THE HEART AND THE HEAD.--LOVE AND REASON.
"And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to
play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do
injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her
strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew
truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter."[A]
[Footnote A: Milton's _Areopagitica_.]
It has been shown that Browning appeals, in defence of his optimistic
faith, from the intellect to the heart. His theory rests on three main
assumptions:--namely (1) that knowledge of the true nature of things is
impossible to man, and that, therefore, it is necessary to find other
and better evidence than the intellect can give for the victory of good
over evil; (2) that the failure of knowledge is a necessary condition of
the moral life, inasmuch as certain knowledge would render all moral
effort either futile or needless; (3) that after the failure of
knowledge there still remains possible a faith of the heart, which can
furnish a sufficient objective basis to morality and religion. The first
of these assumptions I endeavoured to deal with in the last chapter. I
now turn to the remaining two.
Demonstrative, or certain, or absolute knowledge of the actual nature of
things would, Browning asserts, destroy the very possibility of a moral
life.[A] For such knowledge would show either that evil is evil, or that
evil is good; and, in both cases alike, the benevolent activity of love
would be futile. In the first case, it would be thwarted and arrested by
despair; for, if evil be evil, it must remain evil for aught that man
can do. Man cannot effect a change in the nature of things, nor create a
good in a world dominated by evil. In the second case, the saving effect
of moral love would be unnecessary; for, if evil be only seeming, then
all things are perfect and complete, and there is no need of
interference. It is necessary, therefore, that man should be in a
permanent state of doubt as to the real existence of evil; and, whether
evil does exist or not, it must seem, and only seem to exist to man, in
order that he may devote himself to the service of good.[B]
[Footnote A: See Chapter VIII., p. 255.]
[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]
Now, if this view of the poet be taken in the strict sense in which he
uses it in this argument, it admits of a very easy refutation. It takes
us beyond the bounds of all possible human experience, into an imaginary
region, as to which all assertions are equally valueless. It is
impossible to conceive how the conduct of a being who is moral would be
affected by absolute knowledge; or, indeed, to conceive the existence of
such a being. For morality, as the poet insists, is a process in which
an ideal is gradually realized through conflict with the actual--an
actual which it both produces and transmutes at every stage of the
progress. But complete knowledge would be above all process. Hence we
would have, on Browning's hypothesis, to conceive of a being in whom
perfect knowledge was combined with an undeveloped will. A being so
constituted would be an agglomerate of utterly disparate elements, the
interaction of which in a single character it would be impossible to
make intelligible.
But, setting aside this point, there is a curious flaw in Browning's
argument, which indicates that he had not distinguished between two
forms of optimism which are essentially different from each
other,--namely, the pantheistic and the Christian.
To know that evil is only apparent, that pain is only pleasure's mask,
that all forms of wickedness and misery are only illusions of an
incomplete intelligence, would, he argues, arrest all moral action and
stultify love. For love--which necessarily implies need in its
object--is the principle of all right action. In this he argues justly,
for the moral life is essentially a conflict and progress; and, in a
world in which "white ruled unchecked along the line," there would be
neither the need of conflict nor the possibility of progress. And, on
the other hand, if the good were merely a phantom, and evil the reality,
the same destruction of moral activity would follow. "White may not
triumph," in this absolute manner, nor may we "clean abolish, once and
evermore, white's faintest trace." There must be "the constant shade
cast on life's shine."
All this is true; but the admission of it in no way militates against
the conception of absolutely valid knowledge; nor is it any proof that
we need live in the twilight of perpetual doubt, in order to be moral.
For the knowledge, of which Browning speaks, would be knowledge of a
state of things in which morality would be really impossible; that is,
it would be knowledge of a world in which all was evil or all was good.
On the other hand, valid knowledge of a world in which good and evil are
in conflict, and in which the former is realized through victory over
the latter, would not destroy morality. What is inconsistent with the
moral life is the conception of a world where there is no movement from
evil to good, no evolution of character, but merely the stand-still life
of "Rephan." But absolutely certain knowledge that the good is at issue
with sin in the world, that there is no way of attaining goodness except
through conflict with evil, and that moral life, as the poet so
frequently insists, is a process which converts all actual attainment
into a dead self, from which we can rise to higher things--a self,
therefore, which is relatively evil--would, and does, inspire morality.
