Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher

ith thee, Help

s the authenti

that it ever

until gladness

to suffer

mence at

stion's

y almost say, in the evolution of human character; and both of whom, too, regard that evolution as the realization by man of the purposes, greater than man's, which rule in the world. And, although neither of them developed the organic view of humanity, which is implied in their doctrines, into an explicit philosophy, still the moral life of the individual is for each of th

ce of whom man was awed and crushed; for that power had stinted man's endowment, and set him to fight a hopeless battle against endless evil. God was everywhere around man, and the universe was just the expression of His will-a will inexorably b

icent purpose; and instead of duty in the sense of an autocratic imperative, or beneficent tyranny, he finds, deep beneath man's foolishness and sin, a constant tendency towards the good which is bound up with the very nature of man's reason and will. If man could only understand himself he would find without him no limiting necessity, but the manifestation of a law which is one with his own essential being. A beneficent power has loaded the dice, according to the epigram, so that the chances of failure and victory are not even; for man's nature is itself a divine endowment, one with the power that rules his life, and man must finally reach through error to truth, and through sin to ho

the good. Merely to attribute to him an optimistic creed is to say very little; for the worth, or worthlessness, of such a creed depends upon its c

t any cause, or even contrary to the cause; the other stultifies intellectual activity: and both views imply that the critic has so escaped the conditions of human life, as to be able to pass a condemnatory judgment upon them. The belief that a harmonious relation between the self-conscious agent and the supreme good is possible, underlies the practical activity of man; just as the belief in the unity of thought and being underlies his intellectual activity. A moral order-that is, an order of rational ends-is postulated in all human actions, and we act at all only in

e, and will be the last triumph of philosophy. During all the interval the world will be a scene of warring elements; and poetry, religion, and philosophy can only hold forth a promise, and give to man a foretaste of ultimate victory. And in this state of things even their assurance often falters. Faith lapses into doubt, poetry becomes a wail for a lost god, and its votary exhibits, "through Europe to the AEtolian shore, the pageant of his bleeding heart." The optimistic faith is, as a rule, only a hope and a desire, a "Grand Perhaps," which knows no defence against the critical understanding, an

ought them. This little incident lays bare the limits of both these great men. Where the one saw, the other was blind. To the one there was the misery and the universal mirk; to the other, the pure white beam was scarcely broken. Carlyle believed in the good, beyond all doubt: he fought his great battle in its strength and won, but "he was sorely wounded." Emerson was Sir Galahad, blind to all but the Holy Grail, his armour spotless-white, his virtue

s by an invisible garment of contemplative holiness. It is a conviction which has sustained shocks of criticism and the test of facts; and it therefore, both for the poet and his readers, fulfils a mis

stence. Such healthiness we find in Browning, although he wrote with Carlyle at his side, and within earshot of the infinite wail of this moral fatalist. And yet, the word health is inadequate to convey the depth of the joyous meaning which the poet found in the world. His optimism was not a constitutional and irreflective hopefulness, to be accounted for on the ground that "the great mystery of existence was not great to him: did not drive him into rocky solitudes to wrestle with it for an answer, to be answered or to perish." There are, indeed, certain rash and foolish persons who pretend to trace Browning's optimism to his mixed descent; but there is a "pause i

sorrowing,

ed, spiri

ve my woes

lague that cl

und your lif

, and does,

th of pleasu

ed and hol

ys with ag

fail me I'

th your day

ets to r

rth not gr

grim but

p? I pluc

and stare?

