Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher

t diesem Glauben wird nichts so spr?de und hart seyn, das sich ihm nicht er?ffnete. Das zuerst verborgene und verschlossene Wesen des Universums hat keine Kraft, di

ugural Address

s theory, as represented in the last chapter,

owing anything as it really is, or of pronouncing upon the ultimate nature of any phenomenon. It is undesirable, because a theoretical proof of the evanescence of evil would itself give rise to the greatest of all evils. The best thing in the world is moral character. Man exists in order to grow better,

d as something to be annulled. If he had only the power, there would be no pain, no sorrow, no weakness, no failure, no death. Is man, then, better than the Power which made the world and let woe gain entrance into it? No! answers the poet; for man himself is part of that world and the product of that Power. The Power that made the world also made the moral consciousness which condemns the world; if it is the source of the evil in the world, it is also the source of that love in man, which, by self-expenditure, seeks to remedy it. If th

e unreal, there would be no possibility of calling forth the moral potency of man, and the moral life would be a figment. But these two conditions of the moral life-on the one hand, that the evil of the world must be capable of being overcome and is there for the purpose of being overcome, and that it is unreal except as a means to the good; and, on the other hand, that evil must be actually opposed to the good, if the good is to have any meaning,-cannot, Browning thinks, be reconciled with each other. It is manifest that the intellect of man cannot, at the same time, regard evil as both real and unre

matters is impossible. And he rejects this knowledge, not only because our thoughts are self-contradictory in themselves, but because the failure of a speculative solution of these problems is necessary to morality. Clear, convincing, demonstrative knowled

of life are really its refracted rays-the light that gains in splendour by being broken. But we must not, and, indeed, cannot ascend from faith to knowledge. The heart may trust, and must trust, if it faithfully listens to its own natural voice; but reason must not demonstrat

n. Kant's Metaphysic of Ethics is not more metaphysical in intention than the poet's later utterances on the problems of morality. In La Saisiaz, in Ferishtah's Fancies, in the Parleyings, and, though less explicitly, in Asolando, Fifine at the Fair, and Red Cotton Nightcap Country, Browning definitely states, and endeavours to demonstrate a theory of knowledge, a theory of the relation of knowledge to morality, and a theory of the nature of evil; and he discusses the arguments for the immortality o

to combine the weakness of man's intelligence with the strength of his moral and religious life, and to find in the former the condition of the latter? Does human knowledge fail, as the poet considers it to fail

shared even by scientific investigators themselves, as well as by religious teachers and by many students of philosophy, that our knowledge has only limited and relative value, and that it always stops short of the true nature of things. The reason of this

do not know things. "In common life," adds Hegel, "we reflect without particularly noting that this is the process of arriving at the truth, and we think without hesitation and in the firm belief that thought coincides with things."A But, as soon as attention is directed to the process of thinking, and to the way in which the process affects our consciousness of the object, it is at once concluded that thought will never reach reality, that things are not given to us as they are, but distorted by the medium of sense and our i

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says Hegel, "is mainly the work of the critical philosophy and runs counter to the conviction of all previous ages." And the completeness of the divorce corresponds, with tolerable accuracy, to the degree

sphere, beyond experience, into which men cannot enter by the native right of reason. It is asserted that the finite cannot know the infinite, that the nature of God is unknowable-except by means of a supernatural interference, which gives to men a new power of spiritual discernment, and "reveals" to them things which

undisturbed conviction of the validity of our knowledge of ordinary objects. It is believed, in a word, that

region of theology, and which, as is thought, fling the human intellect back upon itself into a consciousness of frailty and finitude, are found to lurk beneath our ordinary knowledge. Whenever, for instance, we endeavour to know any object, we find that we are led back along the line of its conditions to that which unconditionally determines it. For we cannot find the reason for a particular object in a particular object. We are driven back endlessly from one to another alo

