advances
+towards its goal.
+
+                    "Though Master keep aloof,
+  Signs of His presence multiply from roof
+  To basement of the building."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+Thus Browning bases his view upon experience, and finds firm footing for
+his faith in the present; although he acknowledges that the "profound of
+ignorance surges round his rockspit of self-knowledge."
+
+                              "Enough that now,
+  Here where I stand, this moment's me and mine,
+  Shows me what is, permits me to divine
+  What shall be."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+"Since we know love we know enough"; for in love, he confidently thinks
+we have the key to all the mystery of being.
+
+Now, what is to be made of an optimism of this kind, which is based upon
+love and which professes to start from experience, or to be legitimately
+and rationally derived from it?
+
+If such a view be taken seriously, as I propose doing, we must be
+prepared to meet at the outset with some very grave difficulties. The
+first of these is that it is an interpretation of facts by a human
+emotion. To say that love blushes in the rose, or breaks into beauty in
+the clouds, that it shows its strength in the storm, and sets the stars
+in the sky, and that it is in all things the source of order and law,
+may imply a principle of supreme worth both to poetry and religion; but
+when we are asked to take it as a metaphysical explanation of facts, we
+are prone, like the judges of Caponsacchi, not to "levity, or to
+anything indecorous"--
+
+  "Only--I think I apprehend the mood:
+  There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk,
+  The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth,
+  The titter stifled in the hollow palm
+  Which rubbed the eye-brow and caressed the nose,
+  When I first told my tale; they meant, you know--
+  'The sly one, all this we are bound believe!
+  Well, he can say no other than what he says.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Canon Caponsacchi_, 14-20.]
+
+We are sufficiently willing to let the doctrine be held as a pious
+opinion. The faith that "all's love yet all's law," like many another
+illusion, if not hugged too closely, may comfort man's nakedness. But if
+we are asked to substitute this view for that which the sciences
+suggest,--if we are asked to put "Love" in the place of physical energy,
+and, by assuming it as a principle, to regard as unreal all the infinite
+misery of humanity and the degradation of intellect and character from
+which it arises, common-sense seems at once to take the side of the
+doleful sage of Chelsea. When the optimist postulates that the state of
+the world, were it rightly understood, is completely satisfactory,
+reason seems to be brought to a stand; and if poetry and religion
+involve such a postulate, they are taken to be ministering to the
+emotions at the expense of the intellect.
+
+Browning, however, was not a mere sentimentalist who could satisfy his
+heart without answering the questions of his intellect. Nor is his view
+without support--at least, as regards the substance of it. The presence
+of an idealistic element in things is recognized even by ordinary
+thought; and no man's world is so poor that it would not be poorer still
+for him, if it were reduced by the abstract sciences of nature into a
+mere manifestation of physical force. Such a world Richter compares to
+an empty eye-socket.
+
+The great result of speculation since the time of Kant is to teach us to
+recognize that objects are essentially related to mind, and that the
+principles which rule our thought enter, so to speak, into the
+constitution of the things we know. A very slight acquaintance with the
+history even of psychology, especially in modern times, shows that facts
+are more and more retracted into thought. This science, which began with
+a sufficiently common-sense view, not only of the reality and solidity
+of the things of the outer world, but of their opposition to, or
+independence of thought, is now thinning that world down into a mere
+shadow--a something which excites sensation. It shows that external
+things as we know them, and we are not concerned in any others, are, to
+a very great extent, the product of our thinking activities. No one will
+now subscribe to the Lockian or Humean view, of images impressed by
+objects on mind: the object which "impresses" has first to be made by
+mind, out of the results of nervous excitation. In a word, modern
+psychology as well as modern metaphysics, is demonstrating more and more
+fully the dependence of the world, as it is known, on the nature and
+activity of man's mind. Every explanation of the world is found to be,
+in this sense, idealistic; and in this respect, there is no difference
+whatsoever between the interpretation given by science and that of
+poetry, or religion, or philosophy. If we say that a thing is a
+"substance," or has "a cause"; if, with the physicist, we assert the
+principle of the transmutation of energy, or make use of the idea of
+evolution with the biologist or geologist; nay, if we speak of time and
+space with the mathematician, we use principles of unity derived from
+self-consciousness, and interpret nature in terms of ourselves, just as
+truly as the poet or philosopher, who makes love, or reason, the
+constitutive element in things. If the practical man of the world
+charges the poet and philosopher with living amidst phantoms, he can be
+answered with a "_Tu quoque_." "How easy," said Emerson, "it is to show
+the materialist that he also is a phantom walking and working amid
+phantoms, and that he need only ask a question or two beyond his daily
+questions to find his solid universe proving dim and impalpable before
+his sense."
+
+"Sense," which seems to show directly that the world is a solid reality,
+not dependent in any way on thought, is found not to be reliable. All
+science is nothing but an appeal to thought from ordinary sensuous
+opinion. It is an attempt to find the reality of things by thinking
+about them; and this reality, when it is found, turns out to be a law.
+But laws are ideas; though, if they are true ideas, they represent not
+merely thoughts in the mind, but also real principles, which manifest
+themselves in the objects of the outer world, as well as in the
+thinker's mind.
+
+It is not possible in such a work as this, to give a carefully reasoned
+proof of this view of the relation of thought and things, or to repeat
+the argument of Kant. I must be content with merely referring to it, as
+showing that the principles in virtue of which we think, are the
+principles in virtue of which objects as we know them exist; and we
+cannot be concerned with any other objects. The laws which scientific
+investigation discovers are not only ideas that can be written in books,
+but also principles which explain the nature of things. In other words,
+the hypotheses of the natural sciences, or their categories, are points
+of view in the light of which the external world can be regarded as
+governed by uniform laws. And these constructive principles, which lift
+the otherwise disconnected world into an intelligible system, are
+revelations of the nature of intelligence, and only on that account
+principles for explaining the world.
+
+                           "To know,
+  Rather consists in opening out a way
+  Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
+  Than in effecting entry for a light
+  Supposed to be without."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
+
+In this sense, it may be said that all knowledge is anthropomorphic; and
+in this respect there is no difference between the physics, which speaks
+of energy as the essence of things, and the poetry, which speaks of love
+as the ultimate principle of reality. Between such scientific and
+idealistic explanations there is not even the difference that the one
+begins without and the other within, or that the one is objective and
+the other subjective. The true distinction is that the principles upon
+which the latter proceed are less abstract than those of science.
+"Reason" and "love" are higher principles for the explanation of the
+nature of things than "substance" or "cause"; but both are forms of the
+unity of thought. And if the latter seem to have nothing to do with the
+self, it is only because they are inadequate to express its full
+character. On the other hand, the higher categories, or ideas of reason,
+seem to be merely anthropomorphic, and, therefore, ill-suited to explain
+nature, because the relation of nature to intelligence is habitually
+neglected by ordinary thought, which has not pressed its problems far
+enough to know that such higher categories can alone satisfy the demand
+for truth.
+
+But natural science is gradually driven from the lower to the higher
+categories, or, in other words, it is learning to take a more and more
+idealistic view of nature. It is moving very slowly, because it is a
+long labour to exhaust the uses of an instrument of thought; and it is
+only at great intervals in the history of the human intellect, that we
+find the need of a change of categories. But, as already hinted, there
+is no doubt that science is becoming increasingly aware of the
+conditions, under which alone its results may be held as valid. At
+first, it drove "mind" out of the realm of nature, and offered to
+explain both it and man in physical and mathematical terms. But, in our
+day, the man of science has become too cautious to make such rash
+extensions of the principles he uses. He is more inclined to limit
+himself to his special field, and he refuses to make any declaration as
+to the ultimate nature of things. He holds himself apart from
+materialism, as he does from idealism. I think I may even go further,
+and say that the fatal flaw of materialism has been finally detected,
+and that the essential relativity of all objects to thought is all but
+universally acknowledged.
+
+The common notion that science gives a complete view of truth, to which
+we may appeal as refuting idealism, is untenable. Science itself will
+not support the appeal, but will direct the appellant to another court.
+Perhaps, rather, it would be truer to say that its attitude is one of
+doubt whether or not any court, philosophical or other, can give any
+valid decision on the matter. Confining themselves to the region of
+material phenomena, scientific men generally leave to common ignorance,
+or to moral and theological tradition, all the interests and activities
+of man, other than those which are physical or physiological. And some
+of them are even aware, that if they could find the physical equation of
+man, or, through their knowledge of physiology, actually produce in man
+the sensations, thoughts, and notions now ascribed to the intelligent
+life within him, the question of the spiritual or material nature of man
+and the world, would remain precisely where it was. The explanation
+would still begin with mind and end there. The principles of the
+materialistic explanation of the world would still be derived from
+intelligence; mind would still underlie all it explained, and completed
+science would still be, in this sense, anthropomorphic. The charge of
+anthropomorphism thus falls to the ground, because it would prove too
+much. It is a weapon which cuts the hand that wields it. And, as
+directed against idealism, it only shows that he who uses it has
+inadequate notions both of the nature of the self and of the world, and
+is not aware that each gets meaning, only as an exponent of the other.
+
+On the whole, we may say that it is not men of science who now assail
+philosophy, because it gives an idealistic explanation of the world, so
+much as unsystematic dabblers in matters of thought. The best men of
+science, rather, show a tendency to acquiesce in a kind of dualism of
+matter and spirit, and to leave morality and religion, art and
+philosophy to pursue their own ends undisturbed. Mr. Huxley, for
+instance, and some others, offer two philosophical solutions, one
+proceeding from the material world and the other from the sensations and
+other "facts of consciousness." They say that we may either explain man
+as a natural phenomenon, or the world as a mental one.
+
+But it is a little difficult not to ask which of these explanations is
+true. Both of them cannot well be, seeing that they are different. And
+neither of them can be adopted without very serious consequences. It
+would require considerable hardihood to suggest that natural science
+should be swept away in favour of psychology, which would be done if the
+one view held by Mr. Huxley were true. And, in my opinion, it requires
+quite as much hardihood to suggest the adoption of a theory that makes
+morality and religion illusory, which would be done were the other view
+valid.
+
+As a matter of fact, however, such an attitude can scarcely be held by
+any one who is interested _both_ in the success of natural science and
+in the spiritual development of mankind. We are constrained rather to
+say that, if these rival lines of thought lead us to deny either the
+outer world of things, or the world of thought and morality, then they
+must both be wrong. They are not "explanations" but false theories, if
+they lead to such conclusions as these. And, instead of holding them up
+to the world as the final triumph of human thought, we should sweep them
+into the dust-bin, and seek for some better explanation from a new point
+of view.
+
+And, indeed, a better explanation is sought, and sought not only by
+idealists, but by scientific men themselves,--did they only comprehend
+their own main tendency and method. The impulse towards unity, which is
+the very essence of thought, if it is baulked in one direction by a
+hopeless dualism, just breaks out in another. Subjective idealism, that
+is, the theory that things are nothing but phenomena of the individual's
+consciousness, that the world is really all inside the philosopher, is
+now known by most people to end in self-contradiction; and materialism
+is also known to begin with it. And there are not many people sanguine
+enough to believe with Mr. Huxley and Mr. Herbert Spencer, that, if we
+add two self-contradictory theories together, or hold them alternately,
+we shall find the truth. Modern science, that is, the science which does
+not philosophize, and modern philosophy are with tolerable unanimity
+denying this absolute dualism. They do not know of any thought that is
+not of things, or of any things that are not for thought. It is
+necessarily assumed that, in some way or other, the gap between things
+and thought is got over by knowledge. How the connection is brought
+about may not be known; but, that there is the connection between real
+things and true thoughts, no one can well deny. It is an ill-starred
+perversity which leads men to deny such a connection, merely because
+they have not found out how it is established.
+
+A new category of thought has taken possession of the thought of our
+time--a category which is fatal to dualism. The idea of development is
+breaking down the division between mind and matter, as it is breaking
+down all other absolute divisions. Geology, astronomy, and physics at
+one extreme, biology, psychology, and philosophy at the other, combine
+in asserting the idea of the universe as a unity which is always
+evolving its content, and bringing its secret potencies to the light. It
+is true that these sciences have not linked hands as yet. We cannot get
+from chemistry to biology without a leap, or from physiology to
+psychology without another. But no one will postulate a rift right
+through being. The whole tendency of modern science implies the opposite
+of such a conception. History is striving to trace continuity between
+the civilized man and the savage. Psychology is making towards a
+junction with physiology and general biology, biology with chemistry,
+and chemistry with physics. That there is an unbroken continuity in
+existence is becoming a postulate of modern science, almost as truly as
+the "universality of law" or "the uniformity of nature." Nor is the
+postulate held less firmly because the evidence for the continuity of
+nature is not yet complete. Chemistry has not yet quite lapsed into
+physics; biology at present shows no sign of giving up its
+characteristic conception of life, and the former science is as yet
+quite unable to deal with that peculiar phenomenon. The facts of
+consciousness have not been resolved into nervous action, and, so far,
+mind has not been shown to be a secretion of brain. Nevertheless, all
+these sciences are beating against the limits which separate them, and
+new suggestions of connection between natural life and its inorganic
+environment are continually discovered. The sciences are boring towards
+each other, and the dividing strata are wearing thin; so that it seems
+reasonable to expect that, with the growth of knowledge, an unbroken way
+upwards may be discovered, from the lowest and simplest stages of
+existence to the highest and most complex forms of self-conscious life.
+
+Now, to those persons who are primarily interested in the ethical and
+religious phenomena of man's life, the idea of abolishing the chasm
+between spirit and nature is viewed with no little apprehension. It is
+supposed that if evolution were established as a universal law, and the
+unity of being were proved, the mental and moral life of man would be
+degraded into a complex manifestation of mere physical force. And we
+even find religious men rejoicing at the failure of science to bridge
+the gap between the inorganic and the organic, and between natural and
+self-conscious life; as if the validity of religion depended upon the
+maintenance of their separating boundaries. But no religion that is free
+from superstitious elements has anything to gain from the failure of
+knowledge to relate things to each other. It is difficult to see how
+breaks in the continuity of being can be established, when every living
+plant confutes the absolute difference between the organic and
+inorganic, and, by the very fact of living, turns the latter into the
+former; and it is difficult to deny the continuity of "mind and matter,"
+when every human being is relating himself to the outer world in all his
+thoughts and actions. And religion is the very last form of thought
+which could profit from such a proof of absolute distinctions, were it
+possible. In fact, as we have seen, religion, in so far as it demands a
+perfect and absolute being as the object of worship, is vitally
+concerned in maintaining the unity of the world. It must assume that
+matter, in its degree, reveals the same principle which, in a higher
+form, manifests itself in spirit.
+
+But closer investigation will show that the real ground for such
+apprehension does not lie in the continuity of existence, which
+evolution implies; for religion itself postulates the same thing. The
+apprehension springs, rather, from the idea that the continuity asserted
+by evolution, is obtained by resolving the higher forms of existence
+into the lower. It is believed that, if the application of development
+to facts were successfully carried out, the organic would be shown to be
+nothing but complex inorganic forces, mental life nothing but a
+physiological process, and religion, morality, and art, nothing but
+products of the highly complex motion of highly complex aggregates of
+physical atoms.
+
+It seems to me quite natural that science should be regarded as tending
+towards such a materialistic conclusion. This is the view which many
+scientific investigators have themselves taken of their work; and some
+of their philosophical exponents, notably Mr. Herbert Spencer, have,
+with more or less inconsistency, interpreted the idea of evolution in
+this manner. But, it may be well to bear in mind that science is
+generally far more successful in employing its constructive ideas, than
+it is in rendering an account of them. In fact, it is not its business
+to examine its categories: that task properly belongs to philosophy, and
+it is not a superfluous one. But, so long as the employment of the
+categories in the special province of a particular science yields valid
+results, scientific explorers and those who attach, and rightly attach,
+so much value to their discoveries, are very unwilling to believe that
+these categories are not valid universally. The warning voice of
+philosophy is not heeded, when it charges natural science with applying
+its conceptions to materials to which they are inadequate; and its
+examination of the categories of thought is regarded as an innocent, but
+also a useless, activity. For, it is argued, what good can arise from
+the analysis of our working ideas? The world looked for causes, and
+found them, when it was very young; but, up to the time of David Hume,
+no one had shown what causality meant, and the explanation which he
+offered is now rejected by modern science, as definitely as it is
+rejected by philosophy. Meantime, while philosophy is still engaged in
+exposing the fallacies of the theory of association as held by Hume,
+science has gone beyond this category altogether; it is now establishing
+a theory of the conservation of energy, which supplants the law of
+causality by tracing it into a deeper law of nature.
+
+There is some force in this argument, but it cuts both ways. For, even
+if it be admitted that the category was successfully applied in the
+past, it is also admitted that it was applied without being understood;
+and it cannot now be questioned that the philosophers were right in
+rejecting it as the final explanation of the relation of objects to each
+other, and in pointing to other and higher connecting ideas. And this
+consideration should go some way towards convincing evolutionists that,
+though they may be able successfully to apply the idea of development to
+particular facts, this does not guarantee the soundness of their view of
+it as an instrument of thought, or of the nature of the final results
+which it is destined to achieve. Hence, without any disparagement to the
+new extension which science has received by the use of this new idea, it
+may be maintained that the ordinary view of its tendency and mission is
+erroneous.
+
+"The prevailing method of explaining the world," says Professor Caird,
+"may be described as an attempt to level 'downwards.' The doctrine of
+development, interpreted as that idea usually is interpreted, supports
+this view, as making it necessary to trace back higher and more complex
+to lower or simpler forms of being; for the most obvious way of
+accomplishing this task is to show analytically that there is really
+nothing more in the former than in the latter."[A] "Divorced from
+matter," asks Professor Tyndall, "where is life to be found? Whatever
+our _faith_ may say our _knowledge_ shows them to be indissolubly
+joined. Every meal we eat, and every cup we drink, illustrates the
+mysterious _control of Mind by Matter_. Trace the line of life backwards
+and see it approaching more and more to what we call the _purely
+physical condition_."[B] And then, rising to the height of his subject,
+or even above it, he proclaims, "By an intellectual necessity I cross
+the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter
+which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our
+professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with
+opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life."[C] A
+little further on, speaking in the name of science, and on behalf of his
+scientific fellow-workers (with what right is a little doubtful), he
+adds--"We claim, and we shall wrest, from theology, the entire domain of
+cosmological theory. All schemes and systems which thus infringe upon
+the domain of science, must, _in so far as they do this,_ submit to its
+control, and relinquish all thought of controlling it." But if science
+is to control the knowable world, he generously leaves the remainder for
+religion. He will not deprive it of a faith in "a Power absolutely
+inscrutable to the intellect of man. As little in our days as in the
+days of Job can a man by searching find this Power out." And, now that
+he has left this empty sphere of the unknown to religion, he feels
+justified in adding, "There is, you will observe, no very rank
+materialism here."
+
+[Footnote A: _The Critical Philosophy of Kant_, Vol. I. p. 34]
+
+[Footnote B: _Address to the British Association_, 1874, p. 54.]
+
+[Footnote C: _Belfast Address_, 1874.]
+
+  "Yet they did not abolish the gods, but they sent them well out
+  of the way,
+  With the rarest of nectar to drink, and blue fields of nothing
+  to sway."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Clerk Maxwell: "_Notes of the President's Address,_"
+British Association, 1874.]
+
+Now these declarations of Mr. Tyndall are, to say the least, somewhat
+ambiguous and shadowy. Yet, when he informs us that eating and drinking
+"illustrate the control of mind by matter," and "that the line of life
+traced backwards leads towards a purely physical condition," it is a
+little difficult to avoid the conclusion that he regards science as
+destined.
+
+  "To tread the world
+  Into a paste, and thereof make a smooth
+  Uniform mound, whereon to plant its flag."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
+
+For the conclusion of the whole argument seems to be, that all _we know
+as facts_ are mere forms of matter; although the stubborn refusal of
+consciousness to be resolved into natural force, and its power of
+constructing for itself a world of symbols, gives science no little
+trouble, and forces it to acknowledge complete ignorance of the nature
+of the power from which all comes.
+
+  "So roll things to the level which you love,
+  That you could stand at ease there and survey
+  The universal Nothing undisgraced
+  By pert obtrusion of some old church-spire
+  I' the distance! "[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_.]
+
+Some writers on ethics and religion have adopted the same view of the
+goal of the idea of evolution. In consistency with this supposed
+tendency of science, to resolve all things into their simplest, and
+earliest forms, religion has been traced back to the superstition and
+ghost-worship of savages; and then it has been contended that it is, in
+essence, nothing more than superstition and ghost-worship. And, in like
+manner, morality, with its categorical imperative of duty, has been
+traced back, without a break, to the ignorant fear of the vengeance of a
+savage chief. A similar process in the same direction reduces the love
+divine, of which our poet speaks, into brute lust; somewhat sublimated,
+it is true, in its highest forms, but not fundamentally changed.
+
+  "Philosophers deduce you chastity
+  Or shame, from just the fact that at the first
+  Whoso embraced a woman in the field,
+  Threw club down and forewent his brains beside;
+  So, stood a ready victim in the reach
+  Of any brother-savage, club in hand.
+  Hence saw the use of going out of sight
+  In wood or cave to prosecute his loves."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Bishop Blouhram's Apology_.]
+
+And when the sacred things of life are treated in this manner--when
+moral conduct is showed to be evolved by a continuous process from
+"conduct in general," the conduct of an "infusorium or a cephalopod," or
+even of wind-mills or water-wheels, it is not surprising if the
+authority of the moral law seems to be undermined, and that "devout
+souls" are apprehensive of the results of science. "Does law so analyzed
+coerce you much?" asks Browning.
+
+The derivation of spiritual from natural laws thus appears to be fatal
+to the former; and religious teachers naturally think that it is
+necessary for their cause to snap the links of the chain of evolution,
+and, like Professor Drummond, to establish absolute gaps, not only
+between the inorganic and the organic worlds, but also between the
+self-conscious life of man and the mysterious, spiritual life of Christ,
+or God. But it seems to me that, in their antagonism to evolution,
+religious teachers are showing the same incapacity to distinguish
+between their friends and their foes, which they previously manifested
+in their acceptance of the Kantian doctrine of "things in
+themselves,"--a doctrine which placed God and the soul beyond the power
+of speculative reason either to prove or disprove. It is, however,
+already recognized that the attempt of Mansel and Hamilton to degrade
+human reason for the behoof of faith was really a veiled agnosticism;
+and a little reflection must show that the idea of evolution, truly
+interpreted, in no wise threatens the degradation of man, or the
+overthrow of his spiritual interests. On the contrary, this idea is, in
+all the history of thought, the first constructive hypothesis which is
+adequate to the uses of ethics and religion. By means of it, we may hope
+to solve many of the problems arising from the nature of knowledge and
+moral conduct, which the lower category of cause turned into pure
+enigmas. It seems, indeed, to contain the promise of establishing the
+science of man, as intelligent, on a firm basis; on which we may raise a
+superstructure, comparable in strength and superior in worth, to that of
+the science of nature. And, even if the moral science must, like
+philosophy, always return to the beginning--must, that is, from the
+necessity of its nature, and not from any complete failure--it will
+still begin again at a higher level now that the idea of evolution is in
+the field.
+
+It now remains to show in what way the idea of evolution leaves room for
+religion and morality; or, in other words, to show how, so far from
+degrading man to the level of the brute condition, and running life down
+into "purely physical conditions," it contains the promise of
+establishing that idealistic view of the world, which is maintained by
+art and religion.
+
+In order to show this, it is necessary that the idea of evolution should
+be used fearlessly, and applied to all facts that can in any way come
+under it. It must, in other words, be used as a category of thought,
+whose application is universal; so that, if it is valid at all as a
+theory, it is valid of all finite things. For the question we are
+dealing with is not the truth of the hypothesis of a particular science,
+but the truth of a hypothesis as to the relation of all objects in the
+world, including man himself. We must not be deterred from this
+universal application by the fact that we cannot, as yet, prove its
+truth in every detail. No scientific hypothesis ever has exhausted its
+details. I consider, therefore, that Mr. Tyndall had a complete right to
+"cross the boundary of the experimental evidence by an intellectual
+necessity"; for the necessity comes from the assumption of a possible
+explanation by the aid of the hypothesis. It is no argument against such
+a procedure to insist that, as yet, there is no proof of the absolute
+continuity of matter and physical life, or that the dead begets the
+living. The hypothesis is not disproved by the absence of evidence; it
+is only not proved. The connection may be there, although we have not,
+as yet, been able to find it. In the face of such difficulties as these,
+the scientific investigator has always a right to claim more time; and
+his attitude is impregnable as long as he remembers, as Mr. Tyndall did
+on the whole, that his hypothesis is a hypothesis.
+
+But Mr. Tyndall has himself given up this right. He, like Mr. Huxley,
+has placed the phenomena of self-consciousness outside of the developing
+process, and confined the sphere in which evolution is applicable, to
+natural objects. Between objects and the subject, even when both subject
+and object are man himself, there lies "an impassable gulf."
+
+Even to try "to comprehend the connection between thought and thing is
+absurd, like the effort of a man trying to lift himself by his own
+waist-band." Our states of self-consciousness are symbols only--symbols
+of an outside entity, whose real nature we can never know. We know only
+these states; we only _infer_ "that anything answering to our
+impressions exists outside of ourselves." And it is impossible to
+justify even that inference; for, if we can only know states of
+consciousness, we cannot say that they are symbols of anything, or that
+there is anything to be symbolized. The external world, on this theory,
+ceases to exist even as an unknown entity. In triumphantly pointing out
+that, in virtue of this psychological view, "There is, you will observe,
+no very rank materialism here," Mr. Tyndall forgets that he has
+destroyed the basis of all natural science, and reduced evolution into a
+law of "an outside entity," of which we can never know anything, and any
+inference regarding which violates every law of thought.
+
+It seems to me quite plain that either this psychological theory, which
+Mr. Tyndall has mistaken for a philosophy, is invalid; or else it is
+useless to endeavour to propound any view regarding a "nature which is
+the phantom of the individual's mind." I prefer the science of Mr.
+Tyndall (and of Mr. Huxley, too) to his philosophy; and he would have
+escaped materialism more effectively, if he had remained faithful to his
+theory of evolution. It is a disloyalty, not only to science, but to
+thought, to cast away our categories when they seem to imply
+inconvenient consequences. They must be valid universally, if they are
+valid at all.
+
+Mr. Tyndall contends that nature makes man, and he finds evidence in the
+fact that we eat and drink, "of the control of mind by matter." Now, it
+seems to me, that _if_ nature makes man, then nature makes man's
+thoughts also. His sensations, feelings, ideas, notions, being those of
+a naturally-evolved agent, are revelations of the potency of the primal
+matter, just as truly as are the buds, flowers, and fruits of a tree. No
+doubt, we cannot as yet "comprehend the connection" between nervous
+action and sensation, any more than we can comprehend the connection
+between inorganic and organic existence. But, if the absence of
+"experimental evidence" does not disprove the hypothesis in the one
+case, it can not disprove it in the other. There are two crucial points
+in which the theory has not been established.
+
+But, in both cases alike, there is the same kind of evidence that the
+connection exists; although in neither case can we, as yet, discover
+what it is. Plants live by changing inorganic elements into organic
+structure; and man is intelligent only in so far as he crosses over the
+boundary between subject and object, and knows the world without him.
+There is no "impassable gulf separating the subject and object"; if
+there were we could not know anything of either. There are not two
+worlds--the one of thoughts, the other of things--which are absolutely
+exclusive of each other, but one universe in which thought and reality
+meet. Mr. Tyndall thinks that it is an inference (and an inference over
+an impassable gulf!) that anything answering to our impressions exists
+outside ourselves. "The question of the external world is the great
+battleground of metaphysics," he quotes approvingly from Mr. J.S. Mill.
+But the question of the external world is not whether that world exists;
+it is, how are we to account for our knowledge that it does exist. The
+inference is not from thoughts to things, nor from things to thoughts,
+but from a partially known world to a systematic theory of that world.
+Philosophy is not engaged on the foolish enterprise of trying to
+discover whether the world exists, or whether we know that it exists;
+its problem is how to account for our knowledge. It asks what must the
+nature of things be, seeing that they are known; and what is the nature
+of thought, seeing that it knows facts?
+
+There is no hope whatsoever for ethics, or religion, or philosophy--no
+hope even for science--in a theory which would apply evolution all the
+way up from inorganic matter to life, but which would postulate an
+absolute break at consciousness. The connection between thought and
+things is there to begin with, whether we can account for it or not; if
+it were not, then natural science would be impossible. It would be
+palpably irrational even to try to find out the nature of things by
+thinking. The only science would be psychology, and even that would be
+the science of "symbols of an unknown entity." What symbols of an
+unknown can signify, or how an unknown can produce symbols of itself
+across an impassable gulf--Mr. Spencer, Mr. Huxley, and Mr. Tyndall have
+yet to inform us.
+
+It is the more necessary to insist on this, because the division between
+thought and matter, which is admitted by these writers, is often grasped
+at by their opponents, as a means of warding off the results which they
+draw from the theory of evolution. When science breaks its sword,
+religion assails it, with the fragment. It is not at once evident that
+if this chasm were shown to exist, knowledge would be a chimera; for
+there would be no outer world at all, not even a phenomenal one, to
+supply an object for it. We _must_ postulate the ultimate unity of all
+beings with each other and with the mind that knows them, just because
+we are intellectual and moral beings; and to destroy this unity is to
+"kill reason itself, as it were, in the eye," as Milton said.
+
+Now, evolution not only postulates unity, or the unbroken continuity of
+all existence, but it also negates all differences, except those which
+are expressions of that unity. It is not the mere assertion of a
+substratum under qualities; but it implies that the substratum
+penetrates into the qualities, and manifests itself in them. That which
+develops--be it plant, child, or biological kingdom--is, at every stage
+from lowest to highest, a concrete unity of all its differences; and in
+the whole history of its process its actual content is always the same.
+The environment of the plant evokes that content, but it adds nothing to
+it. No addition of anything absolutely new, no external aggregation, no
+insertion of anything alien into a growing thing, is possible. What it
+is now, it was in the beginning; and what it will be, it is now.
+Granting the hypothesis of evolution, there can be no quarrel with the
+view that the crude beginnings of things, matter in its most nebulous
+state, contains potentially all the rich variety of both natural and
+spiritual life.
+
+But this continuity of all existence may be interpreted in two very
+different ways. It may lead us either to radically change our notions of
+mind and its activities, or "to radically change our notions of matter."
+We may take as the principle of explanation, either the beginning, or
+the end of the process of development. We may say of the simple and
+crass, "There is all that your rich universe really means"; or we may
+say of the spiritual activities of man, "This is what your crude
+beginning really was." We may explain the complex by the simple, or the
+simple by the complex. We may analyze the highest back into the lowest,
+or we may follow the lowest, by a process of synthesis, up to the
+highest.
+
+And one of the most important of all questions for morality and religion
+is the question, which of these two methods is valid. If out of crass
+matter is evolved all animal and spiritual life, does that prove life to
+be nothing but matter; or does it not rather show that what we, in our
+ignorance, took to be mere matter was really something much greater? If
+"crass matter" contains all this promise and potency, by what right do
+we still call it "crass"? It is manifestly impossible to treat the
+potencies, assumed to lie in a thing that grows, as if they were of no
+significance; first, to assert that such potencies exist, in saying that
+the object develops; and then, to neglect them, and to regard the effect
+as constituted merely of its simplest elements. Either these potencies
+are not in the object, or else the object has in it, and is, at the
+first, more than it appears to be. Either the object does not grow, or
+the lowest stage of its being is no explanation of its true nature.
+
+If we wish to know what the forms of natural life mean, we look in vain
+to their primary state. We must watch the evolution and revelation of
+the secret hid in natural life, as it moves through the ascending cycles
+of the biological kingdom. The idea of evolution, when it is not
+muddled, is synthetic--not analytic; it explains the simplest in the
+light of the complex, the beginning in the light of the end, and not
+_vice versa_. In a word, it follows the ways of nature, the footsteps of
+fact, instead of inventing a wilful backward path of its own. And nature
+explains by gradually expanding. If we hearken to nature, and not to the
+voice of illusory preconceptions, we shall hear her proclaim at the last
+stage, "Here is the meaning of the seedling. Now it is clear what it
+really was; for the power which lay dormant has pushed itself into
+light, through bud and flower and leaf and fruit." The reality of a
+growing thing is its highest form of being. The last explains the first,
+but not the first the last. The first is abstract, incomplete, not yet
+actual, but mere potency; and we could never know even the potency,
+except in the light of its own actualization.
+
+From this correction of the abstract view of development momentous
+consequences follow. If the universe is, as science pronounces, an
+organic totality, which is ever converting its promise and potency into
+actuality, then we must add that the ultimate interpretation even of
+the lowest existence in the world cannot be given except on principles
+which are adequate to explain the highest. We must "level up and not
+level down": we must not only deny that matter can explain spirit, but
+we must say that even matter itself cannot be fully understood, except
+as an element in a spiritual world."[A]
+
+[Footnote 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
+were established, 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 justify
+_in detail_ the 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 stage
+  You shuffle through your part as best you can."[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 yet
+  I' the backwardness, repine if tree and flower,
+  Mountain or streamlet were my dwelling-place
+  Before I gained enlargement, grew mollusc."[C]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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
+perverted and 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 last
+  To man--the consummation of this scheme
+  Of being, the completion of this sphere
+  Of life."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
+
+"All tended to mankind," he said, after reviewing the whole process of
+nature in _Paracelsus_,
+
+  "And, man produced, all has its end thus far:
+  But in completed man begins anew
+  A tendency to God."[B]
+
+[Footnote 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, explains
+  Each back step in the circle."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+Nature is retracted into thought, built again in mind.
+
+    "Man, once descried, imprints for ever
+  His presence on all lifeless things."[D]
+
+[Footnote 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 a kosmos 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 finds
+_itself_.
+
+  "Striving to be man, the worm
+  Mounts through all the spires of form."[A]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 for Browning 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,
+_must_ seek 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 is a 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,--the _prius_ of all things, the
+active energy _in_ all things, and the _reality_ of 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 seem to 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
+conceptions are 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+BROWNING'S SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL.
+
+
+    "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 establishing an 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 in _The 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 more than 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."
+
+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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 learns
+  Because he lives, which is to be a man,
+  Set to instruct himself by his past self."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+             "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]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+It were easy to multiply passages which show that 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 soul
+  There, where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+But as long as he is man, he has
+
+  "Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become."
+
+In _Paracelsus_, _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 process of
+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 is _becoming_ good, 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 spring from 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 is _either_ good or evil, _either_ rational or irrational, _either_
+free 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 express
+  Heart's satisfaction that the Past indeed
+  Is past, gives way before Life's best and last,
+  The all-including Future!"[A]
+
+[Footnote 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 life
+  Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife
+  Through the ambiguous Present to the goal
+  Of some all-reconciling Future?"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 a _moral 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 discovers
+and 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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 reaction
+against 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 the old 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 means
+  Ever-renewed assurance by defeat
+  That victory is somehow still to reach."[A]
+
+[Footnote 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 effects
+  When exercised on earth's least atom, Son!
+  What was, what is, what may such atom be?
+  No answer!"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 in _La Saisiaz_, _Ferishtah's Fancies, The Parleyings_, and
+_Asolando_--in all his later and more reflective poems, in fact. It
+must, I think, 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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
+consciousness that 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 force
+  Actual e'er its own beginning, operative thro' its course,
+  Unaffected by its end."[A]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+If there were only they two on earth as tenants, there would be no way
+of deciding between them; for, according to his argument, the truth is
+apparently decided by majority of opinions. Each individual, equipped
+with his own particular kind of senses and reason, gets his own
+particular experience, and draws his own particular conclusions from it.
+If it be asked whether these conclusions are true or not, the only
+answer is that the question is absurd; for, under such conditions, there
+cannot be either truth or error. Every one's opinion is its own
+criterion. Each man is the measure of all things; "His own world for
+every mortal," as the poet puts it.
+
+  "To each mortal peradventure earth becomes a new machine,
+  Pain and pleasure no more tally in our sense than red and green."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+The first result of this subjective view of knowledge is clearly enough
+seen by the poet. He is well aware that his convictions regarding the
+high matters of human destiny are valid only for himself.
+
+            "Only for myself I speak,
+  Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers strong and weak."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+Experience, as he interprets it, that is, present consciousness, "this
+moment's me and mine," is too narrow a basis for any universal or
+objective conclusion. So far as his own inner experience of pain and
+pleasure goes,
+
+  "All--for myself--seems ordered wise and well
+  Inside it,--what reigns outside, who can tell?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+But as to the actual world, he can have no opinion, nor, from the good
+and evil that apparently play around him, can he deduce either
+
+  "Praise or blame of its contriver, shown a niggard or profuse
+  In each good or evil issue."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+The moral government of the world is a subject, regarding which we are
+doomed to absolute ignorance. A theory that it is ruled by the "prince
+of the power of the air" has just as much, and just as little, validity
+as the more ordinary view held by religious people. Who needs be told
+
+            "The space
+  Which yields thee knowledge--do its bounds embrace
+  Well-willing and wise-working, each at height?
+  Enough: beyond thee lies the infinite--
+  Back to thy circumscription!"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+And our ignorance of God, and the world, and ourselves is matched by a
+similar ignorance regarding moral matters.
+
+  "Ignorance overwraps his moral sense,
+  Winds him about, relaxing, as it wraps,
+  So much and no more than lets through perhaps
+  The murmured knowledge--' Ignorance exists.'"[D]
+
+[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]
+
+We cannot be certain even of the distinction and conflict of good and
+evil in the world. They, too, and the apparent choice between them to
+which man is continually constrained, may be mere illusions--phenomena
+of the individual consciousness. What remains, then? Nothing but to
+"wait."
+
+  "Take the joys and bear the sorrows--neither with extreme concern!
+  Living here means nescience simply: 'tis next life that helps to
+        learn."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+It is hardly necessary to enter upon any detailed criticism of such a
+theory of knowledge as this, which is proffered by the poet. It is well
+known by all those who are in some degree acquainted with the history of
+philosophy--and it will be easily seen by all who have any critical
+acumen--that it leads directly into absolute scepticism. And absolute
+scepticism is easily shown to be self-contradictory. For a theory of
+nescience, in condemning all knowledge and the faculty of knowledge,
+condemns itself. If nothing is true, or if nothing is known, then this
+theory itself is not true, or its truth cannot be known. And if this
+theory is true, then nothing is true; for this theory, like all others,
+is the product of a defective intelligence. In whatsoever way the matter
+is put, there is left no standing-ground for the human critic who
+condemns human thought. And he cannot well pretend to a footing in a
+sphere above man's, or below it. There is thus one presupposition which
+every one must make, if he is to propound any doctrine whatsoever, even
+if that doctrine be that no doctrine can be valid; it is the
+presupposition that knowledge is possible, and that truth can be known.
+And this presupposition fills, for modern philosophy, the place of the
+_Cogito ergo sum_ of Descartes. It is the starting-point and criterion
+of all knowledge.
+
+It is, at first sight, a somewhat difficult task to account for the
+fact, that so keen an intellect as the poet's did not perceive the
+conclusion to which his theory of knowledge so directly and necessarily
+leads. It is probable, however, that he never critically examined it,
+but simply accepted it as equivalent to the common doctrine of the
+relativity of knowledge, which, in some form or other, all the schools
+of philosophy adopt. But the main reason will be found to lie in the
+fact that knowledge was not, to Browning, its own criterion or end. The
+primary fact of his philosophy is that human life is a moral process.
+His interest in the evolution of character was his deepest interest, as
+he informs us; he was an ethical teacher rather than a metaphysician. He
+is ever willing to asperse man's intelligence. But that man is a moral
+agent he will in no wise doubt. This is his
+
+            "Solid standing-place amid
+  The wash and welter, whence all doubts are bid
+  Back to the ledge they break against in foam."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+His practical maxim was
+
+  "Wholly distrust thy knowledge, then, and trust
+  As wholly love allied to ignorance!
+  There lies thy truth and safety."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Pillar of Sebzevar_.]
+
+All phenomena must, in some way or other, be reconciled by the poet with
+the fundamental and indubitable fact of the progressive moral life of
+man. For the fundamental presupposition which a man makes, is
+necessarily his criterion of knowledge, and it determines the truth or
+illusoriness of all other opinions whatsoever.
+
+Now, Browning held, not only that no certain knowledge is attainable by
+man, but also that such certainty is incompatible with moral life.
+Absolute knowledge would, he contends, lift man above the need and the
+possibility of making the moral choice, which is our supreme business on
+earth. Man can be good or evil, only on condition of being in absolute
+uncertainty regarding the true meaning of the facts of nature and the
+phenomena of life.
+
+This somewhat strange doctrine finds the most explicit and full
+expression in _La Saisiaz_. "Fancy," amongst the concessions it demands
+from "Reason," claims that man should know--not merely surmise or
+fear--that every action done in this life awaits its proper and
+necessary meed in the next.
+
+                "I also will that man become aware
+  Life has worth incalculable, every moment that he spends
+  So much gain or loss for that next life which on this life depends."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+But Reason refuses the concession, upon the ground that such sure
+knowledge would be destructive of the very distinction between right and
+wrong, which the demand implies. The "promulgation of this decree," by
+Fancy, "makes both good and evil to cease." Prior to it "earth was man's
+probation-place"; but under this decree man is no longer free; for
+certain knowledge makes action necessary.
+
+  "Once lay down the law, with Nature's simple 'Such effects succeed
+  Causes such, and heaven or hell depends upon man's earthly deed
+  Just as surely as depends the straight or else the crooked line
+  On his making point meet point or with or else without incline,'
+  Thenceforth neither good nor evil does man, doing what he must."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_, 195.]
+
+If we presuppose that "man, addressed this mode, be sound and sane" (and
+we must stipulate sanity, if his actions are to be morally judged at
+all)--then a law which binds punishment and reward to action in a
+necessary manner, and is known so to bind them, would "obtain prompt and
+absolute obedience." There are some "edicts, now styled God's own
+nature's," "which to hear means to obey." All the laws relating to the
+preservation of life are of this character. And, if the law--"Would'st
+thou live again, be just"--were in all ways as stringent as the other
+law--
+
+  "Would'st thou live now, regularly draw thy breath!
+  For, suspend the operation, straight law's breach results in death"--[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+then no one would disobey it, nor could. "It is the liberty of doing
+evil that gives the doing good a grace." And that liberty would be taken
+away by complete assurance, that effects follow actions in the moral
+world with the necessity seen in the natural sphere. Since, therefore,
+man is made to grow, and earth is the place wherein he is to pass
+probation and prove his powers, there must remain a certain doubt as to
+the issues of his actions; conviction must not be so strong as to carry
+with it man's whole nature. "The best I both see and praise, the worst I
+follow," is the adage rife in man's mouth regarding his moral conduct.
+But, spite of his seeing and praising,
+
+            "he disbelieves
+  In the heart of him that edict which for truth his head receives."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+He has a dim consciousness of ways whereby he may elude the consequences
+of his wickedness, and of the possibility of making amends to law.
+
+  "And now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin',
+  A certain Bardie's rantin', drinkin',
+  Some luckless hour will send him linkin'
+    To your black pit;
+  But, faith, he'll turn a corner jinkin',
+    And cheat you yet."
+
+The more orthodox and less generous individual is prone to agree, as
+regards himself, with Burns; but, he sees, most probably, that such an
+escape is impossible to others. He has secret solacement in a latent
+belief that he himself is an exception. There will be a special method
+of dealing with him. He is a "chosen sample"; and "God will think twice
+before He damns a man of his quality." It is just because there is such
+doubt as to the universality and necessity of the law which connects
+actions and consequences in the moral sphere, that man's deeds have an
+ethical character; while, to disperse doubt and ignorance by the
+assurance of complete knowledge, would take the good from goodness and
+the ill from evil.
+
+In this ingenious manner, the poet turns the imperfect intellect and
+delusive knowledge of man to a moral use. Ordinarily, the intellectual
+impotence of man is regarded as carrying with it moral incapacity as
+well, and the delusiveness of knowledge is one of the strongest
+arguments for pessimism. To persons pledged to the support of no theory,
+and to those who have the _naïveté_, so hard to maintain side by side
+with strong doctrinal convictions, it seems amongst the worst of evils
+that man should be endowed with fallacious faculties, and cursed with a
+futile desire for true knowledge which is so strong, that it cannot be
+quenched even in those who believe that truth can never be attained. It
+is the very best men of the world who cry
+
+            "Oh, this false for real,
+  This emptiness which feigns solidity,--
+  Ever some grey that's white, and dun that's black,--
+  When shall we rest upon the thing itself,
+  Not on its semblance? Soul--too weak, forsooth,
+  To cope with fact--wants fiction everywhere!
+  Mine tires of falsehood: truth at any cost!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_.]
+
+The poet himself was burdened in no small degree with this vain desire
+for knowing the truth; and he recognized, too, that he was placed in a
+world which seems both real and beautiful, and so well worth knowing.
+Yet, it is this very failure of knowledge--a failure which, be it
+remembered, is complete and absolute, because, as he thinks, all facts
+must turn into phantoms by mere contact with our "relative
+intelligences,"--which he constitutes into the basis of his optimistic
+faith.
+
+So high is the dignity and worth of the moral life to Browning, that no
+sacrifice is too great to secure it. And, indeed, if it were once
+clearly recognized that there is no good thing but goodness, nothing of
+supreme worth, except the realization of a loving will, then doubt,
+ignorance, and every other form of apparent evil would be fully
+justified--provided they were conditions whereby this highest good is
+attained. And, to Browning, ignorance was one of the conditions. And
+consequently, the dread pause in the music which agnosticism brings, is
+only "silence implying sound"; and the vain cry for truth, arising from
+the heart of the earth's best men, is only a discord moving towards
+resolution into a more rapturous harmony.
+
+I do not stay here to inquire whether sure knowledge would really have
+this disastrous effect of destroying morality, or whether its failure
+does not rather imply the impossibility of a moral life. I return to the
+question asked at the beginning of this chapter, and which it is now
+possible to answer. That question was: How does Browning reconcile his
+hypothesis of universal love with the natural and moral evils existing
+in the world?
+
+His answer is quite explicit. The poet solves the problem by casting
+doubt upon the facts which threaten his hypothesis. He reduces them into
+phenomena, in the sense of phantoms begotten by the human intellect upon
+unknown and unknowable realities.
+
+  "Thus much at least is clearly understood--
+  Of power does Man possess no particle:
+  Of knowledge--just so much as shows that still
+  It ends in ignorance on every side."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+He is aware of the phenomena of his own consciousness,
+
+  "My soul, and my soul's home,
+  This body ";
+
+but he knows not whether "things outside are fact or feigning." And he
+heeds little, for in either case they
+
+            "Teach
+  What good is and what evil,--just the same,
+  Be feigning or be fact the teacher."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+It is the mixture, or rather the apparent mixture, of shade and light in
+life, the conflict of seeming good with seeming evil in the world, that
+constitutes the world a probation-place. It is a kind of moral
+gymnasium, crowded with phantoms, wherein by exercise man makes moral
+muscle. And the vigour of the athlete's struggle is not in the least
+abated by the consciousness that all he deals with are phantoms.
+
+ "I have lived, then, done and suffered, loved and hated, learnt and taught
+  This--there is no reconciling wisdom with a world distraught,
+  Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the aim,
+  If--(to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the same!)--
+  If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil's place,
+  And life, time--with all their chances, changes,--just probation-space,
+  Mine, for me."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+And the world would not be such a probation-space did we once penetrate
+into its inmost secret, and know its phenomena as veritably either good
+or evil. There is the need of playing something perilously like a trick
+on the human intellect if man is to strive and grow.
+
+            "Here and there a touch
+  Taught me, betimes, the artifice of things--
+  That all about, external to myself,
+  Was meant to be suspected,--not revealed
+  Demonstrably a cheat--but half seen through."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Bean-Stripe._]
+
+To know objects as they veritably are, might reveal all things as locked
+together in a scheme of universal good, so that "white would rule
+unchecked along the line." But this would be the greatest of disasters;
+for, as moral agents, we cannot do without
+
+            "the constant shade
+  Cast on life's shine,--the tremor that intrudes
+  When firmest seems my faith in white."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+The intellectual insight that would penetrate through the vari-colour of
+events into the actual presence of the incandescent white of love, which
+glows, as hope tells us, in all things, would stultify itself, and lose
+its knowledge even of the good.
+
+                                "Think!
+  Could I see plain, be somehow certified
+  All was illusion--evil far and wide
+  Was good disguised,--why, out with one huge wipe
+  Goes knowledge from me. Type needs antitype:
+  As night needs day, as shine needs shade, so good
+  Needs evil: how were pity understood
+  Unless by pain? "[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+Good and evil are relative to each other, and each is known only through
+its contrary.
+
+                                    "For me
+  (Patience, beseech you!) Knowledge can but be
+  Of good by knowledge of good's opposite--
+  Evil."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+The extinction of one of the terms would be the extinction of the other.
+And, in a similar manner, clear knowledge that evil is illusion and that
+all things have their place in an infinite divine order would paralyze
+all moral effort, as well as stultify itself.
+
+            "Make evident that pain
+  Permissibly masks pleasure--you abstain
+  From out-stretch of the finger-tip that saves
+  A drowning fly."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+Certainty on either side, either that evil is evil for evermore,
+irredeemable and absolute, a drench of utter dark not illuminable by
+white; or that it is but mere show and semblance, which the good takes
+upon itself, would alike be ruinous to man. For both alternatives would
+render all striving folly. The right attitude for man is that of
+ignorance, complete uncertainty, the equipoise of conflicting
+alternatives. He must take his stand on the contradiction. Hope he may
+have that all things work together for good. It is right that he should
+nourish the faith that the antagonism of evil with good in the world is
+only an illusion; but that faith must stop short of the complete
+conviction that knowledge would bring. When, therefore, the hypothesis
+of universal love is confronted with the evils of life, and we ask how
+it can be maintained in the face of the manifold miseries everywhere
+apparent, the poet answers, "You do not know, and cannot know, whether
+they are evils or not. Your knowledge remains at the surface of things.
+You cannot fit them into their true place, or pronounce upon their true
+purpose and character; for you see only a small arc of the complete
+circle of being. Wait till you see more, and, in the meantime, hope!"
+
+  "Why faith--but to lift the load,
+    To leaven the lump, where lies
+  Mind prostrate through knowledge owed
+    To the loveless Power it tries
+  To withstand, how vain!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Reverie_--_Asolando_.]
+
+And, if we reply in turn, that this necessary ignorance leaves as little
+room for his scheme of love as it does for its opposite, he again
+answers: "Not so! I appeal from the intellect, which is detected as
+incompetent, to the higher court of the moral consciousness. And there I
+find the ignorance to be justified: for it is the instrument of a higher
+purpose, a means whereby what is best is gained, namely, _Love_."
+
+    "My curls were crowned
+  In youth with knowledge,--off, alas, crown slipped
+  Next moment, pushed by better knowledge still
+  Which nowise proved more constant; gain, to-day,
+  Was toppling loss to-morrow, lay at last
+  --Knowledge, the golden?--lacquered ignorance!
+  As gain--mistrust it! Not as means to gain:
+  Lacquer we learn by: ...
+  The prize is in the process: knowledge means
+  Ever-renewed assurance by defeat
+  That victory is somehow still to reach,
+  But love is victory, the prize itself:
+  Love--trust to! Be rewarded for the trust
+  In trust's mere act."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]
+
+Now, in order to complete our examination of this theory, we must follow
+the poet in his attempt to escape from the testimony of the intellect to
+that of the heart. In order to make the most of the latter, we find that
+Browning, especially in his last work, tends to withdraw his accusation
+of utter incompetence on the part of the intellect. He only tends to do
+so, it is true. He is tolerably consistent in asserting that we know our
+own emotions and the phenomena of our own consciousness; but he is not
+consistent in his account of our knowledge, or ignorance, of external
+things. On the whole, he asserts that we know nothing of them. But in
+_Asolando_ he seems to imply that the evidence of a loveless power in
+the world, permitting evil, is irresistible.[A] To say the least, the
+testimony of the intellect, such as it is, is more clear and convincing
+with regard to evil than it is with regard to good. Within the sphere of
+phenomena, to which the intellect is confined, there seems to be,
+instead of a benevolent purpose, a world ruled by a power indifferent to
+the triumph of evil over good, and either "loveless" or unintelligent.
+
+[Footnote A: _See passage just quoted._]
+
+            "Life, from birth to death,
+  Means--either looking back on harm escaped,
+  Or looking forward to that harm's return
+  With tenfold power of harming."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Bean-Stripe._]
+
+And it is not possible for man to contravene this evidence of faults and
+omissions: for, in doing so, he would remove the facts in reaction
+against which his moral nature becomes active. What proof is there,
+then, that the universal love is no mere dream? None! from the side of
+the intellect, answers the poet. Man, who has the will to remove the
+ills of life,
+
+  "Stop change, avert decay,
+  Fix life fast, banish death,"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Reverie_--_Asolando_.]
+
+has not the power to effect his will; while the Power, whose
+limitlessness he recognizes everywhere around him, merely maintains the
+world in its remorseless course, and puts forth no helping hand when
+good is prone and evil triumphant. "God does nothing."
+
+              "'No sign,'--groaned he,--
+  No stirring of God's finger to denote
+  He wills that right should have supremacy
+  On earth, not wrong! How helpful could we quote
+  But one poor instance when He interposed
+  Promptly and surely and beyond mistake
+  Between oppression and its victim, closed
+  Accounts with sin for once, and bade us wake
+  From our long dream that justice bears no sword,
+  Or else forgets whereto its sharpness serves.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville._]
+
+But he tells us in his later poems, that there is no answer vouchsafed
+to man's cry to the Power, that it should reveal
+
+       "What heals all harm,
+  Nay, hinders the harm at first,
+  Saves earth."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Reverie--Asolando._]
+
+And yet, so far as man can see, there were no bar to the remedy, if
+"God's all-mercy" did really "mate His all-potency."
+
+  "How easy it seems,--to sense
+    Like man's--if somehow met
+  Power with its match--immense
+    Love, limitless, unbeset
+  By hindrance on every side!"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+But that love nowhere makes itself evident. "Power," we recognize,
+
+                 "finds nought too hard,
+    Fulfilling itself all ways,
+  Unchecked, unchanged; while barred,
+    Baffled, what good began
+  Ends evil on every side."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Reverie--Asolando_.]
+
+Thus, the conclusion to which knowledge inevitably leads us is that mere
+power rules.
+
+  "No more than the passive clay
+    Disputes the potter's act,
+  Could the whelmed mind disobey
+    Knowledge, the cataract."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+But if the intellect is thus overwhelmed, so as to be almost passive to
+the pessimistic conclusion borne in upon it by "resistless fact," the
+heart of man is made of another mould. It revolts against the conclusion
+of the intellect, and climbs
+
+  "Through turbidity all between,
+    From the known to the unknown here,
+  Heaven's 'Shall be,' from earth's 'Has been.'"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+It grasps a fact beyond the reach of knowledge, namely, the possibility,
+or even the certainty, that "power is love." At present there is no
+substantiating by knowledge the testimony of the heart; and man has no
+better anchorage for his optimism than faith. But the closer view will
+come, when even our life on earth will be seen to have within it the
+working of love, no less manifest than that of power.
+
+  "When see? When there dawns a day,
+    If not on the homely earth,
+  Then, yonder, worlds away,
+    Where the strange and new have birth,
+  And Power comes full in play."[D]
+
+[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]
+
+Now, what is this evidence of the heart, which is sufficiently cogent
+and valid to counterpoise that of the mind; and which gives to "faith,"
+or "hope," a firm foothold in the very face of the opposing "resistless"
+testimony of knowledge?
+
+Within our experience, to which the poet knows we are entirely confined,
+there is a fact, the significance of which we have not as yet examined.
+For, plain and irresistible as is the evidence of evil, so plain and
+constant is man's recognition of it as evil, and his desire to annul it.
+If man's mind is made to acknowledge evil, his moral nature is made so
+as to revolt against it.
+
+    "Man's heart is _made_ to judge
+  Pain deserved nowhere by the common flesh
+  Our birth-right--bad and good deserve alike
+  No pain, to human apprehension."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Mihrab Shah_--_Ferishtah's Fancies_.]
+
+Owing to the limitation of our intelligence, we cannot deny but that
+
+            "In the eye of God
+  Pain may have purpose and be justified."
+
+But whether it has its purpose for the supreme intelligence or not,
+
+  "Man's sense avails to only see, in pain,
+  A hateful chance no man but would avert
+  Or, failing, needs must pity."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+Man must condemn evil, he cannot acquiesce in its permanence, but is,
+spite of his consciousness of ignorance and powerlessness, roused into
+constant revolt against it.
+
+  "True, he makes nothing, understands no whit:
+  Had the initiator-spasm seen fit
+  Thus doubly to endow him, none the worse
+  And much the better were the universe.
+  What does Man see or feel or apprehend
+  Here, there, and everywhere, but faults to mend,
+  Omissions to supply,--one wide disease
+  Of things that are, which Man at once would ease
+  Had will but power and knowledge?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+But the moral worth of man does not suffer the least detraction from his
+inability to effect his benevolent purpose. "Things must take will for
+deed," as Browning tells us. David is not at all distressed by the
+consciousness of his weakness.
+
+            "Why is it I dare
+  Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?
+  This;--'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Saul_.]
+
+The fact that "his wishes fall through," that he cannot, although
+willing, help Saul, "grow poor to enrich him, fill up his life by
+starving his own," does not prevent him from regarding his "service as
+perfect." The will was there, although it lacked power to effect itself.
+The moral worth of an action is complete, if it is willed; and it is
+nowise affected by its outer consequences, as both Browning and Kant
+teach. The loving will, the inner act of loving, though it can bear no
+outward fruit, being debarred by outward impediment, is still a complete
+and highest good.
+
+  "But Love is victory, the prize itself:
+  Love--trust to! Be rewarded for the trust
+  In trust's mere act. In love success is sure,
+  Attainment--no delusion, whatso'er
+  The prize be: apprehended as a prize,
+  A prize it is."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]
+
+Whatever the evil in the world and the impotence of man, his duty and
+his dignity in willing to perform it, are ever the same. Though God
+neglect the world
+
+            "Man's part
+  Is plain--to send love forth,--astray, perhaps:
+  No matter, he has done his part."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Sun_.]
+
+Now, this fact of inner experience, which the poet thinks
+incontrovertible--the fact that man, every man, necessarily regards
+evil, whether natural or moral, as something to be annulled, were it
+only possible--is an immediate proof of the indwelling of that which is
+highest in man. On this basis, Browning is able to re-establish the
+optimism which, from the side of knowledge, he had utterly abandoned.
+
+The very fact that the world is condemned by man is proof that there
+dwells in man something better than the world, whose evidence the
+pessimist himself cannot escape. All is not wrong, as long as wrong
+_seems_ wrong. The pessimist, in condemning the world, must except
+himself. In his very charge against God of having made man in His anger,
+there lies a contradiction; for he himself fronts and defies the
+outrage. There is no depth of despair which this good cannot illumine
+with joyous light, for the despair is itself the reflex of the good.
+
+            "Were earth and all it holds illusions mere,
+  Only a machine for teaching love and hate, and hope and fear,
+
+            "If this life's conception new life fail to realize--
+  Though earth burst and proved a bubble glassing hues of hell, one huge
+  Reflex of the devil's doings--God's work by no subterfuge,"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+still, good is good, and love is its own exceeding great reward. Alone,
+in a world abandoned to chaos and infinite night, man is still not
+without God, if he loves. In virtue of his love, he himself would be
+crowned as God, as the poet often argues, were there no higher love
+elsewhere.
+
+            "If he believes
+  Might can exist with neither will nor love,
+  In God's case--what he names now Nature's Law--
+  While in himself he recognizes love
+  No less than might and will,"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Death in the Desert_.]
+
+man takes, and rightly takes, the title of being "First, last, and best
+of things."
+
+  "Since if man prove the sole existent thing
+  Where these combine, whatever their degree,
+  However weak the might or will or love,
+  So they be found there, put in evidence--
+  He is as surely higher in the scale
+  Than any might with neither love nor will,
+  As life, apparent in the poorest midge,
+  Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas' self,
+  Given to the nobler midge for resting-place!
+  Thus, man proves best and highest--God, in fine."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+To any one capable of spiritually discerning things, there can be no
+difficulty in regarding goodness, however limited and mated with
+weakness, as infinitely above all natural power. Divinity will be known
+to consist, not in any senseless might, however majestic and miraculous,
+but in moral or spiritual perfection. If God were indifferent to the
+evil of the world, acquiesced in it without reason, and let it ripen
+into all manner of wretchedness, then man, in condemning the world,
+though without power to remove the least of its miseries, would be
+higher than God. But we have still to account for the possibility of
+man's assuming an attitude implied in the consciousness that, while he
+is without power, God is without pity, and in the despair which springs
+from his hate of evil. How comes it that human nature rises above its
+origin, and is able--nay, obliged--to condemn the evil which God
+permits? Is man finite in power, a mere implement of a mocking will so
+far as knowledge goes, the plaything of remorseless forces, and yet
+author and first source of something in himself which invests him with a
+dignity that God Himself cannot share? Is the moral consciousness which,
+by its very nature, must bear witness against the Power, although it
+cannot arrest its pitiless course, or remove the least evil,
+
+  "Man's own work, his birth of heart and brain,
+  His native grace, no alien gift at all?"
+
+We are thus caught between the horns of a final dilemma. Either the pity
+and love, which make man revolt against all suffering, are man's own
+creation; or else God, who made man's heart to love, has given to man
+something higher than He owns Himself. But both of these alternatives
+are impossible.
+
+  "Here's the touch that breaks the bubble."
+
+The first alternative is impossible, because man is by definition
+powerless, a mere link in the endless chain of causes, incapable of
+changing the least part of the scheme of things which he condemns, and
+therefore much more unable to initiate, or to bring into a loveless
+world abandoned to blind power, the noble might of love.
+
+            "Will of man create?
+  No more than this my hand, which strewed the beans
+  Produced them also from its finger-tips."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_.]
+
+All that man is and has is a mere loan; his love no less than his finite
+intellect and limited power, has had its origin elsewhere.
+
+  "Back goes creation to its source, source prime
+  And ultimate, the single and the sole."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+The argument ends by bringing us back
+
+    "To the starting-point,--
+  Man's impotency, God's omnipotence,
+  These stop my answer."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_.]
+
+I shall not pause at present to examine the value of this new form of
+the old argument, "_Ex contingentia mundi_." But I may point out in
+passing, that the reference of human love to a divine creative source is
+accomplished by means of the idea of cause, one of the categories of the
+thought which Browning has aspersed. And it is a little difficult to
+show why, if we are constrained to doubt our thought, when by the aid of
+causality it establishes a connection between finite and finite, we
+should regard it as worthy of trust when it connects the finite and the
+infinite. In fact, it is all too evident that the poet assumes or denies
+the possibility of knowledge, according as it helps or hinders his
+ethical doctrine.
+
+But, if we grant the ascent from the finite to the infinite and regard
+man's love as a divine gift--which it may well be although the poet's
+argument is invalid--then a new light is thrown upon the being who gave
+man this power to love. The "necessity," "the mere power," which alone
+could be discerned by observation of the irresistible movement of the
+world's events, acquires a new character. Prior to this discovery of
+love in man as the work of God--
+
+  "Head praises, but heart refrains
+    From loving's acknowledgment.
+  Whole losses outweigh half-gains:
+    Earth's good is with evil blent:
+  Good struggles but evil reigns."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Reverie_--_Asolando_.]
+
+But love in man is a suggestion of a love without; a proof, in fact,
+that God is love, for man's love is God's love in man. The source of the
+pity that man shows, and of the apparent evils in the world which excite
+it, is the same. The power which called man into being, itself rises up
+in man against the wrongs in the world. The voice of the moral
+consciousness, approving the good, condemning evil, and striving to
+annul it, is the voice of God, and has, therefore, supreme authority. We
+do wrong, therefore, in thinking that it is the weakness of man which is
+matched against the might of evil in the world, and that we are fighting
+a losing battle. It is an incomplete, abstract, untrue view of the facts
+of life which puts God as irresistible Power in the outer world, and
+forgets that the same irresistible Power works, under the higher form of
+love, in the human heart.
+
+  "Is not God now i' the world His power first made?
+  Is not His love at issue still with sin,
+  Visibly when a wrong is done on earth?
+  Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around?"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+In this way, therefore, the poet argues back from the moral
+consciousness of man to the goodness of God. And he finds the ultimate
+proof of this goodness in the very pessimism and scepticism and despair,
+that come with the view of the apparently infinite waste in the world
+and the endless miseries of humanity. The source of this despair,
+namely, the recognition of evil and wrong, is just the Godhood in man.
+There is no way of accounting for the fact that "Man hates what is and
+loves what should be," except by "blending the quality of man with the
+quality of God." And "the quality of God" is the fundamental fact in
+man's history. Love is the last reality the poet always reaches. Beneath
+the pessimism is love: without love of the good there were no
+recognition of evil, no condemnation of it, and no despair.
+
+But the difficulty still remains as to the permission of evil, even
+though it should prove in the end to be merely apparent.
+
+  "Wherefore should any evil hap to man--
+  From ache of flesh to agony of soul--
+  Since God's All-mercy mates All-potency?
+  Nay, why permits He evil to Himself--
+  Man's sin, accounted such? Suppose a world
+  Purged of all pain, with fit inhabitant--
+  Man pure of evil in thought, word, and deed--
+  Were it not well? Then, wherefore otherwise?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Mihrab Shah_.]
+
+The poet finds an answer to this difficulty in the very nature of moral
+goodness, which, as we have seen, he regards as a progressive
+realization of an infinitely high ideal. The demand for a world purged
+of all pain and sin is really, he teaches us, a demand for a sphere
+where
+
+            "Time brings
+  No hope, no fear: as to-day, shall be
+  To-morrow: advance or retreat need we
+  At our stand-still through eternity?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Rephan_--_Asolando_.]
+
+What were there to "bless or curse, in such a uniform universe,"
+
+            "Where weak and strong,
+  The wise and the foolish, right and wrong,
+  Are merged alike in a neutral Best."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+There is a better way of life, thinks Browning, than such a state of
+stagnation.
+
+  "Why should I speak? You divine the test.
+  When the trouble grew in my pregnant breast
+  A voice said, So would'st thou strive, not rest,
+
+  "Burn and not smoulder, win by worth,
+  Not rest content with a wealth that's dearth,
+  Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Earth."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+The discontent of man, the consciousness of sin, evil, pain, is a symbol
+of promotion. The peace of the state of nature has been broken for him;
+and, although the first consequence be
+
+  "Brow-furrowed old age, youth's hollow cheek,--
+  Diseased in the body, sick in soul,
+  Pinched poverty, satiate wealth,--your whole
+  Array of despairs,"[D]
+
+[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]
+
+still, without them, the best is impossible. They are the conditions of
+the moral life, which is essentially progressive. They are the
+consequences of the fact that man has been "startled up"
+
+            "by an Infinite
+  Discovered above and below me--height
+  And depth alike to attract my flight,
+
+  "Repel my descent: by hate taught love.
+  Oh, gain were indeed to see above
+  Supremacy ever--to move, remove,
+
+  "Not reach--aspire yet never attain
+  To the object aimed at."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Rephan_--_Asolando_.]
+
+He who places rest above effort, Rephan above the earth, places a
+natural good above a moral good, stagnation above progress. The demand
+for the absolute extinction of evil betrays ignorance of the nature of
+the highest good. For right and wrong are relative. "Type need
+antitype." The fact that goodness is best, and that goodness is not a
+stagnant state but a progress, a gradual realization, though never
+complete, of an infinite ideal, of the perfection of God by a finite
+being, necessarily implies the consciousness of sin and evil. As a moral
+agent man must set what should be above what is. If he is to aspire and
+attain, the actual present must seem to him inadequate, imperfect,
+wrong, a state to be abolished in favour of a better. And therefore it
+follows that
+
+            "Though wrong were right
+  Could we but know--still wrong must needs seem wrong
+  To do right's service, prove men weak or strong,
+  Choosers of evil or good."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+The apparent existence of evil is the condition of goodness. And yet it
+must only be apparent. For if evil be regarded as veritably evil, it
+must remain so for all that man can do; he cannot annihilate any fact
+nor change its nature, and all effort would, therefore, be futile. And,
+on the other hand, if evil were known as unreal, then there were no need
+of moral effort, no quarrel with the present and therefore no
+aspiration, and no achievement. That which is man's highest and
+best,--namely, a moral life which is a progress--would thus be
+impossible, and his existence would be bereft of all meaning and
+purpose. And if the highest is impossible then all is wrong, "the goal
+being a ruin, so is all the rest."
+
+The hypothesis of the moral life as progressive is essential to
+Browning.
+
+But if this hypothesis be granted, then all difficulties disappear. The
+conception of the endless acquirement of goodness at once postulates the
+consciousness of evil, and the consciousness of it as existing in order
+to be overcome. Hence the consciousness of it as illusion comes nearest
+to the truth. And such a conception is essentially implied by the idea
+of morality. To speculative reason, however, it is impossible, as the
+poet believes, that evil should thus be at the same time regarded as
+both real and unreal. Knowledge leads to despair on every side; for,
+whether it takes the evil in the world as seeming or actual, it
+stultifies effort, and proves that moral progress, which is best of all
+things, is impossible. But the moral consciousness derives its vitality
+from this contradiction. It is the meeting-point and conflict of actual
+and ideal; and its testimony is indisputable, however inconsistent it
+may be with that of knowledge. Acknowledging absolute ignorance of the
+outer world, the poet has still a retreat within himself, safe from all
+doubt. He has in his own inner experience irrefragable proof
+
+    "How things outside, fact or feigning, teach
+  What good is and what evil--just the same,
+  Be feigning or be fact the teacher."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+The consciousness of being taught goodness by interaction with the
+outside unknown is sufficient; it is "a point of vantage" whence he will
+not be moved by any contradictions that the intellect may conjure up
+against it. And this process of learning goodness, this gradual
+realization by man of an ideal infinitely high and absolute in worth,
+throws back a light which illumines all the pain and strife and despair,
+and shows them all to be steps in the endless "love-way." The
+consciousness of evil is thus at once the effect and the condition of
+goodness. The unrealized, though ever-realizing good, which brings
+despair, is the best fact in man's history; and it should rightly bring,
+not despair, but endless joy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A CRITICISM OF BROWNING'S VIEW OF THE FAILURE OF KNOWLEDGE.
+
+
+    "Der Mensch, da er Geist ist, darf und soll sich selbst
+    des höchsten würdig achten, von der Grösse und Macht
+    seines Geistes kann er nicht gross genug denken; und mit
+    diesem Glauben wird nichts so spröde und hart seyn, das
+    sich ihm nicht eröffnete. Das zuerst verborgene und
+    verschlossene Wesen des Universums hat keine Kraft, die
+    dem Muthe des Erkennens Widerstand leisten könnte: es muss
+    sich vor ihm aufthun, und seinen Reichthum und seine
+    Tiefen ihm vor Augen legen und zum Genusse geben."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Hegel's Inaugural Address at Heidelberg_.]
+
+Before entering upon a criticism of Browning's theory, as represented in
+the last chapter, it may be well to give a brief summary of it.
+
+The most interesting feature of Browning's proof of his optimistic faith
+is his appeal from the intelligence to the moral consciousness. To show
+theoretically that evil is merely phenomenal is, in his view, both
+impossible and undesirable. It is impossible, because the human
+intellect is incapable of knowing anything as it really is, or of
+pronouncing upon the ultimate nature of any phenomenon. It is
+undesirable, because a theoretical proof of the evanescence of evil
+would itself give rise to the greatest of all evils. The best thing in
+the world is moral character. Man exists in order to grow better, and
+the world exists in order to help him. But moral growth is possible only
+through conflict against evil, or what seems to be evil; hence, to
+disprove the existence of evil would be to take away the possibility of
+learning goodness, to stultify all human effort, and to deprive the
+world of its meaning.
+
+But, if an optimistic doctrine cannot be reached by way of speculative
+thought, if the intellect of man cannot see the good in things evil, his
+moral consciousness guarantees that all is for the best, and that "the
+good is all in all." For, in distinguishing between good and evil, the
+moral consciousness sets up an ideal over against the actual. It
+conceives of a scheme of goodness which is not realized in the world,
+and it condemns the world as it is. Man, as moral being, is so
+constituted that he cannot but regard the evil in the world as something
+to be annulled. If he had only the power, there would be no pain, no
+sorrow, no weakness, no failure, no death. Is man, then, better than the
+Power which made the world and let woe gain entrance into it? No!
+answers the poet; for man himself is part of that world and the product
+of that Power. The Power that made the world also made the moral
+consciousness which condemns the world; if it is the source of the evil
+in the world, it is also the source of that love in man, which, by
+self-expenditure, seeks to remedy it. If the external world is merely an
+expression of a remorseless Power, whence comes the love which is the
+principle of the moral life in man? The same Power brings the antidote
+as well as the bane. And, further, the bane exists for the sake of the
+antidote, the wrong for the sake of the remedy. The evil in the world is
+means to a higher good, and the only means possible; for it calls into
+activity the divine element in man, and thereby contributes to its
+realization in his character. It gives the necessary opportunity for the
+exercise of love.
+
+Hence, evil cannot be regarded as ultimately real. It is real only as a
+stage in growth, as means to an end; and the means necessarily perishes,
+or is absorbed in, the attainment of the end. It has no significance
+except by reference to that end. From this point of view, evil is the
+resistance which makes progress possible, the negative which gives
+meaning to the positive, the darkness that makes day beautiful. This
+must not, however, be taken to mean that evil is nothing. It is
+resistance; it is negative; it does oppose the good; although its
+opposition is finally overcome. If it did not, if evil were unreal,
+there would be no possibility of calling forth the moral potency of man,
+and the moral life would be a figment. But these two conditions of the
+moral life--on the one hand, that the evil of the world must be capable
+of being overcome and is there for the purpose of being overcome, and
+that it is unreal except as a means to the good; and, on the other hand,
+that evil must be actually opposed to the good, if the good is to have
+any meaning,--cannot, Browning thinks, be reconciled with each other. It
+is manifest that the intellect of man cannot, at the same time, regard
+evil as both real and unreal. It must assert the one and deny the other;
+or else we must regard its testimony as altogether untrustworthy. But
+the first alternative is destructive of the moral consciousness. Moral
+life is alike impossible whether we deny or assert the real existence of
+evil. The latter alternative stultifies knowledge, and leaves all the
+deeper concerns of life--the existence of good and evil, the reality of
+the distinction between them, the existence of God, the moral governance
+of the world, the destiny of man--in a state of absolute uncertainty. We
+must reject the testimony either of the heart or of the head.
+
+Browning, as we have seen, unhesitatingly adopts the latter alternative.
+He remains loyal to the deliverances of his moral consciousness and
+accepts as equally valid, beliefs which the intellect finds to be
+self-contradictory: holding that knowledge on such matters is
+impossible. And he rejects this knowledge, not only because our thoughts
+are self-contradictory in themselves, but because the failure of a
+speculative solution of these problems is necessary to morality. Clear,
+convincing, demonstrative knowledge would destroy morality; and the fact
+that the power to attain such knowledge has been withheld from us is to
+be regarded rather as an indication of the beneficence of God, who has
+not held even ignorance to be too great a price for man to pay for
+goodness.
+
+Knowledge is not the fit atmosphere for morality. It is faith and not
+reason, hope and trust but not certainty, that lend vigour to the good
+life. We may believe, and rejoice in the belief, that the absolute good
+is fulfilling itself in all things, and that even the miseries of life
+are really its refracted rays--the light that gains in splendour by
+being broken. But we must not, and, indeed, cannot ascend from faith to
+knowledge. The heart may trust, and must trust, if it faithfully listens
+to its own natural voice; but reason must not demonstrate. Ignorance on
+the side of intellect, faith on the side of the emotions; distrust of
+knowledge, absolute confidence in love; such is the condition of man's
+highest welfare: it is only thus that the purpose of his life, and of
+the world which is his instrument, can be achieved.
+
+No final estimate of the value of this theory of morals and religion can
+be made, without examining its philosophical presuppositions. Nor is
+such an examination in any way unfair; for it is obvious that Browning
+explicitly offers us a philosophical doctrine. He appeals to argument
+and not to artistic intuition; he offers a definite theory to which he
+claims attention, not on account of any poetic beauty that may lie
+within it, but on the ground that it is a true exposition of the moral
+nature of man. Kant's _Metaphysic of Ethics_ is not more metaphysical in
+intention than the poet's later utterances on the problems of morality.
+In _La Saisiaz_, in _Ferishtah's Fancies_, in the _Parleyings_, and,
+though less explicitly, in _Asolando_, _Fifine at the Fair_, and _Red
+Cotton Nightcap Country_, Browning definitely states, and endeavours to
+demonstrate a theory of knowledge, a theory of the relation of knowledge
+to morality, and a theory of the nature of evil; and he discusses the
+arguments for the immortality of the soul. In these poems his artistic
+instinct avails him, not as in his earlier ones, for the discovery of
+truth by way of intuition, but for the adornment of doctrines already
+derived from a metaphysical repository. His art is no longer free, no
+longer its own end, but coerced into an alien service. It has become
+illustrative and argumentative, and in being made to subserve
+speculative purposes, it has ceased to be creative. Browning has
+appealed to philosophy, and philosophy must try his cause.
+
+Such, then, is Browning's theory; and I need make no further apology for
+discussing at some length the validity of the division which it involves
+between the intellectual and the moral life of man. Is it possible to
+combine the weakness of man's intelligence with the strength of his
+moral and religious life, and to find in the former the condition of the
+latter? Does human knowledge fail, as the poet considers it to fail? Is
+the intelligence of man absolutely incapable of arriving at knowledge of
+things as they are? If it does, if man cannot know the truth, can he
+attain goodness? These are the questions that must now be answered.
+
+It is one of the characteristics of recent thought that it distrusts its
+own activity: the ancient philosophical "Scepticism" has been revived
+and strengthened. Side by side with the sense of the triumphant progress
+of natural science, there is a conviction, shared even by scientific
+investigators themselves, as well as by religious teachers and by many
+students of philosophy, that our knowledge has only limited and relative
+value, and that it always stops short of the true nature of things. The
+reason of this general conviction lies in the fact that thought has
+become aware of its own activity; men realize more clearly than they did
+in former times that the apparent constitution of things depends
+directly on the character of the intelligence which apprehends them.
+
+This relativity of things to thought has, not unnaturally, suggested the
+idea that the objects of our knowledge are different from objects as
+they are. "That the real nature of things is very different from what we
+make of them, that thought and thing are divorced, that there is a
+fundamental antithesis between them," is, as Hegel said, "the hinge on
+which modern philosophy turns." Educated opinion in our day has lost its
+naive trust in itself. "The natural belief of man, it is true, ever
+gives the lie" to the doctrine that we do not know things. "In common
+life," adds Hegel, "we reflect without particularly noting that this is
+the process of arriving at the truth, and we think without hesitation
+and in the firm belief that thought coincides with things."[A] But, as
+soon as attention is directed to the process of thinking, and to the way
+in which the process affects our consciousness of the object, it is at
+once concluded that thought will never reach reality, that things are
+not given to us as they are, but distorted by the medium of sense and
+our intelligence, through which they pass. The doctrine of the
+relativity of knowledge is thus very generally regarded as equivalent to
+the doctrine that there is no true knowledge whatsoever. We know only
+phenomena, or appearances; and it is these, and not veritable facts,
+that we systematize into sciences. "We can arrange the appearances--the
+shadows of our cave--and that, for the practical purposes of the cave,
+is all that we require."[B] Not even "earth's least atom" can ever be
+known to us as it really is; it is for us, at the best,
+
+[Footnote A: Wallace's _Translation of Hegel's Logic_, p. 36.]
+
+[Footnote B: Caird's _Comte_.]
+
+  "An atom with some certain properties
+  Known about, thought of as occasion needs."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _A Bean-Stripe_.]
+
+In this general distrust of knowledge, however, there are, as might be
+expected, many different degrees. Its origin in modern times was, no
+doubt, the doctrine of Kant. "This divorce of thing and thought," says
+Hegel, "is mainly the work of the critical philosophy and runs counter
+to the conviction of all previous ages." And the completeness of the
+divorce corresponds, with tolerable accuracy, to the degree in which the
+critical philosophy has been understood; for Kant's writings, like those
+of all great thinkers, are capable of many interpretations, varying in
+depth with the intelligence of the interpreters.
+
+The most common and general form of this view of the limitation of the
+human intelligence is that which places the objects of religious faith
+beyond the reach of human knowledge. We find traces of it in much of the
+popular theology of our day. The great facts of religion are often
+spoken of as lying in an extra-natural sphere, beyond experience, into
+which men cannot enter by the native right of reason. It is asserted
+that the finite cannot know the infinite, that the nature of God is
+unknowable--except by means of a supernatural interference, which gives
+to men a new power of spiritual discernment, and "reveals" to them
+things which are "above reason," although not contrary to it. The
+theologian often shields certain of his doctrines from criticism, on the
+ground, as he contends, that there are facts which we must believe, but
+which it would be presumptuous for us to pretend to understand or to
+demonstrate. They are the proper objects of "faith."
+
+But this view of the weakness of the intelligence when applied to
+supersensuous facts, is held along with an undisturbed conviction of the
+validity of our knowledge of ordinary objects. It is believed, in a
+word, that there are two kinds of realities,--natural and supernatural;
+and that the former is knowable and the latter not.
+
+It requires, however, no great degree of intellectual acumen to discover
+that this denial of the validity of our knowledge of these matters
+involves its denial in all its applications. The ordinary knowledge of
+natural objects, which we begin by regarding as valid, or, rather, whose
+validity is taken for granted without being questioned, depends upon our
+ideas of these supersensible objects. In other words, those fundamental
+difficulties which pious opinion discovers in the region of theology,
+and which, as is thought, fling the human intellect back upon itself
+into a consciousness of frailty and finitude, are found to lurk beneath
+our ordinary knowledge. Whenever, for instance, we endeavour to know any
+object, we find that we are led back along the line of its conditions to
+that which unconditionally determines it. For we cannot find the reason
+for a particular object in a particular object. We are driven back
+endlessly from one to another along the chain of causes; and we can
+neither discover the first link nor do without it. The first link must
+be a cause of itself, and experience yields none such. Such a cause
+would be the unconditioned, and the unconditioned we cannot know. The
+final result of thinking is thus to lead us to an unknown; and, in
+consequence, all our seeming knowledge is seen to have no intelligible
+basis, and, therefore, to be merely hypothetical. If we cannot know God,
+we cannot know anything.
+
+This view is held by the Positivists, and the most popular English
+exponent of it is, perhaps, Mr. Herbert Spencer. Its characteristic is
+its repudition of both theology and metaphysics as pseudo-sciences, and
+its high esteem for science. That esteem is not disturbed by the
+confession that "noumenal causes,"--that is, the actual reality of
+things,--are unknown; for we can still lay claim to valid knowledge of
+the laws of phenomena. Having acknowledged that natural things as known
+are merely phenomena, positivism treats them in all respects as if they
+were realities; and it rejoices in the triumphant progress of the
+natural sciences as if it were a veritable growth of knowledge. It does
+not take to heart the phenomenal nature of known objects. But, having
+paid its formal compliments to the doctrine of the relativity of all
+knowledge, it neglects it altogether.
+
+Those who understand Kant better carry his scepticism further, and they
+complete the divorce between man's knowledge and reality. The process of
+knowing, they hold, instead of leading us towards facts, as it was so
+long supposed to do, takes us away from them: _i.e._, if either
+"towards" or "away from" can have any meaning when applied to two realms
+which are absolutely severed from one another. Knowledge is always
+concerned with the relations between things; with their likeness, or
+unlikeness, their laws, or connections; but these are universals, and
+things are individuals. Science knows the laws of things, but not the
+things; it reveals how one object affects another, how it is connected
+with it; but what are the things themselves, which are connected, it
+does not know. The laws are mere forms of thought, "bloodless
+categories," and not facts. They may somehow be regarded as explaining
+facts, but they must not be identified with the facts. Knowledge is the
+sphere of man's thoughts, and is made up of ideas; real things are in
+another sphere, which man's thoughts cannot reach. We must distinguish
+more clearly than has hitherto been done, between logic as the science
+of knowledge, and metaphysics as a science which pretends to reveal the
+real nature of things. In a word, we can know thoughts or universals,
+but not things or particular existences. "When existence is in question
+it is the individual, not the universal, that is real; and the real
+individual is not a composite of species and accidents, but is
+individual to the inmost fibre of its being." Each object keeps its own
+real being to itself. Its inmost secret, its reality, is something that
+cannot appear in knowledge. We can only know its manifestations; but
+these manifestations are not its reality, nor connected with it. These
+belong to the sphere of knowledge, they are parts in a system of
+abstract thoughts; they do not exist in that system, or no-system, of
+individual realities, each of which, in its veritable being, is itself
+only, and connected with nought beside.
+
+Now, this view of the absolute impossibility of knowing any reality, on
+account of the fundamental difference between things and our thoughts
+about things, contains a better promise of a true view both of reality
+and of knowledge, than any of the previously mentioned half-hearted
+theories. It forces us explicitly either to regard every effort to know
+as futile, or else to regard it as futile _on this theory of it_. In
+other words, we must either give up knowledge or else give up the
+account of knowledge advanced by these philosophers. Hitherto, however,
+every philosophy that has set itself against the possibility of the
+knowledge of reality has had to give way. It has failed to shake the
+faith of mankind in its own intellectual endowment, or to arrest, even
+for a moment, the attempt by thinking to know things as they are. The
+view held by Berkeley, that knowledge is merely subjective, because the
+essence of things consists in their being perceived by the individual,
+and that they are nothing but his ideas, was refuted by Kant, when he
+showed that the very illusion of seeming knowledge was impossible on
+that theory. And this later view, which represents knowledge as merely
+subjective, on the ground that it is the product of the activity of the
+thought of mankind, working according to universal laws, is capable of
+being refuted in the same manner. The only difference between the
+Berkeleian and this modern speculative theory is that, on the former
+view, each individual constructed his own subjective entities or
+illusions; while, on the latter, all men, by reason of the universality
+of the laws of thought governing their minds, create the same illusion,
+the same subjective scheme of ideas. Instead of each having his own
+private unreality, as the product of his perceiving activity, they have
+all the same, or at least a similar, phantom-world of ideas, as the
+result of their thinking. But, in both cases alike, the reality of the
+world without is out of reach, and knowledge is a purely subjective
+apprehension of a world within. Thoughts are quite different from
+things, and no effort of human reason can reveal any community between
+them.
+
+Now, there are certain difficulties which, so far as I know, those who
+hold this view have scarcely attempted to meet. The first of these lies
+in the obvious fact, that all men at all times consider that this very
+process of thinking, which the theory condemns as futile, is the only
+way we have of finding out what the reality of things is. Why do we
+reflect and think, except in order to pass beyond the illusions of
+sensuous appearances to the knowledge of things as they are? Nay, why do
+these philosophers themselves reflect, when reflection, instead of
+leading to truth, which is knowledge of reality, leads only to ideas,
+which, being universal, cannot represent the realities that are said to
+be "individual."
+
+The second is, that the knowledge of "the laws" of things gives to us
+practical command over them; although, according to this view, laws are
+not things, nor any part of the reality of things, nor even true
+representations of things. Our authority over things seems to grow _pari
+passu_ with our knowledge. The natural sciences seem to prove by their
+practical efficiency, that they are not building up a world of
+apparitions, like the real world; but gradually getting inside nature,
+learning more and more to wield her powers, and to make them the
+instruments of the purposes of man, and the means of his welfare. To
+common-sense,--which frequently "divines" truths that it cannot prove,
+and, like ballast in a ship, has often given steadiness to human
+progress although it is only a dead weight,--the assertion that man
+knows nothing is as incredible as that he knows all things. If it is
+replied, that the "things" which we seem to dominate by the means of
+knowledge are themselves only phenomena, the question arises, what then
+are the real things to which they are opposed? What right has any
+philosophy to say that there is any reality which no one can in any
+sense know? The knowledge that such reality is, is surely a relation
+between that reality and consciousness, and, if so, the assertion of an
+unknowable reality is self-contradictory. For the conception of it is
+the conception of something that is, and at the same time is not, out of
+relation to consciousness.
+
+To say what kind of thing reality is, is a still more remarkable feat,
+if reality is unknowable. Reality, being beyond knowledge, why is it
+called particular or individual, rather than universal? How is it known
+that the true being of things is different from ideas? Surely both of
+the terms must be regarded as known to some extent, if they are called
+like or unlike, contrasted or compared, opposed or identified.
+
+But, lastly, this theory has to account for the fact that it constitutes
+what is not only unreal, but impossible, into the criterion of what is
+actual. If knowledge of reality is altogether different from human
+knowledge, how does it come to be its criterion? That knowledge is
+inadequate or imperfect can be known, only by contrasting it with its
+own proper ideal, whatever that may be. A criticism by reference to a
+foreign or irrelevant criterion, or the condemnation of a theory as
+imperfect because it does not realize an impossible end, is
+unreasonable. All true criticism of an object implies a reference to a
+more perfect state of itself.
+
+We must, then, regard the knowledge of objects as they are, which is
+opposed to human knowledge, as, only a completer and fuller form of that
+knowledge; or else we must cease to contrast it with our human
+knowledge, as valid with invalid, true with phenomenal. Either knowledge
+of reality is complete knowledge, or else it is a chimera. And, in
+either case, the sharp distinction between the real and the phenomenal
+vanishes; and what remains, is not a reality outside of consciousness,
+or different from ideas, but a reality related to consciousness, or, in
+other words, a knowable reality. "The distinction of objects into
+phenomena and noumena, _i.e._, into things that for us exist, and things
+that for us do not exist, is an Irish bull in philosophy," said Heine.
+To speak of reality as unknowable, or to speak of anything as
+unknowable, is to utter a direct self-contradiction; it is to negate in
+the predicate what is asserted in the subject. It is a still more
+strange perversion to erect this knowable emptiness into a criterion of
+knowledge, and to call the latter phenomenal by reference to it.
+
+These difficulties are so fundamental and so obvious, that the theory of
+the phenomenal nature of human knowledge, which, being interpreted,
+means that we know nothing, could scarcely maintain its hold, were it
+not confused with another fact of human experience, that is apparently
+inconsistent with the doctrine that man can know the truth. Side by side
+with the faith of ordinary consciousness, that in order to know anything
+we must think, or, in other words, that knowledge shows us what things
+really are, there is a conviction, strengthened by constant experience,
+that we never know things fully. Every investigation into the nature of
+an object soon brings us to an enigma, a something more we do not know.
+Failing to know this something more, we generally consider that we have
+fallen short of reaching the reality of the object. We recognize, as it
+has been expressed, that we have been brought to a stand, and we
+therefore conclude that we are also brought to the end. We arrive at
+what we do not know, and we pronounce that unknown to be unknowable;
+that is, we regard it as something different in nature from what we do
+know. So far as I can see, the attitude of ordinary thought in regard to
+this matter might be fairly represented by saying, that it always begins
+by considering objects as capable of being known in their reality, or as
+they are, and that experience always proves the attempt to know them as
+they are to be a failure. The effort is continued although failure is
+the result, and even although that failure be exaggerated and
+universalized into that despair of knowledge which we have described. We
+are thus confronted with what seems to be a contradiction; a trust and
+distrust in knowledge. It can only be solved by doing full justice to
+both of the conflicting elements; and then, if possible, by showing that
+they are elements, and not the complete, concrete fact, except when held
+together.
+
+From one point of view, it is undeniable that in every object of
+perception, we come upon problems that we cannot solve. Science at its
+best, and even when dealing with the simplest of things, is forced to
+stop short of its final secret. Even when it has discovered its law,
+there is still apparently something over and above which science cannot
+grasp, and which seems to give to the object its reality. All the
+natural sciences concentrated on a bit of iron ore fail to exhaust the
+truth in it: there is always a "beyond" in it, something still more
+fundamental which is not yet understood. And that something beyond, that
+inner essence, that point in which the laws meet and which the sciences
+fail to lift into knowledge, is regarded as just the reality of the
+thing. Thus the reality is supposed, at the close of every
+investigation, to lie outside of knowledge; and conversely, all that we
+do know, seeing that it lacks this last element, seems to be only
+apparent knowledge, or knowledge of phenomena.
+
+In this way the process of knowing seems always to stop short at the
+critical moment, when the truth is just about to be reached. And those
+who dwell on this aspect alone are apt to conclude that man's intellect
+is touched with a kind of impotence, which makes it useless when it gets
+near the reality. It is like a weapon that snaps at the hilt just when
+the battle is hottest. For we seem to be able to know everything but the
+reality, and yet apart from the real essence all knowledge seems to be
+merely apparent. Physical science penetrates through the outer
+appearances of things to their laws, analyzes them into forms of energy,
+calculates their action and predicts their effects with certainty. Its
+practical power over the forces of nature is so great that it seems to
+have got inside her secrets. And yet science will itself acknowledge
+that in every simplest object there is an unknown. Its triumphant course
+of explaining seems to be always arrested at the threshold of reality.
+It has no theory, scarcely an hypothesis, of the actual nature of
+things, or of what that is in each object, which constitutes it a real
+existence. Natural science, with a scarcely concealed sneer, hands over
+to the metaphysician all questions as to the real being of things; and
+itself makes the more modest pretension of showing how things behave,
+not what they are; what effects follow the original noumenal causes, but
+not the veritable nature of these causes. Nor can the metaphysician, in
+his turn, do more than suggest a hypothesis as to the nature of the
+ultimate reality in things. He cannot detect or demonstrate it in any
+particular fact. In a word, every minutest object in the world baffles
+the combined powers of all forms of human thought, and holds back its
+essence or true being from them. And as long as this true being, or
+reality is not known, the knowledge which we seem to have cannot be held
+as ultimately true, but is demonstrably a makeshift.
+
+Having made this confession, there seems to be no alternative but to
+postulate an utter discrepancy between human thought and real existence,
+or between human knowledge and truth, which is the correspondence of
+thing and thought. For, at no point is knowledge found to be in touch
+with real being; it is everywhere demonstrably conditioned and relative,
+and inadequate to express the true reality of its objects. What remains,
+then, except to regard human knowledge as completely untrustworthy, as
+merely of phenomena? If we cannot know _any_ reality, does not knowledge
+completely fail?
+
+Now, in dealing with the moral life of man, we saw that the method of
+hard alternatives is invalid. The moral life, being progressive, was
+shown to be the meeting--point of the ideal and the actual; and the
+ideal of perfect goodness was regarded as manifesting itself in actions
+which, nevertheless, were never adequate to express it. The good when
+achieved was ever condemned as unworthy, and the ideal when attained
+ever pressed for more adequate expression in a better character. The
+ideal was present as potency, as realizing itself, but it was never
+completely realized. The absolute good was never reached in the best
+action, and never completely missed in the worst.
+
+The same conflict of real and unreal was shown to be essential to every
+natural life. As long as anything grows it neither completely attains,
+nor completely falls away from its ideal. The growing acorn is not an
+oak tree, and yet it is not a mere acorn. The child is not the man; and
+yet the man is in the child, and only needs to be evolved by interaction
+with circumstances. The process of growth is one wherein the ideal is
+always present, as a reconstructive power gradually changing its whole
+vehicle, or organism, into a more perfect expression of itself. The
+ideal is reached in the end, just because it is present in the
+beginning; and there is no end as long as growth continues.
+
+Now, it is evident that knowledge, whether it be that of the individual
+man or of the human race, is a thing that grows. The process by means of
+which natural science makes progress, or by which the consciousness of
+the child expands and deepens into the consciousness of the man, is best
+made intelligible from the point of view of evolution. It is like an
+organic process, in which each new acquirement finds its place in an old
+order, each new fact is brought under the permanent principles of
+experience, and absorbed into an intellectual life, which itself, in
+turn, grows richer and fuller with every new acquisition. No knowledge
+worthy of the name is an aggregation of facts. Wisdom comes by growth.
+
+Hence, the assertion that knowledge never attains reality, does not
+imply that it always misses it. In morals we do not say that a man is
+entirely evil, although he never, even in his best actions, attains the
+true good. And if the process of knowing is one that presses onward
+towards an ideal, that ideal is never completely missed even in the
+poorest knowledge. If it grows, the method of fixed alternatives must be
+inapplicable to it. The ideal, whatever it may be, must be considered as
+active in the present, guiding the whole movement, and gradually
+manifesting itself in each of the passing forms, which are used up as
+the raw material of new acquirement; and yet no passing form completely
+expresses the ideal.
+
+Nor is it difficult to say what that ideal of knowledge is, although we
+cannot define it in any adequate manner. We know that the end of
+morality is the _summum bonum_, although we cannot, as long as we are
+progressive, define its whole content, or find it fully realized in any
+action. Every failure brings new truth, every higher grade of moral
+character reveals some new height of goodness to be scaled; the moral
+ideal acquires definiteness and content as humanity moves upwards. And
+yet the ideal is not entirely unknown even at the first; even to the
+most ignorant, it presents itself as a criterion which enables him to
+distinguish between right and wrong, evil and goodness, and which guides
+his practical life. The same truth holds with regard to knowledge. Its
+growth receives its impulse from, and is directed and determined by,
+what is conceived as the real world of facts. This truth, namely, that
+the ideal knowledge is knowledge of reality, the most subjective
+philosopher cannot but acknowledge. It is implied in his condemnation of
+knowledge as merely phenomenal, that there is possible a knowledge of
+real being. That thought and reality can be brought together, or rather,
+that they are always together, is presupposed in all knowledge and in
+all experience. The effort to know is the effort to _explain_ the
+relation of thought and reality, not to create it. The ideal of perfect
+knowledge is present from the first; it generates the effort, directs
+it, distinguishes between truth and error. And that which man ever aims
+at, whether in the ordinary activities of daily thought, or through the
+patient labour of scientific investigation, or in the reflective
+self-torture of philosophic thought, is to know the world as it is. No
+failure damps the ardour of this endeavour. Relativists, phenomenalists,
+agnostics, sceptics, Kantians or Neo-Kantians--all the crowd of thinkers
+who cry down the human intellect, and draw a charmed circle around
+reality so as to make it unapproachable to the mind of man--ply this
+useless labour. They are seeking to penetrate beneath the shows of sense
+and the outer husk of phenomena to the truth, which is the meeting-point
+of knowledge and reality; they are endeavouring to translate into an
+intellectual possession the powers that play within and around them; or,
+in other words, to make these powers express themselves in their
+thoughts, and supply the content of their spiritual life. The irony,
+latent in their endeavour, gives them no pause; they are in some way
+content to pursue what they call phantoms, and to try to satisfy their
+thirst with the waters of a mirage. This comes from the presence of the
+ideal within them, that is, of the implicit unity of reality and
+thought, which seeks for explicit and complete manifestation in
+knowledge. The reality is present in them as thinking activity, working
+towards complete revelation of itself by means of knowledge. And its
+presence is real, although the process is never complete.
+
+In knowledge, as in morals, it is necessary to remember both of the
+truths implied in the pursuit of an ideal--that a growing thing not only
+always fails to attain, but also always succeeds. The distinction
+between truth and error in knowledge is present at every stage in the
+effort to attain truth, as the distinction between right and wrong is
+present in every phase of the moral life. It is the source of the
+intellectual effort. But that distinction cannot be drawn except by
+reference to a criterion of truth, which condemns our actual knowledge;
+as it is the absolute good, which condemns the present character. The
+ideal may be indefinite, and its content confused and poor; but it is
+always sufficient for its purpose, always better than the actual
+achievement. And, in this sense, reality, the truth, the veritable being
+of things, is always reached by the poorest knowledge. As there is no
+starved and distorted sapling which is not the embodiment of the
+principle of natural life, so the meanest character is the product of an
+ideal of goodness, and the most confused opinion of ignorant mankind is
+an expression of the reality of things. Without it there would not be
+even the semblance of knowledge, not even error and untruth.
+
+Those who, like Browning, make a division between man's thought and real
+things, and regard the sphere of knowledge as touching at no point the
+sphere of actual existence, are attributing to the bare human intellect
+much more power than it has. They regard mind as creating its phenomenal
+knowledge, or the apparent world. For, having separated mind from
+reality, it is evident that they cannot avail themselves of any doctrine
+of sensations or impressions as a medium between them, or postulate any
+other form of connection or means of communication. Connection of any
+kind must, in the end, imply some community of nature, and must put the
+unity of thought and being--here denied--beneath their difference.
+Hence, the world of phenomena which we know, and which as known, does
+not seem to consist of realities, must be the product of the unaided
+human mind. The intellect, isolated from all real being, has
+manufactured the apparent universe, in all its endless wealth. It is a
+creative intellect, although it can only create illusions. It evolves
+all its products from itself.
+
+But thought, set to revolve upon its own axis in an empty region, can
+produce nothing, not even illusions. And, indeed, those who deny that it
+is possible for thought and reality to meet in a unity, have,
+notwithstanding, to bring over "something" to the aid of thought. There
+must be some effluence from the world of reality, some manifestations of
+the thing (though they are not the reality of the thing, nor any part of
+the reality, nor connected with the reality!) to assist the mind and
+supply it with data. The "phenomenal world" is a hybrid, generated by
+thought and "something"--which yet is not reality; for the real world is
+a world of things in themselves, altogether beyond thought. By bringing
+in these data, it is virtually admitted that the human mind reaches down
+into itself in vain for a world, even for a phenomenal one.
+
+Thought apart from things is quite empty, just as things apart from
+thought are blind. Such thought and such reality are mere abstractions,
+hypostasized by false metaphysics; they are elements of truth rent
+asunder, and destroyed in the rending. The dependence of the
+intelligence of man upon reality is direct and complete. The foolishest
+dream, that ever played out its panorama beneath a night-cap, came
+through the gates of the senses from the actual world. Man is limited to
+his material in all that he knows, just as he is ruled by the laws of
+thought. He cannot go one step beyond it. To transcend "experience" is
+impossible. We have no wings to sustain us in an empty region, and no
+need of any. It is as impossible for man to create new ideas, as it is
+for him to create new atoms. Our thought is essentially connected with
+reality. There is no _mauvais pas_ from thought to things. We do not
+need to leap out of ourselves in order to get into the world. We are in
+it from the first, both as physical and moral agents, and as thinking
+beings. Our thoughts are expressions of the real nature of things, so
+far as they go. They may be and are imperfect; they may be and are
+confused and inadequate, and express only the superficial aspects and
+not "the inmost fibres"; still, they are what they are, in virtue of
+"the reality," which finds itself interpreted in them. Severed from that
+reality, they would be nothing.
+
+Thus, the distinction between thought and reality is a distinction
+within a deeper unity. And that unity must not be regarded as something
+additional to both, or as a third something. It _is_ their unity. It is
+both reality and thought: it is existing thought, or reality knowing
+itself and existing through its knowledge of self; it is
+self-consciousness. The distinguished elements have no existence or
+meaning except in their unity. Like the actual and ideal, they have
+significance and being, only in their reference to each other.
+
+There is one more difficulty connected with this matter which I must
+touch upon, although the discussion may already be regarded as prolix.
+It is acknowledged by every one that the knowledge of the individual,
+and his apparent world of realities, grow _pari passu_. Beyond his
+sphere of knowledge there is no reality _for him_, not even apparent
+reality. But, on the other hand, the real world of existing things
+exists all the same whether he knows it or not. It did not begin to be
+with any knowledge he may have of it, it does not cease to be with his
+extinction, and it is not in any way affected by his valid, or invalid,
+reconstruction of it in thought. The world which depends on his thought
+is his world, and not the world of really existing things. And this is
+true alike of every individual. The world is independent of all human
+minds. It existed before them, and will, very possibly, exist after
+them. Can we not, therefore, conclude that the real world is independent
+of thought, and that it exists without relation to it?
+
+A short reference to the moral consciousness may suggest the answer to
+this difficulty. In morality (as also is the case in knowledge) the
+moral ideal, or the objective law of goodness, grows in richness and
+fulness of content with the individual who apprehends it. _His_ moral
+world is the counterpart of _his_ moral growth as a character. Goodness
+_for him_ directly depends upon his recognition of it. Animals,
+presumably, have no moral ideal, because they have not the power to
+constitute it. In morals, as in knowledge, the mind of man constructs
+its own world. And yet, in both alike, the world of truth or of goodness
+exists all the same whether the individual knows it or not. He does not
+call the moral law into being, but finds it without, and then realizes
+it in his own life. The moral law does not vanish and reappear with its
+recognition by mankind. It is not subject to the chances and changes of
+its life, but a good in itself that is eternal.
+
+Is it therefore independent of all intelligence? Can goodness be
+anything but the law of a self-conscious being? Is it the quality or
+motive or ideal of a mere thing? Manifestly not. Its relation to
+self-consciousness is essential. With the extinction of
+self-consciousness all moral goodness is extinguished.
+
+The same holds true of reality. The question of the reality or unreality
+of things cannot arise except in an intelligence. Animals have neither
+illusions nor truths--unless they are self-conscious. The reality, which
+man sets over against his own inadequate knowledge, is posited by him;
+and it has no meaning whatsoever except in this contrast. And to
+endeavour to conceive a reality which no one knows, is to assert a
+relative term without its correlative, which is absurd; it is to posit
+an ideal which is opposed to nothing actual.
+
+In this view, so commonly held in our day, that knowledge is subjective
+and reality unknowable, we have another example of the falseness and
+inconsistency of abstract thinking. If this error be committed, there is
+no fundamental gain in saying with Kant, that things are relative to the
+thought of all, instead of asserting, with Berkeley or Browning, that
+they are relative to the thought of each. The final result is the same.
+Things as known, are reduced into mere creations of thought; things as
+they are, are regarded as not thoughts, and as partaking in no way of
+the nature of thought. And yet "reality" is virtually assumed to be
+given at the beginning of knowledge; for the sensations are supposed to
+be emanations from it, or roused in consciousness by it. These
+sensations, it is said, man does not make, but receives, and receives
+from the concealed reality. They flow from it, and are the
+manifestations of its activity. Then, in the next moment, reality is
+regarded as not given in any way, but as something to be discovered by
+the effort of thought; for we always strive to know things, and not
+phantoms. Lastly, the knowledge thus acquired being regarded as
+imperfect, and experience showing to us continually that every object
+has more in it than we know, the reality is pronounced to be unknowable,
+and all knowledge is regarded as failure, as acquaintance with mere
+phantoms. Thus, in thought, as in morality, the ideal is present at the
+beginning, it is an effort after explicit realization, and its process
+is never complete.
+
+Now, all these aspects of the ideal of knowledge, that is, of reality,
+are held by the unsophisticated intelligence of man; and abstract
+philosophy is not capable of finally getting rid of any one of them. It,
+too, holds them _alternately_. Its denial of the possibility of knowing
+reality is refuted by its own starting-point; for it begins with a given
+something, regarded as real, and its very effort to know is an attempt
+to know that reality by thinking. But it forgets these facts, when it is
+discovered that knowledge at the best is incomplete. It is thus tossed
+from assertion to denial, and from denial to assertion; from one
+abstract or one-sided view of reality, to the other.
+
+When these different aspects of truth are grasped together from the
+point of view of evolution, there seems to be a way of escaping the
+difficulties to which they give rise. For the ideal must be present at
+the beginning, and cannot be present in its fulness till the process is
+complete. What is here required is to lift our theory of man's knowledge
+to the level of our theory of his moral life, and to treat it frankly as
+the process whereby reality manifests itself in the mind of man. In that
+way, we shall avoid the absurdities of both of the abstract schools of
+philosophy, to both of which alike the native intelligence of man gives
+the lie. We shall say neither that man knows nothing, nor that he knows
+all; we shall regard his knowledge, neither as purely phenomenal and out
+of all contact with reality, nor as an actual identification with the
+real being of things in all their complex variety. For, in morality, we
+do not say either that the individual is absolutely evil, because his
+actions never realize the supreme ideal of goodness; nor, that he is at
+the last term of development, and "taking the place of God," because he
+lives as "ever in his great Taskmaster's eye." Just as every moral
+action, however good, leaves something still to be desiderated,
+something that may become a stepping-stone for new movement towards the
+ideal which it has failed to actualize; so all our knowledge of an
+object leaves something over that we have not apprehended, which is
+truer and more real than anything we know, and which in all future
+effort we strive to master. And, just as the very effort, to be good
+derives its impulse and direction from the ideal of goodness which is
+present, and striving for realization; so the effort to know derives its
+impulse and direction from the reality which is present, and striving
+for complete realization in the thought of man. We know reality
+confusedly from the first; and it is because we have attained so much
+knowledge, that we strive for greater clearness and fulness. It is by
+planting his foot on the world that man travels. It is by opposing his
+power to the given reality that his knowledge grows.
+
+When once we recognize that reality is the ideal of knowledge, we are
+able to acknowledge all the truth that is in the doctrine of the
+phenomenalists, without falling into their errors and contradictions. We
+may go as far as the poet in confessing intellectual impotence, and
+roundly call the knowledge of man "lacquered ignorance." "Earth's least
+atom" does veritably remain an enigma. Man is actually flung back into
+his circumscribed sphere by every fact; and he will continue to be so
+flung to the end of time. He will never know reality, nor be able to
+hold up in his hand the very heart of the simplest thing in the world.
+For the world is an organic totality, and its simplest thing will not be
+seen, through and through, till everything is known, till every fact and
+event is related to every other under principles which are universal:
+just as goodness cannot be fully achieved in any act, till the agent is
+in all ways lifted to the level of absolute goodness. Physics cannot
+reveal the forces which keep a stone in its place on the earth, till it
+has traced the forces that maintain the starry systems in their course.
+No fact can be thoroughly known, _i.e._, known in its reality, till the
+light of the universe has been focussed upon it: and, on the other hand,
+to know any subject through and through would be to explain all being.
+The highest law and the essence of the simple fact, the universal and
+the particular, can only be known together, in and through one another.
+"Reality" in "the least atom" will be known, only when knowledge has
+completed its work, and the universe has become a transparent sphere,
+penetrated in every direction by the shafts of intelligence.
+
+But this is only half the truth. If knowledge is never complete, it is
+always _completing_; if reality is never known, it is ever _being
+known_; if the ideal is never actual, it is always _being actualized_.
+The complete failure of knowledge is as impossible as its complete
+success. It is at no time severed from reality; it is never its mere
+adumbration, nor are its contents mere phenomena. On the contrary, it is
+reality partially revealed, the ideal incompletely actualized. Our very
+errors are the working of reality within us, and apart from it they
+would be impossible. The process towards truth by man is the process of
+truth _in_ man; the movement of knowledge towards reality is the movement
+of reality into knowledge. A purely subjective consciousness which knows,
+such as the poet tried to describe, is a self-contradiction: it would be
+a consciousness at once related, and not related, to the actual world.
+But man has no need to relate himself to the world. He is already
+related, and his task is to understand that relation, or, in other words,
+to make both its terms intelligible. Man has no need to go out from
+himself to facts; his relation to facts is prior to his distinction from
+them. The truth is that he cannot entirely lift himself away from them,
+nor suspend his thoughts in the void. In his inmost being he is
+creation's voice, and in his knowledge he confusedly murmurs its deep
+thoughts.
+
+Browning was aware of this truth in its application to man's moral
+nature. In speaking of the principle of love, he was not tempted to
+apply fixed alternatives. On the contrary, he detected in the "poorest
+love that was ever offered" the veritable presence of that which is
+perfect and complete, though never completely actualized. His interest
+in the moral development of man, and his penetrative moral insight,
+acting upon, and guided by the truths of the Christian religion, warned
+him, on this side, against the absolute separation of the ideal and
+actual, the divine and human. Human love, however poor in quality and
+limited in range, was to him God's love in man. It was a wave breaking
+in the individual of that First Love, which is ever flowing back through
+the life of humanity to its primal source. To him all moral endeavour is
+the process of this Primal Love; and every man, as he consciously
+identifies himself with it, may use the language of Scripture, and say,
+"It is not I that live, but Christ lives in me."
+
+But, on the side of knowledge, he was neither so deeply interested, nor
+had he so good a guide to lean upon. Ignorant, according to all
+appearances, of the philosophy which has made the Christian maxim, "Die
+to live,"--which primarily is only a principle of morality--the basis of
+its theory of knowledge, he exaggerated the failure of science to reach
+the whole truth as to any particular object, into a qualitative
+discrepancy between knowledge and truth. Because knowledge is never
+complete, it is always mere lacquered ignorance; and man's apparent
+intellectual victories are only conquests in a land of unrealities, or
+mere phenomena. He occupies in regard to knowledge, a position strictly
+analogous to that of Carlyle, in regard to morality; his intellectual
+pessimism is the counterpart of the moral pessimism of his predecessor,
+and it springs from the same error. He forgot that the ideal without is
+also the power within, which makes for its own manifestation in the mind
+of man.
+
+He opposed the intellect to the world, as Carlyle opposed the weakness
+of man to the law of duty; and he neglected the fact that the world was
+there for him, only because he knew it, just as Carlyle neglected the
+fact that the duty was without, only because it was recognized within.
+He strained the difference between the ideal and actual into an absolute
+distinction; and, as Carlyle condemned man to strive for a goodness
+which he could never achieve, so Browning condemns him to pursue a truth
+which he can never attain. In both, the failure is regarded as absolute.
+"There is no good in us," has for its counterpart "There is no truth in
+us." Both the moralist and the poet dwell on the _negative_ relation of
+the ideal and actual, and forget that the negative has no meaning,
+except as the expression of a deeper affirmative. Carlyle had to learn
+that we know our moral imperfection, only because we are conscious of a
+better within us; and Browning had to learn that we are aware of our
+ignorance, only because we have the consciousness of fuller truth with
+which we contrast our knowledge. Browning, indeed, knew that the
+consciousness of evil was itself evidence of the presence of good, that
+perfection means death, and progress is life, on the side of morals; but
+he has missed the corresponding truth on the side of knowledge. If he
+acknowledges that the highest revealed itself to man, on the practical
+side, as love; he does not see that it has also manifested itself to
+man, on the theoretical side, as reason. The self-communication of the
+Infinite is incomplete love is a quality of God, intelligence a quality
+of man; hence, on one side, there is no limit to achievement, but on the
+other there is impotence. Human nature is absolutely divided against
+itself; and the division, as we have already seen, is not between flesh
+and spirit, but between a love which is God's own and perfect, and an
+intelligence which is merely man's and altogether weak and deceptive.
+
+This is what makes Browning think it impossible to re-establish faith in
+God, except by turning his back on knowledge; but whether it is possible
+for him to appeal to the moral consciousness, we shall inquire in the
+next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE HEART AND THE HEAD.--LOVE AND REASON.
+
+
+    "And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to
+    play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do
+    injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her
+    strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew
+    truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Milton's _Areopagitica_.]
+
+It has been shown that Browning appeals, in defence of his optimistic
+faith, from the intellect to the heart. His theory rests on three main
+assumptions:--namely (1) that knowledge of the true nature of things is
+impossible to man, and that, therefore, it is necessary to find other
+and better evidence than the intellect can give for the victory of good
+over evil; (2) that the failure of knowledge is a necessary condition of
+the moral life, inasmuch as certain knowledge would render all moral
+effort either futile or needless; (3) that after the failure of
+knowledge there still remains possible a faith of the heart, which can
+furnish a sufficient objective basis to morality and religion. The first
+of these assumptions I endeavoured to deal with in the last chapter. I
+now turn to the remaining two.
+
+Demonstrative, or certain, or absolute knowledge of the actual nature of
+things would, Browning asserts, destroy the very possibility of a moral
+life.[A] For such knowledge would show either that evil is evil, or that
+evil is good; and, in both cases alike, the benevolent activity of love
+would be futile. In the first case, it would be thwarted and arrested by
+despair; for, if evil be evil, it must remain evil for aught that man
+can do. Man cannot effect a change in the nature of things, nor create a
+good in a world dominated by evil. In the second case, the saving effect
+of moral love would be unnecessary; for, if evil be only seeming, then
+all things are perfect and complete, and there is no need of
+interference. It is necessary, therefore, that man should be in a
+permanent state of doubt as to the real existence of evil; and, whether
+evil does exist or not, it must seem, and only seem to exist to man, in
+order that he may devote himself to the service of good.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: See Chapter VIII., p. 255.]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+Now, if this view of the poet be taken in the strict sense in which he
+uses it in this argument, it admits of a very easy refutation. It takes
+us beyond the bounds of all possible human experience, into an imaginary
+region, as to which all assertions are equally valueless. It is
+impossible to conceive how the conduct of a being who is moral would be
+affected by absolute knowledge; or, indeed, to conceive the existence of
+such a being. For morality, as the poet insists, is a process in which
+an ideal is gradually realized through conflict with the actual--an
+actual which it both produces and transmutes at every stage of the
+progress. But complete knowledge would be above all process. Hence we
+would have, on Browning's hypothesis, to conceive of a being in whom
+perfect knowledge was combined with an undeveloped will. A being so
+constituted would be an agglomerate of utterly disparate elements, the
+interaction of which in a single character it would be impossible to
+make intelligible.
+
+But, setting aside this point, there is a curious flaw in Browning's
+argument, which indicates that he had not distinguished between two
+forms of optimism which are essentially different from each
+other,--namely, the pantheistic and the Christian.
+
+To know that evil is only apparent, that pain is only pleasure's mask,
+that all forms of wickedness and misery are only illusions of an
+incomplete intelligence, would, he argues, arrest all moral action and
+stultify love. For love--which necessarily implies need in its
+object--is the principle of all right action. In this he argues justly,
+for the moral life is essentially a conflict and progress; and, in a
+world in which "white ruled unchecked along the line," there would be
+neither the need of conflict nor the possibility of progress. And, on
+the other hand, if the good were merely a phantom, and evil the reality,
+the same destruction of moral activity would follow. "White may not
+triumph," in this absolute manner, nor may we "clean abolish, once and
+evermore, white's faintest trace." There must be "the constant shade
+cast on life's shine."
+
+All this is true; but the admission of it in no way militates against
+the conception of absolutely valid knowledge; nor is it any proof that
+we need live in the twilight of perpetual doubt, in order to be moral.
+For the knowledge, of which Browning speaks, would be knowledge of a
+state of things in which morality would be really impossible; that is,
+it would be knowledge of a world in which all was evil or all was good.
+On the other hand, valid knowledge of a world in which good and evil are
+in conflict, and in which the former is realized through victory over
+the latter, would not destroy morality. What is inconsistent with the
+moral life is the conception of a world where there is no movement from
+evil to good, no evolution of character, but merely the stand-still life
+of "Rephan." But absolutely certain knowledge that the good is at issue
+with sin in the world, that there is no way of attaining goodness except
+through conflict with evil, and that moral life, as the poet so
+frequently insists, is a process which converts all actual attainment
+into a dead self, from which we can rise to higher things--a self,
+therefore, which is relatively evil--would, and does, inspire morality.