the Me

n these bases are always weak; for the former leaves man naked and sensitive to the evils that crowd round him when the powers of body and mind decay, and the latter is, at best, useful only for the individual who possesses it, and it breaks down under the stress of criticism and doubt. Browning's optimism is a great element in English literature, because it opposes with such strength the shocks that come from both these quarters. His joy

veals his nakedness to man; he is turned out of the paradise of unconsciousness and doomed to force Nature, now conceived as a step-dame, to satisfy needs which are now first felt. Optimism is the expression of man's new reconciliation with his world; as the o

d immediate consequence was that man, as man, attained infinite worth. "Man was born free," cried Rousseau, with a conviction which swept all before it; "he has original, inalienable, and supreme rights against all things which can set themselves against him." And Rousseau's countrymen believed him. There was not a Sans-c

xp

upon it

as freely

summer's

aste

limited even for Carlyle's shoe-black; nor is it surprising that Byron should find it a waste, and dolefully proclaim his disappointment to much-admiring mankind. Now, both Carlyle and Browning apprehended the cause of the discontent, and both endured the Byronic utte

an Comm

, bade prompt thwa

el: taught that o

ch more, and yet t

s own flame, whic

waters i' the ho

shall dry, turn

nt fire, matter

irly ma

at the F

hing. The holy of holies, where man hears whispered the mystery of life, is "the sanctuary of sorrow." "What Act of Legislature was there that thou shouldst be Happy? A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all. What if thou wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy? Nay, is not 'life itself a disease, knowledge the symptom of derangement'? Have not the poets sung 'Hymns to the Night' as if Night were nobler than Day; as if Day were but a small motley-coloured veil spread transiently over the infinite bosom of Night, and did but deform and hide

ion of happiness, and filled man with yearnings after a better than happiness, but left him nothing wherewith they might be satisfied, except "the duty next to hand." And the duty next to hand, as interpreted by Carlyle, is a means of suppressing by action, not idle speech only, but thought itself. But, if this be true, the highest in man is set against itself. And what kind of action remains possible to a "speck on the illimitable ocean, borne this way and that way by its deep-swelling tides"? "Here on earth we are soldiers, fighting in a foreign land; that understand not the plan of the campaign, and have no need to understand it, seeing what is at our hand to be done." But there is one element of still deeper gloom in this blind

the side of its Wants. It was an endowment of a hunger which nothing could satisfy-not the infinite, because it is too great, not the finite, because it is too little; not God, because He is too far above man, not nature, because it is too far beneath him. We are unable to satisfy ourselves with the things

intment, can only be removed by deeper reflection. The harmony of the world of man's experience, which has been

soul, build

of a higher conception. We must have a deeper grasp and a new view of the Self, the World, and God. And such a view can be given ade

ver demonstrates, but perceives; art is not a process, but a result; truth for it is immediate, and it neither admits nor demands any logical connection of ideas. The standard-bearers and the trumpeters may be necessary to k

however,-for instance, in La Saisiaz, Ferishtatis Fancies and the Parleyings, Browning sought to advance definite proofs of the theories which he held. He appears before us at times armed cap-à-pie, like a philosopher. Still, it is not when he argues that Browning proves: it is when he sees, as a poet sees. It is not by means of logical demonstrations that he helps us to

ense and reason so to interpenetrate, that the old metaphors of "the noble lie" and "the truth beneath the veil" seem no longer to help. He seems to show us the truth so vividly and simply, that we are less willing to make art and philosophy mutually exclusive, although their methods differ. Like some of the greatest philosophers, and notably Plato and Hegel, he constrains us to doubt, whether the distinct

already suggested, from his loyalty to a single idea, which gives unity to all his work. That idea we may, in the end, be obliged to treat not only as a hypothesis-for all principles of reconciliation, even those of th

with the hunger

stem that's al

ce, that's stanc

Hohenstiel

t all the uses of a philosophy, and it may do the same for many who are distrustful of the systems of the schools, and who are "neither able to find a faith nor to do without one." It contains far-reaching hints of a reconciliat

ndamental hypothesis by means of these facts; and he tests its validity with the persistence and impressive candour of a scientific investigator. His optimism is not that of an eclectic, who can ignore inconvenient difficulties. It is not an attempt to justify the whole by neglec