It is the deification of evil not negated or overcome, of evil as it is
in itself and apart from all process, which destroys morality. And the
same is equally true of a pantheistic optimism, which asserts that all
things _are_ good. But it is not true of a Christian optimism, which
asserts that all things are _working together for_ good. For such
optimism implies that the process of negating or overcoming evil is
essential to the attainment of goodness; it does not imply that evil, as
evil, is ever good. Evil is unreal, only in the sense that it cannot
withstand the power which is set against it. It is not _mere_ semblance,
a mere negation or absence of being; it is opposed to the good, and its
opposition can be overcome, only by the moral effort which it calls
forth. An optimistic faith of this kind can find room for morality; and,
indeed, it furnishes it with the religious basis it needs. Browning,
however, has confused these two forms of optimism; and, therefore, he
has been driven to condemn knowledge, because he knew no alternative but
that of either making evil eternally real, or making it absolutely
unreal. A third alternative, however, is supplied by the conception of
moral evolution. Knowledge of the conditions on which good can be
attained--a knowledge that amounts to conviction--is the spring of all
moral effort; whereas an attitude of permanent doubt as to the
distinction between good and evil would paralyse it. Such a doubt must
be solved before man can act at all, or choose one end rather than
another. All action implies belief, and the ardour and vigour of moral
action can only come from a belief which is whole-hearted.
The further assertion, which the poet makes in _La Saisiaz_, and repeats
elsewhere, that sure knowledge of the consequences that follow good and
evil actions would necessarily lead to the choice of good and the
avoidance of evil, and destroy morality by destroying liberty of choice,
raises the whole question of the relation of knowledge and conduct, and
cannot be adequately discussed here. It may be said, however, that it
rests upon a confusion between two forms of necessity: namely, natural
and spiritual necessity. In asserting that knowledge of the consequences
of evil would determine human action in a necessary way, the poet
virtually treats man as if he were a natural being. But the assumption
that man is responsible and liable to punishment, involves that he is
capable of withstanding all such determination. And knowledge does not
and cannot lead to such necessary determination. Reason brings freedom;
for reason constitutes the ends of action.
It is the constant desire of the good to attain to such a convincing
knowledge of the worth and dignity of the moral law that they shall be
able to make themselves its devoted instruments. Their desire is that
"the good" shall supplant in them all motives that conflict against it,
and be the inner principle, or necessity, of all their actions. Such
complete devotion to the good is expressed, for instance, in the words
of the Hebrew Psalmist: "Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage for
ever; for they are the rejoicing of my heart. I have inclined mine heart
to perform Thy statutes alway, even unto the end. I hate vain thoughts,
but Thy law do I love." "Nevertheless I live," said the Christian
apostle, "yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now
live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God." In these words
there is expressed that highest form of the moral life, in which the
individual is so identified in desire with his ideal, that he lives only
to actualize it in his character. The natural self is represented as
dead, and the victory of the new principle is viewed as complete. This
full obedience to the ideal is the service of a necessity; but the
necessity is within, and the service is, therefore, perfect freedom. The
authority of the law is absolute, but the law is self-imposed. The whole
man is convinced of its goodness. He has acquired something even fuller
than a mere intellectual demonstration of it; for his knowledge has
ripened into wisdom, possessed his sympathies, and become a disposition
of his heart. And the fulness and certainty of his knowledge, so far
from rendering morality impossible, is its very perfection. To bring
about such a knowledge of the good of goodness and the evil of evil, as
will engender love of the former and hatred of the latter, is the aim of
all moral education. Thus, the history of human life, in so far as it is
progressive, may be concentrated in the saying that it is the ascent
from the power of a necessity which is natural, to the power of a
necessity which is moral. And this latter necessity can come only
through fuller and more convincing knowledge of the law that rules the
world, and is also the inner principle of man's nature.
There remains now the third element in Browning's view,--namely, that
the faith in the good, implied in morality and religion, can be firmly
established, after knowledge has turned out deceptive, upon the
individual's consciousness of the power of love within himself. In other
words, I must now try to estimate the value of Browning's appeal from
the intellect to the heart.
Before doing so, however, it may be well to repeat once more that
Browning's condemnation of knowledge, in his philosophical poems, is not
partial or hesitating. On the contrary, he confines it definitely to the
individual's consciousness of his own inner states.
"Myself I solely recognize.
They, too, may recognize themselves, not me,
For aught I know or care."[A]
[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_. See also _La Saisiaz_.]
Nor does Browning endeavour to correct this limited testimony of the
intellect as to its own states, by bringing in the miraculous aid of
revelation, or by postulating an unerring moral faculty. He does not
assume an intuitive power of knowing right from wrong; but he maintains
that ignorance enwraps man's moral sense.[B]
[Footnote B: See Chapter VIII.]
And, not only are we unable to know the rule of right and wrong in
details, but we cannot know whether there _is_ right or wrong. At times
the poet seems inclined to say that evil is a phenomenon conjured up by
the frail intelligence of man.
"Man's fancy makes the fault!