+It is the deification of evil not negated or overcome, of evil as it is
+in itself and apart from all process, which destroys morality. And the
+same is equally true of a pantheistic optimism, which asserts that all
+things _are_ good. But it is not true of a Christian optimism, which
+asserts that all things are _working together for_ good. For such
+optimism implies that the process of negating or overcoming evil is
+essential to the attainment of goodness; it does not imply that evil, as
+evil, is ever good. Evil is unreal, only in the sense that it cannot
+withstand the power which is set against it. It is not _mere_ semblance,
+a mere negation or absence of being; it is opposed to the good, and its
+opposition can be overcome, only by the moral effort which it calls
+forth. An optimistic faith of this kind can find room for morality; and,
+indeed, it furnishes it with the religious basis it needs. Browning,
+however, has confused these two forms of optimism; and, therefore, he
+has been driven to condemn knowledge, because he knew no alternative but
+that of either making evil eternally real, or making it absolutely
+unreal. A third alternative, however, is supplied by the conception of
+moral evolution. Knowledge of the conditions on which good can be
+attained--a knowledge that amounts to conviction--is the spring of all
+moral effort; whereas an attitude of permanent doubt as to the
+distinction between good and evil would paralyse it. Such a doubt must
+be solved before man can act at all, or choose one end rather than
+another. All action implies belief, and the ardour and vigour of moral
+action can only come from a belief which is whole-hearted.
+
+The further assertion, which the poet makes in _La Saisiaz_, and repeats
+elsewhere, that sure knowledge of the consequences that follow good and
+evil actions would necessarily lead to the choice of good and the
+avoidance of evil, and destroy morality by destroying liberty of choice,
+raises the whole question of the relation of knowledge and conduct, and
+cannot be adequately discussed here. It may be said, however, that it
+rests upon a confusion between two forms of necessity: namely, natural
+and spiritual necessity. In asserting that knowledge of the consequences
+of evil would determine human action in a necessary way, the poet
+virtually treats man as if he were a natural being. But the assumption
+that man is responsible and liable to punishment, involves that he is
+capable of withstanding all such determination. And knowledge does not
+and cannot lead to such necessary determination. Reason brings freedom;
+for reason constitutes the ends of action.
+
+It is the constant desire of the good to attain to such a convincing
+knowledge of the worth and dignity of the moral law that they shall be
+able to make themselves its devoted instruments. Their desire is that
+"the good" shall supplant in them all motives that conflict against it,
+and be the inner principle, or necessity, of all their actions. Such
+complete devotion to the good is expressed, for instance, in the words
+of the Hebrew Psalmist: "Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage for
+ever; for they are the rejoicing of my heart. I have inclined mine heart
+to perform Thy statutes alway, even unto the end. I hate vain thoughts,
+but Thy law do I love." "Nevertheless I live," said the Christian
+apostle, "yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now
+live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God." In these words
+there is expressed that highest form of the moral life, in which the
+individual is so identified in desire with his ideal, that he lives only
+to actualize it in his character. The natural self is represented as
+dead, and the victory of the new principle is viewed as complete. This
+full obedience to the ideal is the service of a necessity; but the
+necessity is within, and the service is, therefore, perfect freedom. The
+authority of the law is absolute, but the law is self-imposed. The whole
+man is convinced of its goodness. He has acquired something even fuller
+than a mere intellectual demonstration of it; for his knowledge has
+ripened into wisdom, possessed his sympathies, and become a disposition
+of his heart. And the fulness and certainty of his knowledge, so far
+from rendering morality impossible, is its very perfection. To bring
+about such a knowledge of the good of goodness and the evil of evil, as
+will engender love of the former and hatred of the latter, is the aim of
+all moral education. Thus, the history of human life, in so far as it is
+progressive, may be concentrated in the saying that it is the ascent
+from the power of a necessity which is natural, to the power of a
+necessity which is moral. And this latter necessity can come only
+through fuller and more convincing knowledge of the law that rules the
+world, and is also the inner principle of man's nature.
+
+There remains now the third element in Browning's view,--namely, that
+the faith in the good, implied in morality and religion, can be firmly
+established, after knowledge has turned out deceptive, upon the
+individual's consciousness of the power of love within himself. In other
+words, I must now try to estimate the value of Browning's appeal from
+the intellect to the heart.
+
+Before doing so, however, it may be well to repeat once more that
+Browning's condemnation of knowledge, in his philosophical poems, is not
+partial or hesitating. On the contrary, he confines it definitely to the
+individual's consciousness of his own inner states.
+
+            "Myself I solely recognize.
+  They, too, may recognize themselves, not me,
+  For aught I know or care."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_. See also _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+Nor does Browning endeavour to correct this limited testimony of the
+intellect as to its own states, by bringing in the miraculous aid of
+revelation, or by postulating an unerring moral faculty. He does not
+assume an intuitive power of knowing right from wrong; but he maintains
+that ignorance enwraps man's moral sense.[B]
+
+[Footnote B: See Chapter VIII.]
+
+And, not only are we unable to know the rule of right and wrong in
+details, but we cannot know whether there _is_ right or wrong. At times
+the poet seems inclined to say that evil is a phenomenon conjured up by
+the frail intelligence of man.
+
+    "Man's fancy makes the fault!
+  Man, with the narrow mind, must cram inside
+  His finite God's infinitude,--earth's vault
+  He bids comprise the heavenly far and wide,
+  Since Man may claim a right to understand
+  What passes understanding."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville_.]
+
+God's ways are past finding out. Nay, God Himself is unknown. At times,
+indeed, the power to love within man seems to the poet to be a clue to
+the nature of the Power without, and God is all but revealed in this
+surpassing emotion of the human heart. But, when philosophizing, he
+withdraws even this amount of knowledge. He is
+
+  "Assured that, whatsoe'er the quality
+  Of love's cause, save that love was caused thereby,
+  This--nigh upon revealment as it seemed
+  A minute since--defies thy longing looks,
+  Withdrawn into the unknowable once more."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]
+
+Thus--to sum up Browning's view of knowledge--we are ignorant of the
+world; we do not know even whether it is good, or evil, or only their
+semblance, that is presented to us in human life; and we know nothing of
+God, except that He is the cause of love in man. What greater depth of
+agnosticism is possible?
+
+When the doctrine is put in this bald form, the moral and religious
+consciousness of man, on behalf of which the theory was invented,
+revolts against it.
+
+Nevertheless, the distinction made by Browning between the intellectual
+and emotional elements of human life is very common in religious
+thought. It is not often, indeed, that either the worth of love, or the
+weakness of knowledge receives such emphatic expression as that which is
+given to them by the poet; but the same general idea of their relation
+is often expressed, and still more often implied. Browning differs from
+our ordinary teachers mainly in the boldness of his affirmatives and
+negatives. They, too, regard the intellect as merely human, and the
+emotion of love as divine. They, too, shrink from identifying the reason
+of man with the reason of God; even though they may recognize that
+morality and religion must postulate some kind of unity between God and
+man. They, too, conceive that human knowledge differs _in nature_ from
+that of God, while they maintain that human goodness is the same in
+nature with that of God, though different in degree and fulness. There
+are two _kinds_ of knowledge, but there is only one kind of justice, or
+mercy, or loving-kindness. Man must be content with a semblance of a
+knowledge of truth; but a semblance of goodness, would be intolerable.
+God really reveals Himself to man in morality and religion, and He
+communicates to man nothing less than "the divine love." But there is no
+such close connection on the side of reason. The religious life of man
+is a divine principle, the indwelling of God in him; but there is a
+final and fatal defect in man's knowledge. The divine love's
+manifestation of itself is ever incomplete, it is true, even in the best
+of men; but there is no defect in its nature.
+
+As a consequence of this doctrine, few religious opinions are more
+common at the present day, than that it is necessary to appeal, on all
+the high concerns of man's moral and religious life, from the intellect
+to the heart. Where we cannot know, we may still feel; and the religious
+man may have, in his own feeling of the divine, a more intimate
+conviction of the reality of that in which he trusts, than could be
+produced by any intellectual process.
+
+              "Enough to say, 'I feel
+  Love's sure effect, and, being loved, must love
+  The love its cause behind,--I can and do.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Piller at Sebzevar_.]
+
+Reason, in trying to scale the heights of truth, falls-back, impotent
+and broken, into doubt and despair; not by that way can we come to that
+which is best and highest.
+
+  "I found Him not in world or sun,
+    Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye;
+    Nor thro' the questions men may try,
+  The petty cobwebs we have spun."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _In Memoriam_.]
+
+But there is another way to find God and to conquer doubt.
+
+  "If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep,
+    I heard a voice 'believe no more,'
+    And heard an ever-breaking-shore
+  That tumbled in the Godless deep;
+
+  "A warmth within the breast would melt
+    The freezing reason's colder part,
+    And like a man in wrath the heart
+  Stood up and answer'd 'I have felt.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _In Memoriam_.]
+
+What, then, I have now to ask, is the meaning and value of this appeal
+to emotion? Can love, or emotion in any of its forms, reveal truths to
+man which his intellect cannot discover? If so, how? If not, how shall
+we account for the general conviction of good men that it can? We have,
+in a word, either to justify the appeal to the heart, by explaining how
+the heart may utter truths that are hidden from reason; or else to
+account for the illusion, by which religious emotion seems to reveal
+such truths.
+
+The first requirement is shown to be unreasonable by the very terms in
+which it is made. The intuitive insight of faith, the immediate
+conviction of the heart, cannot render, and must not try to render, any
+account of itself. Proof is a process; but there is no process in this
+direct conviction of truth. Its assertion is just the denial of process;
+it is a repudiation of all connections; in such a faith of feeling there
+are no cob-web lines relating fact to fact, which doubt could break.
+Feeling is the immediate unity of the subject and object. I am pained,
+because I cannot rid myself of an element which is already within me; I
+am lifted into the emotion of pleasure, or happiness, or bliss, by the
+consciousness that I am already at one with an object that fulfils my
+longings and satisfies my needs. Hence, there seems to be ground for
+saying that, in this instance, the witness cannot lie; for it cannot go
+before the fact, as it is itself the effect of the fact. If the emotion
+is pleasurable it is the consciousness of the unity within; if it is
+painful, of the disunity. In feeling, I am absolutely with myself; and
+there seems, therefore, to be no need of attempting to justify, by means
+of reason, a faith in God which manifests itself in emotion. The emotion
+itself is its own sufficient witness, a direct result of the intimate
+union of man with the object of devotion. Nay, we may go further, and
+say that the demand is an unjust one, which betrays ignorance of the
+true nature of moral intuition and religious feeling.
+
+I am not concerned to deny the truth that lies in the view here stated;
+and no advocate of the dignity of human reason, or of the worth of human
+knowledge, is called upon to deny it. There is a sense in which the
+conviction of "faith" or "feeling" is more intimate and strong than any
+process of proof. But this does not in any wise justify the contention
+of those who maintain that we can feel what we do not in any sense know,
+or that the heart can testify to that of which the intellect is
+absolutely silent.
+
+  "So let us say--not 'Since we know, we love,'
+  But rather, 'Since we love, we know enough.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]
+
+In these two lines there are combined the truth I would acknowledge, and
+the error I would confute. Love is, in one way, sufficient knowledge;
+or, rather, it is the direct testimony of that completest knowledge, in
+which subject and object interpenetrate. For, where love is, all foreign
+elements have been eliminated. There is not "one and one with a shadowy
+third"; but the object is brought within the self as constituting part
+of its very life. This is involved in all the great forms of human
+thought--in science and art, no less than in morality and religion. It
+is the truth that we love, and only that, which is altogether ours. By
+means of love the poet is
+
+  "Made one with Nature. There is heard
+  His voice in all her music, from the moan
+  Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird ";
+
+and it is because he is made one with her that he is able to reveal her
+inmost secrets. "Man," said Fichte, "can will nothing but what he loves;
+his love is the sole and at the same time the infallible spring of his
+volition, and of all his life's striving and movement." It is only when
+we have identified ourselves with an ideal, and made its realization our
+own interest, that we strive to attain it. Love is revelation in
+knowledge, inspiration in art, motive in morality, and the fulness of
+religious joy.
+
+But, although in this sense love is greater than knowledge, it is a
+grave error to separate it from knowledge. In the life of man at least,
+the separation of the emotional and intellectual elements extinguishes
+both. We cannot know that in which we have no interest. The very effort
+to comprehend an object rests on interest, or the feeling of ourselves
+in it; so that knowledge, as well as morality, may be said to begin in
+love. We cannot know except we love; but, on the other hand, we cannot
+love that which we do not in some degree know. Wherever the frontiers of
+knowledge may be it is certain that there is nothing beyond them which
+can either arouse feeling, or be a steadying centre for it. Emotion is
+like a climbing plant. It clings to the tree of knowledge, adding beauty
+to its strength. But, without knowledge, it is impossible for man. There
+is no feeling which is not also incipient knowledge; for feeling is only
+the subjective side of knowledge--that face of the known fact which is
+turned inwards.
+
+If, therefore, the poet's agnosticism were taken literally, and, in his
+philosophical poems he obviously means it to be taken literally, it
+would lead to a denial of the very principles of religion and morality,
+which it was meant to support. His appeal to love would then, strictly
+speaking, be an appeal to the love of nothing known, or knowable; and
+such love is impossible. For love, if it is to be distinguished from the
+organic, impulse of beast towards beast, must have an object. A mere
+instinctive activity of benevolence in man, by means of which he
+lightened the sorrows of his brethren, if not informed with knowledge,
+would have no more moral worth than the grateful warmth of the sun. Such
+love as this there may be in the animal creation. If the bird is not
+rational, we may say that it builds its nest and lines it for its brood,
+pines for its partner and loves it, at the bidding of the returning
+spring, in much the same way as the meadows burst into flower. Without
+knowledge, the whole process is merely a natural one; or, if it be more,
+it is so only in so far as the life of emotion can be regarded as a
+foretaste of the life of thought. But such a natural process is not
+possible to man. Every activity in him is relative to his
+self-consciousness, and takes a new character from that relation. His
+love at the best and worst is the love of something that he knows, and
+in which he seeks to find himself made rich with new sufficiency. Thus
+love can not "ally" itself with ignorance. It is, indeed, an impulse
+pressing for the closer communion of the lover with the object of his
+love.
+
+      "Like two meteors of expanding flame,
+  Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
+  Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still
+  Burning, yet ever inconsumable;
+  In one another's substance finding food."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Shelley's _Epipsychidion_.]
+
+But, for a being such as Browning describes, who is shut up within the
+blind walls of his own self, the self-transcending impulse of love would
+be impossible. If man's inner consciousness is to be conceived as a dark
+room shutting out the world, upon whose shadowy phenomena the candle of
+introspection throws a dim and uncertain light, then he can have no
+interest outside of himself; nor can he ever take that first step in
+goodness, which carries him beyond his narrow individuality to seek and
+find a larger self in others. Morality, even in its lowest form, implies
+knowledge, and knowledge of something better than "those _apparent_
+other mortals." With the first dawn of the moral life comes the
+consciousness of an ideal, which is not actual; and such a break with
+the natural is not possible except to him who has known a better and
+desired it. The ethical endeavour of man is the attempt to convert ideas
+into actuality; and all his activity as moral agent takes place within
+the sphere that is illumined by the light of knowledge. If knowledge
+breaks down, there is no law of action which he can obey. The moral law
+that must be apprehended, and whose authority must be recognized by man,
+either sinks out of being or becomes an illusive phantom, if man is
+doomed to ignorance or false knowledge. To extinguish truth is to
+extinguish goodness.
+
+In like manner, religion, which the poet would fain defend for man by
+means of agnosticism, becomes impossible, if knowledge be denied.
+Religion is not blind emotion; nor can mere feeling, however ecstatic,
+ascend to God. Animals feel, but they are not, and cannot be,
+religious--unless they can know. The love of God implies knowledge. "I
+know Him whom I have believed" is the language of religion. For what is
+religion but a conscious identification of the self with One who is
+known to fulfil its needs and satisfy its aspirations? Agnosticism is
+thus directly destructive of it. We cannot, indeed, prove God as the
+conclusion of a syllogism, for He is the primary hypothesis of all
+proof. But, nevertheless, we cannot reach Him without knowledge. Emotion
+reveals no object, but is consequent upon the revelation of it; feeling
+yields no truth, but is the witness of the worth of a truth for the
+individual. If man were shut up to mere feeling, even the awe of the
+devout agnostic would be impossible. For the Unknowable cannot generate
+any emotion. It appears to do so, only because the Unknowable of the
+agnostic is not altogether unknown to him; but is a vast, abysmal
+"Something," that has occupied with its shadowy presence the field of
+his imagination. It is paganism stricken with the plague, and philosophy
+afflicted with blindness, that build altars to an unknown God. The
+highest and the strongest faith, the deepest trust and the most loving,
+come with the fullest knowledge. Indeed, the distinction between the awe
+of the agnostic, which is the lowest form of religion, and that highest
+form in which perfect love casteth out fear, springs from the fuller
+knowledge of the nature of the object of warship, which the latter
+implies. Thus, religion and morality grow with the growth of knowledge;
+and neither has a worse enemy than ignorance. The human spirit cannot
+grow in a one-sided manner. Devotion to great moral ends is possible,
+only through the deepening and widening of man's knowledge of the nature
+of the world. Those who know God best, render unto Him the purest
+service.
+
+So evident is this, that it seems at first sight to be difficult to
+account for that antagonism to the intellect and distrust of its
+deliverances, which are so emphatically expressed in the writings of
+Browning, and which are marked characteristics of the ordinary religious
+opinion of our day. On closer examination, however, we shall discover
+that it is not pure emotion, or mere feeling, whose authority is set
+above that of reason, but rather the emotion which is the result of
+knowledge. The appeal of the religious man from the doubts and
+difficulties, which reason levels against "the faith," is really an
+appeal to the character that lies behind the emotion. The conviction of
+the heart, that refuses to yield to the arguments of the understanding,
+is not _mere_ feeling; but, rather, the complex experience of the past
+life, that manifests itself in feeling. When an individual, clinging to
+his moral or religious faith, says, "I have felt it," he opposes to the
+doubt, not his feeling as such, but his personality in all the wealth of
+its experience. The appeal to the heart is the appeal to the unproved,
+but not, therefore, unauthorized, testimony of the best men at their
+best moments, when their vision of truth is clearest. No one pretends
+that "the loud and empty voice of untrained passion and prejudice" has
+any authority in matters of moral and religious faith; though, in such
+cases, "feeling" may lack neither depth nor intensity. If the "feelings"
+of the good man were dissociated from his character, and stripped bare
+of all the significance they obtain therefrom, their worthlessness would
+become apparent. The profound error of condemning knowledge in order to
+honour feeling, is hidden only by the fact that the feeling is already
+informed and inspired with knowledge. Religious agnosticism, like all
+other forms of the theory of nescience, derives its plausibility from
+the adventitious help it purloins from the knowledge which it condemns.
+
+That it is to such feeling that Browning really appeals against
+knowledge becomes abundantly evident, when we bear in mind that he
+always calls it "love." For love in man is never ignorant. It knows its
+object, and is a conscious identification of the self with it. And to
+Browning, the object of love, when love is at its best--of that love by
+means of which he refutes intellectual pessimism--is mankind. The revolt
+of the heart against all evil is a desire for the good of all men. In
+other words, his refuge against the assailing doubts which spring from
+the intellect, is in the moral consciousness. But that consciousness is
+no mere emotion; it is a consciousness which knows the highest good, and
+moves in sympathy with it. It is our maturest wisdom; for it is the
+manifestation of the presence and activity of the ideal, the fullest
+knowledge and the surest. Compared with this, the emotion linked to
+ignorance, of which the poet speaks in his philosophic theory, is a very
+poor thing. It is poorer than the lowest human love.
+
+Now, if this higher interpretation of the term "heart" be accepted, it
+is easily seen why its authority should seem higher than that of reason;
+and particularly, if it be remembered that, while the heart is thus
+widened to take in all direct consciousness of the ideal, "the reason"
+is reduced to the power of reflection, or mental analysis. "The heart,"
+in this sense, is the intensest unity of the complex experiences of a
+whole life, while "the reason" is taken merely as a faculty which
+invents arguments, and provides grounds and evidences; it is what is
+called, in the language of German philosophy, the "understanding." Now,
+in this sense, the understanding has, at best, only a borrowed
+authority. It is the faculty of rules rather than of principles. It is
+ever dogmatic, assertive, repellent, hard; and it always advances its
+forces in single line. Its logic never convinced any one of truth or
+error, unless, beneath the arguments which it advanced, there lay some
+deeper principle of concord. Thus, the opposition between "faith and
+reason," rightly interpreted, is that between a concrete experience,
+instinct with life and conviction, and a mechanical arrangement of
+abstract arguments. The quarrel of the heart is not with reason, but
+with reasons. "Evidences of Christianity?" said Coleridge; "I am weary
+of the word." It is this weariness of evidence, of the endless arguments
+_pro_ and _con_, which has caused so many to distrust reason and
+knowledge, and which has sometimes driven believers to the dangerous
+expedient of making their faith dogmatic and absolute. Nor have the
+opponents of "the faith" been slow to seize the opportunity thus offered
+them. "From the moment that a religion solicits the aid of philosophy,
+its ruin is inevitable," said Heine. "In the attempt at defence, it
+prates itself into destruction. Religion, like every absolutism, must
+not seek to justify itself. Prometheus is bound to the rock by a silent
+force. Yea, Aeschylus permits not personified power to utter a single
+word. It must remain mute. The moment that a religion ventures to print
+a catechism supported by arguments, the moment that a political
+absolutism publishes an official newspaper, both are near their end. But
+therein consists our triumph: we have brought our adversaries to speech,
+and they must reckon with us."[A] But, we may answer, religion is _not_
+an absolutism; and, therefore, it is _not_ near its end when it ventures
+to justify itself. On the contrary, no spiritual power, be it moral or
+religious, can maintain its authority, if it assumes a despotic
+attitude; for the human spirit inevitably moves towards freedom, and
+that movement is the deepest necessity of its nature, which it cannot
+escape. "Religion, on the ground of its sanctity, and law, on the ground
+of its majesty, often resist the sifting of their claims. But in so
+doing, they inevitably awake a not unjust suspicion that their claims
+are ill-founded. They can command the unfeigned homage of man, only when
+they have shown themselves able to stand the test of free inquiry."
+
+[Footnote A: _Religion and Philosophy in Germany_.]
+
+And if it is an error to suppose, with Browning, that the primary truths
+of the moral and religious consciousness belong to a region which is
+higher than knowledge, and can, from that side, be neither assailed nor
+defended; it is also an error to suppose that reason is essentially
+antagonistic to them. The facts of morality and religion are precisely
+the richest facts of knowledge; and that faith is the most secure which
+is most completely illumined by reason. Religion at its best is not a
+dogmatic despotism, nor is reason a merely critical and destructive
+faculty. If reason is loyal to the truth of religion on which it is
+exercised, it will reach beneath all the conflict and clamour of
+disputation, to the principle of unity, on which, as we have seen, both
+reason and religion rest.
+
+The "faith" to which religious spirits appeal against all the attacks of
+doubt, "the love" of Browning, is really implicit reason; it is
+"abbreviated" or concentrated knowledge; it is the manifold experiences
+of life focussed into an intense unity. And, on the other hand, the
+"reason" which they condemn is what Carlyle calls the logic-chopping
+faculty. In taking the side of faith when troubled with difficulties
+which they cannot lay, they are really defending the cause of reason
+against that of the understanding. For it is quite true that the
+understanding, that is, the reason as reflective or critical, can never
+bring about either a moral or religious life. It cannot create a
+religion, any more than physiology can produce men. The reflection which
+brings doubt is always secondary; it can only exercise itself on a given
+material. As Hegel frequently pointed out, it is not the function of
+moral philosophy to create or to institute a morality or religion, but
+to understand them. The facts must first be given; they must be actual
+experiences of the human spirit. Moral philosophy and theology differ
+from the moral or religious life, in the same way as geology differs
+from the earth, or astronomy from the heavenly bodies. The latter are
+facts; the former are theories about the facts. Religion is an attitude
+of the human spirit towards the highest; morality is the realization of
+character; and these are not to be confused with their reflective
+interpretations. Much of the difficulty in these matters comes from the
+lack of a clear distinction between _beliefs_ and _creeds_.
+
+Further, not only are the utterances of the heart prior to the
+deliverances of the intellect in this sense, but it may also be admitted
+that the latter can never do full justice to the contents of the former.
+So rich is character in content and so complex is spiritual life, that
+we can never, by means of reflection, lift into clear consciousness all
+the elements that enter into it. Into the organism of our experience,
+which is our faith, there is continually absorbed the subtle influences
+of our complex natural and social environment. We grow by means of them,
+as the plant grows by feeding on the soil and the sunshine and dew. It
+is as impossible for us to set forth, one by one, the truths and errors
+which we have thus worked into our mental and moral life, as it is to
+keep a reckoning of the physical atoms with which the natural life
+builds up the body. Hence, every attempt to justify these truths seems
+inadequate; and the defence which the understanding sets up for the
+faith, always seems partial and cold. Who ever fully expressed his
+deepest convictions? The consciousness of the dignity of the moral law
+affected Kant like the view of the starry firmament, and generated a
+feeling of the sublime which words could not express; and the religious
+ecstasy of the saints cannot be confined within the channels of speech,
+but floods the soul with overmastering power, possessing all its
+faculties. In this respect, it will always remain true that the greatest
+facts of human experience reach beyond all knowledge. Nay, we may add
+further, that in this respect the simplest of these facts passes all
+understanding. Still, as we have already seen, it is reason that
+constitutes them; that which is presented to reason for explanation, in
+knowledge and morality and religion, is itself the product of reason.
+Reason is the power which, by interaction with our environment, has
+generated the whole of our experience. And, just as natural science
+interprets the phenomena given to it by ordinary opinion, _i.e._,
+interprets and purifies a lower form of knowledge by converting it into
+a higher; so the task of reason when it is exercised upon morality and
+religion, is simply to evolve, and amplify the meaning of its own
+products. The movement from morality and religion to moral philosophy
+and the philosophy of religion, is thus a movement from reason to
+reason, from the implicit to the explicit, from the germ to the
+developed fulness of life and structure. In this matter, as in all
+others wherein the human spirit is concerned, that which is first by
+nature is last in genesis--[Greek: nika d' ho prôtos kai teleutaios
+dramôn.] The whole history of the moral and religious experience of
+mankind is comprised in the statement, that the implicit reason which we
+call "faith" is ever developing towards full consciousness of itself;
+and that, at its first beginning, and throughout the whole ascending
+process of this development, the highest is present in it as a
+self-manifesting power.
+
+But this process from the almost instinctive intuitions of the heart
+towards the morality and religion of freedom, being a process of
+evolution, necessarily involves conflict. There are men, it is true, the
+unity of whose moral and religious faith is never completely broken by
+doubt; just as there are men who are not forced by the contradictions in
+the first interpretation of the world by ordinary experience to attempt
+to re-interpret it by means of science and philosophy.
+
+Throughout their lives they may say like Pompilia--
+
+        "I know the right place by foot's feel,
+  I took it and tread firm there; wherefore change?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1886-1887.]
+
+Jean Paul Richter said that he knew another way of being happy, beside
+that of soaring away so far above the clouds of life, that its miseries
+looked small, and the whole external world shrunk into a little child's
+garden. It was, "Simply to sink down into this little garden; and there
+to nestle yourself so snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, that in
+looking out from your warm lark-nest, you likewise can discern no
+wolf-dens, charnel-houses, or thunder-rods, but only blades and ears,
+every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a tree, and a sun-screen, and
+rain-screen." There is a similar way of being good, with a goodness
+which, though limited, is pure and perfect in nature. Nay, we may even
+admit that such lives are frequently the most complete and beautiful,
+just as the fairest flowers grow, not on the tallest trees, but on the
+fragile plants at their foot. Nevertheless, even in the case of those
+persons who have never broken from the traditional faith of the past, or
+felt it to be inadequate, that faith has been silently reconstructed in
+a new synthesis of knowledge. Spiritual life cannot come by inheritance;
+but every individual must acquire a faith for himself, and turn his
+spiritual environment into personal experience. "A man may be a heretic
+in the truth," said Milton, "and if he believe things only because his
+pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other
+reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes
+his heresy." It is truth to another but tradition to him; it is a creed
+and not a conviction. Browning fully recognizes the need of this
+conflict--
+
+  "Is it not this ignoble confidence,
+  Cowardly hardihood, that dulls and damps,
+  Makes the old heroism impossible?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1848-1850.]
+
+asks the Pope. The stream of truth when it ceases to flow onward,
+becomes a malarious swamp. Movement is the law of life; and knowledge of
+the principles of morality and religion, as of all other principles,
+must, in order to grow, be felt from time to time as inadequate and
+untrue. There are men and ages whose mission is--
+
+                  "to shake
+  This torpor of assurance from our creed,
+  Re-introduce the doubt discarded, bring
+  That formidable danger back, we drove
+  Long ago to the distance and the dark."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid._, 1853-1856.]
+
+Such a spirit of criticism seems to many to exercise a merely
+destructive power, and those who have not felt the inadequacy of the
+inherited faith defend themselves against it, as the enemy of their
+lives. But no logic, or assailing doubt, could have power against the
+testimony of "the heart," unless it was rooted in deeper and truer
+principles than those which it attacked. Nothing can overpower truth
+except a larger truth; and, in such a conflict, the truth in the old
+view will ultimately take the side of the new, and find its subordinate
+position within it. It has happened, not infrequently, as in the case of
+the Encyclopædists, that the explicit truths of reason were more
+abstract, that is, less true, than the implicit "faith" which they
+assailed. The central truths of religion have often proved themselves to
+possess some stubborn, though semi-articulate power, which could
+ultimately overcome or subordinate the more partial and explicit truths
+of abstract science. It is this that gives plausibility to the idea,
+that the testimony of the heart is more reliable than that of the
+intellect. But, in this case also, it was really reason that triumphed.
+It was the truth which proved itself to be immortal, and not any mere
+emotion. The insurrection of the intellect against the heart is quelled,
+only when the untruth, or abstract character, of the principle of the
+assailants has been made manifest, and when the old faith has yielded up
+its unjust gains, and proved its vitality and strength by absorbing the
+truth that gave vigour to the attack. Just as in morality it is the
+ideal, or the unity of the whole moral life, that breaks up into
+differences, so also here it is the implicit faith which, as it grows,
+breaks forth into doubts. In both cases alike, the negative movement
+which induces despair, is only a phase of a positive process--the
+process of reason towards a fuller, a more articulate and complex,
+realization of itself.
+
+Hence it follows that the value and strength of a faith corresponds
+accurately to the doubts it has overcome. Those who never went forth to
+battle cannot come home heroes. It is only when the earthquake has tried
+the towers, and destroyed the sense of security, that
+
+  "Man stands out again, pale, resolute,
+  Prepared to die,--that is, alive at last.
+  As we broke up that old faith of the world,
+  Have we, next age, to break up this the new--
+  Faith, in the thing, grown faith in the report--
+  Whence need to bravely disbelieve report
+  Through increased faith i' the thing reports belie?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1862-1868.]
+
+"Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrive
+by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion."
+
+It was, thus, I conclude, a deep speculative error into which Browning
+fell, when, in order to substantiate his optimistic faith, he
+stigmatized human knowledge as merely apparent. Knowledge does not fail,
+except in the sense in which morality also fails; it does not at any
+time attain to the ultimate truth, any more than the moral life is in
+any of its activities[B] a complete embodiment of the absolute good. It
+is not given to man, who is essentially progressive, to reach the
+ultimate term of development. For there is no ultimate term: life never
+stands still. But, for the same reason, there is no ultimate failure.
+The whole history of man is a history of growth. If, however, knowledge
+did fail, then morality too must fail; and the appeal which the poet
+makes from the intellect to the heart, would be an appeal to mere
+emotion. Finally, even if we take a generous view of the poet's meaning,
+and put out of consideration the theory he expresses when he is
+deliberately philosophizing, there is still no appeal from the reason to
+an alien and higher authority. The appeal to "the heart" is, at best,
+only an appeal from the understanding to the reason, from a conscious
+logic to the more concrete fact constituted by reason, which reflection
+has failed to comprehend in its completeness; at its worst, it is an
+appeal from truth to prejudice, from belief to dogma.
+
+[Footnote B: See Chapter IX., p. 291.]
+
+And in both cases alike, the appeal is futile; for, whether "the heart
+be wiser than the head," or not, whether the faith which is assailed be
+richer or poorer, truer or more false, than the logic which is directed
+against it, an appeal to the heart cannot any longer restore the unity
+of the broken life. Once reflection has set in, there is no way of
+turning away its destructive might, except by deeper reflection. The
+implicit faith of the heart must become the explicit faith of reason.
+"There is no final and satisfactory issue from such an endless internal
+debate and conflict, until the 'heart' has learnt to speak the language
+of the head--_i.e._, until the permanent principles, which underlay and
+gave strength to faith, have been brought into the light of distinct
+consciousness."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Caird's _Comte_.]
+
+I conclude, therefore, that the poet was right in saying that, in order
+to comprehend human character,
+
+  "I needs must blend the quality of man
+  With quality of God, and so assist
+  Mere human sight to understand my Life."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_--_Ferishtah's Fancies_.]
+
+But it was a profound error, which contained in it the destruction of
+morality and religion, as well as of knowledge, to make "the quality of
+God" a love that excludes reason, and the quality of man an intellect
+incapable of knowing truth. Such in-congruous elements could never be
+combined into the unity of a character. A love that was mere emotion
+could not yield a motive for morality, or a principle of religion. A
+philosophy of life which is based on agnosticism is an explicit
+self-contradiction, which can help no one. We must appeal from Browning
+the philosopher to Browning the poet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+  "Well, I can fancy how he did it all,
+  Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,
+  Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,
+  Above and through his art--for it gives way;
+  That arm is wrongly put--and there again--
+  A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines,
+  Its body, so to speak: its soul is right,
+  He means right--that, a child may understand."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Andrea del Sarto_.]
+
+I have tried to show that Browning's theory of life, in so far as it is
+expressed in his philosophical poems, rests on agnosticism; and that
+such a theory is inconsistent with the moral and religious interests of
+man. The idea that truth is unattainable was represented by Browning as
+a bulwark of the faith, but it proved on examination to be treacherous.
+His optimism was found to have no better foundation than personal
+conviction, which any one was free to deny, and which the poet could in
+no wise prove. The evidence of the heart, to which he appealed, was the
+evidence of an emotion severed from intelligence, and, therefore,
+without any content whatsoever. "The faith," which he professed, was not
+the faith that anticipates and invites proof, but a faith which is
+incapable of proof. In casting doubt upon the validity of knowledge, he
+degraded the whole spiritual nature of man; for a love that is ignorant
+of its object is a blind impulse, and a moral consciousness that does
+not know the law is an impossible phantom--a self-contradiction.
+
+But, although Browning's explicitly philosophical theory of life fails,
+there appears in his earlier poems, where his poetical freedom was not
+yet trammelled, nor his moral enthusiasm restrained by the stubborn
+difficulties of reflective thought, a far truer and richer view. In this
+period of pure poetry, his conception of man was less abstract than in
+his later works, and his inspiration was more direct and full. The
+poet's dialectical ingenuity increased with the growth of his reflective
+tendencies; but his relation to the great principles of spiritual life
+seemed to become less intimate, and his expression of them more halting.
+What we find in his earlier works are vigorous ethical convictions, a
+glowing optimistic faith, achieving their fitting expression in
+impassioned poetry; what we find in his later works are arguments,
+which, however richly adorned with poetic metaphors, have lost the
+completeness and energy of life. His poetic fancies are like chaplets
+which crown the dead. Lovers of the poet, who seek in his poems for
+inspiring expressions of their hope and faith, will always do well in
+turning from his militant metaphysics to his art.
+
+In his case, as in that of many others, spiritual experience was far
+richer than the theory which professed to explain it. The task of
+lifting his moral convictions into the clear light of conscious
+philosophy was beyond his power. The theory of the failure of knowledge,
+which he seems to have adopted far too easily from the current doctrine
+of the schools, was fundamentally inconsistent with his generous belief
+in the moral progress of man; and it maimed the expression of that
+belief. The result of his work as a philosopher is a confession of
+complete ignorance and the helpless asseveration of a purely dogmatic
+faith.
+
+The fundamental error of the poet's philosophy lies, I believe, in that
+severance of feeling and intelligence, love and reason, which finds
+expression in _La Saisiaz_, _Ferishtah's Fancies_, _The Parleyings_, and
+_Asolando_. Such an absolute division is not to be found in
+_Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day_, _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, _A Death in the
+Desert_, or in _The Ring and the Book_; nor even in _Fifine at the
+Fair_. In these works we are not perplexed by the strange combination of
+a nature whose principle is love, and which is capable of infinite
+progress, with an intelligence whose best efforts end in ignorance.
+Rather, the spirit of man is regarded as one, in all its manifestations;
+and, therefore, as progressive on all sides of its activity. The
+widening of his knowledge, which is brought about by increasing
+experience, is parallel with the deepening and purifying of his moral
+life. In all Browning's works, indeed, with the possible exception of
+_Paracelsus_, love is conceived as having a place and function of
+supreme importance in the development of the soul. Its divine origin and
+destiny are never obscured; but knowledge is regarded as merely human,
+and, therefore, as falling short of the truth. In _Easter-Day_ it is
+definitely contrasted with love, and shown to be incapable of satisfying
+the deepest wants of man. It is, at the best, only a means to the higher
+purposes of moral activity, and, except in the _Grammarian's Funeral_,
+it is nowhere regarded as in itself a worthy end.
+
+  "'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.
+  And thence I conclude that the real God-function
+  Is to furnish a motive and injunction
+  For practising what we know already."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day_.]
+
+Even here, there is implied that the motive comes otherwise than by
+knowledge; still, taking these earlier poems as a whole, we may say that
+in them knowledge is regarded as means to morality and not as in any
+sense contrasted with or destructive of it. Man's motives are rational
+motives; the ends he seeks are ends conceived and even constituted by
+his intelligence, and not purposes blindly followed as by instinct and
+impulse.
+
+                        "Why live,
+  Except for love--how love, unless they know?"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1327-1328.]
+
+asks the Pope. Moral progress is not secured apart from, or in spite of
+knowledge. We are not exhorted to reject the verdict of the latter as
+illusive, in order to confide in a faith which not only fails to receive
+support from the defective intelligence, but maintains its own integrity
+only by repudiating the testimony of the reason. In the distinction
+between knowledge as means and love as end, it is easy, indeed, to
+detect a tendency to degrade the former into a mere temporary expedient,
+whereby moral ends may be served. The poet speaks of "such knowledge as
+is possible to man." The attitude he assumes towards it is apologetic,
+and betrays a keen consciousness of its limitation, and particularly of
+its utter inadequacy to represent the infinite. In the speech of the
+Pope---which can scarcely be regarded otherwise than as the poet's own
+maturest utterance on the great moral and religious questions raised by
+the tragedy of Pompilia's death--we find this view vividly expressed:--
+
+  "O Thou--as represented here to me
+  In such conception as my soul allows,--
+  Under Thy measureless, my atom width!--
+  Man's mind, what is it but a convex glass
+  Wherein are gathered all the scattered points
+  Picked out of the immensity of sky,
+  To reunite there, be our heaven for earth,
+  Our known unknown, our God revealed to man?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1308-1315.]
+
+God is "appreciable in His absolute immensity solely by Himself," while,
+"by the little mind of man, He is reduced to littleness that suits man's
+faculty." In these words, and others that might be quoted, the poet
+shows that he is profoundly impressed with the distinction between human
+knowledge, and that knowledge which is adequate to the whole nature and
+extent of being. And in _Christmas-Eve_ he repudiates with a touch of
+scorn, the absolute idealism, which is supposed to identify altogether
+human reason with divine reason; and he commends the German critic for
+not making
+
+           "The important stumble
+  Of adding, he, the sage and humble,
+  Was also one with the Creator."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+Nowhere in Browning, unless we except _Paracelsus_, is there any sign of
+an inclination to treat man's knowledge in the same spirit as he deals
+with man's love--namely, as a direct emanation from the inmost nature of
+God, a divine element that completes and crowns man's life on earth. On
+the contrary, he shows a persistent tendency to treat love as a power
+higher in nature than reason, and to give to it a supreme place in the
+formation of character; and, as he grows older, that tendency grows in
+strength. The philosophical poems, in which love is made all in all, and
+knowledge is reduced to nescience follow by logical evolution from
+principles, the influence of which we can detect even in his earlier
+works. Still, in the latter, these principles are only latent, and are
+far from holding undisputed sway. Browning was, at first, restrained
+from exclusive devotion to abstract views, by the suggestions which the
+artistic spirit receives through its immediate contact with the facts of
+life. That contact it is very difficult for philosophy to maintain as it
+pursues its effort after universal truth. Philosophy is obliged to
+analyze in order to define, and, in that process, it is apt to lose
+something of that completeness of representation, which belongs to art.
+For art is always engaged in presenting the universal in the form of a
+particular object of beauty. Its product is a "known unknown," but the
+unknown is the unexhausted reality of a fact of intuition. Nor can
+analysis ever exhaust it; theory can never catch up art, or explain all
+that is in it. On similar grounds, it may be shown that it is impossible
+for reason to lay bare all the elements that enter into its first
+complex product, which we call faith. In religion, as in art, man is
+aware of more than he knows; his articulate logic cannot do justice to
+all the truths of the "heart." "The supplementary reflux of light" of
+philosophy cannot "illustrate all the inferior grades" of knowledge. Man
+will never completely understand himself.
+
+  "I knew, I felt, (perception unexpressed,
+  Uncomprehended by our narrow thought,
+  But somehow felt and known in every shift
+  And change in the spirit,--nay, in every pore
+  Of the body, even,)--what God is, what we are,
+  What life is--how God tastes an infinite joy
+  In infinite ways--one everlasting bliss,
+  From whom all being emanates, all power
+  Proceeds."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
+
+I believe that it is possible, by the help of the intuitions of
+Browning's highest artistic period, to bring together again the elements
+of his broken faith, and to find in them suggestions of a truer
+philosophy of life than anything which the poet himself achieved.
+Perhaps, indeed, it is not easy, nor altogether fair, to press the
+passionate utterances of his religious rapture into the service of
+metaphysics, and to treat the unmeasured language of emotion as the
+expression of a definite doctrine. Nevertheless, rather than set forth a
+new defence of the faith, which his agnosticism left exposed to the
+assaults of doubt and denial, it is better to make Browning correct his
+own errors, and to appeal from the metaphysician to the poet, from the
+sobriety of the logical understanding to the inspiration of poetry.
+
+I have already indicated what seems to me to be the defective element in
+the poet's philosophy of life. His theory of knowledge is in need of
+revision; and what he asserts of human love, should be applied point by
+point to human reason. As man is ideally united with the absolute on the
+side of moral emotion (if the phrase may be pardoned), so he is ideally
+united with the absolute on the side of the intellect. As there is no
+difference of _nature_ between God's goodness and man's goodness, so
+there is no difference of nature between God's truth and man's truth.
+There are not two kinds of righteousness or mercy; there are not two
+kinds of truth. Human nature is not "cut in two with a hatchet," as the
+poet implies that it is. There is in man a lower and a higher element,
+ever at war with each other; still he is not a mixture, or agglomerate,
+of the finite and the infinite. A love perfect in nature cannot be
+linked to an intelligence imperfect in nature; if it were, the love
+would be either a blind impulse or an erring one. Both morality and
+religion demand the presence in man of a perfect ideal, which is at war
+with his imperfections; but an ideal is possible, only to a being
+endowed with a capacity for knowing the truth. In degrading human
+knowledge, the poet is disloyal to the fundamental principle of the
+Christian faith which he professed--that God can and does manifest
+himself in man.
+
+On the other hand, we are not to take the unity of man with God, of
+man's moral ideal with the All-perfect, as implying, on the moral side,
+an absolute identification of the finite with the infinite; nor can we
+do so on the side of knowledge. Man's moral life and rational activity
+in knowledge are the process of the highest. But man is neither first,
+nor last; he is not the original author of his love, any more than of
+his reason; he is not the divine principle of the whole to which he
+belongs, although he is potentially in harmony with it. Both sides of
+his being are equally touched with imperfection--his love, no less than
+his reason. Perfect love would imply perfect wisdom, as perfect wisdom,
+perfect love. But absolute terms are not applicable to man, who is ever
+_on the way_ to goodness and truth, progressively manifesting the power
+of the ideal that dwells in him, and whose very life is conflict and
+acquirement.
+
+  "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
+  Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey
+  Placid and perfect with my art: the worse."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Andrea del Sarto_.]
+
+Hardly any conception is more prominent in Browning's writings than
+this, of endless progress towards an infinite ideal; although he
+occasionally manifests a desire to have done with effort.
+
+            "When a soul has seen
+    By the means of Evil that Good is best,
+  And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene,--
+    When our faith in the same has stood the test--
+  Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod,
+    The uses of labour are surely done,
+  There remaineth a rest for the people of God,
+    And I have had troubles enough, for one."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Old Pictures in Florence_.]
+
+It is the sense of endless onward movement, the outlook towards an
+immortal course, "the life after life in unlimited series," which is so
+inspiring in his early poetry. He conceives that we are here, on this
+lower earth, just to learn one form, the elementary lesson and alphabet
+of goodness, namely, "the uses of the flesh": in other lives, other
+achievements. The separation of the soul from its instrument has very
+little significance to the poet; for it does not arrest the course of
+moral development.
+
+  "No work begun shall ever pause for death."
+
+The spirit pursues its lone way, on other "adventures brave and new,"
+but ever towards a good which is complete.
+
+  "Delayed it may be for more lives yet,
+    Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few:
+  Much is to learn, much to forget
+    Ere the time be come for taking you."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Evelyn Hope_.]
+
+Still the time will come when the awakened need shall be satisfied; for
+the need was created in order to be satisfied.
+
+  "Wherefore did I contrive for thee that ear
+  Hungry for music, and direct thine eye
+  To where I hold a seven-stringed instrument,
+  Unless I meant thee to beseech me play?"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Two Camels_.]
+
+The movement onward is thus a movement in knowledge, as well as in every
+other form of good. The lover of Evelyn Hope, looking back in
+imagination on the course he has travelled on earth and after,
+exclaims--
+
+  "I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,
+    Given up myself so many times,
+  Gained me the gains of various men,
+    Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Evelyn Hope_.]
+
+In these earlier poems, there is not, as in the later ones, a maimed, or
+one-sided, evolution--a progress towards perfect love on the side of the
+heart, and towards an illusive ideal on the side of the intellect.
+Knowledge, too, has its value, and he who lived to settle "_Hoti's_
+business, properly based _Oun_," and who "gave us the doctrine of the
+enclitic _De_," was, to the poet,
+
+  "Still loftier than the world suspects,
+    Living and dying.
+
+  "Here's the top-peak; the multitude below
+    Live, for they can, there:
+  This man decided not to Live but Know--
+    Bury this man there?
+  Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
+    Lightnings are loosened,
+  Stars come and go."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Grammarian's Funeral_.]
+
+No human effort goes to waste, no gift is delusive; but every gift and
+every effort has its proper place as a stage in the endless process. The
+soul bears in it _all_ its conquests.
+
+  "There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;
+    The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
+  What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, _so_ much good more;
+    On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Abt Vogler_.]
+
+The "apparent failure" of knowledge, like every apparent failure, is "a
+triumph's evidence for the fulness of the days." The doubts that
+knowledge brings, instead of implying a defective intelligence doomed to
+spend itself on phantom phenomena, sting to progress towards the truth.
+He bids us "Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe."
+
+  "Rather I prize the doubt
+  Low kinds exist without,
+  Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Rabbi Ben Ezra_.]
+
+Similarly, defects in art, like defects in character, contain the
+promise of further achievement.
+
+  "Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?
+    In both, of such lower types are we
+  Precisely because of our wider nature;
+    For time, their's--ours, for eternity.
+
+  "To-day's brief passion limits their range;
+    It seethes with the morrow for us and more.
+  They are perfect--how else? They shall never change:
+    We are faulty--why not? We have time in store."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Old Pictures in Florence_.]
+
+Prior to the period when a sceptical philosophy came down like a blight,
+and destroyed the bloom of his art and faith, he thus recognized that
+growing knowledge was an essential condition of growing goodness.
+Pompilia shone with a glory that mere knowledge could not give (if there
+were such a thing as _mere_ knowledge).
+
+                "Everywhere
+  I see in the world the intellect of man,
+  That sword, the energy his subtle spear,
+  The knowledge which defends him like a shield--
+  Everywhere; but they make not up, I think,
+  The marvel of a soul like thine, earth's flower
+  She holds up to the softened gaze of God."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1013-1019.]
+
+But yet she recognized with patient pain the loss she had sustained for
+want of knowledge.
+
+  "The saints must bear with me, impute the fault
+  To a soul i' the bud, so starved by ignorance,
+  Stinted of warmth, it will not blow this year
+  Nor recognize the orb which Spring-flowers know."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_Pompilia_, 1515-1518.]
+
+Further on in the Pope's soliloquy, the poet shows that, at that time,
+he fully recognized the risk of entrusting the spiritual interests of
+man to the enthusiasm of elevated feeling, or to the mere intuitions of
+a noble heart. Such intuitions will sometimes guide a man happily, as in
+the case of Caponsacchi:
+
+              "Since ourselves allow
+  He has danced, in gaiety of heart, i' the main
+  The right step through the maze we bade him foot."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1915-1917.]
+
+But, on the other hand, such impulses, not instructed by knowledge of
+the truth, and made steadfast to the laws of the higher life by a
+reasoned conviction, lead man rightly only by accident. In such a career
+there is no guarantee of constancy; other impulses might lead to other
+ways of life.
+
+  "But if his heart had prompted to break loose
+  And mar the measure? Why, we must submit,
+  And thank the chance that brought him safe so far.
+  Will he repeat the prodigy? Perhaps.
+  Can he teach others how to quit themselves,
+  Show why this step was right while that were wrong?
+  How should he? 'Ask your hearts as I asked mine,
+  And get discreetly through the morrice too;
+  If your hearts misdirect you,--quit the stage,
+  And make amends,--be there amends to make.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1916-1927.]
+
+If the heart proved to Caponsacchi a guide to all that is good and
+glorious, "the Abate, second in the suite," puts in the testimony of
+another experience: "His heart answered to another tune."
+
+  "I have my taste too, and tread no such step!
+  You choose the glorious life, and may for me!
+  I like the lowest of life's appetites,--
+  So you judge--but the very truth of joy
+  To my own apprehension which decides."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid._, 1932-1936.]
+
+Mere emotion is thus an insecure guide to conduct, for its authority can
+be equally cited in support of every course of life. No one can say to
+his neighbour, "Thou art wrong." Every impulse is right to the
+individual who has it, and so long as he has it. _De gustibus non
+disputandum_. Without a universal criterion there is no praise or blame.
+
+  "Call me knave and you get yourself called fool!
+  I live for greed, ambition, lust, revenge;
+  Attain these ends by force, guile: hypocrite,
+  To-day, perchance to-morrow recognized
+  The rational man, the type of common-sense."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid._, 1937-1941.]
+
+This poem which, both in its moral wisdom and artistic worth, marks the
+high tide of Browning's poetic insight, while he is not as yet concerned
+with the defence of any theory or the discussion of any abstract
+question, contrasts strongly with the later poems, where knowledge is
+dissembling ignorance, faith is blind trust, and love is a mere impulse
+of the heart. Having failed to meet the difficulties of reflection, the
+poet turned upon the intellect. Knowledge becomes to him an offence, and
+to save his faith he plucked out his right eye and entered into the
+kingdom maimed. In _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ the ascent into another life is
+triumphant, like that of a conqueror bearing with him the spoils of
+earth; but in the later poems he escapes with a bare belief, and the
+loss of all his rich possessions of knowledge, like a shipwrecked
+mariner whose goods have been thrown overboard. His philosophy was a
+treacherous ally to his faith.
+
+But there is another consideration which shows that the poet, as artist,
+recognized the need of giving to reason a larger function than seems to
+be possible according to the theory in his later works. In the early
+poems there is no hint of the doctrine that demonstrative knowledge of
+the good, and of the necessity of its law, would destroy freedom. On the
+contrary, there are suggestions which point to the opposite doctrine,
+according to which knowledge is the condition of freedom.
+
+While in his later poems the poet speaks of love as an impulse--either
+blind or bound to erring knowledge--and of the heart as made to love, in
+his earlier ones he seems to treat man as free to work out his own
+purposes, and act out his own ideals. Browning here finds himself able
+to maintain the dependence of man upon God without destroying morality.
+He regards man's impulses not as blind instincts, but as falling
+_within_ his rational nature, and constituting the forms of its
+activity. He recognizes the distinction between a mere impulse, in the
+sense of a tendency to act, which is directed by a foreign power, and an
+impulse informed, that is, directed by reason. According to this view,
+it is reason which at once gives man the independence of foreign
+authority, which is implied in morality, and constitutes that affinity
+between man and God, which is implied by religion. No doubt, the impulse
+to know, like the impulse to love, was put into man: his whole nature is
+a gift, and he is therefore, in this sense, completely dependent upon
+God--"God's all, man's nought." But, on the other hand, it _is_ a
+rational nature which has been put into him, and not an irrational
+impulse. Or, rather, the impulse that constitutes his life as man, is
+the self-evolving activity of reason.
+
+  "Who speaks of man, then, must not sever
+  Man's very elements from man."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+However the rational nature of man has come to be, whether by emanation
+or creation, it necessarily brings freedom with it, and all its risks
+and possibilities. It is of the very essence of reason that it should
+find its law within itself.
+
+         "God's all, man's nought:
+  But also, God, whose pleasure brought
+  Man into being, stands away
+  As it were a hand-breadth off, to give
+  Room for the newly-made to live,
+  And look at Him from a place apart,
+  And use his gifts of brain and heart,
+  Given, indeed, but to keep for ever."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+Thus, while insisting on the absolute priority of God, and the original
+receptivity of man; while recognizing that love, reason, and every inner
+power and outer opportunity are lent to man, Browning does not forget
+what these powers are. Man can only act as man; he must obey his nature,
+as the stock or stone or plant obeys its nature. But to act as man is to
+act freely, and man's nature is not that of a stock or stone. He is
+rational, and cannot but be rational. Hence he can neither be ruled, as
+dead matter is ruled, by natural law; nor live, like a bird, the life of
+innocent impulse or instinct. He is placed, from the very first, on "the
+table land whence life upsprings aspiring to be immortality." He is a
+spirit,--responsible because he is free, and free because he is
+rational.
+
+  "Man, therefore, stands on his own stock
+  Of love and power as a pin-point rock,
+  And, looks to God who ordained divorce
+  Of the rock from His boundless continent."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid._]
+
+The divorce is real, although ordained, but it is possible only in so
+far as man, by means of reason, constitutes his own ends of action.
+Impulse cannot bring it about. It is reason that enables man to free
+himself from the despotic authority of outer law, to relate himself to
+an inner law, and by reconciling inner and outer to attain to goodness.
+Thus reason is the source of all morality. And it also is the principle
+of religion, for it implies the highest and fullest manifestation of the
+absolute.
+
+Although the first aspect of self-consciousness is its independence,
+which is, in turn, the first condition of morality, still this is only
+the first aspect. The rational being plants himself on his own
+individuality, stands aloof and alone in the rights of his freedom, _in
+order that_ he may set out from thence to take possession, by means of
+knowledge and action, of the world in which he is placed. Reason is
+potentially absolute, capable of finding itself everywhere. So that in
+it man is "honour-clothed and glory-crowned."
+
+  "This is the honour,--that no thing I know,
+  Feel or conceive, but I can make my own
+  Somehow, by use of hand, or head, or heart."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
+
+Man, by his knowledge, overcomes the resistance and hostility of the
+world without him, or rather, discovers that there is not hostility, but
+affinity between it and himself.
+
+  "This is the glory,--that in all conceived,
+  Or felt or known, I recognize a mind
+  Not mine but like mine,--for the double joy,--
+  Making all things for me and me for Him."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_.]
+
+That which is finite is hemmed in by other things, as well as determined
+by them; but the infinite is all-inclusive. There exists for it no other
+thing to limit or determine it. There is nothing finally alien or
+foreign to reason. Freedom and infinitude, self-determination and
+absoluteness, imply each other. In so far as man is free, he is lifted
+above the finite. It was God's plan to make man on His own image:--
+
+        "To create man and then leave him
+  Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him,
+  But able to glorify Him too,
+  As a mere machine could never do,
+  That prayed or praised, all unaware
+  Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer,
+  Made perfect as a thing of course."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+Man must find his law within himself, be the source of his own activity,
+not passive or receptive, but outgoing and effective.
+
+  "Rejoice we are allied
+  To That which doth provide
+  And not partake, effect and not receive!
+  A spark disturbs our clod;
+  Nearer we hold of God
+  Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Rabbi Ben Ezra_.]
+
+This near affinity between the divine and human is just what Browning
+seems to repudiate in his later poems, when he speaks as if the
+absolute, in order to maintain its own supremacy over man, had to stint
+its gifts and endow him only with a defective reason. In the earlier
+period of the poet there is far less timidity. He then saw that the
+greater the gift, the greater the Giver; that only spirit can reveal
+spirit; that "God is glorified in man," and that love is at its fullest
+only when it gives itself.
+
+In insisting on such identity of the human spirit with the divine, our
+poet does not at any time run the risk of forgetting that the identity
+is not absolute. Absolute identity would be pantheism, which leaves God
+lonely and loveless, and extinguishes man, as well as his morality.
+
+  "Man is not God, but hath God's end to serve,
+  A Master to obey, a course to take,
+  Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+Man, at best, only moves _towards_ his ideal: God is conceived as the
+ever-existing ideal. God, in short, is the term which signifies for us
+the Being who is eternally all in all, and who, therefore, is hidden
+from us who are only moving _towards_ perfection, in the excess of the
+brightness of His own glory. Nevertheless, as Browning recognizes, the
+grandeur of God's perfection is just His outflowing love. And that love
+is never complete in its manifestation, till it has given itself. Man's
+life, as spirit, is thus one in nature with that of the absolute. But
+the unity is not complete, because man is only potentially perfect. He
+is the process _of_ the ideal; his life is the divine activity within
+him. Still, it is also man's activity. For the process, being the
+process of spirit, is a _free_ process--one in which man himself
+energizes; so that, in doing God's will, he is doing his own highest
+will, and, in obeying the law of his own deepest nature, he is obeying
+God. The unity of divine and human within the spiritual life of man is a
+real unity, just because man is free; the identity manifests itself
+through the difference, and the difference is possible through the
+unity.
+
+Thus, in the light of an ideal which is moral, and therefore perfect--an
+ideal gradually realizing itself in a process which is endless--the poet
+is able to maintain at once the community between man and God, which is
+necessary to religion, and their independence, which is necessary to
+morality. The conception of God as giving, which is the main doctrine of
+Christianity, and of man as akin with God, is applied by him to the
+whole spiritual nature of man, and not merely to his emotion. The
+process of evolution is thus a process towards truth, as well as
+goodness; in fact, goodness and truth are known as inseparable.
+Knowledge, too, is a Divine endowment. "What gift of man is not from God
+descended?" What gift of God can be deceptive?
+
+  "Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast
+  Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed:
+  Though He is so bright and we so dim,
+  We are made in His image to witness Him."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+The Pope recognizes clearly the inadequacy of human knowledge; but he
+also recognizes that it has a Divine source.
+
+  "Yet my poor spark had for its source, the sun;
+  Thither I sent the great looks which compel
+  Light from its fount: all that I do and am
+  Comes from the truth, or seen or else surmised,
+  Remembered or divined, as mere man may."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1285-1289.]
+
+The last words indicate a suspicion of a certain defect in knowledge,
+which is not recognized in human love; nevertheless, in these earlier
+poems, the poet does not analyze human nature into a finite and
+infinite, or seek to dispose of his difficulties by the deceptive
+solvent of a dualistic agnosticism. He treats spirit as a unity, and
+refuses to set love and reason against each other. Man's _life_, for the
+poet, and not merely man's love, begins with God, and returns back to
+God in the rapt recognition of God's perfect being by reason, and in the
+identification of man's purposes with His by means of will and love.
+
+  "What is left for us, save, in growth
+  Of soul, to rise up, far past both,
+  From the gift looking to the giver,
+  And from the cistern to the river,
+  And from the finite to infinity
+  And from man's dust to God's divinity?"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+It is this movement of the absolute in man, this aspiration towards the
+full knowledge and perfect goodness which can never be completely
+attained, that constitutes man.
+
+  "Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect
+  He could not, what he knows now, know at first:
+  What he considers that he knows to-day,
+  Come but to-morrow, he will find mis-known;
+  Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns
+  Because he lives, which is to be a man,
+  Set to instruct himself by his past self:
+  First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn,
+  Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind,
+  Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.
+  God's gift was that man shall conceive of truth
+  And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake,
+  As midway help till he reach fact indeed?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+"Progress," the poet says, is "man's distinctive mark alone." The
+endlessness of the progress, the fact that every truth known to-day
+seems misknown to-morrow, that every ideal once achieved only points to
+another and becomes itself a stepping stone, does not, as in his later
+days, bring despair to him. For the consciousness of failure is possible
+in knowledge, as in morality, only because there has come a fuller
+light. Browning does not, as yet, dwell exclusively on the negative
+element in progress, or forget that it is possible only through a deeper
+positive. He does not think that, because we turn our backs on what we
+have gained, we are therefore not going forward; nay, he asserts the
+contrary. Failure, even the failure of knowledge, is triumph's evidence
+in these earlier days; and complete failure, the unchecked rule of evil
+in any form, is therefore impossible. We deny
+
+  "Recognized truths, obedient to some truth
+  Unrecognized yet, but perceptible,--
+  Correct the portrait by the living face,
+  Man's God, by God's God in the mind of man."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1871-1874.]
+
+Thus the poet ever returns to the conception of God in the mind of man.
+God is the beginning and the end; and man is the self-conscious worker
+of God's will, the free process whereby the last which is first, returns
+to itself. The process, the growth, is man's life and being; and it
+falls within the ideal, which is eternal and all in all. The spiritual
+life of man, which is both intellectual and moral, is a dying into the
+eternal, not to cease to be in it, but to live in it more fully; for
+spirits necessarily commune. He dies to the temporal interests and
+narrow ends of the exclusive self, and lives an ever-expanding life in
+the life of others, manifesting more and more that spiritual principle
+which is the life of God, who lives and loves in all things. "God is a
+being in whom we exist; with whom we are in principle one; with whom the
+human spirit is identical, in the sense that He _is_ all which the human
+spirit is capable of becoming."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: Green's _Prolegomena to Ethics_, p. 198.]
+
+From this point of view, and in so far as Browning is loyal to the
+conception of the community of the divine and human, he is able to
+maintain his faith in God, not in spite of knowledge, but through the
+very movement of knowledge within him. He is not obliged, as in his
+later works, to look for proofs, either in nature, or elsewhere; nor to
+argue from the emotion of love in man, to a cause of that emotion. He
+needs no syllogistic process to arrive at God; for the very activity of
+his own spirit as intelligence, as the reason which thinks and acts, is
+the activity of God within him. Scepticism, is impossible, for the very
+act of doubting is the activity of reason, and a profession of the
+knowledge of the truth.
+
+                                "I
+  Put no such dreadful question to myself,
+  Within whose circle of experience burns
+  The central truth, Power, Wisdom, Goodness,--God:
+  I must outlive a thing ere know it dead:
+  When I outlive the faith there is a sun,
+  When I lie, ashes to the very soul,--
+  Someone, not I, must wail above the heap,
+  'He died in dark whence never morn arose.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1631-1639.]
+
+And this view of God as immanent in man's experience also forecloses all
+possibility of failure. Beneath the failure, the possibility of which is
+involved in a moral life, lies the divine element, working through
+contradiction to its own fulfilment. Failure is necessary for man,
+because he grows: but, for the same reason, the failure is not final.
+Thus, the poet, instead of denying the evidence of his intellect as to
+the existence of evil, or casting doubt on the distinction between right
+and wrong, or reducing the chequered course of human history into a
+phantasmagoria of mere mental appearances, can regard the conflict
+between good and evil as real and earnest. He can look evil in the face,
+recognize its stubborn resistance to the good, and still regard the
+victory of the latter as sure and complete. He has not to reduce it into
+a phantom, or mere appearance, in order to give it a place within the
+divine order. He sees the night, but he also sees the day succeed it.
+Man falls into sin, but he cannot rest in it. It is contradictory to his
+nature, he cannot content himself with it, and he is driven through it.
+Mephistopheles promised more than he could perform, when he undertook to
+make Faust declare himself satisfied. There is not within the kingdom of
+evil what will satisfy the spirit of man, whose last law is goodness,
+whose nature, however obscured, is God's gift of Himself.
+
+  "While I see day succeed the deepest night--
+  How can I speak but as I know?--my speech
+  Must be, throughout the darkness. It will end:
+  'The light that did burn, will burn!' Clouds obscure--
+  But for which obscuration all were bright?
+  Too hastily concluded! Sun--suffused,
+  A cloud may soothe the eye made blind by blaze,--
+  Better the very clarity of heaven:
+  The soft streaks are the beautiful and dear.
+  What but the weakness in a faith supplies
+  The incentive to humanity, no strength
+  Absolute, irresistible, comports?
+  How can man love but what he yearns to help?
+  And that which men think weakness within strength,
+  But angels know for strength and stronger yet--
+  What were it else but the first things made new,
+  But repetition of the miracle,
+  The divine instance of self-sacrifice
+  That never ends and aye begins for man?
+  So, never I miss footing in the maze,
+  No,--I have light nor fear the dark at all."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1640-1660.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Browning as a Philosophical and Religious
+Teacher, by Henry Jones</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher</p>
+<p>Author: Henry Jones</p>
+<p>Release Date: September 30, 2004  [eBook #13561]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING AS A PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS TEACHER***</p>
+<br /><br /><h4>E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Leonard Johnson,<br />
+                and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h4><br /><br />
+<center><hr class="pg" /></center>
+<br />
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgii" id="pgii">ii</a></span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter">
+    <img src="images/image001.png" alt="Robert Browning" title="Robert Browning" width="300" />
+  </div>
+
+  <h2>ROBERT BROWNING</h2>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgiii" id="pgiii">iii</a></span>
+
+  <h1>BROWNING</h1>
+
+  <h2>AS A PHILOSOPHICAL</h2>
+
+  <h2>AND RELIGIOUS</h2>
+
+  <h2>TEACHER</h2>
+
+  <h4>BY</h4>
+
+  <h2>HENRY JONES</h2>
+
+  <h5>PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY</h5>
+
+  <h5>OF GLASGOW</h5>
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pgiv" id=
+  "pgiv">iv</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgv" id="pgv">v</a></span>
+
+  <h5>THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO</h5>
+
+  <h5>MY DEAR FRIENDS</h5>
+
+  <h3>MISS HARRIET MACARTHUR</h3>
+
+  <h5>AND</h5>
+
+  <h3>MISS JANE MACARTHUR.</h3><span class="pagenum"><a name="pgvi" id=
+  "pgvi">vi</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgvii" id="pgvii">vii</a></span>
+
+  <h2>PREFACE.</h2>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <p>The purpose of this book is to deal with Browning, not simply as a
+  poet, but rather as the exponent of a system of ideas on moral and
+  religious subjects, which may fairly be called a philosophy. I am
+  conscious that it is a wrong to a poet to neglect, or even to
+  subordinate, the artistic aspect of his work. At least, it would be a
+  wrong, if our final judgment on his poetry were to be determined on
+  such a method. But there is a place for everything; and, even in the
+  case of a great poet, there is sometimes an advantage in attempting
+  to estimate the value of what he has said, apart from the form in
+  which he has said it. And of all modern poets, Browning is the one
+  who most obviously invites and justifies such a method of treatment.
+  For, in the first place, he is clearly one of that class of poets who
+  are also prophets. He was never merely "the idle singer of an empty
+  day," but one for whom poetic enthusiasm was intimately bound up
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgviii" id="pgviii">viii</a></span>
+  with religious faith, and who spoke "in numbers," not merely "because
+  the numbers came," but because they were for him the necessary
+  vehicle of an inspiring thought. If it is the business of philosophy
+  to analyze and interpret all the great intellectual forces that mould
+  the thought of an age, it cannot neglect the works of one who has
+  exercised, and is exercising so powerful an influence on the moral
+  and religious life of the present generation.</p>
+
+  <p>In the second place, as will be seen in the sequel, Browning has
+  himself led the way towards such a philosophical interpretation of
+  his work. For, even in his earlier poems, he not seldom crossed the
+  line that divides the poet from the philosopher, and all but broke
+  through the strict limits of art in the effort to express&mdash;and
+  we might even say to preach&mdash;his own idealistic faith. In his
+  later works he did this almost without any disguise, raising
+  philosophical problems, and discussing all the <i>pros</i> and
+  <i>cons</i> of their solution, with no little subtlety and
+  dialectical skill. In some of these poems we might even seem to be
+  receiving a philosophical lesson, in place of a poetic inspiration,
+  if it were not for those powerful imaginative utterances, those
+  winged words, which Browning has always in reserve, to close the
+  ranks of his argument. If the question is stated in a prosaic form,
+  the final answer, as in <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgix" id=
+  "pgix">ix</a></span> the ancient oracle, is in the poetic language of
+  the gods.</p>
+
+  <p>From this point of view I have endeavoured to give a connected
+  account of Browning's ideas, especially of his ideas on religion and
+  morality, and to estimate their value. In order to do so, it was
+  necessary to discuss the philosophical validity of the principles on
+  which his doctrine is more or less consciously based. The more
+  immediately philosophical chapters are the second, seventh, and
+  ninth; but they will not be found unintelligible by those who have
+  reflected on the difficulties of the moral and religious life, even
+  although they may be unacquainted with the methods and language of
+  the schools.</p>
+
+  <p>I have received much valuable help in preparing this work for the
+  press from my colleague, Professor G.B. Mathews, and still more from
+  Professor Edward Caird. I owe them both a deep debt of gratitude.</p>
+
+  <p>HENRY JONES.</p>
+
+  <p>1891.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pgx" id="pgx">x</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pgxi" id="pgxi">xi</a></span>
+
+  <h2><i>CONTENTS</i>.</h2>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <div class="toc">
+  <h3><a href="#ch01">CHAPTER I.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>INTRODUCTION</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch02">CHAPTER II.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>ON THE NEED OF A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch03">CHAPTER III.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>BROWNING'S PLACE IN ENGLISH POETRY</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch04">CHAPTER IV.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>BROWNING'S OPTIMISM</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch05">CHAPTER V.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>OPTIMISM AND ETHICS: THEIR CONTRADICTION</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch06">CHAPTER VI.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>BROWNING'S TREATMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE OF LOVE</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pgxii" id="pgxii">xii</a></span>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch07">CHAPTER VII.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>BROWNING'S IDEALISM, AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch08">CHAPTER VIII.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>BROWNING'S SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch09">CHAPTER IX.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>A CRITICISM OF BROWNING'S VIEW OF THE FAILURE OF KNOWLEDGE</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch10">CHAPTER X.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>THE HEART AND THE HEAD.&mdash;LOVE AND REASON</p>
+
+  <h3><a href="#ch11">CHAPTER XI.</a></h3>
+
+  <p>CONCLUSION</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <hr class="full" />
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg013" id="pg013">013</a></span>
+
+  <h1>ROBERT BROWNING.</h1>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch01" id="ch01">CHAPTER I.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>INTRODUCTION.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,</p>
+
+    <p>Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum." (<i>Faust</i>.)</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There is a saying of Hegel's, frequently quoted, that "a great man
+  condemns the world to the task of explaining him." The condemnation
+  is a double one, and it generally falls heaviest on the great man
+  himself, who has to submit to explanation; and, probably, the last
+  refinement of this species of cruelty is to expound a poet. I
+  therefore begin with an apology in both senses of the term. I
+  acknowledge that no commentator on art has a right to be heard, if he
+  is not aware of the subordinate and temporary nature of his office.
+  At the very best he is only a guide to the beautiful object, and he
+  must fall back in silence so soon as he has led his company into its
+  presence. He may perhaps suggest "the line of vision," or fix the
+  point of view, from which we can best hope to do justice to the
+  artist's work, by appropriating his intention and comprehending his
+  idea; but if <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg014" id=
+  "pg014">014</a></span> he seeks to serve the ends of art, he will not
+  attempt to do anything more.</p>
+
+  <p>In order to do even this successfully, it is essential that every
+  judgment passed should be exclusively ruled by the principles which
+  govern art. "Fine art is not real art till it is free"; that is, till
+  its value is recognized as lying wholly within itself. And it is not,
+  unfortunately, altogether unnecessary to insist that, so far from
+  enhancing the value of an artist's work, we only degrade it into mere
+  means, subordinate it to uses alien, and therefore antagonistic to
+  its perfection, if we try to show that it gives pleasure, or
+  refinement, or moral culture. There is no doubt that great poetry has
+  all these uses, but the reader can enjoy them only on condition of
+  forgetting them; for they are effects that follow the sense of its
+  beauty. Art, morality, religion, is each supreme in its own sphere;
+  the beautiful is not more beautiful because it is also moral, nor is
+  a painting great because its subject is religious. It is true that
+  their spheres overlap, and art is never at its best except when it is
+  a beautiful representation of the good; nevertheless the points of
+  view of the artist and of the ethical teacher are quite different,
+  and consequently also the elements within which they work and the
+  truth they reveal.</p>
+
+  <p>In attempting, therefore, to discover Robert Browning's philosophy
+  of life, I do not pretend that my treatment of him is adequate.
+  Browning is, first of all, a poet; it is only as a poet that he can
+  be finally judged; and the greatness of a poet is to <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg015" id="pg015">015</a></span> be measured by
+  the extent to which his writings are a revelation of what is
+  beautiful.</p>
+
+  <p>I undertake a different and a humbler task, conscious of its
+  limitations, and aware that I can hardly avoid doing some violence to
+  the artist. What I shall seek in the poet's writings is not beauty,
+  but truth; and although truth is beautiful, and beauty is truth,
+  still the poetic and philosophic interpretation of life are not to be
+  confused. Philosophy must separate the matter from the form. Its
+  synthesis comes through analysis, and analysis is destructive of
+  beauty, as it is of all life. Art, therefore, resists the violence of
+  the critical methods of philosophy, and the feud between them, of
+  which Plato speaks, will last through all time. The beauty of form
+  and the music of speech which criticism destroys, and to which
+  philosophy is, at the best, indifferent, are essential to poetry.
+  When we leave them out of account we miss the ultimate secret of
+  poetry, for they cling to the meaning and penetrate it with their
+  charm. Thought and its expression are inseparable in poetry, as they
+  never are in philosophy; hence, in the former, the loss of the
+  expression is the loss of truth. The pure idea that dwells in a poem
+  is suffused in the poetic utterance, as sunshine breaks into beauty
+  in the mist, as life beats and blushes in the flesh, or as an
+  impassioned thought breathes in a thinker's face.</p>
+
+  <p>But, although art and philosophy are supreme, each in its own
+  realm, and neither can be subordinated to the uses of the other, they
+  may help each <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg016" id=
+  "pg016">016</a></span> other. They are independent, but not rival
+  powers of the world of mind. Not only is the interchange of truth
+  possible between them; but each may show and give to the other all
+  its treasures, and be none the poorer itself. "It is in works of art
+  that some nations have deposited the profoundest intuitions and ideas
+  of their hearts." Job and Isaiah, Æschylus and Sophocles, Shakespeare
+  and Goethe, were first of all poets. Mankind is indebted to them in
+  the first place for revealing beauty; but it also owes to them much
+  insight into the facts and principles of the moral world. It would be
+  an unutterable loss to the ethical thinker and the philosopher, if
+  this region were closed against them, so that they could no longer
+  seek in the poets the inspiration and light that lead to goodness and
+  truth. In our own day, almost above all others, we need the poets for
+  these ethical and religious purposes. For the utterances of the
+  dogmatic teacher of religion have been divested of much of their
+  ancient authority; and the moral philosopher is often regarded either
+  as a vendor of commonplaces or as the votary of a discredited
+  science, whose primary principles are matter of doubt and debate.
+  There are not a few educated Englishmen who find in the poets, and in
+  the poets alone, the expression of their deepest convictions
+  concerning the profoundest interests of life. They read the poets for
+  fresh inspiration, partly, no doubt, because the passion and rapture
+  of poetry lull criticism and soothe the questioning spirit into
+  acquiescence.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg017" id=
+  "pg017">017</a></span>
+
+  <p>But there are further reasons; for the poets of England are
+  greater than its moral philosophers; and it is of the nature of the
+  poetic art that, while eschewing system, it presents the strife
+  between right and wrong in concrete character, and therefore with a
+  fulness and truth impossible to the abstract thought of science.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"A poet never dreams:</p>
+
+    <p>We prose folk do: we miss the proper duct</p>
+
+    <p>For thoughts on things unseen."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, lxxxviii.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is true that philosophy endeavours to correct this
+  fragmentariness by starting from the unity of the whole. But it can
+  never quite get rid of an element of abstraction and reach down to
+  the concrete individual.</p>
+
+  <p>The making of character is so complex a process that the poetic
+  representation of it, with its subtle suggestiveness, is always more
+  complete and realistic than any possible philosophic analysis.
+  Science can deal only with aspects and abstractions, and its method
+  becomes more and more inadequate as its matter grows more concrete,
+  unless it proceeds from the unity in which all the aspects are held
+  together. In the case of life, and still more so in that of human
+  conduct, the whole must precede the part, and the moral science must,
+  therefore, more than any other, partake of the nature of poetry; for
+  it must start from living spirit, go from the heart outwards, in
+  order to detect the meaning of the actions of man.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg018" id="pg018">018</a></span>
+
+  <p>On this account, poetry is peculiarly helpful to the ethical
+  investigator, because it always treats the particular thing as a
+  microcosm. It is the great corrective of the onesidedness of science
+  with its harsh method of analysis and distinction. It is a witness to
+  the unity of man and the world. Every object which art touches into
+  beauty, becomes in the very act a whole. The thing that is beautiful
+  is always complete, the embodiment of something absolutely valuable,
+  the product and the source of love; and the beloved object is all the
+  world for the lover&mdash;beyond all praise, because it is above all
+  comparison.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Then why not witness, calmly gazing,</p>
+
+    <p>If earth holds aught&mdash;speak truth&mdash;above her?</p>
+
+    <p>Above this tress, and this, I touch</p>
+
+    <p>But cannot praise, I love so much!" <sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Song</i> (Dramatic Lyrics).</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This characteristic of the work of art brings with it an important
+  practical consequence, because being complete, it appeals to the
+  whole man.</p>
+
+  <p>"Poetry," it has been well said, is "the idealized and monumental
+  utterance of the deepest feelings." And poetic feelings, it must not
+  be forgotten, <i>are</i> deepest; that is, they are the afterglow of
+  the fullest activity of a complete soul, and not shallow
+  titillations, or surface pleasures, such as the palate knows. Led by
+  poetry, the intellect so sees truth that it glows with it, and the
+  will is stirred to deeds of heroism. For there is hardly any fact so
+  mean, but that when intensified by emotion, it grows poetic; as
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg019" id="pg019">019</a></span> there
+  is hardly any man so unimaginative, but that when struck with a great
+  sorrow, or moved by a great passion, he is endowed for a moment with
+  the poet's speech. A poetic fact, one may almost say, is just any
+  fact at its best. Art, it is true, looks at its object through a
+  medium, but it always seems its inmost meaning. In Lear, Othello,
+  Hamlet, in Falstaff and Touchstone, there is a revelation of the
+  inner truth of human life beyond the power of moral science to
+  bestow. We do well to seek philosophy in the poets, for though they
+  teach only by hints and parables, they nevertheless reflect the
+  concrete truth of life, as it is half revealed and half concealed in
+  facts. On the other hand, the reflective process of philosophy may
+  help poetry; for, as we shall show, there is a near kinship between
+  them. Even the critical analyst, while severing element from element,
+  may help art and serve the poet's ends, provided he does not in his
+  analysis of parts forget the whole. His function, though humble and
+  merely preliminary to full poetic enjoyment, is not unimportant. To
+  appreciate the grandeur of the unity of the work of art, there must
+  be knowledge of the parts combined. It is quite true that the guide
+  in the gallery is prone to be too talkative, and there are many who
+  can afford to turn the commentator out of doors, especially if he
+  moralizes. But, after all, man is not pure sensibility, any more than
+  he is pure reason. And the aesthete will not lose if he occasionally
+  allows those whom he may think less sensitive than himself to the
+  charm of rhythmic phrase, to direct sober <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg020" id="pg020">020</a></span> attention to the
+  principles which lie embedded in all great poetry. At the worst, to
+  seek for truth in poetry is a protest against the constant tendency
+  to read it for the sake of the emotions which it stirs, the tendency
+  to make it a refined amusement and nothing more. That is a deeper
+  wrong to art than any which the theoretical moralist can inflict. Of
+  the two, it is better to read poetry for ethical doctrines than for
+  fine sensations; for poetry purifies the passions only when it lifts
+  the reader into the sphere of truths that are universal.</p>
+
+  <p>The task of interpreting a poet may be undertaken in different
+  ways. One of these, with which we have been made familiar by critics
+  of Shakespeare and of Browning himself, is to analyze each poem by
+  itself and regard it as the artistic embodiment of some central idea;
+  the other is to attempt, without dealing separately with each poem,
+  to reach the poet's own point of view, and to reveal the sovereign
+  truths which rule his mind. It is this latter way that I shall try to
+  follow.</p>
+
+  <p>Such dominant or even despotic thoughts it is possible to discover
+  in all our great poets, except perhaps Shakespeare, whose
+  universality baffles every classifier. As a rule, the English poets
+  have been caught up, and inspired, by the exceeding grandeur of some
+  single idea, in whose service they spend themselves with that
+  prodigal thrift which finds life in giving it. Such an idea gives
+  them a fresh way of looking at the world, so that the world grows
+  young again with their new interpretation. <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg021" id="pg021">021</a></span> In the highest
+  instances, poets may become makers of epochs; they reform as well as
+  reveal; for ideas are never dead things, "but grow in the hand that
+  grasps them." In them lies the energy of a nation's life, and we
+  comprehend that life only when we make clear to ourselves the
+  thoughts which inspire it. It is thus true, in the deepest sense,
+  that those who make the songs of a people make its history. In all
+  true poets there are hints for a larger philosophy of life. But, in
+  order to discover it, we must know the truths which dominate them,
+  and break into music in their poems.</p>
+
+  <p>Whether it is always possible, and whether it is at any time fair
+  to a poet to define the idea which inspires him, I shall not inquire
+  at present. No doubt, the interpretation of a poet from first
+  principles carries us beyond the limits of art; and by insisting on
+  the unity of his work, more may be attributed to him, or demanded
+  from him, than he properly owns. To make such a demand is to require
+  that poetry should be philosophy as well, which, owing to its method
+  of intuition, it can never be. Nevertheless, among English poets
+  there is no one who lends himself so easily, or so justly, to this
+  way of treatment as Browning. Much of his poetry trembles on the
+  verge of the abyss which is supposed to separate art from philosophy;
+  and, as I shall try to show, there was in the poet a growing tendency
+  to turn the power of dialectic on the pre-suppositions of his art.
+  Yet, even Browning puts great difficulties in the way of a critic,
+  who seeks to draw a philosophy <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg022"
+  id="pg022">022</a></span> of life from his poems. It is not by any
+  means an easy task to lift the truths he utters under the stress of
+  poetic emotion into the region of placid contemplation, or to connect
+  them into a system, by means of the principle from which he makes his
+  departure.</p>
+
+  <p>The first of these difficulties arises from the extent and variety
+  of his work. He was prodigal of poetic ideas, and wrote for fifty
+  years on nature, art, and man, like a magnificent spendthrift of
+  spiritual treasures. So great a store of knowledge lay at his hand,
+  so real and informed with sympathy, that we can scarcely find any
+  great literature which he has not ransacked, any phase of life which
+  is not represented in his poems. All kinds of men and women, in every
+  station in life, and at every stage of evil and goodness, crowd his
+  pages. There are few forms of human character he has not studied, and
+  each individual he has so caught at the supreme moment of his life,
+  and in the hardest stress of circumstance, that the inmost working of
+  his nature is revealed. The wealth is bewildering, and it is hard to
+  follow the central thought, "the imperial chord, which steadily
+  underlies the accidental mists of music springing thence."<sup>A</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>A second and still graver difficulty lies in the fact that his
+  poetry, as he repeatedly insisted, is "always dramatic in principle,
+  and so many utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine."<sup>B</sup> In
+  his earlier works, especially, Browning is creative rather than
+  reflective, a Maker rather than a Seer; and his <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg023" id="pg023">023</a></span> creations stand
+  aloof from him, working out their fate in an outer world. We often
+  lose the poet in the imaginative characters, into whom he penetrates
+  with his keen artistic intuition, and within whom he lies as a
+  necessity revealing itself in their actions and words. It is not easy
+  anywhere to separate the elements, so that we can say with certainty,
+  "Here I catch the poet, there lies his material." The identification
+  of the work and worker is too intimate, and the realization of the
+  imaginary personage is too complete.</p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: Pref. to <i>Pauline</i>, 1888.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In regard to the dramatic interpretation of his poetry, Browning
+  has manifested a peculiar sensitiveness. In his Preface to
+  <i>Pauline</i> and in several of his poems&mdash;notably <i>The
+  Mermaid</i>, the <i>House</i>, and the <i>Shop</i>&mdash;he
+  explicitly cuts himself free from his work. He knew that direct
+  self-revealment on the part of the poet violates the spirit of the
+  drama. "With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart," said
+  Wordsworth; "Did Shakespeare?" characteristically answers Browning,
+  "If so, the less Shakespeare he!" And of himself he asks:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Which of you did I enable</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Once to slip inside my breast,</p>
+
+    <p>There to catalogue and label</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">What I like least, what love best,</p>
+
+    <p>Hope and fear, believe and doubt of,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Seek and shun, respect&mdash;deride?</p>
+
+    <p>Who has right to make a rout of</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Rarities he found inside?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>At the Mermaid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He repudiates all kinship with Byron and his subjective
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg024" id="pg024">024</a></span> ways,
+  and refuses to be made king by the hands which anointed him. "He will
+  not give his woes an airing, and has no plague that claims respect."
+  Both as man and poet, in virtue of the native, sunny, outer-air
+  healthiness of his character, every kind of subjectivity is repulsive
+  to him. He hands to his readers "his work, his scroll, theirs to take
+  or leave: his soul he proffers not." For him "shop was shop only";
+  and though he dealt in gems, and throws</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"You choice of jewels, every one,</p>
+
+    <p>Good, better, best, star, moon, and sun,"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Shop</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>he still <i>lived</i> elsewhere, and had "stray thoughts and
+  fancies fugitive" not meant for the open market. The poems in which
+  Browning has spoken without the disguise of another character are
+  very few. There are hardly more than two or three of much importance
+  which can be considered as directly reflecting his own ideas, namely,
+  <i>Christmas Eve</i> and <i>Easter Day, La Saisiaz</i>, and <i>One
+  Word More</i>&mdash;unless, spite of the poet's warning, we add
+  <i>Pauline</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>But, although the dramatic element in Browning's poetry renders it
+  difficult to construct his character from his works, while this is
+  comparatively easy in the case of Wordsworth or Byron; and although
+  it throws a shade of uncertainty on every conclusion we might draw as
+  to any specific doctrine held by him, still Browning lives in a
+  certain atmosphere, and looks at his characters through a medium,
+  whose subtle influence makes all his work indisputably <i>his</i>.
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg025" id="pg025">025</a></span> The
+  light he throws on his men and women is not the unobtrusive light of
+  day, which reveals objects, but not itself. Though a true dramatist,
+  he is not objective like Shakespeare and Scott, whose characters seem
+  never to have had an author. The reader feels, rather, that Browning
+  himself attends him through all the sights and wonders of the world
+  of man; he never escapes the sense of the presence of the poet's
+  powerful personality, or of the great convictions on which he has
+  based his life. Browning has, at bottom, only one way of looking at
+  the world, and one way of treating his objects; one point of view,
+  and one artistic method. Nay, further, he has one supreme interest,
+  which he pursues everywhere with a constancy shown by hardly any
+  other poet; and, in consequence, his works have a unity and a certain
+  originality, which make them in many ways a unique contribution to
+  English literature.</p>
+
+  <p>This characteristic, which no critic has missed, and which
+  generally goes by the name of "the metaphysical element" in his
+  poetry, makes it the more imperative to form a clear view of his
+  ruling conceptions. No poet, least of all a dramatic poet, goes about
+  seeking concrete vehicles for ready-made ideas, or attempts to dress
+  a philosophy in metaphors; and Browning, as an artist, is interested
+  first of all in the object which he renders beautiful for its own
+  sole sake, and not in any abstract idea it illustrates. Still, it is
+  true in a peculiar sense in his case, that the eye of the poet brings
+  with it what it sees. He is, as a rule, conscious of no theory, and
+  does not <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg026" id=
+  "pg026">026</a></span> construct a poem for its explication; he
+  rather strikes his ideas out of his material, as the sculptor reveals
+  the breathing life in the stone. Nevertheless, it may be shown that a
+  theory rules him from behind, and that profound convictions arise in
+  the heart and rush along the blood at the moment of creation, using
+  his soul as an instrument of expression to his age and people.</p>
+
+  <p>Of no English poet, except Shakespeare, can we say with
+  approximate truth that he is the poet of all times. The subjective
+  breath of their own epoch dims the mirror which they hold up to
+  nature. Missing by their limitation the highest universality, they
+  can only be understood in their setting. It adds but little to our
+  knowledge of Shakespeare's work to regard him as the great
+  Elizabethan; there is nothing temporary in his dramas, except petty
+  incidents and external trappings&mdash;so truly did he dwell amidst
+  the elements constituting man in every age and clime. But this cannot
+  be said of any other poet, not even of Chaucer or Spenser, far less
+  of Milton, or Pope or Wordsworth. In their case, the artistic form
+  and the material, the idea and its expression, the beauty and the
+  truth, are to some extent separable. We can distinguish in Milton
+  between the Puritanic theology which is perishable, and the art whose
+  beauty can never pass away. The former fixes his kinship with his own
+  age, gives him a definite place in the evolution of English life; the
+  latter is independent of time, a thing which has supreme worth in
+  itself.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg027" id=
+  "pg027">027</a></span>
+
+  <p>Nor can it be doubted that the same holds good of Browning. He
+  also is ruled by the ideas of his own age. It may not be altogether
+  possible for us, "who are partners of his motion and mixed up with
+  his career," to allow for the influence of these ideas, and to
+  distinguish between that which is evanescent and that which is
+  permanent in his work; still I must try to do so; for it is the
+  condition of comprehending him, and of appropriating the truth and
+  beauty he came to reveal. And if his nearness to ourselves makes this
+  more difficult, it also makes it more imperative. For there is no
+  doubt that, with Carlyle, he is the interpreter of our time,
+  reflecting its confused strength and chaotic wealth. He is the high
+  priest of our age, standing at the altar for us, and giving utterance
+  to our needs and aspirations, our fears and faith. By understanding
+  him, we shall, to some degree, understand ourselves and the power
+  which is silently moulding us to its purposes.</p>
+
+  <p>It is because I thus regard Browning as not merely a poet but a
+  prophet, that I think I am entitled to seek in him, as in Isaiah or
+  Aeschylus, a solution, or a help to the solution, of the problems
+  that press upon us when we reflect upon man, his place in the world
+  and his destiny. He has given us indirectly, and as a poet gives, a
+  philosophy of life; he has interpreted the world anew in the light of
+  a dominant idea; and it will be no little gain if we can make clear
+  to ourselves those constitutive principles on which his view of the
+  world rests.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg028" id=
+  "pg028">028</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch02" id="ch02">CHAPTER II.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>ON THE NEED OF A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Art,&mdash;which I may style the love of loving, rage</p>
+
+    <p>Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things</p>
+
+    <p>For truth's sake, whole and sole, not any good, truth brings</p>
+
+    <p>The knower, seer, feeler, beside,&mdash;instinctive Art</p>
+
+    <p>Must fumble for the whole, once fixing on a part</p>
+
+    <p>However poor, surpass the fragment, and aspire</p>
+
+    <p>To reconstruct thereby the ultimate entire." <sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, xliv.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>No English poet has spoken more impressively than Browning on the
+  weightier matters of morality and religion, or sought with more
+  earnestness to meet the difficulties which arise when we try to
+  penetrate to their ultimate principles. His way of poetry is, I
+  think, fundamentally different from that of any other of our great
+  writers. He often seems to be roused into speech, rather by the
+  intensity of his spiritual convictions than by the subtle incitements
+  of poetic sensibility. His convictions caught fire, and truth became
+  beauty for him; not beauty, truth, as with Keats or Shelley. He is
+  swayed by ideas, rather than by sublime moods. Beneath the endless
+  variety of his poems, there are permanent principles, or <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg029" id="pg029">029</a></span> "colligating
+  conceptions," as science calls them; and although these are expressed
+  by the way of emotion, they are held by him with all the resources of
+  his reason.</p>
+
+  <p>His work, though intuitive and perceptive as to form, "gaining God
+  by first leap" as all true art must do, leaves the impression, when
+  regarded as a whole, of an articulated system. It is a view of man's
+  life and destiny that can be maintained, not only during the
+  impassioned moods of poetry, but in the very presence of criticism
+  and doubt. His faith, like Pompilia's, is held fast "despite the
+  plucking fiend." He has given to us something more than intuitive
+  glimpses into, the mysteries of man's character. Throughout his life
+  he held up the steady light of an optimistic conception of the world,
+  and by its means injected new vigour into English ethical thought. In
+  his case, therefore, it is not an immaterial question, but one almost
+  forced upon us, whether we are to take his ethical doctrine and
+  inspiring optimism as valid truths, or to regard them merely as
+  subjective opinions held by a religious poet. Are they creations of a
+  powerful imagination, and nothing more? Do they give to the hopes and
+  aspirations that rise so irrepressibly in the heart of man anything
+  better than an appearance of validity, which will prove illusory the
+  moment the cold light of critical inquiry is turned upon them?</p>
+
+  <p>It is to this unity of his work that I would attribute, in the
+  main, the impressiveness of his <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg030"
+  id="pg030">030</a></span> deliverances on morality and religion. And
+  this unity justifies us, I think, in applying to Browning's view of
+  life methods of criticism that would be out of place with any other
+  English poet. It is one of his unique characteristics, as already
+  hinted, that he has endeavoured to give us a complete and reasoned
+  view of the ethical nature of man, and of his relation to the
+  world&mdash;has sought, in fact, to establish a philosophy of life.
+  In his case, not without injustice, it is true, but with less
+  injustice than in the case of any other poet, we may disregard,
+  <i>for our purposes</i>, the artistic method of his thought, and lay
+  stress on its content only. He has a right to a place amongst
+  philosophers, as Plato has to a place amongst poets. There is such
+  deliberate earnestness and systematic consistency in his teaching,
+  that Hegel can scarcely be said to have maintained that "The Rational
+  is the Real" with greater intellectual tenacity, than Browning held
+  to his view of life. He sought, in fact, to establish an Idealism;
+  and that Idealism, like Kant's and Fichte's, has its last basis in
+  the moral consciousness.</p>
+
+  <p>But, even if it be considered that it is not altogether just to
+  apply these critical tests to the poet's teaching, and to make him
+  pay the penalty for assuming a place amongst philosophers, it is
+  certain that what he says of man's spiritual life cannot be rightly
+  valued, till it is regarded in the light of his guiding principles.
+  We shall miss much of what is best in him, even as a poet, if, for
+  instance, we <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg031" id=
+  "pg031">031</a></span> regard his treatment of love merely as the
+  expression of elevated passion, or his optimism as based upon mere
+  hope. Love was to him rather an indwelling element in the world,
+  present, like power, in everything.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"From the first, Power was&mdash;I knew.</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Life has made clear to me</p>
+
+    <p>That, strive but for closer view,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Love were as plain to see." <sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    A: <i>Reverie&mdash;Asolando</i>.
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Love yielded to him, as Reason did to Hegel, a fundamental
+  exposition of the nature of things. Or, to express the same thing in
+  another way, it was a deliberate hypothesis, which he sought to apply
+  to facts and to test by their means, almost in the same manner as
+  that in which natural science applies and tests its principles.</p>
+
+  <p>That Browning's ethical and religious ideas were for him something
+  different from, and perhaps more than, mere poetic sentiments, will,
+  I believe, be scarcely denied. That he held a deliberate theory, and
+  held it with greater and greater difficulty as he became older, and
+  as his dialectical tendencies grew and threatened to wreck his
+  artistic freedom, is evident to any one who regards his work as a
+  whole. But it will not be admitted so readily that anything other
+  than harm can issue from an attempt to deal with him as if he were a
+  philosopher. Even if it be allowed that he held and expressed a
+  definite theory, will it retain any value if we take it out of the
+  region of poetry and impassioned religious faith, into the
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg032" id="pg032">032</a></span>
+  frigid zone of philosophical inquiry? Could any one maintain, apart
+  from the intoxication of religious and poetic sentiment, that the
+  essence of existence is love? As long as we remain within the realm
+  of imagination, it may be argued, we may find in our poet's great
+  sayings both solacement and strength, both rest and an impulse
+  towards higher moral endeavour; but if we seek to treat them as
+  theories of facts, and turn upon them the light of the understanding,
+  will they not inevitably prove to be hallucinations? Poetry, we
+  think, has its own proper place and function. It is an invaluable
+  anodyne to the cark and care of reflective thought; an opiate which,
+  by steeping the critical intellect in slumber, sets the soul free to
+  rise on the wings of religious faith. But reason breaks the spell;
+  and the world of poetry, and religion&mdash;a world which to them is
+  always beautiful and good with God's presence&mdash;becomes a system
+  of inexorable laws, dead, mechanical, explicable in strict truth, as
+  an equipoise of constantly changing forms of energy.</p>
+
+  <p>There is, at the present time, a widespread belief that we had
+  better keep poetry and religion beyond the reach of critical
+  investigation, if we set any store by them. Faith and reason are
+  thought to be finally divorced. It is an article of the common creed
+  that every attempt which the world has made to bring them together
+  has resulted in denial, or at the best in doubt, regarding all
+  supersensuous facts. The one condition of leading a full life, of
+  maintaining a living relation between ourselves and both the
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg033" id="pg033">033</a></span>
+  spiritual and material elements of our existence, is to make our
+  lives an alternating rhythm of the head and heart, to distinguish
+  with absolute clearness between the realm of reason and that of
+  faith.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, such an assumption would be fatal to any attempt like the
+  present, to find truth in poetry; and I must, therefore, try to meet
+  it before entering upon a statement and criticism of Browning's view
+  of life. I cannot admit that the difficulties of placing the facts of
+  man's spiritual life on a rational basis are so great as to justify
+  the assertion that there is no such basis, or that it is not
+  discoverable by man. Surely, it is unreasonable to make intellectual
+  death the condition of spiritual life. If such a condition were
+  imposed on man, it must inevitably defeat its own purpose; for man
+  cannot possibly continue to live a divided life, and persist in
+  believing that for which his reason knows no defence. We must, in the
+  long run, either rationalize our faith in morality and religion, or
+  abandon them as illusions. And we should at least hesitate to deny
+  that reason&mdash;in spite of its apparent failure in the past to
+  justify our faith in the principles of spiritual life&mdash;may yet,
+  as it becomes aware of its own nature and the might which dwells in
+  it, find beauty and goodness, nay, God himself, in the world. We
+  should at least hesitate to condemn man to choose between
+  irreflective ignorance and irreligion, or to lock the intellect and
+  the highest emotions of our nature and principles of our life, in a
+  mortal struggle. Poetry and religion may, after all, be truer then
+  prose, and have something to <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg034"
+  id="pg034">034</a></span> tell the world that science, which is often
+  ignorant of its own limits, cannot teach.</p>
+
+  <p>The failure of philosophy in the past, even if it were as complete
+  as is believed by persons ignorant of its history, is no argument
+  against its success in the future. Such persons have never known that
+  the world of thought like that of action makes a stepping stone of
+  its dead self. He who presumes to decide what passes the power of
+  man's thought, or to prescribe absolute limits to human knowledge, is
+  rash, to say the least; and he has neither caught the most important
+  of the lessons of modern science, nor been lifted to the level of its
+  inspiration. For science has done one thing greater than to unlock
+  the secrets of nature. It has revealed something of the might of
+  reason, and given new grounds for the faith, which in all ages has
+  inspired the effort to know,&mdash;the faith that the world is an
+  intelligible structure, meant to be penetrated by the thought of man.
+  Can it be that nature is an "open secret," but that man, and he
+  alone, must remain an enigma? Or does he not rather bear within
+  himself the key to every problem which he solves, and is it not
+  <i>his</i> thought which penetrates the secrets of nature? The
+  success of science, in reducing to law the most varied and apparently
+  unconnected facts, should dispel any suspicion which attaches to the
+  attempt to gather these laws under still wider ones, and to interpret
+  the world in the light of the highest principles. And this is
+  precisely what poetry and religion and philosophy do, each in its own
+  way. They carry <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg035" id=
+  "pg035">035</a></span> the work of the sciences into wider regions,
+  and that, as I shall try to show, by methods which, in spite of many
+  external differences, are fundamentally at one with those which the
+  sciences employ.</p>
+
+  <p>There is only one way of giving the quietus to the metaphysics of
+  poets and philosophers, and of showing the futility of a philosophy
+  of life, or of any scientific explanation of religion and morals. It
+  is to show that there is some radical absurdity in the very attempt.
+  Till this is done, the human mind will not give up problems of
+  weighty import, however hard it may be to solve them. The world
+  refused to believe Socrates when he pronounced a science of nature
+  impossible, and centuries of failure did not break man's courage.
+  Science, it is true, has given up some problems as insoluble; it will
+  not now try to construct a perpetually moving machine, or to square
+  the circle. But it has given them up, not because they are difficult,
+  but because they are unreasonable tasks. The problems have a surd or
+  irrational element in them; and to solve them would be to bring
+  reason into collision with itself.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, whatever may be the difficulties of establishing a theory of
+  life, or a philosophy, it has never been shown to be an unreasonable
+  task to attempt it. One might, on the contrary, expect, <i>prima
+  facie</i>, that in a world progressively proved to be intelligible to
+  man, man himself would be no exception. It is impossible that the
+  "light in him should be darkness," or that the thought which reveals
+  the order of the world should be itself chaotic.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg036" id="pg036">036</a></span>
+
+  <p>The need for philosophy is just the ultimate form of the need for
+  knowledge; and the truths which philosophy brings to light are
+  implied in every rational explanation of things. The only choice we
+  can have is between a conscious metaphysics and an unconscious one,
+  between hypotheses which we have examined and whose limitations we
+  know, and hypotheses which rule us from behind, as pure prejudices
+  do. It is because of this that the empiric is so dogmatic, and the
+  ignorant man so certain of the truth of his opinion. They do not know
+  their postulates, nor are they aware that there is no interpretation
+  of an object which does not finally point to a theory of being. We
+  understand no joint or ligament, except in relation to the whole
+  organism, and no fact, or event, except by finding a place for it in
+  the context of our experience. The history of the pebble can be
+  given, only in the light of the story of the earth, as it is told by
+  the whole of geology. We must begin very far back, and bring our
+  widest principles to bear upon the particular thing, if we wish
+  really to know what it is. It is a law that explains, and laws are
+  always universal. All our knowledge, even the most broken and
+  inconsistent, streams from some fundamental conception, in virtue of
+  which all the variety of objects constitute one world, one orderly
+  kosmos, even to the meanest mind. It is true that the central
+  thought, be it rich or poor, must, like the sun's light, be broken
+  against particular facts. But there is no need of forgetting the real
+  source of knowledge, or of deeming that its progress is a
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg037" id="pg037">037</a></span>
+  synthesis without law, or an addition of fact to fact without any
+  guiding principles.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, it is the characteristic of poetry and philosophy that they
+  keep alive our consciousness of these primary, uniting principles.
+  They always dwell in the presence of the idea which makes their
+  object <i>one</i>. To them the world is always, and necessarily, a
+  harmonious whole, as it is also to the religious spirit. It is
+  because of this that the universe is a thing of beauty for the poet,
+  a revelation of God's goodness to the devout soul, and a
+  manifestation of absolute reason to the philosopher. Art, religion,
+  and philosophy fail or flourish together. The age of prose and
+  scepticism appears when the sense of the presence of the whole in the
+  particular facts of the world and of life has been dulled. And there
+  is a necessity in this; for if the conception of the world as a whole
+  is held to be impossible, if philosophy is a futility, then poetry
+  will be a vain sentiment and religion a delusion.</p>
+
+  <p>Nor will the failure of thought, when once demonstrated in these
+  upper regions, be confined to them. On the contrary, it will spread
+  downwards to science and ordinary knowledge, as mountain mists blot
+  out the valleys. For every synthesis of fact to fact, every attempt
+  to know, however humble and limited, is inspired by a secret faith in
+  the unity of the world. Each of the sciences works within its own
+  region, and colligates its details in the light of its own
+  hypothesis; and all the sciences taken together presuppose the
+  presence in the world of a principle <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg038" id="pg038">038</a></span> that binds it into an orderly
+  totality. Scientific explorers know that they are all working towards
+  the same centre. And, ever and anon, as the isolated thinker presses
+  home his own hypothesis, he finds his thought beating on the limits
+  of his science, and suggesting some wider hypothesis. The walls that
+  separate the sciences are wearing thin, and at times light penetrates
+  from one to the other. So that to their votaries, at least, the faith
+  is progressively justified, that there is a meeting point for the
+  sciences, a central truth in which the dispersed rays will again be
+  gathered together. In fact, all the sciences are working together
+  under the guidance of a principle common to them all, although it may
+  not be consciously known and no attempt is made to define it. In
+  science, as in philosophy and art and religion, there is a principle
+  of unity, which, though latent, is really prior to all explanation of
+  particular matters of fact.</p>
+
+  <p>In truth, man has only one way of knowing. There is no fundamental
+  difference between scientific and philosophic procedure. We always
+  light up facts by means of general laws. The fall of the stone was a
+  perfect enigma, a universally unintelligible bit of experience, till
+  the majestic imagination of Newton conceived the idea of universal
+  gravitation. Wherever mind successfully invades the realm of chaos,
+  poetry, the sense of the whole, comes first. There is the intuitive
+  flash, the penetrative glimpse, got no one knows exactly
+  whence&mdash;though we do know that it comes neither from
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg039" id="pg039">039</a></span> the
+  dead facts nor from the vacant region of <i>a priori</i> thought, but
+  somehow from the interaction of both these elements of knowledge.
+  After the intuitive flash comes the slow labour of proof, the
+  application of the principle to details. And that application
+  transforms both the principle and the details, so that the former is
+  enriched with content and the latter are made intelligible&mdash;a
+  veritable conquest and valid possession for mankind. And in this
+  labour of proof, science and philosophy alike take their share.</p>
+
+  <p>Philosophy may be said to come midway between poetry and science,
+  and to partake of the nature of both. On the one side it deals, like
+  poetry, with ideals of knowledge, and announces truths which it does
+  not completely verify; on the other, it leaves to science the task of
+  articulating its principles in facts, though it begins the
+  articulation itself. It reveals subsidiary principles, and is, at the
+  same time, a witness for the unity of the categories of science. We
+  may say, if we wish, that its principles are mere hypotheses. But so
+  are the ideas which underlie the most practical of the sciences; so
+  is every forecast of genius by virtue of which knowledge is extended;
+  so is every principle of knowledge not completely worked out. To say
+  that philosophy is hypothetical implies no charge, other than that
+  which can be levelled, in the same sense, against the most solid body
+  of scientific knowledge in the world. The fruitful question in each
+  case alike is, how far, if <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg040" id=
+  "pg040">040</a></span> at all, does the hypothesis enable us to
+  understand particular facts.</p>
+
+  <p>The more careful of our scientific thinkers are well aware of the
+  limits under which they work and of the hypothetical character of
+  their results. "I take Euclidean space, and the existence of material
+  particles and elemental energy for granted," says the physicist;
+  "deny them, and I am helpless; grant them, and I shall establish
+  quantitative relations between the different forms of this elemental
+  energy, and make it tractable and tame to man's uses. All I teach
+  depends upon my hypothesis. In it is the secret of all the power I
+  wield. I do not pretend to say what this elemental energy is. I make
+  no declaration regarding the actual nature of things; and all
+  questions as to the ultimate origin or final destination of the world
+  are beyond the scope of my inquiry. I am ruled by my hypothesis; I
+  regard phenomena <i>from my point of view</i>; and my right to do so
+  I substantiate by the practical and theoretical results which
+  follow." The language of geology, chemistry, zoology, and even
+  mathematics is the same. They all start from a hypothesis; they are
+  all based on an imaginative conception, and in this sense their
+  votaries are poets, who see the unity of being throb in the
+  particular fact.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, so far as the particular sciences are concerned, I presume
+  that no one will deny the supreme power of these colligating ideas.
+  The sciences do not grow by a process of empiricism, which rambles
+  tentatively and blindly from fact to fact, unguided of <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg041" id="pg041">041</a></span> any hypothesis.
+  But if they do not, if, on the contrary, each science is ruled by its
+  own hypothesis, and uses that hypothesis to bind its facts together,
+  then the question arises, are there no wider colligating principles
+  amongst these hypotheses themselves? Are the sciences independent of
+  each other, or is their independence only surface appearance? This is
+  the question which philosophy asks, and the sciences themselves by
+  their progress suggest a positive answer to it.</p>
+
+  <p>The knowledge of the world which the sciences are building is not
+  a chaotic structure. By their apparently independent efforts, the
+  outer kosmos is gradually reproduced in the mind of man, and the
+  temple of truth is silently rising. We may not as yet be able to
+  connect wing with wing, or to declare definitely the law of the
+  whole. The logical order of the hypotheses of the various sciences,
+  the true connection of these categories of constructive thought, may
+  yet be uncertain. But, still, there <i>is</i> such an order and
+  connection: the whole building has its plan, which becomes more and
+  more intelligible as it approaches to its completion. Beneath all the
+  differences, there are fundamental principles which give to human
+  thought a definite unity of movement and direction. There are
+  architectonic conceptions which are guiding, not only the different
+  sciences, but all the modes of thought of an age. There are
+  intellectual media, "working hypotheses," by means of which
+  successive centuries observe all that they see; and these
+  far-reaching constructive principles <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg042" id="pg042">042</a></span> divide the history of mankind into
+  distinct stages. In a word, there are dynasties of great ideas, such
+  as the idea of development in our own day; and these successively
+  ascend the throne of mind, and hold a sway over human thought which
+  is well-nigh absolute.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, if this is so, is it certain that all <i>knowledge</i> of
+  these ruling conceptions is impossible? In other words, is the
+  attempt to construct a philosophy absurd? To say that it is, to deny
+  the possibility of catching any glimpse of those regulative ideas,
+  which determine the main tendencies of human thought, is to place the
+  supreme directorate of the human intelligence in the hands of a
+  necessity which, <i>for us</i>, is blind. For, an order that is
+  hidden is equivalent to chance, so far as knowledge is concerned; and
+  if we believe it to exist, we do so in the face of the fact that all
+  we see, and all we <i>can</i> see, is the opposite of order, namely
+  lawlessness. Human knowledge, on this view, would be subjected to law
+  in its details and compartments, but to disorder as a whole. Thinking
+  men would be organized into regiments; but the regiments would not
+  constitute an army, nor would there be any unity of movement in the
+  attack on the realm of ignorance.</p>
+
+  <p>But, such is not the conclusion to which the study of human
+  history leads, especially when we observe its movements on a large
+  scale. On the contrary, it is found that history falls into great
+  epochs, each of which has its own peculiar characteristics. Ages,
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg043" id="pg043">043</a></span> as
+  well as nations and individuals, have features of their own, special
+  and definite modes of thinking and acting. The movement of thought in
+  each age has its own direction, which is determined by some
+  characteristic and fundamental idea, that fulfils for it the part of
+  a working hypothesis in a particular science. It is the prerogative
+  of the greatest leaders of thought in an age to catch a glimpse of
+  this ruling idea when it first makes its appearance; and it is their
+  function, not only to discover it, but also to reveal it to others.
+  And, in this way, they are at once the exponents of their time, and
+  its prophets. They reveal that which is already a latent but active
+  power&mdash;"a tendency"; but they reveal it to a generation which
+  will see the truth for itself, only after the potency which lies in
+  it has manifested itself in national institutions and habits of
+  thought and action. <i>After</i> the prophets have left us, we
+  believe what they have said; as long as they are with us, they are
+  voices crying in the wilderness.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, these great ideas, these harmonies of the world of mind,
+  first strike upon the ear of the poet. They seem to break into the
+  consciousness of man by the way of emotion. They possess the seer; he
+  is divinely mad, and he utters words whose meaning passes his own
+  calmer comprehension. What we find in Goethe, we find also in a
+  manner in Browning: an insight which is also foresight, a dim and
+  partial consciousness of the truth about to be, sending its light
+  before it, and anticipating all systematic reflection. It is an
+  insight which appears <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg044" id=
+  "pg044">044</a></span> to be independent of all method; but it is in
+  nature, though not in sweep and expanse, akin to the intuitive leap
+  by which the scientific explorer lights upon his new hypothesis. We
+  can find no other law for it, than that sensitiveness to the beauty
+  and truth hidden in facts, which much reflection on them generates
+  for genius. For these great minds the "muddy vesture" is worn thin by
+  thought, and they hear the immortal music.</p>
+
+  <p>The poet soon passes his glowing torch into the hands of the
+  philosopher. After Aeschylus and Sophocles, come Plato and Aristotle.
+  The intuitive flash grows into a fixed light, which rules the day.
+  The great idea, when reflected upon, becomes a system. When the light
+  of such an idea is steadily held on human affairs, it breaks into
+  endless forms of beauty and truth. The content of the idea is
+  gradually evolved; hypotheses spring out of it, which are accepted as
+  principles, rule the mind of an age, and give it its work and its
+  character. In this way, Hobbes and Locke laid down, or at least
+  defined, the boundaries within which moved the thought of the
+  eighteenth century; and no one acquainted with the poetic and
+  philosophic thought of Germany, from Lessing to Goethe and from Kant
+  to Hegel, can fail to find therein the source and spring of the
+  constitutive principles of our own intellectual, social, political,
+  and religious life. The virtues and the vices of the aristocracy of
+  the world of mind penetrate downwards. The works of the poets and
+  philosophers, so far from being filled with <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg045" id="pg045">045</a></span> impracticable
+  dreams, are repositories of great suggestions which the world adopts
+  for its guidance. The poets and philosophers lay no railroads and
+  invent no telephones; but they, nevertheless, bring about that
+  attitude towards nature, man and God, and generate those moods of the
+  general mind, from which issue, not only the scientific, but also the
+  social, political and religious forces of the age.</p>
+
+  <p>It is mainly on this account that I cannot treat the supreme
+  utterances of Browning lightly, or think it an idle task to try to
+  connect them into a philosophy of life. In his optimism of love, in
+  his supreme confidence in man's destiny and sense of the infinite
+  height of the moral horizon of humanity, in his courageous faith in
+  the good, and his profound conviction of the evanescence of evil,
+  there lies a vital energy whose inspiring power we are yet destined
+  to feel. Until a spirit kindred to his own arises, able to push the
+  battle further into the same region, much of the practical task of
+  the age that is coming will consist in living out in detail the ideas
+  to which he has given expression.</p>
+
+  <p>I contend, then, not merely for a larger charity, but for a truer
+  view of the facts of history than is evinced by those who set aside
+  the poets and philosophers as mere dreamers, and conceive that the
+  sciences alone occupy the region of valid thought in all its extent.
+  There is a universal brotherhood of which all who think are members.
+  Not only do they all contribute to man's victory over his environment
+  and himself, but they contribute in a manner <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg046" id="pg046">046</a></span> which is
+  substantially the same. There are many points of superficial
+  distinction between the processes of philosophy and science, and
+  between both and the method of poetry; but the inner movement, if one
+  may so express it, is identical in all. It is time to have done with
+  the notion that philosophers occupy a transcendent region beyond
+  experience, or spin spiritual cocoons by <i>a priori</i> methods, and
+  with the view that scientific men are mere empirics, building their
+  structures from below by an <i>a posteriori</i> way of thought,
+  without the help of any ruling conceptions. All alike endeavour to
+  interpret experience, but none of them get their principles from
+  it.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i10">"But, friends,</p>
+
+    <p>Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise</p>
+
+    <p>From outward things, whate'er you may believe."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There is room and need for the higher synthesis of philosophy and
+  poetry, as well as for the more palpable and, at the same time, more
+  narrow colligating conceptions of the systematic sciences. The
+  quantitative relations between material objects, which are
+  investigated by mathematics and physics, do not exhaust the realm of
+  the knowable, so as to leave no place for the poet's, or the
+  philosopher's view of the world. The scientific investigator who,
+  like Mr. Tyndall, so far forgets the limitations of his province as
+  to use his natural data as premises for religious or irreligious
+  conclusions, is as illogical as the popular preacher, who attacks
+  scientific conclusions because they are not consistent with his
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg047" id="pg047">047</a></span>
+  theological presuppositions. Looking only at their primary aspects,
+  we cannot say that religious presuppositions and the scientific
+  interpretation of facts are either consistent or inconsistent: they
+  are simply different. Their harmony or discord can come only when the
+  higher principles of philosophy have been fully developed, and when
+  the departmental ideas of the various sciences are organized into a
+  view of the world as a whole. And this is a task which has not as yet
+  been accomplished. The forces from above and below have not met. When
+  they do meet, they will assuredly find that they are friends, and not
+  foes. For philosophy can articulate its supreme conception only by
+  interaction with the sciences; and, on the other hand, the progress
+  of science, and the effectiveness of its division of labour, are
+  ultimately conditioned by its sensitiveness to the hints, given by
+  poets and philosophers, of those wider principles in virtue of which
+  the world is conceived as a unity. There are many, indeed, who cannot
+  see the wood for the trees, as there are others who cannot see the
+  trees for the wood. Carlyle cared nothing though science were able to
+  turn a sunbeam on its axis; Ruskin sees little in the advance of
+  invention except more slag-hills. And scientific men have not been
+  slow to return with interest the scorn of the moralists. But a more
+  comprehensive view of the movement of human knowledge will show that
+  none labour in vain. For its movement is that of a thing which
+  <i>grows</i>! and in growth there is always movement <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg048" id="pg048">048</a></span> towards both
+  unity and difference. Science, in pursuing truth into greater and
+  greater detail, is constrained by its growing consciousness of the
+  unlimited wealth of its material, to divide and isolate its interests
+  more and more; and thus, at the same time, the need for the poets and
+  philosophers is growing deeper, their task is becoming more difficult
+  of achievement, and a greater triumph in so far as it is achieved.