the

etrievable black,-b

's power to

no sample: s

d ruin my

w, doub

ripe-Ferisht

ys to man; that if the good rules at all, it rules absolut

up, in my yo

ough power,

hich make i

ght all to a

Eternal Fir

power, had

eives of wha

m, too, sho

ve as infi

, (my soul

o work all l

less than ma

ristm

on earth, amid al

een the sole go

wing there, spite

perfect, from de

behold Thee,

in Thy li

oved here, sti

I

the poet's own conviction in these

edgment of G

hy reason, so

in the earth

advanced thee

th in th

pe." I believe, further, that it was in order to justify this conviction that he set out on his quest. His interest in vice-in malice, cruelty, ignorance, brutishness, meanness, the irrational perversity of a corrupt disposition, and the subtleties of philosophic and aesthetic falsehood-was no morbid curiosity. Browning was no "painter of dirt"; no artist can portray filth for filth's sake, and remain an artist. He crowds his pages with

, prompt yields each

me-no matter whe

e, or else from st

e wan

o make them

ms henceforth, leav

the ch

ne at t

ompilia'

the day wore, t

ed there would

nd final condemnation. With this view, he seeks evil in its own haunts. He creates Guido, the subtlest and most powerful compound of vice in our literature-except Iago,

blotch

the group of

ther in the c

pala

d the Book-The

hell"; his mistress, on whose face even Pompilia saw the

nightmare in the

ve these three

mother an

ar turns mothe

ess to l

d the Book-The

luster round Pompilia and heat t

yer like

trong, God t

ul in all stri

n good, makes t

He puts forth m

the Book-Pompi

le that with him at our side we can travel safely through the depths of the Inferno-for the flames

en to cleave roof

. then

he scene wit

the absolutest

witness, some

espair o

d the Book-The

s of conduct, which the ordinary moral consciousness condemns without hesitation. All agree that these poems represent a new departure in poetry, and some consider that in them the poet, in thus dealing with metaphysical abstractions, has overleapt the boundaries of the poetic art. To such critics, this later period seems the period of his decadence, in which the casuistical tendencies, which had already appeared in Bishop Blougram's Apology, Mr. Sludge the Medium, and other poems, have overwhelmed his art, and his intellect, in its pride of strength, has grown wanton. Fifine at the Fair is said to be "a defence of inconstancy, or of the right of experiment in love." Its hero, who is "a modern gentleman, a refined, cultured, musical, artistic and philosophic person, of high attainments, lofty aspirations, strong emotions, and capricious will," produces arguments "wide in range, of profound significance

ero of Fifine at the Fair and in the hero of Red Cotton Nightcap Country; but, in these poems, his dramatic interest is itself determined by an ethical purpose, which is equally profound. His meeting with the gipsy at Pornic, and the spectacle of her unscrupulous audacity in v

outward sign, the i

n transpierce earth's

rating the val

at the Fai

her later poems he meets it again in the region of dialectic. In this sphere of metaphysical ethics, evil has assumed a more dangerous form, especially for an artist. His optimistic faith has driven the poet into a realm into which poetry never ventured before. His battle is now, not with flesh and blood, but with the subtler powers of darkness grown vocal and argume

o find in Fifine nothing but a casuistical and shameless justification of evil, whic

e was

much of hate, lov

ningly but hold

ale to scale, do j

xplain the glori

e stuff miscalled b

e tol

e were arms

, not bla

at the F

of self-defence, to confuse the distinctions of right and wrong. But, as we shall try to show in the next chapter, such an apparent justification of evil cannot be avoided by a reflective optimist; and it is

in His

ht with t

asuist, but the stubborn questionings of a spirit, whose religious faith is thoroughly earnest and fearless. To a spirit so loyal to the truth, and so bold to follow its leading, the suppression of such problems is impossible; and, consequently, it was inevitable that he should use the whole strength of his dialectic to try those fundamental principles,