Man, with the narrow mind, must cram inside
His finite God's infinitude,--earth's vault
He bids comprise the heavenly far and wide,
Since Man may claim a right to understand
What passes understanding."[A]
[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville_.]
God's ways are past finding out. Nay, God Himself is unknown. At times,
indeed, the power to love within man seems to the poet to be a clue to
the nature of the Power without, and God is all but revealed in this
surpassing emotion of the human heart. But, when philosophizing, he
withdraws even this amount of knowledge. He is
"Assured that, whatsoe'er the quality
Of love's cause, save that love was caused thereby,
This--nigh upon revealment as it seemed
A minute since--defies thy longing looks,
Withdrawn into the unknowable once more."[B]
[Footnote B: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]
Thus--to sum up Browning's view of knowledge--we are ignorant of the
world; we do not know even whether it is good, or evil, or only their
semblance, that is presented to us in human life; and we know nothing of
God, except that He is the cause of love in man. What greater depth of
agnosticism is possible?
When the doctrine is put in this bald form, the moral and religious
consciousness of man, on behalf of which the theory was invented,
revolts against it.
Nevertheless, the distinction made by Browning between the intellectual
and emotional elements of human life is very common in religious
thought. It is not often, indeed, that either the worth of love, or the
weakness of knowledge receives such emphatic expression as that which is
given to them by the poet; but the same general idea of their relation
is often expressed, and still more often implied. Browning differs from
our ordinary teachers mainly in the boldness of his affirmatives and
negatives. They, too, regard the intellect as merely human, and the
emotion of love as divine. They, too, shrink from identifying the reason
of man with the reason of God; even though they may recognize that
morality and religion must postulate some kind of unity between God and
man. They, too, conceive that human knowledge differs _in nature_ from
that of God, while they maintain that human goodness is the same in
nature with that of God, though different in degree and fulness. There
are two _kinds_ of knowledge, but there is only one kind of justice, or
mercy, or loving-kindness. Man must be content with a semblance of a
knowledge of truth; but a semblance of goodness, would be intolerable.
God really reveals Himself to man in morality and religion, and He
communicates to man nothing less than "the divine love." But there is no
such close connection on the side of reason. The religious life of man
is a divine principle, the indwelling of God in him; but there is a
final and fatal defect in man's knowledge. The divine love's
manifestation of itself is ever incomplete, it is true, even in the best
of men; but there is no defect in its nature.
As a consequence of this doctrine, few religious opinions are more
common at the present day, than that it is necessary to appeal, on all
the high concerns of man's moral and religious life, from the intellect
to the heart. Where we cannot know, we may still feel; and the religious
man may have, in his own feeling of the divine, a more intimate
conviction of the reality of that in which he trusts, than could be
produced by any intellectual process.
"Enough to say, 'I feel
Love's sure effect, and, being loved, must love
The love its cause behind,--I can and do.'"[A]
[Footnote A: _A Piller at Sebzevar_.]
Reason, in trying to scale the heights of truth, falls-back, impotent
and broken, into doubt and despair; not by that way can we come to that
which is best and highest.
"I found Him not in world or sun,
Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye;
Nor thro' the questions men may try,
The petty cobwebs we have spun."[B]
[Footnote B: _In Memoriam_.]
But there is another way to find God and to conquer doubt.
"If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep,
I heard a voice 'believe no more,'
And heard an ever-breaking-shore
That tumbled in the Godless deep;
"A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason's colder part,
And like a man in wrath the heart
Stood up and answer'd 'I have felt.'"[A]
[Footnote A: _In Memoriam_.]
What, then, I have now to ask, is the meaning and value of this appeal
to emotion? Can love, or emotion in any of its forms, reveal truths to
man which his intellect cannot discover? If so, how? If not, how shall
we account for the general conviction of good men that it can? We have,
in a word, either to justify the appeal to the heart, by explaining how
the heart may utter truths that are hidden from reason; or else to
account for the illusion, by which religious emotion seems to reveal
such truths.
The first requirement is shown to be unreasonable by the very terms in
which it is made. The intuitive insight of faith, the immediate
conviction of the heart, cannot render, and must not try to render, any
account of itself. Proof is a process; but there is no process in this
direct conviction of truth. Its assertion is just the denial of process;
it is a repudiation of all connections; in such a faith of feeling there
are no cob-web lines relating fact to fact, which doubt could break.
