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.