+  Both science and philosophy are working towards a more concrete view
+  of the world as an articulated whole. If we cannot quite say with
+  Browning that "poets never dream," we may yet admit with gratitude
+  that their dreams are an inspiration.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear.</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal
+    and woe:</p>
+
+    <p>But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians
+    know."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Abt Vogler</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And side by side with the poetry that grasps the truth in
+  immediate intuition, there is also the uniting activity of
+  philosophy, which, catching up its hints, carries "back our scattered
+  knowledge of the facts and laws of nature to the principle upon which
+  they rest; and, on the other hand, develops that principle so as to
+  fill all the details of knowledge with a significance which they
+  cannot have in themselves, but only as seen <i>sub specie
+  aeternitatis</i>."<sup>B</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Problem of Philosophy at the Present Time</i>, by
+    Professor Caird.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>So far we have spoken of the function of philosophy <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg049" id="pg049">049</a></span> in the
+  interpretation of the phenomena of the outer world. It bears witness
+  to the unity of knowledge, and strives by the constructive criticism
+  of the categories of science to render that unity explicit. Its
+  function is, no doubt, valid and important, for it is evident that
+  man cannot rest content with fragmentary knowledge. But still, it
+  might be objected that it is premature at present to endeavour to
+  formulate that unity. Physics, chemistry, biology, and the other
+  sciences, while they necessarily presuppose the unity of knowledge,
+  and attempt in their own way and in their own sphere to discover it,
+  are making very satisfactory headway without raising any of the
+  desperate questions of metaphysics as to its ultimate nature. For
+  them it is not likely to matter for a long time to come whether
+  Optimism or Pessimism, Materialism or Idealism, or none of them, be
+  true. In any case the principles they establish are valid. Physical
+  relations always remain true; "ginger will be hot i' the mouth, and
+  there will be more cakes and ale." It is only when the sciences break
+  down beneath the weight of knowledge and prove themselves inadequate,
+  that it becomes necessary or advantageous to seek for more
+  comprehensive principles. At present is it not better to persevere in
+  the way of science, than to be seduced from it by the desire to solve
+  ultimate problems, which, however reasonable and pressing, seem to be
+  beyond our power to answer?</p>
+
+  <p>Such reasonings are not convincing; still, so far as natural
+  science is concerned, they seem to <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg050" id="pg050">050</a></span> indicate that there might be no
+  great harm in ignoring, for a time, its dependence on the wider
+  aspects of human thought. There is no department of nature so
+  limited, but that it may more than satisfy the largest ambition of
+  the individual for knowledge. But this attitude of indifference to
+  ultimate questions is liable at any moment to be disturbed.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,</p>
+
+    <p>A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,</p>
+
+    <p>A chorus-ending from Euripides,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears</p>
+
+    <p>As old and new at once as nature's self,</p>
+
+    <p>To rap and knock and enter in our soul,</p>
+
+    <p>Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,</p>
+
+    <p>Round the ancient idol, on his base again,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.</p>
+
+    <p>There the old misgivings, crooked questions are."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Bishop Blougram's Apology.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Amongst the facts of our experience which cry most loudly for some
+  kind of solution, are those of our own inner life. We are in pressing
+  need of a "working hypothesis" wherewith to understand ourselves, as
+  well as of a theory which will explain the revolution of the planets,
+  or the structure of an oyster. And this self of ours intrudes
+  everywhere. It is only by resolutely shutting our eyes, that we can
+  forget the part it plays even in the outer world of natural science.
+  So active is it in the constitution of things, so dependent is their
+  nature on the nature of our knowing faculties, that scientific men
+  themselves admit that their surest <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg051" id="pg051">051</a></span> results are only hypothetical.
+  Their truth depends on laws of thought which natural science does not
+  investigate.</p>
+
+  <p>But quite apart from this doctrine of the relativity of knowledge,
+  which is generally first acknowledged and then ignored, every man,
+  the worst and the best alike, is constrained to take some
+  <i>practical</i> attitude towards his fellows. Man is never alone
+  with nature, and the connections with his fellows which sustain his
+  intelligent life, are liable to bring him into trouble, if they are
+  not to some degree understood.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"There's power in me," said Bishop Blougram, "and will to
+    dominate</p>
+
+    <p>Which I must exercise, they hurt me else."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The impulse to know is only a phase of the more general impulse to
+  act and to be. The specialist's devotion to his science is his answer
+  to a demand, springing from his practical need, that he realize
+  himself through action. He does not construct his edifice of
+  knowledge, as the bird is supposed to build its nest, without any
+  consciousness of an end to be attained thereby. Even if, like
+  Lessing, he values the pursuit of truth for its own sake, still what
+  stings him into effort is the sense that in truth only can he find
+  the means of satisfying and realizing himself. Beneath all man's
+  activities, as their very spring and source, there lies some dim
+  conception of an end to be attained. This is his moral consciousness,
+  which no neglect will utterly suppress. <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg052" id="pg052">052</a></span> All human effort,
+  the effort to know like every other, conceals within it a reference
+  to some good, conceived at the time as supreme and complete; and
+  this, in turn, contains a theory both of man's self and of the
+  universe on which he must impress his image. Every man must have his
+  philosophy of life, simply because he must act; though, in many
+  cases, that philosophy may be latent and unconscious, or, at least,
+  not a definite object of reflection. The most elementary question
+  directed at his moral consciousness will at once elicit the universal
+  element. We cannot ask whether an action be right or wrong without
+  awakening all the echoes of metaphysics. As there is no object on the
+  earth's surface whose equilibrium is not fixed by its relation to the
+  earth's centre, so the most elementary moral judgment, the simplest
+  choice, the most irrational vagaries of a will calling itself free
+  and revelling in its supposed lawlessness, are dominated by the
+  conception of a universal good. Everything that a man does is an
+  attempt to articulate his view of this good, with a particular
+  content. Hence, man as a moral agent is always the centre of his own
+  horizon, and stands right beneath the zenith. Little as he may be
+  aware of it, his relation between himself and his supreme good is
+  direct. And he orders his whole world from his point of view, just as
+  he regards East and West as meeting at the spot on which he stands.
+  Whether he will or not, he cannot but regard the universe of men and
+  objects as the instrument of his purposes. He extracts <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg053" id="pg053">053</a></span> all its interest
+  and meaning from himself. His own shadow falls upon it all. If he is
+  selfish, that is, if he interprets the self that is in him as
+  vulturous, then the whole outer world and his fellow-men fall for him
+  into the category of carrion, or not-carrion. If he knows himself as
+  spirit, as the energy of love or reason, if the prime necessity he
+  recognizes within himself is the necessity to be good, then the
+  universe becomes for him an instrument wherewith moral character is
+  evolved. In all cases alike, his life-work is an effort to rob the
+  world of its alien character, and to translate it into terms of
+  himself.</p>
+
+  <p>We are in the habit of fixing a chasm between a man's deeds and
+  his metaphysical, moral, and religious creed; and even of thinking
+  that he can get on "in a sufficiently prosperous manner," without any
+  such creed. Can we not digest without a theory of peptics, or do
+  justice without constructing an ideal state? The truest answer,
+  though it is an answer easily misunderstood, is that we cannot. In
+  the sphere of morality, at least, action, depends on knowledge:
+  Socrates was right in saying that virtuous conduct ignorant of its
+  end is accidental. Man's action, so far as it is good or evil, is
+  shot through and through with his intelligence. And once we clearly
+  distinguish between belief and profession, between the motives which
+  really impel our actions and the psychological account of them with
+  which we may deceive ourselves and others, we shall be obliged to
+  confess that we always act our creed. A man's conduct, just because
+  he is man, is generated by his view of himself and <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg054" id="pg054">054</a></span> his world. He who
+  cheats his neighbour believes in tortuosity, and, as Carlyle says,
+  has the Supreme Quack for his God. No one ever acted without some
+  dim, though perhaps foolish enough, half-belief that the world was at
+  his back; whether he plots good or evil he always has God as an
+  accomplice. And this is why character cannot be really bettered by
+  any peddling process. Moralists and preachers are right in insisting
+  on the need of a new life, that is, of a new principle, as the basis
+  of any real improvement; and such a principle necessarily carries in
+  it a new attitude towards men, and a new interpretation of the moral
+  agent himself and of his world.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, wherever we touch the practical life of man, we are at once
+  referred to a metaphysic. His creed is the heart of his character,
+  and it beats as a pulse in every action. Hence, when we deal with
+  moral life, we <i>must</i> start from the centre. In our intellectual
+  life, it is not obviously unreasonable to suppose that there is no
+  need of endeavouring to reach upward to a constructive idea, which
+  makes the universe one, but when we act, such self-deception is not
+  possible. As a moral agent, and a moral agent man always is, he not
+  only may, but must have his working hypothesis, and that hypothesis
+  must be all-inclusive. As there are natural laws which connect man's
+  physical movements with the whole system of nature, so there are
+  spiritual relations which connect him with the whole spiritual
+  universe; and spiritual relations are always direct.</p>
+
+  <p>Now it follows from this, that, whenever we consider <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg055" id="pg055">055</a></span> man as a moral
+  agent, that is, as an agent who converts ideas into actual things,
+  the need of a philosophy becomes evident. Instead of condemning ideal
+  interpretations of the universe as useless dreams, the foolish
+  products of an ambition of thought which refuses to respect the
+  limits of the human intellect, we shall understand that philosophers
+  and poets are really striving with greater clearness of vision, and
+  in a more sustained manner, to perform the task which all men are
+  obliged to perform in some way or other. Man subsists as a natural
+  being only on condition of comprehending, to some degree, the
+  conditions of his natural life, and the laws of his natural
+  environment. From earliest youth upwards, he is learning that fire
+  will burn and water drown, and that he can play with the elements
+  with safety only within the sphere lit up by his intelligence. Nature
+  will not pardon the blunders of ignorance, nor tamely submit to every
+  hasty construction. And this truth is still more obvious in relation
+  to man's moral life. Here, too, and in a pre-eminent degree, conduct
+  waits on intelligence. Deep will only answer unto deep; and great
+  characters only come with much meditation on the things that are
+  highest. And, on the other hand, the misconstruction of life's
+  meaning flings man back upon himself, and makes his action nugatory.
+  Byronism was driven "howling home again," says the poet. The universe
+  will not be interpreted in terms of sense, nor be treated as carrion,
+  as Carlyle said. There is no rest in the "Everlasting No," because it
+  is a <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg056" id="pg056">056</a></span>
+  wrong view of man and of the world. Or rather, the negative is not
+  everlasting; and man is driven onwards by despair, through the
+  "Centre of Indifference," till he finds a "Universal Yea"&mdash;a
+  true view of his relation to the universe.</p>
+
+  <p>There is given to men the largest choice to do or to let alone, at
+  every step in life. But there is one necessity which they cannot
+  escape, because they carry it within them. They absolutely must try
+  to make the world their home, find some kind of reconciling idea
+  between themselves and the forces amidst which they move, have some
+  kind of working hypothesis of life. Nor is it possible to admit that
+  they will find rest till they discover a true hypothesis. If they do
+  not seek it by reflection&mdash;if, in their ardour to penetrate into
+  the secrets of nature, they forget themselves; if they allow the
+  supreme facts of their moral life to remain in the confusion of
+  tradition, and seek to compromise the demands of their spirit by
+  sacrificing to the idols of their childhood's faith; if they fortify
+  themselves in the indifference of agnosticism,&mdash;they must reap
+  the harvest of their irreflection. Ignorance is not harmless in
+  matters of character any more than in the concerns of our outer life.
+  There are in national and in individual history seasons of despair,
+  and that despair, when it is deepest, is ever found to be the shadow
+  of moral failure&mdash;the result of going out into action with a
+  false view of the purpose of human life, and a wrong conception of
+  man's destiny. At such times, the people have not understood
+  themselves <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg057" id=
+  "pg057">057</a></span> or their environment, and, in consequence,
+  they come into collision with their own welfare. There is no
+  experiment so dangerous to an age or people, as that of relegating to
+  the common ignorance of unreasoning faith the deep concerns of moral
+  conduct; and there is no attitude more pitiable than that which leads
+  it to turn a deaf ear and the lip of contempt towards those
+  philosophers who carry the spirit of scientific inquiry into these
+  higher regions, and endeavour to establish for mankind, by the
+  irrefragable processes of reason, those principles on which rest all
+  the great elements of man's destiny. We cannot act without a theory
+  of life; and to whom shall we look for such a theory, except to those
+  who, undaunted by the difficulties of the task, ask once more, and
+  strive to answer, those problems which man cannot entirely escape, as
+  long as he continues to think and act?</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg058" id="pg058">058</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch03" id="ch03">CHAPTER III.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>BROWNING'S PLACE IN ENGLISH POETRY.</h3>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    "But there's a great contrast between him and me. He seems very
+    content with life, and takes much satisfaction in the world. It's a
+    very strange and curious spectacle to behold a man in these days so
+    confidently cheerful." (<i>Carlyle</i>.)
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <p>It has been said of Carlyle, who may for many reasons be
+  considered as our poet's twin figure, that he laid the foundations of
+  his world of thought in <i>Sartor Resartus</i>, and never enlarged
+  them. His <i>Orientirung</i> was over before he was forty years
+  old&mdash;as is, indeed, the case with most men. After that period
+  there was no fundamental change in his view of the world; nothing
+  which can be called a new idea disturbed his outline sketch of the
+  universe. He lived afterwards only to fill it in, showing with ever
+  greater detail the relations of man to man in history, and
+  emphasizing with greater grimness the war of good and evil in human
+  action. There is evidence, it is true, that the formulae from which
+  he more or less consciously set forth, ultimately proved too narrow
+  for him, and we find him beating himself in vain against their
+  limitations; still, on the whole, Carlyle speculated within the range
+  and influence of <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg059" id=
+  "pg059">059</a></span> principles adopted early in life, and never
+  abandoned for higher or richer ideas, or substantially changed.</p>
+
+  <p>In these respects, there is considerable resemblance between
+  Carlyle and Browning. Browning, indeed, fixed his point of view and
+  chose his battleground still earlier; and he held it resolutely to
+  his life's close. In his <i>Pauline</i> and in his Epilogue to
+  <i>Asolando</i> we catch the triumphant tone of a single idea, which,
+  during all the long interval, had never sunk into silence. Like</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"The wise thrush, he sings each song twice over,</p>
+
+    <p>Lest you should think he never could recapture</p>
+
+    <p>The first fine careless rapture!" <sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Home Thoughts from Abroad</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Moreover, these two poets, if I may be permitted to call Carlyle a
+  poet, taught the same truth. They were both witnesses to the presence
+  of God in the spirit of man, and looked at this life in the light of
+  another and a higher; or rather, they penetrated through the husk of
+  time and saw that eternity is even here, a tranquil element
+  underlying the noisy antagonisms of man's earthly life. Both of them,
+  like Plato's philosopher, made their home in the sunlight of ideal
+  truth: they were not denizens of the cave taking the things of sense
+  for those of thought, shadows for realities, echoes for the voices of
+  men.</p>
+
+  <p>But, while Carlyle fought his way into this region, Browning found
+  himself in it from the first; while Carlyle bought his freedom with a
+  great sum, the poet "was free born." Carlyle saw the old world
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg060" id="pg060">060</a></span> faith
+  break up around him, and its fragments never ceased to embarrass his
+  path. He was <i>at</i> the point of transition, present at the
+  collision of the old and new, and in the midst of the confusion. He,
+  more than any other English writer, was the instrument of the change
+  from the Deism of the eighteenth century and the despair which
+  followed it, into the larger faith of our own. But, for Browning,
+  there was a new heaven and a new earth, and old things had passed
+  away. This notable contrast between the two men, arising at once from
+  their disposition and their moral environment, had far-reaching
+  effects on their lives and their writings. But their affinity was
+  deeper than the difference, for they are essentially heirs and
+  exponents of the same movement in English thought.</p>
+
+  <p>The main characteristic of that movement is that it is both moral
+  and religious, a devotion to God and the active service of man, a
+  recognition at once of the rights of nature and of spirit. It does
+  not, on the one hand, raise the individual as a natural being to the
+  throne of the universe, and make all forces social, political, and
+  spiritual stoop to his rights; nor does it, on the other hand, deny
+  these rights, or make the individual a mere instrument of society. It
+  at least attempts to reconcile the fundamental facts of human nature,
+  without compromising any of them. It cannot be called either
+  individualistic or socialistic; but it strives to be both at once, so
+  that both man and society mean more to this age than they ever did
+  before. The <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg061" id=
+  "pg061">061</a></span> narrow formulae that cramped the thought of
+  the period which preceded ours have been broken through. No one can
+  pass from the hedonists and individualists to Carlyle and Browning
+  without feeling that these two men are representatives of new forces
+  in politics, in religion, and in literature,&mdash;forces which will
+  undoubtedly effect momentous changes before they are caught again and
+  fixed in creeds.</p>
+
+  <p>That a new epoch in English thought was veritably opened by them
+  is indicated by the surprise and bewilderment they occasioned at
+  their first appearance. Carlyle had Emerson to break his loneliness
+  and Browning had Rossetti; but, to most other men at that day,
+  <i>Sartor</i> and <i>Pauline</i> were all but unintelligible. The
+  general English reader could make little of the strange figures that
+  had broken into the realm of literature; and the value and
+  significance of their work, as well as its originality, will be
+  recognized better by ourselves if we take a hurried glance at the
+  times which lay behind them. Its main worth will be found to lie in
+  the fact that they strove to bring together again certain fundamental
+  elements, on which the moral life of man must always rest, and which
+  had fallen asunder in the ages which preceded their own.</p>
+
+  <p>The whole-hearted, instinctive life of the Elizabethan age was
+  narrowed and deepened into the severe one-sidedness of Puritanism,
+  which cast on the bright earth the sombre shadow of a life to come.
+  England was given up for a time to a magnificent half-truth. It did
+  not</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg062" id=
+  "pg062">062</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Wait</p>
+
+    <p>The slow and sober uprise all around</p>
+
+    <p>O' the building,"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>but</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i10">"Ran up right to roof</p>
+
+    <p>A sudden marvel, piece of perfectness."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>After Puritanism came Charles the Second and the rights of the
+  flesh, which rights were gradually clarified, till they contradicted
+  themselves in the benevolent self-seeking of altruistic hedonism.
+  David Hume led the world out of the shadow of eternity, and showed
+  that it was only an object of the five senses; or of six, if we add
+  that of "hunger." The divine element was explained away, and the
+  proper study of mankind was, not man, as that age thought, but man
+  reduced to his beggarly elements&mdash;a being animated solely by the
+  sensuous springs of pleasure and pain, which should properly, as
+  Carlyle thought, go on all fours, and not lay claim to the dignity of
+  being moral. All things were reduced to what they seemed, robbed of
+  their suggestiveness, changed into definite, sharp-edged, mutually
+  exclusive particulars. The world was an aggregate of isolated facts,
+  or, at the best, a mechanism into which particulars were fitted by
+  force; and society was a gathering of mere individuals, repelling
+  each other by their needs and greed, with a ring of natural necessity
+  to bind them together. It was a fit time for political economy to
+  supplant ethics. There was nowhere an ideal which could lift man
+  above his natural self, and teach him, by losing it, to find a higher
+  life. And, as a necessary <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg063" id=
+  "pg063">063</a></span> consequence, religion gave way to naturalism
+  and poetry to prose.</p>
+
+  <p>After this age of prose came our own day. The new light first
+  flushed the modern world in the writings of the philosopher-poets of
+  Germany: Kant and Lessing, Fichte and Schiller, Goethe and Hegel.
+  They brought about the Copernican change. For them this world of the
+  five senses, of space and time and natural cause, instead of being
+  the fixed centre around which all things revolved, was explicable
+  only in its relation to a system which was spiritual; and man found
+  his meaning in his connection with society, the life of which
+  stretched endlessly far back into the past and forward into the
+  future. Psychology gave way to metaphysics. The universal element in
+  the thought of man was revealed. Instead of mechanism there was life.
+  A new spirit of poetry and philosophy brought God back into the
+  world, revealed his incarnation in the mind of man, and changed
+  nature into a pellucid garment within which throbbed the love divine.
+  The antagonism of hard alternatives was at an end; the universe was
+  spirit-woven and every smallest object was "filled full of magical
+  music, as they freight a star with light." There were no longer two
+  worlds, but one; for "the other" world penetrated this, and was
+  revealed in it: thought and sense, spirit and nature, were
+  reconciled. These thinkers made room for man, as against the
+  Puritans, and for God, as against their successors. Instead of the
+  hopeless struggle of ascetic morality, which divides man against
+  himself, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg064" id=
+  "pg064">064</a></span> they awakened him to that sense of his
+  reconciliation with his ideal which religion gives: "Psyche drinks
+  its stream and forgets her sorrows."</p>
+
+  <p>Now, this is just the soil where art blooms. For what is beauty
+  but the harmony of thought and sense, a universal meaning caught and
+  tamed in the particular? To the poet each little flower that blooms
+  has endless worth, and is regarded as perfect and complete; for he
+  sees that the spirit of the whole dwells in it. It whispers to him
+  the mystery of the infinite; it is a pulse in which beats the
+  universal heart. The true poet finds God everywhere; for the ideal is
+  actual wherever beauty dwells. And there is the closest affinity
+  between art and religion, as its history proves, from Job and Isaiah,
+  Homer and Aeschylus, to our own poet; for both art and religion lift
+  us, each in its own way, above one-sidedness and limitation, to the
+  region of the universal. The one draws God to man, brings perfection
+  <i>here</i>, and reaches its highest form in the joyous life of
+  Greece, where the natural world was clothed with almost supernatural
+  beauty; the other lifts man to God, and finds this life good because
+  it reflects and suggests the greater life that is to be. Both poetry
+  and religion are a reconciliation and a satisfaction; both lift man
+  above the contradictions of limited existence, and place him in the
+  region of peace&mdash;where,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"with an eye made quiet by the power</p>
+
+    <p>Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,</p>
+
+    <p>He sees into the life of things."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Tintern Abbey.</i></p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg065" id="pg065">065</a></span>
+
+  <p>In this sense, it will be always true of the poet, as it is of the
+  religious man, that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"the world,</p>
+
+    <p>The beauty and the wonder and the power,</p>
+
+    <p>The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades,</p>
+
+    <p>Changes, surprises,"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fra Lippo Lippi</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>lead him back to God, who made it all.</p>
+
+  <p>He is essentially a witness to the divine element in the
+  world.</p>
+
+  <p>It is the rediscovery of this divine element, after its expulsion
+  by the age of Deism and doubt, that has given to this century its
+  poetic grandeur. Unless we regard Burke as the herald of the new era,
+  we may say that England first felt the breath of the returning spirit
+  in the poems of Shelley and Wordsworth.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"The One remains, the many change and pass;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows
+    fly;</p>
+
+    <p>Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Stains the white radiance of eternity,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Until death tramples it to fragments."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Adonais</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"And I have felt," says Wordsworth,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"A presence that disturbs me with the joy</p>
+
+    <p>Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime</p>
+
+    <p>Of something far more deeply interfused,</p>
+
+    <p>Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,</p>
+
+    <p>And the round ocean and the living air,</p>
+
+    <p>And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:</p>
+
+    <p>A motion and a spirit, that impels</p>
+
+    <p>All thinking things, all objects of all thought,</p>
+
+    <p>And rolls through all things."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Tintern Abbey</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg066" id="pg066">066</a></span>
+
+  <p>Such notes as these could not be struck by Pope, nor be understood
+  by the age of prose. Still they are only the prelude of the fuller
+  song of Browning. Whether he be a greater poet than these or
+  not,&mdash;a question whose answer can benefit nothing, for each poet
+  has his own worth, and reflects by his own facet the universal
+  truth&mdash;his poetry contains in it larger elements, and the
+  promise of a deeper harmony from the harsher discords of his more
+  stubborn material. Even where their spheres touch, Browning held by
+  the artistic truth in a different manner. To Shelley, perhaps the
+  most intensely spiritual of all our poets,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"That light whose smile kindles the universe,</p>
+
+    <p>That beauty in which all things work and move,"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>was an impassioned sentiment, a glorious intoxication; to Browning
+  it was a conviction, reasoned and willed, possessing the whole man,
+  and held in the sober moments when the heart is silent. "The heavy
+  and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world" was lightened
+  for Wordsworth, only when he was far from the haunts of men, and free
+  from the "dreary intercourse of daily life"; but Browning weaved his
+  song of hope right amidst the wail and woe of man's sin and
+  wretchedness. For Wordsworth "sensations sweet, felt in the blood and
+  felt along the heart, passed into his purer mind with tranquil
+  restoration," and issued "in a serene and blessed mood"; but
+  Browning's poetry is not merely the poetry of the emotions however
+  sublimated. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg067" id=
+  "pg067">067</a></span> He starts with the hard repellent fact,
+  crushes by sheer force of thought its stubborn rind, presses into it,
+  and brings forth the truth at its heart. The greatness of Browning's
+  poetry is in its perceptive grip: and in nothing is he more original
+  than in the manner in which he takes up his task, and assumes his
+  artistic function. In his postponement of feeling to thought we
+  recognize a new poetic method, the significance of which we cannot
+  estimate as yet. But, although we may fail to apprehend the meaning
+  of the new method he employs, we cannot fail to perceive the fact,
+  which is not less striking, that the region from which he quarries
+  his material is new.</p>
+
+  <p>And yet he does not break away abruptly from his predecessors. His
+  kinship with them, in that he recognizes the presence of God in
+  nature, is everywhere evident. We quote one passage, scarcely to be
+  surpassed by any of our poets, as indicative of his power of dealing
+  with the supernaturalism of nature.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,</p>
+
+    <p>And the earth changes like a human face;</p>
+
+    <p>The molten ore burst up among the rocks,</p>
+
+    <p>Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright</p>
+
+    <p>In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds,</p>
+
+    <p>Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged</p>
+
+    <p>With foam, white as the bitter lip of hate,</p>
+
+    <p>When, in the solitary waste, strange groups</p>
+
+    <p>Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like,</p>
+
+    <p>Staring together with their eyes on flame&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride.</p>
+
+    <p>Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod:</p><span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg068" id="pg068">068</a></span>
+
+    <p>But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes</p>
+
+    <p>Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure</p>
+
+    <p>Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between</p>
+
+    <p>The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost,</p>
+
+    <p>Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>"Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark</p>
+
+    <p>Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;</p>
+
+    <p>Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls</p>
+
+    <p>Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe</p>
+
+    <p>Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek</p>
+
+    <p>Their loves in wood and plain&mdash;and God renews</p>
+
+    <p>His ancient rapture. Thus He dwells in all,</p>
+
+    <p>From life's minute beginnings, up at last</p>
+
+    <p>To man&mdash;the consummation of this scheme</p>
+
+    <p>Of being, the completion of this sphere of life."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Such passages as these contain neither the rapt, reflective calm
+  of Wordsworth's solemn tones, nor the ethereal intoxication of
+  Shelley's spirit-music; but there is in them the same consciousness
+  of the infinite meaning of natural facts. And beyond this, there is
+  also, in the closing lines, a hint of a new region for art. Shelley
+  and Wordsworth were the poets of Nature, as all truly say; Browning
+  was the poet of the human soul. For Shelley, the beauty in which all
+  things work and move was well-nigh "quenched by the eclipsing curse
+  of the birth of man"; and Wordsworth lived beneath the habitual sway
+  of fountains, meadows, hills and groves, while he kept grave watch
+  o'er man's mortality, and saw the shades of the prison-house gather
+  round him. From the life of man they garnered nought but mad
+  indignation, or mellowed sadness. It was a foolish and furious strife
+  with <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg069" id="pg069">069</a></span>
+  unknown powers fought in the dark, from which the poet kept aloof,
+  for he could not see that God dwelt amidst the chaos. But Browning
+  found "harmony in immortal souls, spite of the muddy vesture of
+  decay." He found nature crowned in man, though man was mean and
+  miserable. At the heart of the most wretched abortion of wickedness
+  there was the mark of the loving touch of God. Shelley turned away
+  from man; Wordsworth paid him rare visits, like those of a being from
+  a strange world, made wise and sad with looking at him from afar;
+  Browning dwelt with him. He was a comrade in the fight, and ever in
+  the van of man's endeavour bidding him be of good cheer. He was a
+  witness for God in the midmost dark, where meet in deathless struggle
+  the elemental powers of right and wrong. For God is present for him,
+  not only in the order and beauty of nature, but in the world of will
+  and thought. Beneath the caprice and wilful lawlessness of individual
+  action, he saw a beneficent purpose which cannot fail, but "has its
+  way with man, not he with it."</p>
+
+  <p>Now this was a new world for poetry to enter into; a new depth to
+  penetrate with hope; and Browning was the first of modern poets
+  to</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Stoop</p>
+
+    <p>Into the vast and unexplored abyss,</p>
+
+    <p class="i8">Strenuously beating</p>
+
+    <p>The silent boundless regions of the sky."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is also a new world for religion and morality; <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg070" id="pg070">070</a></span> and to understand
+  it demands a deeper insight into the fundamental elements of human
+  life.</p>
+
+  <p>To show this in a proximately adequate manner, we should be
+  obliged, as already hinted, to connect the poet's work, not merely
+  with that of his English predecessors, but with the deeper and more
+  comprehensive movement of the thought of Germany since the time of
+  Kant. It would be necessary to indicate how, by breaking a way
+  through the narrow creeds and equally narrow scepticism of the
+  previous age, the new spirit extended the horizon of man's active and
+  contemplative life, and made him free of the universe, and the
+  repository of the past conquests of his race. It proposed to man the
+  great task of solving the problem of humanity, but it strengthened
+  him with its past achievement, and inspired him with the conviction
+  of its boundless progress. It is not that the significance of the
+  individual or the meaning of his endeavour is lost. Under this new
+  view, man has still to fight for his own hand, and it is still
+  recognized that spirit is always burdened with its own fate and
+  cannot share its responsibility. Morality does not give way to
+  religion or pass into it, and there is a sense in which the
+  individual is always alone in the sphere of duty.</p>
+
+  <p>But from this new point of view the individual is re-explained for
+  us, and we begin to understand that he is the focus of a light which
+  is universal, "one more incarnation of the mind of God." His moral
+  task is no longer to seek his own in the old sense, but to elevate
+  humanity; for it is only by <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg071" id=
+  "pg071">071</a></span> taking this circuit that he can come to his
+  own. Such a task as this is a sufficiently great one to occupy all
+  time; but it is to humanity in him that the task belongs, and it will
+  therefore be achieved. This is no new one-sidedness. It does not
+  mean, to those who comprehend it, the supplanting of the individual
+  thought by the collective thought, or the substitution of humanity
+  for man. The universal is <i>in</i> the particular, the fact
+  <i>is</i> the law. There is no collision between the whole and the
+  part, for the whole lives in the part. As each individual plant has
+  its own life and beauty and worth, although the universe has
+  conspired to bring it into being; so also, and in a far higher
+  degree, man has his own duty and his own dignity, although he is but
+  the embodiment of forces, natural and spiritual, which have come from
+  the endless past. Like a letter in a word, or a word in a sentence,
+  he gets his meaning from his context; <i>but the sentence is
+  meaningless without him</i>. "Rays from all round converge in him,"
+  and he has no power except that which has been lent to him; but all
+  the same, nay, all the more, he must</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Think as if man never thought before!</p>
+
+    <p>Act as if all creation hung attent</p>
+
+    <p>On the acting of such faculty as his."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His responsibility, his individuality, is not less, but greater,
+  in that he can, in his thought and moral action, command the forces
+  that the race has stored for him. The great man speaks the thought of
+  his <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg072" id="pg072">072</a></span>
+  people, and his invocations as their priest are just the expression
+  of their dumb yearnings. And even the mean and insignificant man is
+  what he is, in virtue of the humanity which is blurred and distorted
+  within him; and he can shed his insignificance and meanness, only by
+  becoming a truer vehicle for that humanity.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, when spirit is spiritually discerned, it is seen that man is
+  bound to man in a union closer than any physical organism can show;
+  while "the individual," in the old sense of a being <i>opposed</i> to
+  society and <i>opposed</i> to the world, is found to be a fiction of
+  abstract thought, not discoverable anywhere, because not real. And,
+  on the other hand, society is no longer "collective," but so organic
+  that the whole is potentially in every part&mdash;an organism
+  <i>of</i> organisms.</p>
+
+  <p>The influence of this organic idea in every department of thought
+  which concerns itself with man is not to be measured. It is already
+  fast changing all the practical sciences of man&mdash;economics,
+  politics, ethics and religion. The material, being newly interpreted,
+  is wrought into a new purpose, and revelation is once more bringing
+  about a reformation. But human action in its ethical aspect is, above
+  all, charged with a new significance. The idea of duty has received
+  an expansion almost illimitable, and man himself has thereby attained
+  new worth and dignity&mdash;for what is duty except a dignity and
+  opportunity, man's chance of being good? When we contrast this view
+  of the life of man as the life of humanity in him, with the old
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg073" id="pg073">073</a></span>
+  individualism, we may say that morality also has at last, in Bacon's
+  phrase, passed from the narrow seas into the open ocean. And after
+  all, the greatest achievement of our age may be not that it has
+  established the sciences of nature, but that it has made possible the
+  science of man. We have, at length, reached a point of view from
+  which we may hope to understand ourselves. Law, order, continuity, in
+  human action&mdash;the essential pre-conditions of a moral
+  science&mdash;were beyond the reach of an individualistic theory. It
+  left to ethical writers no choice but that of either sacrificing man
+  to law, or law to man; of denying either the particular or the
+  universal element in his nature. Naturalism did the first.
+  Intuitionism, the second. The former made human action the
+  <i>re</i>action of a natural agent on the incitement of natural
+  forces. It made man a mere object, a <i>thing</i> capable of being
+  affected by other things through his faculty of being pained or
+  pleased; an object acting in obedience to motives that had an
+  external origin, just like any other object. The latter theory cut
+  man free from the world and his fellows, endowed him with a will that
+  had no law, and a conscience that was dogmatic; and thereby succeeded
+  in stultifying both law and morality.</p>
+
+  <p>But this new consciousness of the relation of man to mankind and
+  the world takes him out of his isolation and still leaves him free.
+  It relates men to one another in a humanity, which is incarnated anew
+  in each of them. It elevates the individual above the <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg074" id="pg074">074</a></span> distinctions of
+  time; it treasures up the past in him as the active energy of his
+  knowledge and morality in the present, and also as the potency of the
+  ideal life of the future. On this view, the individual and the race
+  are possible only through each other.</p>
+
+  <p>This fundamental change in our way of looking at the life of man
+  is bound to abolish the ancient landmarks and bring confusion for a
+  time. Out of the new conception, <i>i.e.,</i> out of the idea of
+  evolution, has sprung the tumult as well as the strength of our time.
+  The present age is moved with thoughts beyond the reach of its
+  powers: great aspirations for the well-being of the people and high
+  ideals of social welfare flash across its mind, to be followed again
+  by thicker darkness. There is hardly any limit to its despair or
+  hope. It has a far larger faith in the destiny of man than any of its
+  predecessors, and yet it is <i>sure</i> of hardly
+  anything&mdash;except that the ancient rules of human life are false.
+  Individualism is now detected as scepticism and moral chaos in
+  disguise. We know that the old methods are no longer of use. We
+  cannot now cut ourselves free of the fate of others. The confused
+  cries for help that are heard on every hand are recognized as the
+  voices of our brethren; and we now know that our fate is involved in
+  theirs, and that the problem of their welfare is also ours. We
+  grapple with social questions at last, and recognize that the issues
+  of life and death lie in the solution of these enigmas. Legislators
+  and economists, teachers of religion and socialists, are all alike
+  social reformers. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg075" id=
+  "pg075">075</a></span> Philanthropy has taken a deeper meaning; and
+  all sects bear its banner. But their forces are beaten back by the
+  social wretchedness, for they have not found the sovereign remedy of
+  a great idea; and the result is in many ways sad enough. Our social
+  remedies often work mischief; for we degrade those whom we would
+  elevate, and in our charity forget justice. We insist on the rights
+  of the people and the duties of the privileged classes, and thereby
+  tend to teach greed to those for whom we labour, and goodness to
+  those whom we condemn. The task that lies before us is plain: we want
+  the welfare of the people as a whole. But we fail to grasp the
+  complex social elements together, and our very remedies tend to
+  sunder them. We know that the public good will not be obtained by
+  separating man from man, securing each unit in a charmed circle of
+  personal rights, and protecting it from others by isolation. We must
+  find a place for the individual within the social organism, and we
+  know now that this organism has not, as our fathers seemed to think,
+  the simple constitution of a wooden doll. Society is not put together
+  mechanically, and the individual cannot be outwardly attached to it,
+  if he is to be helped, He must rather share its life, be the heir of
+  the wealth it has garnered for him in the past, and participate in
+  its onward movement. Between this new social ideal and our
+  attainment, between the magnitude of our social duties and the
+  resources of intellect and will at our command, there lies a chasm
+  which we despair of bridging over.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg076" id="pg076">076</a></span>
+
+  <p>The characteristics of this epoch faithfully reflect themselves in
+  the pages of Carlyle, with whose thoughts those of Browning are
+  immediately connected. It was Carlyle who first effectively revealed
+  to England the continuity of human life, and the magnitude of the
+  issues of individual action. Seeing the infinite in the finite,
+  living under a continued sense of the mystery that surrounds man, he
+  flung explosive negations amidst the narrow formulae of the social
+  and religious orthodoxy of his day, blew down the blinding walls of
+  ethical individualism, and, amidst much smoke and din, showed his
+  English readers something of the greatness of the moral world. He
+  gave us a philosophy of clothes, penetrated through symbols to the
+  immortal ideas, condemned all shibboleths, and revealed the soul of
+  humanity behind the external modes of man's activity. He showed us,
+  in a word, that the world is spiritual, that loyalty to duty is the
+  foundation of all human good, and that national welfare rests on
+  character. After reading him, it is impossible for any one who
+  reflects on the nature of duty to ask, "Am I my brother's keeper?" He
+  not only imagined, but knew, how "all things the minutest that man
+  does, minutely influence all men, and the very look of his face
+  blesses or curses whom-so it lights on, and so generates ever new
+  blessing or new cursing. I say, there is not a Red Indian, hunting by
+  Lake Winnipeg, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must
+  smart for it: will not the price of beaver rise? It is a mathematical
+  fact <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg077" id="pg077">077</a></span>
+  that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of
+  gravity of the universe." Carlyle dealt the deathblow to the
+  "laissez-faire" theory rampant in his day, and made each individual
+  responsible for the race. He has demonstrated that the sphere of duty
+  does not terminate with ourselves and our next-door neighbours. There
+  will be no pure air for the correctest Levite to breathe, till the
+  laws of sanitation have been applied to the moral slums. "Ye are my
+  brethren," said he, and he adds, as if conscious of his too
+  denunciatory way of dealing with them, "hence my rage and
+  sorrow."</p>
+
+  <p>But his consciousness of brotherhood with all men brought only
+  despair for him. He saw clearly the responsibility of man, but not
+  the dignity which that implies; he felt the weight of the burden of
+  humanity upon his own soul, and it crushed him, for he forgot that
+  all the good of the world was there to help him bear it, and that
+  "One with God is a majority." He taught only the half-truth, that all
+  men are united on the side of duty, and that the spiritual life of
+  each is conditional on striving to save all. But he neglected the
+  complement of this truth, and forgot the greatness of the beings on
+  whom so great a duty could be laid. He therefore dignifies humanity
+  only to degrade it again. The "twenty millions" each must try to save
+  "are mostly fools." But how fools, when they can have such a task? Is
+  it not true, on the contrary, that no man ever saw a duty beyond his
+  strength, and that "man can because he <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg078" id="pg078">078</a></span> ought" and ought only because he
+  can? The evils an individual cannot overcome are the moral
+  opportunities of his fellows. The good are not lone workers of God's
+  purposes, and there is no need of despair. Carlyle, like the ancient
+  prophet, was too conscious of his own mission, and too forgetful of
+  that of others. "I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts;
+  because the children of Israel have forgotten Thy covenant, thrown
+  down Thine alters, and slain Thy prophets, and I, even I only, am
+  left; and they seek my life, to take it away." He needed, beside the
+  consciousness of his prophetic function, a consciousness of
+  brotherhood with humbler workers. "Yet I have left Me seven thousand
+  in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every
+  mouth which hath not kissed him." It would have helped him had he
+  remembered, that there were on all sides other workers engaged on the
+  temple not made with hands, although he could not hear the sound of
+  their hammers for the din he made himself. It would have changed his
+  despair into joy, and his pity into a higher moral quality, had he
+  been able to believe that, amidst all the millions against whom he
+  hurled his anathemas, there is no one who, let him do what he will,
+  is not constrained to illustrate either the folly and wretchedness of
+  sin, or the glory of goodness. It is not given to any one, least of
+  all to the wicked, to hold back the onward movement of the race, or
+  to destroy the impulse for good which is planted within
+  it.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg079" id=
+  "pg079">079</a></span>
+
+  <p>But Carlyle saw only one side of the truth about man's moral
+  nature and destiny. He knew, as the ancient prophets did, that evil
+  is potential wreck; and he taxed the power of metaphor to the utmost
+  to indicate, how wrong gradually takes root, and ripens into
+  putrescence and self-combustion, in obedience to a necessity which is
+  absolute. That morality is the essence of things, that wrong
+  <i>must</i> prove its weakness, that right is the only might, is
+  reiterated and illustrated on all his pages; they are now
+  commonplaces of speculation on matters of history, if not conscious
+  practical principles which guide its makers. But Carlyle never
+  inquired into the character of this moral necessity, and he
+  overlooked the beneficence which places death at the heart of sin. He
+  never saw wrong except on its way to execution, or in the death
+  throes; but he did not look in the face of the gentle power that led
+  it on to death. He saw the necessity which rules history, but not the
+  beneficent character of that necessity.</p>
+
+  <p>The same limitations marred his view of duty, which was his
+  greatest revelation to his age. He felt its categorical authority and
+  its binding force. But the power which imposed the duty was an alien
+  power, awful in majesty, infinite in might, a "great task-master";
+  and the duty itself was an outer law, written in letters of flame
+  across the high heavens, in comparison with which man's action at its
+  best sank into failure. His only virtue is obedience, and his last
+  rendering even of himself is <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg080"
+  id="pg080">080</a></span> "unprofitable servant." In this he has much
+  of the combined strength and weakness of the old Scottish Calvinism.
+  "He stands between the individual and the Infinite without hope or
+  guide. He has a constant disposition to crush the human being by
+  comparing him with God," said Mazzini, with marvellous penetration.
+  "From his lips, at times so daring, we seem to hear every instant the
+  cry of the Breton Mariner&mdash;'My God protect me! My bark is so
+  small, and Thy ocean so vast.'" His reconciliation of God and man was
+  incomplete: God seemed to him to have manifested Himself <i>to</i>
+  man but not <i>in</i> man. He did not see that "the Eternity which is
+  before and behind us is also within us."</p>
+
+  <p>But the moral law which commands is just the reflection of the
+  aspirations of progressive man, who always creates his own horizon.
+  The extension of duty is the objective counterpart of man's growth; a
+  proof of victory and not of failure, a sign that man is mounting
+  upwards. And, if so, it is irrational to infer the impossibility of
+  success from the magnitude of the demands of a moral law, which is
+  itself the promise of a better future. The hard problems set for us
+  by our social environment are recognized as set by ourselves; for, in
+  matters of morality, the eye sees only what the heart prompts. The
+  very statement of the difficulty contains the potency of its
+  solution; for evil, when understood, is on the way towards being
+  overcome, and the good, when seen, contains the promise of its own
+  fulfilment. It is ignorance which is ruinous, as when the cries of
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg081" id="pg081">081</a></span>
+  humanity beat against a deaf ear; and we can take a comfort, denied
+  to Carlyle, from the fact that he has made us awake to our social
+  duties. He has let loose the confusion upon us, and it is only
+  natural that we should at first be overcome by a sense of bewildered
+  helplessness. But this very sense contains the germ of hope, and
+  England is struggling to its feet to wrestle with its wrongs. Carlyle
+  has brought us within sight of our future, and we are now taking a
+  step into it. He has been our guide in the wilderness; but he died
+  there, and was denied the view from Pisgah.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, this view was given to Robert Browning, and he broke out into
+  a song of victory, whose strains will give strength and comfort to
+  many in the coming time. That his solution of the evils of life is
+  not final, may at once be admitted. There are elements in the problem
+  of which he has taken no account, and which will force those who seek
+  light on the deeper mysteries of man's moral nature, to go beyond
+  anything that the poet has to say. Even the poet himself grows, at
+  least in some directions, less confident of the completeness of his
+  triumph as he grows older. His faith in the good does not fail, but
+  it is the faith of one who confesses to ignorance, and links himself
+  to his finitude. Still, so thorough is his conviction of the moral
+  purpose of life, of the certainty of the good towards which man is
+  moving, and of the beneficence of the power which is at work
+  everywhere in the world, that many of his poems ring like the
+  triumphant songs of Luther.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg082"
+  id="pg082">082</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch04" id="ch04">CHAPTER IV.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>BROWNING'S OPTIMISM.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Gladness be with thee, Helper of the World!</p>
+
+    <p>I think this is the authentic sign and seal</p>
+
+    <p>Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad,</p>
+
+    <p>And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts</p>
+
+    <p>Into a rage to suffer for mankind,</p>
+
+    <p>And recommence at sorrow."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Balaustion's Adventure</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>I have tried to show that one of the distinctive features of the
+  present era is the stress it lays on the worth of the moral life of
+  man, and the new significance it has given to that life by its view
+  of the continuity of history. This view finds expression, on its
+  social and ethical side, in the pages of Carlyle and Browning: both
+  of whom are interested exclusively, one may almost say, in the
+  evolution of human character; and both of whom, too, regard that
+  evolution as the realization by man of the purposes, greater than
+  man's, which rule in the world. And, although neither of them
+  developed the organic view of humanity, which is implied in their
+  doctrines, into an explicit philosophy, still the moral life of the
+  individual is for each of them the infinite life in the finite. The
+  meaning of the universe is <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg083" id=
+  "pg083">083</a></span> moral, its last might is rightness; and the
+  task of man is to catch up that meaning, convert it into his own
+  motive, and thereby make it the source of his actions, the inmost
+  principle of his life. This, fully grasped, will bring the finite and
+  the infinite, morality and religion, together, and reconcile
+  them.</p>
+
+  <p>But the reconciliation which Carlyle sought to effect was
+  incomplete on every side&mdash;even within the sphere of duty, with
+  which alone, as moralist, he specially concerned himself. The moral
+  law was imposed upon man by a higher power, in the presence of whom
+  man was awed and crushed; for that power had stinted man's endowment,
+  and set him to fight a hopeless battle against endless evil. God was
+  everywhere around man, and the universe was just the expression of
+  His will&mdash;a will inexorably bent on the good, so that evil could
+  not prevail; but God was not <i>within</i> man, except as a voice of
+  conscience issuing imperatives and threats. An infinite duty was laid
+  upon a finite being, and its weight made him break out into a cry of
+  despair.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning, however, not only sought to bring about the
+  reconciliation, but succeeded, in so far as that is possible <i>in
+  terms of mere feeling</i>. His poetry contains suggestions that the
+  moral will without is also a force within man; that the power which
+  makes for righteousness in the world has penetrated into, or rather
+  manifests itself <i>as</i>, man. Intelligence and will, the reason
+  which apprehends the nature of things, and the original impulse of
+  self-conscious life which issues in action, are God's power in man;
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg084" id="pg084">084</a></span> so
+  that God is realizing Himself in the deeds of man, and human history
+  is just His return to Himself. Outer law and inner motive are, for
+  the poet, manifestations of the same beneficent purpose; and instead
+  of duty in the sense of an autocratic imperative, or beneficent
+  tyranny, he finds, deep beneath man's foolishness and sin, a constant
+  tendency towards the good which is bound up with the very nature of
+  man's reason and will. If man could only understand himself he would
+  find without him no limiting necessity, but the manifestation of a
+  law which is one with his own essential being. A beneficent power has
+  loaded the dice, according to the epigram, so that the chances of
+  failure and victory are not even; for man's nature is itself a divine
+  endowment, one with the power that rules his life, and man must
+  finally reach through error to truth, and through sin to holiness. In
+  the language of theology, it may be said that the moral process is
+  the spiritual incarnation of God; it is God's goodness as love,
+  effecting itself in human action. Hence Carlyle's cry of despair is
+  turned by Browning into a song of victory. While the former regards
+  the struggle between good and evil as a fixed battle, in which the
+  forces are immovably interlocked, the latter has the consciousness of
+  battling against a retreating foe; and the conviction of coming
+  triumph gives joyous vigour to every stroke. Browning lifted morality
+  into an optimism, and translated its battle into song. This was the
+  distinctive mark and mission which give to him such power of moral
+  inspiration.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg085" id=
+  "pg085">085</a></span>
+
+  <p>In order, however, to estimate the value of this feature of the
+  poet's work, it is necessary to look more closely into the character
+  of his faith in the good. Merely to attribute to him an optimistic
+  creed is to say very little; for the worth, or worthlessness, of such
+  a creed depends upon its content&mdash;upon its fidelity to the facts
+  of human life, the clearness of its consciousness of the evils it
+  confronts, and the intensity of its realism.</p>
+
+  <p>There is a sense, and that a true one, in which it may be said
+  that all men are optimists; for such a faith is implied in every
+  conscious and deliberate action of man. There is no deed which is not
+  an attempt to realize an ideal; whenever man acts he seeks a good,
+  however ruinously he may misunderstand its nature. Final and absolute
+  disbelief in an ultimate good in the sphere of morals, like absolute
+  scepticism in the sphere of knowledge, is a disguised
+  self-contradiction, and therefore an impossibility in fact. The one
+  stultifies action, and asserts an effect without any cause, or even
+  contrary to the cause; the other stultifies intellectual activity:
+  and both views imply that the critic has so escaped the conditions of
+  human life, as to be able to pass a condemnatory judgment upon them.
+  The belief that a harmonious relation between the self-conscious
+  agent and the supreme good is possible, underlies the practical
+  activity of man; just as the belief in the unity of thought and being
+  underlies his intellectual activity. A moral order&mdash;that is, an
+  order of rational ends&mdash;is postulated in all human <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg086" id="pg086">086</a></span> actions, and we
+  act at all only in virtue of it,&mdash;just as truly as we move and
+  work only in virtue of the forces which make the spheres revolve, or
+  think by help of the meaning which presses upon us from the
+  thought-woven world, through all the pores of sense. A true ethics,
+  like a true psychology, or a true science of nature, must lean upon
+  metaphysics, and it cannot pretend to start <i>ab initio</i>. We live
+  in the Copernican age, which puts the individual in a system, in
+  obedience to whose laws he finds his welfare. And this is simply the
+  assertion of an optimistic creed, for it implies a harmonious
+  world.</p>
+
+  <p>But, though this is true, it must be remembered that this faith is
+  a prophetic anticipation, rather than acquired knowledge. We are only
+  on the way towards reconstructing in thought the fact which we are,
+  or towards bringing into clear knowledge the elemental power which
+  manifests itself within us as thought, desire, and deed. And, until
+  this is achieved, we have no full right to an optimistic creed. The
+  revelation of the unity which pervades all things, even in the
+  natural world, will be the last attainment of science; and the
+  reconciliation of nature and man and God is still further in the
+  future, and will be the last triumph of philosophy. During all the
+  interval the world will be a scene of warring elements; and poetry,
+  religion, and philosophy can only hold forth a promise, and give to
+  man a foretaste of ultimate victory. And in this state of things even
+  <i>their</i> assurance often <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg087"
+  id="pg087">087</a></span> falters. Faith lapses into doubt, poetry
+  becomes a wail for a lost god, and its votary exhibits, "through
+  Europe to the AEtolian shore, the pageant of his bleeding heart." The
+  optimistic faith is, as a rule, only a hope and a desire, a "Grand
+  Perhaps," which knows no defence against the critical understanding,
+  and sinks dumb when questioned. If, in the form of a religious
+  conviction, its assurance is more confident, then, too often, it
+  rests upon the treacherous foundations of authoritative ignorance,
+  which crumble into dust beneath the blows of awakened and liberated
+  reason. Nay, if by the aid of philosophy we turn our optimism into a
+  faith held by reason, a fact before which the intellect, as well as
+  the heart, worships and grows glad, it still is for most of us only a
+  general hypothesis, a mere leap to God which spurns the intermediate
+  steps, a universal without content, a bare form that lacks
+  reality.</p>
+
+  <p>Such an optimism, such a plunge into the pure blue and away from
+  facts, was Emerson's. Caroline Fox tells a story of him and Carlyle
+  which reveals this very pointedly. It seems that Carlyle once led the
+  serene philosopher through the abominations of the streets of London
+  at midnight, asking him with grim humour at every few steps, "Do you
+  believe in the devil <i>now</i>?" Emerson replied that the more he
+  saw of the English people the greater and better he thought them.
+  This little incident lays bare the limits of both these great men.
+  Where the one saw, the other was blind. To the <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg088" id="pg088">088</a></span> one there was the
+  misery and the universal mirk; to the other, the pure white beam was
+  scarcely broken. Carlyle believed in the good, beyond all doubt: he
+  fought his great battle in its strength and won, but "he was sorely
+  wounded." Emerson was Sir Galahad, blind to all but the Holy Grail,
+  his armour spotless-white, his virtue cloistered and unbreathed, his
+  race won without the dust and heat. But his optimism was too easy to
+  be satisfactory. His victory was not won in the enemy's citadel,
+  where sin sits throned amidst the chaos, but in the placid upper air
+  of poetic imagination. And, in consequence, Emerson can only convince
+  the converted; and his song is not heard in the dark, nor does it
+  cheer the wayfarer on the muddy highway, along which burthened
+  humanity meanly toils.</p>
+
+  <p>But Browning's optimism is more earnest and real than any pious
+  hope, or dogmatic belief, or benevolent theory held by a placid
+  philosopher, protected against contact with the sins and sorrows of
+  man as by an invisible garment of contemplative holiness. It is a
+  conviction which has sustained shocks of criticism and the test of
+  facts; and it therefore, both for the poet and his readers, fulfils a
+  mission beyond the reach of any easy trust in a mystic good. Its
+  power will be felt and its value recognized by those who have
+  themselves confronted the contradictions of human life and known
+  their depths.</p>
+
+  <p>No lover of Browning's poetry can miss the vigorous manliness of
+  the poet's own bearing, or fail <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg089"
+  id="pg089">089</a></span> to recognize the strength that flows from
+  his joyous, fearless personality, and the might of his intellect and
+  heart. "When British literature," said Carlyle of Scott and Cobbett,
+  "lay all puking and sprawling in Wertherism, Byronism and other
+  Sentimentalisms, nature was kind enough to send us two healthy men."
+  And he breaks out into a eulogy of mere health, of "the just balance
+  of faculties that radiates a glad light outwards, enlightening and
+  embellishing all things." But he finds it easy to account for the
+  health of these men: they had never faced the mystery of existence.
+  Such healthiness we find in Browning, although he wrote with Carlyle
+  at his side, and within earshot of the infinite wail of this moral
+  fatalist. And yet, the word health is inadequate to convey the depth
+  of the joyous meaning which the poet found in the world. His optimism
+  was not a constitutional and irreflective hopefulness, to be
+  accounted for on the ground that "the great mystery of existence was
+  not great to him: did not drive him into rocky solitudes to wrestle
+  with it for an answer, to be answered or to perish." There are,
+  indeed, certain rash and foolish persons who pretend to trace
+  Browning's optimism to his mixed descent; but there is a "pause in
+  the leading and the light" of those wiseacres, who pretend to trace
+  moral and mental characteristics to physiological antecedents. They
+  cannot quite catch a great man in the making, nor, even by the help
+  of evolution, say anything wiser about genius than that "the
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg090" id="pg090">090</a></span> wind
+  bloweth where it listeth." No doubt the poet's optimism indicates a
+  native sturdiness of head and heart. He had the invaluable endowment
+  of a pre-disposition to see the sunny side of life, and a native
+  tendency to revolt against that subjectivity, which is the root of
+  our misery in all its forms. He had little respect for the
+  <i>Welt-schmerz,</i> and can scarcely be civil to the hero of the
+  bleeding heart.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Sinning, sorrowing, despairing,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Body-ruined, spirit-wrecked&mdash;</p>
+
+      <p>Should I give my woes an airing,&mdash;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Where's one plague that claims respect?</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Have you found your life distasteful?</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">My life did, and does, smack sweet.</p>
+
+      <p>Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Mine I saved and hold complete.</p>
+
+      <p>Do your joys with age diminish?</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">When mine fail me I'll complain.</p>
+
+      <p>Must in death your daylight finish?</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">My sun sets to rise again.</p>
+      <hr />
+
+      <p>"I find earth not grey but rosy,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Heaven not grim but fair of hue.</p>
+
+      <p>Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Do I stand and stare? All's blue."<sup>A</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>At the Mermaid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 God'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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg091"
+  id="pg091">091</a></span> mind, as it did beyond a mere sentiment of
+  God'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 <i>in feeling</i> 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,&mdash;that it comes after criticism,
+  after the condemnation which Byron and Carlyle had passed, each from
+  his own point of view, on the world and on man.</p>
+
+  <p>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.
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg092" id="pg092">092</a></span> Both
+  are a judgment passed 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 <i>Sans-culotte</i> 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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Expend</p>
+
+    <p>Eternity upon its shows,</p>
+
+    <p>Flung them as freely as one rose</p>
+
+    <p>Out of a summer's opulence."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Easter Day</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But the very discovery that man is spirit, which is the source of
+  all his rights, is also an implicit <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg093" id="pg093">093</a></span> 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 <i>to eat,</i> and
+  shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not given thee? Close
+  thy Byron, open thy Goethe."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Huntsman Common Sense</p>
+
+    <p>Came to the rescue, bade prompt thwack of thong dispense</p>
+
+    <p>Quiet i' the kennel: taught that ocean might be blue,</p>
+
+    <p>And rolling and much more, and yet the soul have, too,</p>
+
+    <p>Its touch of God's own flame, which He may so expand</p>
+
+    <p>'Who measured the waters i' the hollow of His hand'</p>
+
+    <p>That ocean's self shall dry, turn dew-drop in respect</p>
+
+    <p>Of all-triumphant fire, matter with intellect</p>
+
+    <p>Once fairly matched."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, lxvii.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg094" id="pg094">094</a></span>
+  <i>Entsagung</i>, 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 <i>thou</i> shouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou
+  hadst no right to <i>be</i> 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 nobler 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 shine."</p>
+
+  <p>In such passages as these, there is far deeper pessimism than in
+  anything which Byron could experience or express. Scepticism is
+  directed by <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg095" id=
+  "pg095">095</a></span> Carlyle, not against the natural elements of
+  life&mdash;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 God'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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg096" id="pg096">096</a></span>
+  menace&mdash;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 <i>his</i> 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 God. And consequently, he can draw little strength from
+  religion; for it is only love that can cast out fear.</p>
+
+  <p>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
+  kinship. 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&mdash;not the infinite, because it is too great, not
+  the finite, because it is too little; not God, 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"&mdash;the World, Self, and God&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, these evils which reflection has revealed, and which are so
+  much deeper than those of mere sensuous <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg097" id="pg097">097</a></span> 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&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"In thine own soul, build it up again."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 God. 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, I am prepared to admit the force of this objection, and I
+  shall endeavour in the sequel to <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg098" id="pg098">098</a></span> 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,&mdash;for
+  instance, in <i>La Saisiaz, Ferishtatis Fancies</i> and the
+  <i>Parleyings</i>, Browning sought to advance definite proofs of the
+  theories which he held. He appears before us at times armed
+  <i>cap-à-pie,</i> 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 noble lie" and "the truth beneath the veil" seem no longer to
+  help. He <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg099" id=
+  "pg099">099</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;for all principles of
+  reconciliation, even those of the sciences, as long as knowledge is
+  incomplete, must be regarded as hypotheses&mdash;but also as a
+  hypothesis which he had no right to assume. It may be that in the end
+  we shall be obliged to say of him, as of so many others&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"See the sage, with the hunger for the truth,</p>
+
+    <p>And see his system that's all true, except</p>
+
+    <p>The one weak place, that's stanchioned by a lie!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg100" id="pg100">100</a></span>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>For Browning not only advanced a principle, whereby, as he
+  conceived, man might again be reconciled to the world and God, 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 illustrates 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 <i>all</i> facts; one fact, ultimately
+  irreconcilable with his hypothesis, will, he knows, destroy
+  it.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg101" id=
+  "pg101">101</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"All the same,</p>
+
+    <p>Of absolute and irretrievable black,&mdash;black's soul of
+    black</p>
+
+    <p>Beyond white's power to disintensify,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Of that I saw no sample: such may wreck</p>
+
+    <p>My life and ruin my philosophy</p>
+
+    <p>Tomorrow, doubtless."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Bean Stripe</i>&mdash;<i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He knew that, to justify God, he had to justify <i>all</i> His
+  ways to man; that if the good rules at all, it rules absolutely; and
+  that a single exception would confute his optimism.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"So, gazing up, in my youth, at love</p>
+
+    <p>As seen through power, ever above</p>
+
+    <p>All modes which make it manifest,</p>
+
+    <p>My soul brought all to a single test&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>That He, the Eternal First and Last,</p>
+
+    <p>Who, in His power, had so surpassed</p>
+
+    <p>All man conceives of what is might,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite,</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;Would prove as infinitely good;</p>
+
+    <p>Would never, (my soul understood,)</p>
+
+    <p>With power to work all love desires,</p>
+
+    <p>Bestow e'en less than man requires."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p><i>B: Christmas Eve.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"No: love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it,</p>
+
+    <p>Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it,</p>
+
+    <p>The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it,</p>
+
+    <p>Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it.</p>
+
+    <p>And I shall behold Thee, face to face,</p>
+
+    <p>O God, and in Thy light retrace</p>
+
+    <p>How in all I loved here, still wast Thou!"<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>We can scarcely miss the emphasis of the poet's own conviction in
+  these passages, or in the assertion that,&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"The acknowledgment of God in Christ</p>
+
+    <p>Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee</p><span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg102" id="pg102">102</a></span>
+
+    <p>All questions in the earth and out of it,</p>
+
+    <p>And has so far advanced thee to be wise."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Consequently, there is a defiant and aggressive element in his
+  attitude. 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 passion, 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&mdash;in malice, cruelty, ignorance,
+  brutishness, meanness, the irrational perversity of a corrupt
+  disposition, and the subtleties of philosophic and aesthetic
+  falsehood&mdash;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 God'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 transmuting," and that there is nought in the
+  world.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg103" id=
+  "pg103">103</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"But, touched aright, prompt yields each particle its tongue</p>
+
+    <p>Of elemental flame&mdash;no matter whence flame sprung,</p>
+
+    <p>From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>All we want is&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"The power to make them burn, express</p>
+
+    <p>What lights and warms henceforth, leaves only ash behind,</p>
+
+    <p>Howe'er the chance."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He had Pompilia's faith.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"And still, as the day wore, the trouble grew,</p>
+
+    <p>Whereby I guessed there would be born a star."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He goes forth in the might of his faith in the power of good, as
+  if he wished once for all to try the resources of evil at their
+  uttermost, and pass upon it a complete and final condemnation. With
+  this view, he seeks evil in its own haunts. He creates Guido, the
+  subtlest and most powerful compound of vice in our
+  literature&mdash;except Iago, perhaps&mdash;merely in order that we
+  may see evil at its worst; and he places him in an environment suited
+  to his nature, as if he was carrying out an <i>experimentum
+  crucis.</i> The</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Midmost blotch of black</p>
+
+    <p>Discernible in the group of clustered crimes</p>
+
+    <p>Huddling together in the cave they call</p>
+
+    <p>Their palace."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 869-872.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Beside him are his brothers, each with his own "tint of hell"; his
+  mistress, on whose face even Pompilia saw the glow of the nether pit
+  "flash and fade"; and his mother&mdash;</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg104" id="pg104">104</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"The gaunt grey nightmare in the furthest smoke,</p>
+
+    <p>The hag that gave these three abortions birth,</p>
+
+    <p>Unmotherly mother and unwomanly</p>
+
+    <p>Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame,</p>
+
+    <p>Womanliness to loathing"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 911-915.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Such "denizens o' the cave now cluster round Pompilia and heat the
+  furnace sevenfold." While she</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Sent prayer like incense up</p>
+
+    <p>To God the strong, God the beneficent,</p>
+
+    <p>God ever mindful in all strife and strait,</p>
+
+    <p>Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme,</p>
+
+    <p>Till at the last He puts forth might and saves."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>Pompilia</i>,
+    1384-1388.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In these lines we feel the poet's purpose, constant throughout the
+  whole poem. We know all the while that with him at our side we can
+  travel safely through the depths of the Inferno&mdash;for the flames
+  bend back from him; and it is only what we expect as the result of it
+  all, that there should come</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"A bolt from heaven to cleave roof and clear place,</p>
+
+    <p class="i10">. . . . then flood</p>
+
+    <p>And purify the scene with outside day&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Which yet, in the absolutest drench of dark,</p>
+
+    <p>Ne'er wants its witness, some stray beauty-beam</p>
+
+    <p>To the despair of hell."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    996-1003.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The superabundant strength of Browning's conviction in the
+  supremacy of the good, which led him in <i>The Ring and the Book</i>
+  to depict criminals at their worst, forced him later on in his life
+  to exhibit evil in another form. The real meaning <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg105" id="pg105">105</a></span> and value of such
+  poems as <i>Fifine at the Fair, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Red
+  Cotton Nightcap Country, Ferishtah's Francies</i>, and others, can
+  only be determined by a careful and complete analysis of each of
+  them. But they have one characteristic so prominent, and so new in
+  poetry, that the most careless reader cannot fail to detect it.
+  Action and dramatic treatment give place to a discussion which is
+  metaphysical; instead of the conflict of motives within a character,
+  the stress and strain of passion and will in collision with
+  circumstances, there is reflection on action after it has passed, and
+  the conflict of subtle arguments on the ethical value of motives and
+  ways of conduct, which the ordinary moral consciousness condemns
+  without hesitation. All agree that these poems represent a new
+  departure in poetry, and some consider that in them the poet, in thus
+  dealing with metaphysical abstractions, has overleapt the boundaries
+  of the poetic art. To such critics, this later period seems the
+  period of his decadence, in which the casuistical tendencies, which
+  had already appeared in <i>Bishop Blougram's Apology, Mr. Sludge the
+  Medium</i>, and other poems, have overwhelmed his art, and his
+  intellect, in its pride of strength, has grown wanton. <i>Fifine at
+  the Fair is</i> said to be "a defence of inconstancy, or of the right
+  of experiment in love." Its hero, who is "a modern gentleman, a
+  refined, cultured, musical, artistic and philosophic person, of high
+  attainments, lofty aspirations, strong emotions, and capricious
+  will," produces arguments "wide in range, of profound <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg106" id="pg106">106</a></span> significance and
+  infinite ingenuity," to defend and justify immoral intercourse with a
+  gipsy trull. The poem consists of the speculations of a libertine,
+  who coerces into his service truth and sophistry, and "a
+  superabounding wealth of thought and imagery," and with no further
+  purpose on the poet's part than the dramatic delineation of
+  character. <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i> is spoken of in a
+  similar manner as the justification, by reference to the deepest
+  principles of morality, of compromise, hypocrisy, lying, and a
+  selfishness that betrays every cause to the individual's meanest
+  welfare. The object of the poet is "by no means to prove black white,
+  or white black, or to make the worse appear the better reason, but to
+  bring a seeming monster and perplexing anomaly under the common laws
+  of nature, by showing how it has grown to be what it is, and how it
+  can with more or less self-delusion reconcile itself to itself."</p>
+
+  <p>I am not able to accept this as a complete explanation of the
+  intention of the poet, except with reference to <i>Prince
+  Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i> The <i>Prince</i> is a psychological study,
+  like <i>Mr. Sludge the Medium,</i> and <i>Bishop Blougram</i>. No
+  doubt he had the interest of a dramatist in the hero of <i>Fifine at
+  the Fair</i> and in the hero of <i>Red Cotton Nightcap Country;</i>
+  but, in these poems, his dramatic interest is itself determined by an
+  ethical purpose, which is equally profound. His meeting with the
+  gipsy at Pornic, and the spectacle of her unscrupulous audacity in
+  vice, not only "sent his fancy roaming," but opened <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg107" id="pg107">107</a></span> out before him
+  the fundamental problems of life. What I would find, therefore, in
+  <i>Fifine at the Fair</i> is not the casuistic defence of an artistic
+  and speculative libertine, but an earnest attempt on the part of the
+  poet to prove,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"That, through the outward sign, the inward grace allures,</p>
+
+    <p>And sparks from heaven transpierce earth's coarsest
+    covertures,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>All by demonstrating the value of Fifine."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, xxviii.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Within his scheme of the universal good he seeks to find a place
+  even for this gipsy creature, who traffics "in just what we most
+  pique us that we keep." Having, in the <i>Ring and the Book</i>,
+  challenged evil at its worst as it manifests itself practically in
+  concrete characters and external action, and having wrung from it the
+  victory of the good, in <i>Fifine</i> and in his other later poems he
+  meets it again in the region of dialectic. In this sphere of
+  metaphysical ethics, evil has assumed a more dangerous form,
+  especially for an artist. His optimistic faith has driven the poet
+  into a realm into which poetry never ventured before. His battle is
+  now, not with flesh and blood, but with the subtler powers of
+  darkness grown vocal and argumentative, and threatening to turn the
+  poet's faith in good into a defence of immorality, and to justify the
+  worst evil by what is highest of all. Having indicated in outward
+  fact "the need," as well as the "transiency of sin and death," he
+  seeks here to prove that need, and seems, thereby, to degrade the
+  highest truth of religion into a defence of the worst
+  wickedness.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg108" id=
+  "pg108">108</a></span>
+
+  <p>No doubt the result is sufficiently repulsive to the abstract
+  moralist, who is apt to find in <i>Fifine</i> nothing but a
+  casuistical and shameless justification of evil, which is blasphemy
+  against goodness itself. We are made to "discover," for instance,
+  that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"There was just</p>
+
+    <p>Enough and not too much of hate, love, greed and lust,</p>
+
+    <p>Could one discerningly but hold the balance, shift</p>
+
+    <p>The weight from scale to scale, do justice to the drift</p>
+
+    <p>Of nature, and explain the glories by the shames</p>
+
+    <p>Mixed up in man, one stuff miscalled by different names."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>We are told that&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Force, guile were arms which earned</p>
+
+    <p>My praise, not blame at all."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, cviii.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Confronted with such utterances as these, it is only natural that,
+  rather than entangle the poet in them, we should regard them as the
+  sophistries of a philosophical Don Juan, powerful enough, under the
+  stress of self-defence, to confuse the distinctions of right and
+  wrong. But, as we shall try to show in the next chapter, such an
+  apparent justification of evil cannot be avoided by a reflective
+  optimist; and it is implicitly contained even in those religious
+  utterances of <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra, Christmas Eve</i>, and <i>A Death in
+  the Desert</i>, with which we not only identify the poet but
+  ourselves, in so far as we share his faith that</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg109" id="pg109">109</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"God's in His heaven,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>All's right with the world."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The poet had far too much speculative acumen to be ignorant of
+  this, and too much boldness and strength of conviction in the might
+  of the good, to refuse to confront the issues that sprang from it. In
+  his later poems, as in his earlier ones, he is endeavouring to
+  justify the ways of God to man; and the difficulties which surround
+  him are not those of a casuist, but the stubborn questionings of a
+  spirit, whose religious faith is thoroughly earnest and fearless. To
+  a spirit so loyal to the truth, and so bold to follow its leading,
+  the suppression of such problems is impossible; and, consequently, it
+  was inevitable that he should use the whole strength of his dialectic
+  to try those fundamental principles, on which the moral life of man
+  is based. And it is this, I believe, which we find in <i>Fifine</i>,
+  as in <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i> and the <i>Parleyings</i>; not an
+  exhibition of the argumentative subtlety of a mind whose strength has
+  become lawless, and which spends itself in intellectual gymnastics,
+  that have no place within the realm of either the beautiful or the
+  true.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg110" id=
+  "pg110">110</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch05" id="ch05">CHAPTER V.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>OPTIMISM AND ETHICS: THEIR CONTRADICTION.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,</p>
+
+    <p>Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky</p>
+
+    <p>Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull</p>
+
+    <p>Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>"But most it is presumption in us, when</p>
+
+    <p>The help of heaven we count the act of men."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>All's Well that Ends Well</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>I have tried to show that one of the ruling conceptions of
+  Browning's view of life is that the Good is absolute, and that it
+  reveals itself in all the events of human life. By means of this
+  conception, he endeavoured to bring together the elements which had
+  fallen asunder in the sensational and moral pessimism of Byron and
+  Carlyle. In other words, through the re-interpreting power which lies
+  in this fundamental thought when it is soberly held and fearlessly
+  applied, he sought to reconcile man with the world and with God, and
+  thereby with himself. And the governing motive, whether the conscious
+  motive or not, of Browning's poetry, the secret impulse which led him
+  to dramatise the conflicts and antagonisms of human life, was the
+  necessity of finding in them evidence of the presence of this
+  absolute Good.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg111" id=
+  "pg111">111</a></span>
+
+  <p>Browning's optimism was deep and comprehensive enough to reject
+  all compromise. His faith in the good seemed to rise with the demands
+  that were made upon it by the misery and wickedness of man, and the
+  apparently purposeless waste of life and its resources. There was in
+  it a deliberate earnestness which led him to grapple, not only with
+  the concrete difficulties of individual life, but with those also
+  that spring from reflection and theory.</p>
+
+  <p>The test of a philosophic optimism, as of any optimism which is
+  more than a pious sentiment, must finally lie in its power to reveal
+  the presence of the good in actual individual evils. But there are
+  difficulties still nearer than those presented by concrete facts,
+  difficulties arising out of the very suggestion that evil is a form
+  of good. Such speculative difficulties must be met by a reflective
+  mind, before it can follow out the application of an optimistic
+  theory to particular facts. Now, Browning's creed, at least as he
+  held it in his later years, was not merely the allowable exaggeration
+  of an ecstatic religious sentiment, the impassioned conviction of a
+  God-intoxicated man. It was deliberately presented as a solution of
+  moral problems, and was intended to serve as a theory of the
+  spiritual nature of things. It is, therefore, justly open to the same
+  kind of criticism as that to which a philosophic doctrine is exposed.
+  The poet deprived himself of the refuge, legitimate enough to the
+  intuitive method of art, when, in his later works, he not only
+  offered a dramatic solution of the problem of life, but <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg112" id="pg112">112</a></span> definitely
+  attempted to meet the difficulties of speculative ethics.</p>
+
+  <p>In this chapter I shall point out some of these difficulties, and
+  then proceed to show how the poet proposed to solve them.</p>
+
+  <p>A thorough-going optimism, in that it subdues all things to the
+  idea of the supreme Good, and denies to evil the right even to
+  dispute the absoluteness of its sway, naturally seems to imply a
+  pantheistic theory of the world. And Browning's insistence on the
+  presence of the highest in all things may easily be regarded as a
+  mere revival of the oldest and crudest attempts at finding their
+  unity in God. For if <i>all</i>, as he says, is for the best, there
+  seems to be no room left for the differences apparent in the world,
+  and the variety which gives it beauty and worth. Particular
+  existences would seem to be illusory and evanescent phenomena, the
+  creations of human imagination, itself a delusive appearance. The
+  infinite, on this view, stands over against the finite, and it
+  overpowers and consumes it; and the optimism, implied in the phrase
+  that "God is all," turns at once into a pessimism. For, as soon as we
+  inquire into the meaning of this "all," we find that it is only a
+  negation of everything we can know or be. Such a pantheism as this is
+  self-contradictory; for, while seeming to level all things upwards to
+  a manifestation of the divine, it really levels all downwards to the
+  level of mere unqualified being, a stagnant and empty unknowable. It
+  leaves only a choice <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg113" id=
+  "pg113">113</a></span> between akosmism and atheism, and, at the same
+  time, it makes each of the alternatives impossible. For, in
+  explaining the world it abolishes it, and in abolishing the world it
+  empties itself of all signification; so that the Godhood which it
+  attempts to establish throughout the whole realm of being, is found
+  to mean nothing. "It is the night, in which all cows are black."</p>
+
+  <p>The optimistic creed, which the poet strove to teach, must,
+  therefore, not only establish the immanence of God, but show in some
+  way how such immanence is consistent with the existence of particular
+  things. His doctrine that there is no failure, or folly, or
+  wickedness, or misery, but conceals within it, at its heart, a divine
+  element; that there is no incident in human history which is not a
+  pulsation of the life of the highest, and which has not its place in
+  a scheme of universal good, must leave room for the moral life of
+  man, and all the risks which morality brings with it. Otherwise,
+  optimism is impossible. For a God who, in filling the universe with
+  His presence, encroaches on the freedom and extinguishes the
+  independence of man, precludes the possibility of all that is best
+  for man&mdash;namely, moral achievement. Life, deprived of its moral
+  purpose, is worthless to the poet, and so, in consequence, is all
+  that exists in order to maintain that life. Optimism and ethics seem
+  thus to come into immediate collision. The former, finding the
+  presence of God in all things, seems to leave no room for man; and
+  the latter seems to set man to <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg114"
+  id="pg114">114</a></span> work out his own destiny in solitude, and
+  to give him supreme and absolute authority over his own life; so that
+  any character which he forms, be it good or bad, is entirely the
+  product of his own activity. So far as his life is culpable or
+  praiseworthy, in other words, so far as we pass any moral judgment
+  upon it, we necessarily think of it as the revelation of a self, that
+  is, of an independent will, which cannot divide its responsibility.
+  There may be, and indeed there always is for every individual, a
+  hereditary predisposition and a soliciting environment, tendencies
+  which are his inheritance from a remote past, and which rise to the
+  surface in his own life; in other words, the life of the individual
+  is always led within the larger sweep of the life of humanity. He is
+  part of a whole, and has his place fixed, and his function
+  predetermined, by a power which is greater than his own. But, if we
+  are to call him good or evil, if he is to aspire and repent and
+  strive, in a word, if he is to have any <i>moral</i> character, he
+  cannot be merely a part of a system; there must be something within
+  him which is superior to circumstances, and which makes him master of
+  his own fate. His natural history may begin with the grey dawn of
+  primal being, but his moral history begins with himself, from the
+  time when he first reacted upon the world in which he is placed, and
+  transformed his natural relations into will and character. For who
+  can be responsible for what he did not will? What could a moral
+  imperative mean, what could an "ought" signify, to a being who was
+  only a <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg115" id=
+  "pg115">115</a></span> temporary embodiment of forces, who are prior
+  to, and independent of himself? It would seem, therefore, as if
+  morality were irreconcilable with optimism. The moral life of man
+  cannot be the manifestation of a divine benevolence whose purpose is
+  necessary; it is a trust laid upon himself, which he may either
+  violate or keep. It surpasses divine goodness, "tho' matched with
+  equal power" to <i>make</i> man good, as it has made the flowers
+  beautiful. From this point of view, spiritual attainment, whether
+  intellectual or moral, is man's own, a spontaneous product. Just as
+  God is conceived as all in all in the universe, so man is all in all
+  within the sphere of duty; for the kingdom of heaven is within. In
+  both cases alike, there is absolute exclusion of external
+  interference.</p>
+
+  <p>For this reason, it has often seemed both to philosophers and
+  theologians, as if the world were too confined to hold within it both
+  God and man. In the East, the consciousness of the infinite seemed at
+  times to leave no room for the finite; and in the West, where the
+  consciousness of the finite and interest therein is strongest, and
+  man strives and aspires, a Deism arose which set God at a distance,
+  and allowed Him to interfere in the fate of man only by a benevolent
+  miracle. Nor is this collision of pantheism and freedom, nay of
+  religion and morality, confined to the theoretical region. This
+  difficulty is not merely the punishment of an over-bold and
+  over-ambitious philosophy, which pries too curiously into the mystery
+  of being. It lies <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg116" id=
+  "pg116">116</a></span> at the very threshold of all reflection on the
+  facts of the moral life. Even children feel the mystery of God's
+  permitting sin, and embarrass their helpless parents with the
+  contradiction between absolute benevolence and the miseries and
+  cruelties of life. "A vain interminable controversy," says
+  Teufels-dröckh, "which arises in every soul since the beginning of
+  the world: and in every soul, that would pass from idle suffering
+  into actual endeavouring, must be put an end to. The most, in our own
+  time, have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough Suppression
+  of this controversy: to a few Solution of it is indispensable."</p>
+
+  <p>Solution, and not Suppression, is what Browning sought; he did, in
+  fact, propound a solution, which, whether finally satisfactory or
+  not, at least carries us beyond the easy compromises of ordinary
+  religious and ethical teaching. He does not deny the universality of
+  God's beneficence or power, and divide the realm of being between Him
+  and the adversary: nor, on the other hand, does he limit man's
+  freedom, and stultify ethics by extracting the sting of reality from
+  sin. To limit God, he knew, was to deny Him; and, whatever the
+  difficulties he felt in regarding the absolute Spirit as realising
+  itself in man, he could not be content to reduce man into a temporary
+  phantom, an evanescent embodiment of "spiritual" or natural forces,
+  that take a fleeting form in him as they pursue their onward way.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning held with equal tenacity to the idea of a <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg117" id="pg117">117</a></span> universal
+  benevolent order, and to the idea of the moral freedom of man within
+  it. He was driven in opposite directions by two beliefs, both of
+  which he knew to be essential to the life of man as spirit, and both
+  of which he illustrates throughout his poems with an endless variety
+  of poetic expression. He endeavoured to find God in man and still to
+  leave man free. His optimistic faith sought reconciliation with
+  morality. The vigour of his ethical doctrine is as pre-eminent, as
+  the fulness of his conviction of the absolute sway of the Good. Side
+  by side with his doctrine that there is no failure, no wretchedness
+  of corruption that does not conceal within it a germ of goodness, is
+  his sense of the evil of sin, of the infinite earnestness of man's
+  moral warfare, and of the surpassing magnitude of the issues at stake
+  for each individual soul. So powerful is his interest in man as a
+  moral agent, that he sees nought else in the world of any deep
+  concern. "My stress lay," he said in his preface to <i>Sordello</i>
+  (1863), "on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else
+  is worth study. I, at least, always thought so&mdash;you, with many
+  known and unknown to me, think so&mdash;others may one day think so."
+  And this development of a soul is not at any time regarded by the
+  poet as a peaceful process, like the growth of a plant or animal.
+  Although he thinks of the life of man as the gradual realization of a
+  divine purpose within him, he does not suppose it to take place in
+  obedience to a tranquil necessity. Man advances morally by fighting
+  his way inch by inch, and he gains nothing except <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg118" id="pg118">118</a></span> through conflict.
+  He does not become good as the plant grows into maturity. "The
+  kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by
+  force."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"No, when the fight begins within himself,</p>
+
+    <p>A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head,</p>
+
+    <p>Satan looks up between his feet,&mdash;both tug&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul awakes</p>
+
+    <p>And grows. Prolong that battle through this life!</p>
+
+    <p>Never leave growing till the life to come."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Bishop Blougram</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Man is no idle spectator of the conflict of the forces of right
+  and wrong; Browning never loses the individual in the throng, or
+  sinks him into his age or race. And although the poet ever bears
+  within him the certainty of victory for the good, he calls his
+  fellows to the fight as if the fate of all hung on the valour of
+  each. The struggle is always personal, individual like the duels of
+  the Homeric heroes.</p>
+
+  <p>It is under the guise of warfare that morality always presents
+  itself to Browning. It is not a mere equilibrium of
+  qualities&mdash;the measured, self-contained, statuesque ethics of
+  the Greeks, nor the asceticism and self-restraint of Puritanism, nor
+  the peaceful evolution of Goethe's artistic morality: it is valour in
+  the battle of life. His code contains no negative commandments, and
+  no limitations; but he bids each man let out all the power that is
+  within him, and throw himself upon life with the whole energy of his
+  being. It is better even to seek evil with one's whole mind, than to
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg119" id="pg119">119</a></span> be
+  lukewarm in goodness. Whether you seek good or evil, and play for the
+  counter or the coin, stake it boldly!</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Let a man contend to the uttermost</p>
+
+      <p>For his life's set prize, be it what it will!</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"The counter our lovers staked was lost</p>
+
+      <p>As surely as if it were lawful coin:</p>
+
+      <p>And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin</p>
+
+      <p>Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.</p>
+
+      <p>You, of the virtue (we issue join)</p>
+
+      <p>How strive you?&mdash;'<i>De te fabula!</i>'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p><i>A: The Statue and the Bust.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Indifference and spiritual lassitude are, to the poet, the worst
+  of sins. "Go!" says the Pope to Pompilia's pseudo-parents,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Never again elude the choice of tints!</p>
+
+    <p>White shall not neutralize the black, nor good</p>
+
+    <p>Compensate bad in man, absolve him so:</p>
+
+    <p>Life's business being just the terrible choice."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1235-1238.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In all the greater characters of <i>The Ring and the Book</i>,
+  this intensity of vigour in good and evil flashes out upon us. Even
+  Pompilia, the most gentle of all his creations, at the first
+  prompting of the instinct of motherhood, rises to the law demanding
+  resistance, and casts off the old passivity.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Dutiful to the foolish parents first,</p>
+
+    <p>Submissive next to the bad husband,&mdash;nay,</p>
+
+    <p>Tolerant of those meaner miserable</p>
+
+    <p>That did his hests, eked out the dole of pain ";<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>., 1052-1055.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg120" id="pg120">120</a></span>
+
+  <p>she is found</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Sublime in new impatience with the foe."</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"I did for once see right, do right, give tongue</p>
+
+      <p>The adequate protest: for a worm must turn</p>
+
+      <p>If it would have its wrong observed by God.</p>
+
+      <p>I did spring up, attempt to thrust aside</p>
+
+      <p>That ice-block 'twixt the sun and me, lay low</p>
+
+      <p>The neutralizer of all good and truth."<sup>A</sup></p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Yet, shame thus rank and patent, I struck, bare,</p>
+
+      <p>At foe from head to foot in magic mail,</p>
+
+      <p>And off it withered, cobweb armoury</p>
+
+      <p>Against the lightning! 'Twas truth singed the lies</p>
+
+      <p>And saved me."<sup>B</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;Pompilia</i>, 1591-1596.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>., 1637-1641.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Beneath the mature wisdom of the Pope, amidst the ashes of old
+  age, there sleeps the same fire. He is as truly a warrior priest as
+  Caponsacchi himself, and his matured experience only muffles his
+  vigour. Wearied with his life-long labour, we see him gather himself
+  together "in God's name," to do His will on earth once more with
+  concentrated might.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"I smite</p>
+
+    <p>With my whole strength once more, ere end my part,</p>
+
+    <p>Ending, so far as man may, this offence."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1958-1960.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Nor, spite of doubts, the promptings of mercy, the friends
+  plucking his sleeve to stay his arm, does he fear "to handle a lie
+  roughly"; or shrink from sending the criminal to his account, though
+  it be but one day before he himself is called before <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg121" id="pg121">121</a></span> the judgment
+  seat. The same energy, the same spirit of bold conflict, animates
+  Guido's adoption of evil for his good. At all but the last moment of
+  his life of monstrous crime, just before he hears the echo of the
+  feet of the priests, who descend the stair to lead him to his death,
+  "he repeats his evil deed in will."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Nor is it in me to unhate my hates,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>I use up my last strength to strike once more</p>
+
+    <p>Old Pietro in the wine-house-gossip-face,</p>
+
+    <p>To trample underfoot the whine and wile</p>
+
+    <p>Of beast Violante,&mdash;and I grow one gorge</p>
+
+    <p>To loathingly reject Pompilia's pale</p>
+
+    <p>Poison my hasty hunger took for food."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>Guido</i>,
+    2400-2406.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Saint Eldobert&mdash;I much approve his mode;</p>
+
+    <p>With sinner Vertgalant I sympathize;</p>
+
+    <p>But histrionic Sganarelle, who prompts</p>
+
+    <p>While pulling back, refuses yet concedes,&mdash;</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>"Surely, one should bid pack that mountebank!"</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg122" id="pg122">122</a></span>
+
+  <p>In him, even</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"thickheads ought to recognize</p>
+
+    <p>The Devil, that old stager, at his trick</p>
+
+    <p>Of general utility, who leads</p>
+
+    <p>Downward, perhaps, but fiddles all the way!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Red Cotton Nightcap Country.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 give <i>himself</i> to
+  anything, wreak <i>himself</i> on 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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Each lie</p>
+
+    <p>Redounded to the praise of man, was victory</p>
+
+    <p>Man's nature had both right to get and might to gain." <sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, cxxviii.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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
+  disappointment <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg123" id=
+  "pg123">123</a></span> of utter failure; the sinner is thrown back
+  upon himself empty-handed. He finds himself subjected, even when
+  sinning,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"To the reign</p>
+
+    <p>Of other quite as real a nature, that saw fit</p>
+
+    <p>To have its way with man, not man his way with it."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, cxxviii.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Poor pabulum for pride when the first love is found</p>
+
+    <p>Last also! and, so far from realizing gain,</p>
+
+    <p>Each step aside just proves divergency in vain.</p>
+
+    <p>The wanderer brings home no profit from his quest</p>
+
+    <p>Beyond the sad surmise that keeping house were best</p>
+
+    <p>Could life begin anew."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>. cxxix.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 of <i>Red Cotton Nightcap Country</i>. The
+  sordid hero of the poem is gradually driven to choose between the
+  alternatives. The best of his luck, the poet thinks, was the</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Rough but wholesome shock,</p>
+
+    <p>An accident which comes to kill or cure,</p>
+
+    <p>A jerk which mends a dislocated joint!"<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Red Cotton Nightcap Country</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The continuance of disguise and subterfuge, and the retention of
+  "the first falsehood," are ultimately made impossible to Léonce
+  Miranda:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Thus by a rude in seeming&mdash;rightlier judged</p>
+
+    <p>Beneficent surprise, publicity</p>
+
+    <p>Stopped further fear and trembling, and what tale</p>
+
+    <p>Cowardice thinks a covert: one bold splash</p>
+
+    <p>Into the mid-shame, and the shiver ends,</p>
+
+    <p>Though cramp and drowning may begin perhaps."<sup>D</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>D: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg124" id="pg124">124</a></span>
+
+  <p>In the same spirit he finds Miranda's suicidal leap the best deed
+  possible for <i>him</i>.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"'Mad!' 'No! sane, I say.</p>
+
+    <p>Such being the conditions of his life,</p>
+
+    <p>Such end of life was not irrational.</p>
+
+    <p>Hold a belief, you only half-believe,</p>
+
+    <p>With all-momentous issues either way,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>And I advise you imitate this leap,</p>
+
+    <p>Put faith to proof, be cured or killed at once!'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Red Cotton Nightcap Country</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"I felt quite sure that God had set</p>
+
+    <p>Himself to Satan; who would spend</p>
+
+    <p>A minute's mistrust on the end?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Count Gismond</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg125" id=
+  "pg125">125</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"We shall march prospering,&mdash;not thro' his presence;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Songs may inspirit us,&mdash;not from his lyre;</p>
+
+    <p>Deeds will be done,&mdash;while he boasts his quiescence,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:</p>
+
+    <p><i>Blot out his name</i>, then, record one lost soul more,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">One task more declined, one more footpath untrod,</p>
+
+    <p>One more devil's triumph and sorrow for angels,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">One wrong more to man, one more insult to
+    God!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The List Leader</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 '<i>Pecca fortiter</i>' 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</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Never doubted clouds would break,</p>
+
+    <p>Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would
+    triumph,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight
+    better,</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">Sleep to wake."</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg126" id="pg126">126</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"No, at noon-day in the bustle of man's work-time</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Greet the unseen with a cheer!</p>
+
+    <p>Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">'Strive and thrive'! cry 'Speed!&mdash;fight on, fare
+    ever</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">There as here.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: Epilogue to <i>Asolande</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"My own hope is, a sun will pierce</p>
+
+    <p>The thickest cloud earth ever stretched;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">That, after Last, returns the First,</p>
+
+    <p>Though a wide compass round be fetched;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">That what began best, can't end worst.</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Apparent Failure</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is the poet himself and not merely the sophistic aesthete of
+  <i>Fifine</i> that speaks:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Partake my confidence! No creature's made so mean</p>
+
+    <p>But that, some way, it boasts, could we investigate,</p>
+
+    <p>Its supreme worth: fulfils, by ordinance of
+    fate,</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg127" id=
+    "pg127">127</a></span>
+
+    <p>Its momentary task, gets glory all its own,</p>
+
+    <p>Tastes triumph in the world, pre-eminent, alone."</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>"As firm is my belief, quick sense perceives the same</p>
+
+    <p>Self-vindicating flash illustrate every man</p>
+
+    <p>And woman of our mass, and prove, throughout the plan,</p>
+
+    <p>No detail but, in place allotted it, was prime</p>
+
+    <p>And perfect." <sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, xxix.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But if so,&mdash;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&mdash;but an illusion all the same?</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"What but the weakness in a Faith supplies</p>
+
+    <p>The incentive to humanity, no strength</p>
+
+    <p>Absolute, irresistible comforts.</p>
+
+    <p>How can man love but what he yearns to help?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1649-1652.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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. It <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg128" id="pg128">128</a></span> is easy for the
+  religious conscience to admit with Pippa that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"All service ranks the same with God&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>With God, whose puppets, best and worst,</p>
+
+    <p>Are we: there is no last or first."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Pippa Passes</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"God's in His heaven&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>All's right with the world!"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 realization
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg129" id="pg129">129</a></span> of 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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?</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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"&mdash;<i>only</i> "on <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg130"
+  id="pg130">130</a></span> the 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"This doctrine, which one healthy view of things,</p>
+
+    <p>One sane sight of the general ordinance&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Nature,&mdash;and its particular object,&mdash;man,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Which one mere eyecast at the character</p>
+
+    <p>Of Who made these and gave man sense to boot,</p>
+
+    <p>Had dissipated once and evermore,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>This doctrine I have dosed our flock withal.</p>
+
+    <p>Why? Because none believed it."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Inn Album</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"However near I stand in His regard,</p>
+
+    <p>So much the nearer had I stood by steps</p>
+
+    <p>Offered the feet which rashly spurned their help.</p>
+
+    <p>That I call Hell; why further punishment?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Camel-Driver.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 towards
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg131" id="pg131">131</a></span> the
+  chaos, which is lower then created existence. He observes him</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Not to die so much as slide out of life,</p>
+
+    <p>Pushed by the general horror and common hate</p>
+
+    <p>Low, lower,&mdash;left o' the very ledge of things,</p>
+
+    <p>I seem to see him catch convulsively,</p>
+
+    <p>One by one at all honest forms of life,</p>
+
+    <p>At reason, order, decency and use,</p>
+
+    <p>To cramp him and get foothold by at least;</p>
+
+    <p>And still they disengage them from <i>his</i> clutch.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>"And thus I see him slowly and surely edged</p>
+
+    <p>Off all the table-land whence life upsprings</p>
+
+    <p>Aspiring to be immortality."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There he loses him in the loneliness, silence and dusk&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"At the horizontal line, creation's verge.</p>
+
+    <p>From what just is to absolute nothingness."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;Giuseppe Caponsacchi</i>,
+    1911-1931.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>
+    "'Abate,&mdash;Cardinal,&mdash;Christ,&mdash;Maria,&mdash;God&mdash;'</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"and then the light breaks through the blackest gloom:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"'Pompilia! will you let them murder me?'</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg132" id="pg132">132</a></span>
+
+  <p>"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."</p>
+
+  <p>But even beyond this hope, which is the last for most men, the
+  Pope had still another.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Else I avert my face, nor follow him</p>
+
+    <p>Into that sad obscure sequestered state</p>
+
+    <p>Where God unmakes but to remake the soul</p>
+
+    <p>He else made first in vain: <i>which must not be</i>."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 2129-2132.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"O lover of my life, O soldier-saint,</p>
+
+    <p>No work begun shall ever pause for death!</p>
+
+    <p>Love will be helpful to me more and more</p>
+
+    <p>I' the coming course, the new path I must tread,</p>
+
+    <p>My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Seek&mdash;Pompilia</i>, 1786-1790.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;to wit, that every soul shall learn the lesson
+  of goodness, and reflect the devine life in desire, intelligence, and
+  will.</p>
+
+  <p>Equally emphatic, on some sides at least, is Browning's rejection
+  of those compromises, with which the one-sided religious
+  consciousness threatens the existence <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg133" id="pg133">133</a></span> of 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. <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i> bids
+  us feel</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay";</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and his prayer is,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"So, take and use Thy work:</p>
+
+    <p>Amend what flaws may lurk,</p>
+
+    <p>What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!</p>
+
+    <p>My times be in Thy hand!</p>
+
+    <p>Perfect the cup as planned!</p>
+
+    <p>Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;"Have you the will!"</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"For a worm must turn</p>
+
+    <p>If it would have its wrong observed by God."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;Pompilia,</i> 1592-1593.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg134" id="pg134">134</a></span>
+
+  <p>The root of Browning's joy is in the need of progress towards an
+  infinitely high goal. He rejoices</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"that man is hurled</p>
+
+    <p>From change to change unceasingly,</p>
+
+    <p>His soul's wings never furled."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Then, welcome each rebuff</p>
+
+    <p>That turns earth's smoothness rough,</p>
+
+    <p>Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!</p>
+
+    <p>Be our joys three-parts pain!</p>
+
+    <p>Strive, and hold cheap the strain;</p>
+
+    <p>Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the
+    throe!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Other heights in other lives, God willing."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Death is the summing up of this life's meaning, stored strength
+  for new adventure.</p>
+
+  <p>"The future I may face now I have proved the past;" and, in view
+  of it, Browning is</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Fearless and unperplexed</p>
+
+    <p>When I wage battle next,</p>
+
+    <p>What weapons to select, what armour to indue."</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg135" id="pg135">135</a></span>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Strive and Thrive! cry 'Speed,' fight on, fare ever</p>
+
+    <p>There as here,"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>are the last words which came from his pen.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 achievement <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg136" id="pg136">136</a></span> within 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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."</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg137" id="pg137">137</a></span>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>This is well illustrated in Browning's account of Caponsacchi;
+  from the time when Pompilia's smile first "glowed" upon him, and set
+  him&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Thinking how my life</p>
+
+    <p>Had shaken under me&mdash;broken short indeed</p>
+
+    <p>And showed the gap 'twixt what is, what should be&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>And into what abysm the soul may slip"&mdash;<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>Giuseppe
+    Caponsacchi</i>, 485-488.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"To have to do with nothing but the true,</p>
+
+    <p>The good, the eternal&mdash;and these, not alone</p>
+
+    <p>In the main current of the general life,</p>
+
+    <p>But small experiences of every day,</p>
+
+    <p>Concerns of the particular hearth and home:</p>
+
+    <p>To learn not only by a comet's rush</p>
+
+    <p>But a rose's birth&mdash;not by the grandeur, God,</p>
+
+    <p>But the comfort, Christ. <i>All this</i> how <i>far away</i>
+    /</p>
+
+    <p>Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream!"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid.</i> 2089-2097.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>So illimitably beyond his strength is such a life, that he finds
+  himself like the drudging student who</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Trims his lamp,</p>
+
+    <p>Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place</p><span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg138" id="pg138">138</a></span>
+
+    <p>Of Roman, Grecian; draws the patched gown close,</p>
+
+    <p>Dreams, 'Thus should I fight, save or rule the
+    world!'&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes</p>
+
+    <p>To the old solitary nothingness."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>Giuseppe
+    Caponsacchi</i>, 2098-2103.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"O great, just, good God! Miserable Me!"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 short
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg139" id="pg139">139</a></span> at
+  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" <i>must</i> stand above <i>all</i> human
+  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?</p>
+
+  <p>"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?</p>
+
+  <p>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. <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg140" id="pg140">140</a></span> It must be an
+  idea <i>of</i> something 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&mdash;an ideal
+  which is a valid criterion&mdash;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,&mdash;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 a <i>true</i> idea;
+  for no mere knowledge, however true, <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg141" id="pg141">141</a></span> 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
+  an <i>idea</i> of 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 is
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg142" id="pg142">142</a></span>
+  something 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>i.e.</i>, till the spirit has, out of
+  its environment, created a body adequate to itself.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;both the
+  criterion and the fact which is condemned by it&mdash;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 as <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg143" id=
+  "pg143">143</a></span> unwilling 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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!"</p>
+
+  <p>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 better <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg144" id="pg144">144</a></span> for 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg145" id=
+  "pg145">145</a></span> world 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 word <i>but one</i>, regarding man is
+  "failure."</p>
+
+  <p>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, to <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg146" id="pg146">146</a></span> return 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 of <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg147" id="pg147">147</a></span> perfect 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 "<i>the</i> good," 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 that
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg148" id="pg148">148</a></span> unity
+  as a fact. There is no true or false amongst merely apparent
+  facts.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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. <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg149" id="pg149">149</a></span> Morality, in other words, rests
+  upon, and is the self-evolution of the religious principle in
+  man.</p>
+
+  <p>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,&mdash;the outflow of the universe
+  from God as its source, and its return to Him through the salvation
+  of mankind,&mdash;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
+  within <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg150" id=
+  "pg150">150</a></span> him. 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&mdash;the moral activity&mdash;is its
+  own reward; "the only jewel that shines in its own light."</p>
+
+  <p>It may seem to some to be presumptuous thus to identify the divine
+  and the human; but to separate them makes both morality and religion
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg151" id="pg151">151</a></span>
+  impossible. 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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I never realized God's birth before&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>How He grew likest God in being born."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;Pompilia</i>, 1690-1691.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The intense love of the young mother drew the divine and the human
+  together, and set at nought the contrast which prose ever draws
+  between them. This thought of the unity of God and man is one which
+  has frequent utterance from the poet when his religious spirit is
+  most deeply moved; for it is the characteristic of religious feeling
+  that it abolishes all sense of separation. It removes all the
+  limitations of finitude and lifts man into rapturous unity with the
+  God he adores; and it gives such <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg152" id="pg152">152</a></span> completeness to his life that it
+  seems to him to be a joyous pulse of the life that is absolute. The
+  feeling of unity may be an illusion. This we cannot discuss here;
+  but, in any case, it is a feeling essential to religion. And the
+  philosophy which seeks to lift this feeling into clear consciousness
+  and to account for its existence, cannot but recognize that it
+  implies and presupposes the essential affinity of the divine nature
+  with the nature of man.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, both from the side of morality and from that of religion, we
+  are brought to recognize the unity of God with man as a spiritual
+  being. The moral ideal is man's idea of perfection, that is, his idea
+  of God. While theology and philosophy are often occupied with the
+  vain task of bridging a chasm between the finite and the infinite,
+  which they assume to be separated, the supreme facts of the life of
+  man as a spirit spring from their unity. In other words, morality and
+  religion are but different manifestations of the same principle. The
+  good that man effects is, at the same time, the working of God within
+  him. The activity that man is,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"tending up,</p>
+
+    <p>Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man</p>
+
+    <p>Upward in that dread point of intercourse</p>
+
+    <p>Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him<sup>A</sup>."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"God, perchance,</p>
+
+    <p>Grants each new man, by some as new a mode,</p>
+
+    <p>Inter-communication with Himself</p>
+
+    <p>Wreaking on finiteness infinitude<sup>B</sup>."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg153" id="pg153">153</a></span>
+
+  <p>And while man's moral endeavour is thus recognized as the activity
+  of God within him, it is also implied that the divine being can be
+  known only as revealed, and incarnated, if one may so say, in a
+  perfect human character. It was a permanent conviction of Browning,
+  that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"the acknowledgment of God in Christ</p>
+
+    <p>Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee</p>
+
+    <p>All questions in the earth and out of it."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>So far from regarding the Power in the world which makes for
+  righteousness, as "not-ourselves," as Matthew Arnold did in his
+  haste, that Power is known to be the man's true self and more, and
+  morality is the gradual process whereby its content is evolved. And
+  man's state of perfection, which is symbolized for the intelligent by
+  the term Heaven, is, for Browning,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"The equalizing, ever and anon,</p>
+
+    <p>In momentary rapture, great with small,</p>
+
+    <p>Omniscience with intelligency, God</p>
+
+    <p>With man&mdash;the thunder glow from pole to pole</p>
+
+    <p>Abolishing, a blissful moment-space,</p>
+
+    <p>Great cloud alike and small cloud, in one fire&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>As sure to ebb as sure again to flow</p>
+
+    <p>When the new receptivity deserves</p>
+
+    <p>The new completion<sup>A</sup>."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thus, therefore, does the poet wed the divine strength with human
+  weakness; and the principle of unity, thus conceived, gives him at
+  once his <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg154" id=
+  "pg154">154</a></span> moral strenuousness and that ever present
+  foretaste of victory, which we may call his religious optimism.</p>
+
+  <p>Whether this principle receives adequate expression from the poet,
+  we shall inquire in the next chapter. For on this depends its worth
+  as a solution of the enigma of man's moral life.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg155" id="pg155">155</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch06" id="ch06">CHAPTER VI.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>BROWNING'S TREATMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE OF LOVE.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"God! Thou art Love! I build my faith on that<sup>A</sup>!"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It may be well before going further to gather together the results
+  so far reached.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning was aware of the conflict of the religious and moral
+  consciousness, but he did not hesitate to give to each of them its
+  most uncompromising utterance. And it is on this account that he is
+  instructive; for, whatever may be the value of compromise in
+  practical affairs, there is no doubt that it has never done anything
+  to advance human thought. His religion is an optimistic faith, a
+  peaceful consciousness of the presence of the highest in man, and
+  therefore in all other things. Yet he does not hesitate to represent
+  the moral life as a struggle with evil, and a movement through error
+  towards a highest good which is never finally realized. He sees that
+  the contradiction is not an absolute one, but that a good man is
+  always <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg156" id=
+  "pg156">156</a></span> both moral and religious, and, in every good
+  act he does, transcends their difference. He knew that the ideal
+  apart from the process is nothing, and that "a God beyond the stars"
+  is simply the unknowable. But he knew, too, that the ideal is not
+  <i>merely</i> the process, but also that which starts the process,
+  guides it, and comes to itself through it. God, emptied of human
+  elements, is a mere name; but, at the same time, the process of human
+  evolution does not exhaust the idea of God. The process by itself,
+  <i>i.e.</i>, mere morality, is a conception of a fragment, a fiction
+  of abstract thought; it is a movement which has no beginning or end;
+  and in it neither the head nor the heart of man could find
+  contentment. He is driven by ethics into philosophy, and by morality
+  into religion.</p>
+
+  <p>It was in this way that Browning found himself compelled to trace
+  back the moral process to its origin, and to identify the moral law
+  with the nature of God. It is this that gives value to his view of
+  moral progress, as reaching beyond death to a higher stage of being,
+  for which man's attainments in this life are only preliminary.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes,</p>
+
+    <p>Man has Forever."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Grammarian's Funeral</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There are other "adventures brave and new" for man, "more lives
+  yet," other ways of warfare, other depths of goodness and heights of
+  love. The poet lifts the moral ideal into infinitude, and removes
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg157" id="pg157">157</a></span> all
+  limits to the possibility and necessity of being good. Nay, the
+  process itself is good. Moral activity is its own bountiful reward;
+  for moral progress, which means struggle, is the best thing in the
+  world or out of it. To end such a process, to stop that activity,
+  were therefore evil. But it cannot end, for it is the
+  self-manifestation of the divine life. There is plenty of way to
+  make, for the ideal is absolute goodness. The process cannot exhaust
+  the absolute, and it is impossible that man should be God. And yet
+  this process is the process of the absolute, the working of the
+  ideal, the presence of the highest in man as a living power realizing
+  itself in his acts and in his thoughts. And the absolute cannot fail;
+  not in man, for the process is the evolution of his essential nature;
+  and not in the world, for that is but the necessary instrument of the
+  evolution. By lifting the moral ideal of man to infinitude, the poet
+  has identified it with the nature of God, and made it the absolute
+  law of things.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, this idea of the identity of the human and the divine is a
+  perfectly familiar Christian idea.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Thence shall I, approved</p>
+
+    <p>A man, for aye removed</p>
+
+    <p>From the developed brute; a God though in the germ<sup>A</sup>."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This idea is involved in the ordinary expressions of religious
+  thought. But, nevertheless, both theology and philosophy shrink from
+  giving to <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg158" id=
+  "pg158">158</a></span> it a clear and unembarrassed utterance.
+  Instead of rising to the sublime boldness of the Nazarene Teacher,
+  they set up prudential differences between God and
+  man&mdash;differences not of degree only but of nature; and, in
+  consequence, God is reduced into an unknowable absolute, and man is
+  made incapable not only of moral, but also of intellectual life. The
+  poet himself has proved craven-hearted in this, as we shall see. He,
+  too, sets up insurmountable barriers between the divine and the
+  human, and thereby weakens both his religious and his moral
+  convictions. His moral inspiration is greatest just where his
+  religious enthusiasm is most intense. In <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra, The Death
+  in the Desert</i>, and <i>The Ring and the Book</i>, there prevails a
+  constant sense of the community of God and man within the realm of
+  goodness; and the world itself, "with its dread machinery of sin and
+  sorrow," is made to join the great conspiracy, whose purpose is at
+  once the evolution of man's character, and the realization of the
+  will of God.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>So, through the thunder comes a human voice</p>
+
+    <p>Saying, 'O heart I made, a heart beats here!</p>
+
+    <p>Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!</p>
+
+    <p>Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine,</p>
+
+    <p>But love I gave thee, with myself to love,</p>
+
+    <p>And thou must love Me who have died for thee<sup>A</sup>.'"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>An Epistle from Karshish</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But, if we follow Browning's thoughts in his later and more
+  reflective poems, such as <i>Ferishtah's</i> <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg159" id="pg159">159</a></span> <i>Fancies</i>
+  for instance, it will not be possible to hold that the poet
+  altogether realized the importance for both morality and religion
+  alike, of the idea of the actual immanence of God in man. In these
+  poems he seems to have abandoned it in favour of the hypotheses of a
+  more timid philosophy. But, if his religious faith had not been
+  embarrassed by certain dogmatic presuppositions of which he could not
+  free himself, he might have met more successfully some of the
+  difficulties which later reflection revealed to him, and might have
+  been able to set a true value on that "philosophy," which betrayed
+  his faith while appearing to support it.</p>
+
+  <p>But, before trying to criticize the principle by means of which
+  Browning sought to reconcile the moral and religious elements of
+  human life, it may be well to give it a more explicit and careful
+  statement.</p>
+
+  <p>What, then, is that principle of unity between the divine and the
+  human? How can we interpret the life of man as God's life in man, so
+  that man, in attaining the moral ideal proper to his own nature, is
+  at the same time fulfilling ends which may justly be called
+  divine?</p>
+
+  <p>The poet, in early life and in late life alike, has one answer to
+  this question&mdash;an answer given with the confidence of complete
+  conviction. The meeting-point of God and man is love. Love, in other
+  words, is, for the poet, the supreme principle both of morality and
+  religion. Love, once for all, solves that contradiction between them
+  which, both in <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg160" id=
+  "pg160">160</a></span> theory and in practice, has embarrassed the
+  world for so many ages. Love is the sublimest conception attainable
+  by man; a life inspired by it is the most perfect form of goodness he
+  can conceive; therefore, love is, at the same moment, man's moral
+  ideal, and the very essence of Godhood. A life actuated by love is
+  divine, whatever other limitations it may have. Such is the
+  perfection and glory of this emotion, when it has been translated
+  into a self-conscious motive, and become the energy of an intelligent
+  will, that it lifts him who owns it to the sublimest height of
+  being.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"For the loving worm within its clod,</p>
+
+    <p>Were diviner than a loveless God</p>
+
+    <p>Amid his worlds, I will dare to say."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Christmas Eve</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>So excellent is this emotion that, if man, who has this power to
+  love, did not find the same power in God, then man would excel Him,
+  and the creature and Creator change parts.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift,</p>
+
+    <p>That I doubt His own love can compete with it? Here, the parts
+    shift?</p>
+
+    <p>Here, the creature surpass the Creator,&mdash;the end what
+    Began<sup>B</sup>?"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Saul</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Not so, says David, and with him no doubt the poet himself. God is
+  Himself the source and fulness of love.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Tis Thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive:</p>
+
+    <p>In the first is the last, in Thy will is my power to
+    believe.</p>
+
+    <p>All's one gift."</p>
+    <hr />
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg161" id="pg161">161</a></span>
+
+    <p>"Would I suffer for him that I love? So would'st Thou,&mdash;so
+    wilt Thou!</p>
+
+    <p>So shall crown Thee, the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost
+    crown&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down</p>
+
+    <p>One spot for the creature to stand in!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Saul</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And this same love not only constitutes the nature of God and the
+  moral ideal of man, but it is also the purpose and essence of all
+  created being, both animate and inanimate.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"This world's no blot for us,</p>
+
+    <p>Nor blank; it means intensely and means good."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Fra Lippo Lippi</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:</p>
+
+    <p>And knowing this is love, and love is duty,</p>
+
+    <p>What further may be sought for or declared?"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In this world then "all's love, yet all's law." God permits
+  nothing to break through its universal sway, even the very wickedness
+  and misery of life are brought into the scheme of good, and, when
+  rightly understood, reveal themselves as its means.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I can believe this dread machinery</p>
+
+    <p>Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else,</p>
+
+    <p>Devised&mdash;all pain, at most expenditure</p>
+
+    <p>Of pain by Who devised pain&mdash;to evolve,</p>
+
+    <p>By new machinery in counterpart,</p>
+
+    <p>The moral qualities of man&mdash;how else?&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>To make him love in turn and be beloved,</p>
+
+    <p>Creative and self-sacrificing too,</p>
+
+    <p>And thus eventually Godlike."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1375-1383.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The poet thus brings the natural world, the history of man, and
+  the nature of God, within the limits of the same conception. The idea
+  of love <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg162" id=
+  "pg162">162</a></span> solves for Browning all the enigmas of human
+  life and thought.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"The thing that seems</p>
+
+    <p>Mere misery, under human schemes,</p>
+
+    <p>Becomes, regarded by the light</p>
+
+    <p>Of love, as very near, or quite</p>
+
+    <p>As good a gift as joy before."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Easter Day</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Taking Browning's work as a whole, it is scarcely possible to deny
+  that this is at once the supreme motive of his art, and the principle
+  on which his moral and religious doctrine rests. He is always strong
+  and convincing when he is dealing with this theme. It was evidently
+  his own deepest conviction, and it gave him the courage to face the
+  evils of the world, and the power as an artist to "contrive his music
+  from its moans." It plays, in his philosophy of life, the part that
+  Reason fills for Hegel, or the Blind Will for Schopenhauer; and he is
+  as fearless as they are in reducing all phenomena into forms of the
+  activity of his first principle. Love not only gave him firm footing
+  amid the wash and welter of the present world, where time spins fast,
+  life fleets, and all is change, but it made him look forward with joy
+  to "the immortal course"; for, to him, all the universe is
+  love-woven. All life is but treading the "love-way," and no wanderer
+  can finally lose it. "The way-faring men, though fools, shall not err
+  therein."</p>
+
+  <p>Since love has such an important place in Browning's theory of
+  life, it is necessary to see what he means by it. For love has had
+  for different <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg163" id=
+  "pg163">163</a></span> individuals, ages and nations, a very
+  different significance; and almost every great poet has given it a
+  different interpretation. And this is not unnatural. For love is a
+  passion which, beginning with youth and the hey-day of the blood,
+  expands with the expanding life, and takes new forms of beauty and
+  goodness at every stage. And this is equally true, whether we speak
+  of the individual or of the human race.</p>
+
+  <p>Love is no accident in man's history, nor a passing emotion. It is
+  rather a constitutive element of man's nature, fundamental and
+  necessary as his intelligence. And, like everything native and
+  constitutive, it is obedient to the law of evolution, which is the
+  law of man's being; and it passes, therefore, through ever varying
+  forms. To it&mdash;if we may for the moment make a distinction
+  between the theoretical and practical life, or between ideas and
+  their causative potency&mdash;must be attributed the constructive
+  power which has built the world of morality, with its intangible but
+  most real relations which bind man to man and age to age. It is the
+  author of the organic institutions which, standing between the
+  individual and the rudeness of nature, awaken in him the need, and
+  give him the desire and the faculty, of attaining higher things than
+  physical satisfaction. Man is meant to act as well as to think, to be
+  virtuous as well as to have knowledge. It is possible that reverence
+  for the intellect may have led men, at times, to attribute the
+  evolution of the race too exclusively to <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg164" id="pg164">164</a></span> the theoretic
+  consciousness, forgetting that, along with reason, there co-operates
+  a twin power in all that is wisest and best in us, and that a heart
+  which can love, is as essential a pre-condition of all worthy
+  attainment, as an intellect which can see. Love and reason <sup>A</sup> are
+  equally primal powers in man, and they reflect might into each other:
+  for love increases knowledge, and knowledge love. It is their
+  combined power that gives interest and meaning to the facts of life,
+  and transmutes them into a moral and intellectual order. They,
+  together, are lifting man out of the isolation and chaos of
+  subjectivity into membership in a spiritual kingdom, where collision
+  and exclusion are impossible, and all are at once kings and
+  subjects.</p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: It would be more correct to say the reason that is loving or
+    the love that is rational; for, though there is distinction, there
+    is no dualism.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And, just as reason is present as a transmuting power in the
+  sensational life of the infancy of the individual and race, so is
+  love present amidst the confused and chaotic activity of the life
+  that knows no law other than its own changing emotions. Both make for
+  order, and both grow with it. Both love and reason have travelled a
+  long way in the history of man. The patriot's passion for his
+  country, the enthusiasm of pity and helpfulness towards all suffering
+  which marks the man of God, are as far removed from the physical
+  attraction of sex for sex, and the mere liking of the eye and ear, as
+  is the intellectual power of the sage from the vulpine <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg165" id="pg165">165</a></span> cunning of the
+  savage. "For," as Emerson well said, "it is a fire that, kindling its
+  first embers in the narrow nook of a private bosom, caught from a
+  wandering spark out of another heart, glows and enlarges until it
+  warms and beams upon multitudes of men and women, upon the universal
+  heart of all, and so lights up the world and all nature with its
+  generous flames." Both love and reason alike pass through stage after
+  stage, always away from the particularity of selfishness and
+  ignorance, into larger and larger cycles of common truth and
+  goodness, towards the full realization of knowledge and benevolence,
+  which is the inheritance of emancipated man. In this transition, the
+  sensuous play of feeling within man, and the sensitive responses to
+  external stimuli, are made more and more organic to ends which are
+  universal, that is, to spiritual ends. Love, which in its earliest
+  form, seems to be the natural yearning of brute for brute, appearing
+  and disappearing at the suggestion of physical needs, passes into an
+  idealized sentiment, into an emotion of the soul, into a principle of
+  moral activity which manifests itself in a permanent outflow of
+  helpful deeds for man. It represents, when thus sublimated, one side
+  at least of the expansion of the self, which culminates when the
+  world beats in the pulse of the individual, and the joys and sorrows,
+  the defeats and victories of mankind are felt by him as his own. It
+  is no longer dependent merely on the incitement of youth, grace,
+  beauty, whether of body or character; it transcends all limitations
+  of <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg166" id="pg166">166</a></span>
+  sex and age, and finds objects on which it can spend itself in all
+  that God has made, even in that which has violated its own law of
+  life and become mean and pitiful. It becomes a love of fallen
+  humanity, and an ardour to save it by becoming the conscious and
+  permanent motive of all men. The history of this evolution of love
+  has been written by the poets. Every phase through which this
+  ever-deepening emotion has passed, every form which this primary
+  power has taken in its growth, has received from them its own proper
+  expression. They have made even the grosser instincts lyric with
+  beauty; and, ascending with their theme, they have sung the pure
+  passion of soul for soul, its charm and its strength, its idealism
+  and heroism, up to the point at which, in Browning, it transcends the
+  limits of finite existence, sheds all its earthly vesture, and
+  becomes a spiritual principle of religious aspiration and
+  self-surrender to God.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning nowhere shows his native strength more clearly than in
+  his treatment of love. He has touched this world-old
+  theme&mdash;which almost every poet has handled, and handled in his
+  highest manner&mdash;with that freshness and insight, which is
+  possible only to the inborn originality of genius. Other poets have,
+  in some ways, given to love a more exquisite utterance, and rendered
+  its sweetness, and tenderness, and charm with a lighter grace. It may
+  even be admitted that there are poets whose verses have echoed more
+  faithfully the fervour and intoxication of passion, and who have
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg167" id="pg167">167</a></span> shown
+  greater power of interpreting it in the light of a mystic idealism.