Feeling is the immediate unity of the subject and object. I am pained,
because I cannot rid myself of an element which is already within me; I
am lifted into the emotion of pleasure, or happiness, or bliss, by the
consciousness that I am already at one with an object that fulfils my
longings and satisfies my needs. Hence, there seems to be ground for
saying that, in this instance, the witness cannot lie; for it cannot go
before the fact, as it is itself the effect of the fact. If the emotion
is pleasurable it is the consciousness of the unity within; if it is
painful, of the disunity. In feeling, I am absolutely with myself; and
there seems, therefore, to be no need of attempting to justify, by means
of reason, a faith in God which manifests itself in emotion. The emotion
itself is its own sufficient witness, a direct result of the intimate
union of man with the object of devotion. Nay, we may go further, and
say that the demand is an unjust one, which betrays ignorance of the
true nature of moral intuition and religious feeling.
I am not concerned to deny the truth that lies in the view here stated;
and no advocate of the dignity of human reason, or of the worth of human
knowledge, is called upon to deny it. There is a sense in which the
conviction of "faith" or "feeling" is more intimate and strong than any
process of proof. But this does not in any wise justify the contention
of those who maintain that we can feel what we do not in any sense know,
or that the heart can testify to that of which the intellect is
absolutely silent.
"So let us say--not 'Since we know, we love,'
But rather, 'Since we love, we know enough.'"[A]
[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]
In these two lines there are combined the truth I would acknowledge, and
the error I would confute. Love is, in one way, sufficient knowledge;
or, rather, it is the direct testimony of that completest knowledge, in
which subject and object interpenetrate. For, where love is, all foreign
elements have been eliminated. There is not "one and one with a shadowy
third"; but the object is brought within the self as constituting part
of its very life. This is involved in all the great forms of human
thought--in science and art, no less than in morality and religion. It
is the truth that we love, and only that, which is altogether ours. By
means of love the poet is
"Made one with Nature. There is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird ";
and it is because he is made one with her that he is able to reveal her
inmost secrets. "Man," said Fichte, "can will nothing but what he loves;
his love is the sole and at the same time the infallible spring of his
volition, and of all his life's striving and movement." It is only when
we have identified ourselves with an ideal, and made its realization our
own interest, that we strive to attain it. Love is revelation in
knowledge, inspiration in art, motive in morality, and the fulness of
religious joy.
But, although in this sense love is greater than knowledge, it is a
grave error to separate it from knowledge. In the life of man at least,
the separation of the emotional and intellectual elements extinguishes
both. We cannot know that in which we have no interest. The very effort
to comprehend an object rests on interest, or the feeling of ourselves
in it; so that knowledge, as well as morality, may be said to begin in
love. We cannot know except we love; but, on the other hand, we cannot
love that which we do not in some degree know. Wherever the frontiers of
knowledge may be it is certain that there is nothing beyond them which
can either arouse feeling, or be a steadying centre for it. Emotion is
like a climbing plant. It clings to the tree of knowledge, adding beauty
to its strength. But, without knowledge, it is impossible for man. There
is no feeling which is not also incipient knowledge; for feeling is only
the subjective side of knowledge--that face of the known fact which is
turned inwards.
If, therefore, the poet's agnosticism were taken literally, and, in his
philosophical poems he obviously means it to be taken literally, it
would lead to a denial of the very principles of religion and morality,
which it was meant to support. His appeal to love would then, strictly
speaking, be an appeal to the love of nothing known, or knowable; and
such love is impossible. For love, if it is to be distinguished from the
organic, impulse of beast towards beast, must have an object. A mere
instinctive activity of benevolence in man, by means of which he
lightened the sorrows of his brethren, if not informed with knowledge,
would have no more moral worth than the grateful warmth of the sun. Such
love as this there may be in the animal creation. If the bird is not
rational, we may say that it builds its nest and lines it for its brood,
pines for its partner and loves it, at the bidding of the returning
spring, in much the same way as the meadows burst into flower. Without
knowledge, the whole process is merely a natural one; or, if it be more,
it is so only in so far as the life of emotion can be regarded as a
foretaste of the life of thought. But such a natural process is not
possible to man. Every activity in him is relative to his
self-consciousness, and takes a new character from that relation. His
love at the best and worst is the love of something that he knows, and
in which he seeks to find himself made rich with new sufficiency. Thus
love can not "ally" itself with ignorance. It is, indeed, an impulse
pressing for the closer communion of the lover with the object of his
love.
"Like two meteors of expanding flame,
Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still
Burning, yet ever inconsumable;
In one another's substance finding food."[A]
[Footnote A: Shelley's _Epipsychidion_.]
