narrating the death of St John the Evangelist, John of Patmos;
the narrative interrupted by this gloss:
[This is the doctrine he was wont to teach,
How divers persons witness in each man,
Three souls which make up one soul: _first,_ to wit,
A soul of each and all the bodily parts,
Seated therein, which works, and is _What Does,_
And has the use of earth, and ends the man
Downward: but, tending upward for advice,
Grows into, and again is grown into
By the next soul, which, seated in the brain,
Useth the first with its collected use,
And feeleth, thinketh, willeth,--is _What Knows_:
Which, duly tending upward in its turn,
Grows into, and again is grown into
By the last soul, that uses both the first,
Subsisting whether they assist or no,
And, constituting man's self, is _What Is_--
And leans upon the former
(Mark the word, Gentlemen; '_leans_ upon the former'--leaning
back, as it were felt by him, on this very man who had leaned
on Christ's bosom, being loved)
And leans upon the former, makes it play,
As that played off the first: and, 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.
_What Does, What Knows, What Is;_ three souls, one man.
I give the glossa of Theotypas.]
_What Does, What Knows, What Is_--there is no mistaking what
Browning means, nor in what degrees of hierarchy he places this,
that, and the other.... Does it not strike you how curiously men
to-day, with their minds perverted by hate, are inverting that
order?--all the highest value set on _What Does--What Knows_
suddenly seen to be of importance, but only as important in
feeding the guns, perfecting explosives, collaring trade--all in
the service of _What Does,_ of 'Get on or Get Out,' of
'Efficiency'; no one stopping to think that 'Efficiency' is--must
be--a relative term! Efficient for what?--for _What Does, What
Knows_ or perchance, after all, for _What Is_? No! banish the
humanities and throw everybody into practical science: not into
that study of natural science, which can never conflict with the
'humanities' since it seeks discovery for the pure sake of truth,
or charitably to alleviate man's lot--
Sweetly, rather, to ease, loose and bind
As need requires, this frail fallen humankind ...
--but to invent what will be commercially serviceable in besting
your neighbour, or in gassing him, or in slaughtering him neatly
and wholesale. But still the whisper (not ridiculous in its day)
will assert itself, that _What Is_ comes first, holding and
upheld by God; still through the market clamour for a 'Business
Government' will persist the voice of Plato murmuring that, after
all, the best form of government is government by good men: and
the voice of some small man faintly protesting 'But I don't want
to be governed by business men; because I know them and, without
asking much of life, I have a hankering to die with a shirt on my
back.'