+  But, in one thing, Browning stands alone. He has given to love a
+  moral significance, a place and power amongst those substantial
+  elements on which rest the dignity of man's being and the greatness
+  of his destiny, in a way which is, I believe, without example in any
+  other poet. And he has done this by means of that moral and religious
+  earnestness, which pervades all his poetry. The one object of supreme
+  interest to him is the development of the soul, and his penetrative
+  insight revealed to him the power to love as the paramount fact in
+  that development. To love, he repeatedly tells us, is the sole and
+  supreme object of man's life; it is the one lesson which he has to
+  learn on earth; and, love once learnt, in what way matters little,
+  "it leaves completion in the soul." Love we dare not, and, indeed,
+  cannot absolutely miss. No man can be absolutely selfish and be
+  man.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Beneath the veriest ash, there hides a spark of soul</p>
+
+    <p>Which, quickened by love's breath, may yet pervade the whole</p>
+
+    <p>O' the grey, and, free again, be fire; of worth the same,</p>
+
+    <p>Howe'er produced, for, great or little, flame is flame."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, xliii.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Love, once evoked, once admitted into the soul,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i10">"adds worth to worth,</p>
+
+    <p>As wine enriches blood, and straightway sends it forth,</p>
+
+    <p>Conquering and to conquer, through all eternity,</p>
+
+    <p>That's battle without end."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid.</i> liv.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This view of the significance of love grew on Browning
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg168" id="pg168">168</a></span> as
+  his knowledge of man's nature and destiny became fuller and deeper,
+  while, at the same time, his trust in the intellect became less. Even
+  in <i>Paracelsus</i> he reveals love, not as a sentiment or
+  intoxicating passion, as one might expect from a youthful poet, but
+  as one of the great fundamental "faculties" of man. Love, "blind,
+  oft-failing, half-enlightened, often-chequered trust," though it be,
+  still makes man</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In that poem, love is definitely lifted by the poet to the level
+  of knowledge. Intellectual gain, apart from love, is folly and
+  futility, worthless for the individual and worthless to the race.
+  "Mind is nothing but disease," Paracelsus cries in the bitterness of
+  his disappointment, "and natural health is ignorance"; and he asks of
+  the mad poet who "loved too rashly,"</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Are we not halves of one dissevered world,</p>
+
+    <p>Whom this strange chance unites once more? Part? Never!</p>
+
+    <p>Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower,</p>
+
+    <p>Love&mdash;until both are saved."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And, at the end of the poem, Paracelsus, coming to an
+  understanding with himself as to the gain and loss of life, proclaims
+  with his last strength the truth he had missed throughout his great
+  career, namely, the supreme worth of love.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg169" id="pg169">169</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I saw Aprile&mdash;my Aprile there!</p>
+
+    <p>And as the poor melodious wretch disburthened</p>
+
+    <p>His heart, and moaned his weakness in my ear,</p>
+
+    <p>I learned my own deep error; love's undoing</p>
+
+    <p>Taught me the worth of love in man's estate,</p>
+
+    <p>And what proportion love should hold with power</p>
+
+    <p>In his right constitution; love preceding</p>
+
+    <p>Power, and with much power, always much more love;</p>
+
+    <p>Love still too straitened in his present means,</p>
+
+    <p>And earnest for new power to set love free."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>As long as he hated men, or, in his passionate pursuit of truth,
+  was indifferent to their concerns, it was not strange that he saw no
+  good in men and failed to help them. Knowledge without love is not
+  <i>true</i> knowledge, but folly and weakness.</p>
+
+  <p>But, great as is the place given to love in <i>Paracelsus</i>, it
+  is far less than that given to it in the poet's later works. In
+  <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i> and <i>La Saisiaz</i> it is no longer
+  rivalled by knowledge; nor even in <i>Easter Day</i>, where the voice
+  beside the poet proclaiming that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Life is done,</p>
+
+    <p>Time ends, Eternity's begun,"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>gives a final pronouncement upon the purposes of the life of man.
+  The world of sense&mdash;of beauty and art, of knowledge and truth,
+  are given to man, but none of them satisfy his spirit; they merely
+  sting with hunger for something better. "Deficiency gapes every
+  side," till love is known as the essence and worth of all things.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Is this thy final choice?</p>
+
+    <p>Love is the best? 'Tis somewhat late!</p>
+
+    <p>And all thou dost enumerate</p><span class="pagenum"><a name=
+    "pg170" id="pg170">170</a></span>
+
+    <p>Of power and beauty in the world,</p>
+
+    <p>The righteousness of love was curled</p>
+
+    <p>Inextricably round about.</p>
+
+    <p>Love lay within it and without,</p>
+
+    <p>To clasp thee,&mdash;but in vain! Thy soul</p>
+
+    <p>Still shrunk from Him who made the whole,</p>
+
+    <p>Still set deliberate aside</p>
+
+    <p>His love!&mdash;Now take love! Well betide</p>
+
+    <p>Thy tardy conscience!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Easter Day.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In his later reflective poems, in which he deals with the problems
+  of life in the spirit of a metaphysician, seeking a definite answer
+  to the questions of the intelligence, he declares the reason for his
+  preference of love to knowledge. In <i>La Saisiaz</i> he states that
+  man's love is God's too, a spark from His central fire; but man's
+  knowledge is man's only. Knowledge is finite, limited and tinged with
+  sense. The truth we reach at best is only truth <i>for us</i>,
+  relative, distorted. We are for ever kept from the fact which is
+  supposed to be given; our intellects play about it; sense and even
+  intellect itself are interposing media, which we must use, and yet,
+  in using them, we only fool ourselves with semblances. The poet has
+  now grown so cautious that he will not declare his own knowledge to
+  be valid for any other man. David Hume could scarcely be more
+  suspicious of the human intellect; nor Berkeley more surely persuaded
+  of the purely subjective nature of its attainments. In fact, the
+  latter relied on human knowledge in a way impossible to Browning, for
+  he regarded it as the language of <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg171" id="pg171">171</a></span> spirit speaking to spirit. Out of
+  his experience, Browning says,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i10">"There crowds conjecture manifold.</p>
+
+    <p>But, as knowledge, this comes only,&mdash;things may be as I
+    behold</p>
+
+    <p>Or may not be, but, without me and above me, things there
+    are;</p>
+
+    <p>I myself am what I know not&mdash;ignorance which proves no
+    bar</p>
+
+    <p>To the knowledge that I am, and, since I am, can recognize</p>
+
+    <p>What to me is pain and pleasure: this is sure, the
+    rest&mdash;surmise."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thought itself, for aught he knows, may be afflicted with a kind
+  of colour-blindness; and he knows no appeal when one affirms "green
+  as grass," and another contradicts him with "red as grass." Under
+  such circumstances, it is not strange that Browning should decline to
+  speak except for himself, and that he will</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers strong or
+    weak,"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>or that he will far less presume to pronounce for God, and pretend
+  that the truth finds utterance from lips of clay&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Pass off human lisp as echo of the sphere-song out of
+      reach."</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Have I knowledge? Confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid
+      bare!</p>
+
+      <p>Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite
+      Care!</p>
+      <hr />
+
+      <p>"And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew</p>
+
+      <p>(With that stoop of the soul, which in bending upraises it
+      too)</p>
+
+      <p>The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's
+      all-complete,</p>
+
+      <p>As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to His
+      feet."<sup>B</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Saul</i>, III.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg172" id="pg172">172</a></span>
+
+  <p>But David finds in himself one faculty so supreme in worth that he
+  keeps it in abeyance&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst</p>
+
+    <p>E'en the Giver in one gift.&mdash;Behold, I could love if I
+    durst!</p>
+
+    <p>But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake</p>
+
+    <p>God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love's
+    sake."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Saul</i>, III.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>This faculty of love, so far from being tainted with finitude,
+  like knowledge; so far from being mere man's, or a temporary and
+  deceptive power given to man for temporary uses, by a Creator who has
+  another ineffably higher way of loving, as He has of truth, is itself
+  divine. In contrast with the activity of love, Omnipotence itself
+  dwindles into insignificance, and creation sinks into a puny exercise
+  of power. Love, in a word, is the highest good; and, as such, it has
+  all its worth in itself, and gives to all other things what worth
+  they have. God Himself gains the "ineffable crown" by showing love
+  and saving the weak. It is the power divine, the central energy of
+  God's being.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning never forgets this moral or religious quality of love. So
+  pure is this emotion to the poet, "so perfect in whiteness, that it
+  will not take pollution; but, ermine-like, is armed from dishonour by
+  its own soft snow." In the corruptest hearts, amidst the worst
+  sensuality, love is still a power divine, making for all goodness.
+  Even when it is kindled into flame by an illicit touch, and wars
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg173" id="pg173">173</a></span>
+  against the life of the family, which is its own product, its worth
+  is supreme. He who has learned to love in any way, has "caught God's
+  secret." How he has caught it, whom he loves, whether or not he is
+  loved in return, all these things matter little. The paramount
+  question on which hangs man's fate is, has he learned to love
+  another, any other, Fifine or Elvire. "She has lost me," said the
+  unloved lover; "I have gained her. Her soul's mine."</p>
+
+  <p>The supreme worth of love, the mere emotion itself, however called
+  into activity, secures it against all taint. No one who understands
+  Browning in the least, can accuse him of touching with a rash hand
+  the sanctity of the family; rather he places it on the basis of its
+  own principle, and thereby makes for it the strongest defence. Such
+  love as he speaks of, however irregular its manifestation or sensuous
+  its setting, can never be confounded with lust&mdash;"hell's own blue
+  tint." It is further removed from lust even than asceticism. It has
+  not even a negative attitude towards the flesh; but finds the flesh
+  to be "stuff for transmuting," and reduces it to the uses of the
+  spirit. The love which is sung by Browning is more pure and free, and
+  is set in a higher altitude than anything that can be reached by the
+  way of negation. It is a consecration of the undivided self, so that
+  "soul helps not flesh more, than flesh helps soul." It is not only a
+  spiritual and divine emotion, but it also "shows a heart within
+  blood-tinctured with a veined humanity."</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg174" id="pg174">174</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Be a God and hold me</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">With a charm!</p>
+
+      <p>Be a man and hold me</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">With thine arm!</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Teach me, only teach, Love!</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">As I ought</p>
+
+      <p>I will speak thy speech, Love!</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Think thy thought&mdash;</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Meet, if thou require it,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Both demands,</p>
+
+      <p>Laying flesh and spirit</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">In thy hands." <sup>A</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Woman's Last Word</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>True love is always an infinite giving, which holds nothing back.
+  It is a spendthrift, magnificent in its recklessness, squandering the
+  very essence of the self upon its object, and by doing so, in the end
+  enriching the self beyond all counting. For in loving, the individual
+  becomes re-impersonated in another; the distinction of Me and Thee is
+  swept away, and there pulses in two individuals one warm life.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"If two lives join, there is oft a scar</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">They are one and one with a shadowy third;</p>
+
+      <p>One near one is too far.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"A moment after, and hands unseen</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Were hanging the night around us fast;</p>
+
+      <p>But we knew that a bar was broken between</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Life and life: we were mixed at last</p>
+
+      <p>In spite of the mortal screen."<sup>B</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>By the Fireside</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The throwing down of the limits that wall a man within himself,
+  the mingling of his own deepest interests with those of others,
+  always marks love; <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg175" id=
+  "pg175">175</a></span> be it love of man for maid, parent for child,
+  or patriot for his country. It opens an outlet into the pure air of
+  the world of objects, and enables man to escape from the stuffed and
+  poisonous atmosphere of his narrow self. It is a streaming outwards
+  of the inmost treasures of the spirit, a consecration of its best
+  activities to the welfare of others. And when this is known to be the
+  native quality and quintessence of love, no one can regard it
+  anywhere, or at any time, as out of place. "Prize-lawful or
+  prize-lawless" it is ever a flower, even though it grow, like the
+  love of the hero of <i>Turf and Towers</i>, in slime. Lust, fleshly
+  desire, which has been too often miscalled love, is its worst
+  perversion. Love spends itself for another, and seeks satisfaction
+  only in another's good. But last uses up others for its own worst
+  purposes, wastes its object, and turns the current of life back
+  inwards, into the slush and filth of selfish pleasure. The
+  distinction between love and its perversion, which is impossible in
+  the naive life of an animal, ought to be clear enough to all, and
+  probably is. Nor should the sexual impulse in human beings be
+  confused with fleshly desire, and treated as if it were merely
+  natural, "the mere lust of life" common to all living
+  things,&mdash;"that strive," as Spinoza put it, "to persevere in
+  existing." For there is no purely natural impulse in man; all that he
+  is, is transfused with spirit, whether he will or no. He cannot act
+  as a mere animal, because he cannot leave his rational nature behind
+  him. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg176" id="pg176">176</a></span>
+  He cannot desire as an innocent brute desires: his desire is always
+  love or lust. We have as little right to say that the wisdom of the
+  sage is <i>nothing but</i> the purblind savagery of a Terra del
+  Fuegian, as we have to assert that love is <i>nothing but</i> a
+  sexual impulse. That impulse rather, when its potency is set free,
+  will show itself, at first confusedly, but with more and more
+  clearness as it expands, to be the yearning of soul for soul. It puts
+  us "in training for a love which knows not sex, nor person, nor
+  partiality; but which seeks virtue and wisdom everywhere, to the end
+  of increasing virtue and wisdom." The height to which this passion
+  lifts man, is just what makes possible the fall into a sensuality and
+  excess of brutishness, in comparison with which animal life is a
+  paradise of innocence.</p>
+
+  <p>If this is clearly recognized, many of the idle questions of
+  casuistry that are sometimes raised regarding sexual love and
+  marriage will cease to trouble. For these questions generally
+  presuppose the lowest possible view of this passion. Browning shows
+  us how to follow with serene security the pure light of the emotion
+  of love, amidst all the confused lawlessness of lustful passion, and
+  through all the intricacies of human character. Love, he thinks, is
+  never illicit, never unwise, except when it is disloyal to itself; it
+  never ruins, but always strives to enrich its object. Bacon quotes
+  with approval a saying "That it is impossible to love, and to be
+  wise." Browning <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg177" id=
+  "pg177">177</a></span> asserts that it is impossible to love and
+  <i>not</i> be wise. It is a power that, according to the Christian
+  idea which the poet adopts, has infinite goodness for its source, and
+  that, even in its meanest expression, is always feeling its way back
+  to its origin, flowing again into the ocean whence it came.</p>
+
+  <p>So sparklingly pure is this passion that it could exorcise the
+  evil and turn old to new, even in the case of Léonce Miranda. At
+  least Browning, in this poem, strives to show that, being true love,
+  though the love of an unclean man for an unclean woman, it was a
+  power at war with the sordid elements of that sordid life. Love has
+  always the same potency, flame is always flame,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"no matter whence flame sprung,</p>
+
+    <p>From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Let her but love you,</p>
+
+    <p>All else you disregard! what else can be?</p>
+
+    <p>You know how love is incompatible</p>
+
+    <p>With falsehood&mdash;purifies, assimilates</p>
+
+    <p>All other passions to itself."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Ne'er wrong yourself so far as quote the world</p>
+
+    <p>And say, love can go unrequited here!</p>
+
+    <p>You will have blessed him to his whole life's end&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Low passions hindered, baser cares kept back,</p>
+
+    <p>All goodness cherished where you dwelt&mdash;and dwell."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, lv.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Colombe's Birthday.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg178" id="pg178">178</a></span>
+  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 God's own energy;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"Who never is dishonoured in the spark</p>
+
+    <p>He gave us from His fire of fires, and bade</p>
+
+    <p>Remember whence it sprang, nor be afraid</p>
+
+    <p class="i4">While that burns on, though all the rest grow dark."
+    <sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Any Wife to Any Husband</i>, III.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>But it remains to follow briefly our poet's treatment of love in
+  another direction&mdash;as a principle present, not only in God 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
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg179" id="pg179">179</a></span> as if
+  he had caught the meaning of the language, and believes that all
+  things speak of love&mdash;the love of God.</p>
+
+  <p>"I think," says the heroine of the <i>Inn Album</i>,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Womanliness means only motherhood;</p>
+
+    <p>All love begins and ends there,&mdash;roams enough,</p>
+
+    <p>But, having run the circle, rests at home."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Inn Album</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And Browning detects something of this motherhood everywhere. He
+  finds it as</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Some cause</p>
+
+    <p>Such as is put into a tree, which turns</p>
+
+    <p>Away from the north wind with what nest it holds."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;Canon Caponsacchi</i>,
+    1374-1376.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The Pope&mdash;who, if any one, speaks for Browning&mdash;declares
+  that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Brute and bird, reptile and the fly,</p>
+
+    <p>Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant</p>
+
+    <p>And flower o' the field, are all in a common pact</p>
+
+    <p>To worthily defend the trust of trusts,</p>
+
+    <p>Life from the Ever Living."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1076-1081.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"Because of motherhood," said the minor pope in <i>Ivàn
+  Ivànovitch</i>,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"each male</p>
+
+    <p>Yields to his partner place, sinks proudly in the scale:</p>
+
+    <p>His strength owned weakness, wit&mdash;folly, and
+    courage&mdash;fear,</p>
+
+    <p>Beside the female proved males's mistress&mdash;only here</p>
+
+    <p>The fox-dam, hunger-pined, will slay the felon sire</p>
+
+    <p>Who dares assault her whelp."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The betrayal of the mother's trust is the "unexampled <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg180" id="pg180">180</a></span> sin," which
+  scares the world and shames God.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I hold that, failing human sense,</p>
+
+    <p>The very earth had oped, sky fallen, to efface</p>
+
+    <p>Humanity's new wrong, motherhood's first disgrace."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Ivàn Ivànovitch</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus Browning regards love as an omnipresent good. There is
+  nothing, he tells us in <i>Fifine</i>, which cannot reflect it; even
+  moral putridity becomes phosphorescent, "and sparks from heaven
+  transpierce earth's coarsest covertures."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"There is no good of life but love&mdash;but love!</p>
+
+    <p>What else looks good, is some shade flung from love,</p>
+
+    <p>Love gilds it, gives it worth."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>In a balcony</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There is no fact which, if seen to the heart, will <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg181" id="pg181">181</a></span> 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</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"No detail but, in place allotted it, was prime</p>
+
+    <p>And perfect."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>. xxxi.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"What God is, what we are,</p>
+
+    <p>What life is&mdash;how God tastes an infinite joy</p>
+
+    <p>In finite ways&mdash;one everlasting bliss,</p>
+
+    <p>From whom all being emanates, all power</p>
+
+    <p>Proceeds: in whom is life for evermore,</p>
+
+    <p>Yet whom existence in its lowest form</p>
+
+    <p>Includes."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The scheme of love does not begin with man, he is rather its
+  consummation.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Whose attributes had here and there</p>
+
+    <p>Been scattered o'er the visible world before,</p>
+
+    <p>Asking to be combined, dim fragments meant</p>
+
+    <p>To be united in some wondrous whole,</p>
+
+    <p>Imperfect qualities throughout creation,</p>
+
+    <p>Suggesting some one creature yet to make,</p>
+
+    <p>Some point where all those scattered rays should meet</p>
+
+    <p>Convergent in the faculties of man.</p>
+    <hr />
+    <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg182" id="pg182">182</a></span>
+
+    <p>"Hints and previsions of which faculties,</p>
+
+    <p>Are strewn confusedly everywhere about</p>
+
+    <p>The inferior natures, and all lead up higher,</p>
+
+    <p>All shape out divinely the superior race,</p>
+
+    <p>The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false,</p>
+
+    <p>And man appears at last."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Power, knowledge, love, all these are found in the world, in
+  which</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"All tended to mankind,</p>
+
+    <p>And, man produced, all has its end thus far:</p>
+
+    <p>But, in completed man begins anew</p>
+
+    <p>A tendency to God."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>For man, being intelligent, flings back his light on all that went
+  before,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains</p>
+
+    <p>Each back step in the circle."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>. 189.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He gives voice to the mute significance of Nature, and lets in the
+  light on its blind groping.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"Man, once descried, imprints for ever</p>
+
+    <p>His presence on all lifeless things."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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. The magnificent failure of Paracelsus came from
+  missing this last step. His transcendent hunger for knowledge was not
+  satisfied, not because human knowledge is essentially an illusion or
+  mind disease, but because his knowledge <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg183" id="pg183">183</a></span> did not reach the
+  final truth of things, which is love. For love alone makes the heart
+  wise, to know the secret of all being. This is the ultimate
+  hypothesis in the light of which alone man can catch a glimpse of the
+  general direction and intent of the universal movement in the world
+  and man. Dying, Paracelsus, taught by Aprile, caught a glimpse of
+  this elemental "love-force," in which alone lies the clue to every
+  problem, and the promise of the final satisfaction of the human
+  spirit. Failing in this knowledge, man may know many things, but
+  nothing truly; for all such knowledge stays with outward shows. It is
+  love alone that puts man in the right relation to his fellows and to
+  the world, and removes the distortion which fills life with sorrow,
+  and makes it</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Only a scene</p>
+
+    <p>Of degradation, ugliness and tears,</p>
+
+    <p>The record of disgraces best forgotten,</p>
+
+    <p>A sullen page in human chronicles</p>
+
+    <p>Fit to erase."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But in the light of love, man "sees a good in evil, and a hope in
+  ill success," and recognizes that mankind are</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"All with a touch of nobleness, despite</p>
+
+    <p>Their error, upward tending all though weak;</p>
+
+    <p>Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,</p>
+
+    <p>But dream of him, and guess where he may be,</p>
+
+    <p>And do their best to climb and get to him."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"All this I knew not," adds Paracelsus, "and I <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg184" id="pg184">184</a></span> failed. Let men
+  take the lesson and press this lamp of love, 'God's lamp, close to
+  their breasts'; its splendour, soon or late, will pierce the gloom,"
+  and show that the universe is a transparent manifestation of His
+  beneficence.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg185" id=
+  "pg185">185</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch07" id="ch07">CHAPTER VII.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>BROWNING'S IDEALISM, AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Master, explain this incongruity!</p>
+
+    <p>When I dared question, 'It is beautiful,</p>
+
+    <p>But is it true?' thy answer was, 'In truth</p>
+
+    <p>Lives Beauty.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Shah Abbas</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>We have now seen how Browning sought to explain all things as
+  manifestations of the principle of love; how he endeavoured to bring
+  all the variety of finite existence, and even the deep discrepancies
+  of good and evil, under the sway of one idea. I have already tried to
+  show that all human thought is occupied with the same task: science,
+  art, philosophy, and even the most ordinary common-sense, are all, in
+  their different ways, seeking for constant laws amongst changing
+  facts. Nay, we may even go so far as to say that all the activity of
+  man, the practical as well as the theoretical, is an attempt to
+  establish a <i>modus vivendi</i> between his environment and himself.
+  And such an attempt rests on the assumption that there is some ground
+  common to both of the struggling <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg186" id="pg186">186</a></span> powers within and without, some
+  principle that manifests itself both in man and in nature. So that
+  all men are philosophers to the extent of postulating a unity, which
+  is deeper than all differences; and all are alike trying to discover,
+  in however limited or ignorant a way, what that unity is. If this
+  fact were more constantly kept in view, the effort of philosophers to
+  bring the ultimate colligating principles of thought into clear
+  consciousness would not, at the outset at least, be regarded with so
+  much suspicion. For the philosopher differs from the practical man of
+  the world, not so much in the nature of the task which he is trying
+  to accomplish, as in the distinct and conscious purpose with which he
+  enters upon it.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, I think that those, who, like Browning, offer an explicitly
+  optimistic idea of the relation between man and the world, have a
+  special right to a respectful hearing; for it can scarcely be denied
+  that their optimistic explanation is invaluable, <i>if it is
+  true</i>&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"So might we safely mock at what unnerves</p>
+
+    <p>Faith now, be spared the sapping fear's increase</p>
+
+    <p>That haply evil's strife with good shall cease</p>
+
+    <p>Never on earth."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Bernard de Mandeville</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Despair is a great clog to good work for the world, and
+  pessimists, as a rule, have shown much more readiness than optimists
+  to let evil have its unimpeded way. Having found, like Schopenhauer,
+  that "Life is an awkward business," they "determine to <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg187" id="pg187">187</a></span> spend life in
+  reflecting on it," or at least in moaning about it. The world's
+  helpers have been men of another mould; and the contrast between
+  Fichte and Schopenhauer is suggestive of a general
+  truth:&mdash;"Fichte, in the bright triumphant flight of his
+  idealism, supported by faith in a moral order of the world which
+  works for righteousness, turning his back on the darker ethics of
+  self-torture and mortification, and rushing into the political and
+  social fray, proclaiming the duties of patriotism, idealizing the
+  soldier, calling to and exercising an active philanthrophy, living
+  with his nation, and continually urging it upwards to higher levels
+  of self-realization&mdash;Schopenhauer recurring to the idea of
+  asceticism, preaching the blessedness of the quiescence of all will,
+  disparaging efforts to save the nation or elevate the masses, and
+  holding that each has enough to do in raising his own self from its
+  dull engrossment in lower things to an absorption in that pure,
+  passionless being which lies far beyond all, even the so-called
+  highest, pursuits of practical life."<sup>A</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Schopenhauer</i>, by Prof. Wallace.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>A pessimism, which is nothing more than flippant fault-finding,
+  frequently gains a cheap reputation for wisdom; and, on the other
+  hand, an optimism, which is really the result of much reflection and
+  experience, may be regarded as the product of a superficial spirit
+  that has never known the deeper evils of life. But, if pessimism be
+  true, it differs from other truths by its uselessness; for, even if
+  it <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg188" id="pg188">188</a></span>
+  saves man from the bitterness of petty disappointments, it does so
+  only by making the misery universal. There is no need to specify,
+  when "<i>All</i> is vanity." The drowning man does not feel the
+  discomfort of being wet. But yet, if we reflect on the problem of
+  evil, we shall find that there is no neutral ground, and shall
+  ultimately be driven to choose between pessimism and its opposite.
+  Nor, on the other hand, is the suppression of the problem of evil
+  possible, except at a great cost. It presents itself anew in the mind
+  of every thinking man; and some kind of solution of it, or at least
+  some definite way of meeting its difficulty, is involved in the
+  attitude which every man assumes towards life and its tasks.</p>
+
+  <p>It is not impossible that there may be as much to be said for
+  Browning's joy in life and his love of it, as there is for his
+  predecessor's rage and sorrow. Browning certainly thought that there
+  was; and he held his view consistently to the end. We cannot,
+  therefore, do justice to the poet without dealing critically with the
+  principle on which he has based his faith, and observing how far it
+  is applicable to the facts of human life. As I have previously said,
+  he strives hard to come into fair contact with the misery of man in
+  all its sadness; and, after doing so, he claims, not as a matter of
+  poetic sentiment, but as a matter of strict truth, that good is the
+  heart and reality of it all. It is true that he cannot demonstrate
+  the truth of his principle by reference to all the facts, any more
+  than the scientific man can <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg189" id=
+  "pg189">189</a></span> justify his hypothesis in every detail; but he
+  holds it as a faith which reason can justify and experience
+  establish, although not in every isolated phenomenon. The good may,
+  he holds, be seen actually at work in the world, and its process will
+  be more fully known, as human life advances towards its goal.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Though Master keep aloof,</p>
+
+    <p>Signs of His presence multiply from roof</p>
+
+    <p>To basement of the building."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thus Browning bases his view upon experience, and finds firm
+  footing for his faith in the present; although he acknowledges that
+  the "profound of ignorance surges round his rockspit of
+  self-knowledge."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Enough that now,</p>
+
+    <p>Here where I stand, this moment's me and mine,</p>
+
+    <p>Shows me what is, permits me to divine</p>
+
+    <p>What shall be."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"Since we know love we know enough"; for in love, he confidently
+  thinks we have the key to all the mystery of being.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, what is to be made of an optimism of this kind, which is
+  based upon love and which professes to start from experience, or to
+  be legitimately and rationally derived from it?</p>
+
+  <p>If such a view be taken seriously, as I propose doing, we must be
+  prepared to meet at the outset with some very grave difficulties. The
+  first of these is that it is an interpretation of facts by a human
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg190" id="pg190">190</a></span>
+  emotion. To say that love blushes in the rose, or breaks into beauty
+  in the clouds, that it shows its strength in the storm, and sets the
+  stars in the sky, and that it is in all things the source of order
+  and law, may imply a principle of supreme worth both to poetry and
+  religion; but when we are asked to take it as a metaphysical
+  explanation of facts, we are prone, like the judges of Caponsacchi,
+  not to "levity, or to anything indecorous"&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Only&mdash;I think I apprehend the mood:</p>
+
+    <p>There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk,</p>
+
+    <p>The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth,</p>
+
+    <p>The titter stifled in the hollow palm</p>
+
+    <p>Which rubbed the eye-brow and caressed the nose,</p>
+
+    <p>When I first told my tale; they meant, you know&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>'The sly one, all this we are bound believe!</p>
+
+    <p>Well, he can say no other than what he says.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;Canon Caponsacchi</i>,
+    14-20.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>We are sufficiently willing to let the doctrine be held as a pious
+  opinion. The faith that "all's love yet all's law," like many another
+  illusion, if not hugged too closely, may comfort man's nakedness. But
+  if we are asked to substitute this view for that which the sciences
+  suggest,&mdash;if we are asked to put "Love" in the place of physical
+  energy, and, by assuming it as a principle, to regard as unreal all
+  the infinite misery of humanity and the degradation of intellect and
+  character from which it arises, common-sense seems at once to take
+  the side of the doleful sage of Chelsea. When the optimist postulates
+  that the state of the world, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg191"
+  id="pg191">191</a></span> were it rightly understood, is completely
+  satisfactory, reason seems to be brought to a stand; and if poetry
+  and religion involve such a postulate, they are taken to be
+  ministering to the emotions at the expense of the intellect.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning, however, was not a mere sentimentalist who could satisfy
+  his heart without answering the questions of his intellect. Nor is
+  his view without support&mdash;at least, as regards the substance of
+  it. The presence of an idealistic element in things is recognized
+  even by ordinary thought; and no man's world is so poor that it would
+  not be poorer still for him, if it were reduced by the abstract
+  sciences of nature into a mere manifestation of physical force. Such
+  a world Richter compares to an empty eye-socket.</p>
+
+  <p>The great result of speculation since the time of Kant is to teach
+  us to recognize that objects are essentially related to mind, and
+  that the principles which rule our thought enter, so to speak, into
+  the constitution of the things we know. A very slight acquaintance
+  with the history even of psychology, especially in modern times,
+  shows that facts are more and more retracted into thought. This
+  science, which began with a sufficiently common-sense view, not only
+  of the reality and solidity of the things of the outer world, but of
+  their opposition to, or independence of thought, is now thinning that
+  world down into a mere shadow&mdash;a something which excites
+  sensation. It shows that external things as we know them, and we are
+  not concerned in any others, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg192"
+  id="pg192">192</a></span> are, to a very great extent, the product of
+  our thinking activities. No one will now subscribe to the Lockian or
+  Humean view, of images impressed by objects on mind: the object which
+  "impresses" has first to be made by mind, out of the results of
+  nervous excitation. In a word, modern psychology as well as modern
+  metaphysics, is demonstrating more and more fully the dependence of
+  the world, as it is known, on the nature and activity of man's mind.
+  Every explanation of the world is found to be, in this sense,
+  idealistic; and in this respect, there is no difference whatsoever
+  between the interpretation given by science and that of poetry, or
+  religion, or philosophy. If we say that a thing is a "substance," or
+  has "a cause"; if, with the physicist, we assert the principle of the
+  transmutation of energy, or make use of the idea of evolution with
+  the biologist or geologist; nay, if we speak of time and space with
+  the mathematician, we use principles of unity derived from
+  self-consciousness, and interpret nature in terms of ourselves, just
+  as truly as the poet or philosopher, who makes love, or reason, the
+  constitutive element in things. If the practical man of the world
+  charges the poet and philosopher with living amidst phantoms, he can
+  be answered with a "<i>Tu quoque</i>." "How easy," said Emerson, "it
+  is to show the materialist that he also is a phantom walking and
+  working amid phantoms, and that he need only ask a question or two
+  beyond his daily questions to find his solid universe proving dim and
+  impalpable before his sense." <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg193"
+  id="pg193">193</a></span> "Sense," which seems to show directly that
+  the world is a solid reality, not dependent in any way on thought, is
+  found not to be reliable. All science is nothing but an appeal to
+  thought from ordinary sensuous opinion. It is an attempt to find the
+  reality of things by thinking about them; and this reality, when it
+  is found, turns out to be a law. But laws are ideas; though, if they
+  are true ideas, they represent not merely thoughts in the mind, but
+  also real principles, which manifest themselves in the objects of the
+  outer world, as well as in the thinker's mind.</p>
+
+  <p>It is not possible in such a work as this, to give a carefully
+  reasoned proof of this view of the relation of thought and things, or
+  to repeat the argument of Kant. I must be content with merely
+  referring to it, as showing that the principles in virtue of which we
+  think, are the principles in virtue of which objects as we know them
+  exist; and we cannot be concerned with any other objects. The laws
+  which scientific investigation discovers are not only ideas that can
+  be written in books, but also principles which explain the nature of
+  things. In other words, the hypotheses of the natural sciences, or
+  their categories, are points of view in the light of which the
+  external world can be regarded as governed by uniform laws. And these
+  constructive principles, which lift the otherwise disconnected world
+  into an intelligible system, are revelations of the nature of
+  intelligence, and only on that account principles for explaining the
+  world.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg194" id=
+  "pg194">194</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i10">"To know,</p>
+
+    <p>Rather consists in opening out a way</p>
+
+    <p>Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,</p>
+
+    <p>Than in effecting entry for a light</p>
+
+    <p>Supposed to be without."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In this sense, it may be said that all knowledge is
+  anthropomorphic; and in this respect there is no difference between
+  the physics, which speaks of energy as the essence of things, and the
+  poetry, which speaks of love as the ultimate principle of reality.
+  Between such scientific and idealistic explanations there is not even
+  the difference that the one begins without and the other within, or
+  that the one is objective and the other subjective. The true
+  distinction is that the principles upon which the latter proceed are
+  less abstract than those of science. "Reason" and "love" are higher
+  principles for the explanation of the nature of things than
+  "substance" or "cause"; but both are forms of the unity of thought.
+  And if the latter seem to have nothing to do with the self, it is
+  only because they are inadequate to express its full character. On
+  the other hand, the higher categories, or ideas of reason, seem to be
+  merely anthropomorphic, and, therefore, ill-suited to explain nature,
+  because the relation of nature to intelligence is habitually
+  neglected by ordinary thought, which has not pressed its problems far
+  enough to know that such higher categories can alone satisfy the
+  demand for truth.</p>
+
+  <p>But natural science is gradually driven from the lower to the
+  higher categories, or, in other <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg195"
+  id="pg195">195</a></span> words, it is learning to take a more and
+  more idealistic view of nature. It is moving very slowly, because it
+  is a long labour to exhaust the uses of an instrument of thought; and
+  it is only at great intervals in the history of the human intellect,
+  that we find the need of a change of categories. But, as already
+  hinted, there is no doubt that science is becoming increasingly aware
+  of the conditions, under which alone its results may be held as
+  valid. At first, it drove "mind" out of the realm of nature, and
+  offered to explain both it and man in physical and mathematical
+  terms. But, in our day, the man of science has become too cautious to
+  make such rash extensions of the principles he uses. He is more
+  inclined to limit himself to his special field, and he refuses to
+  make any declaration as to the ultimate nature of things. He holds
+  himself apart from materialism, as he does from idealism. I think I
+  may even go further, and say that the fatal flaw of materialism has
+  been finally detected, and that the essential relativity of all
+  objects to thought is all but universally acknowledged.</p>
+
+  <p>The common notion that science gives a complete view of truth, to
+  which we may appeal as refuting idealism, is untenable. Science
+  itself will not support the appeal, but will direct the appellant to
+  another court. Perhaps, rather, it would be truer to say that its
+  attitude is one of doubt whether or not any court, philosophical or
+  other, can give any valid decision on the matter. Confining
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg196" id="pg196">196</a></span>
+  themselves to the region of material phenomena, scientific men
+  generally leave to common ignorance, or to moral and theological
+  tradition, all the interests and activities of man, other than those
+  which are physical or physiological. And some of them are even aware,
+  that if they could find the physical equation of man, or, through
+  their knowledge of physiology, actually produce in man the
+  sensations, thoughts, and notions now ascribed to the intelligent
+  life within him, the question of the spiritual or material nature of
+  man and the world, would remain precisely where it was. The
+  explanation would still begin with mind and end there. The principles
+  of the materialistic explanation of the world would still be derived
+  from intelligence; mind would still underlie all it explained, and
+  completed science would still be, in this sense, anthropomorphic. The
+  charge of anthropomorphism thus falls to the ground, because it would
+  prove too much. It is a weapon which cuts the hand that wields it.
+  And, as directed against idealism, it only shows that he who uses it
+  has inadequate notions both of the nature of the self and of the
+  world, and is not aware that each gets meaning, only as an exponent
+  of the other.</p>
+
+  <p>On the whole, we may say that it is not men of science who now
+  assail philosophy, because it gives an idealistic explanation of the
+  world, so much as unsystematic dabblers in matters of thought. The
+  best men of science, rather, show a tendency to acquiesce in a kind
+  of dualism of <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg197" id=
+  "pg197">197</a></span> matter and spirit, and to leave morality and
+  religion, art and philosophy to pursue their own ends undisturbed.
+  Mr. Huxley, for instance, and some others, offer two philosophical
+  solutions, one proceeding from the material world and the other from
+  the sensations and other "facts of consciousness." They say that we
+  may either explain man as a natural phenomenon, or the world as a
+  mental one.</p>
+
+  <p>But it is a little difficult not to ask which of these
+  explanations is true. Both of them cannot well be, seeing that they
+  are different. And neither of them can be adopted without very
+  serious consequences. It would require considerable hardihood to
+  suggest that natural science should be swept away in favour of
+  psychology, which would be done if the one view held by Mr. Huxley
+  were true. And, in my opinion, it requires quite as much hardihood to
+  suggest the adoption of a theory that makes morality and religion
+  illusory, which would be done were the other view valid.</p>
+
+  <p>As a matter of fact, however, such an attitude can scarcely be
+  held by any one who is interested <i>both</i> in the success of
+  natural science and in the spiritual development of mankind. We are
+  constrained rather to say that, if these rival lines of thought lead
+  us to deny either the outer world of things, or the world of thought
+  and morality, then they must both be wrong. They are not
+  "explanations" but false theories, if they lead to such conclusions
+  as these. And, instead of holding them up <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg198" id="pg198">198</a></span> to the world as
+  the final triumph of human thought, we should sweep them into the
+  dust-bin, and seek for some better explanation from a new point of
+  view.</p>
+
+  <p>And, indeed, a better explanation is sought, and sought not only
+  by idealists, but by scientific men themselves,&mdash;did they only
+  comprehend their own main tendency and method. The impulse towards
+  unity, which is the very essence of thought, if it is baulked in one
+  direction by a hopeless dualism, just breaks out in another.
+  Subjective idealism, that is, the theory that things are nothing but
+  phenomena of the individual's consciousness, that the world is really
+  all inside the philosopher, is now known by most people to end in
+  self-contradiction; and materialism is also known to begin with it.
+  And there are not many people sanguine enough to believe with Mr.
+  Huxley and Mr. Herbert Spencer, that, if we add two
+  self-contradictory theories together, or hold them alternately, we
+  shall find the truth. Modern science, that is, the science which does
+  not philosophize, and modern philosophy are with tolerable unanimity
+  denying this absolute dualism. They do not know of any thought that
+  is not of things, or of any things that are not for thought. It is
+  necessarily assumed that, in some way or other, the gap between
+  things and thought is got over by knowledge. How the connection is
+  brought about may not be known; but, that there is the connection
+  between real things and true thoughts, no one can well deny. It is an
+  ill-starred perversity which <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg199"
+  id="pg199">199</a></span> leads men to deny such a connection, merely
+  because they have not found out how it is established.</p>
+
+  <p>A new category of thought has taken possession of the thought of
+  our time&mdash;a category which is fatal to dualism. The idea of
+  development is breaking down the division between mind and matter, as
+  it is breaking down all other absolute divisions. Geology, astronomy,
+  and physics at one extreme, biology, psychology, and philosophy at
+  the other, combine in asserting the idea of the universe as a unity
+  which is always evolving its content, and bringing its secret
+  potencies to the light. It is true that these sciences have not
+  linked hands as yet. We cannot get from chemistry to biology without
+  a leap, or from physiology to psychology without another. But no one
+  will postulate a rift right through being. The whole tendency of
+  modern science implies the opposite of such a conception. History is
+  striving to trace continuity between the civilized man and the
+  savage. Psychology is making towards a junction with physiology and
+  general biology, biology with chemistry, and chemistry with physics.
+  That there is an unbroken continuity in existence is becoming a
+  postulate of modern science, almost as truly as the "universality of
+  law" or "the uniformity of nature." Nor is the postulate held less
+  firmly because the evidence for the continuity of nature is not yet
+  complete. Chemistry has not yet quite lapsed into physics; biology at
+  present shows no sign of giving up its characteristic conception of
+  life, and the former science is as yet quite unable to deal with that
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg200" id="pg200">200</a></span>
+  peculiar phenomenon. The facts of consciousness have not been
+  resolved into nervous action, and, so far, mind has not been shown to
+  be a secretion of brain. Nevertheless, all these sciences are beating
+  against the limits which separate them, and new suggestions of
+  connection between natural life and its inorganic environment are
+  continually discovered. The sciences are boring towards each other,
+  and the dividing strata are wearing thin; so that it seems reasonable
+  to expect that, with the growth of knowledge, an unbroken way upwards
+  may be discovered, from the lowest and simplest stages of existence
+  to the highest and most complex forms of self-conscious life.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, to those persons who are primarily interested in the ethical
+  and religious phenomena of man's life, the idea of abolishing the
+  chasm between spirit and nature is viewed with no little
+  apprehension. It is supposed that if evolution were established as a
+  universal law, and the unity of being were proved, the mental and
+  moral life of man would be degraded into a complex manifestation of
+  mere physical force. And we even find religious men rejoicing at the
+  failure of science to bridge the gap between the inorganic and the
+  organic, and between natural and self-conscious life; as if the
+  validity of religion depended upon the maintenance of their
+  separating boundaries. But no religion that is free from
+  superstitious elements has anything to gain from the failure of
+  knowledge to relate things to each other. It is difficult to see how
+  breaks in the continuity of being <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg201" id="pg201">201</a></span> can be established, when every
+  living plant confutes the absolute difference between the organic and
+  inorganic, and, by the very fact of living, turns the latter into the
+  former; and it is difficult to deny the continuity of "mind and
+  matter," when every human being is relating himself to the outer
+  world in all his thoughts and actions. And religion is the very last
+  form of thought which could profit from such a proof of absolute
+  distinctions, were it possible. In fact, as we have seen, religion,
+  in so far as it demands a perfect and absolute being as the object of
+  worship, is vitally concerned in maintaining the unity of the world.
+  It must assume that matter, in its degree, reveals the same principle
+  which, in a higher form, manifests itself in spirit.</p>
+
+  <p>But closer investigation will show that the real ground for such
+  apprehension does not lie in the continuity of existence, which
+  evolution implies; for religion itself postulates the same thing. The
+  apprehension springs, rather, from the idea that the continuity
+  asserted by evolution, is obtained by resolving the higher forms of
+  existence into the lower. It is believed that, if the application of
+  development to facts were successfully carried out, the organic would
+  be shown to be nothing but complex inorganic forces, mental life
+  nothing but a physiological process, and religion, morality, and art,
+  nothing but products of the highly complex motion of highly complex
+  aggregates of physical atoms.</p>
+
+  <p>It seems to me quite natural that science should be regarded as
+  tending towards such a materialistic <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg202" id="pg202">202</a></span> conclusion. This is the view which
+  many scientific investigators have themselves taken of their work;
+  and some of their philosophical exponents, notably Mr. Herbert
+  Spencer, have, with more or less inconsistency, interpreted the idea
+  of evolution in this manner. But, it may be well to bear in mind that
+  science is generally far more successful in employing its
+  constructive ideas, than it is in rendering an account of them. In
+  fact, it is not its business to examine its categories: that task
+  properly belongs to philosophy, and it is not a superfluous one. But,
+  so long as the employment of the categories in the special province
+  of a particular science yields valid results, scientific explorers
+  and those who attach, and rightly attach, so much value to their
+  discoveries, are very unwilling to believe that these categories are
+  not valid universally. The warning voice of philosophy is not heeded,
+  when it charges natural science with applying its conceptions to
+  materials to which they are inadequate; and its examination of the
+  categories of thought is regarded as an innocent, but also a useless,
+  activity. For, it is argued, what good can arise from the analysis of
+  our working ideas? The world looked for causes, and found them, when
+  it was very young; but, up to the time of David Hume, no one had
+  shown what causality meant, and the explanation which he offered is
+  now rejected by modern science, as definitely as it is rejected by
+  philosophy. Meantime, while philosophy is still engaged in exposing
+  the fallacies of the theory of association as held by <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg203" id="pg203">203</a></span> Hume, science has
+  gone beyond this category altogether; it is now establishing a theory
+  of the conservation of energy, which supplants the law of causality
+  by tracing it into a deeper law of nature.</p>
+
+  <p>There is some force in this argument, but it cuts both ways. For,
+  even if it be admitted that the category was successfully applied in
+  the past, it is also admitted that it was applied without being
+  understood; and it cannot now be questioned that the philosophers
+  were right in rejecting it as the final explanation of the relation
+  of objects to each other, and in pointing to other and higher
+  connecting ideas. And this consideration should go some way towards
+  convincing evolutionists that, though they may be able successfully
+  to apply the idea of development to particular facts, this does not
+  guarantee the soundness of their view of it as an instrument of
+  thought, or of the nature of the final results which it is destined
+  to achieve. Hence, without any disparagement to the new extension
+  which science has received by the use of this new idea, it may be
+  maintained that the ordinary view of its tendency and mission is
+  erroneous.</p>
+
+  <p>"The prevailing method of explaining the world," says Professor
+  Caird, "may be described as an attempt to level 'downwards.' The
+  doctrine of development, interpreted as that idea usually is
+  interpreted, supports this view, as making it necessary to trace back
+  higher and more complex to lower or simpler forms of being; for the
+  most obvious way of accomplishing this task is to show analytically
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg204" id="pg204">204</a></span> that
+  there is really nothing more in the former than in the latter."<sup>A</sup>
+  "Divorced from matter," asks Professor Tyndall, "where is life to be
+  found? Whatever our <i>faith</i> may say our <i>knowledge</i> shows
+  them to be indissolubly joined. Every meal we eat, and every cup we
+  drink, illustrates the mysterious <i>control of Mind by Matter</i>.
+  Trace the line of life backwards and see it approaching more and more
+  to what we call the <i>purely physical condition</i>."<sup>B</sup> And then,
+  rising to the height of his subject, or even above it, he proclaims,
+  "By an intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the
+  experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter which we, in our
+  ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed
+  reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the
+  promise and potency of all terrestrial life."<sup>C</sup> A little further on,
+  speaking in the name of science, and on behalf of his scientific
+  fellow-workers (with what right is a little doubtful), he
+  adds&mdash;"We claim, and we shall wrest, from theology, the entire
+  domain of cosmological theory. All schemes and systems which thus
+  infringe upon the domain of science, must, <i>in so far as they do
+  this,</i> submit to its control, and relinquish all thought of
+  controlling it." But if science is to control the knowable world, he
+  generously leaves the remainder for religion. He will not deprive it
+  of a faith in "a Power absolutely inscrutable to the intellect
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg205" id="pg205">205</a></span> of
+  man. As little in our days as in the days of Job can a man by
+  searching find this Power out." And, now that he has left this empty
+  sphere of the unknown to religion, he feels justified in adding,
+  "There is, you will observe, no very rank materialism here."</p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Critical Philosophy of Kant</i>, Vol. I. p. 34</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Address to the British Association</i>, 1874, p. 54.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Belfast Address</i>, 1874.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Yet they did not abolish the gods, but they sent them well out
+    of the way,</p>
+
+    <p>With the rarest of nectar to drink, and blue fields of nothing
+    to sway."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: Clerk Maxwell: "<i>Notes of the President's Address,</i>"
+    British Association, 1874.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Now these declarations of Mr. Tyndall are, to say the least,
+  somewhat ambiguous and shadowy. Yet, when he informs us that eating
+  and drinking "illustrate the control of mind by matter," and "that
+  the line of life traced backwards leads towards a purely physical
+  condition," it is a little difficult to avoid the conclusion that he
+  regards science as destined.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"To tread the world</p>
+
+    <p>Into a paste, and thereof make a smooth</p>
+
+    <p>Uniform mound, whereon to plant its flag."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>For the conclusion of the whole argument seems to be, that all
+  <i>we know as facts</i> are mere forms of matter; although the
+  stubborn refusal of consciousness to be resolved into natural force,
+  and its power of constructing for itself a world of symbols, gives
+  science no little trouble, and forces it to acknowledge complete
+  ignorance of the nature of the power from which all
+  comes.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg206" id=
+  "pg206">206</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"So roll things to the level which you love,</p>
+
+    <p>That you could stand at ease there and survey</p>
+
+    <p>The universal Nothing undisgraced</p>
+
+    <p>By pert obtrusion of some old church-spire</p>
+
+    <p>I' the distance! "<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Some writers on ethics and religion have adopted the same view of
+  the goal of the idea of evolution. In consistency with this supposed
+  tendency of science, to resolve all things into their simplest, and
+  earliest forms, religion has been traced back to the superstition and
+  ghost-worship of savages; and then it has been contended that it is,
+  in essence, nothing more than superstition and ghost-worship. And, in
+  like manner, morality, with its categorical imperative of duty, has
+  been traced back, without a break, to the ignorant fear of the
+  vengeance of a savage chief. A similar process in the same direction
+  reduces the love divine, of which our poet speaks, into brute lust;
+  somewhat sublimated, it is true, in its highest forms, but not
+  fundamentally changed.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Philosophers deduce you chastity</p>
+
+    <p>Or shame, from just the fact that at the first</p>
+
+    <p>Whoso embraced a woman in the field,</p>
+
+    <p>Threw club down and forewent his brains beside;</p>
+
+    <p>So, stood a ready victim in the reach</p>
+
+    <p>Of any brother-savage, club in hand.</p>
+
+    <p>Hence saw the use of going out of sight</p>
+
+    <p>In wood or cave to prosecute his loves."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Bishop Blouhram's Apology</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And when the sacred things of life are treated in this
+  manner&mdash;when moral conduct is showed to <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg207" id="pg207">207</a></span> be evolved by a
+  continuous process from "conduct in general," the conduct of an
+  "infusorium or a cephalopod," or even of wind-mills or water-wheels,
+  it is not surprising if the authority of the moral law seems to be
+  undermined, and that "devout souls" are apprehensive of the results
+  of science. "Does law so analyzed coerce you much?" asks
+  Browning.</p>
+
+  <p>The derivation of spiritual from natural laws thus appears to be
+  fatal to the former; and religious teachers naturally think that it
+  is necessary for their cause to snap the links of the chain of
+  evolution, and, like Professor Drummond, to establish absolute gaps,
+  not only between the inorganic and the organic worlds, but also
+  between the self-conscious life of man and the mysterious, spiritual
+  life of Christ, or God. But it seems to me that, in their antagonism
+  to evolution, religious teachers are showing the same incapacity to
+  distinguish between their friends and their foes, which they
+  previously manifested in their acceptance of the Kantian doctrine of
+  "things in themselves," &mdash;a doctrine which placed God and the
+  soul beyond the power of speculative reason either to prove or
+  disprove. It is, however, already recognized that the attempt of
+  Mansel and Hamilton to degrade human reason for the behoof of faith
+  was really a veiled agnosticism; and a little reflection must show
+  that the idea of evolution, truly interpreted, in no wise threatens
+  the degradation of man, or the overthrow of his spiritual interests.
+  On the contrary, this idea is, in all the history of <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg208" id="pg208">208</a></span> thought, the
+  first constructive hypothesis which is adequate to the uses of ethics
+  and religion. By means of it, we may hope to solve many of the
+  problems arising from the nature of knowledge and moral conduct,
+  which the lower category of cause turned into pure enigmas. It seems,
+  indeed, to contain the promise of establishing the science of man, as
+  intelligent, on a firm basis; on which we may raise a superstructure,
+  comparable in strength and superior in worth, to that of the science
+  of nature. And, even if the moral science must, like philosophy,
+  always return to the beginning&mdash;must, that is, from the
+  necessity of its nature, and not from any complete failure&mdash;it
+  will still begin again at a higher level now that the idea of
+  evolution is in the field.</p>
+
+  <p>It now remains to show in what way the idea of evolution leaves
+  room for religion and morality; or, in other words, to show how, so
+  far from degrading man to the level of the brute condition, and
+  running life down into "purely physical conditions," it contains the
+  promise of establishing that idealistic view of the world, which is
+  maintained by art and religion.</p>
+
+  <p>In order to show this, it is necessary that the idea of evolution
+  should be used fearlessly, and applied to all facts that can in any
+  way come under it. It must, in other words, be used as a category of
+  thought, whose application is universal; so that, if it is valid at
+  all as a theory, it is valid of all finite things. For the question
+  we are dealing with <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg209" id=
+  "pg209">209</a></span> is not the truth of the hypothesis of a
+  particular science, but the truth of a hypothesis as to the relation
+  of all objects in the world, including man himself. We must not be
+  deterred from this universal application by the fact that we cannot,
+  as yet, prove its truth in every detail. No scientific hypothesis
+  ever has exhausted its details. I consider, therefore, that Mr.
+  Tyndall had a complete right to "cross the boundary of the
+  experimental evidence by an intellectual necessity"; for the
+  necessity comes from the assumption of a possible explanation by the
+  aid of the hypothesis. It is no argument against such a procedure to
+  insist that, as yet, there is no proof of the absolute continuity of
+  matter and physical life, or that the dead begets the living. The
+  hypothesis is not disproved by the absence of evidence; it is only
+  not proved. The connection may be there, although we have not, as
+  yet, been able to find it. In the face of such difficulties as these,
+  the scientific investigator has always a right to claim more time;
+  and his attitude is impregnable as long as he remembers, as Mr.
+  Tyndall did on the whole, that his hypothesis is a hypothesis.</p>
+
+  <p>But Mr. Tyndall has himself given up this right. He, like Mr.
+  Huxley, has placed the phenomena of self-consciousness outside of the
+  developing process, and confined the sphere in which evolution is
+  applicable, to natural objects. Between objects and the subject, even
+  when both subject and object are man himself, there lies "an
+  impassable gulf." <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg210" id=
+  "pg210">210</a></span> Even to try "to comprehend the connection
+  between thought and thing is absurd, like the effort of a man trying
+  to lift himself by his own waist-band." Our states of
+  self-consciousness are symbols only&mdash;symbols of an outside
+  entity, whose real nature we can never know. We know only these
+  states; we only <i>infer</i> "that anything answering to our
+  impressions exists outside of ourselves." And it is impossible to
+  justify even that inference; for, if we can only know states of
+  consciousness, we cannot say that they are symbols of anything, or
+  that there is anything to be symbolized. The external world, on this
+  theory, ceases to exist even as an unknown entity. In triumphantly
+  pointing out that, in virtue of this psychological view, "There is,
+  you will observe, no very rank materialism here," Mr. Tyndall forgets
+  that he has destroyed the basis of all natural science, and reduced
+  evolution into a law of "an outside entity," of which we can never
+  know anything, and any inference regarding which violates every law
+  of thought.</p>
+
+  <p>It seems to me quite plain that either this psychological theory,
+  which Mr. Tyndall has mistaken for a philosophy, is invalid; or else
+  it is useless to endeavour to propound any view regarding a "nature
+  which is the phantom of the individual's mind." I prefer the science
+  of Mr. Tyndall (and of Mr. Huxley, too) to his philosophy; and he
+  would have escaped materialism more effectively, if he had remained
+  faithful to his theory of evolution. It is a disloyalty, not only to
+  science, but to thought, to cast away <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg211" id="pg211">211</a></span> our categories when they seem to
+  imply inconvenient consequences. They must be valid universally, if
+  they are valid at all.</p>
+
+  <p>Mr. Tyndall contends that nature makes man, and he finds evidence
+  in the fact that we eat and drink, "of the control of mind by
+  matter." Now, it seems to me, that <i>if</i> nature makes man, then
+  nature makes man's thoughts also. His sensations, feelings, ideas,
+  notions, being those of a naturally-evolved agent, are revelations of
+  the potency of the primal matter, just as truly as are the buds,
+  flowers, and fruits of a tree. No doubt, we cannot as yet "comprehend
+  the connection" between nervous action and sensation, any more than
+  we can comprehend the connection between inorganic and organic
+  existence. But, if the absence of "experimental evidence" does not
+  disprove the hypothesis in the one case, it can not disprove it in
+  the other. There are two crucial points in which the theory has not
+  been established.</p>
+
+  <p>But, in both cases alike, there is the same kind of evidence that
+  the connection exists; although in neither case can we, as yet,
+  discover what it is. Plants live by changing inorganic elements into
+  organic structure; and man is intelligent only in so far as he
+  crosses over the boundary between subject and object, and knows the
+  world without him. There is no "impassable gulf separating the
+  subject and object"; if there were we could not know anything of
+  either. There are not two worlds&mdash;the one of thoughts, the other
+  of things&mdash;which <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg212" id=
+  "pg212">212</a></span> are absolutely exclusive of each other, but
+  one universe in which thought and reality meet. Mr. Tyndall thinks
+  that it is an inference (and an inference over an impassable gulf!)
+  that anything answering to our impressions exists outside ourselves.
+  "The question of the external world is the great battleground of
+  metaphysics," he quotes approvingly from Mr. J.S. Mill. But the
+  question of the external world is not whether that world exists; it
+  is, how are we to account for our knowledge that it does exist. The
+  inference is not from thoughts to things, nor from things to
+  thoughts, but from a partially known world to a systematic theory of
+  that world. Philosophy is not engaged on the foolish enterprise of
+  trying to discover whether the world exists, or whether we know that
+  it exists; its problem is how to account for our knowledge. It asks
+  what must the nature of things be, seeing that they are known; and
+  what is the nature of thought, seeing that it knows facts?</p>
+
+  <p>There is no hope whatsoever for ethics, or religion, or
+  philosophy&mdash;no hope even for science&mdash;in a theory which
+  would apply evolution all the way up from inorganic matter to life,
+  but which would postulate an absolute break at consciousness. The
+  connection between thought and things is there to begin with, whether
+  we can account for it or not; if it were not, then natural science
+  would be impossible. It would be palpably irrational even to try to
+  find out the nature of things by thinking. The only science
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg213" id="pg213">213</a></span> would
+  be psychology, and even that would be the science of "symbols of an
+  unknown entity." What symbols of an unknown can signify, or how an
+  unknown can produce symbols of itself across an impassable
+  gulf&mdash;Mr. Spencer, Mr. Huxley, and Mr. Tyndall have yet to
+  inform us.</p>
+
+  <p>It is the more necessary to insist on this, because the division
+  between thought and matter, which is admitted by these writers, is
+  often grasped at by their opponents, as a means of warding off the
+  results which they draw from the theory of evolution. When science
+  breaks its sword, religion assails it, with the fragment. It is not
+  at once evident that if this chasm were shown to exist, knowledge
+  would be a chimera; for there would be no outer world at all, not
+  even a phenomenal one, to supply an object for it. We <i>must</i>
+  postulate the ultimate unity of all beings with each other and with
+  the mind that knows them, just because we are intellectual and moral
+  beings; and to destroy this unity is to "kill reason itself, as it
+  were, in the eye," as Milton said.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, evolution not only postulates unity, or the unbroken
+  continuity of all existence, but it also negates all differences,
+  except those which are expressions of that unity. It is not the mere
+  assertion of a substratum under qualities; but it implies that the
+  substratum penetrates into the qualities, and manifests itself in
+  them. That which develops&mdash;be it plant, child, or biological
+  kingdom&mdash;is, at every stage from lowest to highest, a concrete
+  unity <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg214" id="pg214">214</a></span>
+  of all its differences; and in the whole history of its process its
+  actual content is always the same. The environment of the plant
+  evokes that content, but it adds nothing to it. No addition of
+  anything absolutely new, no external aggregation, no insertion of
+  anything alien into a growing thing, is possible. What it is now, it
+  was in the beginning; and what it will be, it is now. Granting the
+  hypothesis of evolution, there can be no quarrel with the view that
+  the crude beginnings of things, matter in its most nebulous state,
+  contains potentially all the rich variety of both natural and
+  spiritual life.</p>
+
+  <p>But this continuity of all existence may be interpreted in two
+  very different ways. It may lead us either to radically change our
+  notions of mind and its activities, or "to radically change our
+  notions of matter." We may take as the principle of explanation,
+  either the beginning, or the end of the process of development. We
+  may say of the simple and crass, "There is all that your rich
+  universe really means"; or we may say of the spiritual activities of
+  man, "This is what your crude beginning really was." We may explain
+  the complex by the simple, or the simple by the complex. We may
+  analyze the highest back into the lowest, or we may follow the
+  lowest, by a process of synthesis, up to the highest.</p>
+
+  <p>And one of the most important of all questions for morality and
+  religion is the question, which of these two methods is valid. If out
+  of crass matter <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg215" id=
+  "pg215">215</a></span> is evolved all animal and spiritual life, does
+  that prove life to be nothing but matter; or does it not rather show
+  that what we, in our ignorance, took to be mere matter was really
+  something much greater? If "crass matter" contains all this promise
+  and potency, by what right do we still call it "crass"? It is
+  manifestly impossible to treat the potencies, assumed to lie in a
+  thing that grows, as if they were of no significance; first, to
+  assert that such potencies exist, in saying that the object develops;
+  and then, to neglect them, and to regard the effect as constituted
+  merely of its simplest elements. Either these potencies are not in
+  the object, or else the object has in it, and is, at the first, more
+  than it appears to be. Either the object does not grow, or the lowest
+  stage of its being is no explanation of its true nature.</p>
+
+  <p>If we wish to know what the forms of natural life mean, we look in
+  vain to their primary state. We must watch the evolution and
+  revelation of the secret hid in natural life, as it moves through the
+  ascending cycles of the biological kingdom. The idea of evolution,
+  when it is not muddled, is synthetic&mdash;not analytic; it explains
+  the simplest in the light of the complex, the beginning in the light
+  of the end, and not <i>vice versa</i>. In a word, it follows the ways
+  of nature, the footsteps of fact, instead of inventing a wilful
+  backward path of its own. And nature explains by gradually expanding.
+  If we hearken to nature, and not to the voice of illusory
+  preconceptions, we shall hear her proclaim at the last <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg216" id="pg216">216</a></span> stage, "Here is
+  the meaning of the seedling. Now it is clear what it really was; for
+  the power which lay dormant has pushed itself into light, through bud
+  and flower and leaf and fruit." The reality of a growing thing is its
+  highest form of being. The last explains the first, but not the first
+  the last. The first is abstract, incomplete, not yet actual, but mere
+  potency; and we could never know even the potency, except in the
+  light of its own actualization.</p>
+
+  <p>From this correction of the abstract view of development momentous
+  consequences follow. If the universe is, as science pronounces, an
+  organic totality, which is ever converting its promise and potency
+  into actuality, then we must add that the ultimate interpretation
+  even of the lowest existence in the world cannot be given except on
+  principles which are adequate to explain the highest. We must "level
+  up and not level down": we must not only deny that matter can explain
+  spirit, but we must say that even matter itself cannot be fully
+  understood, except as an element in a spiritual world."<sup>A</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: Professor Caird, <i>The Critical Philosophy of Kant</i>, p.
+    35.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 were <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg217" id="pg217">217</a></span> established, 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 justify <i>in detail</i> the
+  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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg218" id=
+  "pg218">218</a></span> "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.</p>
+
+  <p>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:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"'Will you have why and wherefore, and the fact</p>
+
+    <p>Made plain as pike-staff?' modern Science asks.</p>
+
+    <p>'That mass man sprung from was a jelly-lump</p>
+
+    <p>Once on a time; he kept an after course</p>
+
+    <p>Through fish and insect, reptile, bird and beast,</p>
+
+    <p>Till he attained to be an ape at last,</p>
+
+    <p>Or last but one. And if this doctrine shock</p>
+
+    <p>In aught the natural pride.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"Not at all," the poet interrupts the man of science: "Friend,
+  banish fear!"</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I like the thought He should have lodged me once</p>
+
+    <p>I' the hole, the cave, the hut, the tenement,</p>
+
+    <p>The mansion and the palace; made me learn</p>
+
+    <p>The feel o' the first, before I found myself</p>
+
+    <p>Loftier i' the last."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg219" id="pg219">219</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"But grant me time, give me the management</p>
+
+    <p>And manufacture of a model me,</p>
+
+    <p>Me fifty-fold, a prince without a flaw,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Why, there's no social grade, the sordidest,</p>
+
+    <p>My embryo potentate should brink and scape.</p>
+
+    <p>King, all the better he was cobbler once,</p>
+
+    <p>He should know, sitting on the throne, how tastes</p>
+
+    <p>Life to who sweeps the doorway."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But then, unfortunately, we have no time to make our kings in this
+  way,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"You cut probation short,</p>
+
+    <p>And, being half-instructed, on the stage</p>
+
+    <p>You shuffle through your part as best you can."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>God, however, "takes time." He makes man pass his apprenticeship
+  in all the forms of being. Nor does the poet</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Refuse to follow farther yet</p>
+
+    <p>I' the backwardness, repine if tree and flower,</p>
+
+    <p>Mountain or streamlet were my dwelling-place</p>
+
+    <p>Before I gained enlargement, grew mollusc."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is, indeed, only on the supposition of having been thus evolved
+  from inanimate being that he is able to account</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"For many a thrill</p>
+
+    <p>Of kinship, I confess to, with the powers</p>
+
+    <p>Called Nature: animate, inanimate,</p>
+
+    <p>In parts or in the whole, there's something there</p>
+
+    <p>Man-like that somehow meets the man in me."<sup>D</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>D: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 perverted <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg220" id=
+  "pg220">220</a></span> and 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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"From first to last of lodging, I was I,</p>
+
+    <p>And not at all the place that harboured me."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>Nor does the poet shrink from calling this highest, this last
+  which is also first, by its highest name,&mdash;God.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"He dwells in all,</p>
+
+    <p>From, life's minute beginnings, up at last</p>
+
+    <p>To man&mdash;the consummation of this scheme</p><span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg221" id="pg221">221</a></span>
+
+    <p>Of being, the completion of this sphere</p>
+
+    <p>Of life."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"All tended to mankind," he said, after reviewing the whole
+  process of nature in <i>Paracelsus</i>,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"And, man produced, all has its end thus far:</p>
+
+    <p>But in completed man begins anew</p>
+
+    <p>A tendency to God."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"A supplementary reflux of light,</p>
+
+    <p>Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains</p>
+
+    <p>Each back step in the circle."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Nature is retracted into thought, built again in mind.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"Man, once descried, imprints for ever</p>
+
+    <p>His presence on all lifeless things."<sup>D</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>D: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 a <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg222" id=
+  "pg222">222</a></span> kosmos by the activity of intelligence. In its
+  light, the forces of nature are found to be, not blind nor
+  purposeless, but "hints and previsions"</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Strewn confusedly everywhere about</p>
+
+    <p>The inferior natures, and all lead up higher,</p>
+
+    <p>All shape out dimly the superior race,</p>
+
+    <p>The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false,</p>
+
+    <p>And man appears at last."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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,&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Youth ended, I shall try</p>
+
+    <p>My gain or loss thereby;</p>
+
+    <p>Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:</p>
+
+    <p>And I shall weigh the same,</p>
+
+    <p>Give life its praise or blame:</p>
+
+    <p>Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>As youth attains its meaning in age, so does the unconscious
+  process of nature come to its meaning in man. And old age,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"Still within this life</p>
+
+    <p>Though lifted o'er its strife,"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>is able to</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Discern, compare, pronounce at last,</p>
+
+    <p>This rage was right i' the main,</p>
+
+    <p>That acquiescence vain";<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg223" id="pg223">223</a></span>
+
+  <p>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 finds <i>itself</i>.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Striving to be man, the worm</p>
+
+    <p>Mounts through all the spires of form."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Emerson</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg224" id="pg224">224</a></span>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"The winds</p>
+
+    <p>Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout,</p>
+
+    <p>A querulous mutter, or a quick gay laugh,</p>
+
+    <p>Never a senseless gust now man is born.</p>
+
+    <p>The herded pines commune and have deep thoughts,</p>
+
+    <p>A secret they assemble to discuss</p>
+
+    <p>When the sun drops behind their trunks.</p>
+    <hr />
+
+    <p>"The morn has enterprise, deep quiet droops</p>
+
+    <p>With evening, triumph takes the sunset hour,</p>
+
+    <p>Voluptuous transport ripens with the corn</p>
+
+    <p>Beneath a warm moon like a happy face."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 for <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg225" id="pg225">225</a></span> Browning 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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, <i>must</i> seek 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&mdash;say rather the finish&mdash;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 is <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg226" id="pg226">226</a></span> a 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,&mdash;the
+  <i>prius</i> of all things, the active energy <i>in</i> all things,
+  and the <i>reality</i> of 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."</p>
+
+  <p>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 seem <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg227" id="pg227">227</a></span> to 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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
+  conceptions <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg228" id=
+  "pg228">228</a></span> are 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.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg229" id=
+  "pg229">229</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch08" id="ch08">CHAPTER VIII.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>BROWNING'S SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL.</h3>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    "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."<sup>A</sup>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Novalis</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>In propounding this theory of love, and establishing <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg230" id="pg230">230</a></span> an 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg231"
+  id="pg231">231</a></span> 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 in <i>The
+  Ring and the Book</i>, 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.</p>
+
+  <p>To the critic of a philosophy, there is hardly more <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg232" id="pg232">232</a></span> than 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Denn das Leben ist die Liebe,</p>
+
+    <p>Und des Lebens Leben Geist."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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,
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg233" id="pg233">233</a></span> and,
+  therefore, the true meaning of all existence.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"I search but cannot see</p>
+
+    <p>What purpose serves the soul that strives, or world it tries</p>
+
+    <p>Conclusions with, unless the fruit of victories</p>
+
+    <p>Stay, one and all, stored up and guaranteed its own</p>
+
+    <p>For ever, by some mode whereby shall be made known</p>
+
+    <p>The gain of every life. Death reads the title clear&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>What each soul for itself conquered from out things here:</p>
+
+    <p>Since, in the seeing soul, all worth lies, I assert."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, lv.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In this passage, Browning gives expression to an idea which
+  continually reappears in his pages&mdash;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."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns</p>
+
+    <p>Because he lives, which is to be a man,</p>
+
+    <p>Set to instruct himself by his past self."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"By such confession straight he falls</p>
+
+    <p>Into man's place, a thing nor God nor beast,</p>
+
+    <p>Made to know that he can know and not more:</p>
+
+    <p>Lower than God who knows all and can all,</p>
+
+    <p>Higher than beasts which know and can so far</p>
+
+    <p>As each beast's limit, perfect to an end,</p>
+
+    <p>Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more;</p>
+
+    <p>While man knows partly but conceives beside,</p>
+
+    <p>Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact,</p>
+
+    <p>And in this striving, this converting air</p>
+
+    <p>Into a solid he may grasp and use,</p>
+
+    <p>Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone,</p>
+
+    <p>Not God's and not the beasts': God is, they are,</p>
+
+    <p>Man partly is and wholly hopes to be."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It were easy to multiply passages which show <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg234" id="pg234">234</a></span> that 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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Man must pass from old to new,</p>
+
+    <p>From vain to real, from mistake to fact,</p>
+
+    <p>From what once seemed good, to what now proves best."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Indulging every instinct of the soul</p>
+
+    <p>There, where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But as long as he is man, he has</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In <i>Paracelsus</i>, <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>, <i>Red Cotton
+  Nightcap Country</i>, 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 process <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg235"
+  id="pg235">235</a></span> of 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 is <i>becoming</i> good, 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."</p>
+
+  <p>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 spring
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg236" id="pg236">236</a></span> from
+  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,&mdash;what cannot be true of man, if he grows in
+  intellectual power and moral goodness&mdash;that he is <i>either</i>
+  good or evil, <i>either</i> rational or irrational, <i>either</i>
+  free 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&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Some fitter way express</p>
+
+    <p>Heart's satisfaction that the Past indeed</p>
+
+    <p>Is past, gives way before Life's best and last,</p>
+
+    <p>The all-including Future!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Gerard de Lairesse</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"What were life</p>
+
+    <p>Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife</p>
+
+    <p>Through the ambiguous Present to the goal</p>
+
+    <p>Of some all-reconciling Future?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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."</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg237" id=
+  "pg237">237</a></span>
+
+  <p>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&mdash;a view which finds its exponents in
+  Herbert Spencer, and other so-called evolutionists&mdash;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 a <i>moral ideal</i>, 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 discovers <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg238" id=
+  "pg238">238</a></span> and 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</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"There is no good of life but love&mdash;but love!</p>
+
+    <p>What else looks good, is some shade flung from love.</p>
+
+    <p>Love gilds it, gives it worth. Be warned by me,</p>
+
+    <p>Never you cheat yourself one instant! Love,</p>
+
+    <p>Give love, ask only love, and leave the rest!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>In a Balcony</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"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</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Yearning to dispense,</p>
+
+    <p>Each one its own amount of gain thro' its own mode</p>
+
+    <p>Of practising with life."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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 reaction <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg239" id=
+  "pg239">239</a></span> against 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.</p>
+
+  <p>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 the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg240" id=
+  "pg240">240</a></span> old 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&mdash;even "the
+  poorest love that was ever offered"&mdash;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,"</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg241"
+  id="pg241">241</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Knowledge means</p>
+
+    <p>Ever-renewed assurance by defeat</p>
+
+    <p>That victory is somehow still to reach."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Pillar at Sebzevar</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>A radical flaw runs through our knowing faculty. Human knowledge
+  is not only incomplete&mdash;no one can be so foolish as to deny
+  that&mdash;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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"To know of, think about,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Is all man's sum of faculty effects</p>
+
+    <p>When exercised on earth's least atom, Son!</p>
+
+    <p>What was, what is, what may such atom be?</p>
+
+    <p>No answer!"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Bean-Stripe</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>This theory of knowledge, or rather of nescience or no-knowledge,
+  he gives in <i>La Saisiaz</i>, <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i>, <i>The
+  Parleyings</i>, and <i>Asolando</i>&mdash;in all his later and more
+  reflective poems, in fact. It must, I <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg242" id="pg242">242</a></span> think, be held to be his deliberate
+  and final view&mdash;and all the more so, because, by a peculiar
+  process, he gets from it his defence of his ethical and religious
+  faith.</p>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <p>He finds himself to be "a midway point, between a cause before and
+  an effect behind&mdash;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&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"Conjecture manifold,</p>
+
+    <p>But, as knowledge, this comes only&mdash;things may be as I
+    behold,</p>
+
+    <p>Or may not be, but, without me and above me, things there
+    are;</p>
+
+    <p>I myself am what I know not&mdash;ignorance which proves no
+    bar</p>
+
+    <p>To the knowledge that I am, and, since I am, can recognize</p>
+
+    <p>What to me is pain and pleasure: this is sure, the
+    rest&mdash;surmise.</p>
+
+    <p>If my fellows are or are not, what may please them and what
+    pain,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Mere surmise: my own experience&mdash;that is knowledge once
+    again."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Experience, then, within which he (and every one else)
+  acknowledges that all his knowledge is confined, yields him as
+  certain facts&mdash;the consciousness <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg243" id="pg243">243</a></span> that 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,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"A force</p>
+
+    <p>Actual e'er its own beginning, operative thro' its course,</p>
+
+    <p>Unaffected by its end."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>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.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"All outside its narrow hem,</p>
+
+    <p>Free surmise may sport and welcome! Pleasures, pains affect
+    mankind</p>
+
+    <p>Just as they affect myself? Why, here's my neighbour
+    colour-blind,</p>
+
+    <p>Eyes like mine to all appearance: 'green as grass' do I
+    affirm?</p>
+
+    <p>'Red as grass' he contradicts me: which employs the proper
+    term?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg244" id="pg244">244</a></span>
+
+  <p>If there were only they two on earth as tenants, there would be no
+  way of deciding between them; for, according to his argument, the
+  truth is apparently decided by majority of opinions. Each individual,
+  equipped with his own particular kind of senses and reason, gets his
+  own particular experience, and draws his own particular conclusions
+  from it. If it be asked whether these conclusions are true or not,
+  the only answer is that the question is absurd; for, under such
+  conditions, there cannot be either truth or error. Every one's
+  opinion is its own criterion. Each man is the measure of all things;
+  "His own world for every mortal," as the poet puts it.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"To each mortal peradventure earth becomes a new machine,</p>
+
+    <p>Pain and pleasure no more tally in our sense than red and
+    green."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The first result of this subjective view of knowledge is clearly
+  enough seen by the poet. He is well aware that his convictions
+  regarding the high matters of human destiny are valid only for
+  himself.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"Only for myself I speak,</p>
+
+    <p>Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers strong and
+    weak."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Experience, as he interprets it, that is, present consciousness,
+  "this moment's me and mine," is too narrow a basis for any universal
+  or objective conclusion. So far as his own inner experience of pain
+  and pleasure goes,</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg245" id=
+  "pg245">245</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"All&mdash;for myself&mdash;seems ordered wise and well</p>
+
+    <p>Inside it,&mdash;what reigns outside, who can tell?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But as to the actual world, he can have no opinion, nor, from the
+  good and evil that apparently play around him, can he deduce
+  either</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Praise or blame of its contriver, shown a niggard or
+    profuse</p>
+
+    <p>In each good or evil issue."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The moral government of the world is a subject, regarding which we
+  are doomed to absolute ignorance. A theory that it is ruled by the
+  "prince of the power of the air" has just as much, and just as
+  little, validity as the more ordinary view held by religious people.
+  Who needs be told</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"The space</p>
+
+    <p>Which yields thee knowledge&mdash;do its bounds embrace</p>
+
+    <p>Well-willing and wise-working, each at height?</p>
+
+    <p>Enough: beyond thee lies the infinite&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Back to thy circumscription!"<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And our ignorance of God, and the world, and ourselves is matched
+  by a similar ignorance regarding moral matters.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Ignorance overwraps his moral sense,</p>
+
+    <p>Winds him about, relaxing, as it wraps,</p>
+
+    <p>So much and no more than lets through perhaps</p>
+
+    <p>The murmured knowledge&mdash;' Ignorance exists.'"<sup>D</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>D: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>We cannot be certain even of the distinction and conflict of good
+  and evil in the world. They, too, <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg246" id="pg246">246</a></span> and the apparent choice between
+  them to which man is continually constrained, may be mere
+  illusions&mdash;phenomena of the individual consciousness. What
+  remains, then? Nothing but to "wait."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Take the joys and bear the sorrows&mdash;neither with extreme
+    concern!</p>
+
+    <p>Living here means nescience simply: 'tis next life that helps to
+    learn."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is hardly necessary to enter upon any detailed criticism of
+  such a theory of knowledge as this, which is proffered by the poet.
+  It is well known by all those who are in some degree acquainted with
+  the history of philosophy&mdash;and it will be easily seen by all who
+  have any critical acumen&mdash;that it leads directly into absolute
+  scepticism. And absolute scepticism is easily shown to be
+  self-contradictory. For a theory of nescience, in condemning all
+  knowledge and the faculty of knowledge, condemns itself. If nothing
+  is true, or if nothing is known, then this theory itself is not true,
+  or its truth cannot be known. And if this theory is true, then
+  nothing is true; for this theory, like all others, is the product of
+  a defective intelligence. In whatsoever way the matter is put, there
+  is left no standing-ground for the human critic who condemns human
+  thought. And he cannot well pretend to a footing in a sphere above
+  man's, or below it. There is thus one presupposition which every one
+  must make, if he is to propound any doctrine whatsoever, even if that
+  doctrine be that no doctrine can be <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg247" id="pg247">247</a></span> valid; it is the presupposition
+  that knowledge is possible, and that truth can be known. And this
+  presupposition fills, for modern philosophy, the place of the
+  <i>Cogito ergo sum</i> of Descartes. It is the starting-point and
+  criterion of all knowledge.</p>
+
+  <p>It is, at first sight, a somewhat difficult task to account for
+  the fact, that so keen an intellect as the poet's did not perceive
+  the conclusion to which his theory of knowledge so directly and
+  necessarily leads. It is probable, however, that he never critically
+  examined it, but simply accepted it as equivalent to the common
+  doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, which, in some form or
+  other, all the schools of philosophy adopt. But the main reason will
+  be found to lie in the fact that knowledge was not, to Browning, its
+  own criterion or end. The primary fact of his philosophy is that
+  human life is a moral process. His interest in the evolution of
+  character was his deepest interest, as he informs us; he was an
+  ethical teacher rather than a metaphysician. He is ever willing to
+  asperse man's intelligence. But that man is a moral agent he will in
+  no wise doubt. This is his</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Solid standing-place amid</p>
+
+    <p>The wash and welter, whence all doubts are bid</p>
+
+    <p>Back to the ledge they break against in foam."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>His practical maxim was</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Wholly distrust thy knowledge, then, and trust</p>
+
+    <p>As wholly love allied to ignorance!</p>
+
+    <p>There lies thy truth and safety."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Pillar of Sebzevar</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg248" id="pg248">248</a></span>
+
+  <p>All phenomena must, in some way or other, be reconciled by the
+  poet with the fundamental and indubitable fact of the progressive
+  moral life of man. For the fundamental presupposition which a man
+  makes, is necessarily his criterion of knowledge, and it determines
+  the truth or illusoriness of all other opinions whatsoever.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, Browning held, not only that no certain knowledge is
+  attainable by man, but also that such certainty is incompatible with
+  moral life. Absolute knowledge would, he contends, lift man above the
+  need and the possibility of making the moral choice, which is our
+  supreme business on earth. Man can be good or evil, only on condition
+  of being in absolute uncertainty regarding the true meaning of the
+  facts of nature and the phenomena of life.</p>
+
+  <p>This somewhat strange doctrine finds the most explicit and full
+  expression in <i>La Saisiaz</i>. "Fancy," amongst the concessions it
+  demands from "Reason," claims that man should know&mdash;not merely
+  surmise or fear&mdash;that every action done in this life awaits its
+  proper and necessary meed in the next.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"I also will that man become aware</p>
+
+    <p>Life has worth incalculable, every moment that he spends</p>
+
+    <p>So much gain or loss for that next life which on this life
+    depends."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But Reason refuses the concession, upon the ground that such sure
+  knowledge would be destructive of <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg249" id="pg249">249</a></span> the very distinction between right
+  and wrong, which the demand implies. The "promulgation of this
+  decree," by Fancy, "makes both good and evil to cease." Prior to it
+  "earth was man's probation-place"; but under this decree man is no
+  longer free; for certain knowledge makes action necessary.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Once lay down the law, with Nature's simple 'Such effects
+    succeed</p>
+
+    <p>Causes such, and heaven or hell depends upon man's earthly
+    deed</p>
+
+    <p>Just as surely as depends the straight or else the crooked
+    line</p>
+
+    <p>On his making point meet point or with or else without
+    incline,'</p>
+
+    <p>Thenceforth neither good nor evil does man, doing what he
+    must."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>, 195.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>If we presuppose that "man, addressed this mode, be sound and
+  sane" (and we must stipulate sanity, if his actions are to be morally
+  judged at all)&mdash;then a law which binds punishment and reward to
+  action in a necessary manner, and is known so to bind them, would
+  "obtain prompt and absolute obedience." There are some "edicts, now
+  styled God's own nature's," "which to hear means to obey." All the
+  laws relating to the preservation of life are of this character. And,
+  if the law&mdash;"Would'st thou live again, be just"&mdash;were in
+  all ways as stringent as the other law&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Would'st thou live now, regularly draw thy breath!</p>
+
+    <p>For, suspend the operation, straight law's breach results in
+    death"&mdash;<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>then no one would disobey it, nor could. "It is <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg250" id="pg250">250</a></span> the liberty of
+  doing evil that gives the doing good a grace." And that liberty would
+  be taken away by complete assurance, that effects follow actions in
+  the moral world with the necessity seen in the natural sphere. Since,
+  therefore, man is made to grow, and earth is the place wherein he is
+  to pass probation and prove his powers, there must remain a certain
+  doubt as to the issues of his actions; conviction must not be so
+  strong as to carry with it man's whole nature. "The best I both see
+  and praise, the worst I follow," is the adage rife in man's mouth
+  regarding his moral conduct. But, spite of his seeing and
+  praising,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"he disbelieves</p>
+
+    <p>In the heart of him that edict which for truth his head
+    receives."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He has a dim consciousness of ways whereby he may elude the
+  consequences of his wickedness, and of the possibility of making
+  amends to law.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"And now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin',</p>
+
+    <p>A certain Bardie's rantin', drinkin',</p>
+
+    <p>Some luckless hour will send him linkin'</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">To your black pit;</p>
+
+    <p>But, faith, he'll turn a corner jinkin',</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">And cheat you yet."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The more orthodox and less generous individual is prone to agree,
+  as regards himself, with Burns; but, he sees, most probably, that
+  such an escape is impossible to others. He has secret solacement in a
+  latent belief that he himself is an exception. There will be a
+  special method of dealing with <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg251"
+  id="pg251">251</a></span> him. He is a "chosen sample"; and "God will
+  think twice before He damns a man of his quality." It is just because
+  there is such doubt as to the universality and necessity of the law
+  which connects actions and consequences in the moral sphere, that
+  man's deeds have an ethical character; while, to disperse doubt and
+  ignorance by the assurance of complete knowledge, would take the good
+  from goodness and the ill from evil.</p>
+
+  <p>In this ingenious manner, the poet turns the imperfect intellect
+  and delusive knowledge of man to a moral use. Ordinarily, the
+  intellectual impotence of man is regarded as carrying with it moral
+  incapacity as well, and the delusiveness of knowledge is one of the
+  strongest arguments for pessimism. To persons pledged to the support
+  of no theory, and to those who have the <i>naïveté</i>, so hard to
+  maintain side by side with strong doctrinal convictions, it seems
+  amongst the worst of evils that man should be endowed with fallacious
+  faculties, and cursed with a futile desire for true knowledge which
+  is so strong, that it cannot be quenched even in those who believe
+  that truth can never be attained. It is the very best men of the
+  world who cry</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Oh, this false for real,</p>
+
+    <p>This emptiness which feigns solidity,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Ever some grey that's white, and dun that's black,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>When shall we rest upon the thing itself,</p>
+
+    <p>Not on its semblance? Soul&mdash;too weak, forsooth,</p>
+
+    <p>To cope with fact&mdash;wants fiction everywhere!</p>
+
+    <p>Mine tires of falsehood: truth at any cost!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Bean-Stripe</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg252" id="pg252">252</a></span>
+
+  <p>The poet himself was burdened in no small degree with this vain
+  desire for knowing the truth; and he recognized, too, that he was
+  placed in a world which seems both real and beautiful, and so well
+  worth knowing. Yet, it is this very failure of knowledge&mdash;a
+  failure which, be it remembered, is complete and absolute, because,
+  as he thinks, all facts must turn into phantoms by mere contact with
+  our "relative intelligences,"&mdash;which he constitutes into the
+  basis of his optimistic faith.</p>
+
+  <p>So high is the dignity and worth of the moral life to Browning,
+  that no sacrifice is too great to secure it. And, indeed, if it were
+  once clearly recognized that there is no good thing but goodness,
+  nothing of supreme worth, except the realization of a loving will,
+  then doubt, ignorance, and every other form of apparent evil would be
+  fully justified&mdash;provided they were conditions whereby this
+  highest good is attained. And, to Browning, ignorance was one of the
+  conditions. And consequently, the dread pause in the music which
+  agnosticism brings, is only "silence implying sound"; and the vain
+  cry for truth, arising from the heart of the earth's best men, is
+  only a discord moving towards resolution into a more rapturous
+  harmony.</p>
+
+  <p>I do not stay here to inquire whether sure knowledge would really
+  have this disastrous effect of destroying morality, or whether its
+  failure does not rather imply the impossibility of a moral life. I
+  return to the question asked at the beginning of this chapter, and
+  which it is now possible to <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg253" id=
+  "pg253">253</a></span> answer. That question was: How does Browning
+  reconcile his hypothesis of universal love with the natural and moral
+  evils existing in the world?</p>
+
+  <p>His answer is quite explicit. The poet solves the problem by
+  casting doubt upon the facts which threaten his hypothesis. He
+  reduces them into phenomena, in the sense of phantoms begotten by the
+  human intellect upon unknown and unknowable realities.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Thus much at least is clearly understood&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Of power does Man possess no particle:</p>
+
+    <p>Of knowledge&mdash;just so much as shows that still</p>
+
+    <p>It ends in ignorance on every side."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He is aware of the phenomena of his own consciousness,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"My soul, and my soul's home,</p>
+
+    <p>This body ";</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>but he knows not whether "things outside are fact or feigning."
+  And he heeds little, for in either case they</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"Teach</p>
+
+    <p>What good is and what evil,&mdash;just the same,</p>
+
+    <p>Be feigning or be fact the teacher."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is the mixture, or rather the apparent mixture, of shade and
+  light in life, the conflict of seeming good with seeming evil in the
+  world, that constitutes the world a probation-place. It is a kind of
+  moral gymnasium, crowded with phantoms, wherein by exercise man makes
+  moral muscle. And the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg254" id=
+  "pg254">254</a></span> vigour of the athlete's struggle is not in the
+  least abated by the consciousness that all he deals with are
+  phantoms.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I have lived, then, done and suffered, loved and hated, learnt
+    and taught</p>
+
+    <p>This&mdash;there is no reconciling wisdom with a world
+    distraught,</p>
+
+    <p>Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the
+    aim,</p>
+
+    <p>If&mdash;(to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the
+    same!)&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil's place,</p>
+
+    <p>And life, time&mdash;with all their chances, changes,&mdash;just
+    probation-space,</p>
+
+    <p>Mine, for me."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And the world would not be such a probation-space did we once
+  penetrate into its inmost secret, and know its phenomena as veritably
+  either good or evil. There is the need of playing something
+  perilously like a trick on the human intellect if man is to strive
+  and grow.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Here and there a touch</p>
+
+    <p>Taught me, betimes, the artifice of things&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>That all about, external to myself,</p>
+
+    <p>Was meant to be suspected,&mdash;not revealed</p>
+
+    <p>Demonstrably a cheat&mdash;but half seen through."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Bean-Stripe.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>To know objects as they veritably are, might reveal all things as
+  locked together in a scheme of universal good, so that "white would
+  rule unchecked along the line." But this would be the greatest of
+  disasters; for, as moral agents, we cannot do without</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"the constant shade</p>
+
+    <p>Cast on life's shine,&mdash;the tremor that intrudes</p>
+
+    <p>When firmest seems my faith in white."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg255" id="pg255">255</a></span>
+
+  <p>The intellectual insight that would penetrate through the
+  vari-colour of events into the actual presence of the incandescent
+  white of love, which glows, as hope tells us, in all things, would
+  stultify itself, and lose its knowledge even of the good.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Think!</p>
+
+    <p>Could I see plain, be somehow certified</p>
+
+    <p>All was illusion&mdash;evil far and wide</p>
+
+    <p>Was good disguised,&mdash;why, out with one huge wipe</p>
+
+    <p>Goes knowledge from me. Type needs antitype:</p>
+
+    <p>As night needs day, as shine needs shade, so good</p>
+
+    <p>Needs evil: how were pity understood</p>
+
+    <p>Unless by pain? "<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Good and evil are relative to each other, and each is known only
+  through its contrary.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"For me</p>
+
+    <p>(Patience, beseech you!) Knowledge can but be</p>
+
+    <p>Of good by knowledge of good's opposite&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Evil."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The extinction of one of the terms would be the extinction of the
+  other. And, in a similar manner, clear knowledge that evil is
+  illusion and that all things have their place in an infinite divine
+  order would paralyze all moral effort, as well as stultify
+  itself.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Make evident that pain</p>
+
+    <p>Permissibly masks pleasure&mdash;you abstain</p>
+
+    <p>From out-stretch of the finger-tip that saves</p>
+
+    <p>A drowning fly."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Certainty on either side, either that evil is evil for
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg256" id="pg256">256</a></span>
+  evermore, irredeemable and absolute, a drench of utter dark not
+  illuminable by white; or that it is but mere show and semblance,
+  which the good takes upon itself, would alike be ruinous to man. For
+  both alternatives would render all striving folly. The right attitude
+  for man is that of ignorance, complete uncertainty, the equipoise of
+  conflicting alternatives. He must take his stand on the
+  contradiction. Hope he may have that all things work together for
+  good. It is right that he should nourish the faith that the
+  antagonism of evil with good in the world is only an illusion; but
+  that faith must stop short of the complete conviction that knowledge
+  would bring. When, therefore, the hypothesis of universal love is
+  confronted with the evils of life, and we ask how it can be
+  maintained in the face of the manifold miseries everywhere apparent,
+  the poet answers, "You do not know, and cannot know, whether they are
+  evils or not. Your knowledge remains at the surface of things. You
+  cannot fit them into their true place, or pronounce upon their true
+  purpose and character; for you see only a small arc of the complete
+  circle of being. Wait till you see more, and, in the meantime,
+  hope!"</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Why faith&mdash;but to lift the load,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">To leaven the lump, where lies</p>
+
+    <p>Mind prostrate through knowledge owed</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">To the loveless Power it tries</p>
+
+    <p>To withstand, how vain!"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Reverie</i>&mdash;<i>Asolando</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And, if we reply in turn, that this necessary ignorance
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg257" id="pg257">257</a></span>
+  leaves as little room for his scheme of love as it does for its
+  opposite, he again answers: "Not so! I appeal from the intellect,
+  which is detected as incompetent, to the higher court of the moral
+  consciousness. And there I find the ignorance to be justified: for it
+  is the instrument of a higher purpose, a means whereby what is best
+  is gained, namely, <i>Love</i>."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"My curls were crowned</p>
+
+    <p>In youth with knowledge,&mdash;off, alas, crown slipped</p>
+
+    <p>Next moment, pushed by better knowledge still</p>
+
+    <p>Which nowise proved more constant; gain, to-day,</p>
+
+    <p>Was toppling loss to-morrow, lay at last</p>
+
+    <p>&mdash;Knowledge, the golden?&mdash;lacquered ignorance!</p>
+
+    <p>As gain&mdash;mistrust it! Not as means to gain:</p>
+
+    <p>Lacquer we learn by: ...</p>
+
+    <p>The prize is in the process: knowledge means</p>
+
+    <p>Ever-renewed assurance by defeat</p>
+
+    <p>That victory is somehow still to reach,</p>
+
+    <p>But love is victory, the prize itself:</p>
+
+    <p>Love&mdash;trust to! Be rewarded for the trust</p>
+
+    <p>In trust's mere act."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Pillar at Sebzevar</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Now, in order to complete our examination of this theory, we must
+  follow the poet in his attempt to escape from the testimony of the
+  intellect to that of the heart. In order to make the most of the
+  latter, we find that Browning, especially in his last work, tends to
+  withdraw his accusation of utter incompetence on the part of the
+  intellect. He only tends to do so, it is true. He is tolerably
+  consistent in asserting that we know our own emotions and the
+  phenomena of our own consciousness; but he is not consistent in his
+  account of our knowledge, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg258" id=
+  "pg258">258</a></span> or ignorance, of external things. On the
+  whole, he asserts that we know nothing of them. But in
+  <i>Asolando</i> he seems to imply that the evidence of a loveless
+  power in the world, permitting evil, is irresistible.<sup>A</sup> To say the
+  least, the testimony of the intellect, such as it is, is more clear
+  and convincing with regard to evil than it is with regard to good.
+  Within the sphere of phenomena, to which the intellect is confined,
+  there seems to be, instead of a benevolent purpose, a world ruled by
+  a power indifferent to the triumph of evil over good, and either
+  "loveless" or unintelligent.</p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>See passage just quoted.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Life, from birth to death,</p>
+
+    <p>Means&mdash;either looking back on harm escaped,</p>
+
+    <p>Or looking forward to that harm's return</p>
+
+    <p>With tenfold power of harming."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Bean-Stripe.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And it is not possible for man to contravene this evidence of
+  faults and omissions: for, in doing so, he would remove the facts in
+  reaction against which his moral nature becomes active. What proof is
+  there, then, that the universal love is no mere dream? None! from the
+  side of the intellect, answers the poet. Man, who has the will to
+  remove the ills of life,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Stop change, avert decay,</p>
+
+    <p>Fix life fast, banish death,"<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Reverie</i>&mdash;<i>Asolando</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>has not the power to effect his will; while the Power, whose
+  limitlessness he recognizes everywhere <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg259" id="pg259">259</a></span> around him, merely maintains the
+  world in its remorseless course, and puts forth no helping hand when
+  good is prone and evil triumphant. "God does nothing."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"'No sign,'&mdash;groaned he,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>No stirring of God's finger to denote</p>
+
+    <p>He wills that right should have supremacy</p>
+
+    <p>On earth, not wrong! How helpful could we quote</p>
+
+    <p>But one poor instance when He interposed</p>
+
+    <p>Promptly and surely and beyond mistake</p>
+
+    <p>Between oppression and its victim, closed</p>
+
+    <p>Accounts with sin for once, and bade us wake</p>
+
+    <p>From our long dream that justice bears no sword,</p>
+
+    <p>Or else forgets whereto its sharpness serves.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Bernard de Mandeville.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But he tells us in his later poems, that there is no answer
+  vouchsafed to man's cry to the Power, that it should reveal</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"What heals all harm,</p>
+
+    <p>Nay, hinders the harm at first,</p>
+
+    <p>Saves earth."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Reverie&mdash;Asolando.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And yet, so far as man can see, there were no bar to the remedy,
+  if "God's all-mercy" did really "mate His all-potency."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"How easy it seems,&mdash;to sense</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Like man's&mdash;if somehow met</p>
+
+    <p>Power with its match&mdash;immense</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Love, limitless, unbeset</p>
+
+    <p>By hindrance on every side!"<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But that love nowhere makes itself evident. "Power," we
+  recognize,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"finds nought too hard,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Fulfilling itself all ways,</p>
+
+    <p>Unchecked, unchanged; while barred,</p><span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg260" id="pg260">260</a></span>
+
+    <p class="i2">Baffled, what good began</p>
+
+    <p>Ends evil on every side."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Reverie&mdash;Asolando</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thus, the conclusion to which knowledge inevitably leads us is
+  that mere power rules.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"No more than the passive clay</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Disputes the potter's act,</p>
+
+    <p>Could the whelmed mind disobey</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Knowledge, the cataract."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But if the intellect is thus overwhelmed, so as to be almost
+  passive to the pessimistic conclusion borne in upon it by "resistless
+  fact," the heart of man is made of another mould. It revolts against
+  the conclusion of the intellect, and climbs</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Through turbidity all between,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">From the known to the unknown here,</p>
+
+    <p>Heaven's 'Shall be,' from earth's 'Has been.'"<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It grasps a fact beyond the reach of knowledge, namely, the
+  possibility, or even the certainty, that "power is love." At present
+  there is no substantiating by knowledge the testimony of the heart;
+  and man has no better anchorage for his optimism than faith. But the
+  closer view will come, when even our life on earth will be seen to
+  have within it the working of love, no less manifest than that of
+  power.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"When see? When there dawns a day,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">If not on the homely earth,</p>
+
+    <p>Then, yonder, worlds away,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Where the strange and new have birth,</p>
+
+    <p>And Power comes full in play."<sup>D</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>D: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg261" id="pg261">261</a></span>
+
+  <p>Now, what is this evidence of the heart, which is sufficiently
+  cogent and valid to counterpoise that of the mind; and which gives to
+  "faith," or "hope," a firm foothold in the very face of the opposing
+  "resistless" testimony of knowledge?</p>
+
+  <p>Within our experience, to which the poet knows we are entirely
+  confined, there is a fact, the significance of which we have not as
+  yet examined. For, plain and irresistible as is the evidence of evil,
+  so plain and constant is man's recognition of it as evil, and his
+  desire to annul it. If man's mind is made to acknowledge evil, his
+  moral nature is made so as to revolt against it.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"Man's heart is <i>made</i> to judge</p>
+
+    <p>Pain deserved nowhere by the common flesh</p>
+
+    <p>Our birth-right&mdash;bad and good deserve alike</p>
+
+    <p>No pain, to human apprehension."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Mihrab Shah</i>&mdash;<i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Owing to the limitation of our intelligence, we cannot deny but
+  that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"In the eye of God</p>
+
+    <p>Pain may have purpose and be justified."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But whether it has its purpose for the supreme intelligence or
+  not,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Man's sense avails to only see, in pain,</p>
+
+    <p>A hateful chance no man but would avert</p>
+
+    <p>Or, failing, needs must pity."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Man must condemn evil, he cannot acquiesce in its permanence, but
+  is, spite of his consciousness <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg262"
+  id="pg262">262</a></span> of ignorance and powerlessness, roused into
+  constant revolt against it.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"True, he makes nothing, understands no whit:</p>
+
+    <p>Had the initiator-spasm seen fit</p>
+
+    <p>Thus doubly to endow him, none the worse</p>
+
+    <p>And much the better were the universe.</p>
+
+    <p>What does Man see or feel or apprehend</p>
+
+    <p>Here, there, and everywhere, but faults to mend,</p>
+
+    <p>Omissions to supply,&mdash;one wide disease</p>
+
+    <p>Of things that are, which Man at once would ease</p>
+
+    <p>Had will but power and knowledge?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But the moral worth of man does not suffer the least detraction
+  from his inability to effect his benevolent purpose. "Things must
+  take will for deed," as Browning tells us. David is not at all
+  distressed by the consciousness of his weakness.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"Why is it I dare</p>
+
+    <p>Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my
+    despair?</p>
+
+    <p>This;&mdash;'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what
+    man Would do."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Saul</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The fact that "his wishes fall through," that he cannot, although
+  willing, help Saul, "grow poor to enrich him, fill up his life by
+  starving his own," does not prevent him from regarding his "service
+  as perfect." The will was there, although it lacked power to effect
+  itself. The moral worth of an action is complete, if it is willed;
+  and it is nowise affected by its outer consequences, as both Browning
+  and Kant teach. The loving will, the inner act of loving, though it
+  can bear no outward fruit, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg263" id=
+  "pg263">263</a></span>being debarred by outward impediment, is still
+  a complete and highest good.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"But Love is victory, the prize itself:</p>
+
+    <p>Love&mdash;trust to! Be rewarded for the trust</p>
+
+    <p>In trust's mere act. In love success is sure,</p>
+
+    <p>Attainment&mdash;no delusion, whatso'er</p>
+
+    <p>The prize be: apprehended as a prize,</p>
+
+    <p>A prize it is."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Pillar at Sebzevar</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Whatever the evil in the world and the impotence of man, his duty
+  and his dignity in willing to perform it, are ever the same. Though
+  God neglect the world</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Man's part</p>
+
+    <p>Is plain&mdash;to send love forth,&mdash;astray, perhaps:</p>
+
+    <p>No matter, he has done his part."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Sun</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Now, this fact of inner experience, which the poet thinks
+  incontrovertible&mdash;the fact that man, every man, necessarily
+  regards evil, whether natural or moral, as something to be annulled,
+  were it only possible&mdash;is an immediate proof of the indwelling
+  of that which is highest in man. On this basis, Browning is able to
+  re-establish the optimism which, from the side of knowledge, he had
+  utterly abandoned.</p>
+
+  <p>The very fact that the world is condemned by man is proof that
+  there dwells in man something better than the world, whose evidence
+  the pessimist himself cannot escape. All is not wrong, as long as
+  wrong <i>seems</i> wrong. The pessimist, in condemning the world,
+  must except himself. In his <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg264" id=
+  "pg264">264</a></span> very charge against God of having made man in
+  His anger, there lies a contradiction; for he himself fronts and
+  defies the outrage. There is no depth of despair which this good
+  cannot illumine with joyous light, for the despair is itself the
+  reflex of the good.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i4">"Were earth and all it holds illusions mere,</p>
+
+      <p>Only a machine for teaching love and hate, and hope and
+      fear,</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i4">"If this life's conception new life fail to
+      realize&mdash;</p>
+
+      <p>Though earth burst and proved a bubble glassing hues of hell,
+      one huge</p>
+
+      <p>Reflex of the devil's doings&mdash;God's work by no
+      subterfuge,"<sup>A</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>still, good is good, and love is its own exceeding great reward.
+  Alone, in a world abandoned to chaos and infinite night, man is still
+  not without God, if he loves. In virtue of his love, he himself would
+  be crowned as God, as the poet often argues, were there no higher
+  love elsewhere.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"If he believes</p>
+
+    <p>Might can exist with neither will nor love,</p>
+
+    <p>In God's case&mdash;what he names now Nature's Law&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>While in himself he recognizes love</p>
+
+    <p>No less than might and will,"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>man takes, and rightly takes, the title of being "First, last, and
+  best of things."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Since if man prove the sole existent thing</p>
+
+    <p>Where these combine, whatever their degree,</p>
+
+    <p>However weak the might or will or love,</p>
+
+    <p>So they be found there, put in evidence&mdash;</p><span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg265" id="pg265">265</a></span>
+
+    <p>He is as surely higher in the scale</p>
+
+    <p>Than any might with neither love nor will,</p>
+
+    <p>As life, apparent in the poorest midge,</p>
+
+    <p>Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas' self,</p>
+
+    <p>Given to the nobler midge for resting-place!</p>
+
+    <p>Thus, man proves best and highest&mdash;God, in fine."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>To any one capable of spiritually discerning things, there can be
+  no difficulty in regarding goodness, however limited and mated with
+  weakness, as infinitely above all natural power. Divinity will be
+  known to consist, not in any senseless might, however majestic and
+  miraculous, but in moral or spiritual perfection. If God were
+  indifferent to the evil of the world, acquiesced in it without
+  reason, and let it ripen into all manner of wretchedness, then man,
+  in condemning the world, though without power to remove the least of
+  its miseries, would be higher than God. But we have still to account
+  for the possibility of man's assuming an attitude implied in the
+  consciousness that, while he is without power, God is without pity,
+  and in the despair which springs from his hate of evil. How comes it
+  that human nature rises above its origin, and is able&mdash;nay,
+  obliged&mdash;to condemn the evil which God permits? Is man finite in
+  power, a mere implement of a mocking will so far as knowledge goes,
+  the plaything of remorseless forces, and yet author and first source
+  of something in himself which invests him with a dignity that God
+  Himself cannot share? Is the moral consciousness which, by its very
+  nature, must <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg266" id=
+  "pg266">266</a></span> bear witness against the Power, although it
+  cannot arrest its pitiless course, or remove the least evil,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Man's own work, his birth of heart and brain,</p>
+
+    <p>His native grace, no alien gift at all?"</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>We are thus caught between the horns of a final dilemma. Either
+  the pity and love, which make man revolt against all suffering, are
+  man's own creation; or else God, who made man's heart to love, has
+  given to man something higher than He owns Himself. But both of these
+  alternatives are impossible.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Here's the touch that breaks the bubble."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The first alternative is impossible, because man is by definition
+  powerless, a mere link in the endless chain of causes, incapable of
+  changing the least part of the scheme of things which he condemns,
+  and therefore much more unable to initiate, or to bring into a
+  loveless world abandoned to blind power, the noble might of love.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Will of man create?</p>
+
+    <p>No more than this my hand, which strewed the beans</p>
+
+    <p>Produced them also from its finger-tips."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Bean-Stripe</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>All that man is and has is a mere loan; his love no less than his
+  finite intellect and limited power, has had its origin elsewhere.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Back goes creation to its source, source prime</p>
+
+    <p>And ultimate, the single and the sole."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg267" id="pg267">267</a></span>
+
+  <p>The argument ends by bringing us back</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"To the starting-point,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Man's impotency, God's omnipotence,</p>
+
+    <p>These stop my answer."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Bean-Stripe</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>I shall not pause at present to examine the value of this new form
+  of the old argument, "<i>Ex contingentia mundi</i>." But I may point
+  out in passing, that the reference of human love to a divine creative
+  source is accomplished by means of the idea of cause, one of the
+  categories of the thought which Browning has aspersed. And it is a
+  little difficult to show why, if we are constrained to doubt our
+  thought, when by the aid of causality it establishes a connection
+  between finite and finite, we should regard it as worthy of trust
+  when it connects the finite and the infinite. In fact, it is all too
+  evident that the poet assumes or denies the possibility of knowledge,
+  according as it helps or hinders his ethical doctrine.</p>
+
+  <p>But, if we grant the ascent from the finite to the infinite and
+  regard man's love as a divine gift&mdash;which it may well be
+  although the poet's argument is invalid&mdash;then a new light is
+  thrown upon the being who gave man this power to love. The
+  "necessity," "the mere power," which alone could be discerned by
+  observation of the irresistible movement of the world's events,
+  acquires a new character. Prior to this discovery of love in man as
+  the work of God&mdash;</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg268" id=
+  "pg268">268</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Head praises, but heart refrains</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">From loving's acknowledgment.</p>
+
+    <p>Whole losses outweigh half-gains:</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Earth's good is with evil blent:</p>
+
+    <p>Good struggles but evil reigns."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Reverie</i>&mdash;<i>Asolando</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But love in man is a suggestion of a love without; a proof, in
+  fact, that God is love, for man's love is God's love in man. The
+  source of the pity that man shows, and of the apparent evils in the
+  world which excite it, is the same. The power which called man into
+  being, itself rises up in man against the wrongs in the world. The
+  voice of the moral consciousness, approving the good, condemning
+  evil, and striving to annul it, is the voice of God, and has,
+  therefore, supreme authority. We do wrong, therefore, in thinking
+  that it is the weakness of man which is matched against the might of
+  evil in the world, and that we are fighting a losing battle. It is an
+  incomplete, abstract, untrue view of the facts of life which puts God
+  as irresistible Power in the outer world, and forgets that the same
+  irresistible Power works, under the higher form of love, in the human
+  heart.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Is not God now i' the world His power first made?</p>
+
+    <p>Is not His love at issue still with sin,</p>
+
+    <p>Visibly when a wrong is done on earth?</p>
+
+    <p>Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In this way, therefore, the poet argues back from the moral
+  consciousness of man to the goodness of God. And he finds the
+  ultimate proof of this <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg269" id=
+  "pg269">269</a></span> goodness in the very pessimism and scepticism
+  and despair, that come with the view of the apparently infinite waste
+  in the world and the endless miseries of humanity. The source of this
+  despair, namely, the recognition of evil and wrong, is just the
+  Godhood in man. There is no way of accounting for the fact that "Man
+  hates what is and loves what should be," except by "blending the
+  quality of man with the quality of God." And "the quality of God" is
+  the fundamental fact in man's history. Love is the last reality the
+  poet always reaches. Beneath the pessimism is love: without love of
+  the good there were no recognition of evil, no condemnation of it,
+  and no despair.</p>
+
+  <p>But the difficulty still remains as to the permission of evil,
+  even though it should prove in the end to be merely apparent.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Wherefore should any evil hap to man&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>From ache of flesh to agony of soul&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Since God's All-mercy mates All-potency?</p>
+
+    <p>Nay, why permits He evil to Himself&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Man's sin, accounted such? Suppose a world</p>
+
+    <p>Purged of all pain, with fit inhabitant&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Man pure of evil in thought, word, and deed&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Were it not well? Then, wherefore otherwise?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Mihrab Shah</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The poet finds an answer to this difficulty in the very nature of
+  moral goodness, which, as we have seen, he regards as a progressive
+  realization of an infinitely high ideal. The demand for a world
+  purged of all pain and sin is really, he teaches us, a demand for a
+  sphere where</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg270" id=
+  "pg270">270</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Time brings</p>
+
+    <p>No hope, no fear: as to-day, shall be</p>
+
+    <p>To-morrow: advance or retreat need we</p>
+
+    <p>At our stand-still through eternity?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Rephan</i>&mdash;<i>Asolando</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>What were there to "bless or curse, in such a uniform
+  universe,"</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Where weak and strong,</p>
+
+    <p>The wise and the foolish, right and wrong,</p>
+
+    <p>Are merged alike in a neutral Best."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>There is a better way of life, thinks Browning, than such a state
+  of stagnation.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Why should I speak? You divine the test.</p>
+
+      <p>When the trouble grew in my pregnant breast</p>
+
+      <p>A voice said, So would'st thou strive, not rest,</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Burn and not smoulder, win by worth,</p>
+
+      <p>Not rest content with a wealth that's dearth,</p>
+
+      <p>Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Earth."<sup>C</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The discontent of man, the consciousness of sin, evil, pain, is a
+  symbol of promotion. The peace of the state of nature has been broken
+  for him; and, although the first consequence be</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Brow-furrowed old age, youth's hollow cheek,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Diseased in the body, sick in soul,</p>
+
+    <p>Pinched poverty, satiate wealth,&mdash;your whole</p>
+
+    <p>Array of despairs,"<sup>D</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>D: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>still, without them, the best is impossible. They are the
+  conditions of the moral life, which is essentially progressive. They
+  are the consequences of the fact that man has been "startled
+  up"</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg271" id=
+  "pg271">271</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p class="i6">"by an Infinite</p>
+
+      <p>Discovered above and below me&mdash;height</p>
+
+      <p>And depth alike to attract my flight,</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Repel my descent: by hate taught love.</p>
+
+      <p>Oh, gain were indeed to see above</p>
+
+      <p>Supremacy ever&mdash;to move, remove,</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Not reach&mdash;aspire yet never attain</p>
+
+      <p>To the object aimed at."<sup>A</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Rephan</i>&mdash;<i>Asolando</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>He who places rest above effort, Rephan above the earth, places a
+  natural good above a moral good, stagnation above progress. The
+  demand for the absolute extinction of evil betrays ignorance of the
+  nature of the highest good. For right and wrong are relative. "Type
+  need antitype." The fact that goodness is best, and that goodness is
+  not a stagnant state but a progress, a gradual realization, though
+  never complete, of an infinite ideal, of the perfection of God by a
+  finite being, necessarily implies the consciousness of sin and evil.