But, for a being such as Browning describes, who is shut up within the
blind walls of his own self, the self-transcending impulse of love would
be impossible. If man's inner consciousness is to be conceived as a dark
room shutting out the world, upon whose shadowy phenomena the candle of
introspection throws a dim and uncertain light, then he can have no
interest outside of himself; nor can he ever take that first step in
goodness, which carries him beyond his narrow individuality to seek and
find a larger self in others. Morality, even in its lowest form, implies
knowledge, and knowledge of something better than "those _apparent_
other mortals." With the first dawn of the moral life comes the
consciousness of an ideal, which is not actual; and such a break with
the natural is not possible except to him who has known a better and
desired it. The ethical endeavour of man is the attempt to convert ideas
into actuality; and all his activity as moral agent takes place within
the sphere that is illumined by the light of knowledge. If knowledge
breaks down, there is no law of action which he can obey. The moral law
that must be apprehended, and whose authority must be recognized by man,
either sinks out of being or becomes an illusive phantom, if man is
doomed to ignorance or false knowledge. To extinguish truth is to
extinguish goodness.
In like manner, religion, which the poet would fain defend for man by
means of agnosticism, becomes impossible, if knowledge be denied.
Religion is not blind emotion; nor can mere feeling, however ecstatic,
ascend to God. Animals feel, but they are not, and cannot be,
religious--unless they can know. The love of God implies knowledge. "I
know Him whom I have believed" is the language of religion. For what is
religion but a conscious identification of the self with One who is
known to fulfil its needs and satisfy its aspirations? Agnosticism is
thus directly destructive of it. We cannot, indeed, prove God as the
conclusion of a syllogism, for He is the primary hypothesis of all
proof. But, nevertheless, we cannot reach Him without knowledge. Emotion
reveals no object, but is consequent upon the revelation of it; feeling
yields no truth, but is the witness of the worth of a truth for the
individual. If man were shut up to mere feeling, even the awe of the
devout agnostic would be impossible. For the Unknowable cannot generate
any emotion. It appears to do so, only because the Unknowable of the
agnostic is not altogether unknown to him; but is a vast, abysmal
"Something," that has occupied with its shadowy presence the field of
his imagination. It is paganism stricken with the plague, and philosophy
afflicted with blindness, that build altars to an unknown God. The
highest and the strongest faith, the deepest trust and the most loving,
come with the fullest knowledge. Indeed, the distinction between the awe
of the agnostic, which is the lowest form of religion, and that highest
form in which perfect love casteth out fear, springs from the fuller
knowledge of the nature of the object of warship, which the latter
implies. Thus, religion and morality grow with the growth of knowledge;
and neither has a worse enemy than ignorance. The human spirit cannot
grow in a one-sided manner. Devotion to great moral ends is possible,
only through the deepening and widening of man's knowledge of the nature
of the world. Those who know God best, render unto Him the purest
service.
So evident is this, that it seems at first sight to be difficult to
account for that antagonism to the intellect and distrust of its
deliverances, which are so emphatically expressed in the writings of
Browning, and which are marked characteristics of the ordinary religious
opinion of our day. On closer examination, however, we shall discover
that it is not pure emotion, or mere feeling, whose authority is set
above that of reason, but rather the emotion which is the result of
knowledge. The appeal of the religious man from the doubts and
difficulties, which reason levels against "the faith," is really an
appeal to the character that lies behind the emotion. The conviction of
the heart, that refuses to yield to the arguments of the understanding,
is not _mere_ feeling; but, rather, the complex experience of the past
life, that manifests itself in feeling. When an individual, clinging to
his moral or religious faith, says, "I have felt it," he opposes to the
doubt, not his feeling as such, but his personality in all the wealth of
its experience. The appeal to the heart is the appeal to the unproved,
but not, therefore, unauthorized, testimony of the best men at their
best moments, when their vision of truth is clearest. No one pretends
that "the loud and empty voice of untrained passion and prejudice" has
any authority in matters of moral and religious faith; though, in such
cases, "feeling" may lack neither depth nor intensity. If the "feelings"
of the good man were dissociated from his character, and stripped bare
of all the significance they obtain therefrom, their worthlessness would
become apparent. The profound error of condemning knowledge in order to
honour feeling, is hidden only by the fact that the feeling is already
informed and inspired with knowledge. Religious agnosticism, like all
other forms of the theory of nescience, derives its plausibility from
the adventitious help it purloins from the knowledge which it condemns.
That it is to such feeling that Browning really appeals against
knowledge becomes abundantly evident, when we bear in mind that he
always calls it "love." For love in man is never ignorant. It knows its
object, and is a conscious identification of the self with it. And to
Browning, the object of love, when love is at its best--of that love by
means of which he refutes intellectual pessimism--is mankind. The revolt
of the heart against all evil is a desire for the good of all men. In
other words, his refuge against the assailing doubts which spring from
the intellect, is in the moral consciousness. But that consciousness is
no mere emotion; it is a consciousness which knows the highest good, and
moves in sympathy with it. It is our maturest wisdom; for it is the
manifestation of the presence and activity of the ideal, the fullest
knowledge and the surest. Compared with this, the emotion linked to
ignorance, of which the poet speaks in his philosophic theory, is a very
poor thing. It is poorer than the lowest human love.
