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.