+  As a moral agent man must set what should be above what is. If he is
+  to aspire and attain, the actual present must seem to him inadequate,
+  imperfect, wrong, a state to be abolished in favour of a better. And
+  therefore it follows that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Though wrong were right</p>
+
+    <p>Could we but know&mdash;still wrong must needs seem wrong</p>
+
+    <p>To do right's service, prove men weak or strong,</p>
+
+    <p>Choosers of evil or good."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The apparent existence of evil is the condition of <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg272" id="pg272">272</a></span> goodness. And yet
+  it must only be apparent. For if evil be regarded as veritably evil,
+  it must remain so for all that man can do; he cannot annihilate any
+  fact nor change its nature, and all effort would, therefore, be
+  futile. And, on the other hand, if evil were known as unreal, then
+  there were no need of moral effort, no quarrel with the present and
+  therefore no aspiration, and no achievement. That which is man's
+  highest and best,&mdash;namely, a moral life which is a
+  progress&mdash;would thus be impossible, and his existence would be
+  bereft of all meaning and purpose. And if the highest is impossible
+  then all is wrong, "the goal being a ruin, so is all the rest."</p>
+
+  <p>The hypothesis of the moral life as progressive is essential to
+  Browning.</p>
+
+  <p>But if this hypothesis be granted, then all difficulties
+  disappear. The conception of the endless acquirement of goodness at
+  once postulates the consciousness of evil, and the consciousness of
+  it as existing in order to be overcome. Hence the consciousness of it
+  as illusion comes nearest to the truth. And such a conception is
+  essentially implied by the idea of morality. To speculative reason,
+  however, it is impossible, as the poet believes, that evil should
+  thus be at the same time regarded as both real and unreal. Knowledge
+  leads to despair on every side; for, whether it takes the evil in the
+  world as seeming or actual, it stultifies effort, and proves that
+  moral progress, which is best of all things, is impossible. But the
+  moral consciousness derives its vitality from this contradiction. It
+  is <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg273" id="pg273">273</a></span>
+  the meeting-point and conflict of actual and ideal; and its testimony
+  is indisputable, however inconsistent it may be with that of
+  knowledge. Acknowledging absolute ignorance of the outer world, the
+  poet has still a retreat within himself, safe from all doubt. He has
+  in his own inner experience irrefragable proof</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"How things outside, fact or feigning, teach</p>
+
+    <p>What good is and what evil&mdash;just the same,</p>
+
+    <p>Be feigning or be fact the teacher."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Francis Furini</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The consciousness of being taught goodness by interaction with the
+  outside unknown is sufficient; it is "a point of vantage" whence he
+  will not be moved by any contradictions that the intellect may
+  conjure up against it. And this process of learning goodness, this
+  gradual realization by man of an ideal infinitely high and absolute
+  in worth, throws back a light which illumines all the pain and strife
+  and despair, and shows them all to be steps in the endless
+  "love-way." The consciousness of evil is thus at once the effect and
+  the condition of goodness. The unrealized, though ever-realizing
+  good, which brings despair, is the best fact in man's history; and it
+  should rightly bring, not despair, but endless joy.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg274" id="pg274">274</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch09" id="ch09">CHAPTER IX.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>A CRITICISM OF BROWNING'S VIEW OF THE FAILURE OF KNOWLEDGE.</h3>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    "Der Mensch, da er Geist ist, darf und soll sich selbst des
+    höchsten würdig achten, von der Grösse und Macht seines Geistes
+    kann er nicht gross genug denken; und mit diesem Glauben wird
+    nichts so spröde und hart seyn, das sich ihm nicht eröffnete. Das
+    zuerst verborgene und verschlossene Wesen des Universums hat keine
+    Kraft, die dem Muthe des Erkennens Widerstand leisten könnte: es
+    muss sich vor ihm aufthun, und seinen Reichthum und seine Tiefen
+    ihm vor Augen legen und zum Genusse geben."<sup>A</sup>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Hegel's Inaugural Address at Heidelberg</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Before entering upon a criticism of Browning's theory, as
+  represented in the last chapter, it may be well to give a brief
+  summary of it.</p>
+
+  <p>The most interesting feature of Browning's proof of his optimistic
+  faith is his appeal from the intelligence to the moral consciousness.
+  To show theoretically that evil is merely phenomenal is, in his view,
+  both impossible and undesirable. It is impossible, because the human
+  intellect is incapable of knowing anything as it really is, or of
+  pronouncing upon the ultimate nature of any phenomenon. It is
+  undesirable, because a theoretical proof of the <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg275" id="pg275">275</a></span> evanescence of
+  evil would itself give rise to the greatest of all evils. The best
+  thing in the world is moral character. Man exists in order to grow
+  better, and the world exists in order to help him. But moral growth
+  is possible only through conflict against evil, or what seems to be
+  evil; hence, to disprove the existence of evil would be to take away
+  the possibility of learning goodness, to stultify all human effort,
+  and to deprive the world of its meaning.</p>
+
+  <p>But, if an optimistic doctrine cannot be reached by way of
+  speculative thought, if the intellect of man cannot see the good in
+  things evil, his moral consciousness guarantees that all is for the
+  best, and that "the good is all in all." For, in distinguishing
+  between good and evil, the moral consciousness sets up an ideal over
+  against the actual. It conceives of a scheme of goodness which is not
+  realized in the world, and it condemns the world as it is. Man, as
+  moral being, is so constituted that he cannot but regard the evil in
+  the world as something to be annulled. If he had only the power,
+  there would be no pain, no sorrow, no weakness, no failure, no death.
+  Is man, then, better than the Power which made the world and let woe
+  gain entrance into it? No! answers the poet; for man himself is part
+  of that world and the product of that Power. The Power that made the
+  world also made the moral consciousness which condemns the world; if
+  it is the source of the evil in the world, it is also the source of
+  that love in man, which, by self-expenditure, <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg276" id="pg276">276</a></span> seeks to remedy
+  it. If the external world is merely an expression of a remorseless
+  Power, whence comes the love which is the principle of the moral life
+  in man? The same Power brings the antidote as well as the bane. And,
+  further, the bane exists for the sake of the antidote, the wrong for
+  the sake of the remedy. The evil in the world is means to a higher
+  good, and the only means possible; for it calls into activity the
+  divine element in man, and thereby contributes to its realization in
+  his character. It gives the necessary opportunity for the exercise of
+  love.</p>
+
+  <p>Hence, evil cannot be regarded as ultimately real. It is real only
+  as a stage in growth, as means to an end; and the means necessarily
+  perishes, or is absorbed in, the attainment of the end. It has no
+  significance except by reference to that end. From this point of
+  view, evil is the resistance which makes progress possible, the
+  negative which gives meaning to the positive, the darkness that makes
+  day beautiful. This must not, however, be taken to mean that evil is
+  nothing. It is resistance; it is negative; it does oppose the good;
+  although its opposition is finally overcome. If it did not, if evil
+  were unreal, there would be no possibility of calling forth the moral
+  potency of man, and the moral life would be a figment. But these two
+  conditions of the moral life&mdash;on the one hand, that the evil of
+  the world must be capable of being overcome and is there for the
+  purpose of being overcome, and that it is unreal except as a means to
+  the good; and, on <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg277" id=
+  "pg277">277</a></span> the other hand, that evil must be actually
+  opposed to the good, if the good is to have any
+  meaning,&mdash;cannot, Browning thinks, be reconciled with each
+  other. It is manifest that the intellect of man cannot, at the same
+  time, regard evil as both real and unreal. It must assert the one and
+  deny the other; or else we must regard its testimony as altogether
+  untrustworthy. But the first alternative is destructive of the moral
+  consciousness. Moral life is alike impossible whether we deny or
+  assert the real existence of evil. The latter alternative stultifies
+  knowledge, and leaves all the deeper concerns of life&mdash;the
+  existence of good and evil, the reality of the distinction between
+  them, the existence of God, the moral governance of the world, the
+  destiny of man&mdash;in a state of absolute uncertainty. We must
+  reject the testimony either of the heart or of the head.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning, as we have seen, unhesitatingly adopts the latter
+  alternative. He remains loyal to the deliverances of his moral
+  consciousness and accepts as equally valid, beliefs which the
+  intellect finds to be self-contradictory: holding that knowledge on
+  such matters is impossible. And he rejects this knowledge, not only
+  because our thoughts are self-contradictory in themselves, but
+  because the failure of a speculative solution of these problems is
+  necessary to morality. Clear, convincing, demonstrative knowledge
+  would destroy morality; and the fact that the power to attain such
+  knowledge has been withheld from us is to be regarded rather as an
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg278" id="pg278">278</a></span>
+  indication of the beneficence of God, who has not held even ignorance
+  to be too great a price for man to pay for goodness.</p>
+
+  <p>Knowledge is not the fit atmosphere for morality. It is faith and
+  not reason, hope and trust but not certainty, that lend vigour to the
+  good life. We may believe, and rejoice in the belief, that the
+  absolute good is fulfilling itself in all things, and that even the
+  miseries of life are really its refracted rays&mdash;the light that
+  gains in splendour by being broken. But we must not, and, indeed,
+  cannot ascend from faith to knowledge. The heart may trust, and must
+  trust, if it faithfully listens to its own natural voice; but reason
+  must not demonstrate. Ignorance on the side of intellect, faith on
+  the side of the emotions; distrust of knowledge, absolute confidence
+  in love; such is the condition of man's highest welfare: it is only
+  thus that the purpose of his life, and of the world which is his
+  instrument, can be achieved.</p>
+
+  <p>No final estimate of the value of this theory of morals and
+  religion can be made, without examining its philosophical
+  presuppositions. Nor is such an examination in any way unfair; for it
+  is obvious that Browning explicitly offers us a philosophical
+  doctrine. He appeals to argument and not to artistic intuition; he
+  offers a definite theory to which he claims attention, not on account
+  of any poetic beauty that may lie within it, but on the ground that
+  it is a true exposition of the moral nature of man. Kant's
+  <i>Metaphysic of Ethics</i> is not <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg279" id="pg279">279</a></span> more metaphysical in intention than
+  the poet's later utterances on the problems of morality. In <i>La
+  Saisiaz</i>, in <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i>, in the <i>Parleyings</i>,
+  and, though less explicitly, in <i>Asolando</i>, <i>Fifine at the
+  Fair</i>, and <i>Red Cotton Nightcap Country</i>, Browning definitely
+  states, and endeavours to demonstrate a theory of knowledge, a theory
+  of the relation of knowledge to morality, and a theory of the nature
+  of evil; and he discusses the arguments for the immortality of the
+  soul. In these poems his artistic instinct avails him, not as in his
+  earlier ones, for the discovery of truth by way of intuition, but for
+  the adornment of doctrines already derived from a metaphysical
+  repository. His art is no longer free, no longer its own end, but
+  coerced into an alien service. It has become illustrative and
+  argumentative, and in being made to subserve speculative purposes, it
+  has ceased to be creative. Browning has appealed to philosophy, and
+  philosophy must try his cause.</p>
+
+  <p>Such, then, is Browning's theory; and I need make no further
+  apology for discussing at some length the validity of the division
+  which it involves between the intellectual and the moral life of man.
+  Is it possible to combine the weakness of man's intelligence with the
+  strength of his moral and religious life, and to find in the former
+  the condition of the latter? Does human knowledge fail, as the poet
+  considers it to fail? Is the intelligence of man absolutely incapable
+  of arriving at knowledge of things as they are? If it does, if man
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg280" id="pg280">280</a></span>
+  cannot know the truth, can he attain goodness? These are the
+  questions that must now be answered.</p>
+
+  <p>It is one of the characteristics of recent thought that it
+  distrusts its own activity: the ancient philosophical "Scepticism"
+  has been revived and strengthened. Side by side with the sense of the
+  triumphant progress of natural science, there is a conviction, shared
+  even by scientific investigators themselves, as well as by religious
+  teachers and by many students of philosophy, that our knowledge has
+  only limited and relative value, and that it always stops short of
+  the true nature of things. The reason of this general conviction lies
+  in the fact that thought has become aware of its own activity; men
+  realize more clearly than they did in former times that the apparent
+  constitution of things depends directly on the character of the
+  intelligence which apprehends them.</p>
+
+  <p>This relativity of things to thought has, not unnaturally,
+  suggested the idea that the objects of our knowledge are different
+  from objects as they are. "That the real nature of things is very
+  different from what we make of them, that thought and thing are
+  divorced, that there is a fundamental antithesis between them," is,
+  as Hegel said, "the hinge on which modern philosophy turns." Educated
+  opinion in our day has lost its naive trust in itself. "The natural
+  belief of man, it is true, ever gives the lie" to the doctrine that
+  we do not know things. "In common life," adds Hegel, "we reflect
+  without particularly noting that this is the process <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg281" id="pg281">281</a></span> of arriving at
+  the truth, and we think without hesitation and in the firm belief
+  that thought coincides with things."<sup>A</sup> But, as soon as attention is
+  directed to the process of thinking, and to the way in which the
+  process affects our consciousness of the object, it is at once
+  concluded that thought will never reach reality, that things are not
+  given to us as they are, but distorted by the medium of sense and our
+  intelligence, through which they pass. The doctrine of the relativity
+  of knowledge is thus very generally regarded as equivalent to the
+  doctrine that there is no true knowledge whatsoever. We know only
+  phenomena, or appearances; and it is these, and not veritable facts,
+  that we systematize into sciences. "We can arrange the
+  appearances&mdash;the shadows of our cave&mdash;and that, for the
+  practical purposes of the cave, is all that we require."<sup>B</sup> Not even
+  "earth's least atom" can ever be known to us as it really is; it is
+  for us, at the best,</p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: Wallace's <i>Translation of Hegel's Logic</i>, p. 36.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: Caird's <i>Comte</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"An atom with some certain properties</p>
+
+    <p>Known about, thought of as occasion needs."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>A Bean-Stripe</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In this general distrust of knowledge, however, there are, as
+  might be expected, many different degrees. Its origin in modern times
+  was, no doubt, the doctrine of Kant. "This divorce of thing and
+  thought," says Hegel, "is mainly the work of the critical philosophy
+  and runs counter to the conviction <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg282" id="pg282">282</a></span> of all previous ages." And the
+  completeness of the divorce corresponds, with tolerable accuracy, to
+  the degree in which the critical philosophy has been understood; for
+  Kant's writings, like those of all great thinkers, are capable of
+  many interpretations, varying in depth with the intelligence of the
+  interpreters.</p>
+
+  <p>The most common and general form of this view of the limitation of
+  the human intelligence is that which places the objects of religious
+  faith beyond the reach of human knowledge. We find traces of it in
+  much of the popular theology of our day. The great facts of religion
+  are often spoken of as lying in an extra-natural sphere, beyond
+  experience, into which men cannot enter by the native right of
+  reason. It is asserted that the finite cannot know the infinite, that
+  the nature of God is unknowable&mdash;except by means of a
+  supernatural interference, which gives to men a new power of
+  spiritual discernment, and "reveals" to them things which are "above
+  reason," although not contrary to it. The theologian often shields
+  certain of his doctrines from criticism, on the ground, as he
+  contends, that there are facts which we must believe, but which it
+  would be presumptuous for us to pretend to understand or to
+  demonstrate. They are the proper objects of "faith."</p>
+
+  <p>But this view of the weakness of the intelligence when applied to
+  supersensuous facts, is held along with an undisturbed conviction of
+  the validity of our knowledge of ordinary objects. It is believed,
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg283" id="pg283">283</a></span> in a
+  word, that there are two kinds of realities,&mdash;natural and
+  supernatural; and that the former is knowable and the latter not.</p>
+
+  <p>It requires, however, no great degree of intellectual acumen to
+  discover that this denial of the validity of our knowledge of these
+  matters involves its denial in all its applications. The ordinary
+  knowledge of natural objects, which we begin by regarding as valid,
+  or, rather, whose validity is taken for granted without being
+  questioned, depends upon our ideas of these supersensible objects. In
+  other words, those fundamental difficulties which pious opinion
+  discovers in the region of theology, and which, as is thought, fling
+  the human intellect back upon itself into a consciousness of frailty
+  and finitude, are found to lurk beneath our ordinary knowledge.
+  Whenever, for instance, we endeavour to know any object, we find that
+  we are led back along the line of its conditions to that which
+  unconditionally determines it. For we cannot find the reason for a
+  particular object in a particular object. We are driven back
+  endlessly from one to another along the chain of causes; and we can
+  neither discover the first link nor do without it. The first link
+  must be a cause of itself, and experience yields none such. Such a
+  cause would be the unconditioned, and the unconditioned we cannot
+  know. The final result of thinking is thus to lead us to an unknown;
+  and, in consequence, all our seeming knowledge is seen to have no
+  intelligible basis, and, therefore, to be merely hypothetical. If
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg284" id="pg284">284</a></span> we
+  cannot know God, we cannot know anything.</p>
+
+  <p>This view is held by the Positivists, and the most popular English
+  exponent of it is, perhaps, Mr. Herbert Spencer. Its characteristic
+  is its repudition of both theology and metaphysics as
+  pseudo-sciences, and its high esteem for science. That esteem is not
+  disturbed by the confession that "noumenal causes,"&mdash;that is,
+  the actual reality of things,&mdash;are unknown; for we can still lay
+  claim to valid knowledge of the laws of phenomena. Having
+  acknowledged that natural things as known are merely phenomena,
+  positivism treats them in all respects as if they were realities; and
+  it rejoices in the triumphant progress of the natural sciences as if
+  it were a veritable growth of knowledge. It does not take to heart
+  the phenomenal nature of known objects. But, having paid its formal
+  compliments to the doctrine of the relativity of all knowledge, it
+  neglects it altogether.</p>
+
+  <p>Those who understand Kant better carry his scepticism further, and
+  they complete the divorce between man's knowledge and reality. The
+  process of knowing, they hold, instead of leading us towards facts,
+  as it was so long supposed to do, takes us away from them:
+  <i>i.e.</i>, if either "towards" or "away from" can have any meaning
+  when applied to two realms which are absolutely severed from one
+  another. Knowledge is always concerned with the relations between
+  things; with their likeness, or unlikeness, their laws, or
+  connections; but <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg285" id=
+  "pg285">285</a></span> these are universals, and things are
+  individuals. Science knows the laws of things, but not the things; it
+  reveals how one object affects another, how it is connected with it;
+  but what are the things themselves, which are connected, it does not
+  know. The laws are mere forms of thought, "bloodless categories," and
+  not facts. They may somehow be regarded as explaining facts, but they
+  must not be identified with the facts. Knowledge is the sphere of
+  man's thoughts, and is made up of ideas; real things are in another
+  sphere, which man's thoughts cannot reach. We must distinguish more
+  clearly than has hitherto been done, between logic as the science of
+  knowledge, and metaphysics as a science which pretends to reveal the
+  real nature of things. In a word, we can know thoughts or universals,
+  but not things or particular existences. "When existence is in
+  question it is the individual, not the universal, that is real; and
+  the real individual is not a composite of species and accidents, but
+  is individual to the inmost fibre of its being." Each object keeps
+  its own real being to itself. Its inmost secret, its reality, is
+  something that cannot appear in knowledge. We can only know its
+  manifestations; but these manifestations are not its reality, nor
+  connected with it. These belong to the sphere of knowledge, they are
+  parts in a system of abstract thoughts; they do not exist in that
+  system, or no-system, of individual realities, each of which, in its
+  veritable being, is itself only, and connected with nought
+  beside.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg286" id=
+  "pg286">286</a></span>
+
+  <p>Now, this view of the absolute impossibility of knowing any
+  reality, on account of the fundamental difference between things and
+  our thoughts about things, contains a better promise of a true view
+  both of reality and of knowledge, than any of the previously
+  mentioned half-hearted theories. It forces us explicitly either to
+  regard every effort to know as futile, or else to regard it as futile
+  <i>on this theory of it</i>. In other words, we must either give up
+  knowledge or else give up the account of knowledge advanced by these
+  philosophers. Hitherto, however, every philosophy that has set itself
+  against the possibility of the knowledge of reality has had to give
+  way. It has failed to shake the faith of mankind in its own
+  intellectual endowment, or to arrest, even for a moment, the attempt
+  by thinking to know things as they are. The view held by Berkeley,
+  that knowledge is merely subjective, because the essence of things
+  consists in their being perceived by the individual, and that they
+  are nothing but his ideas, was refuted by Kant, when he showed that
+  the very illusion of seeming knowledge was impossible on that theory.
+  And this later view, which represents knowledge as merely subjective,
+  on the ground that it is the product of the activity of the thought
+  of mankind, working according to universal laws, is capable of being
+  refuted in the same manner. The only difference between the
+  Berkeleian and this modern speculative theory is that, on the former
+  view, each individual constructed his own subjective entities
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg287" id="pg287">287</a></span> or
+  illusions; while, on the latter, all men, by reason of the
+  universality of the laws of thought governing their minds, create the
+  same illusion, the same subjective scheme of ideas. Instead of each
+  having his own private unreality, as the product of his perceiving
+  activity, they have all the same, or at least a similar,
+  phantom-world of ideas, as the result of their thinking. But, in both
+  cases alike, the reality of the world without is out of reach, and
+  knowledge is a purely subjective apprehension of a world within.
+  Thoughts are quite different from things, and no effort of human
+  reason can reveal any community between them.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, there are certain difficulties which, so far as I know, those
+  who hold this view have scarcely attempted to meet. The first of
+  these lies in the obvious fact, that all men at all times consider
+  that this very process of thinking, which the theory condemns as
+  futile, is the only way we have of finding out what the reality of
+  things is. Why do we reflect and think, except in order to pass
+  beyond the illusions of sensuous appearances to the knowledge of
+  things as they are? Nay, why do these philosophers themselves
+  reflect, when reflection, instead of leading to truth, which is
+  knowledge of reality, leads only to ideas, which, being universal,
+  cannot represent the realities that are said to be "individual."</p>
+
+  <p>The second is, that the knowledge of "the laws" of things gives to
+  us practical command over them; although, according to this view,
+  laws are not things, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg288" id=
+  "pg288">288</a></span> nor any part of the reality of things, nor
+  even true representations of things. Our authority over things seems
+  to grow <i>pari passu</i> with our knowledge. The natural sciences
+  seem to prove by their practical efficiency, that they are not
+  building up a world of apparitions, like the real world; but
+  gradually getting inside nature, learning more and more to wield her
+  powers, and to make them the instruments of the purposes of man, and
+  the means of his welfare. To common-sense,&mdash;which frequently
+  "divines" truths that it cannot prove, and, like ballast in a ship,
+  has often given steadiness to human progress although it is only a
+  dead weight,&mdash;the assertion that man knows nothing is as
+  incredible as that he knows all things. If it is replied, that the
+  "things" which we seem to dominate by the means of knowledge are
+  themselves only phenomena, the question arises, what then are the
+  real things to which they are opposed? What right has any philosophy
+  to say that there is any reality which no one can in any sense know?
+  The knowledge that such reality is, is surely a relation between that
+  reality and consciousness, and, if so, the assertion of an unknowable
+  reality is self-contradictory. For the conception of it is the
+  conception of something that is, and at the same time is not, out of
+  relation to consciousness.</p>
+
+  <p>To say what kind of thing reality is, is a still more remarkable
+  feat, if reality is unknowable. Reality, being beyond knowledge, why
+  is it called particular or individual, rather than universal?
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg289" id="pg289">289</a></span> How
+  is it known that the true being of things is different from ideas?
+  Surely both of the terms must be regarded as known to some extent, if
+  they are called like or unlike, contrasted or compared, opposed or
+  identified.</p>
+
+  <p>But, lastly, this theory has to account for the fact that it
+  constitutes what is not only unreal, but impossible, into the
+  criterion of what is actual. If knowledge of reality is altogether
+  different from human knowledge, how does it come to be its criterion?
+  That knowledge is inadequate or imperfect can be known, only by
+  contrasting it with its own proper ideal, whatever that may be. A
+  criticism by reference to a foreign or irrelevant criterion, or the
+  condemnation of a theory as imperfect because it does not realize an
+  impossible end, is unreasonable. All true criticism of an object
+  implies a reference to a more perfect state of itself.</p>
+
+  <p>We must, then, regard the knowledge of objects as they are, which
+  is opposed to human knowledge, as, only a completer and fuller form
+  of that knowledge; or else we must cease to contrast it with our
+  human knowledge, as valid with invalid, true with phenomenal. Either
+  knowledge of reality is complete knowledge, or else it is a chimera.
+  And, in either case, the sharp distinction between the real and the
+  phenomenal vanishes; and what remains, is not a reality outside of
+  consciousness, or different from ideas, but a reality related to
+  consciousness, or, in other words, a knowable reality. "The
+  distinction <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg290" id=
+  "pg290">290</a></span> of objects into phenomena and noumena,
+  <i>i.e.</i>, into things that for us exist, and things that for us do
+  not exist, is an Irish bull in philosophy," said Heine. To speak of
+  reality as unknowable, or to speak of anything as unknowable, is to
+  utter a direct self-contradiction; it is to negate in the predicate
+  what is asserted in the subject. It is a still more strange
+  perversion to erect this knowable emptiness into a criterion of
+  knowledge, and to call the latter phenomenal by reference to it.</p>
+
+  <p>These difficulties are so fundamental and so obvious, that the
+  theory of the phenomenal nature of human knowledge, which, being
+  interpreted, means that we know nothing, could scarcely maintain its
+  hold, were it not confused with another fact of human experience,
+  that is apparently inconsistent with the doctrine that man can know
+  the truth. Side by side with the faith of ordinary consciousness,
+  that in order to know anything we must think, or, in other words,
+  that knowledge shows us what things really are, there is a
+  conviction, strengthened by constant experience, that we never know
+  things fully. Every investigation into the nature of an object soon
+  brings us to an enigma, a something more we do not know. Failing to
+  know this something more, we generally consider that we have fallen
+  short of reaching the reality of the object. We recognize, as it has
+  been expressed, that we have been brought to a stand, and we
+  therefore conclude that we are also brought to the end. We arrive at
+  what we do not know, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg291" id=
+  "pg291">291</a></span> and we pronounce that unknown to be
+  unknowable; that is, we regard it as something different in nature
+  from what we do know. So far as I can see, the attitude of ordinary
+  thought in regard to this matter might be fairly represented by
+  saying, that it always begins by considering objects as capable of
+  being known in their reality, or as they are, and that experience
+  always proves the attempt to know them as they are to be a failure.
+  The effort is continued although failure is the result, and even
+  although that failure be exaggerated and universalized into that
+  despair of knowledge which we have described. We are thus confronted
+  with what seems to be a contradiction; a trust and distrust in
+  knowledge. It can only be solved by doing full justice to both of the
+  conflicting elements; and then, if possible, by showing that they are
+  elements, and not the complete, concrete fact, except when held
+  together.</p>
+
+  <p>From one point of view, it is undeniable that in every object of
+  perception, we come upon problems that we cannot solve. Science at
+  its best, and even when dealing with the simplest of things, is
+  forced to stop short of its final secret. Even when it has discovered
+  its law, there is still apparently something over and above which
+  science cannot grasp, and which seems to give to the object its
+  reality. All the natural sciences concentrated on a bit of iron ore
+  fail to exhaust the truth in it: there is always a "beyond" in it,
+  something still more fundamental which is not yet understood.
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg292" id="pg292">292</a></span> And
+  that something beyond, that inner essence, that point in which the
+  laws meet and which the sciences fail to lift into knowledge, is
+  regarded as just the reality of the thing. Thus the reality is
+  supposed, at the close of every investigation, to lie outside of
+  knowledge; and conversely, all that we do know, seeing that it lacks
+  this last element, seems to be only apparent knowledge, or knowledge
+  of phenomena.</p>
+
+  <p>In this way the process of knowing seems always to stop short at
+  the critical moment, when the truth is just about to be reached. And
+  those who dwell on this aspect alone are apt to conclude that man's
+  intellect is touched with a kind of impotence, which makes it useless
+  when it gets near the reality. It is like a weapon that snaps at the
+  hilt just when the battle is hottest. For we seem to be able to know
+  everything but the reality, and yet apart from the real essence all
+  knowledge seems to be merely apparent. Physical science penetrates
+  through the outer appearances of things to their laws, analyzes them
+  into forms of energy, calculates their action and predicts their
+  effects with certainty. Its practical power over the forces of nature
+  is so great that it seems to have got inside her secrets. And yet
+  science will itself acknowledge that in every simplest object there
+  is an unknown. Its triumphant course of explaining seems to be always
+  arrested at the threshold of reality. It has no theory, scarcely an
+  hypothesis, of the actual nature of things, or of what that is in
+  each object, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg293" id=
+  "pg293">293</a></span> which constitutes it a real existence. Natural
+  science, with a scarcely concealed sneer, hands over to the
+  metaphysician all questions as to the real being of things; and
+  itself makes the more modest pretension of showing how things behave,
+  not what they are; what effects follow the original noumenal causes,
+  but not the veritable nature of these causes. Nor can the
+  metaphysician, in his turn, do more than suggest a hypothesis as to
+  the nature of the ultimate reality in things. He cannot detect or
+  demonstrate it in any particular fact. In a word, every minutest
+  object in the world baffles the combined powers of all forms of human
+  thought, and holds back its essence or true being from them. And as
+  long as this true being, or reality is not known, the knowledge which
+  we seem to have cannot be held as ultimately true, but is
+  demonstrably a makeshift.</p>
+
+  <p>Having made this confession, there seems to be no alternative but
+  to postulate an utter discrepancy between human thought and real
+  existence, or between human knowledge and truth, which is the
+  correspondence of thing and thought. For, at no point is knowledge
+  found to be in touch with real being; it is everywhere demonstrably
+  conditioned and relative, and inadequate to express the true reality
+  of its objects. What remains, then, except to regard human knowledge
+  as completely untrustworthy, as merely of phenomena? If we cannot
+  know <i>any</i> reality, does not knowledge completely
+  fail?</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg294" id=
+  "pg294">294</a></span>
+
+  <p>Now, in dealing with the moral life of man, we saw that the method
+  of hard alternatives is invalid. The moral life, being progressive,
+  was shown to be the meeting&mdash;point of the ideal and the actual;
+  and the ideal of perfect goodness was regarded as manifesting itself
+  in actions which, nevertheless, were never adequate to express it.
+  The good when achieved was ever condemned as unworthy, and the ideal
+  when attained ever pressed for more adequate expression in a better
+  character. The ideal was present as potency, as realizing itself, but
+  it was never completely realized. The absolute good was never reached
+  in the best action, and never completely missed in the worst.</p>
+
+  <p>The same conflict of real and unreal was shown to be essential to
+  every natural life. As long as anything grows it neither completely
+  attains, nor completely falls away from its ideal. The growing acorn
+  is not an oak tree, and yet it is not a mere acorn. The child is not
+  the man; and yet the man is in the child, and only needs to be
+  evolved by interaction with circumstances. The process of growth is
+  one wherein the ideal is always present, as a reconstructive power
+  gradually changing its whole vehicle, or organism, into a more
+  perfect expression of itself. The ideal is reached in the end, just
+  because it is present in the beginning; and there is no end as long
+  as growth continues.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, it is evident that knowledge, whether it be that of the
+  individual man or of the human race, <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg295" id="pg295">295</a></span> is a thing that grows. The process
+  by means of which natural science makes progress, or by which the
+  consciousness of the child expands and deepens into the consciousness
+  of the man, is best made intelligible from the point of view of
+  evolution. It is like an organic process, in which each new
+  acquirement finds its place in an old order, each new fact is brought
+  under the permanent principles of experience, and absorbed into an
+  intellectual life, which itself, in turn, grows richer and fuller
+  with every new acquisition. No knowledge worthy of the name is an
+  aggregation of facts. Wisdom comes by growth.</p>
+
+  <p>Hence, the assertion that knowledge never attains reality, does
+  not imply that it always misses it. In morals we do not say that a
+  man is entirely evil, although he never, even in his best actions,
+  attains the true good. And if the process of knowing is one that
+  presses onward towards an ideal, that ideal is never completely
+  missed even in the poorest knowledge. If it grows, the method of
+  fixed alternatives must be inapplicable to it. The ideal, whatever it
+  may be, must be considered as active in the present, guiding the
+  whole movement, and gradually manifesting itself in each of the
+  passing forms, which are used up as the raw material of new
+  acquirement; and yet no passing form completely expresses the
+  ideal.</p>
+
+  <p>Nor is it difficult to say what that ideal of knowlege is,
+  although we cannot define it in any adequate manner. We know that the
+  end of morality is the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg296" id=
+  "pg296">296</a></span> <i>summum bonum</i>, although we cannot, as
+  long as we are progressive, define its whole content, or find it
+  fully realized in any action. Every failure brings new truth, every
+  higher grade of moral character reveals some new height of goodness
+  to be scaled; the moral ideal acquires definiteness and content as
+  humanity moves upwards. And yet the ideal is not entirely unknown
+  even at the first; even to the most ignorant, it presents itself as a
+  criterion which enables him to distinguish between right and wrong,
+  evil and goodness, and which guides his practical life. The same
+  truth holds with regard to knowledge. Its growth receives its impulse
+  from, and is directed and determined by, what is conceived as the
+  real world of facts. This truth, namely, that the ideal knowledge is
+  knowledge of reality, the most subjective philosopher cannot but
+  acknowledge. It is implied in his condemnation of knowledge as merely
+  phenomenal, that there is possible a knowledge of real being. That
+  thought and reality can be brought together, or rather, that they are
+  always together, is presupposed in all knowledge and in all
+  experience. The effort to know is the effort to <i>explain</i> the
+  relation of thought and reality, not to create it. The ideal of
+  perfect knowledge is present from the first; it generates the effort,
+  directs it, distinguishes between truth and error. And that which man
+  ever aims at, whether in the ordinary activities of daily thought, or
+  through the patient labour of scientific investigation, or in the
+  reflective self-torture of philosophic thought, is to <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg297" id="pg297">297</a></span> know the world as
+  it is. No failure damps the ardour of this endeavour. Relativists,
+  phenomenalists, agnostics, sceptics, Kantians or
+  Neo-Kantians&mdash;all the crowd of thinkers who cry down the human
+  intellect, and draw a charmed circle around reality so as to make it
+  unapproachable to the mind of man&mdash;ply this useless labour. They
+  are seeking to penetrate beneath the shows of sense and the outer
+  husk of phenomena to the truth, which is the meeting-point of
+  knowledge and reality; they are endeavouring to translate into an
+  intellectual possession the powers that play within and around them;
+  or, in other words, to make these powers express themselves in their
+  thoughts, and supply the content of their spiritual life. The irony,
+  latent in their endeavour, gives them no pause; they are in some way
+  content to pursue what they call phantoms, and to try to satisfy
+  their thirst with the waters of a mirage. This comes from the
+  presence of the ideal within them, that is, of the implicit unity of
+  reality and thought, which seeks for explicit and complete
+  manifestation in knowledge. The reality is present in them as
+  thinking activity, working towards complete revelation of itself by
+  means of knowledge. And its presence is real, although the process is
+  never complete.</p>
+
+  <p>In knowledge, as in morals, it is necessary to remember both of
+  the truths implied in the pursuit of an ideal&mdash;that a growing
+  thing not only always fails to attain, but also always succeeds. The
+  distinction between truth and error in knowledge is <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg298" id="pg298">298</a></span> present at every
+  stage in the effort to attain truth, as the distinction between right
+  and wrong is present in every phase of the moral life. It is the
+  source of the intellectual effort. But that distinction cannot be
+  drawn except by reference to a criterion of truth, which condemns our
+  actual knowledge; as it is the absolute good, which condemns the
+  present character. The ideal may be indefinite, and its content
+  confused and poor; but it is always sufficient for its purpose,
+  always better than the actual achievement. And, in this sense,
+  reality, the truth, the veritable being of things, is always reached
+  by the poorest knowledge. As there is no starved and distorted
+  sapling which is not the embodiment of the principle of natural life,
+  so the meanest character is the product of an ideal of goodness, and
+  the most confused opinion of ignorant mankind is an expression of the
+  reality of things. Without it there would not be even the semblance
+  of knowledge, not even error and untruth.</p>
+
+  <p>Those who, like Browning, make a division between man's thought
+  and real things, and regard the sphere of knowledge as touching at no
+  point the sphere of actual existence, are attributing to the bare
+  human intellect much more power than it has. They regard mind as
+  creating its phenomenal knowledge, or the apparent world. For, having
+  separated mind from reality, it is evident that they cannot avail
+  themselves of any doctrine of sensations or impressions as a medium
+  between them, or postulate any other form of connection <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg299" id="pg299">299</a></span> or means of
+  communication. Connection of any kind must, in the end, imply some
+  community of nature, and must put the unity of thought and
+  being&mdash;here denied&mdash;beneath their difference. Hence, the
+  world of phenomena which we know, and which as known, does not seem
+  to consist of realities, must be the product of the unaided human
+  mind. The intellect, isolated from all real being, has manufactured
+  the apparent universe, in all its endless wealth. It is a creative
+  intellect, although it can only create illusions. It evolves all its
+  products from itself.</p>
+
+  <p>But thought, set to revolve upon its own axis in an empty region,
+  can produce nothing, not even illusions. And, indeed, those who deny
+  that it is possible for thought and reality to meet in a unity, have,
+  notwithstanding, to bring over "something" to the aid of thought.
+  There must be some effluence from the world of reality, some
+  manifestations of the thing (though they are not the reality of the
+  thing, nor any part of the reality, nor connected with the reality!)
+  to assist the mind and supply it with data. The "phenomenal world" is
+  a hybrid, generated by thought and "something"&mdash;which yet is not
+  reality; for the real world is a world of things in themselves,
+  altogether beyond thought. By bringing in these data, it is virtually
+  admitted that the human mind reaches down into itself in vain for a
+  world, even for a phenomenal one.</p>
+
+  <p>Thought apart from things is quite empty, just as things apart
+  from thought are blind. Such thought <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg300" id="pg300">300</a></span> and such reality are mere
+  abstractions, hypostasized by false metaphysics; they are elements of
+  truth rent asunder, and destroyed in the rending. The dependence of
+  the intelligence of man upon reality is direct and complete. The
+  foolishest dream, that ever played out its panorama beneath a
+  night-cap, came through the gates of the senses from the actual
+  world. Man is limited to his material in all that he knows, just as
+  he is ruled by the laws of thought. He cannot go one step beyond it.
+  To transcend "experience" is impossible. We have no wings to sustain
+  us in an empty region, and no need of any. It is as impossible for
+  man to create new ideas, as it is for him to create new atoms. Our
+  thought is essentially connected with reality. There is no <i>mauvais
+  pas</i> from thought to things. We do not need to leap out of
+  ourselves in order to get into the world. We are in it from the
+  first, both as physical and moral agents, and as thinking beings. Our
+  thoughts are expressions of the real nature of things, so far as they
+  go. They may be and are imperfect; they may be and are confused and
+  inadequate, and express only the superficial aspects and not "the
+  inmost fibres"; still, they are what they are, in virtue of "the
+  reality," which finds itself interpreted in them. Severed from that
+  reality, they would be nothing.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, the distinction between thought and reality is a distinction
+  within a deeper unity. And that unity must not be regarded as
+  something additional to both, or as a third something. It <i>is</i>
+  their unity. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg301" id=
+  "pg301">301</a></span> It is both reality and thought: it is existing
+  thought, or reality knowing itself and existing through its knowledge
+  of self; it is self-consciousness. The distinguished elements have no
+  existence or meaning except in their unity. Like the actual and
+  ideal, they have significance and being, only in their reference to
+  each other.</p>
+
+  <p>There is one more difficulty connected with this matter which I
+  must touch upon, although the discussion may already be regarded as
+  prolix. It is acknowledged by every one that the knowledge of the
+  individual, and his apparent world of realities, grow <i>pari
+  passu</i>. Beyond his sphere of knowledge there is no reality <i>for
+  him</i>, not even apparent reality. But, on the other hand, the real
+  world of existing things exists all the same whether he knows it or
+  not. It did not begin to be with any knowledge he may have of it, it
+  does not cease to be with his extinction, and it is not in any way
+  affected by his valid, or invalid, reconstruction of it in thought.
+  The world which depends on his thought is his world, and not the
+  world of really existing things. And this is true alike of every
+  individual. The world is independent of all human minds. It existed
+  before them, and will, very possibly, exist after them. Can we not,
+  therefore, conclude that the real world is independent of thought,
+  and that it exists without relation to it?</p>
+
+  <p>A short reference to the moral consciousness may suggest the
+  answer to this difficulty. In morality (as also is the case in
+  knowledge) the moral ideal, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg302" id=
+  "pg302">302</a></span> or the objective law of goodness, grows in
+  richness and fulness of content with the individual who apprehends
+  it. <i>His</i> moral world is the counterpart of <i>his</i> moral
+  growth as a character. Goodness <i>for him</i> directly depends upon
+  his recognition of it. Animals, presumably, have no moral ideal,
+  because they have not the power to constitute it. In morals, as in
+  knowledge, the mind of man constructs its own world. And yet, in both
+  alike, the world of truth or of goodness exists all the same whether
+  the individual knows it or not. He does not call the moral law into
+  being, but finds it without, and then realizes it in his own life.
+  The moral law does not vanish and reappear with its recognition by
+  mankind. It is not subject to the chances and changes of its life,
+  but a good in itself that is eternal.</p>
+
+  <p>Is it therefore independent of all intelligence? Can goodness be
+  anything but the law of a self-conscious being? Is it the quality or
+  motive or ideal of a mere thing? Manifestly not. Its relation to
+  self-consciousness is essential. With the extinction of
+  self-consciousness all moral goodness is extinguished.</p>
+
+  <p>The same holds true of reality. The question of the reality or
+  unreality of things cannot arise except in an intelligence. Animals
+  have neither illusions nor truths&mdash;unless they are
+  self-conscious. The reality, which man sets over against his own
+  inadequate knowledge, is posited by him; and it has no meaning
+  whatsoever except in this contrast. And to endeavour to conceive a
+  reality which no one knows, is to assert a relative term without its
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg303" id="pg303">303</a></span>
+  correlative, which is absurd; it is to posit an ideal which is
+  opposed to nothing actual.</p>
+
+  <p>In this view, so commonly held in our day, that knowledge is
+  subjective and reality unknowable, we have another example of the
+  falseness and inconsistency of abstract thinking. If this error be
+  committed, there is no fundamental gain in saying with Kant, that
+  things are relative to the thought of all, instead of asserting, with
+  Berkeley or Browning, that they are relative to the thought of each.
+  The final result is the same. Things as known, are reduced into mere
+  creations of thought; things as they are, are regarded as not
+  thoughts, and as partaking in no way of the nature of thought. And
+  yet "reality" is virtually assumed to be given at the beginning of
+  knowledge; for the sensations are supposed to be emanations from it,
+  or roused in consciousness by it. These sensations, it is said, man
+  does not make, but receives, and receives from the concealed reality.
+  They flow from it, and are the manifestations of its activity. Then,
+  in the next moment, reality is regarded as not given in any way, but
+  as something to be discovered by the effort of thought; for we always
+  strive to know things, and not phantoms. Lastly, the knowledge thus
+  acquired being regarded as imperfect, and experience showing to us
+  continually that every object has more in it than we know, the
+  reality is pronounced to be unknowable, and all knowledge is regarded
+  as failure, as acquaintance with mere phantoms. Thus, in thought, as
+  in morality, the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg304" id=
+  "pg304">304</a></span> ideal is present at the beginning, it is an
+  effort after explicit realization, and its process is never
+  complete.</p>
+
+  <p>Now, all these aspects of the ideal of knowledge, that is, of
+  reality, are held by the unsophisticated intelligence of man; and
+  abstract philosophy is not capable of finally getting rid of any one
+  of them. It, too, holds them <i>alternately</i>. Its denial of the
+  possibility of knowing reality is refuted by its own starting-point;
+  for it begins with a given something, regarded as real, and its very
+  effort to know is an attempt to know that reality by thinking. But it
+  forgets these facts, when it is discovered that knowledge at the best
+  is incomplete. It is thus tossed from assertion to denial, and from
+  denial to assertion; from one abstract or one-sided view of reality,
+  to the other.</p>
+
+  <p>When these different aspects of truth are grasped together from
+  the point of view of evolution, there seems to be a way of escaping
+  the difficulties to which they give rise. For the ideal must be
+  present at the beginning, and cannot be present in its fulness till
+  the process is complete. What is here required is to lift our theory
+  of man's knowledge to the level of our theory of his moral life, and
+  to treat it frankly as the process whereby reality manifests itself
+  in the mind of man. In that way, we shall avoid the absurdities of
+  both of the abstract schools of philosophy, to both of which alike
+  the native intelligence of man gives the lie. We shall say neither
+  that man knows nothing, nor that he knows all; we shall regard his
+  knowledge, neither as purely <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg305"
+  id="pg305">305</a></span> phenomenal and out of all contact with
+  reality, nor as an actual identification with the real being of
+  things in all their complex variety. For, in morality, we do not say
+  either that the individual is absolutely evil, because his actions
+  never realize the supreme ideal of goodness; nor, that he is at the
+  last term of development, and "taking the place of God," because he
+  lives as "ever in his great Taskmaster's eye." Just as every moral
+  action, however good, leaves something still to be desiderated,
+  something that may become a stepping-stone for new movement towards
+  the ideal which it has failed to actualize; so all our knowledge of
+  an object leaves something over that we have not apprehended, which
+  is truer and more real than anything we know, and which in all future
+  effort we strive to master. And, just as the very effort, to be good
+  derives its impulse and direction from the ideal of goodness which is
+  present, and striving for realization; so the effort to know derives
+  its impulse and direction from the reality which is present, and
+  striving for complete realization in the thought of man. We know
+  reality confusedly from the first; and it is because we have attained
+  so much knowledge, that we strive for greater clearness and fulness.
+  It is by planting his foot on the world that man travels. It is by
+  opposing his power to the given reality that his knowledge grows.</p>
+
+  <p>When once we recognize that reality is the ideal of knowledge, we
+  are able to acknowledge all the truth that is in the doctrine of the
+  phenomenalists, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg306" id=
+  "pg306">306</a></span> without falling into their errors and
+  contradictions. We may go as far as the poet in confessing
+  intellectual impotence, and roundly call the knowledge of man
+  "lacquered ignorance." "Earth's least atom" does veritably remain an
+  enigma. Man is actually flung back into his circumscribed sphere by
+  every fact; and he will continue to be so flung to the end of time.
+  He will never know reality, nor be able to hold up in his hand the
+  very heart of the simplest thing in the world. For the world is an
+  organic totality, and its simplest thing will not be seen, through
+  and through, till everything is known, till every fact and event is
+  related to every other under principles which are universal: just as
+  goodness cannot be fully achieved in any act, till the agent is in
+  all ways lifted to the level of absolute goodness. Physics cannot
+  reveal the forces which keep a stone in its place on the earth, till
+  it has traced the forces that maintain the starry systems in their
+  course. No fact can be thoroughly known, <i>i.e.</i>, known in its
+  reality, till the light of the universe has been focussed upon it:
+  and, on the other hand, to know any subject through and through would
+  be to explain all being. The highest law and the essence of the
+  simple fact, the universal and the particular, can only be known
+  together, in and through one another. "Reality" in "the least atom"
+  will be known, only when knowledge has completed its work, and the
+  universe has become a transparent sphere, penetrated in every
+  direction by the shafts of intelligence.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg307" id="pg307">307</a></span>
+
+  <p>But this is only half the truth. If knowledge is never complete,
+  it is always <i>completing</i>; if reality is never known, it is ever
+  <i>being known</i>; if the ideal is never actual, it is always
+  <i>being actualized</i>. The complete failure of knowledge is as
+  impossible as its complete success. It is at no time severed from
+  reality; it is never its mere adumbration, nor are its contents mere
+  phenomena. On the contrary, it is reality partially revealed, the
+  ideal incompletely actualized. Our very errors are the working of
+  reality within us, and apart from it they would be impossible. The
+  process towards truth by man is the process of truth <i>in</i> man;
+  the movement of knowledge towards reality is the movement of reality
+  into knowledge. A purely subjective consciousness which knows, such
+  as the poet tried to describe, is a self-contradiction: it would be a
+  consciousness at once related, and not related, to the actual world.
+  But man has no need to relate himself to the world. He is already
+  related, and his task is to understand that relation, or, in other
+  words, to make both its terms intelligible. Man has no need to go out
+  from himself to facts; his relation to facts is prior to his
+  distinction from them. The truth is that he cannot entirely lift
+  himself away from them, nor suspend his thoughts in the void. In his
+  inmost being he is creation's voice, and in his knowledge he
+  confusedly murmurs its deep thoughts.</p>
+
+  <p>Browning was aware of this truth in its application to man's moral
+  nature. In speaking of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg308" id=
+  "pg308">308</a></span> principle of love, he was not tempted to apply
+  fixed alternatives. On the contrary, he detected in the "poorest love
+  that was ever offered" the veritable presence of that which is
+  perfect and complete, though never completely actualized. His
+  interest in the moral development of man, and his penetrative moral
+  insight, acting upon, and guided by the truths of the Christian
+  religion, warned him, on this side, against the absolute separation
+  of the ideal and actual, the divine and human. Human love, however
+  poor in quality and limited in range, was to him God's love in man.
+  It was a wave breaking in the individual of that First Love, which is
+  ever flowing back through the life of humanity to its primal source.
+  To him all moral endeavour is the process of this Primal Love; and
+  every man, as he consciously identifies himself with it, may use the
+  language of Scripture, and say, "It is not I that live, but Christ
+  lives in me."</p>
+
+  <p>But, on the side of knowledge, he was neither so deeply
+  interested, nor had he so good a guide to lean upon. Ignorant,
+  according to all appearances, of the philosophy which has made the
+  Christian maxim, "Die to live,"&mdash;which primarily is only a
+  principle of morality&mdash;the basis of its theory of knowledge, he
+  exaggerated the failure of science to reach the whole truth as to any
+  particular object, into a qualitative discrepancy between knowledge
+  and truth. Because knowledge is never complete, it is always mere
+  lacquered ignorance; and man's apparent intellectual victories are
+  only <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg309" id="pg309">309</a></span>
+  conquests in a land of unrealities, or mere phenomena. He occupies in
+  regard to knowledge, a position strictly analogous to that of
+  Carlyle, in regard to morality; his intellectual pessimism is the
+  counterpart of the moral pessimism of his predecessor, and it springs
+  from the same error. He forgot that the ideal without is also the
+  power within, which makes for its own manifestation in the mind of
+  man.</p>
+
+  <p>He opposed the intellect to the world, as Carlyle opposed the
+  weakness of man to the law of duty; and he neglected the fact that
+  the world was there for him, only because he knew it, just as Carlyle
+  neglected the fact that the duty was without, only because it was
+  recognized within. He strained the difference between the ideal and
+  actual into an absolute distinction; and, as Carlyle condemned man to
+  strive for a goodness which he could never achieve, so Browning
+  condemns him to pursue a truth which he can never attain. In both,
+  the failure is regarded as absolute. "There is no good in us," has
+  for its counterpart "There is no truth in us." Both the moralist and
+  the poet dwell on the <i>negative</i> relation of the ideal and
+  actual, and forget that the negative has no meaning, except as the
+  expression of a deeper affirmative. Carlyle had to learn that we know
+  our moral imperfection, only because we are conscious of a better
+  within us; and Browning had to learn that we are aware of our
+  ignorance, only because we have the consciousness of fuller truth
+  with which we contrast <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg310" id=
+  "pg310">310</a></span> our knowledge. Browning, indeed, knew that the
+  consciousness of evil was itself evidence of the presence of good,
+  that perfection means death, and progress is life, on the side of
+  morals; but he has missed the corresponding truth on the side of
+  knowledge. If he acknowledges that the highest revealed itself to
+  man, on the practical side, as love; he does not see that it has also
+  manifested itself to man, on the theoretical side, as reason. The
+  self-communication of the Infinite is incomplete love is a quality of
+  God, intelligence a quality of man; hence, on one side, there is no
+  limit to achievement, but on the other there is impotence. Human
+  nature is absolutely divided against itself; and the division, as we
+  have already seen, is not between flesh and spirit, but between a
+  love which is God's own and perfect, and an intelligence which is
+  merely man's and altogether weak and deceptive.</p>
+
+  <p>This is what makes Browning think it impossible to re-establish
+  faith in God, except by turning his back on knowledge; but whether it
+  is possible for him to appeal to the moral consciousness, we shall
+  inquire in the next chapter.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg311"
+  id="pg311">311</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch10" id="ch10">CHAPTER X.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>THE HEART AND THE HEAD.&mdash;LOVE AND REASON.</h3>
+
+  <blockquote>
+    "And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon
+    the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing
+    and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood
+    grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open
+    encounter."<sup>A</sup>
+  </blockquote>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: Milton's <i>Areopagitica</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It has been shown that Browning appeals, in defence of his
+  optimistic faith, from the intellect to the heart. His theory rests
+  on three main assumptions:&mdash;namely (1) that knowledge of the
+  true nature of things is impossible to man, and that, therefore, it
+  is necessary to find other and better evidence than the intellect can
+  give for the victory of good over evil; (2) that the failure of
+  knowledge is a necessary condition of the moral life, inasmuch as
+  certain knowledge would render all moral effort either futile or
+  needless; (3) that after the failure of knowledge there still remains
+  possible a faith of the heart, which can furnish a sufficient
+  objective basis to morality and religion. The first of these
+  assumptions I endeavoured to deal with in the last chapter. I now
+  turn to the remaining two.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg312"
+  id="pg312">312</a></span>
+
+  <p>Demonstrative, or certain, or absolute knowledge of the actual
+  nature of things would, Browning asserts, destroy the very
+  possibility of a moral life.<sup>A</sup> For such knowledge would show either
+  that evil is evil, or that evil is good; and, in both cases alike,
+  the benevolent activity of love would be futile. In the first case,
+  it would be thwarted and arrested by despair; for, if evil be evil,
+  it must remain evil for aught that man can do. Man cannot effect a
+  change in the nature of things, nor create a good in a world
+  dominated by evil. In the second case, the saving effect of moral
+  love would be unnecessary; for, if evil be only seeming, then all
+  things are perfect and complete, and there is no need of
+  interference. It is necessary, therefore, that man should be in a
+  permanent state of doubt as to the real existence of evil; and,
+  whether evil does exist or not, it must seem, and only seem to exist
+  to man, in order that he may devote himself to the service of
+  good.<sup>B</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: See Chapter VIII., p. <a href="#pg255">255.</a></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Now, if this view of the poet be taken in the strict sense in
+  which he uses it in this argument, it admits of a very easy
+  refutation. It takes us beyond the bounds of all possible human
+  experience, into an imaginary region, as to which all assertions are
+  equally valueless. It is impossible to conceive how the conduct of a
+  being who is moral would be affected by absolute knowledge; or,
+  indeed, to conceive the existence of such a being. For morality, as
+  the poet insists, is a process in which <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg313" id="pg313">313</a></span> an ideal is
+  gradually realized through conflict with the actual&mdash;an actual
+  which it both produces and transmutes at every stage of the progress.
+  But complete knowledge would be above all process. Hence we would
+  have, on Browning's hypothesis, to conceive of a being in whom
+  perfect knowledge was combined with an undeveloped will. A being so
+  constituted would be an agglomerate of utterly disparate elements,
+  the interaction of which in a single character it would be impossible
+  to make intelligible.</p>
+
+  <p>But, setting aside this point, there is a curious flaw in
+  Browning's argument, which indicates that he had not distinguished
+  between two forms of optimism which are essentially different from
+  each other,&mdash;namely, the pantheistic and the Christian.</p>
+
+  <p>To know that evil is only apparent, that pain is only pleasure's
+  mask, that all forms of wickedness and misery are only illusions of
+  an incomplete intelligence, would, he argues, arrest all moral action
+  and stultify love. For love&mdash;which necessarily implies need in
+  its object&mdash;is the principle of all right action. In this he
+  argues justly, for the moral life is essentially a conflict and
+  progress; and, in a world in which "white ruled unchecked along the
+  line," there would be neither the need of conflict nor the
+  possibility of progress. And, on the other hand, if the good were
+  merely a phantom, and evil the reality, the same destruction of moral
+  activity would follow. "White may not triumph," in this absolute
+  manner, nor may we "clean abolish, once <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg314" id="pg314">314</a></span> and evermore,
+  white's faintest trace." There must be "the constant shade cast on
+  life's shine."</p>
+
+  <p>All this is true; but the admission of it in no way militates
+  against the conception of absolutely valid knowledge; nor is it any
+  proof that we need live in the twilight of perpetual doubt, in order
+  to be moral. For the knowledge, of which Browning speaks, would be
+  knowledge of a state of things in which morality would be really
+  impossible; that is, it would be knowledge of a world in which all
+  was evil or all was good. On the other hand, valid knowledge of a
+  world in which good and evil are in conflict, and in which the former
+  is realized through victory over the latter, would not destroy
+  morality. What is inconsistent with the moral life is the conception
+  of a world where there is no movement from evil to good, no evolution
+  of character, but merely the stand-still life of "Rephan." But
+  absolutely certain knowledge that the good is at issue with sin in
+  the world, that there is no way of attaining goodness except through
+  conflict with evil, and that moral life, as the poet so frequently
+  insists, is a process which converts all actual attainment into a
+  dead self, from which we can rise to higher things&mdash;a self,
+  therefore, which is relatively evil&mdash;would, and does, inspire
+  morality. It is the deification of evil not negated or overcome, of
+  evil as it is in itself and apart from all process, which destroys
+  morality. And the same is equally true of a pantheistic optimism,
+  which asserts that all things <i>are</i> good. But it is not true
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg315" id="pg315">315</a></span> of a
+  Christian optimism, which asserts that all things are <i>working
+  together for</i> good. For such optimism implies that the process of
+  negating or overcoming evil is essential to the attainment of
+  goodness; it does not imply that evil, as evil, is ever good. Evil is
+  unreal, only in the sense that it cannot withstand the power which is
+  set against it. It is not <i>mere</i> semblance, a mere negation or
+  absence of being; it is opposed to the good, and its opposition can
+  be overcome, only by the moral effort which it calls forth. An
+  optimistic faith of this kind can find room for morality; and,
+  indeed, it furnishes it with the religious basis it needs. Browning,
+  however, has confused these two forms of optimism; and, therefore, he
+  has been driven to condemn knowledge, because he knew no alternative
+  but that of either making evil eternally real, or making it
+  absolutely unreal. A third alternative, however, is supplied by the
+  conception of moral evolution. Knowledge of the conditions on which
+  good can be attained&mdash;a knowledge that amounts to
+  conviction&mdash;is the spring of all moral effort; whereas an
+  attitude of permanent doubt as to the distinction between good and
+  evil would paralyse it. Such a doubt must be solved before man can
+  act at all, or choose one end rather than another. All action implies
+  belief, and the ardour and vigour of moral action can only come from
+  a belief which is whole-hearted.</p>
+
+  <p>The further assertion, which the poet makes in <i>La Saisiaz</i>,
+  and repeats elsewhere, that sure knowledge <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg316" id="pg316">316</a></span> of the
+  consequences that follow good and evil actions would necessarily lead
+  to the choice of good and the avoidance of evil, and destroy morality
+  by destroying liberty of choice, raises the whole question of the
+  relation of knowledge and conduct, and cannot be adequately discussed
+  here. It may be said, however, that it rests upon a confusion between
+  two forms of necessity: namely, natural and spiritual necessity. In
+  asserting that knowledge of the consequences of evil would determine
+  human action in a necessary way, the poet virtually treats man as if
+  he were a natural being. But the assumption that man is responsible
+  and liable to punishment, involves that he is capable of withstanding
+  all such determination. And knowledge does not and cannot lead to
+  such necessary determination. Reason brings freedom; for reason
+  constitutes the ends of action.</p>
+
+  <p>It is the constant desire of the good to attain to such a
+  convincing knowledge of the worth and dignity of the moral law that
+  they shall be able to make themselves its devoted instruments. Their
+  desire is that "the good" shall supplant in them all motives that
+  conflict against it, and be the inner principle, or necessity, of all
+  their actions. Such complete devotion to the good is expressed, for
+  instance, in the words of the Hebrew Psalmist: "Thy testimonies have
+  I taken as an heritage for ever; for they are the rejoicing of my
+  heart. I have inclined mine heart to perform Thy statutes alway, even
+  unto the end. I hate vain thoughts, <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg317" id="pg317">317</a></span> but Thy law do I love."
+  "Nevertheless I live," said the Christian apostle, "yet not I, but
+  Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I
+  live by the faith of the Son of God." In these words there is
+  expressed that highest form of the moral life, in which the
+  individual is so identified in desire with his ideal, that he lives
+  only to actualize it in his character. The natural self is
+  represented as dead, and the victory of the new principle is viewed
+  as complete. This full obedience to the ideal is the service of a
+  necessity; but the necessity is within, and the service is,
+  therefore, perfect freedom. The authority of the law is absolute, but
+  the law is self-imposed. The whole man is convinced of its goodness.
+  He has acquired something even fuller than a mere intellectual
+  demonstration of it; for his knowledge has ripened into wisdom,
+  possessed his sympathies, and become a disposition of his heart. And
+  the fulness and certainty of his knowledge, so far from rendering
+  morality impossible, is its very perfection. To bring about such a
+  knowledge of the good of goodness and the evil of evil, as will
+  engender love of the former and hatred of the latter, is the aim of
+  all moral education. Thus, the history of human life, in so far as it
+  is progressive, may be concentrated in the saying that it is the
+  ascent from the power of a necessity which is natural, to the power
+  of a necessity which is moral. And this latter necessity can come
+  only through fuller and more convincing knowledge of the law that
+  rules the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg318" id=
+  "pg318">318</a></span> world, and is also the inner principle of
+  man's nature.</p>
+
+  <p>There remains now the third element in Browning's
+  view,&mdash;namely, that the faith in the good, implied in morality
+  and religion, can be firmly established, after knowledge has turned
+  out deceptive, upon the individual's consciousness of the power of
+  love within himself. In other words, I must now try to estimate the
+  value of Browning's appeal from the intellect to the heart.</p>
+
+  <p>Before doing so, however, it may be well to repeat once more that
+  Browning's condemnation of knowledge, in his philosophical poems, is
+  not partial or hesitating. On the contrary, he confines it definitely
+  to the individual's consciousness of his own inner states.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Myself I solely recognize.</p>
+
+    <p>They, too, may recognize themselves, not me,</p>
+
+    <p>For aught I know or care."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Bean-Stripe</i>. See also <i>La Saisiaz</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Nor does Browning endeavour to correct this limited testimony of
+  the intellect as to its own states, by bringing in the miraculous aid
+  of revelation, or by postulating an unerring moral faculty. He does
+  not assume an intuitive power of knowing right from wrong; but he
+  maintains that ignorance enwraps man's moral sense.<sup>B</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: See Chapter <a href="#ch08">VIII.</a></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And, not only are we unable to know the rule of right and wrong in
+  details, but we cannot know whether there <i>is</i> right or wrong.
+  At times the poet <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg319" id=
+  "pg319">319</a></span> seems inclined to say that evil is a
+  phenomenon conjured up by the frail intelligence of man.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i2">"Man's fancy makes the fault!</p>
+
+    <p>Man, with the narrow mind, must cram inside</p>
+
+    <p>His finite God's infinitude,&mdash;earth's vault</p>
+
+    <p>He bids comprise the heavenly far and wide,</p>
+
+    <p>Since Man may claim a right to understand</p>
+
+    <p>What passes understanding."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Bernard de Mandeville</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>God's ways are past finding out. Nay, God Himself is unknown. At
+  times, indeed, the power to love within man seems to the poet to be a
+  clue to the nature of the Power without, and God is all but revealed
+  in this surpassing emotion of the human heart. But, when
+  philosophizing, he withdraws even this amount of knowledge. He is</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Assured that, whatsoe'er the quality</p>
+
+    <p>Of love's cause, save that love was caused thereby,</p>
+
+    <p>This&mdash;nigh upon revealment as it seemed</p>
+
+    <p>A minute since&mdash;defies thy longing looks,</p>
+
+    <p>Withdrawn into the unknowable once more."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>A Pillar at Sebzevar</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thus&mdash;to sum up Browning's view of knowledge&mdash;we are
+  ignorant of the world; we do not know even whether it is good, or
+  evil, or only their semblance, that is presented to us in human life;
+  and we know nothing of God, except that He is the cause of love in
+  man. What greater depth of agnosticism is possible?</p>
+
+  <p>When the doctrine is put in this bald form, the moral and
+  religious consciousness of man, on behalf of which the theory was
+  invented, revolts against it. <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg320"
+  id="pg320">320</a></span> Nevertheless, the distinction made by
+  Browning between the intellectual and emotional elements of human
+  life is very common in religious thought. It is not often, indeed,
+  that either the worth of love, or the weakness of knowledge receives
+  such emphatic expression as that which is given to them by the poet;
+  but the same general idea of their relation is often expressed, and
+  still more often implied. Browning differs from our ordinary teachers
+  mainly in the boldness of his affirmatives and negatives. They, too,
+  regard the intellect as merely human, and the emotion of love as
+  divine. They, too, shrink from identifying the reason of man with the
+  reason of God; even though they may recognize that morality and
+  religion must postulate some kind of unity between God and man. They,
+  too, conceive that human knowledge differs <i>in nature</i> from that
+  of God, while they maintain that human goodness is the same in nature
+  with that of God, though different in degree and fulness. There are
+  two <i>kinds</i> of knowledge, but there is only one kind of justice,
+  or mercy, or loving-kindness. Man must be content with a semblance of
+  a knowledge of truth; but a semblance of goodness, would be
+  intolerable. God really reveals Himself to man in morality and
+  religion, and He communicates to man nothing less than "the divine
+  love." But there is no such close connection on the side of reason.
+  The religious life of man is a divine principle, the indwelling of
+  God in him; but there is a final and fatal defect in man's knowledge.
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg321" id="pg321">321</a></span> The
+  divine love's manifestation of itself is ever incomplete, it is true,
+  even in the best of men; but there is no defect in its nature.</p>
+
+  <p>As a consequence of this doctrine, few religious opinions are more
+  common at the present day, than that it is necessary to appeal, on
+  all the high concerns of man's moral and religious life, from the
+  intellect to the heart. Where we cannot know, we may still feel; and
+  the religious man may have, in his own feeling of the divine, a more
+  intimate conviction of the reality of that in which he trusts, than
+  could be produced by any intellectual process.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"Enough to say, 'I feel</p>
+
+    <p>Love's sure effect, and, being loved, must love</p>
+
+    <p>The love its cause behind,&mdash;I can and do.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Piller at Sebzevar</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Reason, in trying to scale the heights of truth, falls-back,
+  impotent and broken, into doubt and despair; not by that way can we
+  come to that which is best and highest.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I found Him not in world or sun,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Nor thro' the questions men may try,</p>
+
+    <p>The petty cobwebs we have spun."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>In Memoriam</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But there is another way to find God and to conquer doubt.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">I heard a voice 'believe no more,'</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">And heard an ever-breaking-shore</p>
+
+    <p>That tumbled in the Godless deep;</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg322" id="pg322">322</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"A warmth within the breast would melt</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">The freezing reason's colder part,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">And like a man in wrath the heart</p>
+
+    <p>Stood up and answer'd 'I have felt.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>In Memoriam</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>What, then, I have now to ask, is the meaning and value of this
+  appeal to emotion? Can love, or emotion in any of its forms, reveal
+  truths to man which his intellect cannot discover? If so, how? If
+  not, how shall we account for the general conviction of good men that
+  it can? We have, in a word, either to justify the appeal to the
+  heart, by explaining how the heart may utter truths that are hidden
+  from reason; or else to account for the illusion, by which religious
+  emotion seems to reveal such truths.</p>
+
+  <p>The first requirement is shown to be unreasonable by the very
+  terms in which it is made. The intuitive insight of faith, the
+  immediate conviction of the heart, cannot render, and must not try to
+  render, any account of itself. Proof is a process; but there is no
+  process in this direct conviction of truth. Its assertion is just the
+  denial of process; it is a repudiation of all connections; in such a
+  faith of feeling there are no cob-web lines relating fact to fact,
+  which doubt could break. Feeling is the immediate unity of the
+  subject and object. I am pained, because I cannot rid myself of an
+  element which is already within me; I am lifted into the emotion of
+  pleasure, or happiness, or bliss, by the consciousness that I am
+  already at one with an object that fulfils <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg323" id="pg323">323</a></span> my longings and
+  satisfies my needs. Hence, there seems to be ground for saying that,
+  in this instance, the witness cannot lie; for it cannot go before the
+  fact, as it is itself the effect of the fact. If the emotion is
+  pleasurable it is the consciousness of the unity within; if it is
+  painful, of the disunity. In feeling, I am absolutely with myself;
+  and there seems, therefore, to be no need of attempting to justify,
+  by means of reason, a faith in God which manifests itself in emotion.
+  The emotion itself is its own sufficient witness, a direct result of
+  the intimate union of man with the object of devotion. Nay, we may go
+  further, and say that the demand is an unjust one, which betrays
+  ignorance of the true nature of moral intuition and religious
+  feeling.</p>
+
+  <p>I am not concerned to deny the truth that lies in the view here
+  stated; and no advocate of the dignity of human reason, or of the
+  worth of human knowledge, is called upon to deny it. There is a sense
+  in which the conviction of "faith" or "feeling" is more intimate and
+  strong than any process of proof. But this does not in any wise
+  justify the contention of those who maintain that we can feel what we
+  do not in any sense know, or that the heart can testify to that of
+  which the intellect is absolutely silent.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"So let us say&mdash;not 'Since we know, we love,'</p>
+
+    <p>But rather, 'Since we love, we know enough.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Pillar at Sebzevar</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In these two lines there are combined the truth I <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg324" id="pg324">324</a></span> would
+  acknowledge, and the error I would confute. Love is, in one way,
+  sufficient knowledge; or, rather, it is the direct testimony of that
+  completest knowledge, in which subject and object interpenetrate.
+  For, where love is, all foreign elements have been eliminated. There
+  is not "one and one with a shadowy third"; but the object is brought
+  within the self as constituting part of its very life. This is
+  involved in all the great forms of human thought&mdash;in science and
+  art, no less than in morality and religion. It is the truth that we
+  love, and only that, which is altogether ours. By means of love the
+  poet is</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Made one with Nature. There is heard</p>
+
+    <p>His voice in all her music, from the moan</p>
+
+    <p>Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird ";</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>and it is because he is made one with her that he is able to
+  reveal her inmost secrets. "Man," said Fichte, "can will nothing but
+  what he loves; his love is the sole and at the same time the
+  infallible spring of his volition, and of all his life's striving and
+  movement." It is only when we have identified ourselves with an
+  ideal, and made its realization our own interest, that we strive to
+  attain it. Love is revelation in knowledge, inspiration in art,
+  motive in morality, and the fulness of religious joy.</p>
+
+  <p>But, although in this sense love is greater than knowledge, it is
+  a grave error to separate it from knowledge. In the life of man at
+  least, the separation of the emotional and intellectual elements
+  extinguishes both. We cannot know that in which we <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg325" id="pg325">325</a></span> have no interest.
+  The very effort to comprehend an object rests on interest, or the
+  feeling of ourselves in it; so that knowledge, as well as morality,
+  may be said to begin in love. We cannot know except we love; but, on
+  the other hand, we cannot love that which we do not in some degree
+  know. Wherever the frontiers of knowledge may be it is certain that
+  there is nothing beyond them which can either arouse feeling, or be a
+  steadying centre for it. Emotion is like a climbing plant. It clings
+  to the tree of knowledge, adding beauty to its strength. But, without
+  knowledge, it is impossible for man. There is no feeling which is not
+  also incipient knowledge; for feeling is only the subjective side of
+  knowledge&mdash;that face of the known fact which is turned
+  inwards.</p>
+
+  <p>If, therefore, the poet's agnosticism were taken literally, and,
+  in his philosophical poems he obviously means it to be taken
+  literally, it would lead to a denial of the very principles of
+  religion and morality, which it was meant to support. His appeal to
+  love would then, strictly speaking, be an appeal to the love of
+  nothing known, or knowable; and such love is impossible. For love, if
+  it is to be distinguished from the organic, impulse of beast towards
+  beast, must have an object. A mere instinctive activity of
+  benevolence in man, by means of which he lightened the sorrows of his
+  brethren, if not informed with knowledge, would have no more moral
+  worth than the grateful warmth of the sun. Such love as this there
+  may be in the animal <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg326" id=
+  "pg326">326</a></span> creation. If the bird is not rational, we may
+  say that it builds its nest and lines it for its brood, pines for its
+  partner and loves it, at the bidding of the returning spring, in much
+  the same way as the meadows burst into flower. Without knowledge, the
+  whole process is merely a natural one; or, if it be more, it is so
+  only in so far as the life of emotion can be regarded as a foretaste
+  of the life of thought. But such a natural process is not possible to
+  man. Every activity in him is relative to his self-consciousness, and
+  takes a new character from that relation. His love at the best and
+  worst is the love of something that he knows, and in which he seeks
+  to find himself made rich with new sufficiency. Thus love can not
+  "ally" itself with ignorance. It is, indeed, an impulse pressing for
+  the closer communion of the lover with the object of his love.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"Like two meteors of expanding flame,</p>
+
+    <p>Those spheres instinct with it become the same,</p>
+
+    <p>Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still</p>
+
+    <p>Burning, yet ever inconsumable;</p>
+
+    <p>In one another's substance finding food."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: Shelley's <i>Epipsychidion</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But, for a being such as Browning describes, who is shut up within
+  the blind walls of his own self, the self-transcending impulse of
+  love would be impossible. If man's inner consciousness is to be
+  conceived as a dark room shutting out the world, upon whose shadowy
+  phenomena the candle of introspection throws a dim and uncertain
+  light, then <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg327" id=
+  "pg327">327</a></span> he can have no interest outside of himself;
+  nor can he ever take that first step in goodness, which carries him
+  beyond his narrow individuality to seek and find a larger self in
+  others. Morality, even in its lowest form, implies knowledge, and
+  knowledge of something better than "those <i>apparent</i> other
+  mortals." With the first dawn of the moral life comes the
+  consciousness of an ideal, which is not actual; and such a break with
+  the natural is not possible except to him who has known a better and
+  desired it. The ethical endeavour of man is the attempt to convert
+  ideas into actuality; and all his activity as moral agent takes place
+  within the sphere that is illumined by the light of knowledge. If
+  knowledge breaks down, there is no law of action which he can obey.
+  The moral law that must be apprehended, and whose authority must be
+  recognized by man, either sinks out of being or becomes an illusive
+  phantom, if man is doomed to ignorance or false knowledge. To
+  extinguish truth is to extinguish goodness.</p>
+
+  <p>In like manner, religion, which the poet would fain defend for man
+  by means of agnosticism, becomes impossible, if knowledge be denied.
+  Religion is not blind emotion; nor can mere feeling, however
+  ecstatic, ascend to God. Animals feel, but they are not, and cannot
+  be, religious&mdash;unless they can know. The love of God implies
+  knowledge. "I know Him whom I have believed" is the language of
+  religion. For what is religion but a conscious identification of the
+  self with One who is <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg328" id=
+  "pg328">328</a></span> known to fulfil its needs and satisfy its
+  aspirations? Agnosticism is thus directly destructive of it. We
+  cannot, indeed, prove God as the conclusion of a syllogism, for He is
+  the primary hypothesis of all proof. But, nevertheless, we cannot
+  reach Him without knowledge. Emotion reveals no object, but is
+  consequent upon the revelation of it; feeling yields no truth, but is
+  the witness of the worth of a truth for the individual. If man were
+  shut up to mere feeling, even the awe of the devout agnostic would be
+  impossible. For the Unknowable cannot generate any emotion. It
+  appears to do so, only because the Unknowable of the agnostic is not
+  altogether unknown to him; but is a vast, abysmal "Something," that
+  has occupied with its shadowy presence the field of his imagination.
+  It is paganism stricken with the plague, and philosophy afflicted
+  with blindness, that build altars to an unknown God. The highest and
+  the strongest faith, the deepest trust and the most loving, come with
+  the fullest knowledge. Indeed, the distinction between the awe of the
+  agnostic, which is the lowest form of religion, and that highest form
+  in which perfect love casteth out fear, springs from the fuller
+  knowledge of the nature of the object of warship, which the latter
+  implies. Thus, religion and morality grow with the growth of
+  knowledge; and neither has a worse enemy than ignorance. The human
+  spirit cannot grow in a one-sided manner. Devotion to great moral
+  ends is possible, only through the deepening and widening of man's
+  knowledge of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg329" id=
+  "pg329">329</a></span> nature of the world. Those who know God best,
+  render unto Him the purest service.</p>
+
+  <p>So evident is this, that it seems at first sight to be difficult
+  to account for that antagonism to the intellect and distrust of its
+  deliverances, which are so emphatically expressed in the writings of
+  Browning, and which are marked characteristics of the ordinary
+  religious opinion of our day. On closer examination, however, we
+  shall discover that it is not pure emotion, or mere feeling, whose
+  authority is set above that of reason, but rather the emotion which
+  is the result of knowledge. The appeal of the religious man from the
+  doubts and difficulties, which reason levels against "the faith," is
+  really an appeal to the character that lies behind the emotion. The
+  conviction of the heart, that refuses to yield to the arguments of
+  the understanding, is not <i>mere</i> feeling; but, rather, the
+  complex experience of the past life, that manifests itself in
+  feeling. When an individual, clinging to his moral or religious
+  faith, says, "I have felt it," he opposes to the doubt, not his
+  feeling as such, but his personality in all the wealth of its
+  experience. The appeal to the heart is the appeal to the unproved,
+  but not, therefore, unauthorized, testimony of the best men at their
+  best moments, when their vision of truth is clearest. No one pretends
+  that "the loud and empty voice of untrained passion and prejudice"
+  has any authority in matters of moral and religious faith; though, in
+  such cases, "feeling" may lack neither depth nor intensity. If the
+  "feelings" of <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg330" id=
+  "pg330">330</a></span> the good man were dissociated from his
+  character, and stripped bare of all the significance they obtain
+  therefrom, their worthlessness would become apparent. The profound
+  error of condemning knowledge in order to honour feeling, is hidden
+  only by the fact that the feeling is already informed and inspired
+  with knowledge. Religious agnosticism, like all other forms of the
+  theory of nescience, derives its plausibility from the adventitious
+  help it purloins from the knowledge which it condemns.</p>
+
+  <p>That it is to such feeling that Browning really appeals against
+  knowledge becomes abundantly evident, when we bear in mind that he
+  always calls it "love." For love in man is never ignorant. It knows
+  its object, and is a conscious identification of the self with it.
+  And to Browning, the object of love, when love is at its
+  best&mdash;of that love by means of which he refutes intellectual
+  pessimism&mdash;is mankind. The revolt of the heart against all evil
+  is a desire for the good of all men. In other words, his refuge
+  against the assailing doubts which spring from the intellect, is in
+  the moral consciousness. But that consciousness is no mere emotion;
+  it is a consciousness which knows the highest good, and moves in
+  sympathy with it. It is our maturest wisdom; for it is the
+  manifestation of the presence and activity of the ideal, the fullest
+  knowledge and the surest. Compared with this, the emotion linked to
+  ignorance, of which the poet speaks in his philosophic theory, is a
+  very poor thing. It is poorer than the lowest human
+  love.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg331" id=
+  "pg331">331</a></span>
+
+  <p>Now, if this higher interpretation of the term "heart" be
+  accepted, it is easily seen why its authority should seem higher than
+  that of reason; and particularly, if it be remembered that, while the
+  heart is thus widened to take in all direct consciousness of the
+  ideal, "the reason" is reduced to the power of reflection, or mental
+  analysis. "The heart," in this sense, is the intensest unity of the
+  complex experiences of a whole life, while "the reason" is taken
+  merely as a faculty which invents arguments, and provides grounds and
+  evidences; it is what is called, in the language of German
+  philosophy, the "understanding." Now, in this sense, the
+  understanding has, at best, only a borrowed authority. It is the
+  faculty of rules rather than of principles. It is ever dogmatic,
+  assertive, repellent, hard; and it always advances its forces in
+  single line. Its logic never convinced any one of truth or error,
+  unless, beneath the arguments which it advanced, there lay some
+  deeper principle of concord. Thus, the opposition between "faith and
+  reason," rightly interpreted, is that between a concrete experience,
+  instinct with life and conviction, and a mechanical arrangement of
+  abstract arguments. The quarrel of the heart is not with reason, but
+  with reasons. "Evidences of Christianity?" said Coleridge; "I am
+  weary of the word." It is this weariness of evidence, of the endless
+  arguments <i>pro</i> and <i>con</i>, which has caused so many to
+  distrust reason and knowledge, and which has sometimes driven
+  believers to the dangerous expedient <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg332" id="pg332">332</a></span> of making their faith dogmatic and
+  absolute. Nor have the opponents of "the faith" been slow to seize
+  the opportunity thus offered them. "From the moment that a religion
+  solicits the aid of philosophy, its ruin is inevitable," said Heine.
+  "In the attempt at defence, it prates itself into destruction.
+  Religion, like every absolutism, must not seek to justify itself.
+  Prometheus is bound to the rock by a silent force. Yea, Aeschylus
+  permits not personified power to utter a single word. It must remain
+  mute. The moment that a religion ventures to print a catechism
+  supported by arguments, the moment that a political absolutism
+  publishes an official newspaper, both are near their end. But therein
+  consists our triumph: we have brought our adversaries to speech, and
+  they must reckon with us."<sup>A</sup> But, we may answer, religion is
+  <i>not</i> an absolutism; and, therefore, it is <i>not</i> near its
+  end when it ventures to justify itself. On the contrary, no spiritual
+  power, be it moral or religious, can maintain its authority, if it
+  assumes a despotic attitude; for the human spirit inevitably moves
+  towards freedom, and that movement is the deepest necessity of its
+  nature, which it cannot escape. "Religion, on the ground of its
+  sanctity, and law, on the ground of its majesty, often resist the
+  sifting of their claims. But in so doing, they inevitably awake a not
+  unjust suspicion that their claims are ill-founded. They can command
+  the unfeigned homage of man, only when they have <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg333" id="pg333">333</a></span> shown themselves
+  able to stand the test of free inquiry."</p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Religion and Philosophy in Germany</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And if it is an error to suppose, with Browning, that the primary
+  truths of the moral and religious consciousness belong to a region
+  which is higher than knowledge, and can, from that side, be neither
+  assailed nor defended; it is also an error to suppose that reason is
+  essentially antagonistic to them. The facts of morality and religion
+  are precisely the richest facts of knowledge; and that faith is the
+  most secure which is most completely illumined by reason. Religion at
+  its best is not a dogmatic despotism, nor is reason a merely critical
+  and destructive faculty. If reason is loyal to the truth of religion
+  on which it is exercised, it will reach beneath all the conflict and
+  clamour of disputation, to the principle of unity, on which, as we
+  have seen, both reason and religion rest.</p>
+
+  <p>The "faith" to which religious spirits appeal against all the
+  attacks of doubt, "the love" of Browning, is really implicit reason;
+  it is "abbreviated" or concentrated knowledge; it is the manifold
+  experiences of life focussed into an intense unity. And, on the other
+  hand, the "reason" which they condemn is what Carlyle calls the
+  logic-chopping faculty. In taking the side of faith when troubled
+  with difficulties which they cannot lay, they are really defending
+  the cause of reason against that of the understanding. For it is
+  quite true that the understanding, that is, the reason as reflective
+  or critical, can never bring about either a <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg334" id="pg334">334</a></span> moral or
+  religious life. It cannot create a religion, any more than physiology
+  can produce men. The reflection which brings doubt is always
+  secondary; it can only exercise itself on a given material. As Hegel
+  frequently pointed out, it is not the function of moral philosophy to
+  create or to institute a morality or religion, but to understand
+  them. The facts must first be given; they must be actual experiences
+  of the human spirit. Moral philosophy and theology differ from the
+  moral or religious life, in the same way as geology differs from the
+  earth, or astronomy from the heavenly bodies. The latter are facts;
+  the former are theories about the facts. Religion is an attitude of
+  the human spirit towards the highest; morality is the realization of
+  character; and these are not to be confused with their reflective
+  interpretations. Much of the difficulty in these matters comes from
+  the lack of a clear distinction between <i>beliefs</i> and
+  <i>creeds</i>.</p>
+
+  <p>Further, not only are the utterances of the heart prior to the
+  deliverances of the intellect in this sense, but it may also be
+  admitted that the latter can never do full justice to the contents of
+  the former. So rich is character in content and so complex is
+  spiritual life, that we can never, by means of reflection, lift into
+  clear consciousness all the elements that enter into it. Into the
+  organism of our experience, which is our faith, there is continually
+  absorbed the subtle influences of our complex natural and social
+  environment. We grow by <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg335" id=
+  "pg335">335</a></span> means of them, as the plant grows by feeding
+  on the soil and the sunshine and dew. It is as impossible for us to
+  set forth, one by one, the truths and errors which we have thus
+  worked into our mental and moral life, as it is to keep a reckoning
+  of the physical atoms with which the natural life builds up the body.
+  Hence, every attempt to justify these truths seems inadequate; and
+  the defence which the understanding sets up for the faith, always
+  seems partial and cold. Who ever fully expressed his deepest
+  convictions? The consciousness of the dignity of the moral law
+  affected Kant like the view of the starry firmament, and generated a
+  feeling of the sublime which words could not express; and the
+  religious ecstasy of the saints cannot be confined within the
+  channels of speech, but floods the soul with overmastering power,
+  possessing all its faculties. In this respect, it will always remain
+  true that the greatest facts of human experience reach beyond all
+  knowledge. Nay, we may add further, that in this respect the simplest
+  of these facts passes all understanding. Still, as we have already
+  seen, it is reason that constitutes them; that which is presented to
+  reason for explanation, in knowledge and morality and religion, is
+  itself the product of reason. Reason is the power which, by
+  interaction with our environment, has generated the whole of our
+  experience. And, just as natural science interprets the phenomena
+  given to it by ordinary opinion, <i>i.e.</i>, interprets and purifies
+  a lower form of knowledge by converting <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg336" id="pg336">336</a></span> it into a higher;
+  so the task of reason when it is exercised upon morality and
+  religion, is simply to evolve, and amplify the meaning of its own
+  products. The movement from morality and religion to moral philosophy
+  and the philosophy of religion, is thus a movement from reason to
+  reason, from the implicit to the explicit, from the germ to the
+  developed fulness of life and structure. In this matter, as in all
+  others wherein the human spirit is concerned, that which is first by
+  nature is last in genesis&mdash;[Greek: nika d' ho prôtos kai
+  teleutaios dramôn.] The whole history of the moral and religious
+  experience of mankind is comprised in the statement, that the
+  implicit reason which we call "faith" is ever developing towards full
+  consciousness of itself; and that, at its first beginning, and
+  throughout the whole ascending process of this development, the
+  highest is present in it as a self-manifesting power.</p>
+
+  <p>But this process from the almost instinctive intuitions of the
+  heart towards the morality and religion of freedom, being a process
+  of evolution, necessarily involves conflict. There are men, it is
+  true, the unity of whose moral and religious faith is never
+  completely broken by doubt; just as there are men who are not forced
+  by the contradictions in the first interpretation of the world by
+  ordinary experience to attempt to re-interpret it by means of science
+  and philosophy.</p>
+
+  <p>Throughout their lives they may say like
+  Pompilia&mdash;</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg337" id=
+  "pg337">337</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"I know the right place by foot's feel,</p>
+
+    <p>I took it and tread firm there; wherefore change?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    1886-1887.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Jean Paul Richter said that he knew another way of being happy,
+  beside that of soaring away so far above the clouds of life, that its
+  miseries looked small, and the whole external world shrunk into a
+  little child's garden. It was, "Simply to sink down into this little
+  garden; and there to nestle yourself so snugly, so homewise, in some
+  furrow, that in looking out from your warm lark-nest, you likewise
+  can discern no wolf-dens, charnel-houses, or thunder-rods, but only
+  blades and ears, every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a tree,
+  and a sun-screen, and rain-screen." There is a similar way of being
+  good, with a goodness which, though limited, is pure and perfect in
+  nature. Nay, we may even admit that such lives are frequently the
+  most complete and beautiful, just as the fairest flowers grow, not on
+  the tallest trees, but on the fragile plants at their foot.
+  Nevertheless, even in the case of those persons who have never broken
+  from the traditional faith of the past, or felt it to be inadequate,
+  that faith has been silently reconstructed in a new synthesis of
+  knowledge. Spiritual life cannot come by inheritance; but every
+  individual must acquire a faith for himself, and turn his spiritual
+  environment into personal experience. "A man may be a heretic in the
+  truth," said Milton, "and if he believe things only because his
+  pastor says so, or the assembly so <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg338" id="pg338">338</a></span> determines, without knowing other
+  reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds
+  becomes his heresy." It is truth to another but tradition to him; it
+  is a creed and not a conviction. Browning fully recognizes the need
+  of this conflict&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Is it not this ignoble confidence,</p>
+
+    <p>Cowardly hardihood, that dulls and damps,</p>
+
+    <p>Makes the old heroism impossible?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1848-1850.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>asks the Pope. The stream of truth when it ceases to flow onward,
+  becomes a malarious swamp. Movement is the law of life; and knowledge
+  of the principles of morality and religion, as of all other
+  principles, must, in order to grow, be felt from time to time as
+  inadequate and untrue. There are men and ages whose mission
+  is&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"to shake</p>
+
+    <p>This torpor of assurance from our creed,</p>
+
+    <p>Re-introduce the doubt discarded, bring</p>
+
+    <p>That formidable danger back, we drove</p>
+
+    <p>Long ago to the distance and the dark."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid.</i>, 1853-1856.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Such a spirit of criticism seems to many to exercise a merely
+  destructive power, and those who have not felt the inadequacy of the
+  inherited faith defend themselves against it, as the enemy of their
+  lives. But no logic, or assailing doubt, could have power against the
+  testimony of "the heart," unless it was rooted in deeper and truer
+  principles than those which it attacked. Nothing can overpower
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg339" id="pg339">339</a></span> truth
+  except a larger truth; and, in such a conflict, the truth in the old
+  view will ultimately take the side of the new, and find its
+  subordinate position within it. It has happened, not infrequently, as
+  in the case of the Encyclop&aelig;dists, that the explicit truths of
+  reason were more abstract, that is, less true, than the implicit
+  "faith" which they assailed. The central truths of religion have
+  often proved themselves to possess some stubborn, though
+  semi-articulate power, which could ultimately overcome or subordinate
+  the more partial and explicit truths of abstract science. It is this
+  that gives plausibility to the idea, that the testimony of the heart
+  is more reliable than that of the intellect. But, in this case also,
+  it was really reason that triumphed. It was the truth which proved
+  itself to be immortal, and not any mere emotion. The insurrection of
+  the intellect against the heart is quelled, only when the untruth, or
+  abstract character, of the principle of the assailants has been made
+  manifest, and when the old faith has yielded up its unjust gains, and
+  proved its vitality and strength by absorbing the truth that gave
+  vigour to the attack. Just as in morality it is the ideal, or the
+  unity of the whole moral life, that breaks up into differences, so
+  also here it is the implicit faith which, as it grows, breaks forth
+  into doubts. In both cases alike, the negative movement which induces
+  despair, is only a phase of a positive process&mdash;the process of
+  reason towards a fuller, a more articulate and complex, realization
+  of itself.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg340" id=
+  "pg340">340</a></span>
+
+  <p>Hence it follows that the value and strength of a faith
+  corresponds accurately to the doubts it has overcome. Those who never
+  went forth to battle cannot come home heroes. It is only when the
+  earthquake has tried the towers, and destroyed the sense of security,
+  that</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Man stands out again, pale, resolute,</p>
+
+    <p>Prepared to die,&mdash;that is, alive at last.</p>
+
+    <p>As we broke up that old faith of the world,</p>
+
+    <p>Have we, next age, to break up this the new&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Faith, in the thing, grown faith in the report&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Whence need to bravely disbelieve report</p>
+
+    <p>Through increased faith i' the thing reports belie?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1862-1868.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge
+  thrive by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion."</p>
+
+  <p>It was, thus, I conclude, a deep speculative error into which
+  Browning fell, when, in order to substantiate his optimistic faith,
+  he stigmatized human knowledge as merely apparent. Knowledge does not
+  fail, except in the sense in which morality also fails; it does not
+  at any time attain to the ultimate truth, any more than the moral
+  life is in any of its activities<sup>B</sup> a complete embodiment of the
+  absolute good. It is not given to man, who is essentially
+  progressive, to reach the ultimate term of development. For there is
+  no ultimate term: life never stands still. But, for the same reason,
+  there is no ultimate failure. The whole history of man is a history
+  of growth. If, however, knowledge did <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg341" id="pg341">341</a></span> fail, then morality too must fail;
+  and the appeal which the poet makes from the intellect to the heart,
+  would be an appeal to mere emotion. Finally, even if we take a
+  generous view of the poet's meaning, and put out of consideration the
+  theory he expresses when he is deliberately philosophizing, there is
+  still no appeal from the reason to an alien and higher authority. The
+  appeal to "the heart" is, at best, only an appeal from the
+  understanding to the reason, from a conscious logic to the more
+  concrete fact constituted by reason, which reflection has failed to
+  comprehend in its completeness; at its worst, it is an appeal from
+  truth to prejudice, from belief to dogma.</p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: See Chapter IX., p. <a href="#pg291">291.</a></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And in both cases alike, the appeal is futile; for, whether "the
+  heart be wiser than the head," or not, whether the faith which is
+  assailed be richer or poorer, truer or more false, than the logic
+  which is directed against it, an appeal to the heart cannot any
+  longer restore the unity of the broken life. Once reflection has set
+  in, there is no way of turning away its destructive might, except by
+  deeper reflection. The implicit faith of the heart must become the
+  explicit faith of reason. "There is no final and satisfactory issue
+  from such an endless internal debate and conflict, until the 'heart'
+  has learnt to speak the language of the head&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, until
+  the permanent principles, which underlay and gave strength to faith,
+  have been brought into the light of distinct consciousness."<sup>A</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: Caird's <i>Comte</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg342" id="pg342">342</a></span>
+
+  <p>I conclude, therefore, that the poet was right in saying that, in
+  order to comprehend human character,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I needs must blend the quality of man</p>
+
+    <p>With quality of God, and so assist</p>
+
+    <p>Mere human sight to understand my Life."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Bean-Stripe</i>&mdash;<i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But it was a profound error, which contained in it the destruction
+  of morality and religion, as well as of knowledge, to make "the
+  quality of God" a love that excludes reason, and the quality of man
+  an intellect incapable of knowing truth. Such in-congruous elements
+  could never be combined into the unity of a character. A love that
+  was mere emotion could not yield a motive for morality, or a
+  principle of religion. A philosophy of life which is based on
+  agnosticism is an explicit self-contradiction, which can help no one.
+  We must appeal from Browning the philosopher to Browning the
+  poet.</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg343" id=
+  "pg343">343</a></span>
+  <hr class="full" />
+
+  <h2><a name="ch11" id="ch11">CHAPTER XI.</a></h2>
+
+  <h3>CONCLUSION.</h3>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Well, I can fancy how he did it all,</p>
+
+    <p>Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,</p>
+
+    <p>Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,</p>
+
+    <p>Above and through his art&mdash;for it gives way;</p>
+
+    <p>That arm is wrongly put&mdash;and there again&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines,</p>
+
+    <p>Its body, so to speak: its soul is right,</p>
+
+    <p>He means right&mdash;that, a child may understand."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Andrea del Sarto</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>I have tried to show that Browning's theory of life, in so far as
+  it is expressed in his philosophical poems, rests on agnosticism; and
+  that such a theory is inconsistent with the moral and religious
+  interests of man. The idea that truth is unattainable was represented
+  by Browning as a bulwark of the faith, but it proved on examination
+  to be treacherous. His optimism was found to have no better
+  foundation than personal conviction, which any one was free to deny,
+  and which the poet could in no wise prove. The evidence of the heart,
+  to which he appealed, was the evidence of an emotion severed from
+  intelligence, and, therefore, <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg344"
+  id="pg344">344</a></span> without any content whatsoever. "The
+  faith," which he professed, was not the faith that anticipates and
+  invites proof, but a faith which is incapable of proof. In casting
+  doubt upon the validity of knowledge, he degraded the whole spiritual
+  nature of man; for a love that is ignorant of its object is a blind
+  impulse, and a moral consciousness that does not know the law is an
+  impossible phantom&mdash;a self-contradiction.</p>
+
+  <p>But, although Browning's explicitly philosophical theory of life
+  fails, there appears in his earlier poems, where his poetical freedom
+  was not yet trammelled, nor his moral enthusiasm restrained by the
+  stubborn difficulties of reflective thought, a far truer and richer
+  view. In this period of pure poetry, his conception of man was less
+  abstract than in his later works, and his inspiration was more direct
+  and full. The poet's dialectical ingenuity increased with the growth
+  of his reflective tendencies; but his relation to the great
+  principles of spiritual life seemed to become less intimate, and his
+  expression of them more halting. What we find in his earlier works
+  are vigorous ethical convictions, a glowing optimistic faith,
+  achieving their fitting expression in impassioned poetry; what we
+  find in his later works are arguments, which, however richly adorned
+  with poetic metaphors, have lost the completeness and energy of life.
+  His poetic fancies are like chaplets which crown the dead. Lovers of
+  the poet, who seek in his poems for inspiring expressions of their
+  hope <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg345" id="pg345">345</a></span>
+  and faith, will always do well in turning from his militant
+  metaphysics to his art.</p>
+
+  <p>In his case, as in that of many others, spiritual experience was
+  far richer than the theory which professed to explain it. The task of
+  lifting his moral convictions into the clear light of conscious
+  philosophy was beyond his power. The theory of the failure of
+  knowledge, which he seems to have adopted far too easily from the
+  current doctrine of the schools, was fundamentally inconsistent with
+  his generous belief in the moral progress of man; and it maimed the
+  expression of that belief. The result of his work as a philosopher is
+  a confession of complete ignorance and the helpless asseveration of a
+  purely dogmatic faith.</p>
+
+  <p>The fundamental error of the poet's philosophy lies, I believe, in
+  that severance of feeling and intelligence, love and reason, which
+  finds expression in <i>La Saisiaz</i>, <i>Ferishtah's Fancies</i>,
+  <i>The Parleyings</i>, and <i>Asolando</i>. Such an absolute division
+  is not to be found in <i>Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day</i>, <i>Rabbi
+  Ben Ezra</i>, <i>A Death in the Desert</i>, or in <i>The Ring and the
+  Book</i>; nor even in <i>Fifine at the Fair</i>. In these works we
+  are not perplexed by the strange combination of a nature whose
+  principle is love, and which is capable of infinite progress, with an
+  intelligence whose best efforts end in ignorance. Rather, the spirit
+  of man is regarded as one, in all its manifestations; and, therefore,
+  as progressive on all sides of its activity. The widening of his
+  knowledge, which is brought about by increasing experience, is
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg346" id="pg346">346</a></span>
+  parallel with the deepening and purifying of his moral life. In all
+  Browning's works, indeed, with the possible exception of
+  <i>Paracelsus</i>, love is conceived as having a place and function
+  of supreme importance in the development of the soul. Its divine
+  origin and destiny are never obscured; but knowledge is regarded as
+  merely human, and, therefore, as falling short of the truth. In
+  <i>Easter-Day</i> it is definitely contrasted with love, and shown to
+  be incapable of satisfying the deepest wants of man. It is, at the
+  best, only a means to the higher purposes of moral activity, and,
+  except in the <i>Grammarian's Funeral</i>, it is nowhere regarded as
+  in itself a worthy end.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.</p>
+
+    <p>And thence I conclude that the real God-function</p>
+
+    <p>Is to furnish a motive and injunction</p>
+
+    <p>For practising what we know already."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Even here, there is implied that the motive comes otherwise than
+  by knowledge; still, taking these earlier poems as a whole, we may
+  say that in them knowledge is regarded as means to morality and not
+  as in any sense contrasted with or destructive of it. Man's motives
+  are rational motives; the ends he seeks are ends conceived and even
+  constituted by his intelligence, and not purposes blindly followed as
+  by instinct and impulse.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i12">"Why live,</p>
+
+    <p>Except for love&mdash;how love, unless they know?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    1327-1328.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg347" id="pg347">347</a></span>
+
+  <p>asks the Pope. Moral progress is not secured apart from, or in
+  spite of knowledge. We are not exhorted to reject the verdict of the
+  latter as illusive, in order to confide in a faith which not only
+  fails to receive support from the defective intelligence, but
+  maintains its own integrity only by repudiating the testimony of the
+  reason. In the distinction between knowledge as means and love as
+  end, it is easy, indeed, to detect a tendency to degrade the former
+  into a mere temporary expedient, whereby moral ends may be served.
+  The poet speaks of "such knowledge as is possible to man." The
+  attitude he assumes towards it is apologetic, and betrays a keen
+  consciousness of its limitation, and particularly of its utter
+  inadequacy to represent the infinite. In the speech of the
+  Pope&mdash;-which can scarcely be regarded otherwise than as the
+  poet's own maturest utterance on the great moral and religious
+  questions raised by the tragedy of Pompilia's death&mdash;we find
+  this view vividly expressed:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"O Thou&mdash;as represented here to me</p>
+
+    <p>In such conception as my soul allows,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Under Thy measureless, my atom width!&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Man's mind, what is it but a convex glass</p>
+
+    <p>Wherein are gathered all the scattered points</p>
+
+    <p>Picked out of the immensity of sky,</p>
+
+    <p>To reunite there, be our heaven for earth,</p>
+
+    <p>Our known unknown, our God revealed to man?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    1308-1315.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>God is "appreciable in His absolute immensity <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg348" id="pg348">348</a></span> solely by
+  Himself," while, "by the little mind of man, He is reduced to
+  littleness that suits man's faculty." In these words, and others that
+  might be quoted, the poet shows that he is profoundly impressed with
+  the distinction between human knowledge, and that knowledge which is
+  adequate to the whole nature and extent of being. And in
+  <i>Christmas-Eve</i> he repudiates with a touch of scorn, the
+  absolute idealism, which is supposed to identify altogether human
+  reason with divine reason; and he commends the German critic for not
+  making</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"The important stumble</p>
+
+    <p>Of adding, he, the sage and humble,</p>
+
+    <p>Was also one with the Creator."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Christmas-Eve</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Nowhere in Browning, unless we except <i>Paracelsus</i>, is there
+  any sign of an inclination to treat man's knowledge in the same
+  spirit as he deals with man's love&mdash;namely, as a direct
+  emanation from the inmost nature of God, a divine element that
+  completes and crowns man's life on earth. On the contrary, he shows a
+  persistent tendency to treat love as a power higher in nature than
+  reason, and to give to it a supreme place in the formation of
+  character; and, as he grows older, that tendency grows in strength.
+  The philosophical poems, in which love is made all in all, and
+  knowledge is reduced to nescience follow by logical evolution from
+  principles, the influence of which we can detect even in his earlier
+  works. Still, in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg349" id=
+  "pg349">349</a></span> latter, these principles are only latent, and
+  are far from holding undisputed sway. Browning was, at first,
+  restrained from exclusive devotion to abstract views, by the
+  suggestions which the artistic spirit receives through its immediate
+  contact with the facts of life. That contact it is very difficult for
+  philosophy to maintain as it pursues its effort after universal
+  truth. Philosophy is obliged to analyze in order to define, and, in
+  that process, it is apt to lose something of that completeness of
+  representation, which belongs to art. For art is always engaged in
+  presenting the universal in the form of a particular object of
+  beauty. Its product is a "known unknown," but the unknown is the
+  unexhausted reality of a fact of intuition. Nor can analysis ever
+  exhaust it; theory can never catch up art, or explain all that is in
+  it. On similar grounds, it may be shown that it is impossible for
+  reason to lay bare all the elements that enter into its first complex
+  product, which we call faith. In religion, as in art, man is aware of
+  more than he knows; his articulate logic cannot do justice to all the
+  truths of the "heart." "The supplementary reflux of light" of
+  philosophy cannot "illustrate all the inferior grades" of knowledge.
+  Man will never completely understand himself.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I knew, I felt, (perception unexpressed,</p>
+
+    <p>Uncomprehended by our narrow thought,</p>
+
+    <p>But somehow felt and known in every shift</p>
+
+    <p>And change in the spirit,&mdash;nay, in every pore</p>
+
+    <p>Of the body, even,)&mdash;what God is, what we are,</p>
+
+    <p>What life is&mdash;how God tastes an infinite
+    joy</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg350" id=
+    "pg350">350</a></span>
+
+    <p>In infinite ways&mdash;one everlasting bliss,</p>
+
+    <p>From whom all being emanates, all power</p>
+
+    <p>Proceeds."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Paracelsus</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>I believe that it is possible, by the help of the intuitions of
+  Browning's highest artistic period, to bring together again the
+  elements of his broken faith, and to find in them suggestions of a
+  truer philosophy of life than anything which the poet himself
+  achieved. Perhaps, indeed, it is not easy, nor altogether fair, to
+  press the passionate utterances of his religious rapture into the
+  service of metaphysics, and to treat the unmeasured language of
+  emotion as the expression of a definite doctrine. Nevertheless,
+  rather than set forth a new defence of the faith, which his
+  agnosticism left exposed to the assaults of doubt and denial, it is
+  better to make Browning correct his own errors, and to appeal from
+  the metaphysician to the poet, from the sobriety of the logical
+  understanding to the inspiration of poetry.</p>
+
+  <p>I have already indicated what seems to me to be the defective
+  element in the poet's philosophy of life. His theory of knowledge is
+  in need of revision; and what he asserts of human love, should be
+  applied point by point to human reason. As man is ideally united with
+  the absolute on the side of moral emotion (if the phrase may be
+  pardoned), so he is ideally united with the absolute on the side of
+  the intellect. As there is no difference of <i>nature</i> between
+  God's goodness and man's goodness, so there is no difference of
+  nature between God's <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg351" id=
+  "pg351">351</a></span> truth and man's truth. There are not two kinds
+  of righteousness or mercy; there are not two kinds of truth. Human
+  nature is not "cut in two with a hatchet," as the poet implies that
+  it is. There is in man a lower and a higher element, ever at war with
+  each other; still he is not a mixture, or agglomerate, of the finite
+  and the infinite. A love perfect in nature cannot be linked to an
+  intelligence imperfect in nature; if it were, the love would be
+  either a blind impulse or an erring one. Both morality and religion
+  demand the presence in man of a perfect ideal, which is at war with
+  his imperfections; but an ideal is possible, only to a being endowed
+  with a capacity for knowing the truth. In degrading human knowledge,
+  the poet is disloyal to the fundamental principle of the Christian
+  faith which he professed&mdash;that God can and does manifest himself
+  in man.</p>
+
+  <p>On the other hand, we are not to take the unity of man with God,
+  of man's moral ideal with the All-perfect, as implying, on the moral
+  side, an absolute identification of the finite with the infinite; nor
+  can we do so on the side of knowledge. Man's moral life and rational
+  activity in knowledge are the process of the highest. But man is
+  neither first, nor last; he is not the original author of his love,
+  any more than of his reason; he is not the divine principle of the
+  whole to which he belongs, although he is potentially in harmony with
+  it. Both sides of his being are equally touched with
+  imperfection&mdash;his love, no less than his reason. <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg352" id="pg352">352</a></span> Perfect love
+  would imply perfect wisdom, as perfect wisdom, perfect love. But
+  absolute terms are not applicable to man, who is ever <i>on the
+  way</i> to goodness and truth, progressively manifesting the power of
+  the ideal that dwells in him, and whose very life is conflict and
+  acquirement.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,</p>
+
+    <p>Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey</p>
+
+    <p>Placid and perfect with my art: the worse."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Andrea del Sarto</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Hardly any conception is more prominent in Browning's writings
+  than this, of endless progress towards an infinite ideal; although he
+  occasionally manifests a desire to have done with effort.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i6">"When a soul has seen</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">By the means of Evil that Good is best,</p>
+
+    <p>And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's
+    serene,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">When our faith in the same has stood the
+    test&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">The uses of labour are surely done,</p>
+
+    <p>There remaineth a rest for the people of God,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">And I have had troubles enough, for one."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Old Pictures in Florence</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>It is the sense of endless onward movement, the outlook towards an
+  immortal course, "the life after life in unlimited series," which is
+  so inspiring in his early poetry. He conceives that we are here, on
+  this lower earth, just to learn one form, the elementary lesson and
+  alphabet of goodness, namely, "the uses of the flesh": in other
+  lives, other achievements. The separation of the soul from its
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg353" id="pg353">353</a></span>
+  instrument has very little significance to the poet; for it does not
+  arrest the course of moral development.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"No work begun shall ever pause for death."</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The spirit pursues its lone way, on other "adventures brave and
+  new," but ever towards a good which is complete.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Delayed it may be for more lives yet,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few:</p>
+
+    <p>Much is to learn, much to forget</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Ere the time be come for taking you."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Evelyn Hope</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Still the time will come when the awakened need shall be
+  satisfied; for the need was created in order to be satisfied.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Wherefore did I contrive for thee that ear</p>
+
+    <p>Hungry for music, and direct thine eye</p>
+
+    <p>To where I hold a seven-stringed instrument,</p>
+
+    <p>Unless I meant thee to beseech me play?"<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Two Camels</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The movement onward is thus a movement in knowledge, as well as in
+  every other form of good. The lover of Evelyn Hope, looking back in
+  imagination on the course he has travelled on earth and after,
+  exclaims&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Given up myself so many times,</p>
+
+    <p>Gained me the gains of various men,</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Evelyn Hope</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>In these earlier poems, there is not, as in the later <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg354" id="pg354">354</a></span> ones, a maimed,
+  or one-sided, evolution&mdash;a progress towards perfect love on the
+  side of the heart, and towards an illusive ideal on the side of the
+  intellect. Knowledge, too, has its value, and he who lived to settle
+  "<i>Hoti's</i> business, properly based <i>Oun</i>," and who "gave us
+  the doctrine of the enclitic <i>De</i>," was, to the poet,</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Still loftier than the world suspects,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Living and dying.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Here's the top-peak; the multitude below</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Live, for they can, there:</p>
+
+      <p>This man decided not to Live but Know&mdash;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Bury this man there?</p>
+
+      <p>Here&mdash;here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds
+      form,</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">Lightnings are loosened,</p>
+
+      <p>Stars come and go."<sup>A</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Grammarian's Funeral</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>No human effort goes to waste, no gift is delusive; but every gift
+  and every effort has its proper place as a stage in the endless
+  process. The soul bears in it <i>all</i> its conquests.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as
+    before;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying
+    sound;</p>
+
+    <p>What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, <i>so</i> much
+    good more;</p>
+
+    <p class="i2">On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a
+    perfect round."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Abt Vogler</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The "apparent failure" of knowledge, like every apparent failure,
+  is "a triumph's evidence for the fulness of the days." The doubts
+  that knowledge <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg355" id=
+  "pg355">355</a></span> brings, instead of implying a defective
+  intelligence doomed to spend itself on phantom phenomena, sting to
+  progress towards the truth. He bids us "Learn, nor account the pang;
+  dare, never grudge the throe."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Rather I prize the doubt</p>
+
+    <p>Low kinds exist without,</p>
+
+    <p>Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Similarly, defects in art, like defects in character, contain the
+  promise of further achievement.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">In both, of such lower types are we</p>
+
+      <p>Precisely because of our wider nature;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">For time, their's&mdash;ours, for eternity.</p>
+    </div>
+
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p>"To-day's brief passion limits their range;</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">It seethes with the morrow for us and more.</p>
+
+      <p>They are perfect&mdash;how else? They shall never change:</p>
+
+      <p class="i2">We are faulty&mdash;why not? We have time in
+      store."<sup>B</sup></p>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Old Pictures in Florence</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Prior to the period when a sceptical philosophy came down like a
+  blight, and destroyed the bloom of his art and faith, he thus
+  recognized that growing knowledge was an essential condition of
+  growing goodness. Pompilia shone with a glory that mere knowledge
+  could not give (if there were such a thing as <i>mere</i>
+  knowledge).</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Everywhere</p>
+
+    <p>I see in the world the intellect of man,</p>
+
+    <p>That sword, the energy his subtle spear,</p>
+
+    <p>The knowledge which defends him like a
+    shield&mdash;</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg356" id=
+    "pg356">356</a></span>
+
+    <p>Everywhere; but they make not up, I think,</p>
+
+    <p>The marvel of a soul like thine, earth's flower</p>
+
+    <p>She holds up to the softened gaze of God."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    1013-1019.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But yet she recognized with patient pain the loss she had
+  sustained for want of knowledge.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"The saints must bear with me, impute the fault</p>
+
+    <p>To a soul i' the bud, so starved by ignorance,</p>
+
+    <p>Stinted of warmth, it will not blow this year</p>
+
+    <p>Nor recognize the orb which Spring-flowers know."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>Pompilia</i>,
+    1515-1518.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Further on in the Pope's soliloquy, the poet shows that, at that
+  time, he fully recognized the risk of entrusting the spiritual
+  interests of man to the enthusiasm of elevated feeling, or to the
+  mere intuitions of a noble heart. Such intuitions will sometimes
+  guide a man happily, as in the case of Caponsacchi:</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i8">"Since ourselves allow</p>
+
+    <p>He has danced, in gaiety of heart, i' the main</p>
+
+    <p>The right step through the maze we bade him foot."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    1915-1917.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>But, on the other hand, such impulses, not instructed by knowledge
+  of the truth, and made steadfast to the laws of the higher life by a
+  reasoned conviction, lead man rightly only by accident. In such a
+  career there is no guarantee of constancy; other impulses might lead
+  to other ways of life.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"But if his heart had prompted to break loose</p>
+
+    <p>And mar the measure? Why, we must submit,</p><span class=
+    "pagenum"><a name="pg357" id="pg357">357</a></span>
+
+    <p>And thank the chance that brought him safe so far.</p>
+
+    <p>Will he repeat the prodigy? Perhaps.</p>
+
+    <p>Can he teach others how to quit themselves,</p>
+
+    <p>Show why this step was right while that were wrong?</p>
+
+    <p>How should he? 'Ask your hearts as I asked mine,</p>
+
+    <p>And get discreetly through the morrice too;</p>
+
+    <p>If your hearts misdirect you,&mdash;quit the stage,</p>
+
+    <p>And make amends,&mdash;be there amends to make.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    1916-1927.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>If the heart proved to Caponsacchi a guide to all that is good and
+  glorious, "the Abate, second in the suite," puts in the testimony of
+  another experience: "His heart answered to another tune."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"I have my taste too, and tread no such step!</p>
+
+    <p>You choose the glorious life, and may for me!</p>
+
+    <p>I like the lowest of life's appetites,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>So you judge&mdash;but the very truth of joy</p>
+
+    <p>To my own apprehension which decides."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid.</i>, 1932-1936.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Mere emotion is thus an insecure guide to conduct, for its
+  authority can be equally cited in support of every course of life. No
+  one can say to his neighbour, "Thou art wrong." Every impulse is
+  right to the individual who has it, and so long as he has it. <i>De
+  gustibus non disputandum</i>. Without a universal criterion there is
+  no praise or blame.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Call me knave and you get yourself called fool!</p>
+
+    <p>I live for greed, ambition, lust, revenge;</p>
+
+    <p>Attain these ends by force, guile: hypocrite,</p>
+
+    <p>To-day, perchance to-morrow recognized</p>
+
+    <p>The rational man, the type of common-sense."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Ibid.</i>, 1937-1941.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg358" id="pg358">358</a></span>
+
+  <p>This poem which, both in its moral wisdom and artistic worth,
+  marks the high tide of Browning's poetic insight, while he is not as
+  yet concerned with the defence of any theory or the discussion of any
+  abstract question, contrasts strongly with the later poems, where
+  knowledge is dissembling ignorance, faith is blind trust, and love is
+  a mere impulse of the heart. Having failed to meet the difficulties
+  of reflection, the poet turned upon the intellect. Knowledge becomes
+  to him an offence, and to save his faith he plucked out his right eye
+  and entered into the kingdom maimed. In <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i> the
+  ascent into another life is triumphant, like that of a conqueror
+  bearing with him the spoils of earth; but in the later poems he
+  escapes with a bare belief, and the loss of all his rich possessions
+  of knowledge, like a shipwrecked mariner whose goods have been thrown
+  overboard. His philosophy was a treacherous ally to his faith.</p>
+
+  <p>But there is another consideration which shows that the poet, as
+  artist, recognized the need of giving to reason a larger function
+  than seems to be possible according to the theory in his later works.
+  In the early poems there is no hint of the doctrine that
+  demonstrative knowledge of the good, and of the necessity of its law,
+  would destroy freedom. On the contrary, there are suggestions which
+  point to the opposite doctrine, according to which knowledge is the
+  condition of freedom.</p>
+
+  <p>While in his later poems the poet speaks of love as an
+  impulse&mdash;either blind or bound to erring <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg359" id="pg359">359</a></span>
+  knowledge&mdash;and of the heart as made to love, in his earlier ones
+  he seems to treat man as free to work out his own purposes, and act
+  out his own ideals. Browning here finds himself able to maintain the
+  dependence of man upon God without destroying morality. He regards
+  man's impulses not as blind instincts, but as falling <i>within</i>
+  his rational nature, and constituting the forms of its activity. He
+  recognizes the distinction between a mere impulse, in the sense of a
+  tendency to act, which is directed by a foreign power, and an impulse
+  informed, that is, directed by reason. According to this view, it is
+  reason which at once gives man the independence of foreign authority,
+  which is implied in morality, and constitutes that affinity between
+  man and God, which is implied by religion. No doubt, the impulse to
+  know, like the impulse to love, was put into man: his whole nature is
+  a gift, and he is therefore, in this sense, completely dependent upon
+  God&mdash;"God's all, man's nought." But, on the other hand, it
+  <i>is</i> a rational nature which has been put into him, and not an
+  irrational impulse. Or, rather, the impulse that constitutes his life
+  as man, is the self-evolving activity of reason.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Who speaks of man, then, must not sever</p>
+
+    <p>Man's very elements from man."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Christmas-Eve</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>However the rational nature of man has come to be, whether by
+  emanation or creation, it necessarily brings freedom with it, and all
+  its risks and <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg360" id=
+  "pg360">360</a></span> possibilities. It is of the very essence of
+  reason that it should find its law within itself.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"God's all, man's nought:</p>
+
+    <p>But also, God, whose pleasure brought</p>
+
+    <p>Man into being, stands away</p>
+
+    <p>As it were a hand-breadth off, to give</p>
+
+    <p>Room for the newly-made to live,</p>
+
+    <p>And look at Him from a place apart,</p>
+
+    <p>And use his gifts of brain and heart,</p>
+
+    <p>Given, indeed, but to keep for ever."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Christmas-Eve</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thus, while insisting on the absolute priority of God, and the
+  original receptivity of man; while recognizing that love, reason, and
+  every inner power and outer opportunity are lent to man, Browning
+  does not forget what these powers are. Man can only act as man; he
+  must obey his nature, as the stock or stone or plant obeys its
+  nature. But to act as man is to act freely, and man's nature is not
+  that of a stock or stone. He is rational, and cannot but be rational.
+  Hence he can neither be ruled, as dead matter is ruled, by natural
+  law; nor live, like a bird, the life of innocent impulse or instinct.