Now, if this higher interpretation of the term "heart" be accepted, it
is easily seen why its authority should seem higher than that of reason;
and particularly, if it be remembered that, while the heart is thus
widened to take in all direct consciousness of the ideal, "the reason"
is reduced to the power of reflection, or mental analysis. "The heart,"
in this sense, is the intensest unity of the complex experiences of a
whole life, while "the reason" is taken merely as a faculty which
invents arguments, and provides grounds and evidences; it is what is
called, in the language of German philosophy, the "understanding." Now,
in this sense, the understanding has, at best, only a borrowed
authority. It is the faculty of rules rather than of principles. It is
ever dogmatic, assertive, repellent, hard; and it always advances its
forces in single line. Its logic never convinced any one of truth or
error, unless, beneath the arguments which it advanced, there lay some
deeper principle of concord. Thus, the opposition between "faith and
reason," rightly interpreted, is that between a concrete experience,
instinct with life and conviction, and a mechanical arrangement of
abstract arguments. The quarrel of the heart is not with reason, but
with reasons. "Evidences of Christianity?" said Coleridge; "I am weary
of the word." It is this weariness of evidence, of the endless arguments
_pro_ and _con_, which has caused so many to distrust reason and
knowledge, and which has sometimes driven believers to the dangerous
expedient of making their faith dogmatic and absolute. Nor have the
opponents of "the faith" been slow to seize the opportunity thus offered
them. "From the moment that a religion solicits the aid of philosophy,
its ruin is inevitable," said Heine. "In the attempt at defence, it
prates itself into destruction. Religion, like every absolutism, must
not seek to justify itself. Prometheus is bound to the rock by a silent
force. Yea, Aeschylus permits not personified power to utter a single
word. It must remain mute. The moment that a religion ventures to print
a catechism supported by arguments, the moment that a political
absolutism publishes an official newspaper, both are near their end. But
therein consists our triumph: we have brought our adversaries to speech,
and they must reckon with us."[A] But, we may answer, religion is _not_
an absolutism; and, therefore, it is _not_ near its end when it ventures
to justify itself. On the contrary, no spiritual power, be it moral or
religious, can maintain its authority, if it assumes a despotic
attitude; for the human spirit inevitably moves towards freedom, and
that movement is the deepest necessity of its nature, which it cannot
escape. "Religion, on the ground of its sanctity, and law, on the ground
of its majesty, often resist the sifting of their claims. But in so
doing, they inevitably awake a not unjust suspicion that their claims
are ill-founded. They can command the unfeigned homage of man, only when
they have shown themselves able to stand the test of free inquiry."
[Footnote A: _Religion and Philosophy in Germany_.]
And if it is an error to suppose, with Browning, that the primary truths
of the moral and religious consciousness belong to a region which is
higher than knowledge, and can, from that side, be neither assailed nor
defended; it is also an error to suppose that reason is essentially
antagonistic to them. The facts of morality and religion are precisely
the richest facts of knowledge; and that faith is the most secure which
is most completely illumined by reason. Religion at its best is not a
dogmatic despotism, nor is reason a merely critical and destructive
faculty. If reason is loyal to the truth of religion on which it is
exercised, it will reach beneath all the conflict and clamour of
disputation, to the principle of unity, on which, as we have seen, both
reason and religion rest.
The "faith" to which religious spirits appeal against all the attacks of
doubt, "the love" of Browning, is really implicit reason; it is
"abbreviated" or concentrated knowledge; it is the manifold experiences
of life focussed into an intense unity. And, on the other hand, the
"reason" which they condemn is what Carlyle calls the logic-chopping
faculty. In taking the side of faith when troubled with difficulties
which they cannot lay, they are really defending the cause of reason
against that of the understanding. For it is quite true that the
understanding, that is, the reason as reflective or critical, can never
bring about either a moral or religious life. It cannot create a
religion, any more than physiology can produce men. The reflection which
brings doubt is always secondary; it can only exercise itself on a given
material. As Hegel frequently pointed out, it is not the function of
moral philosophy to create or to institute a morality or religion, but
to understand them. The facts must first be given; they must be actual
experiences of the human spirit. Moral philosophy and theology differ
from the moral or religious life, in the same way as geology differs
from the earth, or astronomy from the heavenly bodies. The latter are
facts; the former are theories about the facts. Religion is an attitude
of the human spirit towards the highest; morality is the realization of
character; and these are not to be confused with their reflective
interpretations. Much of the difficulty in these matters comes from the
lack of a clear distinction between _beliefs_ and _creeds_.
Further, not only are the utterances of the heart prior to the
deliverances of the intellect in this sense, but it may also be admitted
that the latter can never do full justice to the contents of the former.