+  He is placed, from the very first, on "the table land whence life
+  upsprings aspiring to be immortality." He is a
+  spirit,&mdash;responsible because he is free, and free because he is
+  rational.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Man, therefore, stands on his own stock</p>
+
+    <p>Of love and power as a pin-point rock,</p>
+
+    <p>And, looks to God who ordained divorce</p>
+
+    <p>Of the rock from His boundless continent."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg361" id="pg361">361</a></span>
+
+  <p>The divorce is real, although ordained, but it is possible only in
+  so far as man, by means of reason, constitutes his own ends of
+  action. Impulse cannot bring it about. It is reason that enables man
+  to free himself from the despotic authority of outer law, to relate
+  himself to an inner law, and by reconciling inner and outer to attain
+  to goodness. Thus reason is the source of all morality. And it also
+  is the principle of religion, for it implies the highest and fullest
+  manifestation of the absolute.</p>
+
+  <p>Although the first aspect of self-consciousness is its
+  independence, which is, in turn, the first condition of morality,
+  still this is only the first aspect. The rational being plants
+  himself on his own individuality, stands aloof and alone in the
+  rights of his freedom, <i>in order that</i> he may set out from
+  thence to take possession, by means of knowledge and action, of the
+  world in which he is placed. Reason is potentially absolute, capable
+  of finding itself everywhere. So that in it man is "honour-clothed
+  and glory-crowned."</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"This is the honour,&mdash;that no thing I know,</p>
+
+    <p>Feel or conceive, but I can make my own</p>
+
+    <p>Somehow, by use of hand, or head, or heart."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.</i></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Man, by his knowledge, overcomes the resistance and hostility of
+  the world without him, or rather, discovers that there is not
+  hostility, but affinity between it and himself.</p><span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg362" id="pg362">362</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"This is the glory,&mdash;that in all conceived,</p>
+
+    <p>Or felt or known, I recognize a mind</p>
+
+    <p>Not mine but like mine,&mdash;for the double joy,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Making all things for me and me for Him."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>That which is finite is hemmed in by other things, as well as
+  determined by them; but the infinite is all-inclusive. There exists
+  for it no other thing to limit or determine it. There is nothing
+  finally alien or foreign to reason. Freedom and infinitude,
+  self-determination and absoluteness, imply each other. In so far as
+  man is free, he is lifted above the finite. It was God's plan to make
+  man on His own image:&mdash;</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i4">"To create man and then leave him</p>
+
+    <p>Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him,</p>
+
+    <p>But able to glorify Him too,</p>
+
+    <p>As a mere machine could never do,</p>
+
+    <p>That prayed or praised, all unaware</p>
+
+    <p>Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer,</p>
+
+    <p>Made perfect as a thing of course."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>Christmas-Eve</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Man must find his law within himself, be the source of his own
+  activity, not passive or receptive, but outgoing and effective.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Rejoice we are allied</p>
+
+    <p>To That which doth provide</p>
+
+    <p>And not partake, effect and not receive!</p>
+
+    <p>A spark disturbs our clod;</p>
+
+    <p>Nearer we hold of God</p>
+
+    <p>Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe."<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Rabbi Ben Ezra</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg363" id="pg363">363</a></span>
+
+  <p>This near affinity between the divine and human is just what
+  Browning seems to repudiate in his later poems, when he speaks as if
+  the absolute, in order to maintain its own supremacy over man, had to
+  stint its gifts and endow him only with a defective reason. In the
+  earlier period of the poet there is far less timidity. He then saw
+  that the greater the gift, the greater the Giver; that only spirit
+  can reveal spirit; that "God is glorified in man," and that love is
+  at its fullest only when it gives itself.</p>
+
+  <p>In insisting on such identity of the human spirit with the divine,
+  our poet does not at any time run the risk of forgetting that the
+  identity is not absolute. Absolute identity would be pantheism, which
+  leaves God lonely and loveless, and extinguishes man, as well as his
+  morality.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Man is not God, but hath God's end to serve,</p>
+
+    <p>A Master to obey, a course to take,</p>
+
+    <p>Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Man, at best, only moves <i>towards</i> his ideal: God is
+  conceived as the ever-existing ideal. God, in short, is the term
+  which signifies for us the Being who is eternally all in all, and
+  who, therefore, is hidden from us who are only moving <i>towards</i>
+  perfection, in the excess of the brightness of His own glory.
+  Nevertheless, as Browning recognizes, the grandeur of God's
+  perfection is just His outflowing love. And that love is never
+  complete in its manifestation, till <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+  "pg364" id="pg364">364</a></span> it has given itself. Man's life, as
+  spirit, is thus one in nature with that of the absolute. But the
+  unity is not complete, because man is only potentially perfect. He is
+  the process <i>of</i> the ideal; his life is the divine activity
+  within him. Still, it is also man's activity. For the process, being
+  the process of spirit, is a <i>free</i> process&mdash;one in which
+  man himself energizes; so that, in doing God's will, he is doing his
+  own highest will, and, in obeying the law of his own deepest nature,
+  he is obeying God. The unity of divine and human within the spiritual
+  life of man is a real unity, just because man is free; the identity
+  manifests itself through the difference, and the difference is
+  possible through the unity.</p>
+
+  <p>Thus, in the light of an ideal which is moral, and therefore
+  perfect&mdash;an ideal gradually realizing itself in a process which
+  is endless&mdash;the poet is able to maintain at once the community
+  between man and God, which is necessary to religion, and their
+  independence, which is necessary to morality. The conception of God
+  as giving, which is the main doctrine of Christianity, and of man as
+  akin with God, is applied by him to the whole spiritual nature of
+  man, and not merely to his emotion. The process of evolution is thus
+  a process towards truth, as well as goodness; in fact, goodness and
+  truth are known as inseparable. Knowledge, too, is a Divine
+  endowment. "What gift of man is not from God descended?" What gift of
+  God can be deceptive?</p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg365" id=
+  "pg365">365</a></span>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast</p>
+
+    <p>Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed:</p>
+
+    <p>Though He is so bright and we so dim,</p>
+
+    <p>We are made in His image to witness Him."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>Christmas-Eve</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The Pope recognizes clearly the inadequacy of human knowledge; but
+  he also recognizes that it has a Divine source.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Yet my poor spark had for its source, the sun;</p>
+
+    <p>Thither I sent the great looks which compel</p>
+
+    <p>Light from its fount: all that I do and am</p>
+
+    <p>Comes from the truth, or seen or else surmised,</p>
+
+    <p>Remembered or divined, as mere man may."<sup>B</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: <i>The Ring and the Book</i>&mdash;<i>The Pope</i>,
+    1285-1289.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>The last words indicate a suspicion of a certain defect in
+  knowledge, which is not recognized in human love; nevertheless, in
+  these earlier poems, the poet does not analyze human nature into a
+  finite and infinite, or seek to dispose of his difficulties by the
+  deceptive solvent of a dualistic agnosticism. He treats spirit as a
+  unity, and refuses to set love and reason against each other. Man's
+  <i>life</i>, for the poet, and not merely man's love, begins with
+  God, and returns back to God in the rapt recognition of God's perfect
+  being by reason, and in the identification of man's purposes with His
+  by means of will and love.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"What is left for us, save, in growth</p>
+
+    <p>Of soul, to rise up, far past both,</p>
+
+    <p>From the gift looking to the giver,</p>
+
+    <p>And from the cistern to the river,</p>
+
+    <p>And from the finite to infinity</p>
+
+    <p>And from man's dust to God's divinity?"<sup>C</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>C: <i>Christmas-Eve</i>.</p>
+  </div><span class="pagenum"><a name="pg366" id="pg366">366</a></span>
+
+  <p>It is this movement of the absolute in man, this aspiration
+  towards the full knowledge and perfect goodness which can never be
+  completely attained, that constitutes man.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect</p>
+
+    <p>He could not, what he knows now, know at first:</p>
+
+    <p>What he considers that he knows to-day,</p>
+
+    <p>Come but to-morrow, he will find mis-known;</p>
+
+    <p>Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns</p>
+
+    <p>Because he lives, which is to be a man,</p>
+
+    <p>Set to instruct himself by his past self:</p>
+
+    <p>First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn,</p>
+
+    <p>Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind,</p>
+
+    <p>Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.</p>
+
+    <p>God's gift was that man shall conceive of truth</p>
+
+    <p>And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake,</p>
+
+    <p>As midway help till he reach fact indeed?"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>A Death in the Desert</i>.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>"Progress," the poet says, is "man's distinctive mark alone." The
+  endlessness of the progress, the fact that every truth known to-day
+  seems misknown to-morrow, that every ideal once achieved only points
+  to another and becomes itself a stepping stone, does not, as in his
+  later days, bring despair to him. For the consciousness of failure is
+  possible in knowledge, as in morality, only because there has come a
+  fuller light. Browning does not, as yet, dwell exclusively on the
+  negative element in progress, or forget that it is possible only
+  through a deeper positive. He does not think that, because we turn
+  our backs on what we have gained, we are therefore not going forward;
+  nay, he asserts the <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg367" id=
+  "pg367">367</a></span> contrary. Failure, even the failure of
+  knowledge, is triumph's evidence in these earlier days; and complete
+  failure, the unchecked rule of evil in any form, is therefore
+  impossible. We deny</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"Recognized truths, obedient to some truth</p>
+
+    <p>Unrecognized yet, but perceptible,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Correct the portrait by the living face,</p>
+
+    <p>Man's God, by God's God in the mind of man."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1871-1874.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>Thus the poet ever returns to the conception of God in the mind of
+  man. God is the beginning and the end; and man is the self-conscious
+  worker of God's will, the free process whereby the last which is
+  first, returns to itself. The process, the growth, is man's life and
+  being; and it falls within the ideal, which is eternal and all in
+  all. The spiritual life of man, which is both intellectual and moral,
+  is a dying into the eternal, not to cease to be in it, but to live in
+  it more fully; for spirits necessarily commune. He dies to the
+  temporal interests and narrow ends of the exclusive self, and lives
+  an ever-expanding life in the life of others, manifesting more and
+  more that spiritual principle which is the life of God, who lives and
+  loves in all things. "God is a being in whom we exist; with whom we
+  are in principle one; with whom the human spirit is identical, in the
+  sense that He <i>is</i> all which the human spirit is capable of
+  becoming."<sup>B</sup></p>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>B: Green's <i>Prolegomena to Ethics</i>, p. 198.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>From this point of view, and in so far as Browning <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg368" id="pg368">368</a></span> is loyal to the
+  conception of the community of the divine and human, he is able to
+  maintain his faith in God, not in spite of knowledge, but through the
+  very movement of knowledge within him. He is not obliged, as in his
+  later works, to look for proofs, either in nature, or elsewhere; nor
+  to argue from the emotion of love in man, to a cause of that emotion.
+  He needs no syllogistic process to arrive at God; for the very
+  activity of his own spirit as intelligence, as the reason which
+  thinks and acts, is the activity of God within him. Scepticism, is
+  impossible, for the very act of doubting is the activity of reason,
+  and a profession of the knowledge of the truth.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p class="i14">"I</p>
+
+    <p>Put no such dreadful question to myself,</p>
+
+    <p>Within whose circle of experience burns</p>
+
+    <p>The central truth, Power, Wisdom, Goodness,&mdash;God:</p>
+
+    <p>I must outlive a thing ere know it dead:</p>
+
+    <p>When I outlive the faith there is a sun,</p>
+
+    <p>When I lie, ashes to the very soul,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Someone, not I, must wail above the heap,</p>
+
+    <p>'He died in dark whence never morn arose.'"<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1631-1639.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <p>And this view of God as immanent in man's experience also
+  forecloses all possibility of failure. Beneath the failure, the
+  possibility of which is involved in a moral life, lies the divine
+  element, working through contradiction to its own fulfilment. Failure
+  is necessary for man, because he grows: but, for the same reason, the
+  failure is not final. Thus, the poet, instead of denying the evidence
+  of his intellect as to the existence of evil, or casting <span class=
+  "pagenum"><a name="pg369" id="pg369">369</a></span> doubt on the
+  distinction between right and wrong, or reducing the chequered course
+  of human history into a phantasmagoria of mere mental appearances,
+  can regard the conflict between good and evil as real and earnest. He
+  can look evil in the face, recognize its stubborn resistance to the
+  good, and still regard the victory of the latter as sure and
+  complete. He has not to reduce it into a phantom, or mere appearance,
+  in order to give it a place within the divine order. He sees the
+  night, but he also sees the day succeed it. Man falls into sin, but
+  he cannot rest in it. It is contradictory to his nature, he cannot
+  content himself with it, and he is driven through it. Mephistopheles
+  promised more than he could perform, when he undertook to make Faust
+  declare himself satisfied. There is not within the kingdom of evil
+  what will satisfy the spirit of man, whose last law is goodness,
+  whose nature, however obscured, is God's gift of Himself.</p>
+
+  <div class="poem">
+    <p>"While I see day succeed the deepest night&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>How can I speak but as I know?&mdash;my speech</p>
+
+    <p>Must be, throughout the darkness. It will end:</p>
+
+    <p>'The light that did burn, will burn!' Clouds obscure&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>But for which obscuration all were bright?</p>
+
+    <p>Too hastily concluded! Sun&mdash;suffused,</p>
+
+    <p>A cloud may soothe the eye made blind by blaze,&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>Better the very clarity of heaven:</p>
+
+    <p>The soft streaks are the beautiful and dear.</p>
+
+    <p>What but the weakness in a faith supplies</p>
+
+    <p>The incentive to humanity, no strength</p>
+
+    <p>Absolute, irresistible, comports?</p>
+
+    <p>How can man love but what he yearns to help?</p>
+
+    <p>And that which men think weakness within strength,</p>
+
+    <p>But angels know for strength and stronger yet&mdash;</p>
+
+    <p>What were it else but the first things made new,</p>
+
+    <p>But repetition of the miracle,</p>
+
+    <p>The divine instance of self-sacrifice</p>
+
+    <p>That never ends and aye begins for man?</p>
+
+    <p>So, never I miss footing in the maze,</p>
+
+    <p>No,&mdash;I have light nor fear the dark at all."<sup>A</sup></p>
+  </div>
+
+  <div class="footnote">
+    <p>A: <i>The Ring and the Book&mdash;The Pope</i>, 1640-1660.</p>
+  </div>
+
+  <span class="pagenum"><a name="pg370" id=
+  "pg370">370</a></span>
+
+  <div class="figcenter">
+    <img src="images/image370.png" alt="publisher emblem" width=
+    "100" />
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+
+<center><hr class="pg" /></center>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Browning as a Philosophical and Religious
+Teacher, by Henry Jones
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher
+
+Author: Henry Jones
+
+Release Date: September 30, 2004  [eBook #13561]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING AS A PHILOSOPHICAL AND
+RELIGIOUS TEACHER***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Leonard Johnson, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+BROWNING AS A PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS TEACHER
+
+by
+
+HENRY JONES
+
+Professor of Philosophy in the University of Glasgow
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING.]
+
+
+
+THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
+MY DEAR FRIENDS
+
+MISS HARRIET MACARTHUR
+AND
+MISS JANE MACARTHUR.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The purpose of this book is to deal with Browning, not simply as a poet,
+but rather as the exponent of a system of ideas on moral and religious
+subjects, which may fairly be called a philosophy. I am conscious that
+it is a wrong to a poet to neglect, or even to subordinate, the artistic
+aspect of his work. At least, it would be a wrong, if our final judgment
+on his poetry were to be determined on such a method. But there is a
+place for everything; and, even in the case of a great poet, there is
+sometimes an advantage in attempting to estimate the value of what he
+has said, apart from the form in which he has said it. And of all modern
+poets, Browning is the one who most obviously invites and justifies such
+a method of treatment. For, in the first place, he is clearly one of
+that class of poets who are also prophets. He was never merely "the idle
+singer of an empty day," but one for whom poetic enthusiasm was
+intimately bound up with religious faith, and who spoke "in numbers,"
+not merely "because the numbers came," but because they were for him the
+necessary vehicle of an inspiring thought. If it is the business of
+philosophy to analyze and interpret all the great intellectual forces
+that mould the thought of an age, it cannot neglect the works of one who
+has exercised, and is exercising so powerful an influence on the moral
+and religious life of the present generation.
+
+In the second place, as will be seen in the sequel, Browning has himself
+led the way towards such a philosophical interpretation of his work.
+For, even in his earlier poems, he not seldom crossed the line that
+divides the poet from the philosopher, and all but broke through the
+strict limits of art in the effort to express--and we might even say to
+preach--his own idealistic faith. In his later works he did this almost
+without any disguise, raising philosophical problems, and discussing all
+the _pros_ and _cons_ of their solution, with no little subtlety and
+dialectical skill. In some of these poems we might even seem to be
+receiving a philosophical lesson, in place of a poetic inspiration, if
+it were not for those powerful imaginative utterances, those winged
+words, which Browning has always in reserve, to close the ranks of his
+argument. If the question is stated in a prosaic form, the final answer,
+as in the ancient oracle, is in the poetic language of the gods.
+
+From this point of view I have endeavoured to give a connected account
+of Browning's ideas, especially of his ideas on religion and morality,
+and to estimate their value. In order to do so, it was necessary to
+discuss the philosophical validity of the principles on which his
+doctrine is more or less consciously based. The more immediately
+philosophical chapters are the second, seventh, and ninth; but they will
+not be found unintelligible by those who have reflected on the
+difficulties of the moral and religious life, even although they may be
+unacquainted with the methods and language of the schools.
+
+I have received much valuable help in preparing this work for the press
+from my colleague, Professor G.B. Mathews, and still more from Professor
+Edward Caird. I owe them both a deep debt of gratitude.
+
+HENRY JONES.
+
+1891.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+INTRODUCTION
+
+CHAPTER II.
+ON THE NEED OF A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
+
+CHAPTER III.
+BROWNING'S PLACE IN ENGLISH POETRY
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+BROWNING'S OPTIMISM
+
+CHAPTER V.
+OPTIMISM AND ETHICS: THEIR CONTRADICTION
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+BROWNING'S TREATMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE
+OF LOVE
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+BROWNING'S IDEALISM, AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL
+JUSTIFICATION
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+BROWNING'S SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM
+OF EVIL
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+A CRITICISM OF BROWNING'S VIEW OF
+THE FAILURE OF KNOWLEDGE
+
+CHAPTER X.
+THE HEART AND THE HEAD.--LOVE AND
+REASON
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BROWNING.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+  "Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
+  Und gruen des Lebens goldner Baum." (_Faust_.)
+
+There is a saying of Hegel's, frequently quoted, that "a great man
+condemns the world to the task of explaining him." The condemnation is a
+double one, and it generally falls heaviest on the great man himself,
+who has to submit to explanation; and, probably, the last refinement of
+this species of cruelty is to expound a poet. I therefore begin with an
+apology in both senses of the term. I acknowledge that no commentator on
+art has a right to be heard, if he is not aware of the subordinate and
+temporary nature of his office. At the very best he is only a guide to
+the beautiful object, and he must fall back in silence so soon as he has
+led his company into its presence. He may perhaps suggest "the line of
+vision," or fix the point of view, from which we can best hope to do
+justice to the artist's work, by appropriating his intention and
+comprehending his idea; but if he seeks to serve the ends of art, he
+will not attempt to do anything more.
+
+In order to do even this successfully, it is essential that every
+judgment passed should be exclusively ruled by the principles which
+govern art. "Fine art is not real art till it is free"; that is, till
+its value is recognized as lying wholly within itself. And it is not,
+unfortunately, altogether unnecessary to insist that, so far from
+enhancing the value of an artist's work, we only degrade it into mere
+means, subordinate it to uses alien, and therefore antagonistic to its
+perfection, if we try to show that it gives pleasure, or refinement, or
+moral culture. There is no doubt that great poetry has all these uses,
+but the reader can enjoy them only on condition of forgetting them; for
+they are effects that follow the sense of its beauty. Art, morality,
+religion, is each supreme in its own sphere; the beautiful is not more
+beautiful because it is also moral, nor is a painting great because its
+subject is religious. It is true that their spheres overlap, and art is
+never at its best except when it is a beautiful representation of the
+good; nevertheless the points of view of the artist and of the ethical
+teacher are quite different, and consequently also the elements within
+which they work and the truth they reveal.
+
+In attempting, therefore, to discover Robert Browning's philosophy of
+life, I do not pretend that my treatment of him is adequate. Browning
+is, first of all, a poet; it is only as a poet that he can be finally
+judged; and the greatness of a poet is to be measured by the extent to
+which his writings are a revelation of what is beautiful.
+
+I undertake a different and a humbler task, conscious of its
+limitations, and aware that I can hardly avoid doing some violence to
+the artist. What I shall seek in the poet's writings is not beauty, but
+truth; and although truth is beautiful, and beauty is truth, still the
+poetic and philosophic interpretation of life are not to be confused.
+Philosophy must separate the matter from the form. Its synthesis comes
+through analysis, and analysis is destructive of beauty, as it is of all
+life. Art, therefore, resists the violence of the critical methods of
+philosophy, and the feud between them, of which Plato speaks, will last
+through all time. The beauty of form and the music of speech which
+criticism destroys, and to which philosophy is, at the best,
+indifferent, are essential to poetry. When we leave them out of account
+we miss the ultimate secret of poetry, for they cling to the meaning and
+penetrate it with their charm. Thought and its expression are
+inseparable in poetry, as they never are in philosophy; hence, in the
+former, the loss of the expression is the loss of truth. The pure idea
+that dwells in a poem is suffused in the poetic utterance, as sunshine
+breaks into beauty in the mist, as life beats and blushes in the flesh,
+or as an impassioned thought breathes in a thinker's face.
+
+But, although art and philosophy are supreme, each in its own realm, and
+neither can be subordinated to the uses of the other, they may help each
+other. They are independent, but not rival powers of the world of mind.
+Not only is the interchange of truth possible between them; but each may
+show and give to the other all its treasures, and be none the poorer
+itself. "It is in works of art that some nations have deposited the
+profoundest intuitions and ideas of their hearts." Job and Isaiah,
+AEschylus and Sophocles, Shakespeare and Goethe, were first of all poets.
+Mankind is indebted to them in the first place for revealing beauty; but
+it also owes to them much insight into the facts and principles of the
+moral world. It would be an unutterable loss to the ethical thinker and
+the philosopher, if this region were closed against them, so that they
+could no longer seek in the poets the inspiration and light that lead to
+goodness and truth. In our own day, almost above all others, we need the
+poets for these ethical and religious purposes. For the utterances of
+the dogmatic teacher of religion have been divested of much of their
+ancient authority; and the moral philosopher is often regarded either as
+a vendor of commonplaces or as the votary of a discredited science,
+whose primary principles are matter of doubt and debate. There are not a
+few educated Englishmen who find in the poets, and in the poets alone,
+the expression of their deepest convictions concerning the profoundest
+interests of life. They read the poets for fresh inspiration, partly, no
+doubt, because the passion and rapture of poetry lull criticism and
+soothe the questioning spirit into acquiescence.
+
+
+But there are further reasons; for the poets of England are greater than
+its moral philosophers; and it is of the nature of the poetic art that,
+while eschewing system, it presents the strife between right and wrong
+in concrete character, and therefore with a fulness and truth impossible
+to the abstract thought of science.
+
+                "A poet never dreams:
+  We prose folk do: we miss the proper duct
+  For thoughts on things unseen."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, lxxxviii.]
+
+It is true that philosophy endeavours to correct this fragmentariness by
+starting from the unity of the whole. But it can never quite get rid of
+an element of abstraction and reach down to the concrete individual.
+
+The making of character is so complex a process that the poetic
+representation of it, with its subtle suggestiveness, is always more
+complete and realistic than any possible philosophic analysis. Science
+can deal only with aspects and abstractions, and its method becomes more
+and more inadequate as its matter grows more concrete, unless it
+proceeds from the unity in which all the aspects are held together. In
+the case of life, and still more so in that of human conduct, the whole
+must precede the part, and the moral science must, therefore, more than
+any other, partake of the nature of poetry; for it must start from
+living spirit, go from the heart outwards, in order to detect the
+meaning of the actions of man.
+
+On this account, poetry is peculiarly helpful to the ethical
+investigator, because it always treats the particular thing as a
+microcosm. It is the great corrective of the onesidedness of science
+with its harsh method of analysis and distinction. It is a witness to
+the unity of man and the world. Every object which art touches into
+beauty, becomes in the very act a whole. The thing that is beautiful is
+always complete, the embodiment of something absolutely valuable, the
+product and the source of love; and the beloved object is all the world
+for the lover--beyond all praise, because it is above all comparison.
+
+  "Then why not witness, calmly gazing,
+  If earth holds aught--speak truth--above her?
+  Above this tress, and this, I touch
+  But cannot praise, I love so much!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Song_ (Dramatic Lyrics).]
+
+This characteristic of the work of art brings with it an important
+practical consequence, because being complete, it appeals to the whole
+man.
+
+"Poetry," it has been well said, is "the idealized and monumental
+utterance of the deepest feelings." And poetic feelings, it must not be
+forgotten, _are_ deepest; that is, they are the afterglow of the
+fullest activity of a complete soul, and not shallow titillations, or
+surface pleasures, such as the palate knows. Led by poetry, the
+intellect so sees truth that it glows with it, and the will is stirred
+to deeds of heroism. For there is hardly any fact so mean, but that when
+intensified by emotion, it grows poetic; as there is hardly any man so
+unimaginative, but that when struck with a great sorrow, or moved by a
+great passion, he is endowed for a moment with the poet's speech. A
+poetic fact, one may almost say, is just any fact at its best. Art, it
+is true, looks at its object through a medium, but it always seems its
+inmost meaning. In Lear, Othello, Hamlet, in Falstaff and Touchstone,
+there is a revelation of the inner truth of human life beyond the power
+of moral science to bestow. We do well to seek philosophy in the poets,
+for though they teach only by hints and parables, they nevertheless
+reflect the concrete truth of life, as it is half revealed and half
+concealed in facts. On the other hand, the reflective process of
+philosophy may help poetry; for, as we shall show, there is a near
+kinship between them. Even the critical analyst, while severing element
+from element, may help art and serve the poet's ends, provided he does
+not in his analysis of parts forget the whole. His function, though
+humble and merely preliminary to full poetic enjoyment, is not
+unimportant. To appreciate the grandeur of the unity of the work of art,
+there must be knowledge of the parts combined. It is quite true that the
+guide in the gallery is prone to be too talkative, and there are many
+who can afford to turn the commentator out of doors, especially if he
+moralizes. But, after all, man is not pure sensibility, any more than he
+is pure reason. And the aesthete will not lose if he occasionally allows
+those whom he may think less sensitive than himself to the charm of
+rhythmic phrase, to direct sober attention to the principles which lie
+embedded in all great poetry. At the worst, to seek for truth in poetry
+is a protest against the constant tendency to read it for the sake of
+the emotions which it stirs, the tendency to make it a refined amusement
+and nothing more. That is a deeper wrong to art than any which the
+theoretical moralist can inflict. Of the two, it is better to read
+poetry for ethical doctrines than for fine sensations; for poetry
+purifies the passions only when it lifts the reader into the sphere of
+truths that are universal.
+
+The task of interpreting a poet may be undertaken in different ways. One
+of these, with which we have been made familiar by critics of
+Shakespeare and of Browning himself, is to analyze each poem by itself
+and regard it as the artistic embodiment of some central idea; the other
+is to attempt, without dealing separately with each poem, to reach the
+poet's own point of view, and to reveal the sovereign truths which rule
+his mind. It is this latter way that I shall try to follow.
+
+Such dominant or even despotic thoughts it is possible to discover in
+all our great poets, except perhaps Shakespeare, whose universality
+baffles every classifier. As a rule, the English poets have been caught
+up, and inspired, by the exceeding grandeur of some single idea, in
+whose service they spend themselves with that prodigal thrift which
+finds life in giving it. Such an idea gives them a fresh way of looking
+at the world, so that the world grows young again with their new
+interpretation. In the highest instances, poets may become makers of
+epochs; they reform as well as reveal; for ideas are never dead things,
+"but grow in the hand that grasps them." In them lies the energy of a
+nation's life, and we comprehend that life only when we make clear to
+ourselves the thoughts which inspire it. It is thus true, in the deepest
+sense, that those who make the songs of a people make its history. In
+all true poets there are hints for a larger philosophy of life. But, in
+order to discover it, we must know the truths which dominate them, and
+break into music in their poems.
+
+Whether it is always possible, and whether it is at any time fair to a
+poet to define the idea which inspires him, I shall not inquire at
+present. No doubt, the interpretation of a poet from first principles
+carries us beyond the limits of art; and by insisting on the unity of
+his work, more may be attributed to him, or demanded from him, than he
+properly owns. To make such a demand is to require that poetry should be
+philosophy as well, which, owing to its method of intuition, it can
+never be. Nevertheless, among English poets there is no one who lends
+himself so easily, or so justly, to this way of treatment as Browning.
+Much of his poetry trembles on the verge of the abyss which is supposed
+to separate art from philosophy; and, as I shall try to show, there was
+in the poet a growing tendency to turn the power of dialectic on the
+pre-suppositions of his art. Yet, even Browning puts great difficulties
+in the way of a critic, who seeks to draw a philosophy of life from his
+poems. It is not by any means an easy task to lift the truths he utters
+under the stress of poetic emotion into the region of placid
+contemplation, or to connect them into a system, by means of the
+principle from which he makes his departure.
+
+The first of these difficulties arises from the extent and variety of
+his work. He was prodigal of poetic ideas, and wrote for fifty years on
+nature, art, and man, like a magnificent spendthrift of spiritual
+treasures. So great a store of knowledge lay at his hand, so real and
+informed with sympathy, that we can scarcely find any great literature
+which he has not ransacked, any phase of life which is not represented
+in his poems. All kinds of men and women, in every station in life, and
+at every stage of evil and goodness, crowd his pages. There are few
+forms of human character he has not studied, and each individual he has
+so caught at the supreme moment of his life, and in the hardest stress
+of circumstance, that the inmost working of his nature is revealed. The
+wealth is bewildering, and it is hard to follow the central thought,
+"the imperial chord, which steadily underlies the accidental mists of
+music springing thence."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_.]
+
+A second and still graver difficulty lies in the fact that his poetry,
+as he repeatedly insisted, is "always dramatic in principle, and so many
+utterances of so many imaginary persons, not mine."[B] In his earlier
+works, especially, Browning is creative rather than reflective, a Maker
+rather than a Seer; and his creations stand aloof from him, working out
+their fate in an outer world. We often lose the poet in the imaginative
+characters, into whom he penetrates with his keen artistic intuition,
+and within whom he lies as a necessity revealing itself in their actions
+and words. It is not easy anywhere to separate the elements, so that we
+can say with certainty, "Here I catch the poet, there lies his
+material." The identification of the work and worker is too intimate,
+and the realization of the imaginary personage is too complete.
+
+[Footnote B: Pref. to _Pauline_, 1888.]
+
+In regard to the dramatic interpretation of his poetry, Browning has
+manifested a peculiar sensitiveness. In his Preface to _Pauline_ and in
+several of his poems--notably _The Mermaid_, the _House_, and the
+_Shop_--he explicitly cuts himself free from his work. He knew that
+direct self-revealment on the part of the poet violates the spirit of
+the drama. "With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart," said
+Wordsworth; "Did Shakespeare?" characteristically answers Browning, "If
+so, the less Shakespeare he!" And of himself he asks:
+
+  "Which of you did I enable
+    Once to slip inside my breast,
+  There to catalogue and label
+    What I like least, what love best,
+  Hope and fear, believe and doubt of,
+    Seek and shun, respect--deride?
+  Who has right to make a rout of
+    Rarities he found inside?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _At the Mermaid_.]
+
+He repudiates all kinship with Byron and his subjective ways, and
+refuses to be made king by the hands which anointed him. "He will not
+give his woes an airing, and has no plague that claims respect." Both as
+man and poet, in virtue of the native, sunny, outer-air healthiness of
+his character, every kind of subjectivity is repulsive to him. He hands
+to his readers "his work, his scroll, theirs to take or leave: his soul
+he proffers not." For him "shop was shop only"; and though he dealt in
+gems, and throws
+
+  "You choice of jewels, every one,
+  Good, better, best, star, moon, and sun,"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Shop_.]
+
+he still _lived_ elsewhere, and had "stray thoughts and fancies
+fugitive" not meant for the open market. The poems in which Browning has
+spoken without the disguise of another character are very few. There are
+hardly more than two or three of much importance which can be considered
+as directly reflecting his own ideas, namely, _Christmas Eve_ and
+_Easter Day, La Saisiaz_, and _One Word More_--unless, spite of the
+poet's warning, we add _Pauline_.
+
+But, although the dramatic element in Browning's poetry renders it
+difficult to construct his character from his works, while this is
+comparatively easy in the case of Wordsworth or Byron; and although it
+throws a shade of uncertainty on every conclusion we might draw as to
+any specific doctrine held by him, still Browning lives in a certain
+atmosphere, and looks at his characters through a medium, whose subtle
+influence makes all his work indisputably _his_. The light he throws on
+his men and women is not the unobtrusive light of day, which reveals
+objects, but not itself. Though a true dramatist, he is not objective
+like Shakespeare and Scott, whose characters seem never to have had an
+author. The reader feels, rather, that Browning himself attends him
+through all the sights and wonders of the world of man; he never escapes
+the sense of the presence of the poet's powerful personality, or of the
+great convictions on which he has based his life. Browning has, at
+bottom, only one way of looking at the world, and one way of treating
+his objects; one point of view, and one artistic method. Nay, further,
+he has one supreme interest, which he pursues everywhere with a
+constancy shown by hardly any other poet; and, in consequence, his works
+have a unity and a certain originality, which make them in many ways a
+unique contribution to English literature.
+
+This characteristic, which no critic has missed, and which generally
+goes by the name of "the metaphysical element" in his poetry, makes it
+the more imperative to form a clear view of his ruling conceptions. No
+poet, least of all a dramatic poet, goes about seeking concrete vehicles
+for ready-made ideas, or attempts to dress a philosophy in metaphors;
+and Browning, as an artist, is interested first of all in the object
+which he renders beautiful for its own sole sake, and not in any
+abstract idea it illustrates. Still, it is true in a peculiar sense in
+his case, that the eye of the poet brings with it what it sees. He is,
+as a rule, conscious of no theory, and does not construct a poem for its
+explication; he rather strikes his ideas out of his material, as the
+sculptor reveals the breathing life in the stone. Nevertheless, it may
+be shown that a theory rules him from behind, and that profound
+convictions arise in the heart and rush along the blood at the moment of
+creation, using his soul as an instrument of expression to his age and
+people.
+
+Of no English poet, except Shakespeare, can we say with approximate
+truth that he is the poet of all times. The subjective breath of their
+own epoch dims the mirror which they hold up to nature. Missing by their
+limitation the highest universality, they can only be understood in
+their setting. It adds but little to our knowledge of Shakespeare's work
+to regard him as the great Elizabethan; there is nothing temporary in
+his dramas, except petty incidents and external trappings--so truly did
+he dwell amidst the elements constituting man in every age and clime.
+But this cannot be said of any other poet, not even of Chaucer or
+Spenser, far less of Milton, or Pope or Wordsworth. In their case, the
+artistic form and the material, the idea and its expression, the beauty
+and the truth, are to some extent separable. We can distinguish in
+Milton between the Puritanic theology which is perishable, and the art
+whose beauty can never pass away. The former fixes his kinship with his
+own age, gives him a definite place in the evolution of English life;
+the latter is independent of time, a thing which has supreme worth in
+itself.
+
+Nor can it be doubted that the same holds good of Browning. He also is
+ruled by the ideas of his own age. It may not be altogether possible for
+us, "who are partners of his motion and mixed up with his career," to
+allow for the influence of these ideas, and to distinguish between that
+which is evanescent and that which is permanent in his work; still I
+must try to do so; for it is the condition of comprehending him, and of
+appropriating the truth and beauty he came to reveal. And if his
+nearness to ourselves makes this more difficult, it also makes it more
+imperative. For there is no doubt that, with Carlyle, he is the
+interpreter of our time, reflecting its confused strength and chaotic
+wealth. He is the high priest of our age, standing at the altar for us,
+and giving utterance to our needs and aspirations, our fears and faith.
+By understanding him, we shall, to some degree, understand ourselves and
+the power which is silently moulding us to its purposes.
+
+It is because I thus regard Browning as not merely a poet but a prophet,
+that I think I am entitled to seek in him, as in Isaiah or Aeschylus, a
+solution, or a help to the solution, of the problems that press upon us
+when we reflect upon man, his place in the world and his destiny. He has
+given us indirectly, and as a poet gives, a philosophy of life; he has
+interpreted the world anew in the light of a dominant idea; and it will
+be no little gain if we can make clear to ourselves those constitutive
+principles on which his view of the world rests.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ON THE NEED OF A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.
+
+  "Art,--which I may style the love of loving, rage
+  Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things
+  For truth's sake, whole and sole, not any good, truth brings
+  The knower, seer, feeler, beside,--instinctive Art
+  Must fumble for the whole, once fixing on a part
+  However poor, surpass the fragment, and aspire
+  To reconstruct thereby the ultimate entire."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xliv.]
+
+No English poet has spoken more impressively than Browning on the
+weightier matters of morality and religion, or sought with more
+earnestness to meet the difficulties which arise when we try to
+penetrate to their ultimate principles. His way of poetry is, I think,
+fundamentally different from that of any other of our great writers. He
+often seems to be roused into speech, rather by the intensity of his
+spiritual convictions than by the subtle incitements of poetic
+sensibility. His convictions caught fire, and truth became beauty for
+him; not beauty, truth, as with Keats or Shelley. He is swayed by ideas,
+rather than by sublime moods. Beneath the endless variety of his poems,
+there are permanent principles, or "colligating conceptions," as science
+calls them; and although these are expressed by the way of emotion, they
+are held by him with all the resources of his reason.
+
+His work, though intuitive and perceptive as to form, "gaining God by
+first leap" as all true art must do, leaves the impression, when
+regarded as a whole, of an articulated system. It is a view of man's
+life and destiny that can be maintained, not only during the impassioned
+moods of poetry, but in the very presence of criticism and doubt. His
+faith, like Pompilia's, is held fast "despite the plucking fiend." He
+has given to us something more than intuitive glimpses into, the
+mysteries of man's character. Throughout his life he held up the steady
+light of an optimistic conception of the world, and by its means
+injected new vigour into English ethical thought. In his case,
+therefore, it is not an immaterial question, but one almost forced upon
+us, whether we are to take his ethical doctrine and inspiring optimism
+as valid truths, or to regard them merely as subjective opinions held by
+a religious poet. Are they creations of a powerful imagination, and
+nothing more? Do they give to the hopes and aspirations that rise so
+irrepressibly in the heart of man anything better than an appearance of
+validity, which will prove illusory the moment the cold light of
+critical inquiry is turned upon them?
+
+It is to this unity of his work that I would attribute, in the main, the
+impressiveness of his deliverances on morality and religion. And this
+unity justifies us, I think, in applying to Browning's view of life
+methods of criticism that would be out of place with any other English
+poet. It is one of his unique characteristics, as already hinted, that
+he has endeavoured to give us a complete and reasoned view of the
+ethical nature of man, and of his relation to the world--has sought, in
+fact, to establish a philosophy of life. In his case, not without
+injustice, it is true, but with less injustice than in the case of any
+other poet, we may disregard, _for our purposes_, the artistic method of
+his thought, and lay stress on its content only. He has a right to a
+place amongst philosophers, as Plato has to a place amongst poets. There
+is such deliberate earnestness and systematic consistency in his
+teaching, that Hegel can scarcely be said to have maintained that "The
+Rational is the Real" with greater intellectual tenacity, than Browning
+held to his view of life. He sought, in fact, to establish an Idealism;
+and that Idealism, like Kant's and Fichte's, has its last basis in the
+moral consciousness.
+
+But, even if it be considered that it is not altogether just to apply
+these critical tests to the poet's teaching, and to make him pay the
+penalty for assuming a place amongst philosophers, it is certain that
+what he says of man's spiritual life cannot be rightly valued, till it
+is regarded in the light of his guiding principles. We shall miss much
+of what is best in him, even as a poet, if, for instance, we regard his
+treatment of love merely as the expression of elevated passion, or his
+optimism as based upon mere hope. Love was to him rather an indwelling
+element in the world, present, like power, in everything.
+
+  "From the first, Power was--I knew.
+    Life has made clear to me
+  That, strive but for closer view,
+    Love were as plain to see."[A]
+
+[Footnote: A _Reverie--Asolando_.]
+
+Love yielded to him, as Reason did to Hegel, a fundamental exposition of
+the nature of things. Or, to express the same thing in another way, it
+was a deliberate hypothesis, which he sought to apply to facts and to
+test by their means, almost in the same manner as that in which natural
+science applies and tests its principles.
+
+That Browning's ethical and religious ideas were for him something
+different from, and perhaps more than, mere poetic sentiments, will, I
+believe, be scarcely denied. That he held a deliberate theory, and held
+it with greater and greater difficulty as he became older, and as his
+dialectical tendencies grew and threatened to wreck his artistic
+freedom, is evident to any one who regards his work as a whole. But it
+will not be admitted so readily that anything other than harm can issue
+from an attempt to deal with him as if he were a philosopher. Even if it
+be allowed that he held and expressed a definite theory, will it retain
+any value if we take it out of the region of poetry and impassioned
+religious faith, into the frigid zone of philosophical inquiry? Could
+any one maintain, apart from the intoxication of religious and poetic
+sentiment, that the essence of existence is love? As long as we remain
+within the realm of imagination, it may be argued, we may find in our
+poet's great sayings both solacement and strength, both rest and an
+impulse towards higher moral endeavour; but if we seek to treat them as
+theories of facts, and turn upon them the light of the understanding,
+will they not inevitably prove to be hallucinations? Poetry, we think,
+has its own proper place and function. It is an invaluable anodyne to
+the cark and care of reflective thought; an opiate which, by steeping
+the critical intellect in slumber, sets the soul free to rise on the
+wings of religious faith. But reason breaks the spell; and the world of
+poetry, and religion--a world which to them is always beautiful and good
+with God's presence--becomes a system of inexorable laws, dead,
+mechanical, explicable in strict truth, as an equipoise of constantly
+changing forms of energy.
+
+There is, at the present time, a widespread belief that we had better
+keep poetry and religion beyond the reach of critical investigation, if
+we set any store by them. Faith and reason are thought to be finally
+divorced. It is an article of the common creed that every attempt which
+the world has made to bring them together has resulted in denial, or at
+the best in doubt, regarding all supersensuous facts. The one condition
+of leading a full life, of maintaining a living relation between
+ourselves and both the spiritual and material elements of our existence,
+is to make our lives an alternating rhythm of the head and heart, to
+distinguish with absolute clearness between the realm of reason and that
+of faith.
+
+Now, such an assumption would be fatal to any attempt like the present,
+to find truth in poetry; and I must, therefore, try to meet it before
+entering upon a statement and criticism of Browning's view of life. I
+cannot admit that the difficulties of placing the facts of man's
+spiritual life on a rational basis are so great as to justify the
+assertion that there is no such basis, or that it is not discoverable by
+man. Surely, it is unreasonable to make intellectual death the condition
+of spiritual life. If such a condition were imposed on man, it must
+inevitably defeat its own purpose; for man cannot possibly continue to
+live a divided life, and persist in believing that for which his reason
+knows no defence. We must, in the long run, either rationalize our faith
+in morality and religion, or abandon them as illusions. And we should at
+least hesitate to deny that reason--in spite of its apparent failure in
+the past to justify our faith in the principles of spiritual life--may
+yet, as it becomes aware of its own nature and the might which dwells in
+it, find beauty and goodness, nay, God himself, in the world. We should
+at least hesitate to condemn man to choose between irreflective
+ignorance and irreligion, or to lock the intellect and the highest
+emotions of our nature and principles of our life, in a mortal struggle.
+Poetry and religion may, after all, be truer then prose, and have
+something to tell the world that science, which is often ignorant of its
+own limits, cannot teach.
+
+The failure of philosophy in the past, even if it were as complete as is
+believed by persons ignorant of its history, is no argument against its
+success in the future. Such persons have never known that the world of
+thought like that of action makes a stepping stone of its dead self. He
+who presumes to decide what passes the power of man's thought, or to
+prescribe absolute limits to human knowledge, is rash, to say the least;
+and he has neither caught the most important of the lessons of modern
+science, nor been lifted to the level of its inspiration. For science
+has done one thing greater than to unlock the secrets of nature. It has
+revealed something of the might of reason, and given new grounds for the
+faith, which in all ages has inspired the effort to know,--the faith
+that the world is an intelligible structure, meant to be penetrated by
+the thought of man. Can it be that nature is an "open secret," but that
+man, and he alone, must remain an enigma? Or does he not rather bear
+within himself the key to every problem which he solves, and is it not
+_his_ thought which penetrates the secrets of nature? The success of
+science, in reducing to law the most varied and apparently unconnected
+facts, should dispel any suspicion which attaches to the attempt to
+gather these laws under still wider ones, and to interpret the world in
+the light of the highest principles. And this is precisely what poetry
+and religion and philosophy do, each in its own way. They carry the work
+of the sciences into wider regions, and that, as I shall try to show, by
+methods which, in spite of many external differences, are fundamentally
+at one with those which the sciences employ.
+
+There is only one way of giving the quietus to the metaphysics of poets
+and philosophers, and of showing the futility of a philosophy of life,
+or of any scientific explanation of religion and morals. It is to show
+that there is some radical absurdity in the very attempt. Till this is
+done, the human mind will not give up problems of weighty import,
+however hard it may be to solve them. The world refused to believe
+Socrates when he pronounced a science of nature impossible, and
+centuries of failure did not break man's courage. Science, it is true,
+has given up some problems as insoluble; it will not now try to
+construct a perpetually moving machine, or to square the circle. But it
+has given them up, not because they are difficult, but because they are
+unreasonable tasks. The problems have a surd or irrational element in
+them; and to solve them would be to bring reason into collision with
+itself.
+
+Now, whatever may be the difficulties of establishing a theory of life,
+or a philosophy, it has never been shown to be an unreasonable task to
+attempt it. One might, on the contrary, expect, _prima facie_, that in
+a world progressively proved to be intelligible to man, man himself
+would be no exception. It is impossible that the "light in him should be
+darkness," or that the thought which reveals the order of the world
+should be itself chaotic.
+
+The need for philosophy is just the ultimate form of the need for
+knowledge; and the truths which philosophy brings to light are implied
+in every rational explanation of things. The only choice we can have is
+between a conscious metaphysics and an unconscious one, between
+hypotheses which we have examined and whose limitations we know, and
+hypotheses which rule us from behind, as pure prejudices do. It is
+because of this that the empiric is so dogmatic, and the ignorant man so
+certain of the truth of his opinion. They do not know their postulates,
+nor are they aware that there is no interpretation of an object which
+does not finally point to a theory of being. We understand no joint or
+ligament, except in relation to the whole organism, and no fact, or
+event, except by finding a place for it in the context of our
+experience. The history of the pebble can be given, only in the light of
+the story of the earth, as it is told by the whole of geology. We must
+begin very far back, and bring our widest principles to bear upon the
+particular thing, if we wish really to know what it is. It is a law that
+explains, and laws are always universal. All our knowledge, even the
+most broken and inconsistent, streams from some fundamental conception,
+in virtue of which all the variety of objects constitute one world, one
+orderly kosmos, even to the meanest mind. It is true that the central
+thought, be it rich or poor, must, like the sun's light, be broken
+against particular facts. But there is no need of forgetting the real
+source of knowledge, or of deeming that its progress is a synthesis
+without law, or an addition of fact to fact without any guiding
+principles.
+
+Now, it is the characteristic of poetry and philosophy that they keep
+alive our consciousness of these primary, uniting principles. They
+always dwell in the presence of the idea which makes their object _one_.
+To them the world is always, and necessarily, a harmonious whole, as it
+is also to the religious spirit. It is because of this that the universe
+is a thing of beauty for the poet, a revelation of God's goodness to the
+devout soul, and a manifestation of absolute reason to the philosopher.
+Art, religion, and philosophy fail or flourish together. The age of
+prose and scepticism appears when the sense of the presence of the whole
+in the particular facts of the world and of life has been dulled. And
+there is a necessity in this; for if the conception of the world as a
+whole is held to be impossible, if philosophy is a futility, then
+poetry will be a vain sentiment and religion a delusion.
+
+Nor will the failure of thought, when once demonstrated in these upper
+regions, be confined to them. On the contrary, it will spread downwards
+to science and ordinary knowledge, as mountain mists blot out the
+valleys. For every synthesis of fact to fact, every attempt to know,
+however humble and limited, is inspired by a secret faith in the unity
+of the world. Each of the sciences works within its own region, and
+colligates its details in the light of its own hypothesis; and all the
+sciences taken together presuppose the presence in the world of a
+principle that binds it into an orderly totality. Scientific explorers
+know that they are all working towards the same centre. And, ever and
+anon, as the isolated thinker presses home his own hypothesis, he finds
+his thought beating on the limits of his science, and suggesting some
+wider hypothesis. The walls that separate the sciences are wearing thin,
+and at times light penetrates from one to the other. So that to their
+votaries, at least, the faith is progressively justified, that there is
+a meeting point for the sciences, a central truth in which the dispersed
+rays will again be gathered together. In fact, all the sciences are
+working together under the guidance of a principle common to them all,
+although it may not be consciously known and no attempt is made to
+define it. In science, as in philosophy and art and religion, there is a
+principle of unity, which, though latent, is really prior to all
+explanation of particular matters of fact.
+
+In truth, man has only one way of knowing. There is no fundamental
+difference between scientific and philosophic procedure. We always light
+up facts by means of general laws. The fall of the stone was a perfect
+enigma, a universally unintelligible bit of experience, till the
+majestic imagination of Newton conceived the idea of universal
+gravitation. Wherever mind successfully invades the realm of chaos,
+poetry, the sense of the whole, comes first. There is the intuitive
+flash, the penetrative glimpse, got no one knows exactly whence--though
+we do know that it comes neither from the dead facts nor from the vacant
+region of _a priori_ thought, but somehow from the interaction of both
+these elements of knowledge. After the intuitive flash comes the slow
+labour of proof, the application of the principle to details. And that
+application transforms both the principle and the details, so that the
+former is enriched with content and the latter are made intelligible--a
+veritable conquest and valid possession for mankind. And in this labour
+of proof, science and philosophy alike take their share.
+
+Philosophy may be said to come midway between poetry and science, and to
+partake of the nature of both. On the one side it deals, like poetry,
+with ideals of knowledge, and announces truths which it does not
+completely verify; on the other, it leaves to science the task of
+articulating its principles in facts, though it begins the articulation
+itself. It reveals subsidiary principles, and is, at the same time, a
+witness for the unity of the categories of science. We may say, if we
+wish, that its principles are mere hypotheses. But so are the ideas
+which underlie the most practical of the sciences; so is every forecast
+of genius by virtue of which knowledge is extended; so is every
+principle of knowledge not completely worked out. To say that philosophy
+is hypothetical implies no charge, other than that which can be
+levelled, in the same sense, against the most solid body of scientific
+knowledge in the world. The fruitful question in each case alike is, how
+far, if at all, does the hypothesis enable us to understand particular
+facts.
+
+The more careful of our scientific thinkers are well aware of the limits
+under which they work and of the hypothetical character of their
+results. "I take Euclidean space, and the existence of material
+particles and elemental energy for granted," says the physicist; "deny
+them, and I am helpless; grant them, and I shall establish quantitative
+relations between the different forms of this elemental energy, and make
+it tractable and tame to man's uses. All I teach depends upon my
+hypothesis. In it is the secret of all the power I wield. I do not
+pretend to say what this elemental energy is. I make no declaration
+regarding the actual nature of things; and all questions as to the
+ultimate origin or final destination of the world are beyond the scope
+of my inquiry. I am ruled by my hypothesis; I regard phenomena _from my
+point of view_; and my right to do so I substantiate by the practical
+and theoretical results which follow." The language of geology,
+chemistry, zoology, and even mathematics is the same. They all start
+from a hypothesis; they are all based on an imaginative conception, and
+in this sense their votaries are poets, who see the unity of being throb
+in the particular fact.
+
+Now, so far as the particular sciences are concerned, I presume that no
+one will deny the supreme power of these colligating ideas. The sciences
+do not grow by a process of empiricism, which rambles tentatively and
+blindly from fact to fact, unguided of any hypothesis. But if they do
+not, if, on the contrary, each science is ruled by its own hypothesis,
+and uses that hypothesis to bind its facts together, then the question
+arises, are there no wider colligating principles amongst these
+hypotheses themselves? Are the sciences independent of each other, or
+is their independence only surface appearance? This is the question
+which philosophy asks, and the sciences themselves by their progress
+suggest a positive answer to it.
+
+The knowledge of the world which the sciences are building is not a
+chaotic structure. By their apparently independent efforts, the outer
+kosmos is gradually reproduced in the mind of man, and the temple of
+truth is silently rising. We may not as yet be able to connect wing with
+wing, or to declare definitely the law of the whole. The logical order
+of the hypotheses of the various sciences, the true connection of these
+categories of constructive thought, may yet be uncertain. But, still,
+there _is_ such an order and connection: the whole building has its
+plan, which becomes more and more intelligible as it approaches to its
+completion. Beneath all the differences, there are fundamental
+principles which give to human thought a definite unity of movement and
+direction. There are architectonic conceptions which are guiding, not
+only the different sciences, but all the modes of thought of an age.
+There are intellectual media, "working hypotheses," by means of which
+successive centuries observe all that they see; and these far-reaching
+constructive principles divide the history of mankind into distinct
+stages. In a word, there are dynasties of great ideas, such as the idea
+of development in our own day; and these successively ascend the throne
+of mind, and hold a sway over human thought which is well-nigh absolute.
+
+Now, if this is so, is it certain that all _knowledge_ of these ruling
+conceptions is impossible? In other words, is the attempt to construct a
+philosophy absurd? To say that it is, to deny the possibility of
+catching any glimpse of those regulative ideas, which determine the main
+tendencies of human thought, is to place the supreme directorate of the
+human intelligence in the hands of a necessity which, _for us_, is
+blind. For, an order that is hidden is equivalent to chance, so far as
+knowledge is concerned; and if we believe it to exist, we do so in the
+face of the fact that all we see, and all we _can_ see, is the opposite
+of order, namely lawlessness. Human knowledge, on this view, would be
+subjected to law in its details and compartments, but to disorder as a
+whole. Thinking men would be organized into regiments; but the regiments
+would not constitute an army, nor would there be any unity of movement
+in the attack on the realm of ignorance.
+
+But, such is not the conclusion to which the study of human history
+leads, especially when we observe its movements on a large scale. On the
+contrary, it is found that history falls into great epochs, each of
+which has its own peculiar characteristics. Ages, as well as nations and
+individuals, have features of their own, special and definite modes of
+thinking and acting. The movement of thought in each age has its own
+direction, which is determined by some characteristic and fundamental
+idea, that fulfils for it the part of a working hypothesis in a
+particular science. It is the prerogative of the greatest leaders of
+thought in an age to catch a glimpse of this ruling idea when it first
+makes its appearance; and it is their function, not only to discover it,
+but also to reveal it to others. And, in this way, they are at once the
+exponents of their time, and its prophets. They reveal that which is
+already a latent but active power--"a tendency"; but they reveal it to a
+generation which will see the truth for itself, only after the potency
+which lies in it has manifested itself in national institutions and
+habits of thought and action. _After_ the prophets have left us, we
+believe what they have said; as long as they are with us, they are
+voices crying in the wilderness.
+
+Now, these great ideas, these harmonies of the world of mind, first
+strike upon the ear of the poet. They seem to break into the
+consciousness of man by the way of emotion. They possess the seer; he is
+divinely mad, and he utters words whose meaning passes his own calmer
+comprehension. What we find in Goethe, we find also in a manner in
+Browning: an insight which is also foresight, a dim and partial
+consciousness of the truth about to be, sending its light before it, and
+anticipating all systematic reflection. It is an insight which appears
+to be independent of all method; but it is in nature, though not in
+sweep and expanse, akin to the intuitive leap by which the scientific
+explorer lights upon his new hypothesis. We can find no other law for
+it, than that sensitiveness to the beauty and truth hidden in facts,
+which much reflection on them generates for genius. For these great
+minds the "muddy vesture" is worn thin by thought, and they hear the
+immortal music.
+
+The poet soon passes his glowing torch into the hands of the
+philosopher. After Aeschylus and Sophocles, come Plato and Aristotle.
+The intuitive flash grows into a fixed light, which rules the day. The
+great idea, when reflected upon, becomes a system. When the light of
+such an idea is steadily held on human affairs, it breaks into endless
+forms of beauty and truth. The content of the idea is gradually evolved;
+hypotheses spring out of it, which are accepted as principles, rule the
+mind of an age, and give it its work and its character. In this way,
+Hobbes and Locke laid down, or at least defined, the boundaries within
+which moved the thought of the eighteenth century; and no one acquainted
+with the poetic and philosophic thought of Germany, from Lessing to
+Goethe and from Kant to Hegel, can fail to find therein the source and
+spring of the constitutive principles of our own intellectual, social,
+political, and religious life. The virtues and the vices of the
+aristocracy of the world of mind penetrate downwards. The works of the
+poets and philosophers, so far from being filled with impracticable
+dreams, are repositories of great suggestions which the world adopts for
+its guidance. The poets and philosophers lay no railroads and invent no
+telephones; but they, nevertheless, bring about that attitude towards
+nature, man and God, and generate those moods of the general mind, from
+which issue, not only the scientific, but also the social, political and
+religious forces of the age.
+
+It is mainly on this account that I cannot treat the supreme utterances
+of Browning lightly, or think it an idle task to try to connect them
+into a philosophy of life. In his optimism of love, in his supreme
+confidence in man's destiny and sense of the infinite height of the
+moral horizon of humanity, in his courageous faith in the good, and his
+profound conviction of the evanescence of evil, there lies a vital
+energy whose inspiring power we are yet destined to feel. Until a spirit
+kindred to his own arises, able to push the battle further into the same
+region, much of the practical task of the age that is coming will
+consist in living out in detail the ideas to which he has given
+expression.
+
+I contend, then, not merely for a larger charity, but for a truer view
+of the facts of history than is evinced by those who set aside the poets
+and philosophers as mere dreamers, and conceive that the sciences alone
+occupy the region of valid thought in all its extent. There is a
+universal brotherhood of which all who think are members. Not only do
+they all contribute to man's victory over his environment and himself,
+but they contribute in a manner which is substantially the same. There
+are many points of superficial distinction between the processes of
+philosophy and science, and between both and the method of poetry; but
+the inner movement, if one may so express it, is identical in all. It is
+time to have done with the notion that philosophers occupy a
+transcendent region beyond experience, or spin spiritual cocoons by _a
+priori_ methods, and with the view that scientific men are mere
+empirics, building their structures from below by an _a posteriori_ way
+of thought, without the help of any ruling conceptions. All alike
+endeavour to interpret experience, but none of them get their principles
+from it.
+
+                           "But, friends,
+  Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
+  From outward things, whate'er you may believe."
+
+There is room and need for the higher synthesis of philosophy and
+poetry, as well as for the more palpable and, at the same time, more
+narrow colligating conceptions of the systematic sciences. The
+quantitative relations between material objects, which are investigated
+by mathematics and physics, do not exhaust the realm of the knowable, so
+as to leave no place for the poet's, or the philosopher's view of the
+world. The scientific investigator who, like Mr. Tyndall, so far forgets
+the limitations of his province as to use his natural data as premises
+for religious or irreligious conclusions, is as illogical as the popular
+preacher, who attacks scientific conclusions because they are not
+consistent with his theological presuppositions. Looking only at their
+primary aspects, we cannot say that religious presuppositions and the
+scientific interpretation of facts are either consistent or
+inconsistent: they are simply different. Their harmony or discord can
+come only when the higher principles of philosophy have been fully
+developed, and when the departmental ideas of the various sciences are
+organized into a view of the world as a whole. And this is a task which
+has not as yet been accomplished. The forces from above and below have
+not met. When they do meet, they will assuredly find that they are
+friends, and not foes. For philosophy can articulate its supreme
+conception only by interaction with the sciences; and, on the other
+hand, the progress of science, and the effectiveness of its division of
+labour, are ultimately conditioned by its sensitiveness to the hints,
+given by poets and philosophers, of those wider principles in virtue of
+which the world is conceived as a unity. There are many, indeed, who
+cannot see the wood for the trees, as there are others who cannot see
+the trees for the wood. Carlyle cared nothing though science were able
+to turn a sunbeam on its axis; Ruskin sees little in the advance of
+invention except more slag-hills. And scientific men have not been slow
+to return with interest the scorn of the moralists. But a more
+comprehensive view of the movement of human knowledge will show that
+none labour in vain. For its movement is that of a thing which _grows_!
+and in growth there is always movement towards both unity and
+difference. Science, in pursuing truth into greater and greater detail,
+is constrained by its growing consciousness of the unlimited wealth of
+its material, to divide and isolate its interests more and more; and
+thus, at the same time, the need for the poets and philosophers is
+growing deeper, their task is becoming more difficult of achievement,
+and a greater triumph in so far as it is achieved. Both science and
+philosophy are working towards a more concrete view of the world as an
+articulated whole. If we cannot quite say with Browning that "poets
+never dream," we may yet admit with gratitude that their dreams are an
+inspiration.
+
+  "Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear.
+    Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:
+  But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;
+    The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Abt Vogler_.]
+
+And side by side with the poetry that grasps the truth in immediate
+intuition, there is also the uniting activity of philosophy, which,
+catching up its hints, carries "back our scattered knowledge of the
+facts and laws of nature to the principle upon which they rest; and, on
+the other hand, develops that principle so as to fill all the details of
+knowledge with a significance which they cannot have in themselves, but
+only as seen _sub specie aeternitatis_."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Problem of Philosophy at the Present Time_, by
+Professor Caird.]
+
+So far we have spoken of the function of philosophy in the
+interpretation of the phenomena of the outer world. It bears witness to
+the unity of knowledge, and strives by the constructive criticism of the
+categories of science to render that unity explicit. Its function is, no
+doubt, valid and important, for it is evident that man cannot rest
+content with fragmentary knowledge. But still, it might be objected that
+it is premature at present to endeavour to formulate that unity.
+Physics, chemistry, biology, and the other sciences, while they
+necessarily presuppose the unity of knowledge, and attempt in their own
+way and in their own sphere to discover it, are making very satisfactory
+headway without raising any of the desperate questions of metaphysics as
+to its ultimate nature. For them it is not likely to matter for a long
+time to come whether Optimism or Pessimism, Materialism or Idealism, or
+none of them, be true. In any case the principles they establish are
+valid. Physical relations always remain true; "ginger will be hot i' the
+mouth, and there will be more cakes and ale." It is only when the
+sciences break down beneath the weight of knowledge and prove themselves
+inadequate, that it becomes necessary or advantageous to seek for more
+comprehensive principles. At present is it not better to persevere in
+the way of science, than to be seduced from it by the desire to solve
+ultimate problems, which, however reasonable and pressing, seem to be
+beyond our power to answer?
+
+Such reasonings are not convincing; still, so far as natural science is
+concerned, they seem to indicate that there might be no great harm in
+ignoring, for a time, its dependence on the wider aspects of human
+thought. There is no department of nature so limited, but that it may
+more than satisfy the largest ambition of the individual for knowledge.
+But this attitude of indifference to ultimate questions is liable at any
+moment to be disturbed.
+
+  "Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch,
+  A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
+  A chorus-ending from Euripides,--
+  And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
+  As old and new at once as nature's self,
+  To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
+  Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
+  Round the ancient idol, on his base again,--
+  The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.
+  There the old misgivings, crooked questions are."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Bishop Blougram's Apology._]
+
+Amongst the facts of our experience which cry most loudly for some kind
+of solution, are those of our own inner life. We are in pressing need of
+a "working hypothesis" wherewith to understand ourselves, as well as of
+a theory which will explain the revolution of the planets, or the
+structure of an oyster. And this self of ours intrudes everywhere. It is
+only by resolutely shutting our eyes, that we can forget the part it
+plays even in the outer world of natural science. So active is it in the
+constitution of things, so dependent is their nature on the nature of
+our knowing faculties, that scientific men themselves admit that their
+surest results are only hypothetical. Their truth depends on laws of
+thought which natural science does not investigate.
+
+But quite apart from this doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, which
+is generally first acknowledged and then ignored, every man, the worst
+and the best alike, is constrained to take some _practical_ attitude
+towards his fellows. Man is never alone with nature, and the connections
+with his fellows which sustain his intelligent life, are liable to bring
+him into trouble, if they are not to some degree understood.
+
+  "There's power in me," said Bishop Blougram, "and will to dominate
+  Which I must exercise, they hurt me else."
+
+The impulse to know is only a phase of the more general impulse to act
+and to be. The specialist's devotion to his science is his answer to a
+demand, springing from his practical need, that he realize himself
+through action. He does not construct his edifice of knowledge, as the
+bird is supposed to build its nest, without any consciousness of an end
+to be attained thereby. Even if, like Lessing, he values the pursuit of
+truth for its own sake, still what stings him into effort is the sense
+that in truth only can he find the means of satisfying and realizing
+himself. Beneath all man's activities, as their very spring and source,
+there lies some dim conception of an end to be attained. This is his
+moral consciousness, which no neglect will utterly suppress. All human
+effort, the effort to know like every other, conceals within it a
+reference to some good, conceived at the time as supreme and complete;
+and this, in turn, contains a theory both of man's self and of the
+universe on which he must impress his image. Every man must have his
+philosophy of life, simply because he must act; though, in many cases,
+that philosophy may be latent and unconscious, or, at least, not a
+definite object of reflection. The most elementary question directed at
+his moral consciousness will at once elicit the universal element. We
+cannot ask whether an action be right or wrong without awakening all the
+echoes of metaphysics. As there is no object on the earth's surface
+whose equilibrium is not fixed by its relation to the earth's centre, so
+the most elementary moral judgment, the simplest choice, the most
+irrational vagaries of a will calling itself free and revelling in its
+supposed lawlessness, are dominated by the conception of a universal
+good. Everything that a man does is an attempt to articulate his view of
+this good, with a particular content. Hence, man as a moral agent is
+always the centre of his own horizon, and stands right beneath the
+zenith. Little as he may be aware of it, his relation between himself
+and his supreme good is direct. And he orders his whole world from his
+point of view, just as he regards East and West as meeting at the spot
+on which he stands. Whether he will or not, he cannot but regard the
+universe of men and objects as the instrument of his purposes. He
+extracts all its interest and meaning from himself. His own shadow falls
+upon it all. If he is selfish, that is, if he interprets the self that
+is in him as vulturous, then the whole outer world and his fellow-men
+fall for him into the category of carrion, or not-carrion. If he knows
+himself as spirit, as the energy of love or reason, if the prime
+necessity he recognizes within himself is the necessity to be good, then
+the universe becomes for him an instrument wherewith moral character is
+evolved. In all cases alike, his life-work is an effort to rob the world
+of its alien character, and to translate it into terms of himself.
+
+We are in the habit of fixing a chasm between a man's deeds and his
+metaphysical, moral, and religious creed; and even of thinking that he
+can get on "in a sufficiently prosperous manner," without any such
+creed. Can we not digest without a theory of peptics, or do justice
+without constructing an ideal state? The truest answer, though it is an
+answer easily misunderstood, is that we cannot. In the sphere of
+morality, at least, action, depends on knowledge: Socrates was right in
+saying that virtuous conduct ignorant of its end is accidental. Man's
+action, so far as it is good or evil, is shot through and through with
+his intelligence. And once we clearly distinguish between belief and
+profession, between the motives which really impel our actions and the
+psychological account of them with which we may deceive ourselves and
+others, we shall be obliged to confess that we always act our creed. A
+man's conduct, just because he is man, is generated by his view of
+himself and his world. He who cheats his neighbour believes in
+tortuosity, and, as Carlyle says, has the Supreme Quack for his God. No
+one ever acted without some dim, though perhaps foolish enough,
+half-belief that the world was at his back; whether he plots good or
+evil he always has God as an accomplice. And this is why character
+cannot be really bettered by any peddling process. Moralists and
+preachers are right in insisting on the need of a new life, that is, of
+a new principle, as the basis of any real improvement; and such a
+principle necessarily carries in it a new attitude towards men, and a
+new interpretation of the moral agent himself and of his world.
+
+Thus, wherever we touch the practical life of man, we are at once
+referred to a metaphysic. His creed is the heart of his character, and
+it beats as a pulse in every action. Hence, when we deal with moral
+life, we _must_ start from the centre. In our intellectual life, it is
+not obviously unreasonable to suppose that there is no need of
+endeavouring to reach upward to a constructive idea, which makes the
+universe one, but when we act, such self-deception is not possible. As a
+moral agent, and a moral agent man always is, he not only may, but must
+have his working hypothesis, and that hypothesis must be all-inclusive.
+As there are natural laws which connect man's physical movements with
+the whole system of nature, so there are spiritual relations which
+connect him with the whole spiritual universe; and spiritual relations
+are always direct.
+
+Now it follows from this, that, whenever we consider man as a moral
+agent, that is, as an agent who converts ideas into actual things, the
+need of a philosophy becomes evident. Instead of condemning ideal
+interpretations of the universe as useless dreams, the foolish products
+of an ambition of thought which refuses to respect the limits of the
+human intellect, we shall understand that philosophers and poets are
+really striving with greater clearness of vision, and in a more
+sustained manner, to perform the task which all men are obliged to
+perform in some way or other. Man subsists as a natural being only on
+condition of comprehending, to some degree, the conditions of his
+natural life, and the laws of his natural environment. From earliest
+youth upwards, he is learning that fire will burn and water drown, and
+that he can play with the elements with safety only within the sphere
+lit up by his intelligence. Nature will not pardon the blunders of
+ignorance, nor tamely submit to every hasty construction. And this truth
+is still more obvious in relation to man's moral life. Here, too, and in
+a pre-eminent degree, conduct waits on intelligence. Deep will only
+answer unto deep; and great characters only come with much meditation on
+the things that are highest. And, on the other hand, the misconstruction
+of life's meaning flings man back upon himself, and makes his action
+nugatory. Byronism was driven "howling home again," says the poet. The
+universe will not be interpreted in terms of sense, nor be treated as
+carrion, as Carlyle said. There is no rest in the "Everlasting No,"
+because it is a wrong view of man and of the world. Or rather, the
+negative is not everlasting; and man is driven onwards by despair,
+through the "Centre of Indifference," till he finds a "Universal Yea"--a
+true view of his relation to the universe.
+
+There is given to men the largest choice to do or to let alone, at every
+step in life. But there is one necessity which they cannot escape,
+because they carry it within them. They absolutely must try to make the
+world their home, find some kind of reconciling idea between themselves
+and the forces amidst which they move, have some kind of working
+hypothesis of life. Nor is it possible to admit that they will find rest
+till they discover a true hypothesis. If they do not seek it by
+reflection--if, in their ardour to penetrate into the secrets of nature,
+they forget themselves; if they allow the supreme facts of their moral
+life to remain in the confusion of tradition, and seek to compromise the
+demands of their spirit by sacrificing to the idols of their childhood's
+faith; if they fortify themselves in the indifference of
+agnosticism,--they must reap the harvest of their irreflection.
+Ignorance is not harmless in matters of character any more than in the
+concerns of our outer life. There are in national and in individual
+history seasons of despair, and that despair, when it is deepest, is
+ever found to be the shadow of moral failure--the result of going out
+into action with a false view of the purpose of human life, and a wrong
+conception of man's destiny. At such times, the people have not
+understood themselves or their environment, and, in consequence, they
+come into collision with their own welfare. There is no experiment so
+dangerous to an age or people, as that of relegating to the common
+ignorance of unreasoning faith the deep concerns of moral conduct; and
+there is no attitude more pitiable than that which leads it to turn a
+deaf ear and the lip of contempt towards those philosophers who carry
+the spirit of scientific inquiry into these higher regions, and
+endeavour to establish for mankind, by the irrefragable processes of
+reason, those principles on which rest all the great elements of man's
+destiny. We cannot act without a theory of life; and to whom shall we
+look for such a theory, except to those who, undaunted by the
+difficulties of the task, ask once more, and strive to answer, those
+problems which man cannot entirely escape, as long as he continues to
+think and act?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+BROWNING'S PLACE IN ENGLISH POETRY.
+
+
+    "But there's a great contrast between him and me. He seems
+    very content with life, and takes much satisfaction in the
+    world. It's a very strange and curious spectacle to behold
+    a man in these days so confidently cheerful." (_Carlyle_.)
+
+It has been said of Carlyle, who may for many reasons be considered as
+our poet's twin figure, that he laid the foundations of his world of
+thought in _Sartor Resartus_, and never enlarged them. His _Orientirung_
+was over before he was forty years old--as is, indeed, the case with
+most men. After that period there was no fundamental change in his view
+of the world; nothing which can be called a new idea disturbed his
+outline sketch of the universe. He lived afterwards only to fill it in,
+showing with ever greater detail the relations of man to man in history,
+and emphasizing with greater grimness the war of good and evil in human
+action. There is evidence, it is true, that the formulae from which he
+more or less consciously set forth, ultimately proved too narrow for
+him, and we find him beating himself in vain against their limitations;
+still, on the whole, Carlyle speculated within the range and influence
+of principles adopted early in life, and never abandoned for higher or
+richer ideas, or substantially changed.
+
+In these respects, there is considerable resemblance between Carlyle and
+Browning. Browning, indeed, fixed his point of view and chose his
+battleground still earlier; and he held it resolutely to his life's
+close. In his _Pauline_ and in his Epilogue to _Asolando_ we catch the
+triumphant tone of a single idea, which, during all the long interval,
+had never sunk into silence. Like
+
+  "The wise thrush, he sings each song twice over,
+  Lest you should think he never could recapture
+  The first fine careless rapture!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Home Thoughts from Abroad_.]
+
+Moreover, these two poets, if I may be permitted to call Carlyle a poet,
+taught the same truth. They were both witnesses to the presence of God
+in the spirit of man, and looked at this life in the light of another
+and a higher; or rather, they penetrated through the husk of time and
+saw that eternity is even here, a tranquil element underlying the noisy
+antagonisms of man's earthly life. Both of them, like Plato's
+philosopher, made their home in the sunlight of ideal truth: they were
+not denizens of the cave taking the things of sense for those of
+thought, shadows for realities, echoes for the voices of men.
+
+But, while Carlyle fought his way into this region, Browning found
+himself in it from the first; while Carlyle bought his freedom with a
+great sum, the poet "was free born." Carlyle saw the old world faith
+break up around him, and its fragments never ceased to embarrass his
+path. He was _at_ the point of transition, present at the collision of
+the old and new, and in the midst of the confusion. He, more than any
+other English writer, was the instrument of the change from the Deism of
+the eighteenth century and the despair which followed it, into the
+larger faith of our own. But, for Browning, there was a new heaven and a
+new earth, and old things had passed away. This notable contrast between
+the two men, arising at once from their disposition and their moral
+environment, had far-reaching effects on their lives and their writings.
+But their affinity was deeper than the difference, for they are
+essentially heirs and exponents of the same movement in English thought.
+
+The main characteristic of that movement is that it is both moral and
+religious, a devotion to God and the active service of man, a
+recognition at once of the rights of nature and of spirit. It does not,
+on the one hand, raise the individual as a natural being to the throne
+of the universe, and make all forces social, political, and spiritual
+stoop to his rights; nor does it, on the other hand, deny these rights,
+or make the individual a mere instrument of society. It at least
+attempts to reconcile the fundamental facts of human nature, without
+compromising any of them. It cannot be called either individualistic or
+socialistic; but it strives to be both at once, so that both man and
+society mean more to this age than they ever did before. The narrow
+formulae that cramped the thought of the period which preceded ours have
+been broken through. No one can pass from the hedonists and
+individualists to Carlyle and Browning without feeling that these two
+men are representatives of new forces in politics, in religion, and in
+literature,--forces which will undoubtedly effect momentous changes
+before they are caught again and fixed in creeds.
+
+That a new epoch in English thought was veritably opened by them is
+indicated by the surprise and bewilderment they occasioned at their
+first appearance. Carlyle had Emerson to break his loneliness and
+Browning had Rossetti; but, to most other men at that day, _Sartor_ and
+_Pauline_ were all but unintelligible. The general English reader could
+make little of the strange figures that had broken into the realm of
+literature; and the value and significance of their work, as well as its
+originality, will be recognized better by ourselves if we take a hurried
+glance at the times which lay behind them. Its main worth will be found
+to lie in the fact that they strove to bring together again certain
+fundamental elements, on which the moral life of man must always rest,
+and which had fallen asunder in the ages which preceded their own.
+
+The whole-hearted, instinctive life of the Elizabethan age was narrowed
+and deepened into the severe one-sidedness of Puritanism, which cast on
+the bright earth the sombre shadow of a life to come. England was given
+up for a time to a magnificent half-truth. It did not
+
+    "Wait
+  The slow and sober uprise all around
+  O' the building,"
+
+but
+
+    "Ran up right to roof
+  A sudden marvel, piece of perfectness."[A]
+
+[Footnote A:_Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
+
+After Puritanism came Charles the Second and the rights of the flesh,
+which rights were gradually clarified, till they contradicted themselves
+in the benevolent self-seeking of altruistic hedonism. David Hume led
+the world out of the shadow of eternity, and showed that it was only an
+object of the five senses; or of six, if we add that of "hunger." The
+divine element was explained away, and the proper study of mankind was,
+not man, as that age thought, but man reduced to his beggarly
+elements--a being animated solely by the sensuous springs of pleasure
+and pain, which should properly, as Carlyle thought, go on all fours,
+and not lay claim to the dignity of being moral. All things were reduced
+to what they seemed, robbed of their suggestiveness, changed into
+definite, sharp-edged, mutually exclusive particulars. The world was an
+aggregate of isolated facts, or, at the best, a mechanism into which
+particulars were fitted by force; and society was a gathering of mere
+individuals, repelling each other by their needs and greed, with a ring
+of natural necessity to bind them together. It was a fit time for
+political economy to supplant ethics. There was nowhere an ideal which
+could lift man above his natural self, and teach him, by losing it, to
+find a higher life. And, as a necessary consequence, religion gave way
+to naturalism and poetry to prose.
+
+After this age of prose came our own day. The new light first flushed
+the modern world in the writings of the philosopher-poets of Germany:
+Kant and Lessing, Fichte and Schiller, Goethe and Hegel. They brought
+about the Copernican change. For them this world of the five senses, of
+space and time and natural cause, instead of being the fixed centre
+around which all things revolved, was explicable only in its relation to
+a system which was spiritual; and man found his meaning in his
+connection with society, the life of which stretched endlessly far back
+into the past and forward into the future. Psychology gave way to
+metaphysics. The universal element in the thought of man was revealed.
+Instead of mechanism there was life. A new spirit of poetry and
+philosophy brought God back into the world, revealed his incarnation in
+the mind of man, and changed nature into a pellucid garment within which
+throbbed the love divine. The antagonism of hard alternatives was at an
+end; the universe was spirit-woven and every smallest object was "filled
+full of magical music, as they freight a star with light." There were no
+longer two worlds, but one; for "the other" world penetrated this, and
+was revealed in it: thought and sense, spirit and nature, were
+reconciled. These thinkers made room for man, as against the Puritans,
+and for God, as against their successors. Instead of the hopeless
+struggle of ascetic morality, which divides man against himself, they
+awakened him to that sense of his reconciliation with his ideal which
+religion gives: "Psyche drinks its stream and forgets her sorrows."
+
+Now, this is just the soil where art blooms. For what is beauty but the
+harmony of thought and sense, a universal meaning caught and tamed in
+the particular? To the poet each little flower that blooms has endless
+worth, and is regarded as perfect and complete; for he sees that the
+spirit of the whole dwells in it. It whispers to him the mystery of the
+infinite; it is a pulse in which beats the universal heart. The true
+poet finds God everywhere; for the ideal is actual wherever beauty
+dwells. And there is the closest affinity between art and religion, as
+its history proves, from Job and Isaiah, Homer and Aeschylus, to our own
+poet; for both art and religion lift us, each in its own way, above
+one-sidedness and limitation, to the region of the universal. The one
+draws God to man, brings perfection _here_, and reaches its highest form
+in the joyous life of Greece, where the natural world was clothed with
+almost supernatural beauty; the other lifts man to God, and finds this
+life good because it reflects and suggests the greater life that is to
+be. Both poetry and religion are a reconciliation and a satisfaction;
+both lift man above the contradictions of limited existence, and place
+him in the region of peace--where,
+
+    "with an eye made quiet by the power
+  Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
+  He sees into the life of things."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Tintern Abbey._]
+
+In this sense, it will be always true of the poet, as it is of the
+religious man, that
+
+    "the world,
+  The beauty and the wonder and the power,
+  The shapes of things, their colours, lights and shades,
+  Changes, surprises,"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fra Lippo Lippi_.]
+
+lead him back to God, who made it all.
+
+He is essentially a witness to the divine element in the world.
+
+It is the rediscovery of this divine element, after its expulsion by the
+age of Deism and doubt, that has given to this century its poetic
+grandeur. Unless we regard Burke as the herald of the new era, we may
+say that England first felt the breath of the returning spirit in the
+poems of Shelley and Wordsworth.
+
+  "The One remains, the many change and pass;
+    Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly;
+  Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
+    Stains the white radiance of eternity,
+    Until death tramples it to fragments."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Adonais_.]
+
+"And I have felt," says Wordsworth,
+
+  "A presence that disturbs me with the joy
+  Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
+  Of something far more deeply interfused,
+  Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
+  And the round ocean and the living air,
+  And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
+  A motion and a spirit, that impels
+  All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
+  And rolls through all things."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Tintern Abbey_.]
+
+Such notes as these could not be struck by Pope, nor be understood by
+the age of prose. Still they are only the prelude of the fuller song of
+Browning. Whether he be a greater poet than these or not,--a question
+whose answer can benefit nothing, for each poet has his own worth, and
+reflects by his own facet the universal truth--his poetry contains in it
+larger elements, and the promise of a deeper harmony from the harsher
+discords of his more stubborn material. Even where their spheres touch,
+Browning held by the artistic truth in a different manner. To Shelley,
+perhaps the most intensely spiritual of all our poets,
+
+  "That light whose smile kindles the universe,
+  That beauty in which all things work and move,"
+
+was an impassioned sentiment, a glorious intoxication; to Browning it
+was a conviction, reasoned and willed, possessing the whole man, and
+held in the sober moments when the heart is silent. "The heavy and the
+weary weight of all this unintelligible world" was lightened for
+Wordsworth, only when he was far from the haunts of men, and free from
+the "dreary intercourse of daily life"; but Browning weaved his song of
+hope right amidst the wail and woe of man's sin and wretchedness. For
+Wordsworth "sensations sweet, felt in the blood and felt along the
+heart, passed into his purer mind with tranquil restoration," and issued
+"in a serene and blessed mood"; but Browning's poetry is not merely the
+poetry of the emotions however sublimated. He starts with the hard
+repellent fact, crushes by sheer force of thought its stubborn rind,
+presses into it, and brings forth the truth at its heart. The greatness
+of Browning's poetry is in its perceptive grip: and in nothing is he
+more original than in the manner in which he takes up his task, and
+assumes his artistic function. In his postponement of feeling to thought
+we recognize a new poetic method, the significance of which we cannot
+estimate as yet. But, although we may fail to apprehend the meaning of
+the new method he employs, we cannot fail to perceive the fact, which is
+not less striking, that the region from which he quarries his material
+is new.
+
+And yet he does not break away abruptly from his predecessors. His
+kinship with them, in that he recognizes the presence of God in nature,
+is everywhere evident. We quote one passage, scarcely to be surpassed by
+any of our poets, as indicative of his power of dealing with the
+supernaturalism of nature.
+
+  "The centre-fire heaves underneath the earth,
+  And the earth changes like a human face;
+  The molten ore burst up among the rocks,
+  Winds into the stone's heart, outbranches bright
+  In hidden mines, spots barren river-beds,
+  Crumbles into fine sand where sunbeams bask--
+  God joys therein. The wroth sea's waves are edged
+  With foam, white as the bitter lip of hate,
+  When, in the solitary waste, strange groups
+  Of young volcanos come up, cyclops-like,
+  Staring together with their eyes on flame--
+  God tastes a pleasure in their uncouth pride.
+  Then all is still; earth is a wintry clod:
+  But spring-wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes
+  Over its breast to waken it, rare verdure
+  Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between
+  The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost,
+  Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Above, birds fly in merry flocks, the lark
+  Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;
+  Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls
+  Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe
+  Of nested limpets; savage creatures seek
+  Their loves in wood and plain--and God renews
+  His ancient rapture. Thus 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]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus._]
+
+Such passages as these contain neither the rapt, reflective calm of
+Wordsworth's solemn tones, nor the ethereal intoxication of Shelley's
+spirit-music; but there is in them the same consciousness of the
+infinite meaning of natural facts. And beyond this, there is also, in
+the closing lines, a hint of a new region for art. Shelley and
+Wordsworth were the poets of Nature, as all truly say; Browning was the
+poet of the human soul. For Shelley, the beauty in which all things work
+and move was well-nigh "quenched by the eclipsing curse of the birth of
+man"; and Wordsworth lived beneath the habitual sway of fountains,
+meadows, hills and groves, while he kept grave watch o'er man's
+mortality, and saw the shades of the prison-house gather round him. From
+the life of man they garnered nought but mad indignation, or mellowed
+sadness. It was a foolish and furious strife with unknown powers fought
+in the dark, from which the poet kept aloof, for he could not see that
+God dwelt amidst the chaos. But Browning found "harmony in immortal
+souls, spite of the muddy vesture of decay." He found nature crowned in
+man, though man was mean and miserable. At the heart of the most
+wretched abortion of wickedness there was the mark of the loving touch
+of God. Shelley turned away from man; Wordsworth paid him rare visits,
+like those of a being from a strange world, made wise and sad with
+looking at him from afar; Browning dwelt with him. He was a comrade in
+the fight, and ever in the van of man's endeavour bidding him be of good
+cheer. He was a witness for God in the midmost dark, where meet in
+deathless struggle the elemental powers of right and wrong. For God is
+present for him, not only in the order and beauty of nature, but in the
+world of will and thought. Beneath the caprice and wilful lawlessness of
+individual action, he saw a beneficent purpose which cannot fail, but
+"has its way with man, not he with it."
+
+Now this was a new world for poetry to enter into; a new depth to
+penetrate with hope; and Browning was the first of modern poets to
+
+                              "Stoop
+  Into the vast and unexplored abyss,
+                 Strenuously beating
+  The silent boundless regions of the sky."
+
+It is also a new world for religion and morality; and to understand it
+demands a deeper insight into the fundamental elements of human life.
+
+To show this in a proximately adequate manner, we should be obliged, as
+already hinted, to connect the poet's work, not merely with that of his
+English predecessors, but with the deeper and more comprehensive
+movement of the thought of Germany since the time of Kant. It would be
+necessary to indicate how, by breaking a way through the narrow creeds
+and equally narrow scepticism of the previous age, the new spirit
+extended the horizon of man's active and contemplative life, and made
+him free of the universe, and the repository of the past conquests of
+his race. It proposed to man the great task of solving the problem of
+humanity, but it strengthened him with its past achievement, and
+inspired him with the conviction of its boundless progress. It is not
+that the significance of the individual or the meaning of his endeavour
+is lost. Under this new view, man has still to fight for his own hand,
+and it is still recognized that spirit is always burdened with its own
+fate and cannot share its responsibility. Morality does not give way to
+religion or pass into it, and there is a sense in which the individual
+is always alone in the sphere of duty.
+
+But from this new point of view the individual is re-explained for us,
+and we begin to understand that he is the focus of a light which is
+universal, "one more incarnation of the mind of God." His moral task is
+no longer to seek his own in the old sense, but to elevate humanity; for
+it is only by taking this circuit that he can come to his own. Such a
+task as this is a sufficiently great one to occupy all time; but it is
+to humanity in him that the task belongs, and it will therefore be
+achieved. This is no new one-sidedness. It does not mean, to those who
+comprehend it, the supplanting of the individual thought by the
+collective thought, or the substitution of humanity for man. The
+universal is _in_ the particular, the fact _is_ the law. There is no
+collision between the whole and the part, for the whole lives in the
+part. As each individual plant has its own life and beauty and worth,
+although the universe has conspired to bring it into being; so also, and
+in a far higher degree, man has his own duty and his own dignity,
+although he is but the embodiment of forces, natural and spiritual,
+which have come from the endless past. Like a letter in a word, or a
+word in a sentence, he gets his meaning from his context; _but the
+sentence is meaningless without him_. "Rays from all round converge in
+him," and he has no power except that which has been lent to him; but
+all the same, nay, all the more, he must
+
+  "Think as if man never thought before!
+  Act as if all creation hung attent
+  On the acting of such faculty as his."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
+
+His responsibility, his individuality, is not less, but greater, in that
+he can, in his thought and moral action, command the forces that the
+race has stored for him. The great man speaks the thought of his people,
+and his invocations as their priest are just the expression of their
+dumb yearnings. And even the mean and insignificant man is what he is,
+in virtue of the humanity which is blurred and distorted within him; and
+he can shed his insignificance and meanness, only by becoming a truer
+vehicle for that humanity.
+
+Thus, when spirit is spiritually discerned, it is seen that man is bound
+to man in a union closer than any physical organism can show; while "the
+individual," in the old sense of a being _opposed_ to society and
+_opposed_ to the world, is found to be a fiction of abstract thought,
+not discoverable anywhere, because not real. And, on the other hand,
+society is no longer "collective," but so organic that the whole is
+potentially in every part--an organism _of_ organisms.
+
+The influence of this organic idea in every department of thought which
+concerns itself with man is not to be measured. It is already fast
+changing all the practical sciences of man--economics, politics, ethics
+and religion. The material, being newly interpreted, is wrought into a
+new purpose, and revelation is once more bringing about a reformation.
+But human action in its ethical aspect is, above all, charged with a new
+significance. The idea of duty has received an expansion almost
+illimitable, and man himself has thereby attained new worth and
+dignity--for what is duty except a dignity and opportunity, man's chance
+of being good? When we contrast this view of the life of man as the life
+of humanity in him, with the old individualism, we may say that morality
+also has at last, in Bacon's phrase, passed from the narrow seas into
+the open ocean. And after all, the greatest achievement of our age may
+be not that it has established the sciences of nature, but that it has
+made possible the science of man. We have, at length, reached a point of
+view from which we may hope to understand ourselves. Law, order,
+continuity, in human action--the essential pre-conditions of a moral
+science--were beyond the reach of an individualistic theory. It left to
+ethical writers no choice but that of either sacrificing man to law, or
+law to man; of denying either the particular or the universal element in
+his nature. Naturalism did the first. Intuitionism, the second. The
+former made human action the _re_action of a natural agent on the
+incitement of natural forces. It made man a mere object, a _thing_
+capable of being affected by other things through his faculty of being
+pained or pleased; an object acting in obedience to motives that had an
+external origin, just like any other object. The latter theory cut man
+free from the world and his fellows, endowed him with a will that had no
+law, and a conscience that was dogmatic; and thereby succeeded in
+stultifying both law and morality.
+
+But this new consciousness of the relation of man to mankind and the
+world takes him out of his isolation and still leaves him free. It
+relates men to one another in a humanity, which is incarnated anew in
+each of them. It elevates the individual above the distinctions of time;
+it treasures up the past in him as the active energy of his knowledge
+and morality in the present, and also as the potency of the ideal life
+of the future. On this view, the individual and the race are possible
+only through each other.
+
+This fundamental change in our way of looking at the life of man is
+bound to abolish the ancient landmarks and bring confusion for a time.
+Out of the new conception, _i.e.,_ out of the idea of evolution, has
+sprung the tumult as well as the strength of our time. The present age
+is moved with thoughts beyond the reach of its powers: great aspirations
+for the well-being of the people and high ideals of social welfare flash
+across its mind, to be followed again by thicker darkness. There is
+hardly any limit to its despair or hope. It has a far larger faith in
+the destiny of man than any of its predecessors, and yet it is _sure_ of
+hardly anything--except that the ancient rules of human life are false.
+Individualism is now detected as scepticism and moral chaos in disguise.
+We know that the old methods are no longer of use. We cannot now cut
+ourselves free of the fate of others. The confused cries for help that
+are heard on every hand are recognized as the voices of our brethren;
+and we now know that our fate is involved in theirs, and that the
+problem of their welfare is also ours. We grapple with social questions
+at last, and recognize that the issues of life and death lie in the
+solution of these enigmas. Legislators and economists, teachers of
+religion and socialists, are all alike social reformers. Philanthropy
+has taken a deeper meaning; and all sects bear its banner. But their
+forces are beaten back by the social wretchedness, for they have not
+found the sovereign remedy of a great idea; and the result is in many
+ways sad enough. Our social remedies often work mischief; for we degrade
+those whom we would elevate, and in our charity forget justice. We
+insist on the rights of the people and the duties of the privileged
+classes, and thereby tend to teach greed to those for whom we labour,
+and goodness to those whom we condemn. The task that lies before us is
+plain: we want the welfare of the people as a whole. But we fail to
+grasp the complex social elements together, and our very remedies tend
+to sunder them. We know that the public good will not be obtained by
+separating man from man, securing each unit in a charmed circle of
+personal rights, and protecting it from others by isolation. We must
+find a place for the individual within the social organism, and we know
+now that this organism has not, as our fathers seemed to think, the
+simple constitution of a wooden doll. Society is not put together
+mechanically, and the individual cannot be outwardly attached to it, if
+he is to be helped, He must rather share its life, be the heir of the
+wealth it has garnered for him in the past, and participate in its
+onward movement. Between this new social ideal and our attainment,
+between the magnitude of our social duties and the resources of
+intellect and will at our command, there lies a chasm which we despair
+of bridging over.
+
+The characteristics of this epoch faithfully reflect themselves in the
+pages of Carlyle, with whose thoughts those of Browning are immediately
+connected. It was Carlyle who first effectively revealed to England the
+continuity of human life, and the magnitude of the issues of individual
+action. Seeing the infinite in the finite, living under a continued
+sense of the mystery that surrounds man, he flung explosive negations
+amidst the narrow formulae of the social and religious orthodoxy of his
+day, blew down the blinding walls of ethical individualism, and, amidst
+much smoke and din, showed his English readers something of the
+greatness of the moral world. He gave us a philosophy of clothes,
+penetrated through symbols to the immortal ideas, condemned all
+shibboleths, and revealed the soul of humanity behind the external modes
+of man's activity. He showed us, in a word, that the world is spiritual,
+that loyalty to duty is the foundation of all human good, and that
+national welfare rests on character. After reading him, it is impossible
+for any one who reflects on the nature of duty to ask, "Am I my
+brother's keeper?" He not only imagined, but knew, how "all things the
+minutest that man does, minutely influence all men, and the very look of
+his face blesses or curses whom-so it lights on, and so generates ever
+new blessing or new cursing. I say, there is not a Red Indian, hunting
+by Lake Winnipeg, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole world must
+smart for it: will not the price of beaver rise? It is a mathematical
+fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of
+gravity of the universe." Carlyle dealt the deathblow to the
+"laissez-faire" theory rampant in his day, and made each individual
+responsible for the race. He has demonstrated that the sphere of duty
+does not terminate with ourselves and our next-door neighbours. There
+will be no pure air for the correctest Levite to breathe, till the laws
+of sanitation have been applied to the moral slums. "Ye are my
+brethren," said he, and he adds, as if conscious of his too denunciatory
+way of dealing with them, "hence my rage and sorrow."
+
+But his consciousness of brotherhood with all men brought only despair
+for him. He saw clearly the responsibility of man, but not the dignity
+which that implies; he felt the weight of the burden of humanity upon
+his own soul, and it crushed him, for he forgot that all the good of the
+world was there to help him bear it, and that "One with God is a
+majority." He taught only the half-truth, that all men are united on the
+side of duty, and that the spiritual life of each is conditional on
+striving to save all. But he neglected the complement of this truth, and
+forgot the greatness of the beings on whom so great a duty could be
+laid. He therefore dignifies humanity only to degrade it again. The
+"twenty millions" each must try to save "are mostly fools." But how
+fools, when they can have such a task? Is it not true, on the contrary,
+that no man ever saw a duty beyond his strength, and that "man can
+because he ought" and ought only because he can? The evils an individual
+cannot overcome are the moral opportunities of his fellows. The good are
+not lone workers of God's purposes, and there is no need of despair.
+Carlyle, like the ancient prophet, was too conscious of his own mission,
+and too forgetful of that of others. "I have been very jealous for the
+Lord God of hosts; because the children of Israel have forgotten Thy
+covenant, thrown down Thine alters, and slain Thy prophets, and I, even
+I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away." He needed,
+beside the consciousness of his prophetic function, a consciousness of
+brotherhood with humbler workers. "Yet I have left Me seven thousand in
+Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth
+which hath not kissed him." It would have helped him had he remembered,
+that there were on all sides other workers engaged on the temple not
+made with hands, although he could not hear the sound of their hammers
+for the din he made himself. It would have changed his despair into joy,
+and his pity into a higher moral quality, had he been able to believe
+that, amidst all the millions against whom he hurled his anathemas,
+there is no one who, let him do what he will, is not constrained to
+illustrate either the folly and wretchedness of sin, or the glory of
+goodness. It is not given to any one, least of all to the wicked, to
+hold back the onward movement of the race, or to destroy the impulse for
+good which is planted within it.
+
+But Carlyle saw only one side of the truth about man's moral nature and
+destiny. He knew, as the ancient prophets did, that evil is potential
+wreck; and he taxed the power of metaphor to the utmost to indicate, how
+wrong gradually takes root, and ripens into putrescence and
+self-combustion, in obedience to a necessity which is absolute. That
+morality is the essence of things, that wrong _must_ prove its
+weakness, that right is the only might, is reiterated and illustrated on
+all his pages; they are now commonplaces of speculation on matters of
+history, if not conscious practical principles which guide its makers.
+But Carlyle never inquired into the character of this moral necessity,
+and he overlooked the beneficence which places death at the heart of
+sin. He never saw wrong except on its way to execution, or in the death
+throes; but he did not look in the face of the gentle power that led it
+on to death. He saw the necessity which rules history, but not the
+beneficent character of that necessity.
+
+The same limitations marred his view of duty, which was his greatest
+revelation to his age. He felt its categorical authority and its binding
+force. But the power which imposed the duty was an alien power, awful in
+majesty, infinite in might, a "great task-master"; and the duty itself
+was an outer law, written in letters of flame across the high heavens,
+in comparison with which man's action at its best sank into failure. His
+only virtue is obedience, and his last rendering even of himself is
+"unprofitable servant." In this he has much of the combined strength and
+weakness of the old Scottish Calvinism. "He stands between the
+individual and the Infinite without hope or guide. He has a constant
+disposition to crush the human being by comparing him with God," said
+Mazzini, with marvellous penetration. "From his lips, at times so
+daring, we seem to hear every instant the cry of the Breton Mariner--'My
+God protect me! My bark is so small, and Thy ocean so vast.'" His
+reconciliation of God and man was incomplete: God seemed to him to have
+manifested Himself _to_ man but not _in_ man. He did not see that "the
+Eternity which is before and behind us is also within us."
+
+But the moral law which commands is just the reflection of the
+aspirations of progressive man, who always creates his own horizon. The
+extension of duty is the objective counterpart of man's growth; a proof
+of victory and not of failure, a sign that man is mounting upwards. And,
+if so, it is irrational to infer the impossibility of success from the
+magnitude of the demands of a moral law, which is itself the promise of
+a better future. The hard problems set for us by our social environment
+are recognized as set by ourselves; for, in matters of morality, the eye
+sees only what the heart prompts. The very statement of the difficulty
+contains the potency of its solution; for evil, when understood, is on
+the way towards being overcome, and the good, when seen, contains the
+promise of its own fulfilment. It is ignorance which is ruinous, as when
+the cries of humanity beat against a deaf ear; and we can take a
+comfort, denied to Carlyle, from the fact that he has made us awake to
+our social duties. He has let loose the confusion upon us, and it is
+only natural that we should at first be overcome by a sense of
+bewildered helplessness. But this very sense contains the germ of hope,
+and England is struggling to its feet to wrestle with its wrongs.
+Carlyle has brought us within sight of our future, and we are now taking
+a step into it. He has been our guide in the wilderness; but he died
+there, and was denied the view from Pisgah.
+
+Now, this view was given to Robert Browning, and he broke out into a
+song of victory, whose strains will give strength and comfort to many in
+the coming time. That his solution of the evils of life is not final,
+may at once be admitted. There are elements in the problem of which he
+has taken no account, and which will force those who seek light on the
+deeper mysteries of man's moral nature, to go beyond anything that the
+poet has to say. Even the poet himself grows, at least in some
+directions, less confident of the completeness of his triumph as he
+grows older. His faith in the good does not fail, but it is the faith of
+one who confesses to ignorance, and links himself to his finitude.
+Still, so thorough is his conviction of the moral purpose of life, of
+the certainty of the good towards which man is moving, and of the
+beneficence of the power which is at work everywhere in the world, that
+many of his poems ring like the triumphant songs of Luther.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+BROWNING'S OPTIMISM.
+
+
+  "Gladness be with thee, Helper of the World!
+  I think this is the authentic sign and seal
+  Of Godship, that it ever waxes glad,
+  And more glad, until gladness blossoms, bursts
+  Into a rage to suffer for mankind,
+  And recommence at sorrow."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Balaustion's Adventure_.]
+
+I have tried to show that one of the distinctive features of the present
+era is the stress it lays on the worth of the moral life of man, and the
+new significance it has given to that life by its view of the continuity
+of history. This view finds expression, on its social and ethical side,
+in the pages of Carlyle and Browning: both of whom are interested
+exclusively, one may almost say, in the evolution of human character;
+and both of whom, too, regard that evolution as the realization by man
+of the purposes, greater than man's, which rule in the world. And,
+although neither of them developed the organic view of humanity, which
+is implied in their doctrines, into an explicit philosophy, still the
+moral life of the individual is for each of them the infinite life in
+the finite. The meaning of the universe is moral, its last might is
+rightness; and the task of man is to catch up that meaning, convert it
+into his own motive, and thereby make it the source of his actions, the
+inmost principle of his life. This, fully grasped, will bring the finite
+and the infinite, morality and religion, together, and reconcile them.
+
+But the reconciliation which Carlyle sought to effect was incomplete on
+every side--even within the sphere of duty, with which alone, as
+moralist, he specially concerned himself. The moral law was imposed upon
+man by a higher power, in the presence of whom man was awed and crushed;
+for that power had stinted man's endowment, and set him to fight a
+hopeless battle against endless evil. God was everywhere around man, and
+the universe was just the expression of His will--a will inexorably bent
+on the good, so that evil could not prevail; but God was not _within_
+man, except as a voice of conscience issuing imperatives and threats. An
+infinite duty was laid upon a finite being, and its weight made him
+break out into a cry of despair.
+
+Browning, however, not only sought to bring about the reconciliation,
+but succeeded, in so far as that is possible _in terms of mere feeling_.
+His poetry contains suggestions that the moral will without is also a
+force within man; that the power which makes for righteousness in the
+world has penetrated into, or rather manifests itself _as_, man.
+Intelligence and will, the reason which apprehends the nature of things,
+and the original impulse of self-conscious life which issues in action,
+are God's power in man; so that God is realizing Himself in the deeds of
+man, and human history is just His return to Himself. Outer law and
+inner motive are, for the poet, manifestations of the same beneficent
+purpose; and instead of duty in the sense of an autocratic imperative,
+or beneficent tyranny, he finds, deep beneath man's foolishness and sin,
+a constant tendency towards the good which is bound up with the very
+nature of man's reason and will. If man could only understand himself he
+would find without him no limiting necessity, but the manifestation of a
+law which is one with his own essential being. A beneficent power has
+loaded the dice, according to the epigram, so that the chances of
+failure and victory are not even; for man's nature is itself a divine
+endowment, one with the power that rules his life, and man must finally
+reach through error to truth, and through sin to holiness. In the
+language of theology, it may be said that the moral process is the
+spiritual incarnation of God; it is God's goodness as love, effecting
+itself in human action. Hence Carlyle's cry of despair is turned by
+Browning into a song of victory. While the former regards the struggle
+between good and evil as a fixed battle, in which the forces are
+immovably interlocked, the latter has the consciousness of battling
+against a retreating foe; and the conviction of coming triumph gives
+joyous vigour to every stroke. Browning lifted morality into an
+optimism, and translated its battle into song. This was the distinctive
+mark and mission which give to him such power of moral inspiration.
+
+In order, however, to estimate the value of this feature of the poet's
+work, it is necessary to look more closely into the character of his
+faith in the good. Merely to attribute to him an optimistic creed is to
+say very little; for the worth, or worthlessness, of such a creed
+depends upon its content--upon its fidelity to the facts of human life,
+the clearness of its consciousness of the evils it confronts, and the
+intensity of its realism.
+
+There is a sense, and that a true one, in which it may be said that all
+men are optimists; for such a faith is implied in every conscious and
+deliberate action of man. There is no deed which is not an attempt to
+realize an ideal; whenever man acts he seeks a good, however ruinously
+he may misunderstand its nature. Final and absolute disbelief in an
+ultimate good in the sphere of morals, like absolute scepticism in the
+sphere of knowledge, is a disguised self-contradiction, and therefore an
+impossibility in fact. The one stultifies action, and asserts an effect
+without any cause, or even contrary to the cause; the other stultifies
+intellectual activity: and both views imply that the critic has so
+escaped the conditions of human life, as to be able to pass a
+condemnatory judgment upon them. The belief that a harmonious relation
+between the self-conscious agent and the supreme good is possible,
+underlies the practical activity of man; just as the belief in the unity
+of thought and being underlies his intellectual activity. A moral
+order--that is, an order of rational ends--is postulated in all human
+actions, and we act at all only in virtue of it,--just as truly as we
+move and work only in virtue of the forces which make the spheres
+revolve, or think by help of the meaning which presses upon us from the
+thought-woven world, through all the pores of sense. A true ethics, like
+a true psychology, or a true science of nature, must lean upon
+metaphysics, and it cannot pretend to start _ab initio_. We live in the
+Copernican age, which puts the individual in a system, in obedience to
+whose laws he finds his welfare. And this is simply the assertion of an
+optimistic creed, for it implies a harmonious world.
+
+But, though this is true, it must be remembered that this faith is a
+prophetic anticipation, rather than acquired knowledge. We are only on
+the way towards reconstructing in thought the fact which we are, or
+towards bringing into clear knowledge the elemental power which
+manifests itself within us as thought, desire, and deed. And, until this
+is achieved, we have no full right to an optimistic creed. The
+revelation of the unity which pervades all things, even in the natural
+world, will be the last attainment of science; and the reconciliation of
+nature and man and God is still further in the future, and will be the
+last triumph of philosophy. During all the interval the world will be a
+scene of warring elements; and poetry, religion, and philosophy can only
+hold forth a promise, and give to man a foretaste of ultimate victory.
+And in this state of things even _their_ assurance often falters. Faith
+lapses into doubt, poetry becomes a wail for a lost god, and its votary
+exhibits, "through Europe to the AEtolian shore, the pageant of his
+bleeding heart." The optimistic faith is, as a rule, only a hope and a
+desire, a "Grand Perhaps," which knows no defence against the critical
+understanding, and sinks dumb when questioned. If, in the form of a
+religious conviction, its assurance is more confident, then, too often,
+it rests upon the treacherous foundations of authoritative ignorance,
+which crumble into dust beneath the blows of awakened and liberated
+reason. Nay, if by the aid of philosophy we turn our optimism into a
+faith held by reason, a fact before which the intellect, as well as the
+heart, worships and grows glad, it still is for most of us only a
+general hypothesis, a mere leap to God which spurns the intermediate
+steps, a universal without content, a bare form that lacks reality.
+
+Such an optimism, such a plunge into the pure blue and away from facts,
+was Emerson's. Caroline Fox tells a story of him and Carlyle which
+reveals this very pointedly. It seems that Carlyle once led the serene
+philosopher through the abominations of the streets of London at
+midnight, asking him with grim humour at every few steps, "Do you
+believe in the devil _now_?" Emerson replied that the more he saw of the
+English people the greater and better he thought them. This little
+incident lays bare the limits of both these great men. Where the one
+saw, the other was blind. To the one there was the misery and the
+universal mirk; to the other, the pure white beam was scarcely broken.
+Carlyle believed in the good, beyond all doubt: he fought his great
+battle in its strength and won, but "he was sorely wounded." Emerson was
+Sir Galahad, blind to all but the Holy Grail, his armour spotless-white,
+his virtue cloistered and unbreathed, his race won without the dust and
+heat. But his optimism was too easy to be satisfactory. His victory was
+not won in the enemy's citadel, where sin sits throned amidst the chaos,
+but in the placid upper air of poetic imagination. And, in consequence,
+Emerson can only convince the converted; and his song is not heard in
+the dark, nor does it cheer the wayfarer on the muddy highway, along
+which burthened humanity meanly toils.
+
+But Browning's optimism is more earnest and real than any pious hope, or
+dogmatic belief, or benevolent theory held by a placid philosopher,
+protected against contact with the sins and sorrows of man as by an
+invisible garment of contemplative holiness. It is a conviction which
+has sustained shocks of criticism and the test of facts; and it
+therefore, both for the poet and his readers, fulfils a mission beyond
+the reach of any easy trust in a mystic good. Its power will be felt and
+its value recognized by those who have themselves confronted the
+contradictions of human life and known their depths.
+
+No lover of Browning's poetry can miss the vigorous manliness of the
+poet's own bearing, or fail to recognize the strength that flows from
+his joyous, fearless personality, and the might of his intellect and
+heart. "When British literature," said Carlyle of Scott and Cobbett,
+"lay all puking and sprawling in Wertherism, Byronism and other
+Sentimentalisms, nature was kind enough to send us two healthy men." And
+he breaks out into a eulogy of mere health, of "the just balance of
+faculties that radiates a glad light outwards, enlightening and
+embellishing all things." But he finds it easy to account for the health
+of these men: they had never faced the mystery of existence. Such
+healthiness we find in Browning, although he wrote with Carlyle at his
+side, and within earshot of the infinite wail of this moral fatalist.
+And yet, the word health is inadequate to convey the depth of the joyous
+meaning which the poet found in the world. His optimism was not a
+constitutional and irreflective hopefulness, to be accounted for on the
+ground that "the great mystery of existence was not great to him: did
+not drive him into rocky solitudes to wrestle with it for an answer, to
+be answered or to perish." There are, indeed, certain rash and foolish
+persons who pretend to trace Browning's optimism to his mixed descent;
+but there is a "pause in the leading and the light" of those wiseacres,
+who pretend to trace moral and mental characteristics to physiological
+antecedents. They cannot quite catch a great man in the making, nor,
+even by the help of evolution, say anything wiser about genius than that
+"the wind bloweth where it listeth." No doubt the poet's optimism
+indicates a native sturdiness of head and heart. He had the invaluable
+endowment of a pre-disposition to see the sunny side of life, and a
+native tendency to revolt against that subjectivity, which is the root
+of our misery in all its forms. He had little respect for the
+_Welt-schmerz,_ and can scarcely be civil to the hero of the bleeding
+heart.
+
+  "Sinning, sorrowing, despairing,
+    Body-ruined, spirit-wrecked--
+  Should I give my woes an airing,--
+    Where's one plague that claims respect?
+
+  "Have you found your life distasteful?
+    My life did, and does, smack sweet.
+  Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
+    Mine I saved and hold complete.
+  Do your joys with age diminish?
+    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 God'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 God'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 passed, 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 passed 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 God'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 nobler 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 shine."
+
+In such passages 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 God'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 God. 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 kinship. 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
+God, 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
+God--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 God. 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 noble 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 assume. 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-Schwangau._]
+
+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 God, 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 illustrates 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 God, 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 surpassed
+  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 God, 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
+passages, or in the assertion that,--
+
+      "The acknowledgment of God 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 attitude.
+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 passion, 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 God'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 transmuting," 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.
+
+  "And still, as the day wore, the trouble grew,
+  Whereby I guessed there would be born a star."
+
+He goes forth in the might of his faith in the power of good, as if he
+wished once for all to try the resources of evil at their uttermost, and
+pass upon it a complete and final condemnation. With this view, he seeks
+evil in its own haunts. He creates Guido, the subtlest and most powerful
+compound of vice in our literature--except Iago, perhaps--merely in
+order that we may see evil at its worst; and he places him in an
+environment suited to his nature, as if he was carrying out an
+_experimentum crucis_. The
+
+        "Midmost blotch of black
+  Discernible in the group of clustered crimes
+  Huddling together in the cave they call
+  Their palace."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 869-872.]
+
+Beside him are his brothers, each with his own "tint of hell"; his
+mistress, on whose face even Pompilia saw the glow of the nether pit
+"flash and fade"; and his mother--
+
+  "The gaunt grey nightmare in the furthest smoke,
+  The hag that gave these three abortions birth,
+  Unmotherly mother and unwomanly
+  Woman, that near turns motherhood to shame,
+  Womanliness to loathing"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 911-915.]
+
+Such "denizens o' the cave now cluster round Pompilia and heat the
+furnace sevenfold." While she
+
+              "Sent prayer like incense up
+  To God the strong, God the beneficent,
+  God ever mindful in all strife and strait,
+  Who, for our own good, makes the need extreme,
+  Till at the last He puts forth might and saves."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_Pompilia_, 1384-1388.]
+
+In these lines we feel the poet's purpose, constant throughout the whole
+poem. We know all the while that with him at our side we can travel
+safely through the depths of the Inferno--for the flames bend back from
+him; and it is only what we expect as the result of it all, that there
+should come
+
+  "A bolt from heaven to cleave roof and clear place,
+                   . . . . then flood
+  And purify the scene with outside day--
+  Which yet, in the absolutest drench of dark,
+  Ne'er wants its witness, some stray beauty-beam
+  To the despair of hell."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 996-1003.]
+
+The superabundant strength of Browning's conviction in the supremacy of
+the good, which led him in _The Ring and the Book_ to depict criminals
+at their worst, forced him later on in his life to exhibit evil in
+another form. The real meaning and value of such poems as _Fifine at the
+Fair, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Red Cotton Nightcap Country,
+Ferishtah's Francies_, and others, can only be determined by a careful
+and complete analysis of each of them. But they have one characteristic
+so prominent, and so new in poetry, that the most careless reader cannot
+fail to detect it. Action and dramatic treatment give place to a
+discussion which is metaphysical; instead of the conflict of motives
+within a character, the stress and strain of passion and will in
+collision with circumstances, there is reflection on action after it has
+passed, and the conflict of subtle arguments on the ethical value of
+motives and ways of conduct, which the ordinary moral consciousness
+condemns without hesitation. All agree that these poems represent a new
+departure in poetry, and some consider that in them the poet, in thus
+dealing with metaphysical abstractions, has overleapt the boundaries of
+the poetic art. To such critics, this later period seems the period of
+his decadence, in which the casuistical tendencies, which had already
+appeared in _Bishop Blougram's Apology, Mr. Sludge the Medium_, and
+other poems, have overwhelmed his art, and his intellect, in its pride
+of strength, has grown wanton. _Fifine at the Fair is_ said to be "a
+defence of inconstancy, or of the right of experiment in love." Its
+hero, who is "a modern gentleman, a refined, cultured, musical, artistic
+and philosophic person, of high attainments, lofty aspirations, strong
+emotions, and capricious will," produces arguments "wide in range, of
+profound significance and infinite ingenuity," to defend and justify
+immoral intercourse with a gipsy trull. The poem consists of the
+speculations of a libertine, who coerces into his service truth and
+sophistry, and "a superabounding wealth of thought and imagery," and
+with no further purpose on the poet's part than the dramatic delineation
+of character. _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_ is spoken of in a similar
+manner as the justification, by reference to the deepest principles of
+morality, of compromise, hypocrisy, lying, and a selfishness that
+betrays every cause to the individual's meanest welfare. The object of
+the poet is "by no means to prove black white, or white black, or to
+make the worse appear the better reason, but to bring a seeming monster
+and perplexing anomaly under the common laws of nature, by showing how
+it has grown to be what it is, and how it can with more or less
+self-delusion reconcile itself to itself."
+
+I am not able to accept this as a complete explanation of the intention
+of the poet, except with reference to _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._ The
+_Prince_ is a psychological study, like _Mr. Sludge the Medium,_ and
+_Bishop Blougram_. No doubt he had the interest of a dramatist in the
+hero of _Fifine at the Fair_ and in the hero of _Red Cotton Nightcap
+Country;_ but, in these poems, his dramatic interest is itself
+determined by an ethical purpose, which is equally profound. His meeting
+with the gipsy at Pornic, and the spectacle of her unscrupulous audacity
+in vice, not only "sent his fancy roaming," but opened out before him
+the fundamental problems of life. What I would find, therefore, in
+_Fifine at the Fair_ is not the casuistic defence of an artistic and
+speculative libertine, but an earnest attempt on the part of the poet to
+prove,
+
+  "That, through the outward sign, the inward grace allures,
+  And sparks from heaven transpierce earth's coarsest covertures,--
+  All by demonstrating the value of Fifine."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xxviii.]
+
+Within his scheme of the universal good he seeks to find a place even
+for this gipsy creature, who traffics "in just what we most pique us
+that we keep." Having, in the _Ring and the Book_, challenged evil at
+its worst as it manifests itself practically in concrete characters and
+external action, and having wrung from it the victory of the good, in
+_Fifine_ and in his other later poems he meets it again in the region of
+dialectic. In this sphere of metaphysical ethics, evil has assumed a
+more dangerous form, especially for an artist. His optimistic faith has
+driven the poet into a realm into which poetry never ventured before.
+His battle is now, not with flesh and blood, but with the subtler powers
+of darkness grown vocal and argumentative, and threatening to turn the
+poet's faith in good into a defence of immorality, and to justify the
+worst evil by what is highest of all. Having indicated in outward fact
+"the need," as well as the "transiency of sin and death," he seeks here
+to prove that need, and seems, thereby, to degrade the highest truth of
+religion into a defence of the worst wickedness.
+
+No doubt the result is sufficiently repulsive to the abstract moralist,
+who is apt to find in _Fifine_ nothing but a casuistical and shameless
+justification of evil, which is blasphemy against goodness itself. We
+are made to "discover," for instance, that
+
+                           "There was just
+  Enough and not too much of hate, love, greed and lust,
+  Could one discerningly but hold the balance, shift
+  The weight from scale to scale, do justice to the drift
+  Of nature, and explain the glories by the shames
+  Mixed up in man, one stuff miscalled by different names."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, cviii.]
+
+We are told that--
+
+  "Force, guile were arms which earned
+  My praise, not blame at all."
+
+Confronted with such utterances as these, it is only natural that,
+rather than entangle the poet in them, we should regard them as the
+sophistries of a philosophical Don Juan, powerful enough, under the
+stress of self-defence, to confuse the distinctions of right and wrong.
+But, as we shall try to show in the next chapter, such an apparent
+justification of evil cannot be avoided by a reflective optimist; and it
+is implicitly contained even in those religious utterances of _Rabbi Ben
+Ezra, Christmas Eve_, and _A Death in the Desert_, with which we not
+only identify the poet but ourselves, in so far as we share his faith
+that
+
+  "God's in His heaven,--
+  All's right with the world."