So rich is character in content and so complex is spiritual life, that
we can never, by means of reflection, lift into clear consciousness all
the elements that enter into it. Into the organism of our experience,
which is our faith, there is continually absorbed the subtle influences
of our complex natural and social environment. We grow by means of them,
as the plant grows by feeding on the soil and the sunshine and dew. It
is as impossible for us to set forth, one by one, the truths and errors
which we have thus worked into our mental and moral life, as it is to
keep a reckoning of the physical atoms with which the natural life
builds up the body. Hence, every attempt to justify these truths seems
inadequate; and the defence which the understanding sets up for the
faith, always seems partial and cold. Who ever fully expressed his
deepest convictions? The consciousness of the dignity of the moral law
affected Kant like the view of the starry firmament, and generated a
feeling of the sublime which words could not express; and the religious
ecstasy of the saints cannot be confined within the channels of speech,
but floods the soul with overmastering power, possessing all its
faculties. In this respect, it will always remain true that the greatest
facts of human experience reach beyond all knowledge. Nay, we may add
further, that in this respect the simplest of these facts passes all
understanding. Still, as we have already seen, it is reason that
constitutes them; that which is presented to reason for explanation, in
knowledge and morality and religion, is itself the product of reason.
Reason is the power which, by interaction with our environment, has
generated the whole of our experience. And, just as natural science
interprets the phenomena given to it by ordinary opinion, _i.e._,
interprets and purifies a lower form of knowledge by converting it into
a higher; so the task of reason when it is exercised upon morality and
religion, is simply to evolve, and amplify the meaning of its own
products. The movement from morality and religion to moral philosophy
and the philosophy of religion, is thus a movement from reason to
reason, from the implicit to the explicit, from the germ to the
developed fulness of life and structure. In this matter, as in all
others wherein the human spirit is concerned, that which is first by
nature is last in genesis--[Greek: nika d' ho prôtos kai teleutaios
dramôn.] The whole history of the moral and religious experience of
mankind is comprised in the statement, that the implicit reason which we
call "faith" is ever developing towards full consciousness of itself;
and that, at its first beginning, and throughout the whole ascending
process of this development, the highest is present in it as a
self-manifesting power.
But this process from the almost instinctive intuitions of the heart
towards the morality and religion of freedom, being a process of
evolution, necessarily involves conflict. There are men, it is true, the
unity of whose moral and religious faith is never completely broken by
doubt; just as there are men who are not forced by the contradictions in
the first interpretation of the world by ordinary experience to attempt
to re-interpret it by means of science and philosophy.
Throughout their lives they may say like Pompilia--
"I know the right place by foot's feel,
I took it and tread firm there; wherefore change?"[A]
[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1886-1887.]
Jean Paul Richter said that he knew another way of being happy, beside
that of soaring away so far above the clouds of life, that its miseries
looked small, and the whole external world shrunk into a little child's
garden. It was, "Simply to sink down into this little garden; and there
to nestle yourself so snugly, so homewise, in some furrow, that in
looking out from your warm lark-nest, you likewise can discern no
wolf-dens, charnel-houses, or thunder-rods, but only blades and ears,
every one of which, for the nest-bird, is a tree, and a sun-screen, and
rain-screen." There is a similar way of being good, with a goodness
which, though limited, is pure and perfect in nature. Nay, we may even
admit that such lives are frequently the most complete and beautiful,
just as the fairest flowers grow, not on the tallest trees, but on the
fragile plants at their foot. Nevertheless, even in the case of those
persons who have never broken from the traditional faith of the past, or
felt it to be inadequate, that faith has been silently reconstructed in
a new synthesis of knowledge. Spiritual life cannot come by inheritance;
but every individual must acquire a faith for himself, and turn his
spiritual environment into personal experience. "A man may be a heretic
in the truth," said Milton, "and if he believe things only because his
pastor says so, or the assembly so determines, without knowing other
reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes
his heresy." It is truth to another but tradition to him; it is a creed
and not a conviction. Browning fully recognizes the need of this
conflict--
"Is it not this ignoble confidence,
Cowardly hardihood, that dulls and damps,
Makes the old heroism impossible?"[A]
[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1848-1850.]
asks the Pope. The stream of truth when it ceases to flow onward,
becomes a malarious swamp. Movement is the law of life; and knowledge of
the principles of morality and religion, as of all other principles,
must, in order to grow, be felt from time to time as inadequate and
untrue. There are men and ages whose mission is--
"to shake
This torpor of assurance from our creed,
Re-introduce the doubt discarded, bring
That formidable danger back, we drove
Long ago to the distance and the dark."[B]
[Footnote B: _Ibid._, 1853-1856.]