+
+The poet had far too much speculative acumen to be ignorant of this, and
+too much boldness and strength of conviction in the might of the good,
+to refuse to confront the issues that sprang from it. In his later
+poems, as in his earlier ones, he is endeavouring to justify the ways of
+God to man; and the difficulties which surround him are not those of a
+casuist, but the stubborn questionings of a spirit, whose religious
+faith is thoroughly earnest and fearless. To a spirit so loyal to the
+truth, and so bold to follow its leading, the suppression of such
+problems is impossible; and, consequently, it was inevitable that he
+should use the whole strength of his dialectic to try those fundamental
+principles, on which the moral life of man is based. And it is this, I
+believe, which we find in _Fifine_, as in _Ferishtah's Fancies_ and the
+_Parleyings_; not an exhibition of the argumentative subtlety of a mind
+whose strength has become lawless, and which spends itself in
+intellectual gymnastics, that have no place within the realm of either
+the beautiful or the true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+OPTIMISM AND ETHICS: THEIR CONTRADICTION.
+
+
+  "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
+  Which we ascribe to heaven. The fated sky
+  Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
+  Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "But most it is presumption in us, when
+  The help of heaven we count the act of men."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _All's Well that Ends Well_.]
+
+I have tried to show that one of the ruling conceptions of Browning's
+view of life is that the Good is absolute, and that it reveals itself in
+all the events of human life. By means of this conception, he
+endeavoured to bring together the elements which had fallen asunder in
+the sensational and moral pessimism of Byron and Carlyle. In other
+words, through the re-interpreting power which lies in this fundamental
+thought when it is soberly held and fearlessly applied, he sought to
+reconcile man with the world and with God, and thereby with himself. And
+the governing motive, whether the conscious motive or not, of Browning's
+poetry, the secret impulse which led him to dramatise the conflicts and
+antagonisms of human life, was the necessity of finding in them evidence
+of the presence of this absolute Good.
+
+Browning's optimism was deep and comprehensive enough to reject all
+compromise. His faith in the good seemed to rise with the demands that
+were made upon it by the misery and wickedness of man, and the
+apparently purposeless waste of life and its resources. There was in it
+a deliberate earnestness which led him to grapple, not only with the
+concrete difficulties of individual life, but with those also that
+spring from reflection and theory.
+
+The test of a philosophic optimism, as of any optimism which is more
+than a pious sentiment, must finally lie in its power to reveal the
+presence of the good in actual individual evils. But there are
+difficulties still nearer than those presented by concrete facts,
+difficulties arising out of the very suggestion that evil is a form of
+good. Such speculative difficulties must be met by a reflective mind,
+before it can follow out the application of an optimistic theory to
+particular facts. Now, Browning's creed, at least as he held it in his
+later years, was not merely the allowable exaggeration of an ecstatic
+religious sentiment, the impassioned conviction of a God-intoxicated
+man. It was deliberately presented as a solution of moral problems, and
+was intended to serve as a theory of the spiritual nature of things. It
+is, therefore, justly open to the same kind of criticism as that to
+which a philosophic doctrine is exposed. The poet deprived himself of
+the refuge, legitimate enough to the intuitive method of art, when, in
+his later works, he not only offered a dramatic solution of the problem
+of life, but definitely attempted to meet the difficulties of
+speculative ethics.
+
+In this chapter I shall point out some of these difficulties, and then
+proceed to show how the poet proposed to solve them.
+
+A thorough-going optimism, in that it subdues all things to the idea of
+the supreme Good, and denies to evil the right even to dispute the
+absoluteness of its sway, naturally seems to imply a pantheistic theory
+of the world. And Browning's insistence on the presence of the highest
+in all things may easily be regarded as a mere revival of the oldest and
+crudest attempts at finding their unity in God. For if _all_, as he
+says, is for the best, there seems to be no room left for the
+differences apparent in the world, and the variety which gives it beauty
+and worth. Particular existences would seem to be illusory and
+evanescent phenomena, the creations of human imagination, itself a
+delusive appearance. The infinite, on this view, stands over against the
+finite, and it overpowers and consumes it; and the optimism, implied in
+the phrase that "God is all," turns at once into a pessimism. For, as
+soon as we inquire into the meaning of this "all," we find that it is
+only a negation of everything we can know or be. Such a pantheism as
+this is self-contradictory; for, while seeming to level all things
+upwards to a manifestation of the divine, it really levels all downwards
+to the level of mere unqualified being, a stagnant and empty unknowable.
+It leaves only a choice between akosmism and atheism, and, at the same
+time, it makes each of the alternatives impossible. For, in explaining
+the world it abolishes it, and in abolishing the world it empties itself
+of all signification; so that the Godhood which it attempts to establish
+throughout the whole realm of being, is found to mean nothing. "It is
+the night, in which all cows are black."
+
+The optimistic creed, which the poet strove to teach, must, therefore,
+not only establish the immanence of God, but show in some way how such
+immanence is consistent with the existence of particular things. His
+doctrine that there is no failure, or folly, or wickedness, or misery,
+but conceals within it, at its heart, a divine element; that there is no
+incident in human history which is not a pulsation of the life of the
+highest, and which has not its place in a scheme of universal good, must
+leave room for the moral life of man, and all the risks which morality
+brings with it. Otherwise, optimism is impossible. For a God who, in
+filling the universe with His presence, encroaches on the freedom and
+extinguishes the independence of man, precludes the possibility of all
+that is best for man--namely, moral achievement. Life, deprived of its
+moral purpose, is worthless to the poet, and so, in consequence, is all
+that exists in order to maintain that life. Optimism and ethics seem
+thus to come into immediate collision. The former, finding the presence
+of God in all things, seems to leave no room for man; and the latter
+seems to set man to work out his own destiny in solitude, and to give
+him supreme and absolute authority over his own life; so that any
+character which he forms, be it good or bad, is entirely the product of
+his own activity. So far as his life is culpable or praiseworthy, in
+other words, so far as we pass any moral judgment upon it, we
+necessarily think of it as the revelation of a self, that is, of an
+independent will, which cannot divide its responsibility. There may be,
+and indeed there always is for every individual, a hereditary
+predisposition and a soliciting environment, tendencies which are his
+inheritance from a remote past, and which rise to the surface in his own
+life; in other words, the life of the individual is always led within
+the larger sweep of the life of humanity. He is part of a whole, and has
+his place fixed, and his function predetermined, by a power which is
+greater than his own. But, if we are to call him good or evil, if he is
+to aspire and repent and strive, in a word, if he is to have any _moral_
+character, he cannot be merely a part of a system; there must be
+something within him which is superior to circumstances, and which
+makes him master of his own fate. His natural history may begin with the
+grey dawn of primal being, but his moral history begins with himself,
+from the time when he first reacted upon the world in which he is
+placed, and transformed his natural relations into will and character.
+For who can be responsible for what he did not will? What could a moral
+imperative mean, what could an "ought" signify, to a being who was only
+a temporary embodiment of forces, who are prior to, and independent of
+himself? It would seem, therefore, as if morality were irreconcilable
+with optimism. The moral life of man cannot be the manifestation of a
+divine benevolence whose purpose is necessary; it is a trust laid upon
+himself, which he may either violate or keep. It surpasses divine
+goodness, "tho' matched with equal power" to _make_ man good, as it has
+made the flowers beautiful. From this point of view, spiritual
+attainment, whether intellectual or moral, is man's own, a spontaneous
+product. Just as God is conceived as all in all in the universe, so man
+is all in all within the sphere of duty; for the kingdom of heaven is
+within. In both cases alike, there is absolute exclusion of external
+interference.
+
+For this reason, it has often seemed both to philosophers and
+theologians, as if the world were too confined to hold within it both
+God and man. In the East, the consciousness of the infinite seemed at
+times to leave no room for the finite; and in the West, where the
+consciousness of the finite and interest therein is strongest, and man
+strives and aspires, a Deism arose which set God at a distance, and
+allowed Him to interfere in the fate of man only by a benevolent
+miracle. Nor is this collision of pantheism and freedom, nay of religion
+and morality, confined to the theoretical region. This difficulty is not
+merely the punishment of an over-bold and over-ambitious philosophy,
+which pries too curiously into the mystery of being. It lies at the very
+threshold of all reflection on the facts of the moral life. Even
+children feel the mystery of God's permitting sin, and embarrass their
+helpless parents with the contradiction between absolute benevolence and
+the miseries and cruelties of life. "A vain interminable controversy,"
+says Teufels-droeckh, "which arises in every soul since the beginning of
+the world: and in every soul, that would pass from idle suffering into
+actual endeavouring, must be put an end to. The most, in our own time,
+have to go content with a simple, incomplete enough Suppression of this
+controversy: to a few Solution of it is indispensable."
+
+Solution, and not Suppression, is what Browning sought; he did, in fact,
+propound a solution, which, whether finally satisfactory or not, at
+least carries us beyond the easy compromises of ordinary religious and
+ethical teaching. He does not deny the universality of God's beneficence
+or power, and divide the realm of being between Him and the adversary:
+nor, on the other hand, does he limit man's freedom, and stultify ethics
+by extracting the sting of reality from sin. To limit God, he knew, was
+to deny Him; and, whatever the difficulties he felt in regarding the
+absolute Spirit as realising itself in man, he could not be content to
+reduce man into a temporary phantom, an evanescent embodiment of
+"spiritual" or natural forces, that take a fleeting form in him as they
+pursue their onward way.
+
+Browning held with equal tenacity to the idea of a universal benevolent
+order, and to the idea of the moral freedom of man within it. He was
+driven in opposite directions by two beliefs, both of which he knew to
+be essential to the life of man as spirit, and both of which he
+illustrates throughout his poems with an endless variety of poetic
+expression. He endeavoured to find God in man and still to leave man
+free. His optimistic faith sought reconciliation with morality. The
+vigour of his ethical doctrine is as pre-eminent, as the fulness of his
+conviction of the absolute sway of the Good. Side by side with his
+doctrine that there is no failure, no wretchedness of corruption that
+does not conceal within it a germ of goodness, is his sense of the evil
+of sin, of the infinite earnestness of man's moral warfare, and of the
+surpassing magnitude of the issues at stake for each individual soul. So
+powerful is his interest in man as a moral agent, that he sees nought
+else in the world of any deep concern. "My stress lay," he said in his
+preface to _Sordello_ (1863), "on the incidents in the development of a
+soul: little else is worth study. I, at least, always thought so--you,
+with many known and unknown to me, think so--others may one day think
+so." And this development of a soul is not at any time regarded by the
+poet as a peaceful process, like the growth of a plant or animal.
+Although he thinks of the life of man as the gradual realization of a
+divine purpose within him, he does not suppose it to take place in
+obedience to a tranquil necessity. Man advances morally by fighting his
+way inch by inch, and he gains nothing except through conflict. He does
+not become good as the plant grows into maturity. "The kingdom of heaven
+suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."
+
+  "No, when the fight begins within himself,
+  A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head,
+  Satan looks up between his feet,--both tug--
+  He's left, himself, i' the middle: the soul awakes
+  And grows. Prolong that battle through this life!
+  Never leave growing till the life to come."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Bishop Blougram_.]
+
+Man is no idle spectator of the conflict of the forces of right and
+wrong; Browning never loses the individual in the throng, or sinks him
+into his age or race. And although the poet ever bears within him the
+certainty of victory for the good, he calls his fellows to the fight as
+if the fate of all hung on the valour of each. The struggle is always
+personal, individual like the duels of the Homeric heroes.
+
+It is under the guise of warfare that morality always presents itself to
+Browning. It is not a mere equilibrium of qualities--the measured,
+self-contained, statuesque ethics of the Greeks, nor the asceticism and
+self-restraint of Puritanism, nor the peaceful evolution of Goethe's
+artistic morality: it is valour in the battle of life. His code contains
+no negative commandments, and no limitations; but he bids each man let
+out all the power that is within him, and throw himself upon life with
+the whole energy of his being. It is better even to seek evil with one's
+whole mind, than to be lukewarm in goodness. Whether you seek good or
+evil, and play for the counter or the coin, stake it boldly!
+
+  "Let a man contend to the uttermost
+  For his life's set prize, be it what it will!
+
+  "The counter our lovers staked was lost
+  As surely as if it were lawful coin:
+  And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost
+
+  "Is, the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin
+  Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.
+  You, of the virtue (we issue join)
+  How strive you?--'_De te fabula!_'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Statue and the Bust_.]
+
+Indifference and spiritual lassitude are, to the poet, the worst of
+sins. "Go!" says the Pope to Pompilia's pseudo-parents,
+
+  "Never again elude the choice of tints!
+  White shall not neutralize the black, nor good
+  Compensate bad in man, absolve him so:
+  Life's business being just the terrible choice."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1235-1238.]
+
+In all the greater characters of _The Ring and the Book_, this intensity
+of vigour in good and evil flashes out upon us. Even Pompilia, the most
+gentle of all his creations, at the first prompting of the instinct of
+motherhood, rises to the law demanding resistance, and casts off the old
+passivity.
+
+  "Dutiful to the foolish parents first,
+  Submissive next to the bad husband,--nay,
+  Tolerant of those meaner miserable
+  That did his hests, eked out the dole of pain ";[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_., 1052-1055.]
+
+she is found
+
+  "Sublime in new impatience with the foe."
+
+  "I did for once see right, do right, give tongue
+  The adequate protest: for a worm must turn
+  If it would have its wrong observed by God.
+  I did spring up, attempt to thrust aside
+  That ice-block 'twixt the sun and me, lay low
+  The neutralizer of all good and truth."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Pompilia_, 1591-1596.]
+
+  "Yet, shame thus rank and patent, I struck, bare,
+  At foe from head to foot in magic mail,
+  And off it withered, cobweb armoury
+  Against the lightning! 'Twas truth singed the lies
+  And saved me."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_., 1637-1641.]
+
+Beneath the mature wisdom of the Pope, amidst the ashes of old age,
+there sleeps the same fire. He is as truly a warrior priest as
+Caponsacchi himself, and his matured experience only muffles his vigour.
+Wearied with his life-long labour, we see him gather himself together
+"in God's name," to do His will on earth once more with concentrated
+might.
+
+                                    "I smite
+  With my whole strength once more, ere end my part,
+  Ending, so far as man may, this offence."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1958-1960.]
+
+Nor, spite of doubts, the promptings of mercy, the friends plucking his
+sleeve to stay his arm, does he fear "to handle a lie roughly"; or
+shrink from sending the criminal to his account, though it be but one
+day before he himself is called before the judgment seat. The same
+energy, the same spirit of bold conflict, animates Guido's adoption of
+evil for his good. At all but the last moment of his life of monstrous
+crime, just before he hears the echo of the feet of the priests, who
+descend the stair to lead him to his death, "he repeats his evil deed in
+will."
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 prompts
+  While pulling back, refuses yet concedes,--
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Surely, one should bid pack that mountebank!"
+
+In him, even
+
+               "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 give _himself_ to anything, wreak _himself_ on
+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 lie
+  Redounded to the praise of man, was victory
+  Man's nature had both right to get and might to gain."[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 disappointment of utter failure;
+the sinner is thrown back upon himself empty-handed. He finds himself
+subjected, even when sinning,
+
+                                         "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]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, cxxviii.]
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 of _Red 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]
+
+[Footnote C: _Red Cotton Nightcap Country_.]
+
+The continuance of disguise and subterfuge, and the retention of "the
+first falsehood," are ultimately made impossible to Leonce Miranda:
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]
+
+In the same spirit he finds Miranda's suicidal leap the best deed
+possible for _him_.
+
+                       "'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]
+
+[Footnote 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 set
+  Himself to Satan; who would spend
+  A minute's mistrust on the end?"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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]
+
+[Footnote 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."
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote A: Epilogue to _Asolande_.]
+
+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 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]
+
+[Footnote B: _Apparent Failure_.]
+
+It is the poet himself and not merely the sophistic aesthete of _Fifine_
+that speaks:--
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 supplies
+  The incentive to humanity, no strength
+  Absolute, irresistible comforts.
+  How can man love but what he yearns to help?"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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. It is 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]
+
+[Footnote 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 realization
+of 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_ "on the
+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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 steps
+  Offered the feet which rashly spurned their help.
+  That I call Hell; why further punishment?"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 towards the 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 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 from _his_ clutch.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 more
+  I' the coming course, the new path I must tread,
+  My weak hand in thy strong hand, strong for that!"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 existence of 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 Ezra_ bids 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 turn
+  If it would have its wrong observed by God."[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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 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 achievement within
+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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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 this_ how _far away_
+  Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream!"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 short at 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" _must_ stand
+above _all_ human 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 idea _of_ something 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 a _true_
+idea; 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 an _idea_
+of 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 is something 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 as unwilling 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 better for 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 the world 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 word _but 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, to return 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 of perfect 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 "_the_ good," 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 that unity 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
+within him. 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 religion
+impossible. 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.
+
+  "I never realized God's birth before--
+  How He grew likest God in being born."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Pompilia_, 1690-1691.]
+
+The intense love of the young mother drew the divine and the human
+together, and set at nought the contrast which prose ever draws between
+them. This thought of the unity of God and man is one which has frequent
+utterance from the poet when his religious spirit is most deeply moved;
+for it is the characteristic of religious feeling that it abolishes all
+sense of separation. It removes all the limitations of finitude and
+lifts man into rapturous unity with the God he adores; and it gives such
+completeness to his life that it seems to him to be a joyous pulse of
+the life that is absolute. The feeling of unity may be an illusion. This
+we cannot discuss here; but, in any case, it is a feeling essential to
+religion. And the philosophy which seeks to lift this feeling into clear
+consciousness and to account for its existence, cannot but recognize
+that it implies and presupposes the essential affinity of the divine
+nature with the nature of man.
+
+Thus, both from the side of morality and from that of religion, we are
+brought to recognize the unity of God with man as a spiritual being. The
+moral ideal is man's idea of perfection, that is, his idea of God. While
+theology and philosophy are often occupied with the vain task of
+bridging a chasm between the finite and the infinite, which they assume
+to be separated, the supreme facts of the life of man as a spirit spring
+from their unity. In other words, morality and religion are but
+different manifestations of the same principle. The good that man
+effects is, at the same time, the working of God within him. The
+activity that man is,
+
+                                "tending up,
+  Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man
+  Upward in that dread point of intercourse
+  Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+                              "God, perchance,
+  Grants each new man, by some as new a mode,
+  Inter-communication with Himself
+  Wreaking on finiteness infinitude."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
+
+And while man's moral endeavour is thus recognized as the activity of
+God within him, it is also implied that the divine being can be known
+only as revealed, and incarnated, if one may so say, in a perfect human
+character. It was a permanent conviction of Browning, that
+
+      "the acknowledgment of God in Christ
+  Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
+  All questions in the earth and out of it."
+
+So far from regarding the Power in the world which makes for
+righteousness, as "not-ourselves," as Matthew Arnold did in his haste,
+that Power is known to be the man's true self and more, and morality is
+the gradual process whereby its content is evolved. And man's state of
+perfection, which is symbolized for the intelligent by the term Heaven,
+is, for Browning,
+
+  "The equalizing, ever and anon,
+  In momentary rapture, great with small,
+  Omniscience with intelligency, God
+  With man--the thunder glow from pole to pole
+  Abolishing, a blissful moment-space,
+  Great cloud alike and small cloud, in one fire--
+  As sure to ebb as sure again to flow
+  When the new receptivity deserves
+  The new completion."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_.]
+
+Thus, therefore, does the poet wed the divine strength with human
+weakness; and the principle of unity, thus conceived, gives him at once
+his moral strenuousness and that ever present foretaste of victory,
+which we may call his religious optimism.
+
+Whether this principle receives adequate expression from the poet, we
+shall inquire in the next chapter. For on this depends its worth as a
+solution of the enigma of man's moral life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+BROWNING'S TREATMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE OF LOVE.
+
+
+  "God! Thou art Love! I build my faith on that!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_]
+
+It may be well before going further to gather together the results so
+far reached.
+
+Browning was aware of the conflict of the religious and moral
+consciousness, but he did not hesitate to give to each of them its most
+uncompromising utterance. And it is on this account that he is
+instructive; for, whatever may be the value of compromise in practical
+affairs, there is no doubt that it has never done anything to advance
+human thought. His religion is an optimistic faith, a peaceful
+consciousness of the presence of the highest in man, and therefore in
+all other things. Yet he does not hesitate to represent the moral life
+as a struggle with evil, and a movement through error towards a highest
+good which is never finally realized. He sees that the contradiction is
+not an absolute one, but that a good man is always both moral and
+religious, and, in every good act he does, transcends their difference.
+He knew that the ideal apart from the process is nothing, and that "a
+God beyond the stars" is simply the unknowable. But he knew, too, that
+the ideal is not _merely_ the process, but also that which starts the
+process, guides it, and comes to itself through it. God, emptied of
+human elements, is a mere name; but, at the same time, the process of
+human evolution does not exhaust the idea of God. The process by itself,
+_i.e._, mere morality, is a conception of a fragment, a fiction of
+abstract thought; it is a movement which has no beginning or end; and in
+it neither the head nor the heart of man could find contentment. He is
+driven by ethics into philosophy, and by morality into religion.
+
+It was in this way that Browning found himself compelled to trace back
+the moral process to its origin, and to identify the moral law with the
+nature of God. It is this that gives value to his view of moral
+progress, as reaching beyond death to a higher stage of being, for which
+man's attainments in this life are only preliminary.
+
+  "What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes,
+  Man has Forever."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Grammarian's Funeral_.]
+
+There are other "adventures brave and new" for man, "more lives yet,"
+other ways of warfare, other depths of goodness and heights of love. The
+poet lifts the moral ideal into infinitude, and removes all limits to
+the possibility and necessity of being good. Nay, the process itself is
+good. Moral activity is its own bountiful reward; for moral progress,
+which means struggle, is the best thing in the world or out of it. To
+end such a process, to stop that activity, were therefore evil. But it
+cannot end, for it is the self-manifestation of the divine life. There
+is plenty of way to make, for the ideal is absolute goodness. The
+process cannot exhaust the absolute, and it is impossible that man
+should be God. And yet this process is the process of the absolute, the
+working of the ideal, the presence of the highest in man as a living
+power realizing itself in his acts and in his thoughts. And the absolute
+cannot fail; not in man, for the process is the evolution of his
+essential nature; and not in the world, for that is but the necessary
+instrument of the evolution. By lifting the moral ideal of man to
+infinitude, the poet has identified it with the nature of God, and made
+it the absolute law of things.
+
+Now, this idea of the identity of the human and the divine is a
+perfectly familiar Christian idea.
+
+  "Thence shall I, approved
+  A man, for aye removed
+  From the developed brute; a God though in the germ."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Rabbi Ben Ezra._]
+
+This idea is involved in the ordinary expressions of religious thought.
+But, nevertheless, both theology and philosophy shrink from giving to it
+a clear and unembarrassed utterance. Instead of rising to the sublime
+boldness of the Nazarene Teacher, they set up prudential differences
+between God and man--differences not of degree only but of nature; and,
+in consequence, God is reduced into an unknowable absolute, and man is
+made incapable not only of moral, but also of intellectual life. The
+poet himself has proved craven-hearted in this, as we shall see. He,
+too, sets up insurmountable barriers between the divine and the human,
+and thereby weakens both his religious and his moral convictions. His
+moral inspiration is greatest just where his religious enthusiasm is
+most intense. In _Rabbi Ben Ezra, The Death in the Desert_, and _The
+Ring and the Book_, there prevails a constant sense of the community of
+God and man within the realm of goodness; and the world itself, "with
+its dread machinery of sin and sorrow," is made to join the great
+conspiracy, whose purpose is at once the evolution of man's character,
+and the realization of the will of God.
+
+  "So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too--
+  So, through the thunder comes a human voice
+  Saying, 'O heart I made, a heart beats here!
+  Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
+  Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine,
+  But love I gave thee, with myself to love,
+  And thou must love Me who have died for thee.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _An Epistle from Karshish_.]
+
+But, if we follow Browning's thoughts in his later and more reflective
+poems, such as _Ferishtah's_ _Fancies_ for instance, it will not be
+possible to hold that the poet altogether realized the importance for
+both morality and religion alike, of the idea of the actual immanence of
+God in man. In these poems he seems to have abandoned it in favour of
+the hypotheses of a more timid philosophy. But, if his religious faith
+had not been embarrassed by certain dogmatic presuppositions of which he
+could not free himself, he might have met more successfully some of the
+difficulties which later reflection revealed to him, and might have been
+able to set a true value on that "philosophy," which betrayed his faith
+while appearing to support it.
+
+But, before trying to criticize the principle by means of which Browning
+sought to reconcile the moral and religious elements of human life, it
+may be well to give it a more explicit and careful statement.
+
+What, then, is that principle of unity between the divine and the human?
+How can we interpret the life of man as God's life in man, so that man,
+in attaining the moral ideal proper to his own nature, is at the same
+time fulfilling ends which may justly be called divine?
+
+The poet, in early life and in late life alike, has one answer to this
+question--an answer given with the confidence of complete conviction.
+The meeting-point of God and man is love. Love, in other words, is, for
+the poet, the supreme principle both of morality and religion. Love,
+once for all, solves that contradiction between them which, both in
+theory and in practice, has embarrassed the world for so many ages. Love
+is the sublimest conception attainable by man; a life inspired by it is
+the most perfect form of goodness he can conceive; therefore, love is,
+at the same moment, man's moral ideal, and the very essence of Godhood.
+A life actuated by love is divine, whatever other limitations it may
+have. Such is the perfection and glory of this emotion, when it has been
+translated into a self-conscious motive, and become the energy of an
+intelligent will, that it lifts him who owns it to the sublimest height
+of being.
+
+  "For the loving worm within its clod,
+  Were diviner than a loveless God
+  Amid his worlds, I will dare to say."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas Eve_.]
+
+So excellent is this emotion that, if man, who has this power to love,
+did not find the same power in God, then man would excel Him, and the
+creature and Creator change parts.
+
+  "Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate gift,
+  That I doubt His own love can compete with it? Here, the parts shift?
+  Here, the creature surpass the Creator,--the end what Began?"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Saul_.]
+
+Not so, says David, and with him no doubt the poet himself. God is
+Himself the source and fulness of love.
+
+        "Tis Thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive:
+  In the first is the last, in Thy will is my power to believe.
+  All's one gift."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Would I suffer for him that I love? So would'st Thou,--so wilt Thou!
+  So shall crown Thee, the topmost, ineffablest, uttermost crown--
+  And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down
+  One spot for the creature to stand in!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Saul_.]
+
+And this same love not only constitutes the nature of God and the moral
+ideal of man, but it is also the purpose and essence of all created
+being, both animate and inanimate.
+
+                          "This world's no blot for us,
+  Nor blank; it means intensely and means good."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Fra Lippo Lippi_.]
+
+  "O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:
+  And knowing this is love, and love is duty,
+  What further may be sought for or declared?"
+
+In this world then "all's love, yet all's law." God permits nothing to
+break through its universal sway, even the very wickedness and misery of
+life are brought into the scheme of good, and, when rightly understood,
+reveal themselves as its means.
+
+  "I can believe this dread machinery
+  Of sin and sorrow, would confound me else,
+  Devised--all pain, at most expenditure
+  Of pain by Who devised pain--to evolve,
+  By new machinery in counterpart,
+  The moral qualities of man--how else?--
+  To make him love in turn and be beloved,
+  Creative and self-sacrificing too,
+  And thus eventually Godlike."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1375-1383.]
+
+The poet thus brings the natural world, the history of man, and the
+nature of God, within the limits of the same conception. The idea of
+love solves for Browning all the enigmas of human life and thought.
+
+          "The thing that seems
+  Mere misery, under human schemes,
+  Becomes, regarded by the light
+  Of love, as very near, or quite
+  As good a gift as joy before."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Easter Day_.]
+
+Taking Browning's work as a whole, it is scarcely possible to deny that
+this is at once the supreme motive of his art, and the principle on
+which his moral and religious doctrine rests. He is always strong and
+convincing when he is dealing with this theme. It was evidently his own
+deepest conviction, and it gave him the courage to face the evils of the
+world, and the power as an artist to "contrive his music from its
+moans." It plays, in his philosophy of life, the part that Reason fills
+for Hegel, or the Blind Will for Schopenhauer; and he is as fearless as
+they are in reducing all phenomena into forms of the activity of his
+first principle. Love not only gave him firm footing amid the wash and
+welter of the present world, where time spins fast, life fleets, and all
+is change, but it made him look forward with joy to "the immortal
+course"; for, to him, all the universe is love-woven. All life is but
+treading the "love-way," and no wanderer can finally lose it. "The
+way-faring men, though fools, shall not err therein."
+
+Since love has such an important place in Browning's theory of life, it
+is necessary to see what he means by it. For love has had for different
+individuals, ages and nations, a very different significance; and almost
+every great poet has given it a different interpretation. And this is
+not unnatural. For love is a passion which, beginning with youth and the
+hey-day of the blood, expands with the expanding life, and takes new
+forms of beauty and goodness at every stage. And this is equally true,
+whether we speak of the individual or of the human race.
+
+Love is no accident in man's history, nor a passing emotion. It is
+rather a constitutive element of man's nature, fundamental and necessary
+as his intelligence. And, like everything native and constitutive, it is
+obedient to the law of evolution, which is the law of man's being; and
+it passes, therefore, through ever varying forms. To it--if we may for
+the moment make a distinction between the theoretical and practical
+life, or between ideas and their causative potency--must be attributed
+the constructive power which has built the world of morality, with its
+intangible but most real relations which bind man to man and age to age.
+It is the author of the organic institutions which, standing between the
+individual and the rudeness of nature, awaken in him the need, and give
+him the desire and the faculty, of attaining higher things than physical
+satisfaction. Man is meant to act as well as to think, to be virtuous as
+well as to have knowledge. It is possible that reverence for the
+intellect may have led men, at times, to attribute the evolution of the
+race too exclusively to the theoretic consciousness, forgetting that,
+along with reason, there co-operates a twin power in all that is wisest
+and best in us, and that a heart which can love, is as essential a
+pre-condition of all worthy attainment, as an intellect which can see.
+Love and reason[A] are equally primal powers in man, and they reflect
+might into each other: for love increases knowledge, and knowledge love.
+It is their combined power that gives interest and meaning to the facts
+of life, and transmutes them into a moral and intellectual order. They,
+together, are lifting man out of the isolation and chaos of subjectivity
+into membership in a spiritual kingdom, where collision and exclusion
+are impossible, and all are at once kings and subjects.
+
+[Footnote A: It would be more correct to say the reason that is loving
+or the love that is rational; for, though there is distinction, there is
+no dualism.]
+
+And, just as reason is present as a transmuting power in the sensational
+life of the infancy of the individual and race, so is love present
+amidst the confused and chaotic activity of the life that knows no law
+other than its own changing emotions. Both make for order, and both grow
+with it. Both love and reason have travelled a long way in the history
+of man. The patriot's passion for his country, the enthusiasm of pity
+and helpfulness towards all suffering which marks the man of God, are as
+far removed from the physical attraction of sex for sex, and the mere
+liking of the eye and ear, as is the intellectual power of the sage from
+the vulpine cunning of the savage. "For," as Emerson well said, "it is a
+fire that, kindling its first embers in the narrow nook of a private
+bosom, caught from a wandering spark out of another heart, glows and
+enlarges until it warms and beams upon multitudes of men and women, upon
+the universal heart of all, and so lights up the world and all nature
+with its generous flames." Both love and reason alike pass through stage
+after stage, always away from the particularity of selfishness and
+ignorance, into larger and larger cycles of common truth and goodness,
+towards the full realization of knowledge and benevolence, which is the
+inheritance of emancipated man. In this transition, the sensuous play of
+feeling within man, and the sensitive responses to external stimuli, are
+made more and more organic to ends which are universal, that is, to
+spiritual ends. Love, which in its earliest form, seems to be the
+natural yearning of brute for brute, appearing and disappearing at the
+suggestion of physical needs, passes into an idealized sentiment, into
+an emotion of the soul, into a principle of moral activity which
+manifests itself in a permanent outflow of helpful deeds for man. It
+represents, when thus sublimated, one side at least of the expansion of
+the self, which culminates when the world beats in the pulse of the
+individual, and the joys and sorrows, the defeats and victories of
+mankind are felt by him as his own. It is no longer dependent merely on
+the incitement of youth, grace, beauty, whether of body or character; it
+transcends all limitations of sex and age, and finds objects on which it
+can spend itself in all that God has made, even in that which has
+violated its own law of life and become mean and pitiful. It becomes a
+love of fallen humanity, and an ardour to save it by becoming the
+conscious and permanent motive of all men. The history of this evolution
+of love has been written by the poets. Every phase through which this
+ever-deepening emotion has passed, every form which this primary power
+has taken in its growth, has received from them its own proper
+expression. They have made even the grosser instincts lyric with beauty;
+and, ascending with their theme, they have sung the pure passion of soul
+for soul, its charm and its strength, its idealism and heroism, up to
+the point at which, in Browning, it transcends the limits of finite
+existence, sheds all its earthly vesture, and becomes a spiritual
+principle of religious aspiration and self-surrender to God.
+
+Browning nowhere shows his native strength more clearly than in his
+treatment of love. He has touched this world-old theme--which almost
+every poet has handled, and handled in his highest manner--with that
+freshness and insight, which is possible only to the inborn originality
+of genius. Other poets have, in some ways, given to love a more
+exquisite utterance, and rendered its sweetness, and tenderness, and
+charm with a lighter grace. It may even be admitted that there are poets
+whose verses have echoed more faithfully the fervour and intoxication of
+passion, and who have shown greater power of interpreting it in the
+light of a mystic idealism. But, in one thing, Browning stands alone. He
+has given to love a moral significance, a place and power amongst those
+substantial elements on which rest the dignity of man's being and the
+greatness of his destiny, in a way which is, I believe, without example
+in any other poet. And he has done this by means of that moral and
+religious earnestness, which pervades all his poetry. The one object of
+supreme interest to him is the development of the soul, and his
+penetrative insight revealed to him the power to love as the paramount
+fact in that development. To love, he repeatedly tells us, is the sole
+and supreme object of man's life; it is the one lesson which he has to
+learn on earth; and, love once learnt, in what way matters little, "it
+leaves completion in the soul." Love we dare not, and, indeed, cannot
+absolutely miss. No man can be absolutely selfish and be man.
+
+  "Beneath the veriest ash, there hides a spark of soul
+  Which, quickened by love's breath, may yet pervade the whole
+  O' the grey, and, free again, be fire; of worth the same,
+  Howe'er produced, for, great or little, flame is flame."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, xliii.]
+
+Love, once evoked, once admitted into the soul,
+
+                          "adds worth to worth,
+  As wine enriches blood, and straightway sends it forth,
+  Conquering and to conquer, through all eternity,
+  That's battle without end."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_. liv.]
+
+This view of the significance of love grew on Browning as his knowledge
+of man's nature and destiny became fuller and deeper, while, at the same
+time, his trust in the intellect became less. Even in _Paracelsus_ he
+reveals love, not as a sentiment or intoxicating passion, as one might
+expect from a youthful poet, but as one of the great fundamental
+"faculties" of man. Love, "blind, oft-failing, half-enlightened,
+often-chequered trust," though it be, still makes man
+
+  "The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false."
+
+In that poem, love is definitely lifted by the poet to the level of
+knowledge. Intellectual gain, apart from love, is folly and futility,
+worthless for the individual and worthless to the race. "Mind is nothing
+but disease," Paracelsus cries in the bitterness of his disappointment,
+"and natural health is ignorance"; and he asks of the mad poet who
+"loved too rashly,"
+
+  "Are we not halves of one dissevered world,
+  Whom this strange chance unites once more? Part? Never!
+  Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower,
+  Love--until both are saved."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
+
+And, at the end of the poem, Paracelsus, coming to an understanding with
+himself as to the gain and loss of life, proclaims with his last
+strength the truth he had missed throughout his great career, namely,
+the supreme worth of love.
+
+  "I saw Aprile--my Aprile there!
+  And as the poor melodious wretch disburthened
+  His heart, and moaned his weakness in my ear,
+  I learned my own deep error; love's undoing
+  Taught me the worth of love in man's estate,
+  And what proportion love should hold with power
+  In his right constitution; love preceding
+  Power, and with much power, always much more love;
+  Love still too straitened in his present means,
+  And earnest for new power to set love free."
+
+As long as he hated men, or, in his passionate pursuit of truth, was
+indifferent to their concerns, it was not strange that he saw no good in
+men and failed to help them. Knowledge without love is not _true_
+knowledge, but folly and weakness.
+
+But, great as is the place given to love in _Paracelsus_, it is far less
+than that given to it in the poet's later works. In _Ferishtah's
+Fancies_ and _La Saisiaz_ it is no longer rivalled by knowledge; nor
+even in _Easter Day_, where the voice beside the poet proclaiming that
+
+  "Life is done,
+  Time ends, Eternity's begun,"
+
+gives a final pronouncement upon the purposes of the life of man. The
+world of sense--of beauty and art, of knowledge and truth, are given to
+man, but none of them satisfy his spirit; they merely sting with hunger
+for something better. "Deficiency gapes every side," till love is known
+as the essence and worth of all things.
+
+                  "Is this thy final choice?
+  Love is the best? 'Tis somewhat late!
+  And all thou dost enumerate
+  Of power and beauty in the world,
+  The righteousness of love was curled
+  Inextricably round about.
+  Love lay within it and without,
+  To clasp thee,--but in vain! Thy soul
+  Still shrunk from Him who made the whole,
+  Still set deliberate aside
+  His love!--Now take love! Well betide
+  Thy tardy conscience!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Easter Day._]
+
+In his later reflective poems, in which he deals with the problems of
+life in the spirit of a metaphysician, seeking a definite answer to the
+questions of the intelligence, he declares the reason for his preference
+of love to knowledge. In _La Saisiaz_ he states that man's love is God's
+too, a spark from His central fire; but man's knowledge is man's only.
+Knowledge is finite, limited and tinged with sense. The truth we reach
+at best is only truth _for us_, relative, distorted. We are for ever
+kept from the fact which is supposed to be given; our intellects play
+about it; sense and even intellect itself are interposing media, which
+we must use, and yet, in using them, we only fool ourselves with
+semblances. The poet has now grown so cautious that he will not declare
+his own knowledge to be valid for any other man. David Hume could
+scarcely be more suspicious of the human intellect; nor Berkeley more
+surely persuaded of the purely subjective nature of its attainments. In
+fact, the latter relied on human knowledge in a way impossible to
+Browning, for he regarded it as the language of spirit speaking to
+spirit. Out of his experience, Browning says,
+
+                            "There crowds 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."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+Thought itself, for aught he knows, may be afflicted with a kind of
+colour-blindness; and he knows no appeal when one affirms "green as
+grass," and another contradicts him with "red as grass." Under such
+circumstances, it is not strange that Browning should decline to speak
+except for himself, and that he will
+
+  "Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers strong or weak,"
+
+or that he will far less presume to pronounce for God, and pretend that
+the truth finds utterance from lips of clay--
+
+  "Pass off human lisp as echo of the sphere-song out of reach."
+
+  "Have I knowledge? Confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare!
+  Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew
+  (With that stoop of the soul, which in bending upraises it too)
+  The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete,
+  As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to His feet."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Saul_, III.]
+
+But David finds in himself one faculty so supreme in worth that he keeps
+it in abeyance--
+
+  "Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst
+  E'en the Giver in one gift.--Behold, I could love if I durst!
+  But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake
+  God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love's sake."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Saul_, III.]
+
+This faculty of love, so far from being tainted with finitude, like
+knowledge; so far from being mere man's, or a temporary and deceptive
+power given to man for temporary uses, by a Creator who has another
+ineffably higher way of loving, as He has of truth, is itself divine. In
+contrast with the activity of love, Omnipotence itself dwindles into
+insignificance, and creation sinks into a puny exercise of power. Love,
+in a word, is the highest good; and, as such, it has all its worth in
+itself, and gives to all other things what worth they have. God Himself
+gains the "ineffable crown" by showing love and saving the weak. It is
+the power divine, the central energy of God's being.
+
+Browning never forgets this moral or religious quality of love. So pure
+is this emotion to the poet, "so perfect in whiteness, that it will not
+take pollution; but, ermine-like, is armed from dishonour by its own
+soft snow." In the corruptest hearts, amidst the worst sensuality, love
+is still a power divine, making for all goodness. Even when it is
+kindled into flame by an illicit touch, and wars against the life of the
+family, which is its own product, its worth is supreme. He who has
+learned to love in any way, has "caught God's secret." How he has caught
+it, whom he loves, whether or not he is loved in return, all these
+things matter little. The paramount question on which hangs man's fate
+is, has he learned to love another, any other, Fifine or Elvire. "She
+has lost me," said the unloved lover; "I have gained her. Her soul's
+mine."
+
+The supreme worth of love, the mere emotion itself, however called into
+activity, secures it against all taint. No one who understands Browning
+in the least, can accuse him of touching with a rash hand the sanctity
+of the family; rather he places it on the basis of its own principle,
+and thereby makes for it the strongest defence. Such love as he speaks
+of, however irregular its manifestation or sensuous its setting, can
+never be confounded with lust--"hell's own blue tint." It is further
+removed from lust even than asceticism. It has not even a negative
+attitude towards the flesh; but finds the flesh to be "stuff for
+transmuting," and reduces it to the uses of the spirit. The love which
+is sung by Browning is more pure and free, and is set in a higher
+altitude than anything that can be reached by the way of negation. It is
+a consecration of the undivided self, so that "soul helps not flesh
+more, than flesh helps soul." It is not only a spiritual and divine
+emotion, but it also "shows a heart within blood-tinctured with a veined
+humanity."
+
+  "Be a God and hold me
+    With a charm!
+  Be a man and hold me
+    With thine arm!
+
+  "Teach me, only teach, Love!
+    As I ought
+  I will speak thy speech, Love!
+    Think thy thought--
+
+  "Meet, if thou require it,
+    Both demands,
+  Laying flesh and spirit
+    In thy hands."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Woman's Last Word_.]
+
+True love is always an infinite giving, which holds nothing back. It is
+a spendthrift, magnificent in its recklessness, squandering the very
+essence of the self upon its object, and by doing so, in the end
+enriching the self beyond all counting. For in loving, the individual
+becomes re-impersonated in another; the distinction of Me and Thee is
+swept away, and there pulses in two individuals one warm life.
+
+  "If two lives join, there is oft a scar
+    They are one and one with a shadowy third;
+  One near one is too far.
+
+  "A moment after, and hands unseen
+    Were hanging the night around us fast;
+  But we knew that a bar was broken between
+    Life and life: we were mixed at last
+  In spite of the mortal screen."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _By the Fireside_.]
+
+The throwing down of the limits that wall a man within himself, the
+mingling of his own deepest interests with those of others, always marks
+love; be it love of man for maid, parent for child, or patriot for his
+country. It opens an outlet into the pure air of the world of objects,
+and enables man to escape from the stuffed and poisonous atmosphere of
+his narrow self. It is a streaming outwards of the inmost treasures of
+the spirit, a consecration of its best activities to the welfare of
+others. And when this is known to be the native quality and quintessence
+of love, no one can regard it anywhere, or at any time, as out of place.
+"Prize-lawful or prize-lawless" it is ever a flower, even though it
+grow, like the love of the hero of _Turf and Towers_, in slime. Lust,
+fleshly desire, which has been too often miscalled love, is its worst
+perversion. Love spends itself for another, and seeks satisfaction only
+in another's good. But last uses up others for its own worst purposes,
+wastes its object, and turns the current of life back inwards, into the
+slush and filth of selfish pleasure. The distinction between love and
+its perversion, which is impossible in the naive life of an animal,
+ought to be clear enough to all, and probably is. Nor should the sexual
+impulse in human beings be confused with fleshly desire, and treated as
+if it were merely natural, "the mere lust of life" common to all living
+things,--"that strive," as Spinoza put it, "to persevere in existing."
+For there is no purely natural impulse in man; all that he is, is
+transfused with spirit, whether he will or no. He cannot act as a mere
+animal, because he cannot leave his rational nature behind him.
+
+He cannot desire as an innocent brute desires: his desire is always love
+or lust. We have as little right to say that the wisdom of the sage is
+_nothing but_ the purblind savagery of a Terra del Fuegian, as we have
+to assert that love is _nothing but_ a sexual impulse. That impulse
+rather, when its potency is set free, will show itself, at first
+confusedly, but with more and more clearness as it expands, to be the
+yearning of soul for soul. It puts us "in training for a love which
+knows not sex, nor person, nor partiality; but which seeks virtue and
+wisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom." The
+height to which this passion lifts man, is just what makes possible the
+fall into a sensuality and excess of brutishness, in comparison with
+which animal life is a paradise of innocence.
+
+If this is clearly recognized, many of the idle questions of casuistry
+that are sometimes raised regarding sexual love and marriage will cease
+to trouble. For these questions generally presuppose the lowest possible
+view of this passion. Browning shows us how to follow with serene
+security the pure light of the emotion of love, amidst all the confused
+lawlessness of lustful passion, and through all the intricacies of human
+character. Love, he thinks, is never illicit, never unwise, except when
+it is disloyal to itself; it never ruins, but always strives to enrich
+its object. Bacon quotes with approval a saying "That it is impossible
+to love, and to be wise." Browning asserts that it is impossible to love
+and _not_ be wise. It is a power that, according to the Christian idea
+which the poet adopts, has infinite goodness for its source, and that,
+even in its meanest expression, is always feeling its way back to its
+origin, flowing again into the ocean whence it came.
+
+So sparklingly pure is this passion that it could exorcise the evil and
+turn old to new, even in the case of Leonce Miranda. At least Browning,
+in this poem, strives to show that, being true love, though the love of
+an unclean man for an unclean woman, it was a power at war with the
+sordid elements of that sordid life. Love has always the same potency,
+flame is always flame,
+
+      "no matter whence flame sprung,
+  From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness."[A]
+
+[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, assimilates
+  All other passions 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 passions 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 God'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 God 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 God.
+
+"I think," says the heroine of the _Inn Album_,
+
+  "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 Album_.]
+
+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 assault her whelp."
+
+The betrayal of the mother's trust is the "unexampled sin," which scares
+the world and shames God.
+
+  "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 phosphorescent, "and sparks from heaven transpierce earth's
+coarsest 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_. xxxi.]
+
+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 God is, what we are,
+  What life is--how God 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 God."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+For man, being intelligent, flings back his light on all that went
+before,
+
+  "Illustrates 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.
+The magnificent failure of Paracelsus came from missing this last step.
+His transcendent hunger for knowledge was not satisfied, not because
+human knowledge is essentially an illusion or mind disease, but because
+his knowledge did not reach the final truth of things, which is love.
+For love alone makes the heart wise, to know the secret of all being.
+This is the ultimate hypothesis in the light of which alone man can
+catch a glimpse of the general direction and intent of the universal
+movement in the world and man. Dying, Paracelsus, taught by Aprile,
+caught a glimpse of this elemental "love-force," in which alone lies the
+clue to every problem, and the promise of the final satisfaction of the
+human spirit. Failing in this knowledge, man may know many things, but
+nothing truly; for all such knowledge stays with outward shows. It is
+love alone that puts man in the right relation to his fellows and to the
+world, and removes the distortion which fills life with sorrow, and
+makes it
+
+            "Only a scene
+  Of degradation, ugliness and tears,
+  The record of disgraces best forgotten,
+  A sullen page in human chronicles
+  Fit to erase."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
+
+But in the light of love, man "sees a good in evil, and a hope in ill
+success," and recognizes that mankind are
+
+  "All with a touch of nobleness, despite
+  Their error, upward tending all though weak;
+  Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,
+  But dream of him, and guess where he may be,
+  And do their best to climb and get to him."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+"All this I knew not," adds Paracelsus, "and I failed. Let men take the
+lesson and press this lamp of love, 'God's lamp, close to their
+breasts'; its splendour, soon or late, will pierce the gloom," and show
+that the universe is a transparent manifestation of His beneficence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+BROWNING'S IDEALISM, AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION.
+
+
+  "Master, explain this incongruity!
+  When I dared question, 'It is beautiful,
+  But is it true?' thy answer was, 'In truth
+  Lives Beauty.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Shah Abbas_.]
+
+We have now seen how Browning sought to explain all things as
+manifestations of the principle of love; how he endeavoured to bring all
+the variety of finite existence, and even the deep discrepancies of good
+and evil, under the sway of one idea. I have already tried to show that
+all human thought is occupied with the same task: science, art,
+philosophy, and even the most ordinary common-sense, are all, in their
+different ways, seeking for constant laws amongst changing facts. Nay,
+we may even go so far as to say that all the activity of man, the
+practical as well as the theoretical, is an attempt to establish a
+_modus vivendi_ between his environment and himself. And such an attempt
+rests on the assumption that there is some ground common to both of the
+struggling powers within and without, some principle that manifests
+itself both in man and in nature. So that all men are philosophers to
+the extent of postulating a unity, which is deeper than all differences;
+and all are alike trying to discover, in however limited or ignorant a
+way, what that unity is. If this fact were more constantly kept in view,
+the effort of philosophers to bring the ultimate colligating principles
+of thought into clear consciousness would not, at the outset at least,
+be regarded with so much suspicion. For the philosopher differs from the
+practical man of the world, not so much in the nature of the task which
+he is trying to accomplish, as in the distinct and conscious purpose
+with which he enters upon it.
+
+Now, I think that those, who, like Browning, offer an explicitly
+optimistic idea of the relation between man and the world, have a
+special right to a respectful hearing; for it can scarcely be denied
+that their optimistic explanation is invaluable, _if it is true_--
+
+  "So might we safely mock at what unnerves
+  Faith now, be spared the sapping fear's increase
+  That haply evil's strife with good shall cease
+  Never on earth."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville_.]
+
+Despair is a great clog to good work for the world, and pessimists, as a
+rule, have shown much more readiness than optimists to let evil have its
+unimpeded way. Having found, like Schopenhauer, that "Life is an awkward
+business," they "determine to spend life in reflecting on it," or at
+least in moaning about it. The world's helpers have been men of another
+mould; and the contrast between Fichte and Schopenhauer is suggestive of
+a general truth:--"Fichte, in the bright triumphant flight of his
+idealism, supported by faith in a moral order of the world which works
+for righteousness, turning his back on the darker ethics of self-torture
+and mortification, and rushing into the political and social fray,
+proclaiming the duties of patriotism, idealizing the soldier,
+calling to and exercising an active philanthrophy, living with
+his nation, and continually urging it upwards to higher levels of
+self-realization--Schopenhauer recurring to the idea of asceticism,
+preaching the blessedness of the quiescence of all will, disparaging
+efforts to save the nation or elevate the masses, and holding that each
+has enough to do in raising his own self from its dull engrossment in
+lower things to an absorption in that pure, passionless being which lies
+far beyond all, even the so-called highest, pursuits of practical
+life."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Schopenhauer_, by Prof. Wallace.]
+
+A pessimism, which is nothing more than flippant fault-finding,
+frequently gains a cheap reputation for wisdom; and, on the other hand,
+an optimism, which is really the result of much reflection and
+experience, may be regarded as the product of a superficial spirit that
+has never known the deeper evils of life. But, if pessimism be true, it
+differs from other truths by its uselessness; for, even if it saves man
+from the bitterness of petty disappointments, it does so only by making
+the misery universal. There is no need to specify, when "_All_ is
+vanity." The drowning man does not feel the discomfort of being wet. But
+yet, if we reflect on the problem of evil, we shall find that there is
+no neutral ground, and shall ultimately be driven to choose between
+pessimism and its opposite. Nor, on the other hand, is the suppression
+of the problem of evil possible, except at a great cost. It presents
+itself anew in the mind of every thinking man; and some kind of solution
+of it, or at least some definite way of meeting its difficulty, is
+involved in the attitude which every man assumes towards life and its
+tasks.
+
+It is not impossible that there may be as much to be said for Browning's
+joy in life and his love of it, as there is for his predecessor's rage
+and sorrow. Browning certainly thought that there was; and he held his
+view consistently to the end. We cannot, therefore, do justice to the
+poet without dealing critically with the principle on which he has based
+his faith, and observing how far it is applicable to the facts of human
+life. As I have previously said, he strives hard to come into fair
+contact with the misery of man in all its sadness; and, after doing so,
+he claims, not as a matter of poetic sentiment, but as a matter of
+strict truth, that good is the heart and reality of it all. It is true
+that he cannot demonstrate the truth of his principle by reference to
+all the facts, any more than the scientific man can justify his
+hypothesis in every detail; but he holds it as a faith which reason can
+justify and experience establish, although not in every isolated
+phenomenon. The good may, he holds, be seen actually at work in the
+world, and its process will be more fully known, as human life advances
+towards its goal.
+
+                    "Though Master keep aloof,
+  Signs of His presence multiply from roof
+  To basement of the building."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+Thus Browning bases his view upon experience, and finds firm footing for
+his faith in the present; although he acknowledges that the "profound of
+ignorance surges round his rockspit of self-knowledge."
+
+                              "Enough that now,
+  Here where I stand, this moment's me and mine,
+  Shows me what is, permits me to divine
+  What shall be."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+"Since we know love we know enough"; for in love, he confidently thinks
+we have the key to all the mystery of being.
+
+Now, what is to be made of an optimism of this kind, which is based upon
+love and which professes to start from experience, or to be legitimately
+and rationally derived from it?
+
+If such a view be taken seriously, as I propose doing, we must be
+prepared to meet at the outset with some very grave difficulties. The
+first of these is that it is an interpretation of facts by a human
+emotion. To say that love blushes in the rose, or breaks into beauty in
+the clouds, that it shows its strength in the storm, and sets the stars
+in the sky, and that it is in all things the source of order and law,
+may imply a principle of supreme worth both to poetry and religion; but
+when we are asked to take it as a metaphysical explanation of facts, we
+are prone, like the judges of Caponsacchi, not to "levity, or to
+anything indecorous"--
+
+  "Only--I think I apprehend the mood:
+  There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk,
+  The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth,
+  The titter stifled in the hollow palm
+  Which rubbed the eye-brow and caressed the nose,
+  When I first told my tale; they meant, you know--
+  'The sly one, all this we are bound believe!
+  Well, he can say no other than what he says.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Canon Caponsacchi_, 14-20.]
+
+We are sufficiently willing to let the doctrine be held as a pious
+opinion. The faith that "all's love yet all's law," like many another
+illusion, if not hugged too closely, may comfort man's nakedness. But if
+we are asked to substitute this view for that which the sciences
+suggest,--if we are asked to put "Love" in the place of physical energy,
+and, by assuming it as a principle, to regard as unreal all the infinite
+misery of humanity and the degradation of intellect and character from
+which it arises, common-sense seems at once to take the side of the
+doleful sage of Chelsea. When the optimist postulates that the state of
+the world, were it rightly understood, is completely satisfactory,
+reason seems to be brought to a stand; and if poetry and religion
+involve such a postulate, they are taken to be ministering to the
+emotions at the expense of the intellect.
+
+Browning, however, was not a mere sentimentalist who could satisfy his
+heart without answering the questions of his intellect. Nor is his view
+without support--at least, as regards the substance of it. The presence
+of an idealistic element in things is recognized even by ordinary
+thought; and no man's world is so poor that it would not be poorer still
+for him, if it were reduced by the abstract sciences of nature into a
+mere manifestation of physical force. Such a world Richter compares to
+an empty eye-socket.
+
+The great result of speculation since the time of Kant is to teach us to
+recognize that objects are essentially related to mind, and that the
+principles which rule our thought enter, so to speak, into the
+constitution of the things we know. A very slight acquaintance with the
+history even of psychology, especially in modern times, shows that facts
+are more and more retracted into thought. This science, which began with
+a sufficiently common-sense view, not only of the reality and solidity
+of the things of the outer world, but of their opposition to, or
+independence of thought, is now thinning that world down into a mere
+shadow--a something which excites sensation. It shows that external
+things as we know them, and we are not concerned in any others, are, to
+a very great extent, the product of our thinking activities. No one will
+now subscribe to the Lockian or Humean view, of images impressed by
+objects on mind: the object which "impresses" has first to be made by
+mind, out of the results of nervous excitation. In a word, modern
+psychology as well as modern metaphysics, is demonstrating more and more
+fully the dependence of the world, as it is known, on the nature and
+activity of man's mind. Every explanation of the world is found to be,
+in this sense, idealistic; and in this respect, there is no difference
+whatsoever between the interpretation given by science and that of
+poetry, or religion, or philosophy. If we say that a thing is a
+"substance," or has "a cause"; if, with the physicist, we assert the
+principle of the transmutation of energy, or make use of the idea of
+evolution with the biologist or geologist; nay, if we speak of time and
+space with the mathematician, we use principles of unity derived from
+self-consciousness, and interpret nature in terms of ourselves, just as
+truly as the poet or philosopher, who makes love, or reason, the
+constitutive element in things. If the practical man of the world
+charges the poet and philosopher with living amidst phantoms, he can be
+answered with a "_Tu quoque_." "How easy," said Emerson, "it is to show
+the materialist that he also is a phantom walking and working amid
+phantoms, and that he need only ask a question or two beyond his daily
+questions to find his solid universe proving dim and impalpable before
+his sense."
+
+"Sense," which seems to show directly that the world is a solid reality,
+not dependent in any way on thought, is found not to be reliable. All
+science is nothing but an appeal to thought from ordinary sensuous
+opinion. It is an attempt to find the reality of things by thinking
+about them; and this reality, when it is found, turns out to be a law.
+But laws are ideas; though, if they are true ideas, they represent not
+merely thoughts in the mind, but also real principles, which manifest
+themselves in the objects of the outer world, as well as in the
+thinker's mind.
+
+It is not possible in such a work as this, to give a carefully reasoned
+proof of this view of the relation of thought and things, or to repeat
+the argument of Kant. I must be content with merely referring to it, as
+showing that the principles in virtue of which we think, are the
+principles in virtue of which objects as we know them exist; and we
+cannot be concerned with any other objects. The laws which scientific
+investigation discovers are not only ideas that can be written in books,
+but also principles which explain the nature of things. In other words,
+the hypotheses of the natural sciences, or their categories, are points
+of view in the light of which the external world can be regarded as
+governed by uniform laws. And these constructive principles, which lift
+the otherwise disconnected world into an intelligible system, are
+revelations of the nature of intelligence, and only on that account
+principles for explaining the world.
+
+                           "To know,
+  Rather consists in opening out a way
+  Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
+  Than in effecting entry for a light
+  Supposed to be without."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
+
+In this sense, it may be said that all knowledge is anthropomorphic; and
+in this respect there is no difference between the physics, which speaks
+of energy as the essence of things, and the poetry, which speaks of love
+as the ultimate principle of reality. Between such scientific and
+idealistic explanations there is not even the difference that the one
+begins without and the other within, or that the one is objective and
+the other subjective. The true distinction is that the principles upon
+which the latter proceed are less abstract than those of science.
+"Reason" and "love" are higher principles for the explanation of the
+nature of things than "substance" or "cause"; but both are forms of the
+unity of thought. And if the latter seem to have nothing to do with the
+self, it is only because they are inadequate to express its full
+character. On the other hand, the higher categories, or ideas of reason,
+seem to be merely anthropomorphic, and, therefore, ill-suited to explain
+nature, because the relation of nature to intelligence is habitually
+neglected by ordinary thought, which has not pressed its problems far
+enough to know that such higher categories can alone satisfy the demand
+for truth.
+
+But natural science is gradually driven from the lower to the higher
+categories, or, in other words, it is learning to take a more and more
+idealistic view of nature. It is moving very slowly, because it is a
+long labour to exhaust the uses of an instrument of thought; and it is
+only at great intervals in the history of the human intellect, that we
+find the need of a change of categories. But, as already hinted, there
+is no doubt that science is becoming increasingly aware of the
+conditions, under which alone its results may be held as valid. At
+first, it drove "mind" out of the realm of nature, and offered to
+explain both it and man in physical and mathematical terms. But, in our
+day, the man of science has become too cautious to make such rash
+extensions of the principles he uses. He is more inclined to limit
+himself to his special field, and he refuses to make any declaration as
+to the ultimate nature of things. He holds himself apart from
+materialism, as he does from idealism. I think I may even go further,
+and say that the fatal flaw of materialism has been finally detected,
+and that the essential relativity of all objects to thought is all but
+universally acknowledged.
+
+The common notion that science gives a complete view of truth, to which
+we may appeal as refuting idealism, is untenable. Science itself will
+not support the appeal, but will direct the appellant to another court.
+Perhaps, rather, it would be truer to say that its attitude is one of
+doubt whether or not any court, philosophical or other, can give any
+valid decision on the matter. Confining themselves to the region of
+material phenomena, scientific men generally leave to common ignorance,
+or to moral and theological tradition, all the interests and activities
+of man, other than those which are physical or physiological. And some
+of them are even aware, that if they could find the physical equation of
+man, or, through their knowledge of physiology, actually produce in man
+the sensations, thoughts, and notions now ascribed to the intelligent
+life within him, the question of the spiritual or material nature of man
+and the world, would remain precisely where it was. The explanation
+would still begin with mind and end there. The principles of the
+materialistic explanation of the world would still be derived from
+intelligence; mind would still underlie all it explained, and completed
+science would still be, in this sense, anthropomorphic. The charge of
+anthropomorphism thus falls to the ground, because it would prove too
+much. It is a weapon which cuts the hand that wields it. And, as
+directed against idealism, it only shows that he who uses it has
+inadequate notions both of the nature of the self and of the world, and
+is not aware that each gets meaning, only as an exponent of the other.
+
+On the whole, we may say that it is not men of science who now assail
+philosophy, because it gives an idealistic explanation of the world, so
+much as unsystematic dabblers in matters of thought. The best men of
+science, rather, show a tendency to acquiesce in a kind of dualism of
+matter and spirit, and to leave morality and religion, art and
+philosophy to pursue their own ends undisturbed. Mr. Huxley, for
+instance, and some others, offer two philosophical solutions, one
+proceeding from the material world and the other from the sensations and
+other "facts of consciousness." They say that we may either explain man
+as a natural phenomenon, or the world as a mental one.
+
+But it is a little difficult not to ask which of these explanations is
+true. Both of them cannot well be, seeing that they are different. And
+neither of them can be adopted without very serious consequences. It
+would require considerable hardihood to suggest that natural science
+should be swept away in favour of psychology, which would be done if the
+one view held by Mr. Huxley were true. And, in my opinion, it requires
+quite as much hardihood to suggest the adoption of a theory that makes
+morality and religion illusory, which would be done were the other view
+valid.
+
+As a matter of fact, however, such an attitude can scarcely be held by
+any one who is interested _both_ in the success of natural science and
+in the spiritual development of mankind. We are constrained rather to
+say that, if these rival lines of thought lead us to deny either the
+outer world of things, or the world of thought and morality, then they
+must both be wrong. They are not "explanations" but false theories, if
+they lead to such conclusions as these. And, instead of holding them up
+to the world as the final triumph of human thought, we should sweep them
+into the dust-bin, and seek for some better explanation from a new point
+of view.
+
+And, indeed, a better explanation is sought, and sought not only by
+idealists, but by scientific men themselves,--did they only comprehend
+their own main tendency and method. The impulse towards unity, which is
+the very essence of thought, if it is baulked in one direction by a
+hopeless dualism, just breaks out in another. Subjective idealism, that
+is, the theory that things are nothing but phenomena of the individual's
+consciousness, that the world is really all inside the philosopher, is
+now known by most people to end in self-contradiction; and materialism
+is also known to begin with it. And there are not many people sanguine
+enough to believe with Mr. Huxley and Mr. Herbert Spencer, that, if we
+add two self-contradictory theories together, or hold them alternately,
+we shall find the truth. Modern science, that is, the science which does
+not philosophize, and modern philosophy are with tolerable unanimity
+denying this absolute dualism. They do not know of any thought that is
+not of things, or of any things that are not for thought. It is
+necessarily assumed that, in some way or other, the gap between things
+and thought is got over by knowledge. How the connection is brought
+about may not be known; but, that there is the connection between real
+things and true thoughts, no one can well deny. It is an ill-starred
+perversity which leads men to deny such a connection, merely because
+they have not found out how it is established.
+
+A new category of thought has taken possession of the thought of our
+time--a category which is fatal to dualism. The idea of development is
+breaking down the division between mind and matter, as it is breaking
+down all other absolute divisions. Geology, astronomy, and physics at
+one extreme, biology, psychology, and philosophy at the other, combine
+in asserting the idea of the universe as a unity which is always
+evolving its content, and bringing its secret potencies to the light. It
+is true that these sciences have not linked hands as yet. We cannot get
+from chemistry to biology without a leap, or from physiology to
+psychology without another. But no one will postulate a rift right
+through being. The whole tendency of modern science implies the opposite
+of such a conception. History is striving to trace continuity between
+the civilized man and the savage. Psychology is making towards a
+junction with physiology and general biology, biology with chemistry,
+and chemistry with physics. That there is an unbroken continuity in
+existence is becoming a postulate of modern science, almost as truly as
+the "universality of law" or "the uniformity of nature." Nor is the
+postulate held less firmly because the evidence for the continuity of
+nature is not yet complete. Chemistry has not yet quite lapsed into
+physics; biology at present shows no sign of giving up its
+characteristic conception of life, and the former science is as yet
+quite unable to deal with that peculiar phenomenon. The facts of
+consciousness have not been resolved into nervous action, and, so far,
+mind has not been shown to be a secretion of brain. Nevertheless, all
+these sciences are beating against the limits which separate them, and
+new suggestions of connection between natural life and its inorganic
+environment are continually discovered. The sciences are boring towards
+each other, and the dividing strata are wearing thin; so that it seems
+reasonable to expect that, with the growth of knowledge, an unbroken way
+upwards may be discovered, from the lowest and simplest stages of
+existence to the highest and most complex forms of self-conscious life.
+
+Now, to those persons who are primarily interested in the ethical and
+religious phenomena of man's life, the idea of abolishing the chasm
+between spirit and nature is viewed with no little apprehension. It is
+supposed that if evolution were established as a universal law, and the
+unity of being were proved, the mental and moral life of man would be
+degraded into a complex manifestation of mere physical force. And we
+even find religious men rejoicing at the failure of science to bridge
+the gap between the inorganic and the organic, and between natural and
+self-conscious life; as if the validity of religion depended upon the
+maintenance of their separating boundaries. But no religion that is free
+from superstitious elements has anything to gain from the failure of
+knowledge to relate things to each other. It is difficult to see how
+breaks in the continuity of being can be established, when every living
+plant confutes the absolute difference between the organic and
+inorganic, and, by the very fact of living, turns the latter into the
+former; and it is difficult to deny the continuity of "mind and matter,"
+when every human being is relating himself to the outer world in all his
+thoughts and actions. And religion is the very last form of thought
+which could profit from such a proof of absolute distinctions, were it
+possible. In fact, as we have seen, religion, in so far as it demands a
+perfect and absolute being as the object of worship, is vitally
+concerned in maintaining the unity of the world. It must assume that
+matter, in its degree, reveals the same principle which, in a higher
+form, manifests itself in spirit.
+
+But closer investigation will show that the real ground for such
+apprehension does not lie in the continuity of existence, which
+evolution implies; for religion itself postulates the same thing. The
+apprehension springs, rather, from the idea that the continuity asserted
+by evolution, is obtained by resolving the higher forms of existence
+into the lower. It is believed that, if the application of development
+to facts were successfully carried out, the organic would be shown to be
+nothing but complex inorganic forces, mental life nothing but a
+physiological process, and religion, morality, and art, nothing but
+products of the highly complex motion of highly complex aggregates of
+physical atoms.
+
+It seems to me quite natural that science should be regarded as tending
+towards such a materialistic conclusion. This is the view which many
+scientific investigators have themselves taken of their work; and some
+of their philosophical exponents, notably Mr. Herbert Spencer, have,
+with more or less inconsistency, interpreted the idea of evolution in
+this manner. But, it may be well to bear in mind that science is
+generally far more successful in employing its constructive ideas, than
+it is in rendering an account of them. In fact, it is not its business
+to examine its categories: that task properly belongs to philosophy, and
+it is not a superfluous one. But, so long as the employment of the
+categories in the special province of a particular science yields valid
+results, scientific explorers and those who attach, and rightly attach,
+so much value to their discoveries, are very unwilling to believe that
+these categories are not valid universally. The warning voice of
+philosophy is not heeded, when it charges natural science with applying
+its conceptions to materials to which they are inadequate; and its
+examination of the categories of thought is regarded as an innocent, but
+also a useless, activity. For, it is argued, what good can arise from
+the analysis of our working ideas? The world looked for causes, and
+found them, when it was very young; but, up to the time of David Hume,
+no one had shown what causality meant, and the explanation which he
+offered is now rejected by modern science, as definitely as it is
+rejected by philosophy. Meantime, while philosophy is still engaged in
+exposing the fallacies of the theory of association as held by Hume,
+science has gone beyond this category altogether; it is now establishing
+a theory of the conservation of energy, which supplants the law of
+causality by tracing it into a deeper law of nature.
+
+There is some force in this argument, but it cuts both ways. For, even
+if it be admitted that the category was successfully applied in the
+past, it is also admitted that it was applied without being understood;
+and it cannot now be questioned that the philosophers were right in
+rejecting it as the final explanation of the relation of objects to each
+other, and in pointing to other and higher connecting ideas. And this
+consideration should go some way towards convincing evolutionists that,
+though they may be able successfully to apply the idea of development to
+particular facts, this does not guarantee the soundness of their view of
+it as an instrument of thought, or of the nature of the final results
+which it is destined to achieve. Hence, without any disparagement to the
+new extension which science has received by the use of this new idea, it
+may be maintained that the ordinary view of its tendency and mission is
+erroneous.
+
+"The prevailing method of explaining the world," says Professor Caird,
+"may be described as an attempt to level 'downwards.' The doctrine of
+development, interpreted as that idea usually is interpreted, supports
+this view, as making it necessary to trace back higher and more complex
+to lower or simpler forms of being; for the most obvious way of
+accomplishing this task is to show analytically that there is really
+nothing more in the former than in the latter."[A] "Divorced from
+matter," asks Professor Tyndall, "where is life to be found? Whatever
+our _faith_ may say our _knowledge_ shows them to be indissolubly
+joined. Every meal we eat, and every cup we drink, illustrates the
+mysterious _control of Mind by Matter_. Trace the line of life backwards
+and see it approaching more and more to what we call the _purely
+physical condition_."[B] And then, rising to the height of his subject,
+or even above it, he proclaims, "By an intellectual necessity I cross
+the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that Matter
+which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our
+professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with
+opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life."[C] A
+little further on, speaking in the name of science, and on behalf of his
+scientific fellow-workers (with what right is a little doubtful), he
+adds--"We claim, and we shall wrest, from theology, the entire domain of
+cosmological theory. All schemes and systems which thus infringe upon
+the domain of science, must, _in so far as they do this,_ submit to its
+control, and relinquish all thought of controlling it." But if science
+is to control the knowable world, he generously leaves the remainder for
+religion. He will not deprive it of a faith in "a Power absolutely
+inscrutable to the intellect of man. As little in our days as in the
+days of Job can a man by searching find this Power out." And, now that
+he has left this empty sphere of the unknown to religion, he feels
+justified in adding, "There is, you will observe, no very rank
+materialism here."
+
+[Footnote A: _The Critical Philosophy of Kant_, Vol. I. p. 34]
+
+[Footnote B: _Address to the British Association_, 1874, p. 54.]
+
+[Footnote C: _Belfast Address_, 1874.]
+
+  "Yet they did not abolish the gods, but they sent them well out
+  of the way,
+  With the rarest of nectar to drink, and blue fields of nothing
+  to sway."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Clerk Maxwell: "_Notes of the President's Address,_"
+British Association, 1874.]
+
+Now these declarations of Mr. Tyndall are, to say the least, somewhat
+ambiguous and shadowy. Yet, when he informs us that eating and drinking
+"illustrate the control of mind by matter," and "that the line of life
+traced backwards leads towards a purely physical condition," it is a
+little difficult to avoid the conclusion that he regards science as
+destined.
+
+  "To tread the world
+  Into a paste, and thereof make a smooth
+  Uniform mound, whereon to plant its flag."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
+
+For the conclusion of the whole argument seems to be, that all _we know
+as facts_ are mere forms of matter; although the stubborn refusal of
+consciousness to be resolved into natural force, and its power of
+constructing for itself a world of symbols, gives science no little
+trouble, and forces it to acknowledge complete ignorance of the nature
+of the power from which all comes.
+
+  "So roll things to the level which you love,
+  That you could stand at ease there and survey
+  The universal Nothing undisgraced
+  By pert obtrusion of some old church-spire
+  I' the distance! "[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_.]
+
+Some writers on ethics and religion have adopted the same view of the
+goal of the idea of evolution. In consistency with this supposed
+tendency of science, to resolve all things into their simplest, and
+earliest forms, religion has been traced back to the superstition and
+ghost-worship of savages; and then it has been contended that it is, in
+essence, nothing more than superstition and ghost-worship. And, in like
+manner, morality, with its categorical imperative of duty, has been
+traced back, without a break, to the ignorant fear of the vengeance of a
+savage chief. A similar process in the same direction reduces the love
+divine, of which our poet speaks, into brute lust; somewhat sublimated,
+it is true, in its highest forms, but not fundamentally changed.
+
+  "Philosophers deduce you chastity
+  Or shame, from just the fact that at the first
+  Whoso embraced a woman in the field,
+  Threw club down and forewent his brains beside;
+  So, stood a ready victim in the reach
+  Of any brother-savage, club in hand.
+  Hence saw the use of going out of sight
+  In wood or cave to prosecute his loves."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Bishop Blouhram's Apology_.]
+
+And when the sacred things of life are treated in this manner--when
+moral conduct is showed to be evolved by a continuous process from
+"conduct in general," the conduct of an "infusorium or a cephalopod," or
+even of wind-mills or water-wheels, it is not surprising if the
+authority of the moral law seems to be undermined, and that "devout
+souls" are apprehensive of the results of science. "Does law so analyzed
+coerce you much?" asks Browning.
+
+The derivation of spiritual from natural laws thus appears to be fatal
+to the former; and religious teachers naturally think that it is
+necessary for their cause to snap the links of the chain of evolution,
+and, like Professor Drummond, to establish absolute gaps, not only
+between the inorganic and the organic worlds, but also between the
+self-conscious life of man and the mysterious, spiritual life of Christ,
+or God. But it seems to me that, in their antagonism to evolution,
+religious teachers are showing the same incapacity to distinguish
+between their friends and their foes, which they previously manifested
+in their acceptance of the Kantian doctrine of "things in
+themselves,"--a doctrine which placed God and the soul beyond the power
+of speculative reason either to prove or disprove. It is, however,
+already recognized that the attempt of Mansel and Hamilton to degrade
+human reason for the behoof of faith was really a veiled agnosticism;
+and a little reflection must show that the idea of evolution, truly
+interpreted, in no wise threatens the degradation of man, or the
+overthrow of his spiritual interests. On the contrary, this idea is, in
+all the history of thought, the first constructive hypothesis which is
+adequate to the uses of ethics and religion. By means of it, we may hope
+to solve many of the problems arising from the nature of knowledge and
+moral conduct, which the lower category of cause turned into pure
+enigmas. It seems, indeed, to contain the promise of establishing the
+science of man, as intelligent, on a firm basis; on which we may raise a
+superstructure, comparable in strength and superior in worth, to that of
+the science of nature. And, even if the moral science must, like
+philosophy, always return to the beginning--must, that is, from the
+necessity of its nature, and not from any complete failure--it will
+still begin again at a higher level now that the idea of evolution is in
+the field.
+
+It now remains to show in what way the idea of evolution leaves room for
+religion and morality; or, in other words, to show how, so far from
+degrading man to the level of the brute condition, and running life down
+into "purely physical conditions," it contains the promise of
+establishing that idealistic view of the world, which is maintained by
+art and religion.
+
+In order to show this, it is necessary that the idea of evolution should
+be used fearlessly, and applied to all facts that can in any way come
+under it. It must, in other words, be used as a category of thought,
+whose application is universal; so that, if it is valid at all as a
+theory, it is valid of all finite things. For the question we are
+dealing with is not the truth of the hypothesis of a particular science,
+but the truth of a hypothesis as to the relation of all objects in the
+world, including man himself. We must not be deterred from this
+universal application by the fact that we cannot, as yet, prove its
+truth in every detail. No scientific hypothesis ever has exhausted its
+details. I consider, therefore, that Mr. Tyndall had a complete right to
+"cross the boundary of the experimental evidence by an intellectual
+necessity"; for the necessity comes from the assumption of a possible
+explanation by the aid of the hypothesis. It is no argument against such
+a procedure to insist that, as yet, there is no proof of the absolute
+continuity of matter and physical life, or that the dead begets the
+living. The hypothesis is not disproved by the absence of evidence; it
+is only not proved. The connection may be there, although we have not,
+as yet, been able to find it. In the face of such difficulties as these,
+the scientific investigator has always a right to claim more time; and
+his attitude is impregnable as long as he remembers, as Mr. Tyndall did
+on the whole, that his hypothesis is a hypothesis.
+
+But Mr. Tyndall has himself given up this right. He, like Mr. Huxley,
+has placed the phenomena of self-consciousness outside of the developing
+process, and confined the sphere in which evolution is applicable, to
+natural objects. Between objects and the subject, even when both subject
+and object are man himself, there lies "an impassable gulf."
+
+Even to try "to comprehend the connection between thought and thing is
+absurd, like the effort of a man trying to lift himself by his own
+waist-band." Our states of self-consciousness are symbols only--symbols
+of an outside entity, whose real nature we can never know. We know only
+these states; we only _infer_ "that anything answering to our
+impressions exists outside of ourselves." And it is impossible to
+justify even that inference; for, if we can only know states of
+consciousness, we cannot say that they are symbols of anything, or that
+there is anything to be symbolized. The external world, on this theory,
+ceases to exist even as an unknown entity. In triumphantly pointing out
+that, in virtue of this psychological view, "There is, you will observe,
+no very rank materialism here," Mr. Tyndall forgets that he has
+destroyed the basis of all natural science, and reduced evolution into a
+law of "an outside entity," of which we can never know anything, and any
+inference regarding which violates every law of thought.
+
+It seems to me quite plain that either this psychological theory, which
+Mr. Tyndall has mistaken for a philosophy, is invalid; or else it is
+useless to endeavour to propound any view regarding a "nature which is
+the phantom of the individual's mind." I prefer the science of Mr.
+Tyndall (and of Mr. Huxley, too) to his philosophy; and he would have
+escaped materialism more effectively, if he had remained faithful to his
+theory of evolution. It is a disloyalty, not only to science, but to
+thought, to cast away our categories when they seem to imply
+inconvenient consequences. They must be valid universally, if they are
+valid at all.
+
+Mr. Tyndall contends that nature makes man, and he finds evidence in the
+fact that we eat and drink, "of the control of mind by matter." Now, it
+seems to me, that _if_ nature makes man, then nature makes man's
+thoughts also. His sensations, feelings, ideas, notions, being those of
+a naturally-evolved agent, are revelations of the potency of the primal
+matter, just as truly as are the buds, flowers, and fruits of a tree. No
+doubt, we cannot as yet "comprehend the connection" between nervous
+action and sensation, any more than we can comprehend the connection
+between inorganic and organic existence. But, if the absence of
+"experimental evidence" does not disprove the hypothesis in the one
+case, it can not disprove it in the other. There are two crucial points
+in which the theory has not been established.
+
+But, in both cases alike, there is the same kind of evidence that the
+connection exists; although in neither case can we, as yet, discover
+what it is. Plants live by changing inorganic elements into organic
+structure; and man is intelligent only in so far as he crosses over the
+boundary between subject and object, and knows the world without him.
+There is no "impassable gulf separating the subject and object"; if
+there were we could not know anything of either. There are not two
+worlds--the one of thoughts, the other of things--which are absolutely
+exclusive of each other, but one universe in which thought and reality
+meet. Mr. Tyndall thinks that it is an inference (and an inference over
+an impassable gulf!) that anything answering to our impressions exists
+outside ourselves. "The question of the external world is the great
+battleground of metaphysics," he quotes approvingly from Mr. J.S. Mill.
+But the question of the external world is not whether that world exists;
+it is, how are we to account for our knowledge that it does exist. The
+inference is not from thoughts to things, nor from things to thoughts,
+but from a partially known world to a systematic theory of that world.
+Philosophy is not engaged on the foolish enterprise of trying to
+discover whether the world exists, or whether we know that it exists;
+its problem is how to account for our knowledge. It asks what must the
+nature of things be, seeing that they are known; and what is the nature
+of thought, seeing that it knows facts?
+
+There is no hope whatsoever for ethics, or religion, or philosophy--no
+hope even for science--in a theory which would apply evolution all the
+way up from inorganic matter to life, but which would postulate an
+absolute break at consciousness. The connection between thought and
+things is there to begin with, whether we can account for it or not; if
+it were not, then natural science would be impossible. It would be
+palpably irrational even to try to find out the nature of things by
+thinking. The only science would be psychology, and even that would be
+the science of "symbols of an unknown entity." What symbols of an
+unknown can signify, or how an unknown can produce symbols of itself
+across an impassable gulf--Mr. Spencer, Mr. Huxley, and Mr. Tyndall have
+yet to inform us.
+
+It is the more necessary to insist on this, because the division between
+thought and matter, which is admitted by these writers, is often grasped
+at by their opponents, as a means of warding off the results which they
+draw from the theory of evolution. When science breaks its sword,
+religion assails it, with the fragment. It is not at once evident that
+if this chasm were shown to exist, knowledge would be a chimera; for
+there would be no outer world at all, not even a phenomenal one, to
+supply an object for it. We _must_ postulate the ultimate unity of all
+beings with each other and with the mind that knows them, just because
+we are intellectual and moral beings; and to destroy this unity is to
+"kill reason itself, as it were, in the eye," as Milton said.
+
+Now, evolution not only postulates unity, or the unbroken continuity of
+all existence, but it also negates all differences, except those which
+are expressions of that unity. It is not the mere assertion of a
+substratum under qualities; but it implies that the substratum
+penetrates into the qualities, and manifests itself in them. That which
+develops--be it plant, child, or biological kingdom--is, at every stage
+from lowest to highest, a concrete unity of all its differences; and in
+the whole history of its process its actual content is always the same.
+The environment of the plant evokes that content, but it adds nothing to
+it. No addition of anything absolutely new, no external aggregation, no
+insertion of anything alien into a growing thing, is possible. What it
+is now, it was in the beginning; and what it will be, it is now.
+Granting the hypothesis of evolution, there can be no quarrel with the
+view that the crude beginnings of things, matter in its most nebulous
+state, contains potentially all the rich variety of both natural and
+spiritual life.
+
+But this continuity of all existence may be interpreted in two very
+different ways. It may lead us either to radically change our notions of
+mind and its activities, or "to radically change our notions of matter."
+We may take as the principle of explanation, either the beginning, or
+the end of the process of development. We may say of the simple and
+crass, "There is all that your rich universe really means"; or we may
+say of the spiritual activities of man, "This is what your crude
+beginning really was." We may explain the complex by the simple, or the
+simple by the complex. We may analyze the highest back into the lowest,
+or we may follow the lowest, by a process of synthesis, up to the
+highest.
+
+And one of the most important of all questions for morality and religion
+is the question, which of these two methods is valid. If out of crass
+matter is evolved all animal and spiritual life, does that prove life to
+be nothing but matter; or does it not rather show that what we, in our
+ignorance, took to be mere matter was really something much greater? If
+"crass matter" contains all this promise and potency, by what right do
+we still call it "crass"? It is manifestly impossible to treat the
+potencies, assumed to lie in a thing that grows, as if they were of no
+significance; first, to assert that such potencies exist, in saying that
+the object develops; and then, to neglect them, and to regard the effect
+as constituted merely of its simplest elements. Either these potencies
+are not in the object, or else the object has in it, and is, at the
+first, more than it appears to be. Either the object does not grow, or
+the lowest stage of its being is no explanation of its true nature.
+
+If we wish to know what the forms of natural life mean, we look in vain
+to their primary state. We must watch the evolution and revelation of
+the secret hid in natural life, as it moves through the ascending cycles
+of the biological kingdom. The idea of evolution, when it is not
+muddled, is synthetic--not analytic; it explains the simplest in the
+light of the complex, the beginning in the light of the end, and not
+_vice versa_. In a word, it follows the ways of nature, the footsteps of
+fact, instead of inventing a wilful backward path of its own. And nature
+explains by gradually expanding. If we hearken to nature, and not to the
+voice of illusory preconceptions, we shall hear her proclaim at the last
+stage, "Here is the meaning of the seedling. Now it is clear what it
+really was; for the power which lay dormant has pushed itself into
+light, through bud and flower and leaf and fruit." The reality of a
+growing thing is its highest form of being. The last explains the first,
+but not the first the last. The first is abstract, incomplete, not yet
+actual, but mere potency; and we could never know even the potency,
+except in the light of its own actualization.
+
+From this correction of the abstract view of development momentous
+consequences follow. If the universe is, as science pronounces, an
+organic totality, which is ever converting its promise and potency into
+actuality, then we must add that the ultimate interpretation even of
+the lowest existence in the world cannot be given except on principles
+which are adequate to explain the highest. We must "level up and not
+level down": we must not only deny that matter can explain spirit, but
+we must say that even matter itself cannot be fully understood, except
+as an element in a spiritual world."[A]
+
+[Footnote 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
+were established, 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 justify
+_in detail_ the 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 stage
+  You shuffle through your part as best you can."[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 yet
+  I' the backwardness, repine if tree and flower,
+  Mountain or streamlet were my dwelling-place
+  Before I gained enlargement, grew mollusc."[C]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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
+perverted and 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 last
+  To man--the consummation of this scheme
+  Of being, the completion of this sphere
+  Of life."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
+
+"All tended to mankind," he said, after reviewing the whole process of
+nature in _Paracelsus_,
+
+  "And, man produced, all has its end thus far:
+  But in completed man begins anew
+  A tendency to God."[B]
+
+[Footnote 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, explains
+  Each back step in the circle."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+Nature is retracted into thought, built again in mind.
+
+    "Man, once descried, imprints for ever
+  His presence on all lifeless things."[D]
+
+[Footnote 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 a kosmos 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 finds
+_itself_.
+
+  "Striving to be man, the worm
+  Mounts through all the spires of form."[A]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 for Browning 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,
+_must_ seek 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 is a 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,--the _prius_ of all things, the
+active energy _in_ all things, and the _reality_ of 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 seem to 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
+conceptions are 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.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+BROWNING'S SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF EVIL.
+
+
+    "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]
+
+[Footnote 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 establishing an 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 in _The 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 more than 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."
+
+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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 learns
+  Because he lives, which is to be a man,
+  Set to instruct himself by his past self."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+             "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]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+It were easy to multiply passages which show that 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 soul
+  There, where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+But as long as he is man, he has
+
+  "Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become."
+
+In _Paracelsus_, _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 process of
+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 is _becoming_ good, 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 spring from 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 is _either_ good or evil, _either_ rational or irrational, _either_
+free 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 express
+  Heart's satisfaction that the Past indeed
+  Is past, gives way before Life's best and last,
+  The all-including Future!"[A]
+
+[Footnote 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 life
+  Did soul stand still therein, forego her strife
+  Through the ambiguous Present to the goal
+  Of some all-reconciling Future?"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 a _moral 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 discovers
+and 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]
+
+[Footnote 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 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 reaction
+against 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 the old 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 means
+  Ever-renewed assurance by defeat
+  That victory is somehow still to reach."[A]
+
+[Footnote 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 effects
+  When exercised on earth's least atom, Son!
+  What was, what is, what may such atom be?
+  No answer!"[B]
+
+[Footnote 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 in _La Saisiaz_, _Ferishtah's Fancies, The Parleyings_, and
+_Asolando_--in all his later and more reflective poems, in fact. It
+must, I think, 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 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]
+
+[Footnote 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
+consciousness that 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 force
+  Actual e'er its own beginning, operative thro' its course,
+  Unaffected by its end."[A]
+
+[Footnote 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 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]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+If there were only they two on earth as tenants, there would be no way
+of deciding between them; for, according to his argument, the truth is
+apparently decided by majority of opinions. Each individual, equipped
+with his own particular kind of senses and reason, gets his own
+particular experience, and draws his own particular conclusions from it.
+If it be asked whether these conclusions are true or not, the only
+answer is that the question is absurd; for, under such conditions, there
+cannot be either truth or error. Every one's opinion is its own
+criterion. Each man is the measure of all things; "His own world for
+every mortal," as the poet puts it.
+
+  "To each mortal peradventure earth becomes a new machine,
+  Pain and pleasure no more tally in our sense than red and green."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+The first result of this subjective view of knowledge is clearly enough
+seen by the poet. He is well aware that his convictions regarding the
+high matters of human destiny are valid only for himself.
+
+            "Only for myself I speak,
+  Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers strong and weak."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+Experience, as he interprets it, that is, present consciousness, "this
+moment's me and mine," is too narrow a basis for any universal or
+objective conclusion. So far as his own inner experience of pain and
+pleasure goes,
+
+  "All--for myself--seems ordered wise and well
+  Inside it,--what reigns outside, who can tell?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+But as to the actual world, he can have no opinion, nor, from the good
+and evil that apparently play around him, can he deduce either
+
+  "Praise or blame of its contriver, shown a niggard or profuse
+  In each good or evil issue."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+The moral government of the world is a subject, regarding which we are
+doomed to absolute ignorance. A theory that it is ruled by the "prince
+of the power of the air" has just as much, and just as little, validity
+as the more ordinary view held by religious people. Who needs be told
+
+            "The space
+  Which yields thee knowledge--do its bounds embrace
+  Well-willing and wise-working, each at height?
+  Enough: beyond thee lies the infinite--
+  Back to thy circumscription!"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+And our ignorance of God, and the world, and ourselves is matched by a
+similar ignorance regarding moral matters.
+
+  "Ignorance overwraps his moral sense,
+  Winds him about, relaxing, as it wraps,
+  So much and no more than lets through perhaps
+  The murmured knowledge--' Ignorance exists.'"[D]
+
+[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]
+
+We cannot be certain even of the distinction and conflict of good and
+evil in the world. They, too, and the apparent choice between them to
+which man is continually constrained, may be mere illusions--phenomena
+of the individual consciousness. What remains, then? Nothing but to
+"wait."
+
+  "Take the joys and bear the sorrows--neither with extreme concern!
+  Living here means nescience simply: 'tis next life that helps to
+        learn."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+It is hardly necessary to enter upon any detailed criticism of such a
+theory of knowledge as this, which is proffered by the poet. It is well
+known by all those who are in some degree acquainted with the history of
+philosophy--and it will be easily seen by all who have any critical
+acumen--that it leads directly into absolute scepticism. And absolute
+scepticism is easily shown to be self-contradictory. For a theory of
+nescience, in condemning all knowledge and the faculty of knowledge,
+condemns itself. If nothing is true, or if nothing is known, then this
+theory itself is not true, or its truth cannot be known. And if this
+theory is true, then nothing is true; for this theory, like all others,
+is the product of a defective intelligence. In whatsoever way the matter
+is put, there is left no standing-ground for the human critic who
+condemns human thought. And he cannot well pretend to a footing in a
+sphere above man's, or below it. There is thus one presupposition which
+every one must make, if he is to propound any doctrine whatsoever, even
+if that doctrine be that no doctrine can be valid; it is the
+presupposition that knowledge is possible, and that truth can be known.
+And this presupposition fills, for modern philosophy, the place of the
+_Cogito ergo sum_ of Descartes. It is the starting-point and criterion
+of all knowledge.
+
+It is, at first sight, a somewhat difficult task to account for the
+fact, that so keen an intellect as the poet's did not perceive the
+conclusion to which his theory of knowledge so directly and necessarily
+leads. It is probable, however, that he never critically examined it,
+but simply accepted it as equivalent to the common doctrine of the
+relativity of knowledge, which, in some form or other, all the schools
+of philosophy adopt. But the main reason will be found to lie in the
+fact that knowledge was not, to Browning, its own criterion or end. The
+primary fact of his philosophy is that human life is a moral process.
+His interest in the evolution of character was his deepest interest, as
+he informs us; he was an ethical teacher rather than a metaphysician. He
+is ever willing to asperse man's intelligence. But that man is a moral
+agent he will in no wise doubt. This is his
+
+            "Solid standing-place amid
+  The wash and welter, whence all doubts are bid
+  Back to the ledge they break against in foam."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+His practical maxim was
+
+  "Wholly distrust thy knowledge, then, and trust
+  As wholly love allied to ignorance!
+  There lies thy truth and safety."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Pillar of Sebzevar_.]
+
+All phenomena must, in some way or other, be reconciled by the poet with
+the fundamental and indubitable fact of the progressive moral life of
+man. For the fundamental presupposition which a man makes, is
+necessarily his criterion of knowledge, and it determines the truth or
+illusoriness of all other opinions whatsoever.
+
+Now, Browning held, not only that no certain knowledge is attainable by
+man, but also that such certainty is incompatible with moral life.
+Absolute knowledge would, he contends, lift man above the need and the
+possibility of making the moral choice, which is our supreme business on
+earth. Man can be good or evil, only on condition of being in absolute
+uncertainty regarding the true meaning of the facts of nature and the
+phenomena of life.
+
+This somewhat strange doctrine finds the most explicit and full
+expression in _La Saisiaz_. "Fancy," amongst the concessions it demands
+from "Reason," claims that man should know--not merely surmise or
+fear--that every action done in this life awaits its proper and
+necessary meed in the next.
+
+                "I also will that man become aware
+  Life has worth incalculable, every moment that he spends
+  So much gain or loss for that next life which on this life depends."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+But Reason refuses the concession, upon the ground that such sure
+knowledge would be destructive of the very distinction between right and
+wrong, which the demand implies. The "promulgation of this decree," by
+Fancy, "makes both good and evil to cease." Prior to it "earth was man's
+probation-place"; but under this decree man is no longer free; for
+certain knowledge makes action necessary.
+
+  "Once lay down the law, with Nature's simple 'Such effects succeed
+  Causes such, and heaven or hell depends upon man's earthly deed
+  Just as surely as depends the straight or else the crooked line
+  On his making point meet point or with or else without incline,'
+  Thenceforth neither good nor evil does man, doing what he must."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_, 195.]
+
+If we presuppose that "man, addressed this mode, be sound and sane" (and
+we must stipulate sanity, if his actions are to be morally judged at
+all)--then a law which binds punishment and reward to action in a
+necessary manner, and is known so to bind them, would "obtain prompt and
+absolute obedience." There are some "edicts, now styled God's own
+nature's," "which to hear means to obey." All the laws relating to the
+preservation of life are of this character. And, if the law--"Would'st
+thou live again, be just"--were in all ways as stringent as the other
+law--
+
+  "Would'st thou live now, regularly draw thy breath!
+  For, suspend the operation, straight law's breach results in death"--[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+then no one would disobey it, nor could. "It is the liberty of doing
+evil that gives the doing good a grace." And that liberty would be taken
+away by complete assurance, that effects follow actions in the moral
+world with the necessity seen in the natural sphere. Since, therefore,
+man is made to grow, and earth is the place wherein he is to pass
+probation and prove his powers, there must remain a certain doubt as to
+the issues of his actions; conviction must not be so strong as to carry
+with it man's whole nature. "The best I both see and praise, the worst I
+follow," is the adage rife in man's mouth regarding his moral conduct.
+But, spite of his seeing and praising,
+
+            "he disbelieves
+  In the heart of him that edict which for truth his head receives."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+He has a dim consciousness of ways whereby he may elude the consequences
+of his wickedness, and of the possibility of making amends to law.
+
+  "And now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin',
+  A certain Bardie's rantin', drinkin',
+  Some luckless hour will send him linkin'
+    To your black pit;
+  But, faith, he'll turn a corner jinkin',
+    And cheat you yet."
+
+The more orthodox and less generous individual is prone to agree, as
+regards himself, with Burns; but, he sees, most probably, that such an
+escape is impossible to others. He has secret solacement in a latent
+belief that he himself is an exception. There will be a special method
+of dealing with him. He is a "chosen sample"; and "God will think twice
+before He damns a man of his quality." It is just because there is such
+doubt as to the universality and necessity of the law which connects
+actions and consequences in the moral sphere, that man's deeds have an
+ethical character; while, to disperse doubt and ignorance by the
+assurance of complete knowledge, would take the good from goodness and
+the ill from evil.
+
+In this ingenious manner, the poet turns the imperfect intellect and
+delusive knowledge of man to a moral use. Ordinarily, the intellectual
+impotence of man is regarded as carrying with it moral incapacity as
+well, and the delusiveness of knowledge is one of the strongest
+arguments for pessimism. To persons pledged to the support of no theory,
+and to those who have the _naivete_, so hard to maintain side by side
+with strong doctrinal convictions, it seems amongst the worst of evils
+that man should be endowed with fallacious faculties, and cursed with a
+futile desire for true knowledge which is so strong, that it cannot be
+quenched even in those who believe that truth can never be attained. It
+is the very best men of the world who cry
+
+            "Oh, this false for real,
+  This emptiness which feigns solidity,--
+  Ever some grey that's white, and dun that's black,--
+  When shall we rest upon the thing itself,
+  Not on its semblance? Soul--too weak, forsooth,
+  To cope with fact--wants fiction everywhere!
+  Mine tires of falsehood: truth at any cost!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_.]
+
+The poet himself was burdened in no small degree with this vain desire
+for knowing the truth; and he recognized, too, that he was placed in a
+world which seems both real and beautiful, and so well worth knowing.
+Yet, it is this very failure of knowledge--a failure which, be it
+remembered, is complete and absolute, because, as he thinks, all facts
+must turn into phantoms by mere contact with our "relative
+intelligences,"--which he constitutes into the basis of his optimistic
+faith.
+
+So high is the dignity and worth of the moral life to Browning, that no
+sacrifice is too great to secure it. And, indeed, if it were once
+clearly recognized that there is no good thing but goodness, nothing of
+supreme worth, except the realization of a loving will, then doubt,
+ignorance, and every other form of apparent evil would be fully
+justified--provided they were conditions whereby this highest good is
+attained. And, to Browning, ignorance was one of the conditions. And
+consequently, the dread pause in the music which agnosticism brings, is
+only "silence implying sound"; and the vain cry for truth, arising from
+the heart of the earth's best men, is only a discord moving towards
+resolution into a more rapturous harmony.
+
+I do not stay here to inquire whether sure knowledge would really have
+this disastrous effect of destroying morality, or whether its failure
+does not rather imply the impossibility of a moral life. I return to the
+question asked at the beginning of this chapter, and which it is now
+possible to answer. That question was: How does Browning reconcile his
+hypothesis of universal love with the natural and moral evils existing
+in the world?
+
+His answer is quite explicit. The poet solves the problem by casting
+doubt upon the facts which threaten his hypothesis. He reduces them into
+phenomena, in the sense of phantoms begotten by the human intellect upon
+unknown and unknowable realities.
+
+  "Thus much at least is clearly understood--
+  Of power does Man possess no particle:
+  Of knowledge--just so much as shows that still
+  It ends in ignorance on every side."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+He is aware of the phenomena of his own consciousness,
+
+  "My soul, and my soul's home,
+  This body ";
+
+but he knows not whether "things outside are fact or feigning." And he
+heeds little, for in either case they
+
+            "Teach
+  What good is and what evil,--just the same,
+  Be feigning or be fact the teacher."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+It is the mixture, or rather the apparent mixture, of shade and light in
+life, the conflict of seeming good with seeming evil in the world, that
+constitutes the world a probation-place. It is a kind of moral
+gymnasium, crowded with phantoms, wherein by exercise man makes moral
+muscle. And the vigour of the athlete's struggle is not in the least
+abated by the consciousness that all he deals with are phantoms.
+
+ "I have lived, then, done and suffered, loved and hated, learnt and taught
+  This--there is no reconciling wisdom with a world distraught,
+  Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the aim,
+  If--(to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the same!)--
+  If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil's place,
+  And life, time--with all their chances, changes,--just probation-space,
+  Mine, for me."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+And the world would not be such a probation-space did we once penetrate
+into its inmost secret, and know its phenomena as veritably either good
+or evil. There is the need of playing something perilously like a trick
+on the human intellect if man is to strive and grow.
+
+            "Here and there a touch
+  Taught me, betimes, the artifice of things--
+  That all about, external to myself,
+  Was meant to be suspected,--not revealed
+  Demonstrably a cheat--but half seen through."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Bean-Stripe._]
+
+To know objects as they veritably are, might reveal all things as locked
+together in a scheme of universal good, so that "white would rule
+unchecked along the line." But this would be the greatest of disasters;
+for, as moral agents, we cannot do without
+
+            "the constant shade
+  Cast on life's shine,--the tremor that intrudes
+  When firmest seems my faith in white."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+The intellectual insight that would penetrate through the vari-colour of
+events into the actual presence of the incandescent white of love, which
+glows, as hope tells us, in all things, would stultify itself, and lose
+its knowledge even of the good.
+
+                                "Think!
+  Could I see plain, be somehow certified
+  All was illusion--evil far and wide
+  Was good disguised,--why, out with one huge wipe
+  Goes knowledge from me. Type needs antitype:
+  As night needs day, as shine needs shade, so good
+  Needs evil: how were pity understood
+  Unless by pain? "[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+Good and evil are relative to each other, and each is known only through
+its contrary.
+
+                                    "For me
+  (Patience, beseech you!) Knowledge can but be
+  Of good by knowledge of good's opposite--
+  Evil."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+The extinction of one of the terms would be the extinction of the other.
+And, in a similar manner, clear knowledge that evil is illusion and that
+all things have their place in an infinite divine order would paralyze
+all moral effort, as well as stultify itself.
+
+            "Make evident that pain
+  Permissibly masks pleasure--you abstain
+  From out-stretch of the finger-tip that saves
+  A drowning fly."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+Certainty on either side, either that evil is evil for evermore,
+irredeemable and absolute, a drench of utter dark not illuminable by
+white; or that it is but mere show and semblance, which the good takes
+upon itself, would alike be ruinous to man. For both alternatives would
+render all striving folly. The right attitude for man is that of
+ignorance, complete uncertainty, the equipoise of conflicting
+alternatives. He must take his stand on the contradiction. Hope he may
+have that all things work together for good. It is right that he should
+nourish the faith that the antagonism of evil with good in the world is
+only an illusion; but that faith must stop short of the complete
+conviction that knowledge would bring. When, therefore, the hypothesis
+of universal love is confronted with the evils of life, and we ask how
+it can be maintained in the face of the manifold miseries everywhere
+apparent, the poet answers, "You do not know, and cannot know, whether
+they are evils or not. Your knowledge remains at the surface of things.
+You cannot fit them into their true place, or pronounce upon their true
+purpose and character; for you see only a small arc of the complete
+circle of being. Wait till you see more, and, in the meantime, hope!"
+
+  "Why faith--but to lift the load,
+    To leaven the lump, where lies
+  Mind prostrate through knowledge owed
+    To the loveless Power it tries
+  To withstand, how vain!"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Reverie_--_Asolando_.]
+
+And, if we reply in turn, that this necessary ignorance leaves as little
+room for his scheme of love as it does for its opposite, he again
+answers: "Not so! I appeal from the intellect, which is detected as
+incompetent, to the higher court of the moral consciousness. And there I
+find the ignorance to be justified: for it is the instrument of a higher
+purpose, a means whereby what is best is gained, namely, _Love_."
+
+    "My curls were crowned
+  In youth with knowledge,--off, alas, crown slipped
+  Next moment, pushed by better knowledge still
+  Which nowise proved more constant; gain, to-day,
+  Was toppling loss to-morrow, lay at last
+  --Knowledge, the golden?--lacquered ignorance!
+  As gain--mistrust it! Not as means to gain:
+  Lacquer we learn by: ...
+  The prize is in the process: knowledge means
+  Ever-renewed assurance by defeat
+  That victory is somehow still to reach,
+  But love is victory, the prize itself:
+  Love--trust to! Be rewarded for the trust
+  In trust's mere act."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]
+
+Now, in order to complete our examination of this theory, we must follow
+the poet in his attempt to escape from the testimony of the intellect to
+that of the heart. In order to make the most of the latter, we find that
+Browning, especially in his last work, tends to withdraw his accusation
+of utter incompetence on the part of the intellect. He only tends to do
+so, it is true. He is tolerably consistent in asserting that we know our
+own emotions and the phenomena of our own consciousness; but he is not
+consistent in his account of our knowledge, or ignorance, of external
+things. On the whole, he asserts that we know nothing of them. But in
+_Asolando_ he seems to imply that the evidence of a loveless power in
+the world, permitting evil, is irresistible.[A] To say the least, the
+testimony of the intellect, such as it is, is more clear and convincing
+with regard to evil than it is with regard to good. Within the sphere of
+phenomena, to which the intellect is confined, there seems to be,
+instead of a benevolent purpose, a world ruled by a power indifferent to
+the triumph of evil over good, and either "loveless" or unintelligent.
+
+[Footnote A: _See passage just quoted._]
+
+            "Life, from birth to death,
+  Means--either looking back on harm escaped,
+  Or looking forward to that harm's return
+  With tenfold power of harming."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Bean-Stripe._]
+
+And it is not possible for man to contravene this evidence of faults and
+omissions: for, in doing so, he would remove the facts in reaction
+against which his moral nature becomes active. What proof is there,
+then, that the universal love is no mere dream? None! from the side of
+the intellect, answers the poet. Man, who has the will to remove the
+ills of life,
+
+  "Stop change, avert decay,
+  Fix life fast, banish death,"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Reverie_--_Asolando_.]
+
+has not the power to effect his will; while the Power, whose
+limitlessness he recognizes everywhere around him, merely maintains the
+world in its remorseless course, and puts forth no helping hand when
+good is prone and evil triumphant. "God does nothing."
+
+              "'No sign,'--groaned he,--
+  No stirring of God's finger to denote
+  He wills that right should have supremacy
+  On earth, not wrong! How helpful could we quote
+  But one poor instance when He interposed
+  Promptly and surely and beyond mistake
+  Between oppression and its victim, closed
+  Accounts with sin for once, and bade us wake
+  From our long dream that justice bears no sword,
+  Or else forgets whereto its sharpness serves.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville._]
+
+But he tells us in his later poems, that there is no answer vouchsafed
+to man's cry to the Power, that it should reveal
+
+       "What heals all harm,
+  Nay, hinders the harm at first,
+  Saves earth."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Reverie--Asolando._]
+
+And yet, so far as man can see, there were no bar to the remedy, if
+"God's all-mercy" did really "mate His all-potency."
+
+  "How easy it seems,--to sense
+    Like man's--if somehow met
+  Power with its match--immense
+    Love, limitless, unbeset
+  By hindrance on every side!"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+But that love nowhere makes itself evident. "Power," we recognize,
+
+                 "finds nought too hard,
+    Fulfilling itself all ways,
+  Unchecked, unchanged; while barred,
+    Baffled, what good began
+  Ends evil on every side."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Reverie--Asolando_.]
+
+Thus, the conclusion to which knowledge inevitably leads us is that mere
+power rules.
+
+  "No more than the passive clay
+    Disputes the potter's act,
+  Could the whelmed mind disobey
+    Knowledge, the cataract."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+But if the intellect is thus overwhelmed, so as to be almost passive to
+the pessimistic conclusion borne in upon it by "resistless fact," the
+heart of man is made of another mould. It revolts against the conclusion
+of the intellect, and climbs
+
+  "Through turbidity all between,
+    From the known to the unknown here,
+  Heaven's 'Shall be,' from earth's 'Has been.'"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+It grasps a fact beyond the reach of knowledge, namely, the possibility,
+or even the certainty, that "power is love." At present there is no
+substantiating by knowledge the testimony of the heart; and man has no
+better anchorage for his optimism than faith. But the closer view will
+come, when even our life on earth will be seen to have within it the
+working of love, no less manifest than that of power.
+
+  "When see? When there dawns a day,
+    If not on the homely earth,
+  Then, yonder, worlds away,
+    Where the strange and new have birth,
+  And Power comes full in play."[D]
+
+[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]
+
+Now, what is this evidence of the heart, which is sufficiently cogent
+and valid to counterpoise that of the mind; and which gives to "faith,"
+or "hope," a firm foothold in the very face of the opposing "resistless"
+testimony of knowledge?
+
+Within our experience, to which the poet knows we are entirely confined,
+there is a fact, the significance of which we have not as yet examined.
+For, plain and irresistible as is the evidence of evil, so plain and
+constant is man's recognition of it as evil, and his desire to annul it.
+If man's mind is made to acknowledge evil, his moral nature is made so
+as to revolt against it.
+
+    "Man's heart is _made_ to judge
+  Pain deserved nowhere by the common flesh
+  Our birth-right--bad and good deserve alike
+  No pain, to human apprehension."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Mihrab Shah_--_Ferishtah's Fancies_.]
+
+Owing to the limitation of our intelligence, we cannot deny but that
+
+            "In the eye of God
+  Pain may have purpose and be justified."
+
+But whether it has its purpose for the supreme intelligence or not,
+
+  "Man's sense avails to only see, in pain,
+  A hateful chance no man but would avert
+  Or, failing, needs must pity."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+Man must condemn evil, he cannot acquiesce in its permanence, but is,
+spite of his consciousness of ignorance and powerlessness, roused into
+constant revolt against it.
+
+  "True, he makes nothing, understands no whit:
+  Had the initiator-spasm seen fit
+  Thus doubly to endow him, none the worse
+  And much the better were the universe.
+  What does Man see or feel or apprehend
+  Here, there, and everywhere, but faults to mend,
+  Omissions to supply,--one wide disease
+  Of things that are, which Man at once would ease
+  Had will but power and knowledge?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+But the moral worth of man does not suffer the least detraction from his
+inability to effect his benevolent purpose. "Things must take will for
+deed," as Browning tells us. David is not at all distressed by the
+consciousness of his weakness.
+
+            "Why is it I dare
+  Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?
+  This;--'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Saul_.]
+
+The fact that "his wishes fall through," that he cannot, although
+willing, help Saul, "grow poor to enrich him, fill up his life by
+starving his own," does not prevent him from regarding his "service as
+perfect." The will was there, although it lacked power to effect itself.
+The moral worth of an action is complete, if it is willed; and it is
+nowise affected by its outer consequences, as both Browning and Kant
+teach. The loving will, the inner act of loving, though it can bear no
+outward fruit, being debarred by outward impediment, is still a complete
+and highest good.
+
+  "But Love is victory, the prize itself:
+  Love--trust to! Be rewarded for the trust
+  In trust's mere act. In love success is sure,
+  Attainment--no delusion, whatso'er
+  The prize be: apprehended as a prize,
+  A prize it is."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]
+
+Whatever the evil in the world and the impotence of man, his duty and
+his dignity in willing to perform it, are ever the same. Though God
+neglect the world
+
+            "Man's part
+  Is plain--to send love forth,--astray, perhaps:
+  No matter, he has done his part."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Sun_.]
+
+Now, this fact of inner experience, which the poet thinks
+incontrovertible--the fact that man, every man, necessarily regards
+evil, whether natural or moral, as something to be annulled, were it
+only possible--is an immediate proof of the indwelling of that which is
+highest in man. On this basis, Browning is able to re-establish the
+optimism which, from the side of knowledge, he had utterly abandoned.
+
+The very fact that the world is condemned by man is proof that there
+dwells in man something better than the world, whose evidence the
+pessimist himself cannot escape. All is not wrong, as long as wrong
+_seems_ wrong. The pessimist, in condemning the world, must except
+himself. In his very charge against God of having made man in His anger,
+there lies a contradiction; for he himself fronts and defies the
+outrage. There is no depth of despair which this good cannot illumine
+with joyous light, for the despair is itself the reflex of the good.
+
+            "Were earth and all it holds illusions mere,
+  Only a machine for teaching love and hate, and hope and fear,
+
+            "If this life's conception new life fail to realize--
+  Though earth burst and proved a bubble glassing hues of hell, one huge
+  Reflex of the devil's doings--God's work by no subterfuge,"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+still, good is good, and love is its own exceeding great reward. Alone,
+in a world abandoned to chaos and infinite night, man is still not
+without God, if he loves. In virtue of his love, he himself would be
+crowned as God, as the poet often argues, were there no higher love
+elsewhere.
+
+            "If he believes
+  Might can exist with neither will nor love,
+  In God's case--what he names now Nature's Law--
+  While in himself he recognizes love
+  No less than might and will,"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Death in the Desert_.]
+
+man takes, and rightly takes, the title of being "First, last, and best
+of things."
+
+  "Since if man prove the sole existent thing
+  Where these combine, whatever their degree,
+  However weak the might or will or love,
+  So they be found there, put in evidence--
+  He is as surely higher in the scale
+  Than any might with neither love nor will,
+  As life, apparent in the poorest midge,
+  Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas' self,
+  Given to the nobler midge for resting-place!
+  Thus, man proves best and highest--God, in fine."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+To any one capable of spiritually discerning things, there can be no
+difficulty in regarding goodness, however limited and mated with
+weakness, as infinitely above all natural power. Divinity will be known
+to consist, not in any senseless might, however majestic and miraculous,
+but in moral or spiritual perfection. If God were indifferent to the
+evil of the world, acquiesced in it without reason, and let it ripen
+into all manner of wretchedness, then man, in condemning the world,
+though without power to remove the least of its miseries, would be
+higher than God. But we have still to account for the possibility of
+man's assuming an attitude implied in the consciousness that, while he
+is without power, God is without pity, and in the despair which springs
+from his hate of evil. How comes it that human nature rises above its
+origin, and is able--nay, obliged--to condemn the evil which God
+permits? Is man finite in power, a mere implement of a mocking will so
+far as knowledge goes, the plaything of remorseless forces, and yet
+author and first source of something in himself which invests him with a
+dignity that God Himself cannot share? Is the moral consciousness which,
+by its very nature, must bear witness against the Power, although it
+cannot arrest its pitiless course, or remove the least evil,
+
+  "Man's own work, his birth of heart and brain,
+  His native grace, no alien gift at all?"
+
+We are thus caught between the horns of a final dilemma. Either the pity
+and love, which make man revolt against all suffering, are man's own
+creation; or else God, who made man's heart to love, has given to man
+something higher than He owns Himself. But both of these alternatives
+are impossible.
+
+  "Here's the touch that breaks the bubble."
+
+The first alternative is impossible, because man is by definition
+powerless, a mere link in the endless chain of causes, incapable of
+changing the least part of the scheme of things which he condemns, and
+therefore much more unable to initiate, or to bring into a loveless
+world abandoned to blind power, the noble might of love.
+
+            "Will of man create?
+  No more than this my hand, which strewed the beans
+  Produced them also from its finger-tips."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_.]
+
+All that man is and has is a mere loan; his love no less than his finite
+intellect and limited power, has had its origin elsewhere.
+
+  "Back goes creation to its source, source prime
+  And ultimate, the single and the sole."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+The argument ends by bringing us back
+
+    "To the starting-point,--
+  Man's impotency, God's omnipotence,
+  These stop my answer."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_.]
+
+I shall not pause at present to examine the value of this new form of
+the old argument, "_Ex contingentia mundi_." But I may point out in
+passing, that the reference of human love to a divine creative source is
+accomplished by means of the idea of cause, one of the categories of the
+thought which Browning has aspersed. And it is a little difficult to
+show why, if we are constrained to doubt our thought, when by the aid of
+causality it establishes a connection between finite and finite, we
+should regard it as worthy of trust when it connects the finite and the
+infinite. In fact, it is all too evident that the poet assumes or denies
+the possibility of knowledge, according as it helps or hinders his
+ethical doctrine.
+
+But, if we grant the ascent from the finite to the infinite and regard
+man's love as a divine gift--which it may well be although the poet's
+argument is invalid--then a new light is thrown upon the being who gave
+man this power to love. The "necessity," "the mere power," which alone
+could be discerned by observation of the irresistible movement of the
+world's events, acquires a new character. Prior to this discovery of
+love in man as the work of God--
+
+  "Head praises, but heart refrains
+    From loving's acknowledgment.
+  Whole losses outweigh half-gains:
+    Earth's good is with evil blent:
+  Good struggles but evil reigns."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Reverie_--_Asolando_.]
+
+But love in man is a suggestion of a love without; a proof, in fact,
+that God is love, for man's love is God's love in man. The source of the
+pity that man shows, and of the apparent evils in the world which excite
+it, is the same. The power which called man into being, itself rises up
+in man against the wrongs in the world. The voice of the moral
+consciousness, approving the good, condemning evil, and striving to
+annul it, is the voice of God, and has, therefore, supreme authority. We
+do wrong, therefore, in thinking that it is the weakness of man which is
+matched against the might of evil in the world, and that we are fighting
+a losing battle. It is an incomplete, abstract, untrue view of the facts
+of life which puts God as irresistible Power in the outer world, and
+forgets that the same irresistible Power works, under the higher form of
+love, in the human heart.
+
+  "Is not God now i' the world His power first made?
+  Is not His love at issue still with sin,
+  Visibly when a wrong is done on earth?
+  Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around?"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+In this way, therefore, the poet argues back from the moral
+consciousness of man to the goodness of God. And he finds the ultimate
+proof of this goodness in the very pessimism and scepticism and despair,
+that come with the view of the apparently infinite waste in the world
+and the endless miseries of humanity. The source of this despair,
+namely, the recognition of evil and wrong, is just the Godhood in man.
+There is no way of accounting for the fact that "Man hates what is and
+loves what should be," except by "blending the quality of man with the
+quality of God." And "the quality of God" is the fundamental fact in
+man's history. Love is the last reality the poet always reaches. Beneath
+the pessimism is love: without love of the good there were no
+recognition of evil, no condemnation of it, and no despair.
+
+But the difficulty still remains as to the permission of evil, even
+though it should prove in the end to be merely apparent.
+
+  "Wherefore should any evil hap to man--
+  From ache of flesh to agony of soul--
+  Since God's All-mercy mates All-potency?
+  Nay, why permits He evil to Himself--
+  Man's sin, accounted such? Suppose a world
+  Purged of all pain, with fit inhabitant--
+  Man pure of evil in thought, word, and deed--
+  Were it not well? Then, wherefore otherwise?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Mihrab Shah_.]
+
+The poet finds an answer to this difficulty in the very nature of moral
+goodness, which, as we have seen, he regards as a progressive
+realization of an infinitely high ideal. The demand for a world purged
+of all pain and sin is really, he teaches us, a demand for a sphere
+where
+
+            "Time brings
+  No hope, no fear: as to-day, shall be
+  To-morrow: advance or retreat need we
+  At our stand-still through eternity?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Rephan_--_Asolando_.]
+
+What were there to "bless or curse, in such a uniform universe,"
+
+            "Where weak and strong,
+  The wise and the foolish, right and wrong,
+  Are merged alike in a neutral Best."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+There is a better way of life, thinks Browning, than such a state of
+stagnation.
+
+  "Why should I speak? You divine the test.