Such a spirit of criticism seems to many to exercise a merely
destructive power, and those who have not felt the inadequacy of the
inherited faith defend themselves against it, as the enemy of their
lives. But no logic, or assailing doubt, could have power against the
testimony of "the heart," unless it was rooted in deeper and truer
principles than those which it attacked. Nothing can overpower truth
except a larger truth; and, in such a conflict, the truth in the old
view will ultimately take the side of the new, and find its subordinate
position within it. It has happened, not infrequently, as in the case of
the Encyclopædists, that the explicit truths of reason were more
abstract, that is, less true, than the implicit "faith" which they
assailed. The central truths of religion have often proved themselves to
possess some stubborn, though semi-articulate power, which could
ultimately overcome or subordinate the more partial and explicit truths
of abstract science. It is this that gives plausibility to the idea,
that the testimony of the heart is more reliable than that of the
intellect. But, in this case also, it was really reason that triumphed.
It was the truth which proved itself to be immortal, and not any mere
emotion. The insurrection of the intellect against the heart is quelled,
only when the untruth, or abstract character, of the principle of the
assailants has been made manifest, and when the old faith has yielded up
its unjust gains, and proved its vitality and strength by absorbing the
truth that gave vigour to the attack. Just as in morality it is the
ideal, or the unity of the whole moral life, that breaks up into
differences, so also here it is the implicit faith which, as it grows,
breaks forth into doubts. In both cases alike, the negative movement
which induces despair, is only a phase of a positive process--the
process of reason towards a fuller, a more articulate and complex,
realization of itself.
Hence it follows that the value and strength of a faith corresponds
accurately to the doubts it has overcome. Those who never went forth to
battle cannot come home heroes. It is only when the earthquake has tried
the towers, and destroyed the sense of security, that
"Man stands out again, pale, resolute,
Prepared to die,--that is, alive at last.
As we broke up that old faith of the world,
Have we, next age, to break up this the new--
Faith, in the thing, grown faith in the report--
Whence need to bravely disbelieve report
Through increased faith i' the thing reports belie?"[A]
[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1862-1868.]
"Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrive
by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion."
It was, thus, I conclude, a deep speculative error into which Browning
fell, when, in order to substantiate his optimistic faith, he
stigmatized human knowledge as merely apparent. Knowledge does not fail,
except in the sense in which morality also fails; it does not at any
time attain to the ultimate truth, any more than the moral life is in
any of its activities[B] a complete embodiment of the absolute good. It
is not given to man, who is essentially progressive, to reach the
ultimate term of development. For there is no ultimate term: life never
stands still. But, for the same reason, there is no ultimate failure.
The whole history of man is a history of growth. If, however, knowledge
did fail, then morality too must fail; and the appeal which the poet
makes from the intellect to the heart, would be an appeal to mere
emotion. Finally, even if we take a generous view of the poet's meaning,
and put out of consideration the theory he expresses when he is
deliberately philosophizing, there is still no appeal from the reason to
an alien and higher authority. The appeal to "the heart" is, at best,
only an appeal from the understanding to the reason, from a conscious
logic to the more concrete fact constituted by reason, which reflection
has failed to comprehend in its completeness; at its worst, it is an
appeal from truth to prejudice, from belief to dogma.
[Footnote B: See Chapter IX., p. 291.]
And in both cases alike, the appeal is futile; for, whether "the heart
be wiser than the head," or not, whether the faith which is assailed be
richer or poorer, truer or more false, than the logic which is directed
against it, an appeal to the heart cannot any longer restore the unity
of the broken life. Once reflection has set in, there is no way of
turning away its destructive might, except by deeper reflection. The
implicit faith of the heart must become the explicit faith of reason.
"There is no final and satisfactory issue from such an endless internal
debate and conflict, until the 'heart' has learnt to speak the language
of the head--_i.e._, until the permanent principles, which underlay and
gave strength to faith, have been brought into the light of distinct
consciousness."[A]
[Footnote A: Caird's _Comte_.]
I conclude, therefore, that the poet was right in saying that, in order
to comprehend human character,
"I needs must blend the quality of man
With quality of God, and so assist
Mere human sight to understand my Life."[A]
[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_--_Ferishtah's Fancies_.]
But it was a profound error, which contained in it the destruction of
morality and religion, as well as of knowledge, to make "the quality of
God" a love that excludes reason, and the quality of man an intellect
incapable of knowing truth. Such in-congruous elements could never be
combined into the unity of a character. A love that was mere emotion
could not yield a motive for morality, or a principle of religion. A
philosophy of life which is based on agnosticism is an explicit
self-contradiction, which can help no one. We must appeal from Browning
the philosopher to Browning the poet.