+  When the trouble grew in my pregnant breast
+  A voice said, So would'st thou strive, not rest,
+
+  "Burn and not smoulder, win by worth,
+  Not rest content with a wealth that's dearth,
+  Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Earth."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]
+
+The discontent of man, the consciousness of sin, evil, pain, is a symbol
+of promotion. The peace of the state of nature has been broken for him;
+and, although the first consequence be
+
+  "Brow-furrowed old age, youth's hollow cheek,--
+  Diseased in the body, sick in soul,
+  Pinched poverty, satiate wealth,--your whole
+  Array of despairs,"[D]
+
+[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]
+
+still, without them, the best is impossible. They are the conditions of
+the moral life, which is essentially progressive. They are the
+consequences of the fact that man has been "startled up"
+
+            "by an Infinite
+  Discovered above and below me--height
+  And depth alike to attract my flight,
+
+  "Repel my descent: by hate taught love.
+  Oh, gain were indeed to see above
+  Supremacy ever--to move, remove,
+
+  "Not reach--aspire yet never attain
+  To the object aimed at."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Rephan_--_Asolando_.]
+
+He who places rest above effort, Rephan above the earth, places a
+natural good above a moral good, stagnation above progress. The demand
+for the absolute extinction of evil betrays ignorance of the nature of
+the highest good. For right and wrong are relative. "Type need
+antitype." The fact that goodness is best, and that goodness is not a
+stagnant state but a progress, a gradual realization, though never
+complete, of an infinite ideal, of the perfection of God by a finite
+being, necessarily implies the consciousness of sin and evil. As a moral
+agent man must set what should be above what is. If he is to aspire and
+attain, the actual present must seem to him inadequate, imperfect,
+wrong, a state to be abolished in favour of a better. And therefore it
+follows that
+
+            "Though wrong were right
+  Could we but know--still wrong must needs seem wrong
+  To do right's service, prove men weak or strong,
+  Choosers of evil or good."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+The apparent existence of evil is the condition of goodness. And yet it
+must only be apparent. For if evil be regarded as veritably evil, it
+must remain so for all that man can do; he cannot annihilate any fact
+nor change its nature, and all effort would, therefore, be futile. And,
+on the other hand, if evil were known as unreal, then there were no need
+of moral effort, no quarrel with the present and therefore no
+aspiration, and no achievement. That which is man's highest and
+best,--namely, a moral life which is a progress--would thus be
+impossible, and his existence would be bereft of all meaning and
+purpose. And if the highest is impossible then all is wrong, "the goal
+being a ruin, so is all the rest."
+
+The hypothesis of the moral life as progressive is essential to
+Browning.
+
+But if this hypothesis be granted, then all difficulties disappear. The
+conception of the endless acquirement of goodness at once postulates the
+consciousness of evil, and the consciousness of it as existing in order
+to be overcome. Hence the consciousness of it as illusion comes nearest
+to the truth. And such a conception is essentially implied by the idea
+of morality. To speculative reason, however, it is impossible, as the
+poet believes, that evil should thus be at the same time regarded as
+both real and unreal. Knowledge leads to despair on every side; for,
+whether it takes the evil in the world as seeming or actual, it
+stultifies effort, and proves that moral progress, which is best of all
+things, is impossible. But the moral consciousness derives its vitality
+from this contradiction. It is the meeting-point and conflict of actual
+and ideal; and its testimony is indisputable, however inconsistent it
+may be with that of knowledge. Acknowledging absolute ignorance of the
+outer world, the poet has still a retreat within himself, safe from all
+doubt. He has in his own inner experience irrefragable proof
+
+    "How things outside, fact or feigning, teach
+  What good is and what evil--just the same,
+  Be feigning or be fact the teacher."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]
+
+The consciousness of being taught goodness by interaction with the
+outside unknown is sufficient; it is "a point of vantage" whence he will
+not be moved by any contradictions that the intellect may conjure up
+against it. And this process of learning goodness, this gradual
+realization by man of an ideal infinitely high and absolute in worth,
+throws back a light which illumines all the pain and strife and despair,
+and shows them all to be steps in the endless "love-way." The
+consciousness of evil is thus at once the effect and the condition of
+goodness. The unrealized, though ever-realizing good, which brings
+despair, is the best fact in man's history; and it should rightly bring,
+not despair, but endless joy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A CRITICISM OF BROWNING'S VIEW OF THE FAILURE OF KNOWLEDGE.
+
+
+    "Der Mensch, da er Geist ist, darf und soll sich selbst
+    des hoechsten wuerdig achten, von der Groesse und Macht
+    seines Geistes kann er nicht gross genug denken; und mit
+    diesem Glauben wird nichts so sproede und hart seyn, das
+    sich ihm nicht eroeffnete. Das zuerst verborgene und
+    verschlossene Wesen des Universums hat keine Kraft, die
+    dem Muthe des Erkennens Widerstand leisten koennte: es muss
+    sich vor ihm aufthun, und seinen Reichthum und seine
+    Tiefen ihm vor Augen legen und zum Genusse geben."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Hegel's Inaugural Address at Heidelberg_.]
+
+Before entering upon a criticism of Browning's theory, as represented in
+the last chapter, it may be well to give a brief summary of it.
+
+The most interesting feature of Browning's proof of his optimistic faith
+is his appeal from the intelligence to the moral consciousness. To show
+theoretically that evil is merely phenomenal is, in his view, both
+impossible and undesirable. It is impossible, because the human
+intellect is incapable of knowing anything as it really is, or of
+pronouncing upon the ultimate nature of any phenomenon. It is
+undesirable, because a theoretical proof of the evanescence of evil
+would itself give rise to the greatest of all evils. The best thing in
+the world is moral character. Man exists in order to grow better, and
+the world exists in order to help him. But moral growth is possible only
+through conflict against evil, or what seems to be evil; hence, to
+disprove the existence of evil would be to take away the possibility of
+learning goodness, to stultify all human effort, and to deprive the
+world of its meaning.
+
+But, if an optimistic doctrine cannot be reached by way of speculative
+thought, if the intellect of man cannot see the good in things evil, his
+moral consciousness guarantees that all is for the best, and that "the
+good is all in all." For, in distinguishing between good and evil, the
+moral consciousness sets up an ideal over against the actual. It
+conceives of a scheme of goodness which is not realized in the world,
+and it condemns the world as it is. Man, as moral being, is so
+constituted that he cannot but regard the evil in the world as something
+to be annulled. If he had only the power, there would be no pain, no
+sorrow, no weakness, no failure, no death. Is man, then, better than the
+Power which made the world and let woe gain entrance into it? No!
+answers the poet; for man himself is part of that world and the product
+of that Power. The Power that made the world also made the moral
+consciousness which condemns the world; if it is the source of the evil
+in the world, it is also the source of that love in man, which, by
+self-expenditure, seeks to remedy it. If the external world is merely an
+expression of a remorseless Power, whence comes the love which is the
+principle of the moral life in man? The same Power brings the antidote
+as well as the bane. And, further, the bane exists for the sake of the
+antidote, the wrong for the sake of the remedy. The evil in the world is
+means to a higher good, and the only means possible; for it calls into
+activity the divine element in man, and thereby contributes to its
+realization in his character. It gives the necessary opportunity for the
+exercise of love.
+
+Hence, evil cannot be regarded as ultimately real. It is real only as a
+stage in growth, as means to an end; and the means necessarily perishes,
+or is absorbed in, the attainment of the end. It has no significance
+except by reference to that end. From this point of view, evil is the
+resistance which makes progress possible, the negative which gives
+meaning to the positive, the darkness that makes day beautiful. This
+must not, however, be taken to mean that evil is nothing. It is
+resistance; it is negative; it does oppose the good; although its
+opposition is finally overcome. If it did not, if evil were unreal,
+there would be no possibility of calling forth the moral potency of man,
+and the moral life would be a figment. But these two conditions of the
+moral life--on the one hand, that the evil of the world must be capable
+of being overcome and is there for the purpose of being overcome, and
+that it is unreal except as a means to the good; and, on the other hand,
+that evil must be actually opposed to the good, if the good is to have
+any meaning,--cannot, Browning thinks, be reconciled with each other. It
+is manifest that the intellect of man cannot, at the same time, regard
+evil as both real and unreal. It must assert the one and deny the other;
+or else we must regard its testimony as altogether untrustworthy. But
+the first alternative is destructive of the moral consciousness. Moral
+life is alike impossible whether we deny or assert the real existence of
+evil. The latter alternative stultifies knowledge, and leaves all the
+deeper concerns of life--the existence of good and evil, the reality of
+the distinction between them, the existence of God, the moral governance
+of the world, the destiny of man--in a state of absolute uncertainty. We
+must reject the testimony either of the heart or of the head.
+
+Browning, as we have seen, unhesitatingly adopts the latter alternative.
+He remains loyal to the deliverances of his moral consciousness and
+accepts as equally valid, beliefs which the intellect finds to be
+self-contradictory: holding that knowledge on such matters is
+impossible. And he rejects this knowledge, not only because our thoughts
+are self-contradictory in themselves, but because the failure of a
+speculative solution of these problems is necessary to morality. Clear,
+convincing, demonstrative knowledge would destroy morality; and the fact
+that the power to attain such knowledge has been withheld from us is to
+be regarded rather as an indication of the beneficence of God, who has
+not held even ignorance to be too great a price for man to pay for
+goodness.
+
+Knowledge is not the fit atmosphere for morality. It is faith and not
+reason, hope and trust but not certainty, that lend vigour to the good
+life. We may believe, and rejoice in the belief, that the absolute good
+is fulfilling itself in all things, and that even the miseries of life
+are really its refracted rays--the light that gains in splendour by
+being broken. But we must not, and, indeed, cannot ascend from faith to
+knowledge. The heart may trust, and must trust, if it faithfully listens
+to its own natural voice; but reason must not demonstrate. Ignorance on
+the side of intellect, faith on the side of the emotions; distrust of
+knowledge, absolute confidence in love; such is the condition of man's
+highest welfare: it is only thus that the purpose of his life, and of
+the world which is his instrument, can be achieved.
+
+No final estimate of the value of this theory of morals and religion can
+be made, without examining its philosophical presuppositions. Nor is
+such an examination in any way unfair; for it is obvious that Browning
+explicitly offers us a philosophical doctrine. He appeals to argument
+and not to artistic intuition; he offers a definite theory to which he
+claims attention, not on account of any poetic beauty that may lie
+within it, but on the ground that it is a true exposition of the moral
+nature of man. Kant's _Metaphysic of Ethics_ is not more metaphysical in
+intention than the poet's later utterances on the problems of morality.
+In _La Saisiaz_, in _Ferishtah's Fancies_, in the _Parleyings_, and,
+though less explicitly, in _Asolando_, _Fifine at the Fair_, and _Red
+Cotton Nightcap Country_, Browning definitely states, and endeavours to
+demonstrate a theory of knowledge, a theory of the relation of knowledge
+to morality, and a theory of the nature of evil; and he discusses the
+arguments for the immortality of the soul. In these poems his artistic
+instinct avails him, not as in his earlier ones, for the discovery of
+truth by way of intuition, but for the adornment of doctrines already
+derived from a metaphysical repository. His art is no longer free, no
+longer its own end, but coerced into an alien service. It has become
+illustrative and argumentative, and in being made to subserve
+speculative purposes, it has ceased to be creative. Browning has
+appealed to philosophy, and philosophy must try his cause.
+
+Such, then, is Browning's theory; and I need make no further apology for
+discussing at some length the validity of the division which it involves
+between the intellectual and the moral life of man. Is it possible to
+combine the weakness of man's intelligence with the strength of his
+moral and religious life, and to find in the former the condition of the
+latter? Does human knowledge fail, as the poet considers it to fail? Is
+the intelligence of man absolutely incapable of arriving at knowledge of
+things as they are? If it does, if man cannot know the truth, can he
+attain goodness? These are the questions that must now be answered.
+
+It is one of the characteristics of recent thought that it distrusts its
+own activity: the ancient philosophical "Scepticism" has been revived
+and strengthened. Side by side with the sense of the triumphant progress
+of natural science, there is a conviction, shared even by scientific
+investigators themselves, as well as by religious teachers and by many
+students of philosophy, that our knowledge has only limited and relative
+value, and that it always stops short of the true nature of things. The
+reason of this general conviction lies in the fact that thought has
+become aware of its own activity; men realize more clearly than they did
+in former times that the apparent constitution of things depends
+directly on the character of the intelligence which apprehends them.
+
+This relativity of things to thought has, not unnaturally, suggested the
+idea that the objects of our knowledge are different from objects as
+they are. "That the real nature of things is very different from what we
+make of them, that thought and thing are divorced, that there is a
+fundamental antithesis between them," is, as Hegel said, "the hinge on
+which modern philosophy turns." Educated opinion in our day has lost its
+naive trust in itself. "The natural belief of man, it is true, ever
+gives the lie" to the doctrine that we do not know things. "In common
+life," adds Hegel, "we reflect without particularly noting that this is
+the process of arriving at the truth, and we think without hesitation
+and in the firm belief that thought coincides with things."[A] But, as
+soon as attention is directed to the process of thinking, and to the way
+in which the process affects our consciousness of the object, it is at
+once concluded that thought will never reach reality, that things are
+not given to us as they are, but distorted by the medium of sense and
+our intelligence, through which they pass. The doctrine of the
+relativity of knowledge is thus very generally regarded as equivalent to
+the doctrine that there is no true knowledge whatsoever. We know only
+phenomena, or appearances; and it is these, and not veritable facts,
+that we systematize into sciences. "We can arrange the appearances--the
+shadows of our cave--and that, for the practical purposes of the cave,
+is all that we require."[B] Not even "earth's least atom" can ever be
+known to us as it really is; it is for us, at the best,
+
+[Footnote A: Wallace's _Translation of Hegel's Logic_, p. 36.]
+
+[Footnote B: Caird's _Comte_.]
+
+  "An atom with some certain properties
+  Known about, thought of as occasion needs."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _A Bean-Stripe_.]
+
+In this general distrust of knowledge, however, there are, as might be
+expected, many different degrees. Its origin in modern times was, no
+doubt, the doctrine of Kant. "This divorce of thing and thought," says
+Hegel, "is mainly the work of the critical philosophy and runs counter
+to the conviction of all previous ages." And the completeness of the
+divorce corresponds, with tolerable accuracy, to the degree in which the
+critical philosophy has been understood; for Kant's writings, like those
+of all great thinkers, are capable of many interpretations, varying in
+depth with the intelligence of the interpreters.
+
+The most common and general form of this view of the limitation of the
+human intelligence is that which places the objects of religious faith
+beyond the reach of human knowledge. We find traces of it in much of the
+popular theology of our day. The great facts of religion are often
+spoken of as lying in an extra-natural sphere, beyond experience, into
+which men cannot enter by the native right of reason. It is asserted
+that the finite cannot know the infinite, that the nature of God is
+unknowable--except by means of a supernatural interference, which gives
+to men a new power of spiritual discernment, and "reveals" to them
+things which are "above reason," although not contrary to it. The
+theologian often shields certain of his doctrines from criticism, on the
+ground, as he contends, that there are facts which we must believe, but
+which it would be presumptuous for us to pretend to understand or to
+demonstrate. They are the proper objects of "faith."
+
+But this view of the weakness of the intelligence when applied to
+supersensuous facts, is held along with an undisturbed conviction of the
+validity of our knowledge of ordinary objects. It is believed, in a
+word, that there are two kinds of realities,--natural and supernatural;
+and that the former is knowable and the latter not.
+
+It requires, however, no great degree of intellectual acumen to discover
+that this denial of the validity of our knowledge of these matters
+involves its denial in all its applications. The ordinary knowledge of
+natural objects, which we begin by regarding as valid, or, rather, whose
+validity is taken for granted without being questioned, depends upon our
+ideas of these supersensible objects. In other words, those fundamental
+difficulties which pious opinion discovers in the region of theology,
+and which, as is thought, fling the human intellect back upon itself
+into a consciousness of frailty and finitude, are found to lurk beneath
+our ordinary knowledge. Whenever, for instance, we endeavour to know any
+object, we find that we are led back along the line of its conditions to
+that which unconditionally determines it. For we cannot find the reason
+for a particular object in a particular object. We are driven back
+endlessly from one to another along the chain of causes; and we can
+neither discover the first link nor do without it. The first link must
+be a cause of itself, and experience yields none such. Such a cause
+would be the unconditioned, and the unconditioned we cannot know. The
+final result of thinking is thus to lead us to an unknown; and, in
+consequence, all our seeming knowledge is seen to have no intelligible
+basis, and, therefore, to be merely hypothetical. If we cannot know God,
+we cannot know anything.
+
+This view is held by the Positivists, and the most popular English
+exponent of it is, perhaps, Mr. Herbert Spencer. Its characteristic is
+its repudition of both theology and metaphysics as pseudo-sciences, and
+its high esteem for science. That esteem is not disturbed by the
+confession that "noumenal causes,"--that is, the actual reality of
+things,--are unknown; for we can still lay claim to valid knowledge of
+the laws of phenomena. Having acknowledged that natural things as known
+are merely phenomena, positivism treats them in all respects as if they
+were realities; and it rejoices in the triumphant progress of the
+natural sciences as if it were a veritable growth of knowledge. It does
+not take to heart the phenomenal nature of known objects. But, having
+paid its formal compliments to the doctrine of the relativity of all
+knowledge, it neglects it altogether.
+
+Those who understand Kant better carry his scepticism further, and they
+complete the divorce between man's knowledge and reality. The process of
+knowing, they hold, instead of leading us towards facts, as it was so
+long supposed to do, takes us away from them: _i.e._, if either
+"towards" or "away from" can have any meaning when applied to two realms
+which are absolutely severed from one another. Knowledge is always
+concerned with the relations between things; with their likeness, or
+unlikeness, their laws, or connections; but these are universals, and
+things are individuals. Science knows the laws of things, but not the
+things; it reveals how one object affects another, how it is connected
+with it; but what are the things themselves, which are connected, it
+does not know. The laws are mere forms of thought, "bloodless
+categories," and not facts. They may somehow be regarded as explaining
+facts, but they must not be identified with the facts. Knowledge is the
+sphere of man's thoughts, and is made up of ideas; real things are in
+another sphere, which man's thoughts cannot reach. We must distinguish
+more clearly than has hitherto been done, between logic as the science
+of knowledge, and metaphysics as a science which pretends to reveal the
+real nature of things. In a word, we can know thoughts or universals,
+but not things or particular existences. "When existence is in question
+it is the individual, not the universal, that is real; and the real
+individual is not a composite of species and accidents, but is
+individual to the inmost fibre of its being." Each object keeps its own
+real being to itself. Its inmost secret, its reality, is something that
+cannot appear in knowledge. We can only know its manifestations; but
+these manifestations are not its reality, nor connected with it. These
+belong to the sphere of knowledge, they are parts in a system of
+abstract thoughts; they do not exist in that system, or no-system, of
+individual realities, each of which, in its veritable being, is itself
+only, and connected with nought beside.
+
+Now, this view of the absolute impossibility of knowing any reality, on
+account of the fundamental difference between things and our thoughts
+about things, contains a better promise of a true view both of reality
+and of knowledge, than any of the previously mentioned half-hearted
+theories. It forces us explicitly either to regard every effort to know
+as futile, or else to regard it as futile _on this theory of it_. In
+other words, we must either give up knowledge or else give up the
+account of knowledge advanced by these philosophers. Hitherto, however,
+every philosophy that has set itself against the possibility of the
+knowledge of reality has had to give way. It has failed to shake the
+faith of mankind in its own intellectual endowment, or to arrest, even
+for a moment, the attempt by thinking to know things as they are. The
+view held by Berkeley, that knowledge is merely subjective, because the
+essence of things consists in their being perceived by the individual,
+and that they are nothing but his ideas, was refuted by Kant, when he
+showed that the very illusion of seeming knowledge was impossible on
+that theory. And this later view, which represents knowledge as merely
+subjective, on the ground that it is the product of the activity of the
+thought of mankind, working according to universal laws, is capable of
+being refuted in the same manner. The only difference between the
+Berkeleian and this modern speculative theory is that, on the former
+view, each individual constructed his own subjective entities or
+illusions; while, on the latter, all men, by reason of the universality
+of the laws of thought governing their minds, create the same illusion,
+the same subjective scheme of ideas. Instead of each having his own
+private unreality, as the product of his perceiving activity, they have
+all the same, or at least a similar, phantom-world of ideas, as the
+result of their thinking. But, in both cases alike, the reality of the
+world without is out of reach, and knowledge is a purely subjective
+apprehension of a world within. Thoughts are quite different from
+things, and no effort of human reason can reveal any community between
+them.
+
+Now, there are certain difficulties which, so far as I know, those who
+hold this view have scarcely attempted to meet. The first of these lies
+in the obvious fact, that all men at all times consider that this very
+process of thinking, which the theory condemns as futile, is the only
+way we have of finding out what the reality of things is. Why do we
+reflect and think, except in order to pass beyond the illusions of
+sensuous appearances to the knowledge of things as they are? Nay, why do
+these philosophers themselves reflect, when reflection, instead of
+leading to truth, which is knowledge of reality, leads only to ideas,
+which, being universal, cannot represent the realities that are said to
+be "individual."
+
+The second is, that the knowledge of "the laws" of things gives to us
+practical command over them; although, according to this view, laws are
+not things, nor any part of the reality of things, nor even true
+representations of things. Our authority over things seems to grow _pari
+passu_ with our knowledge. The natural sciences seem to prove by their
+practical efficiency, that they are not building up a world of
+apparitions, like the real world; but gradually getting inside nature,
+learning more and more to wield her powers, and to make them the
+instruments of the purposes of man, and the means of his welfare. To
+common-sense,--which frequently "divines" truths that it cannot prove,
+and, like ballast in a ship, has often given steadiness to human
+progress although it is only a dead weight,--the assertion that man
+knows nothing is as incredible as that he knows all things. If it is
+replied, that the "things" which we seem to dominate by the means of
+knowledge are themselves only phenomena, the question arises, what then
+are the real things to which they are opposed? What right has any
+philosophy to say that there is any reality which no one can in any
+sense know? The knowledge that such reality is, is surely a relation
+between that reality and consciousness, and, if so, the assertion of an
+unknowable reality is self-contradictory. For the conception of it is
+the conception of something that is, and at the same time is not, out of
+relation to consciousness.
+
+To say what kind of thing reality is, is a still more remarkable feat,
+if reality is unknowable. Reality, being beyond knowledge, why is it
+called particular or individual, rather than universal? How is it known
+that the true being of things is different from ideas? Surely both of
+the terms must be regarded as known to some extent, if they are called
+like or unlike, contrasted or compared, opposed or identified.
+
+But, lastly, this theory has to account for the fact that it constitutes
+what is not only unreal, but impossible, into the criterion of what is
+actual. If knowledge of reality is altogether different from human
+knowledge, how does it come to be its criterion? That knowledge is
+inadequate or imperfect can be known, only by contrasting it with its
+own proper ideal, whatever that may be. A criticism by reference to a
+foreign or irrelevant criterion, or the condemnation of a theory as
+imperfect because it does not realize an impossible end, is
+unreasonable. All true criticism of an object implies a reference to a
+more perfect state of itself.
+
+We must, then, regard the knowledge of objects as they are, which is
+opposed to human knowledge, as, only a completer and fuller form of that
+knowledge; or else we must cease to contrast it with our human
+knowledge, as valid with invalid, true with phenomenal. Either knowledge
+of reality is complete knowledge, or else it is a chimera. And, in
+either case, the sharp distinction between the real and the phenomenal
+vanishes; and what remains, is not a reality outside of consciousness,
+or different from ideas, but a reality related to consciousness, or, in
+other words, a knowable reality. "The distinction of objects into
+phenomena and noumena, _i.e._, into things that for us exist, and things
+that for us do not exist, is an Irish bull in philosophy," said Heine.
+To speak of reality as unknowable, or to speak of anything as
+unknowable, is to utter a direct self-contradiction; it is to negate in
+the predicate what is asserted in the subject. It is a still more
+strange perversion to erect this knowable emptiness into a criterion of
+knowledge, and to call the latter phenomenal by reference to it.
+
+These difficulties are so fundamental and so obvious, that the theory of
+the phenomenal nature of human knowledge, which, being interpreted,
+means that we know nothing, could scarcely maintain its hold, were it
+not confused with another fact of human experience, that is apparently
+inconsistent with the doctrine that man can know the truth. Side by side
+with the faith of ordinary consciousness, that in order to know anything
+we must think, or, in other words, that knowledge shows us what things
+really are, there is a conviction, strengthened by constant experience,
+that we never know things fully. Every investigation into the nature of
+an object soon brings us to an enigma, a something more we do not know.
+Failing to know this something more, we generally consider that we have
+fallen short of reaching the reality of the object. We recognize, as it
+has been expressed, that we have been brought to a stand, and we
+therefore conclude that we are also brought to the end. We arrive at
+what we do not know, and we pronounce that unknown to be unknowable;
+that is, we regard it as something different in nature from what we do
+know. So far as I can see, the attitude of ordinary thought in regard to
+this matter might be fairly represented by saying, that it always begins
+by considering objects as capable of being known in their reality, or as
+they are, and that experience always proves the attempt to know them as
+they are to be a failure. The effort is continued although failure is
+the result, and even although that failure be exaggerated and
+universalized into that despair of knowledge which we have described. We
+are thus confronted with what seems to be a contradiction; a trust and
+distrust in knowledge. It can only be solved by doing full justice to
+both of the conflicting elements; and then, if possible, by showing that
+they are elements, and not the complete, concrete fact, except when held
+together.
+
+From one point of view, it is undeniable that in every object of
+perception, we come upon problems that we cannot solve. Science at its
+best, and even when dealing with the simplest of things, is forced to
+stop short of its final secret. Even when it has discovered its law,
+there is still apparently something over and above which science cannot
+grasp, and which seems to give to the object its reality. All the
+natural sciences concentrated on a bit of iron ore fail to exhaust the
+truth in it: there is always a "beyond" in it, something still more
+fundamental which is not yet understood. And that something beyond, that
+inner essence, that point in which the laws meet and which the sciences
+fail to lift into knowledge, is regarded as just the reality of the
+thing. Thus the reality is supposed, at the close of every
+investigation, to lie outside of knowledge; and conversely, all that we
+do know, seeing that it lacks this last element, seems to be only
+apparent knowledge, or knowledge of phenomena.
+
+In this way the process of knowing seems always to stop short at the
+critical moment, when the truth is just about to be reached. And those
+who dwell on this aspect alone are apt to conclude that man's intellect
+is touched with a kind of impotence, which makes it useless when it gets
+near the reality. It is like a weapon that snaps at the hilt just when
+the battle is hottest. For we seem to be able to know everything but the
+reality, and yet apart from the real essence all knowledge seems to be
+merely apparent. Physical science penetrates through the outer
+appearances of things to their laws, analyzes them into forms of energy,
+calculates their action and predicts their effects with certainty. Its
+practical power over the forces of nature is so great that it seems to
+have got inside her secrets. And yet science will itself acknowledge
+that in every simplest object there is an unknown. Its triumphant course
+of explaining seems to be always arrested at the threshold of reality.
+It has no theory, scarcely an hypothesis, of the actual nature of
+things, or of what that is in each object, which constitutes it a real
+existence. Natural science, with a scarcely concealed sneer, hands over
+to the metaphysician all questions as to the real being of things; and
+itself makes the more modest pretension of showing how things behave,
+not what they are; what effects follow the original noumenal causes, but
+not the veritable nature of these causes. Nor can the metaphysician, in
+his turn, do more than suggest a hypothesis as to the nature of the
+ultimate reality in things. He cannot detect or demonstrate it in any
+particular fact. In a word, every minutest object in the world baffles
+the combined powers of all forms of human thought, and holds back its
+essence or true being from them. And as long as this true being, or
+reality is not known, the knowledge which we seem to have cannot be held
+as ultimately true, but is demonstrably a makeshift.
+
+Having made this confession, there seems to be no alternative but to
+postulate an utter discrepancy between human thought and real existence,
+or between human knowledge and truth, which is the correspondence of
+thing and thought. For, at no point is knowledge found to be in touch
+with real being; it is everywhere demonstrably conditioned and relative,
+and inadequate to express the true reality of its objects. What remains,
+then, except to regard human knowledge as completely untrustworthy, as
+merely of phenomena? If we cannot know _any_ reality, does not knowledge
+completely fail?
+
+Now, in dealing with the moral life of man, we saw that the method of
+hard alternatives is invalid. The moral life, being progressive, was
+shown to be the meeting--point of the ideal and the actual; and the
+ideal of perfect goodness was regarded as manifesting itself in actions
+which, nevertheless, were never adequate to express it. The good when
+achieved was ever condemned as unworthy, and the ideal when attained
+ever pressed for more adequate expression in a better character. The
+ideal was present as potency, as realizing itself, but it was never
+completely realized. The absolute good was never reached in the best
+action, and never completely missed in the worst.
+
+The same conflict of real and unreal was shown to be essential to every
+natural life. As long as anything grows it neither completely attains,
+nor completely falls away from its ideal. The growing acorn is not an
+oak tree, and yet it is not a mere acorn. The child is not the man; and
+yet the man is in the child, and only needs to be evolved by interaction
+with circumstances. The process of growth is one wherein the ideal is
+always present, as a reconstructive power gradually changing its whole
+vehicle, or organism, into a more perfect expression of itself. The
+ideal is reached in the end, just because it is present in the
+beginning; and there is no end as long as growth continues.
+
+Now, it is evident that knowledge, whether it be that of the individual
+man or of the human race, is a thing that grows. The process by means of
+which natural science makes progress, or by which the consciousness of
+the child expands and deepens into the consciousness of the man, is best
+made intelligible from the point of view of evolution. It is like an
+organic process, in which each new acquirement finds its place in an old
+order, each new fact is brought under the permanent principles of
+experience, and absorbed into an intellectual life, which itself, in
+turn, grows richer and fuller with every new acquisition. No knowledge
+worthy of the name is an aggregation of facts. Wisdom comes by growth.
+
+Hence, the assertion that knowledge never attains reality, does not
+imply that it always misses it. In morals we do not say that a man is
+entirely evil, although he never, even in his best actions, attains the
+true good. And if the process of knowing is one that presses onward
+towards an ideal, that ideal is never completely missed even in the
+poorest knowledge. If it grows, the method of fixed alternatives must be
+inapplicable to it. The ideal, whatever it may be, must be considered as
+active in the present, guiding the whole movement, and gradually
+manifesting itself in each of the passing forms, which are used up as
+the raw material of new acquirement; and yet no passing form completely
+expresses the ideal.
+
+Nor is it difficult to say what that ideal of knowledge is, although we
+cannot define it in any adequate manner. We know that the end of
+morality is the _summum bonum_, although we cannot, as long as we are
+progressive, define its whole content, or find it fully realized in any
+action. Every failure brings new truth, every higher grade of moral
+character reveals some new height of goodness to be scaled; the moral
+ideal acquires definiteness and content as humanity moves upwards. And
+yet the ideal is not entirely unknown even at the first; even to the
+most ignorant, it presents itself as a criterion which enables him to
+distinguish between right and wrong, evil and goodness, and which guides
+his practical life. The same truth holds with regard to knowledge. Its
+growth receives its impulse from, and is directed and determined by,
+what is conceived as the real world of facts. This truth, namely, that
+the ideal knowledge is knowledge of reality, the most subjective
+philosopher cannot but acknowledge. It is implied in his condemnation of
+knowledge as merely phenomenal, that there is possible a knowledge of
+real being. That thought and reality can be brought together, or rather,
+that they are always together, is presupposed in all knowledge and in
+all experience. The effort to know is the effort to _explain_ the
+relation of thought and reality, not to create it. The ideal of perfect
+knowledge is present from the first; it generates the effort, directs
+it, distinguishes between truth and error. And that which man ever aims
+at, whether in the ordinary activities of daily thought, or through the
+patient labour of scientific investigation, or in the reflective
+self-torture of philosophic thought, is to know the world as it is. No
+failure damps the ardour of this endeavour. Relativists, phenomenalists,
+agnostics, sceptics, Kantians or Neo-Kantians--all the crowd of thinkers
+who cry down the human intellect, and draw a charmed circle around
+reality so as to make it unapproachable to the mind of man--ply this
+useless labour. They are seeking to penetrate beneath the shows of sense
+and the outer husk of phenomena to the truth, which is the meeting-point
+of knowledge and reality; they are endeavouring to translate into an
+intellectual possession the powers that play within and around them; or,
+in other words, to make these powers express themselves in their
+thoughts, and supply the content of their spiritual life. The irony,
+latent in their endeavour, gives them no pause; they are in some way
+content to pursue what they call phantoms, and to try to satisfy their
+thirst with the waters of a mirage. This comes from the presence of the
+ideal within them, that is, of the implicit unity of reality and
+thought, which seeks for explicit and complete manifestation in
+knowledge. The reality is present in them as thinking activity, working
+towards complete revelation of itself by means of knowledge. And its
+presence is real, although the process is never complete.
+
+In knowledge, as in morals, it is necessary to remember both of the
+truths implied in the pursuit of an ideal--that a growing thing not only
+always fails to attain, but also always succeeds. The distinction
+between truth and error in knowledge is present at every stage in the
+effort to attain truth, as the distinction between right and wrong is
+present in every phase of the moral life. It is the source of the
+intellectual effort. But that distinction cannot be drawn except by
+reference to a criterion of truth, which condemns our actual knowledge;
+as it is the absolute good, which condemns the present character. The
+ideal may be indefinite, and its content confused and poor; but it is
+always sufficient for its purpose, always better than the actual
+achievement. And, in this sense, reality, the truth, the veritable being
+of things, is always reached by the poorest knowledge. As there is no
+starved and distorted sapling which is not the embodiment of the
+principle of natural life, so the meanest character is the product of an
+ideal of goodness, and the most confused opinion of ignorant mankind is
+an expression of the reality of things. Without it there would not be
+even the semblance of knowledge, not even error and untruth.
+
+Those who, like Browning, make a division between man's thought and real
+things, and regard the sphere of knowledge as touching at no point the
+sphere of actual existence, are attributing to the bare human intellect
+much more power than it has. They regard mind as creating its phenomenal
+knowledge, or the apparent world. For, having separated mind from
+reality, it is evident that they cannot avail themselves of any doctrine
+of sensations or impressions as a medium between them, or postulate any
+other form of connection or means of communication. Connection of any
+kind must, in the end, imply some community of nature, and must put the
+unity of thought and being--here denied--beneath their difference.
+Hence, the world of phenomena which we know, and which as known, does
+not seem to consist of realities, must be the product of the unaided
+human mind. The intellect, isolated from all real being, has
+manufactured the apparent universe, in all its endless wealth. It is a
+creative intellect, although it can only create illusions. It evolves
+all its products from itself.
+
+But thought, set to revolve upon its own axis in an empty region, can
+produce nothing, not even illusions. And, indeed, those who deny that it
+is possible for thought and reality to meet in a unity, have,
+notwithstanding, to bring over "something" to the aid of thought. There
+must be some effluence from the world of reality, some manifestations of
+the thing (though they are not the reality of the thing, nor any part of
+the reality, nor connected with the reality!) to assist the mind and
+supply it with data. The "phenomenal world" is a hybrid, generated by
+thought and "something"--which yet is not reality; for the real world is
+a world of things in themselves, altogether beyond thought. By bringing
+in these data, it is virtually admitted that the human mind reaches down
+into itself in vain for a world, even for a phenomenal one.
+
+Thought apart from things is quite empty, just as things apart from
+thought are blind. Such thought and such reality are mere abstractions,
+hypostasized by false metaphysics; they are elements of truth rent
+asunder, and destroyed in the rending. The dependence of the
+intelligence of man upon reality is direct and complete. The foolishest
+dream, that ever played out its panorama beneath a night-cap, came
+through the gates of the senses from the actual world. Man is limited to
+his material in all that he knows, just as he is ruled by the laws of
+thought. He cannot go one step beyond it. To transcend "experience" is
+impossible. We have no wings to sustain us in an empty region, and no
+need of any. It is as impossible for man to create new ideas, as it is
+for him to create new atoms. Our thought is essentially connected with
+reality. There is no _mauvais pas_ from thought to things. We do not
+need to leap out of ourselves in order to get into the world. We are in
+it from the first, both as physical and moral agents, and as thinking
+beings. Our thoughts are expressions of the real nature of things, so
+far as they go. They may be and are imperfect; they may be and are
+confused and inadequate, and express only the superficial aspects and
+not "the inmost fibres"; still, they are what they are, in virtue of
+"the reality," which finds itself interpreted in them. Severed from that
+reality, they would be nothing.
+
+Thus, the distinction between thought and reality is a distinction
+within a deeper unity. And that unity must not be regarded as something
+additional to both, or as a third something. It _is_ their unity. It is
+both reality and thought: it is existing thought, or reality knowing
+itself and existing through its knowledge of self; it is
+self-consciousness. The distinguished elements have no existence or
+meaning except in their unity. Like the actual and ideal, they have
+significance and being, only in their reference to each other.
+
+There is one more difficulty connected with this matter which I must
+touch upon, although the discussion may already be regarded as prolix.
+It is acknowledged by every one that the knowledge of the individual,
+and his apparent world of realities, grow _pari passu_. Beyond his
+sphere of knowledge there is no reality _for him_, not even apparent
+reality. But, on the other hand, the real world of existing things
+exists all the same whether he knows it or not. It did not begin to be
+with any knowledge he may have of it, it does not cease to be with his
+extinction, and it is not in any way affected by his valid, or invalid,
+reconstruction of it in thought. The world which depends on his thought
+is his world, and not the world of really existing things. And this is
+true alike of every individual. The world is independent of all human
+minds. It existed before them, and will, very possibly, exist after
+them. Can we not, therefore, conclude that the real world is independent
+of thought, and that it exists without relation to it?
+
+A short reference to the moral consciousness may suggest the answer to
+this difficulty. In morality (as also is the case in knowledge) the
+moral ideal, or the objective law of goodness, grows in richness and
+fulness of content with the individual who apprehends it. _His_ moral
+world is the counterpart of _his_ moral growth as a character. Goodness
+_for him_ directly depends upon his recognition of it. Animals,
+presumably, have no moral ideal, because they have not the power to
+constitute it. In morals, as in knowledge, the mind of man constructs
+its own world. And yet, in both alike, the world of truth or of goodness
+exists all the same whether the individual knows it or not. He does not
+call the moral law into being, but finds it without, and then realizes
+it in his own life. The moral law does not vanish and reappear with its
+recognition by mankind. It is not subject to the chances and changes of
+its life, but a good in itself that is eternal.
+
+Is it therefore independent of all intelligence? Can goodness be
+anything but the law of a self-conscious being? Is it the quality or
+motive or ideal of a mere thing? Manifestly not. Its relation to
+self-consciousness is essential. With the extinction of
+self-consciousness all moral goodness is extinguished.
+
+The same holds true of reality. The question of the reality or unreality
+of things cannot arise except in an intelligence. Animals have neither
+illusions nor truths--unless they are self-conscious. The reality, which
+man sets over against his own inadequate knowledge, is posited by him;
+and it has no meaning whatsoever except in this contrast. And to
+endeavour to conceive a reality which no one knows, is to assert a
+relative term without its correlative, which is absurd; it is to posit
+an ideal which is opposed to nothing actual.
+
+In this view, so commonly held in our day, that knowledge is subjective
+and reality unknowable, we have another example of the falseness and
+inconsistency of abstract thinking. If this error be committed, there is
+no fundamental gain in saying with Kant, that things are relative to the
+thought of all, instead of asserting, with Berkeley or Browning, that
+they are relative to the thought of each. The final result is the same.
+Things as known, are reduced into mere creations of thought; things as
+they are, are regarded as not thoughts, and as partaking in no way of
+the nature of thought. And yet "reality" is virtually assumed to be
+given at the beginning of knowledge; for the sensations are supposed to
+be emanations from it, or roused in consciousness by it. These
+sensations, it is said, man does not make, but receives, and receives
+from the concealed reality. They flow from it, and are the
+manifestations of its activity. Then, in the next moment, reality is
+regarded as not given in any way, but as something to be discovered by
+the effort of thought; for we always strive to know things, and not
+phantoms. Lastly, the knowledge thus acquired being regarded as
+imperfect, and experience showing to us continually that every object
+has more in it than we know, the reality is pronounced to be unknowable,
+and all knowledge is regarded as failure, as acquaintance with mere
+phantoms. Thus, in thought, as in morality, the ideal is present at the
+beginning, it is an effort after explicit realization, and its process
+is never complete.
+
+Now, all these aspects of the ideal of knowledge, that is, of reality,
+are held by the unsophisticated intelligence of man; and abstract
+philosophy is not capable of finally getting rid of any one of them. It,
+too, holds them _alternately_. Its denial of the possibility of knowing
+reality is refuted by its own starting-point; for it begins with a given
+something, regarded as real, and its very effort to know is an attempt
+to know that reality by thinking. But it forgets these facts, when it is
+discovered that knowledge at the best is incomplete. It is thus tossed
+from assertion to denial, and from denial to assertion; from one
+abstract or one-sided view of reality, to the other.
+
+When these different aspects of truth are grasped together from the
+point of view of evolution, there seems to be a way of escaping the
+difficulties to which they give rise. For the ideal must be present at
+the beginning, and cannot be present in its fulness till the process is
+complete. What is here required is to lift our theory of man's knowledge
+to the level of our theory of his moral life, and to treat it frankly as
+the process whereby reality manifests itself in the mind of man. In that
+way, we shall avoid the absurdities of both of the abstract schools of
+philosophy, to both of which alike the native intelligence of man gives
+the lie. We shall say neither that man knows nothing, nor that he knows
+all; we shall regard his knowledge, neither as purely phenomenal and out
+of all contact with reality, nor as an actual identification with the
+real being of things in all their complex variety. For, in morality, we
+do not say either that the individual is absolutely evil, because his
+actions never realize the supreme ideal of goodness; nor, that he is at
+the last term of development, and "taking the place of God," because he
+lives as "ever in his great Taskmaster's eye." Just as every moral
+action, however good, leaves something still to be desiderated,
+something that may become a stepping-stone for new movement towards the
+ideal which it has failed to actualize; so all our knowledge of an
+object leaves something over that we have not apprehended, which is
+truer and more real than anything we know, and which in all future
+effort we strive to master. And, just as the very effort, to be good
+derives its impulse and direction from the ideal of goodness which is
+present, and striving for realization; so the effort to know derives its
+impulse and direction from the reality which is present, and striving
+for complete realization in the thought of man. We know reality
+confusedly from the first; and it is because we have attained so much
+knowledge, that we strive for greater clearness and fulness. It is by
+planting his foot on the world that man travels. It is by opposing his
+power to the given reality that his knowledge grows.
+
+When once we recognize that reality is the ideal of knowledge, we are
+able to acknowledge all the truth that is in the doctrine of the
+phenomenalists, without falling into their errors and contradictions. We
+may go as far as the poet in confessing intellectual impotence, and
+roundly call the knowledge of man "lacquered ignorance." "Earth's least
+atom" does veritably remain an enigma. Man is actually flung back into
+his circumscribed sphere by every fact; and he will continue to be so
+flung to the end of time. He will never know reality, nor be able to
+hold up in his hand the very heart of the simplest thing in the world.
+For the world is an organic totality, and its simplest thing will not be
+seen, through and through, till everything is known, till every fact and
+event is related to every other under principles which are universal:
+just as goodness cannot be fully achieved in any act, till the agent is
+in all ways lifted to the level of absolute goodness. Physics cannot
+reveal the forces which keep a stone in its place on the earth, till it
+has traced the forces that maintain the starry systems in their course.
+No fact can be thoroughly known, _i.e._, known in its reality, till the
+light of the universe has been focussed upon it: and, on the other hand,
+to know any subject through and through would be to explain all being.
+The highest law and the essence of the simple fact, the universal and
+the particular, can only be known together, in and through one another.
+"Reality" in "the least atom" will be known, only when knowledge has
+completed its work, and the universe has become a transparent sphere,
+penetrated in every direction by the shafts of intelligence.
+
+But this is only half the truth. If knowledge is never complete, it is
+always _completing_; if reality is never known, it is ever _being
+known_; if the ideal is never actual, it is always _being actualized_.
+The complete failure of knowledge is as impossible as its complete
+success. It is at no time severed from reality; it is never its mere
+adumbration, nor are its contents mere phenomena. On the contrary, it is
+reality partially revealed, the ideal incompletely actualized. Our very
+errors are the working of reality within us, and apart from it they
+would be impossible. The process towards truth by man is the process of
+truth _in_ man; the movement of knowledge towards reality is the movement
+of reality into knowledge. A purely subjective consciousness which knows,
+such as the poet tried to describe, is a self-contradiction: it would be
+a consciousness at once related, and not related, to the actual world.
+But man has no need to relate himself to the world. He is already
+related, and his task is to understand that relation, or, in other words,
+to make both its terms intelligible. Man has no need to go out from
+himself to facts; his relation to facts is prior to his distinction from
+them. The truth is that he cannot entirely lift himself away from them,
+nor suspend his thoughts in the void. In his inmost being he is
+creation's voice, and in his knowledge he confusedly murmurs its deep
+thoughts.
+
+Browning was aware of this truth in its application to man's moral
+nature. In speaking of the principle of love, he was not tempted to
+apply fixed alternatives. On the contrary, he detected in the "poorest
+love that was ever offered" the veritable presence of that which is
+perfect and complete, though never completely actualized. His interest
+in the moral development of man, and his penetrative moral insight,
+acting upon, and guided by the truths of the Christian religion, warned
+him, on this side, against the absolute separation of the ideal and
+actual, the divine and human. Human love, however poor in quality and
+limited in range, was to him God's love in man. It was a wave breaking
+in the individual of that First Love, which is ever flowing back through
+the life of humanity to its primal source. To him all moral endeavour is
+the process of this Primal Love; and every man, as he consciously
+identifies himself with it, may use the language of Scripture, and say,
+"It is not I that live, but Christ lives in me."
+
+But, on the side of knowledge, he was neither so deeply interested, nor
+had he so good a guide to lean upon. Ignorant, according to all
+appearances, of the philosophy which has made the Christian maxim, "Die
+to live,"--which primarily is only a principle of morality--the basis of
+its theory of knowledge, he exaggerated the failure of science to reach
+the whole truth as to any particular object, into a qualitative
+discrepancy between knowledge and truth. Because knowledge is never
+complete, it is always mere lacquered ignorance; and man's apparent
+intellectual victories are only conquests in a land of unrealities, or
+mere phenomena. He occupies in regard to knowledge, a position strictly
+analogous to that of Carlyle, in regard to morality; his intellectual
+pessimism is the counterpart of the moral pessimism of his predecessor,
+and it springs from the same error. He forgot that the ideal without is
+also the power within, which makes for its own manifestation in the mind
+of man.
+
+He opposed the intellect to the world, as Carlyle opposed the weakness
+of man to the law of duty; and he neglected the fact that the world was
+there for him, only because he knew it, just as Carlyle neglected the
+fact that the duty was without, only because it was recognized within.
+He strained the difference between the ideal and actual into an absolute
+distinction; and, as Carlyle condemned man to strive for a goodness
+which he could never achieve, so Browning condemns him to pursue a truth
+which he can never attain. In both, the failure is regarded as absolute.
+"There is no good in us," has for its counterpart "There is no truth in
+us." Both the moralist and the poet dwell on the _negative_ relation of
+the ideal and actual, and forget that the negative has no meaning,
+except as the expression of a deeper affirmative. Carlyle had to learn
+that we know our moral imperfection, only because we are conscious of a
+better within us; and Browning had to learn that we are aware of our
+ignorance, only because we have the consciousness of fuller truth with
+which we contrast our knowledge. Browning, indeed, knew that the
+consciousness of evil was itself evidence of the presence of good, that
+perfection means death, and progress is life, on the side of morals; but
+he has missed the corresponding truth on the side of knowledge. If he
+acknowledges that the highest revealed itself to man, on the practical
+side, as love; he does not see that it has also manifested itself to
+man, on the theoretical side, as reason. The self-communication of the
+Infinite is incomplete love is a quality of God, intelligence a quality
+of man; hence, on one side, there is no limit to achievement, but on the
+other there is impotence. Human nature is absolutely divided against
+itself; and the division, as we have already seen, is not between flesh
+and spirit, but between a love which is God's own and perfect, and an
+intelligence which is merely man's and altogether weak and deceptive.
+
+This is what makes Browning think it impossible to re-establish faith in
+God, except by turning his back on knowledge; but whether it is possible
+for him to appeal to the moral consciousness, we shall inquire in the
+next chapter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE HEART AND THE HEAD.--LOVE AND REASON.
+
+
+    "And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to
+    play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do
+    injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her
+    strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew
+    truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Milton's _Areopagitica_.]
+
+It has been shown that Browning appeals, in defence of his optimistic
+faith, from the intellect to the heart. His theory rests on three main
+assumptions:--namely (1) that knowledge of the true nature of things is
+impossible to man, and that, therefore, it is necessary to find other
+and better evidence than the intellect can give for the victory of good
+over evil; (2) that the failure of knowledge is a necessary condition of
+the moral life, inasmuch as certain knowledge would render all moral
+effort either futile or needless; (3) that after the failure of
+knowledge there still remains possible a faith of the heart, which can
+furnish a sufficient objective basis to morality and religion. The first
+of these assumptions I endeavoured to deal with in the last chapter. I
+now turn to the remaining two.
+
+Demonstrative, or certain, or absolute knowledge of the actual nature of
+things would, Browning asserts, destroy the very possibility of a moral
+life.[A] For such knowledge would show either that evil is evil, or that
+evil is good; and, in both cases alike, the benevolent activity of love
+would be futile. In the first case, it would be thwarted and arrested by
+despair; for, if evil be evil, it must remain evil for aught that man
+can do. Man cannot effect a change in the nature of things, nor create a
+good in a world dominated by evil. In the second case, the saving effect
+of moral love would be unnecessary; for, if evil be only seeming, then
+all things are perfect and complete, and there is no need of
+interference. It is necessary, therefore, that man should be in a
+permanent state of doubt as to the real existence of evil; and, whether
+evil does exist or not, it must seem, and only seem to exist to man, in
+order that he may devote himself to the service of good.[B]
+
+[Footnote A: See Chapter VIII., p. 255.]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
+
+Now, if this view of the poet be taken in the strict sense in which he
+uses it in this argument, it admits of a very easy refutation. It takes
+us beyond the bounds of all possible human experience, into an imaginary
+region, as to which all assertions are equally valueless. It is
+impossible to conceive how the conduct of a being who is moral would be
+affected by absolute knowledge; or, indeed, to conceive the existence of
+such a being. For morality, as the poet insists, is a process in which
+an ideal is gradually realized through conflict with the actual--an
+actual which it both produces and transmutes at every stage of the
+progress. But complete knowledge would be above all process. Hence we
+would have, on Browning's hypothesis, to conceive of a being in whom
+perfect knowledge was combined with an undeveloped will. A being so
+constituted would be an agglomerate of utterly disparate elements, the
+interaction of which in a single character it would be impossible to
+make intelligible.
+
+But, setting aside this point, there is a curious flaw in Browning's
+argument, which indicates that he had not distinguished between two
+forms of optimism which are essentially different from each
+other,--namely, the pantheistic and the Christian.
+
+To know that evil is only apparent, that pain is only pleasure's mask,
+that all forms of wickedness and misery are only illusions of an
+incomplete intelligence, would, he argues, arrest all moral action and
+stultify love. For love--which necessarily implies need in its
+object--is the principle of all right action. In this he argues justly,
+for the moral life is essentially a conflict and progress; and, in a
+world in which "white ruled unchecked along the line," there would be
+neither the need of conflict nor the possibility of progress. And, on
+the other hand, if the good were merely a phantom, and evil the reality,
+the same destruction of moral activity would follow. "White may not
+triumph," in this absolute manner, nor may we "clean abolish, once and
+evermore, white's faintest trace." There must be "the constant shade
+cast on life's shine."
+
+All this is true; but the admission of it in no way militates against
+the conception of absolutely valid knowledge; nor is it any proof that
+we need live in the twilight of perpetual doubt, in order to be moral.
+For the knowledge, of which Browning speaks, would be knowledge of a
+state of things in which morality would be really impossible; that is,
+it would be knowledge of a world in which all was evil or all was good.
+On the other hand, valid knowledge of a world in which good and evil are
+in conflict, and in which the former is realized through victory over
+the latter, would not destroy morality. What is inconsistent with the
+moral life is the conception of a world where there is no movement from
+evil to good, no evolution of character, but merely the stand-still life
+of "Rephan." But absolutely certain knowledge that the good is at issue
+with sin in the world, that there is no way of attaining goodness except
+through conflict with evil, and that moral life, as the poet so
+frequently insists, is a process which converts all actual attainment
+into a dead self, from which we can rise to higher things--a self,
+therefore, which is relatively evil--would, and does, inspire morality.
+It is the deification of evil not negated or overcome, of evil as it is
+in itself and apart from all process, which destroys morality. And the
+same is equally true of a pantheistic optimism, which asserts that all
+things _are_ good. But it is not true of a Christian optimism, which
+asserts that all things are _working together for_ good. For such
+optimism implies that the process of negating or overcoming evil is
+essential to the attainment of goodness; it does not imply that evil, as
+evil, is ever good. Evil is unreal, only in the sense that it cannot
+withstand the power which is set against it. It is not _mere_ semblance,
+a mere negation or absence of being; it is opposed to the good, and its
+opposition can be overcome, only by the moral effort which it calls
+forth. An optimistic faith of this kind can find room for morality; and,
+indeed, it furnishes it with the religious basis it needs. Browning,
+however, has confused these two forms of optimism; and, therefore, he
+has been driven to condemn knowledge, because he knew no alternative but
+that of either making evil eternally real, or making it absolutely
+unreal. A third alternative, however, is supplied by the conception of
+moral evolution. Knowledge of the conditions on which good can be
+attained--a knowledge that amounts to conviction--is the spring of all
+moral effort; whereas an attitude of permanent doubt as to the
+distinction between good and evil would paralyse it. Such a doubt must
+be solved before man can act at all, or choose one end rather than
+another. All action implies belief, and the ardour and vigour of moral
+action can only come from a belief which is whole-hearted.
+
+The further assertion, which the poet makes in _La Saisiaz_, and repeats
+elsewhere, that sure knowledge of the consequences that follow good and
+evil actions would necessarily lead to the choice of good and the
+avoidance of evil, and destroy morality by destroying liberty of choice,
+raises the whole question of the relation of knowledge and conduct, and
+cannot be adequately discussed here. It may be said, however, that it
+rests upon a confusion between two forms of necessity: namely, natural
+and spiritual necessity. In asserting that knowledge of the consequences
+of evil would determine human action in a necessary way, the poet
+virtually treats man as if he were a natural being. But the assumption
+that man is responsible and liable to punishment, involves that he is
+capable of withstanding all such determination. And knowledge does not
+and cannot lead to such necessary determination. Reason brings freedom;
+for reason constitutes the ends of action.
+
+It is the constant desire of the good to attain to such a convincing
+knowledge of the worth and dignity of the moral law that they shall be
+able to make themselves its devoted instruments. Their desire is that
+"the good" shall supplant in them all motives that conflict against it,
+and be the inner principle, or necessity, of all their actions. Such
+complete devotion to the good is expressed, for instance, in the words
+of the Hebrew Psalmist: "Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage for
+ever; for they are the rejoicing of my heart. I have inclined mine heart
+to perform Thy statutes alway, even unto the end. I hate vain thoughts,
+but Thy law do I love." "Nevertheless I live," said the Christian
+apostle, "yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now
+live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God." In these words
+there is expressed that highest form of the moral life, in which the
+individual is so identified in desire with his ideal, that he lives only
+to actualize it in his character. The natural self is represented as
+dead, and the victory of the new principle is viewed as complete. This
+full obedience to the ideal is the service of a necessity; but the
+necessity is within, and the service is, therefore, perfect freedom. The
+authority of the law is absolute, but the law is self-imposed. The whole
+man is convinced of its goodness. He has acquired something even fuller
+than a mere intellectual demonstration of it; for his knowledge has
+ripened into wisdom, possessed his sympathies, and become a disposition
+of his heart. And the fulness and certainty of his knowledge, so far
+from rendering morality impossible, is its very perfection. To bring
+about such a knowledge of the good of goodness and the evil of evil, as
+will engender love of the former and hatred of the latter, is the aim of
+all moral education. Thus, the history of human life, in so far as it is
+progressive, may be concentrated in the saying that it is the ascent
+from the power of a necessity which is natural, to the power of a
+necessity which is moral. And this latter necessity can come only
+through fuller and more convincing knowledge of the law that rules the
+world, and is also the inner principle of man's nature.
+
+There remains now the third element in Browning's view,--namely, that
+the faith in the good, implied in morality and religion, can be firmly
+established, after knowledge has turned out deceptive, upon the
+individual's consciousness of the power of love within himself. In other
+words, I must now try to estimate the value of Browning's appeal from
+the intellect to the heart.
+
+Before doing so, however, it may be well to repeat once more that
+Browning's condemnation of knowledge, in his philosophical poems, is not
+partial or hesitating. On the contrary, he confines it definitely to the
+individual's consciousness of his own inner states.
+
+            "Myself I solely recognize.
+  They, too, may recognize themselves, not me,
+  For aught I know or care."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_. See also _La Saisiaz_.]
+
+Nor does Browning endeavour to correct this limited testimony of the
+intellect as to its own states, by bringing in the miraculous aid of
+revelation, or by postulating an unerring moral faculty. He does not
+assume an intuitive power of knowing right from wrong; but he maintains
+that ignorance enwraps man's moral sense.[B]
+
+[Footnote B: See Chapter VIII.]
+
+And, not only are we unable to know the rule of right and wrong in
+details, but we cannot know whether there _is_ right or wrong. At times
+the poet seems inclined to say that evil is a phenomenon conjured up by
+the frail intelligence of man.
+
+    "Man's fancy makes the fault!
+  Man, with the narrow mind, must cram inside
+  His finite God's infinitude,--earth's vault
+  He bids comprise the heavenly far and wide,
+  Since Man may claim a right to understand
+  What passes understanding."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville_.]
+
+God's ways are past finding out. Nay, God Himself is unknown. At times,
+indeed, the power to love within man seems to the poet to be a clue to
+the nature of the Power without, and God is all but revealed in this
+surpassing emotion of the human heart. But, when philosophizing, he
+withdraws even this amount of knowledge. He is
+
+  "Assured that, whatsoe'er the quality
+  Of love's cause, save that love was caused thereby,
+  This--nigh upon revealment as it seemed
+  A minute since--defies thy longing looks,
+  Withdrawn into the unknowable once more."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]
+
+Thus--to sum up Browning's view of knowledge--we are ignorant of the
+world; we do not know even whether it is good, or evil, or only their
+semblance, that is presented to us in human life; and we know nothing of
+God, except that He is the cause of love in man. What greater depth of
+agnosticism is possible?
+
+When the doctrine is put in this bald form, the moral and religious
+consciousness of man, on behalf of which the theory was invented,
+revolts against it.
+
+Nevertheless, the distinction made by Browning between the intellectual
+and emotional elements of human life is very common in religious
+thought. It is not often, indeed, that either the worth of love, or the
+weakness of knowledge receives such emphatic expression as that which is
+given to them by the poet; but the same general idea of their relation
+is often expressed, and still more often implied. Browning differs from
+our ordinary teachers mainly in the boldness of his affirmatives and
+negatives. They, too, regard the intellect as merely human, and the
+emotion of love as divine. They, too, shrink from identifying the reason
+of man with the reason of God; even though they may recognize that
+morality and religion must postulate some kind of unity between God and
+man. They, too, conceive that human knowledge differs _in nature_ from
+that of God, while they maintain that human goodness is the same in
+nature with that of God, though different in degree and fulness. There
+are two _kinds_ of knowledge, but there is only one kind of justice, or
+mercy, or loving-kindness. Man must be content with a semblance of a
+knowledge of truth; but a semblance of goodness, would be intolerable.
+God really reveals Himself to man in morality and religion, and He
+communicates to man nothing less than "the divine love." But there is no
+such close connection on the side of reason. The religious life of man
+is a divine principle, the indwelling of God in him; but there is a
+final and fatal defect in man's knowledge. The divine love's
+manifestation of itself is ever incomplete, it is true, even in the best
+of men; but there is no defect in its nature.
+
+As a consequence of this doctrine, few religious opinions are more
+common at the present day, than that it is necessary to appeal, on all
+the high concerns of man's moral and religious life, from the intellect
+to the heart. Where we cannot know, we may still feel; and the religious
+man may have, in his own feeling of the divine, a more intimate
+conviction of the reality of that in which he trusts, than could be
+produced by any intellectual process.
+
+              "Enough to say, 'I feel
+  Love's sure effect, and, being loved, must love
+  The love its cause behind,--I can and do.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Piller at Sebzevar_.]
+
+Reason, in trying to scale the heights of truth, falls-back, impotent
+and broken, into doubt and despair; not by that way can we come to that
+which is best and highest.
+
+  "I found Him not in world or sun,
+    Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye;
+    Nor thro' the questions men may try,
+  The petty cobwebs we have spun."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _In Memoriam_.]
+
+But there is another way to find God and to conquer doubt.
+
+  "If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep,
+    I heard a voice 'believe no more,'
+    And heard an ever-breaking-shore
+  That tumbled in the Godless deep;
+
+  "A warmth within the breast would melt
+    The freezing reason's colder part,
+    And like a man in wrath the heart
+  Stood up and answer'd 'I have felt.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _In Memoriam_.]
+
+What, then, I have now to ask, is the meaning and value of this appeal
+to emotion? Can love, or emotion in any of its forms, reveal truths to
+man which his intellect cannot discover? If so, how? If not, how shall
+we account for the general conviction of good men that it can? We have,
+in a word, either to justify the appeal to the heart, by explaining how
+the heart may utter truths that are hidden from reason; or else to
+account for the illusion, by which religious emotion seems to reveal
+such truths.
+
+The first requirement is shown to be unreasonable by the very terms in
+which it is made. The intuitive insight of faith, the immediate
+conviction of the heart, cannot render, and must not try to render, any
+account of itself. Proof is a process; but there is no process in this
+direct conviction of truth. Its assertion is just the denial of process;
+it is a repudiation of all connections; in such a faith of feeling there
+are no cob-web lines relating fact to fact, which doubt could break.
+Feeling is the immediate unity of the subject and object. I am pained,
+because I cannot rid myself of an element which is already within me; I
+am lifted into the emotion of pleasure, or happiness, or bliss, by the
+consciousness that I am already at one with an object that fulfils my
+longings and satisfies my needs. Hence, there seems to be ground for
+saying that, in this instance, the witness cannot lie; for it cannot go
+before the fact, as it is itself the effect of the fact. If the emotion
+is pleasurable it is the consciousness of the unity within; if it is
+painful, of the disunity. In feeling, I am absolutely with myself; and
+there seems, therefore, to be no need of attempting to justify, by means
+of reason, a faith in God which manifests itself in emotion. The emotion
+itself is its own sufficient witness, a direct result of the intimate
+union of man with the object of devotion. Nay, we may go further, and
+say that the demand is an unjust one, which betrays ignorance of the
+true nature of moral intuition and religious feeling.
+
+I am not concerned to deny the truth that lies in the view here stated;
+and no advocate of the dignity of human reason, or of the worth of human
+knowledge, is called upon to deny it. There is a sense in which the
+conviction of "faith" or "feeling" is more intimate and strong than any
+process of proof. But this does not in any wise justify the contention
+of those who maintain that we can feel what we do not in any sense know,
+or that the heart can testify to that of which the intellect is
+absolutely silent.
+
+  "So let us say--not 'Since we know, we love,'
+  But rather, 'Since we love, we know enough.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]
+
+In these two lines there are combined the truth I would acknowledge, and
+the error I would confute. Love is, in one way, sufficient knowledge;
+or, rather, it is the direct testimony of that completest knowledge, in
+which subject and object interpenetrate. For, where love is, all foreign
+elements have been eliminated. There is not "one and one with a shadowy
+third"; but the object is brought within the self as constituting part
+of its very life. This is involved in all the great forms of human
+thought--in science and art, no less than in morality and religion. It
+is the truth that we love, and only that, which is altogether ours. By
+means of love the poet is
+
+  "Made one with Nature. There is heard
+  His voice in all her music, from the moan
+  Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird ";
+
+and it is because he is made one with her that he is able to reveal her
+inmost secrets. "Man," said Fichte, "can will nothing but what he loves;
+his love is the sole and at the same time the infallible spring of his
+volition, and of all his life's striving and movement." It is only when
+we have identified ourselves with an ideal, and made its realization our
+own interest, that we strive to attain it. Love is revelation in
+knowledge, inspiration in art, motive in morality, and the fulness of
+religious joy.
+
+But, although in this sense love is greater than knowledge, it is a
+grave error to separate it from knowledge. In the life of man at least,
+the separation of the emotional and intellectual elements extinguishes
+both. We cannot know that in which we have no interest. The very effort
+to comprehend an object rests on interest, or the feeling of ourselves
+in it; so that knowledge, as well as morality, may be said to begin in
+love. We cannot know except we love; but, on the other hand, we cannot
+love that which we do not in some degree know. Wherever the frontiers of
+knowledge may be it is certain that there is nothing beyond them which
+can either arouse feeling, or be a steadying centre for it. Emotion is
+like a climbing plant. It clings to the tree of knowledge, adding beauty
+to its strength. But, without knowledge, it is impossible for man. There
+is no feeling which is not also incipient knowledge; for feeling is only
+the subjective side of knowledge--that face of the known fact which is
+turned inwards.
+
+If, therefore, the poet's agnosticism were taken literally, and, in his
+philosophical poems he obviously means it to be taken literally, it
+would lead to a denial of the very principles of religion and morality,
+which it was meant to support. His appeal to love would then, strictly
+speaking, be an appeal to the love of nothing known, or knowable; and
+such love is impossible. For love, if it is to be distinguished from the
+organic, impulse of beast towards beast, must have an object. A mere
+instinctive activity of benevolence in man, by means of which he
+lightened the sorrows of his brethren, if not informed with knowledge,
+would have no more moral worth than the grateful warmth of the sun. Such
+love as this there may be in the animal creation. If the bird is not
+rational, we may say that it builds its nest and lines it for its brood,
+pines for its partner and loves it, at the bidding of the returning
+spring, in much the same way as the meadows burst into flower. Without
+knowledge, the whole process is merely a natural one; or, if it be more,
+it is so only in so far as the life of emotion can be regarded as a
+foretaste of the life of thought. But such a natural process is not
+possible to man. Every activity in him is relative to his
+self-consciousness, and takes a new character from that relation. His
+love at the best and worst is the love of something that he knows, and
+in which he seeks to find himself made rich with new sufficiency. Thus
+love can not "ally" itself with ignorance. It is, indeed, an impulse
+pressing for the closer communion of the lover with the object of his
+love.
+
+      "Like two meteors of expanding flame,
+  Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
+  Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still
+  Burning, yet ever inconsumable;
+  In one another's substance finding food."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Shelley's _Epipsychidion_.]
+
+But, for a being such as Browning describes, who is shut up within the
+blind walls of his own self, the self-transcending impulse of love would
+be impossible. If man's inner consciousness is to be conceived as a dark
+room shutting out the world, upon whose shadowy phenomena the candle of
+introspection throws a dim and uncertain light, then he can have no
+interest outside of himself; nor can he ever take that first step in
+goodness, which carries him beyond his narrow individuality to seek and
+find a larger self in others. Morality, even in its lowest form, implies
+knowledge, and knowledge of something better than "those _apparent_
+other mortals." With the first dawn of the moral life comes the
+consciousness of an ideal, which is not actual; and such a break with
+the natural is not possible except to him who has known a better and
+desired it. The ethical endeavour of man is the attempt to convert ideas
+into actuality; and all his activity as moral agent takes place within
+the sphere that is illumined by the light of knowledge. If knowledge
+breaks down, there is no law of action which he can obey. The moral law
+that must be apprehended, and whose authority must be recognized by man,
+either sinks out of being or becomes an illusive phantom, if man is
+doomed to ignorance or false knowledge. To extinguish truth is to
+extinguish goodness.
+
+In like manner, religion, which the poet would fain defend for man by
+means of agnosticism, becomes impossible, if knowledge be denied.
+Religion is not blind emotion; nor can mere feeling, however ecstatic,
+ascend to God. Animals feel, but they are not, and cannot be,
+religious--unless they can know. The love of God implies knowledge. "I
+know Him whom I have believed" is the language of religion. For what is
+religion but a conscious identification of the self with One who is
+known to fulfil its needs and satisfy its aspirations? Agnosticism is
+thus directly destructive of it. We cannot, indeed, prove God as the
+conclusion of a syllogism, for He is the primary hypothesis of all
+proof. But, nevertheless, we cannot reach Him without knowledge. Emotion
+reveals no object, but is consequent upon the revelation of it; feeling
+yields no truth, but is the witness of the worth of a truth for the
+individual. If man were shut up to mere feeling, even the awe of the
+devout agnostic would be impossible. For the Unknowable cannot generate
+any emotion. It appears to do so, only because the Unknowable of the
+agnostic is not altogether unknown to him; but is a vast, abysmal
+"Something," that has occupied with its shadowy presence the field of
+his imagination. It is paganism stricken with the plague, and philosophy
+afflicted with blindness, that build altars to an unknown God. The
+highest and the strongest faith, the deepest trust and the most loving,
+come with the fullest knowledge. Indeed, the distinction between the awe
+of the agnostic, which is the lowest form of religion, and that highest
+form in which perfect love casteth out fear, springs from the fuller
+knowledge of the nature of the object of warship, which the latter
+implies. Thus, religion and morality grow with the growth of knowledge;
+and neither has a worse enemy than ignorance. The human spirit cannot
+grow in a one-sided manner. Devotion to great moral ends is possible,
+only through the deepening and widening of man's knowledge of the nature
+of the world. Those who know God best, render unto Him the purest
+service.
+
+So evident is this, that it seems at first sight to be difficult to
+account for that antagonism to the intellect and distrust of its
+deliverances, which are so emphatically expressed in the writings of
+Browning, and which are marked characteristics of the ordinary religious
+opinion of our day. On closer examination, however, we shall discover
+that it is not pure emotion, or mere feeling, whose authority is set
+above that of reason, but rather the emotion which is the result of
+knowledge. The appeal of the religious man from the doubts and
+difficulties, which reason levels against "the faith," is really an
+appeal to the character that lies behind the emotion. The conviction of
+the heart, that refuses to yield to the arguments of the understanding,
+is not _mere_ feeling; but, rather, the complex experience of the past
+life, that manifests itself in feeling. When an individual, clinging to
+his moral or religious faith, says, "I have felt it," he opposes to the
+doubt, not his feeling as such, but his personality in all the wealth of
+its experience. The appeal to the heart is the appeal to the unproved,
+but not, therefore, unauthorized, testimony of the best men at their
+best moments, when their vision of truth is clearest. No one pretends
+that "the loud and empty voice of untrained passion and prejudice" has
+any authority in matters of moral and religious faith; though, in such
+cases, "feeling" may lack neither depth nor intensity. If the "feelings"
+of the good man were dissociated from his character, and stripped bare
+of all the significance they obtain therefrom, their worthlessness would
+become apparent. The profound error of condemning knowledge in order to
+honour feeling, is hidden only by the fact that the feeling is already
+informed and inspired with knowledge. Religious agnosticism, like all
+other forms of the theory of nescience, derives its plausibility from
+the adventitious help it purloins from the knowledge which it condemns.
+
+That it is to such feeling that Browning really appeals against
+knowledge becomes abundantly evident, when we bear in mind that he
+always calls it "love." For love in man is never ignorant. It knows its
+object, and is a conscious identification of the self with it. And to
+Browning, the object of love, when love is at its best--of that love by
+means of which he refutes intellectual pessimism--is mankind. The revolt
+of the heart against all evil is a desire for the good of all men. In
+other words, his refuge against the assailing doubts which spring from
+the intellect, is in the moral consciousness. But that consciousness is
+no mere emotion; it is a consciousness which knows the highest good, and
+moves in sympathy with it. It is our maturest wisdom; for it is the
+manifestation of the presence and activity of the ideal, the fullest
+knowledge and the surest. Compared with this, the emotion linked to
+ignorance, of which the poet speaks in his philosophic theory, is a very
+poor thing. It is poorer than the lowest human love.
+
+Now, if this higher interpretation of the term "heart" be accepted, it
+is easily seen why its authority should seem higher than that of reason;
+and particularly, if it be remembered that, while the heart is thus
+widened to take in all direct consciousness of the ideal, "the reason"
+is reduced to the power of reflection, or mental analysis. "The heart,"
+in this sense, is the intensest unity of the complex experiences of a
+whole life, while "the reason" is taken merely as a faculty which
+invents arguments, and provides grounds and evidences; it is what is
+called, in the language of German philosophy, the "understanding." Now,
+in this sense, the understanding has, at best, only a borrowed
+authority. It is the faculty of rules rather than of principles. It is
+ever dogmatic, assertive, repellent, hard; and it always advances its
+forces in single line. Its logic never convinced any one of truth or
+error, unless, beneath the arguments which it advanced, there lay some
+deeper principle of concord. Thus, the opposition between "faith and
+reason," rightly interpreted, is that between a concrete experience,
+instinct with life and conviction, and a mechanical arrangement of
+abstract arguments. The quarrel of the heart is not with reason, but
+with reasons. "Evidences of Christianity?" said Coleridge; "I am weary
+of the word." It is this weariness of evidence, of the endless arguments
+_pro_ and _con_, which has caused so many to distrust reason and
+knowledge, and which has sometimes driven believers to the dangerous
+expedient of making their faith dogmatic and absolute. Nor have the
+opponents of "the faith" been slow to seize the opportunity thus offered
+them. "From the moment that a religion solicits the aid of philosophy,
+its ruin is inevitable," said Heine. "In the attempt at defence, it
+prates itself into destruction. Religion, like every absolutism, must
+not seek to justify itself. Prometheus is bound to the rock by a silent
+force. Yea, Aeschylus permits not personified power to utter a single
+word. It must remain mute. The moment that a religion ventures to print
+a catechism supported by arguments, the moment that a political
+absolutism publishes an official newspaper, both are near their end. But
+therein consists our triumph: we have brought our adversaries to speech,
+and they must reckon with us."[A] But, we may answer, religion is _not_
+an absolutism; and, therefore, it is _not_ near its end when it ventures
+to justify itself. On the contrary, no spiritual power, be it moral or
+religious, can maintain its authority, if it assumes a despotic
+attitude; for the human spirit inevitably moves towards freedom, and
+that movement is the deepest necessity of its nature, which it cannot
+escape. "Religion, on the ground of its sanctity, and law, on the ground
+of its majesty, often resist the sifting of their claims. But in so
+doing, they inevitably awake a not unjust suspicion that their claims
+are ill-founded. They can command the unfeigned homage of man, only when
+they have shown themselves able to stand the test of free inquiry."
+
+[Footnote A: _Religion and Philosophy in Germany_.]
+
+And if it is an error to suppose, with Browning, that the primary truths
+of the moral and religious consciousness belong to a region which is
+higher than knowledge, and can, from that side, be neither assailed nor
+defended; it is also an error to suppose that reason is essentially
+antagonistic to them. The facts of morality and religion are precisely
+the richest facts of knowledge; and that faith is the most secure which
+is most completely illumined by reason. Religion at its best is not a
+dogmatic despotism, nor is reason a merely critical and destructive
+faculty. If reason is loyal to the truth of religion on which it is
+exercised, it will reach beneath all the conflict and clamour of
+disputation, to the principle of unity, on which, as we have seen, both
+reason and religion rest.
+
+The "faith" to which religious spirits appeal against all the attacks of
+doubt, "the love" of Browning, is really implicit reason; it is
+"abbreviated" or concentrated knowledge; it is the manifold experiences
+of life focussed into an intense unity. And, on the other hand, the
+"reason" which they condemn is what Carlyle calls the logic-chopping
+faculty. In taking the side of faith when troubled with difficulties
+which they cannot lay, they are really defending the cause of reason
+against that of the understanding. For it is quite true that the
+understanding, that is, the reason as reflective or critical, can never
+bring about either a moral or religious life. It cannot create a
+religion, any more than physiology can produce men. The reflection which
+brings doubt is always secondary; it can only exercise itself on a given
+material. As Hegel frequently pointed out, it is not the function of
+moral philosophy to create or to institute a morality or religion, but
+to understand them. The facts must first be given; they must be actual
+experiences of the human spirit. Moral philosophy and theology differ
+from the moral or religious life, in the same way as geology differs
+from the earth, or astronomy from the heavenly bodies. The latter are
+facts; the former are theories about the facts. Religion is an attitude
+of the human spirit towards the highest; morality is the realization of
+character; and these are not to be confused with their reflective
+interpretations. Much of the difficulty in these matters comes from the
+lack of a clear distinction between _beliefs_ and _creeds_.
+
+Further, not only are the utterances of the heart prior to the
+deliverances of the intellect in this sense, but it may also be admitted
+that the latter can never do full justice to the contents of the former.
+So rich is character in content and so complex is spiritual life, that
+we can never, by means of reflection, lift into clear consciousness all
+the elements that enter into it. Into the organism of our experience,
+which is our faith, there is continually absorbed the subtle influences
+of our complex natural and social environment. We grow by means of them,
+as the plant grows by feeding on the soil and the sunshine and dew. It
+is as impossible for us to set forth, one by one, the truths and errors
+which we have thus worked into our mental and moral life, as it is to
+keep a reckoning of the physical atoms with which the natural life
+builds up the body. Hence, every attempt to justify these truths seems
+inadequate; and the defence which the understanding sets up for the
+faith, always seems partial and cold. Who ever fully expressed his
+deepest convictions? The consciousness of the dignity of the moral law
+affected Kant like the view of the starry firmament, and generated a
+feeling of the sublime which words could not express; and the religious
+ecstasy of the saints cannot be confined within the channels of speech,
+but floods the soul with overmastering power, possessing all its
+faculties. In this respect, it will always remain true that the greatest
+facts of human experience reach beyond all knowledge. Nay, we may add
+further, that in this respect the simplest of these facts passes all
+understanding. Still, as we have already seen, it is reason that
+constitutes them; that which is presented to reason for explanation, in
+knowledge and morality and religion, is itself the product of reason.
+Reason is the power which, by interaction with our environment, has
+generated the whole of our experience. And, just as natural science
+interprets the phenomena given to it by ordinary opinion, _i.e._,
+interprets and purifies a lower form of knowledge by converting it into
+a higher; so the task of reason when it is exercised upon morality and
+religion, is simply to evolve, and amplify the meaning of its own
+products. The movement from morality and religion to moral philosophy
+and the philosophy of religion, is thus a movement from reason to
+reason, from the implicit to the explicit, from the germ to the
+developed fulness of life and structure. In this matter, as in all
+others wherein the human spirit is concerned, that which is first by
+nature is last in genesis--[Greek: nika d' ho protos kai teleutaios
+dramon.] The whole history of the moral and religious experience of
+mankind is comprised in the statement, that the implicit reason which we
+call "faith" is ever developing towards full consciousness of itself;
+and that, at its first beginning, and throughout the whole ascending
+process of this development, the highest is present in it as a
+self-manifesting power.
+
+But this process from the almost instinctive intuitions of the heart
+towards the morality and religion of freedom, being a process of
+evolution, necessarily involves conflict. There are men, it is true, the
+unity of whose moral and religious faith is never completely broken by
+doubt; just as there are men who are not forced by the contradictions in
+the first interpretation of the world by ordinary experience to attempt
+to re-interpret it by means of science and philosophy.
+
+Throughout their lives they may say like Pompilia--
+
+        "I know the right place by foot's feel,
+  I took it and tread firm there; wherefore change?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1886-1887.]
+
+Jean Paul Richter said that he knew another way of being happy, beside
+that of soaring away so far above the clouds of life, that its miseries
+looked small, and the whole external world shrunk into a little child's
+garden. It was, "Simply to sink down into this little garden; and there
+to nestle yourself so snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, that in
+looking out from your warm lark-nest, you likewise can discern no
+wolf-dens, charnel-houses, or thunder-rods, but only blades and ears,
+every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a tree, and a sun-screen, and
+rain-screen." There is a similar way of being good, with a goodness
+which, though limited, is pure and perfect in nature. Nay, we may even
+admit that such lives are frequently the most complete and beautiful,
+just as the fairest flowers grow, not on the tallest trees, but on the
+fragile plants at their foot. Nevertheless, even in the case of those
+persons who have never broken from the traditional faith of the past, or
+felt it to be inadequate, that faith has been silently reconstructed in
+a new synthesis of knowledge. Spiritual life cannot come by inheritance;
+but every individual must acquire a faith for himself, and turn his
+spiritual environment into personal experience. "A man may be a heretic
+in the truth," said Milton, "and if he believe things only because his
+pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other
+reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes
+his heresy." It is truth to another but tradition to him; it is a creed
+and not a conviction. Browning fully recognizes the need of this
+conflict--
+
+  "Is it not this ignoble confidence,
+  Cowardly hardihood, that dulls and damps,
+  Makes the old heroism impossible?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1848-1850.]
+
+asks the Pope. The stream of truth when it ceases to flow onward,
+becomes a malarious swamp. Movement is the law of life; and knowledge of
+the principles of morality and religion, as of all other principles,
+must, in order to grow, be felt from time to time as inadequate and
+untrue. There are men and ages whose mission is--
+
+                  "to shake
+  This torpor of assurance from our creed,
+  Re-introduce the doubt discarded, bring
+  That formidable danger back, we drove
+  Long ago to the distance and the dark."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid._, 1853-1856.]
+
+Such a spirit of criticism seems to many to exercise a merely
+destructive power, and those who have not felt the inadequacy of the
+inherited faith defend themselves against it, as the enemy of their
+lives. But no logic, or assailing doubt, could have power against the
+testimony of "the heart," unless it was rooted in deeper and truer
+principles than those which it attacked. Nothing can overpower truth
+except a larger truth; and, in such a conflict, the truth in the old
+view will ultimately take the side of the new, and find its subordinate
+position within it. It has happened, not infrequently, as in the case of
+the Encyclopaedists, that the explicit truths of reason were more
+abstract, that is, less true, than the implicit "faith" which they
+assailed. The central truths of religion have often proved themselves to
+possess some stubborn, though semi-articulate power, which could
+ultimately overcome or subordinate the more partial and explicit truths
+of abstract science. It is this that gives plausibility to the idea,
+that the testimony of the heart is more reliable than that of the
+intellect. But, in this case also, it was really reason that triumphed.
+It was the truth which proved itself to be immortal, and not any mere
+emotion. The insurrection of the intellect against the heart is quelled,
+only when the untruth, or abstract character, of the principle of the
+assailants has been made manifest, and when the old faith has yielded up
+its unjust gains, and proved its vitality and strength by absorbing the
+truth that gave vigour to the attack. Just as in morality it is the
+ideal, or the unity of the whole moral life, that breaks up into
+differences, so also here it is the implicit faith which, as it grows,
+breaks forth into doubts. In both cases alike, the negative movement
+which induces despair, is only a phase of a positive process--the
+process of reason towards a fuller, a more articulate and complex,
+realization of itself.
+
+Hence it follows that the value and strength of a faith corresponds
+accurately to the doubts it has overcome. Those who never went forth to
+battle cannot come home heroes. It is only when the earthquake has tried
+the towers, and destroyed the sense of security, that
+
+  "Man stands out again, pale, resolute,
+  Prepared to die,--that is, alive at last.
+  As we broke up that old faith of the world,
+  Have we, next age, to break up this the new--
+  Faith, in the thing, grown faith in the report--
+  Whence need to bravely disbelieve report
+  Through increased faith i' the thing reports belie?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1862-1868.]
+
+"Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrive
+by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion."
+
+It was, thus, I conclude, a deep speculative error into which Browning
+fell, when, in order to substantiate his optimistic faith, he
+stigmatized human knowledge as merely apparent. Knowledge does not fail,
+except in the sense in which morality also fails; it does not at any
+time attain to the ultimate truth, any more than the moral life is in
+any of its activities[B] a complete embodiment of the absolute good. It
+is not given to man, who is essentially progressive, to reach the
+ultimate term of development. For there is no ultimate term: life never
+stands still. But, for the same reason, there is no ultimate failure.
+The whole history of man is a history of growth. If, however, knowledge
+did fail, then morality too must fail; and the appeal which the poet
+makes from the intellect to the heart, would be an appeal to mere
+emotion. Finally, even if we take a generous view of the poet's meaning,
+and put out of consideration the theory he expresses when he is
+deliberately philosophizing, there is still no appeal from the reason to
+an alien and higher authority. The appeal to "the heart" is, at best,
+only an appeal from the understanding to the reason, from a conscious
+logic to the more concrete fact constituted by reason, which reflection
+has failed to comprehend in its completeness; at its worst, it is an
+appeal from truth to prejudice, from belief to dogma.
+
+[Footnote B: See Chapter IX., p. 291.]
+
+And in both cases alike, the appeal is futile; for, whether "the heart
+be wiser than the head," or not, whether the faith which is assailed be
+richer or poorer, truer or more false, than the logic which is directed
+against it, an appeal to the heart cannot any longer restore the unity
+of the broken life. Once reflection has set in, there is no way of
+turning away its destructive might, except by deeper reflection. The
+implicit faith of the heart must become the explicit faith of reason.
+"There is no final and satisfactory issue from such an endless internal
+debate and conflict, until the 'heart' has learnt to speak the language
+of the head--_i.e._, until the permanent principles, which underlay and
+gave strength to faith, have been brought into the light of distinct
+consciousness."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: Caird's _Comte_.]
+
+I conclude, therefore, that the poet was right in saying that, in order
+to comprehend human character,
+
+  "I needs must blend the quality of man
+  With quality of God, and so assist
+  Mere human sight to understand my Life."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_--_Ferishtah's Fancies_.]
+
+But it was a profound error, which contained in it the destruction of
+morality and religion, as well as of knowledge, to make "the quality of
+God" a love that excludes reason, and the quality of man an intellect
+incapable of knowing truth. Such in-congruous elements could never be
+combined into the unity of a character. A love that was mere emotion
+could not yield a motive for morality, or a principle of religion. A
+philosophy of life which is based on agnosticism is an explicit
+self-contradiction, which can help no one. We must appeal from Browning
+the philosopher to Browning the poet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+  "Well, I can fancy how he did it all,
+  Pouring his soul, with kings and popes to see,
+  Reaching, that heaven might so replenish him,
+  Above and through his art--for it gives way;
+  That arm is wrongly put--and there again--
+  A fault to pardon in the drawing's lines,
+  Its body, so to speak: its soul is right,
+  He means right--that, a child may understand."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Andrea del Sarto_.]
+
+I have tried to show that Browning's theory of life, in so far as it is
+expressed in his philosophical poems, rests on agnosticism; and that
+such a theory is inconsistent with the moral and religious interests of
+man. The idea that truth is unattainable was represented by Browning as
+a bulwark of the faith, but it proved on examination to be treacherous.
+His optimism was found to have no better foundation than personal
+conviction, which any one was free to deny, and which the poet could in
+no wise prove. The evidence of the heart, to which he appealed, was the
+evidence of an emotion severed from intelligence, and, therefore,
+without any content whatsoever. "The faith," which he professed, was not
+the faith that anticipates and invites proof, but a faith which is
+incapable of proof. In casting doubt upon the validity of knowledge, he
+degraded the whole spiritual nature of man; for a love that is ignorant
+of its object is a blind impulse, and a moral consciousness that does
+not know the law is an impossible phantom--a self-contradiction.
+
+But, although Browning's explicitly philosophical theory of life fails,
+there appears in his earlier poems, where his poetical freedom was not
+yet trammelled, nor his moral enthusiasm restrained by the stubborn
+difficulties of reflective thought, a far truer and richer view. In this
+period of pure poetry, his conception of man was less abstract than in
+his later works, and his inspiration was more direct and full. The
+poet's dialectical ingenuity increased with the growth of his reflective
+tendencies; but his relation to the great principles of spiritual life
+seemed to become less intimate, and his expression of them more halting.
+What we find in his earlier works are vigorous ethical convictions, a
+glowing optimistic faith, achieving their fitting expression in
+impassioned poetry; what we find in his later works are arguments,
+which, however richly adorned with poetic metaphors, have lost the
+completeness and energy of life. His poetic fancies are like chaplets
+which crown the dead. Lovers of the poet, who seek in his poems for
+inspiring expressions of their hope and faith, will always do well in
+turning from his militant metaphysics to his art.
+
+In his case, as in that of many others, spiritual experience was far
+richer than the theory which professed to explain it. The task of
+lifting his moral convictions into the clear light of conscious
+philosophy was beyond his power. The theory of the failure of knowledge,
+which he seems to have adopted far too easily from the current doctrine
+of the schools, was fundamentally inconsistent with his generous belief
+in the moral progress of man; and it maimed the expression of that
+belief. The result of his work as a philosopher is a confession of
+complete ignorance and the helpless asseveration of a purely dogmatic
+faith.
+
+The fundamental error of the poet's philosophy lies, I believe, in that
+severance of feeling and intelligence, love and reason, which finds
+expression in _La Saisiaz_, _Ferishtah's Fancies_, _The Parleyings_, and
+_Asolando_. Such an absolute division is not to be found in
+_Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day_, _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, _A Death in the
+Desert_, or in _The Ring and the Book_; nor even in _Fifine at the
+Fair_. In these works we are not perplexed by the strange combination of
+a nature whose principle is love, and which is capable of infinite
+progress, with an intelligence whose best efforts end in ignorance.
+Rather, the spirit of man is regarded as one, in all its manifestations;
+and, therefore, as progressive on all sides of its activity. The
+widening of his knowledge, which is brought about by increasing
+experience, is parallel with the deepening and purifying of his moral
+life. In all Browning's works, indeed, with the possible exception of
+_Paracelsus_, love is conceived as having a place and function of
+supreme importance in the development of the soul. Its divine origin and
+destiny are never obscured; but knowledge is regarded as merely human,
+and, therefore, as falling short of the truth. In _Easter-Day_ it is
+definitely contrasted with love, and shown to be incapable of satisfying
+the deepest wants of man. It is, at the best, only a means to the higher
+purposes of moral activity, and, except in the _Grammarian's Funeral_,
+it is nowhere regarded as in itself a worthy end.
+
+  "'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.
+  And thence I conclude that the real God-function
+  Is to furnish a motive and injunction
+  For practising what we know already."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day_.]
+
+Even here, there is implied that the motive comes otherwise than by
+knowledge; still, taking these earlier poems as a whole, we may say that
+in them knowledge is regarded as means to morality and not as in any
+sense contrasted with or destructive of it. Man's motives are rational
+motives; the ends he seeks are ends conceived and even constituted by
+his intelligence, and not purposes blindly followed as by instinct and
+impulse.
+
+                        "Why live,
+  Except for love--how love, unless they know?"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1327-1328.]
+
+asks the Pope. Moral progress is not secured apart from, or in spite of
+knowledge. We are not exhorted to reject the verdict of the latter as
+illusive, in order to confide in a faith which not only fails to receive
+support from the defective intelligence, but maintains its own integrity
+only by repudiating the testimony of the reason. In the distinction
+between knowledge as means and love as end, it is easy, indeed, to
+detect a tendency to degrade the former into a mere temporary expedient,
+whereby moral ends may be served. The poet speaks of "such knowledge as
+is possible to man." The attitude he assumes towards it is apologetic,
+and betrays a keen consciousness of its limitation, and particularly of
+its utter inadequacy to represent the infinite. In the speech of the
+Pope---which can scarcely be regarded otherwise than as the poet's own
+maturest utterance on the great moral and religious questions raised by
+the tragedy of Pompilia's death--we find this view vividly expressed:--
+
+  "O Thou--as represented here to me
+  In such conception as my soul allows,--
+  Under Thy measureless, my atom width!--
+  Man's mind, what is it but a convex glass
+  Wherein are gathered all the scattered points
+  Picked out of the immensity of sky,
+  To reunite there, be our heaven for earth,
+  Our known unknown, our God revealed to man?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1308-1315.]
+
+God is "appreciable in His absolute immensity solely by Himself," while,
+"by the little mind of man, He is reduced to littleness that suits man's
+faculty." In these words, and others that might be quoted, the poet
+shows that he is profoundly impressed with the distinction between human
+knowledge, and that knowledge which is adequate to the whole nature and
+extent of being. And in _Christmas-Eve_ he repudiates with a touch of
+scorn, the absolute idealism, which is supposed to identify altogether
+human reason with divine reason; and he commends the German critic for
+not making
+
+           "The important stumble
+  Of adding, he, the sage and humble,
+  Was also one with the Creator."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+Nowhere in Browning, unless we except _Paracelsus_, is there any sign of
+an inclination to treat man's knowledge in the same spirit as he deals
+with man's love--namely, as a direct emanation from the inmost nature of
+God, a divine element that completes and crowns man's life on earth. On
+the contrary, he shows a persistent tendency to treat love as a power
+higher in nature than reason, and to give to it a supreme place in the
+formation of character; and, as he grows older, that tendency grows in
+strength. The philosophical poems, in which love is made all in all, and
+knowledge is reduced to nescience follow by logical evolution from
+principles, the influence of which we can detect even in his earlier
+works. Still, in the latter, these principles are only latent, and are
+far from holding undisputed sway. Browning was, at first, restrained
+from exclusive devotion to abstract views, by the suggestions which the
+artistic spirit receives through its immediate contact with the facts of
+life. That contact it is very difficult for philosophy to maintain as it
+pursues its effort after universal truth. Philosophy is obliged to
+analyze in order to define, and, in that process, it is apt to lose
+something of that completeness of representation, which belongs to art.
+For art is always engaged in presenting the universal in the form of a
+particular object of beauty. Its product is a "known unknown," but the
+unknown is the unexhausted reality of a fact of intuition. Nor can
+analysis ever exhaust it; theory can never catch up art, or explain all
+that is in it. On similar grounds, it may be shown that it is impossible
+for reason to lay bare all the elements that enter into its first
+complex product, which we call faith. In religion, as in art, man is
+aware of more than he knows; his articulate logic cannot do justice to
+all the truths of the "heart." "The supplementary reflux of light" of
+philosophy cannot "illustrate all the inferior grades" of knowledge. Man
+will never completely understand himself.
+
+  "I knew, I felt, (perception unexpressed,
+  Uncomprehended by our narrow thought,
+  But somehow felt and known in every shift
+  And change in the spirit,--nay, in every pore
+  Of the body, even,)--what God is, what we are,
+  What life is--how God tastes an infinite joy
+  In infinite ways--one everlasting bliss,
+  From whom all being emanates, all power
+  Proceeds."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]
+
+I believe that it is possible, by the help of the intuitions of
+Browning's highest artistic period, to bring together again the elements
+of his broken faith, and to find in them suggestions of a truer
+philosophy of life than anything which the poet himself achieved.
+Perhaps, indeed, it is not easy, nor altogether fair, to press the
+passionate utterances of his religious rapture into the service of
+metaphysics, and to treat the unmeasured language of emotion as the
+expression of a definite doctrine. Nevertheless, rather than set forth a
+new defence of the faith, which his agnosticism left exposed to the
+assaults of doubt and denial, it is better to make Browning correct his
+own errors, and to appeal from the metaphysician to the poet, from the
+sobriety of the logical understanding to the inspiration of poetry.
+
+I have already indicated what seems to me to be the defective element in
+the poet's philosophy of life. His theory of knowledge is in need of
+revision; and what he asserts of human love, should be applied point by
+point to human reason. As man is ideally united with the absolute on the
+side of moral emotion (if the phrase may be pardoned), so he is ideally
+united with the absolute on the side of the intellect. As there is no
+difference of _nature_ between God's goodness and man's goodness, so
+there is no difference of nature between God's truth and man's truth.
+There are not two kinds of righteousness or mercy; there are not two
+kinds of truth. Human nature is not "cut in two with a hatchet," as the
+poet implies that it is. There is in man a lower and a higher element,
+ever at war with each other; still he is not a mixture, or agglomerate,
+of the finite and the infinite. A love perfect in nature cannot be
+linked to an intelligence imperfect in nature; if it were, the love
+would be either a blind impulse or an erring one. Both morality and
+religion demand the presence in man of a perfect ideal, which is at war
+with his imperfections; but an ideal is possible, only to a being
+endowed with a capacity for knowing the truth. In degrading human
+knowledge, the poet is disloyal to the fundamental principle of the
+Christian faith which he professed--that God can and does manifest
+himself in man.
+
+On the other hand, we are not to take the unity of man with God, of
+man's moral ideal with the All-perfect, as implying, on the moral side,
+an absolute identification of the finite with the infinite; nor can we
+do so on the side of knowledge. Man's moral life and rational activity
+in knowledge are the process of the highest. But man is neither first,
+nor last; he is not the original author of his love, any more than of
+his reason; he is not the divine principle of the whole to which he
+belongs, although he is potentially in harmony with it. Both sides of
+his being are equally touched with imperfection--his love, no less than
+his reason. Perfect love would imply perfect wisdom, as perfect wisdom,
+perfect love. But absolute terms are not applicable to man, who is ever
+_on the way_ to goodness and truth, progressively manifesting the power
+of the ideal that dwells in him, and whose very life is conflict and
+acquirement.
+
+  "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
+  Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey
+  Placid and perfect with my art: the worse."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Andrea del Sarto_.]
+
+Hardly any conception is more prominent in Browning's writings than
+this, of endless progress towards an infinite ideal; although he
+occasionally manifests a desire to have done with effort.
+
+            "When a soul has seen
+    By the means of Evil that Good is best,
+  And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene,--
+    When our faith in the same has stood the test--
+  Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod,
+    The uses of labour are surely done,
+  There remaineth a rest for the people of God,
+    And I have had troubles enough, for one."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Old Pictures in Florence_.]
+
+It is the sense of endless onward movement, the outlook towards an
+immortal course, "the life after life in unlimited series," which is so
+inspiring in his early poetry. He conceives that we are here, on this
+lower earth, just to learn one form, the elementary lesson and alphabet
+of goodness, namely, "the uses of the flesh": in other lives, other
+achievements. The separation of the soul from its instrument has very
+little significance to the poet; for it does not arrest the course of
+moral development.
+
+  "No work begun shall ever pause for death."
+
+The spirit pursues its lone way, on other "adventures brave and new,"
+but ever towards a good which is complete.
+
+  "Delayed it may be for more lives yet,
+    Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few:
+  Much is to learn, much to forget
+    Ere the time be come for taking you."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Evelyn Hope_.]
+
+Still the time will come when the awakened need shall be satisfied; for
+the need was created in order to be satisfied.
+
+  "Wherefore did I contrive for thee that ear
+  Hungry for music, and direct thine eye
+  To where I hold a seven-stringed instrument,
+  Unless I meant thee to beseech me play?"[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Two Camels_.]
+
+The movement onward is thus a movement in knowledge, as well as in every
+other form of good. The lover of Evelyn Hope, looking back in
+imagination on the course he has travelled on earth and after,
+exclaims--
+
+  "I have lived (I shall say) so much since then,
+    Given up myself so many times,
+  Gained me the gains of various men,
+    Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Evelyn Hope_.]
+
+In these earlier poems, there is not, as in the later ones, a maimed, or
+one-sided, evolution--a progress towards perfect love on the side of the
+heart, and towards an illusive ideal on the side of the intellect.
+Knowledge, too, has its value, and he who lived to settle "_Hoti's_
+business, properly based _Oun_," and who "gave us the doctrine of the
+enclitic _De_," was, to the poet,
+
+  "Still loftier than the world suspects,
+    Living and dying.
+
+  "Here's the top-peak; the multitude below
+    Live, for they can, there:
+  This man decided not to Live but Know--
+    Bury this man there?
+  Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
+    Lightnings are loosened,
+  Stars come and go."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Grammarian's Funeral_.]
+
+No human effort goes to waste, no gift is delusive; but every gift and
+every effort has its proper place as a stage in the endless process. The
+soul bears in it _all_ its conquests.
+
+  "There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;
+    The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound;
+  What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, _so_ much good more;
+    On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Abt Vogler_.]
+
+The "apparent failure" of knowledge, like every apparent failure, is "a
+triumph's evidence for the fulness of the days." The doubts that
+knowledge brings, instead of implying a defective intelligence doomed to
+spend itself on phantom phenomena, sting to progress towards the truth.
+He bids us "Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe."
+
+  "Rather I prize the doubt
+  Low kinds exist without,
+  Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Rabbi Ben Ezra_.]
+
+Similarly, defects in art, like defects in character, contain the
+promise of further achievement.
+
+  "Are they perfect of lineament, perfect of stature?
+    In both, of such lower types are we
+  Precisely because of our wider nature;
+    For time, their's--ours, for eternity.
+
+  "To-day's brief passion limits their range;
+    It seethes with the morrow for us and more.
+  They are perfect--how else? They shall never change:
+    We are faulty--why not? We have time in store."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Old Pictures in Florence_.]
+
+Prior to the period when a sceptical philosophy came down like a blight,
+and destroyed the bloom of his art and faith, he thus recognized that
+growing knowledge was an essential condition of growing goodness.
+Pompilia shone with a glory that mere knowledge could not give (if there
+were such a thing as _mere_ knowledge).
+
+                "Everywhere
+  I see in the world the intellect of man,
+  That sword, the energy his subtle spear,
+  The knowledge which defends him like a shield--
+  Everywhere; but they make not up, I think,
+  The marvel of a soul like thine, earth's flower
+  She holds up to the softened gaze of God."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1013-1019.]
+
+But yet she recognized with patient pain the loss she had sustained for
+want of knowledge.
+
+  "The saints must bear with me, impute the fault
+  To a soul i' the bud, so starved by ignorance,
+  Stinted of warmth, it will not blow this year
+  Nor recognize the orb which Spring-flowers know."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_Pompilia_, 1515-1518.]
+
+Further on in the Pope's soliloquy, the poet shows that, at that time,
+he fully recognized the risk of entrusting the spiritual interests of
+man to the enthusiasm of elevated feeling, or to the mere intuitions of
+a noble heart. Such intuitions will sometimes guide a man happily, as in
+the case of Caponsacchi:
+
+              "Since ourselves allow
+  He has danced, in gaiety of heart, i' the main
+  The right step through the maze we bade him foot."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1915-1917.]
+
+But, on the other hand, such impulses, not instructed by knowledge of
+the truth, and made steadfast to the laws of the higher life by a
+reasoned conviction, lead man rightly only by accident. In such a career
+there is no guarantee of constancy; other impulses might lead to other
+ways of life.
+
+  "But if his heart had prompted to break loose
+  And mar the measure? Why, we must submit,
+  And thank the chance that brought him safe so far.
+  Will he repeat the prodigy? Perhaps.
+  Can he teach others how to quit themselves,
+  Show why this step was right while that were wrong?
+  How should he? 'Ask your hearts as I asked mine,
+  And get discreetly through the morrice too;
+  If your hearts misdirect you,--quit the stage,
+  And make amends,--be there amends to make.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1916-1927.]
+
+If the heart proved to Caponsacchi a guide to all that is good and
+glorious, "the Abate, second in the suite," puts in the testimony of
+another experience: "His heart answered to another tune."
+
+  "I have my taste too, and tread no such step!
+  You choose the glorious life, and may for me!
+  I like the lowest of life's appetites,--
+  So you judge--but the very truth of joy
+  To my own apprehension which decides."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid._, 1932-1936.]
+
+Mere emotion is thus an insecure guide to conduct, for its authority can
+be equally cited in support of every course of life. No one can say to
+his neighbour, "Thou art wrong." Every impulse is right to the
+individual who has it, and so long as he has it. _De gustibus non
+disputandum_. Without a universal criterion there is no praise or blame.
+
+  "Call me knave and you get yourself called fool!
+  I live for greed, ambition, lust, revenge;
+  Attain these ends by force, guile: hypocrite,
+  To-day, perchance to-morrow recognized
+  The rational man, the type of common-sense."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Ibid._, 1937-1941.]
+
+This poem which, both in its moral wisdom and artistic worth, marks the
+high tide of Browning's poetic insight, while he is not as yet concerned
+with the defence of any theory or the discussion of any abstract
+question, contrasts strongly with the later poems, where knowledge is
+dissembling ignorance, faith is blind trust, and love is a mere impulse
+of the heart. Having failed to meet the difficulties of reflection, the
+poet turned upon the intellect. Knowledge becomes to him an offence, and
+to save his faith he plucked out his right eye and entered into the
+kingdom maimed. In _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ the ascent into another life is
+triumphant, like that of a conqueror bearing with him the spoils of
+earth; but in the later poems he escapes with a bare belief, and the
+loss of all his rich possessions of knowledge, like a shipwrecked
+mariner whose goods have been thrown overboard. His philosophy was a
+treacherous ally to his faith.
+
+But there is another consideration which shows that the poet, as artist,
+recognized the need of giving to reason a larger function than seems to
+be possible according to the theory in his later works. In the early
+poems there is no hint of the doctrine that demonstrative knowledge of
+the good, and of the necessity of its law, would destroy freedom. On the
+contrary, there are suggestions which point to the opposite doctrine,
+according to which knowledge is the condition of freedom.
+
+While in his later poems the poet speaks of love as an impulse--either
+blind or bound to erring knowledge--and of the heart as made to love, in
+his earlier ones he seems to treat man as free to work out his own
+purposes, and act out his own ideals. Browning here finds himself able
+to maintain the dependence of man upon God without destroying morality.
+He regards man's impulses not as blind instincts, but as falling
+_within_ his rational nature, and constituting the forms of its
+activity. He recognizes the distinction between a mere impulse, in the
+sense of a tendency to act, which is directed by a foreign power, and an
+impulse informed, that is, directed by reason. According to this view,
+it is reason which at once gives man the independence of foreign
+authority, which is implied in morality, and constitutes that affinity
+between man and God, which is implied by religion. No doubt, the impulse
+to know, like the impulse to love, was put into man: his whole nature is
+a gift, and he is therefore, in this sense, completely dependent upon
+God--"God's all, man's nought." But, on the other hand, it _is_ a
+rational nature which has been put into him, and not an irrational
+impulse. Or, rather, the impulse that constitutes his life as man, is
+the self-evolving activity of reason.
+
+  "Who speaks of man, then, must not sever
+  Man's very elements from man."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+However the rational nature of man has come to be, whether by emanation
+or creation, it necessarily brings freedom with it, and all its risks
+and possibilities. It is of the very essence of reason that it should
+find its law within itself.
+
+         "God's all, man's nought:
+  But also, God, whose pleasure brought
+  Man into being, stands away
+  As it were a hand-breadth off, to give
+  Room for the newly-made to live,
+  And look at Him from a place apart,
+  And use his gifts of brain and heart,
+  Given, indeed, but to keep for ever."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+Thus, while insisting on the absolute priority of God, and the original
+receptivity of man; while recognizing that love, reason, and every inner
+power and outer opportunity are lent to man, Browning does not forget
+what these powers are. Man can only act as man; he must obey his nature,
+as the stock or stone or plant obeys its nature. But to act as man is to
+act freely, and man's nature is not that of a stock or stone. He is
+rational, and cannot but be rational. Hence he can neither be ruled, as
+dead matter is ruled, by natural law; nor live, like a bird, the life of
+innocent impulse or instinct. He is placed, from the very first, on "the
+table land whence life upsprings aspiring to be immortality." He is a
+spirit,--responsible because he is free, and free because he is
+rational.
+
+  "Man, therefore, stands on his own stock
+  Of love and power as a pin-point rock,
+  And, looks to God who ordained divorce
+  Of the rock from His boundless continent."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Ibid._]
+
+The divorce is real, although ordained, but it is possible only in so
+far as man, by means of reason, constitutes his own ends of action.
+Impulse cannot bring it about. It is reason that enables man to free
+himself from the despotic authority of outer law, to relate himself to
+an inner law, and by reconciling inner and outer to attain to goodness.
+Thus reason is the source of all morality. And it also is the principle
+of religion, for it implies the highest and fullest manifestation of the
+absolute.
+
+Although the first aspect of self-consciousness is its independence,
+which is, in turn, the first condition of morality, still this is only
+the first aspect. The rational being plants himself on his own
+individuality, stands aloof and alone in the rights of his freedom, _in
+order that_ he may set out from thence to take possession, by means of
+knowledge and action, of the world in which he is placed. Reason is
+potentially absolute, capable of finding itself everywhere. So that in
+it man is "honour-clothed and glory-crowned."
+
+  "This is the honour,--that no thing I know,
+  Feel or conceive, but I can make my own
+  Somehow, by use of hand, or head, or heart."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau._]
+
+Man, by his knowledge, overcomes the resistance and hostility of the
+world without him, or rather, discovers that there is not hostility, but
+affinity between it and himself.
+
+  "This is the glory,--that in all conceived,
+  Or felt or known, I recognize a mind
+  Not mine but like mine,--for the double joy,--
+  Making all things for me and me for Him."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau_.]
+
+That which is finite is hemmed in by other things, as well as determined
+by them; but the infinite is all-inclusive. There exists for it no other
+thing to limit or determine it. There is nothing finally alien or
+foreign to reason. Freedom and infinitude, self-determination and
+absoluteness, imply each other. In so far as man is free, he is lifted
+above the finite. It was God's plan to make man on His own image:--
+
+        "To create man and then leave him
+  Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him,
+  But able to glorify Him too,
+  As a mere machine could never do,
+  That prayed or praised, all unaware
+  Of its fitness for aught but praise or prayer,
+  Made perfect as a thing of course."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+Man must find his law within himself, be the source of his own activity,
+not passive or receptive, but outgoing and effective.
+
+  "Rejoice we are allied
+  To That which doth provide
+  And not partake, effect and not receive!
+  A spark disturbs our clod;
+  Nearer we hold of God
+  Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe."[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Rabbi Ben Ezra_.]
+
+This near affinity between the divine and human is just what Browning
+seems to repudiate in his later poems, when he speaks as if the
+absolute, in order to maintain its own supremacy over man, had to stint
+its gifts and endow him only with a defective reason. In the earlier
+period of the poet there is far less timidity. He then saw that the
+greater the gift, the greater the Giver; that only spirit can reveal
+spirit; that "God is glorified in man," and that love is at its fullest
+only when it gives itself.
+
+In insisting on such identity of the human spirit with the divine, our
+poet does not at any time run the risk of forgetting that the identity
+is not absolute. Absolute identity would be pantheism, which leaves God
+lonely and loveless, and extinguishes man, as well as his morality.
+
+  "Man is not God, but hath God's end to serve,
+  A Master to obey, a course to take,
+  Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+Man, at best, only moves _towards_ his ideal: God is conceived as the
+ever-existing ideal. God, in short, is the term which signifies for us
+the Being who is eternally all in all, and who, therefore, is hidden
+from us who are only moving _towards_ perfection, in the excess of the
+brightness of His own glory. Nevertheless, as Browning recognizes, the
+grandeur of God's perfection is just His outflowing love. And that love
+is never complete in its manifestation, till it has given itself. Man's
+life, as spirit, is thus one in nature with that of the absolute. But
+the unity is not complete, because man is only potentially perfect. He
+is the process _of_ the ideal; his life is the divine activity within
+him. Still, it is also man's activity. For the process, being the
+process of spirit, is a _free_ process--one in which man himself
+energizes; so that, in doing God's will, he is doing his own highest
+will, and, in obeying the law of his own deepest nature, he is obeying
+God. The unity of divine and human within the spiritual life of man is a
+real unity, just because man is free; the identity manifests itself
+through the difference, and the difference is possible through the
+unity.
+
+Thus, in the light of an ideal which is moral, and therefore perfect--an
+ideal gradually realizing itself in a process which is endless--the poet
+is able to maintain at once the community between man and God, which is
+necessary to religion, and their independence, which is necessary to
+morality. The conception of God as giving, which is the main doctrine of
+Christianity, and of man as akin with God, is applied by him to the
+whole spiritual nature of man, and not merely to his emotion. The
+process of evolution is thus a process towards truth, as well as
+goodness; in fact, goodness and truth are known as inseparable.
+Knowledge, too, is a Divine endowment. "What gift of man is not from God
+descended?" What gift of God can be deceptive?
+
+  "Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast
+  Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed:
+  Though He is so bright and we so dim,
+  We are made in His image to witness Him."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+The Pope recognizes clearly the inadequacy of human knowledge; but he
+also recognizes that it has a Divine source.
+
+  "Yet my poor spark had for its source, the sun;
+  Thither I sent the great looks which compel
+  Light from its fount: all that I do and am
+  Comes from the truth, or seen or else surmised,
+  Remembered or divined, as mere man may."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1285-1289.]
+
+The last words indicate a suspicion of a certain defect in knowledge,
+which is not recognized in human love; nevertheless, in these earlier
+poems, the poet does not analyze human nature into a finite and
+infinite, or seek to dispose of his difficulties by the deceptive
+solvent of a dualistic agnosticism. He treats spirit as a unity, and
+refuses to set love and reason against each other. Man's _life_, for the
+poet, and not merely man's love, begins with God, and returns back to
+God in the rapt recognition of God's perfect being by reason, and in the
+identification of man's purposes with His by means of will and love.
+
+  "What is left for us, save, in growth
+  Of soul, to rise up, far past both,
+  From the gift looking to the giver,
+  And from the cistern to the river,
+  And from the finite to infinity
+  And from man's dust to God's divinity?"[C]
+
+[Footnote C: _Christmas-Eve_.]
+
+It is this movement of the absolute in man, this aspiration towards the
+full knowledge and perfect goodness which can never be completely
+attained, that constitutes man.
+
+  "Man, therefore, thus conditioned, must expect
+  He could not, what he knows now, know at first:
+  What he considers that he knows to-day,
+  Come but to-morrow, he will find mis-known;
+  Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns
+  Because he lives, which is to be a man,
+  Set to instruct himself by his past self:
+  First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn,
+  Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind,
+  Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law.
+  God's gift was that man shall conceive of truth
+  And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake,
+  As midway help till he reach fact indeed?"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]
+
+"Progress," the poet says, is "man's distinctive mark alone." The
+endlessness of the progress, the fact that every truth known to-day
+seems misknown to-morrow, that every ideal once achieved only points to
+another and becomes itself a stepping stone, does not, as in his later
+days, bring despair to him. For the consciousness of failure is possible
+in knowledge, as in morality, only because there has come a fuller
+light. Browning does not, as yet, dwell exclusively on the negative
+element in progress, or forget that it is possible only through a deeper
+positive. He does not think that, because we turn our backs on what we
+have gained, we are therefore not going forward; nay, he asserts the
+contrary. Failure, even the failure of knowledge, is triumph's evidence
+in these earlier days; and complete failure, the unchecked rule of evil
+in any form, is therefore impossible. We deny
+
+  "Recognized truths, obedient to some truth
+  Unrecognized yet, but perceptible,--
+  Correct the portrait by the living face,
+  Man's God, by God's God in the mind of man."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1871-1874.]
+
+Thus the poet ever returns to the conception of God in the mind of man.
+God is the beginning and the end; and man is the self-conscious worker
+of God's will, the free process whereby the last which is first, returns
+to itself. The process, the growth, is man's life and being; and it
+falls within the ideal, which is eternal and all in all. The spiritual
+life of man, which is both intellectual and moral, is a dying into the
+eternal, not to cease to be in it, but to live in it more fully; for
+spirits necessarily commune. He dies to the temporal interests and
+narrow ends of the exclusive self, and lives an ever-expanding life in
+the life of others, manifesting more and more that spiritual principle
+which is the life of God, who lives and loves in all things. "God is a
+being in whom we exist; with whom we are in principle one; with whom the
+human spirit is identical, in the sense that He _is_ all which the human
+spirit is capable of becoming."[B]
+
+[Footnote B: Green's _Prolegomena to Ethics_, p. 198.]
+
+From this point of view, and in so far as Browning is loyal to the
+conception of the community of the divine and human, he is able to
+maintain his faith in God, not in spite of knowledge, but through the
+very movement of knowledge within him. He is not obliged, as in his
+later works, to look for proofs, either in nature, or elsewhere; nor to
+argue from the emotion of love in man, to a cause of that emotion. He
+needs no syllogistic process to arrive at God; for the very activity of
+his own spirit as intelligence, as the reason which thinks and acts, is
+the activity of God within him. Scepticism, is impossible, for the very
+act of doubting is the activity of reason, and a profession of the
+knowledge of the truth.
+
+                                "I
+  Put no such dreadful question to myself,
+  Within whose circle of experience burns
+  The central truth, Power, Wisdom, Goodness,--God:
+  I must outlive a thing ere know it dead:
+  When I outlive the faith there is a sun,
+  When I lie, ashes to the very soul,--
+  Someone, not I, must wail above the heap,
+  'He died in dark whence never morn arose.'"[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1631-1639.]
+
+And this view of God as immanent in man's experience also forecloses all
+possibility of failure. Beneath the failure, the possibility of which is
+involved in a moral life, lies the divine element, working through
+contradiction to its own fulfilment. Failure is necessary for man,
+because he grows: but, for the same reason, the failure is not final.
+Thus, the poet, instead of denying the evidence of his intellect as to
+the existence of evil, or casting doubt on the distinction between right
+and wrong, or reducing the chequered course of human history into a
+phantasmagoria of mere mental appearances, can regard the conflict
+between good and evil as real and earnest. He can look evil in the face,
+recognize its stubborn resistance to the good, and still regard the
+victory of the latter as sure and complete. He has not to reduce it into
+a phantom, or mere appearance, in order to give it a place within the
+divine order. He sees the night, but he also sees the day succeed it.
+Man falls into sin, but he cannot rest in it. It is contradictory to his
+nature, he cannot content himself with it, and he is driven through it.
+Mephistopheles promised more than he could perform, when he undertook to
+make Faust declare himself satisfied. There is not within the kingdom of
+evil what will satisfy the spirit of man, whose last law is goodness,
+whose nature, however obscured, is God's gift of Himself.
+
+  "While I see day succeed the deepest night--
+  How can I speak but as I know?--my speech
+  Must be, throughout the darkness. It will end:
+  'The light that did burn, will burn!' Clouds obscure--
+  But for which obscuration all were bright?
+  Too hastily concluded! Sun--suffused,
+  A cloud may soothe the eye made blind by blaze,--
+  Better the very clarity of heaven:
+  The soft streaks are the beautiful and dear.
+  What but the weakness in a faith supplies
+  The incentive to humanity, no strength
+  Absolute, irresistible, comports?
+  How can man love but what he yearns to help?
+  And that which men think weakness within strength,
+  But angels know for strength and stronger yet--
+  What were it else but the first things made new,
+  But repetition of the miracle,
+  The divine instance of self-sacrifice
+  That never ends and aye begins for man?
+  So, never I miss footing in the maze,
+  No,--I have light nor fear the dark at all."[A]
+
+[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1640-1660.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROWNING AS A PHILOSOPHICAL AND
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