t "noumenal causes,"-that is, the actual reality of things,-are unknown; for we can still lay claim to valid knowledge of the laws of phenomena. Having acknowledged that natural things as known are merely phenomena, positivism treats them in all respects as if they were realities; and it

s connected with it; but what are the things themselves, which are connected, it does not know. The laws are mere forms of thought, "bloodless categories," and not facts. They may somehow be regarded as explaining facts, but they must not be identified with the facts. Knowledge is the sphere of man's thoughts, and is made up of ideas; real things are in another sphere, which man's thoughts cannot reach. We must distinguish more clearly than has hitherto been done, between logic as the science of knowledge, and metaphysics as a science which pretends to reveal the real nature of things. In a word, we can know thoughts or universals, but not things or particular existences. "Whe

n intellectual endowment, or to arrest, even for a moment, the attempt by thinking to know things as they are. The view held by Berkeley, that knowledge is merely subjective, because the essence of things consists in their being perceived by the individual, and that they are nothing but his ideas, was refuted by Kant, when he showed that the very illusion of seeming knowledge was impossible on that theory. And this later view, which represents knowledge as merely subjective, on the ground that it is the product of the activity of the thought of mankind, working according to universal laws, is capable of being refuted in the same manner. The only difference between the Berkeleian and this modern speculative theor

h the theory condemns as futile, is the only way we have of finding out what the reality of things is. Why do we reflect and think, except in order to pass beyond the illusions of sensuous appearances to the knowledge of things as they are

more and more to wield her powers, and to make them the instruments of the purposes of man, and the means of his welfare. To common-sense,-which frequently "divines" truths that it cannot prove, and, like ballast in a ship, has often given steadiness to human progress although it is only a dead weight,-the assertion that man knows nothing is as incredible as that he knows all things. If it is replied, that the "things" which we seem to dominate by the means of knowledge are themselves

t called particular or individual, rather than universal? How is it known that the true being of things is different from ideas? Surely bo

ledge, how does it come to be its criterion? That knowledge is inadequate or imperfect can be known, only by contrasting it with its own proper ideal, whatever that may be. A criticism by reference to a foreign or i

distinction between the real and the phenomenal vanishes; and what remains, is not a reality outside of consciousness, or different from ideas, but a reality related to consciousness, or, in other words, a knowable reality. "The distinction of objects into phenomena and noumena, i.e., into things that for us exist, and things that for us do not exist, is an Irish

f an object soon brings us to an enigma, a something more we do not know. Failing to know this something more, we generally consider that we have fallen short of reaching the reality of the object. We recognize, as it has been expressed, that we have been brought to a stand, and we therefore conclude that we are also brought to the end. We arrive at what we do not know, and we pronounce that unknown to be unknowable; that is, we regard it as something different in nature from what we do know. So far as I can see, the attitude of ordinary thought in regard to this matter might be fairly represented by saying, that it always begins by

nce cannot grasp, and which seems to give to the object its reality. All the natural sciences concentrated on a bit of iron ore fail to exhaust the truth in it: there is always a "beyond" in it, something still more fundamental which is not yet understood. And that something beyond, that inner essence, that point in which the laws mee

action and predicts their effects with certainty. Its practical power over the forces of nature is so great that it seems to have got inside her secrets. And yet science will itself acknowledge that in every simplest object there is an unknown. Its triumphant course of explaining seems to be always arrested at the threshold of reality. It has no theory, scarcely an hypothesis, of the actual nature of things, or of what that is in each object, which constitutes it a real existence. Natural science, with a scarcely concealed sneer, hands over to the metaphysician all questions as to the real being of things; and itself makes the more modest pret

rrespondence of thing and thought. For, at no point is knowledge found to be in touch with real being; it is everywhere demonstrably conditioned and relative, and inadequate to express the true r

oodness was regarded as manifesting itself in actions which, nevertheless, were never adequate to express it. The good when achieved was ever condemned as unworthy, and the ideal when attained ever pressed for more adequate

t it is not a mere acorn. The child is not the man; and yet the man is in the child, and only needs to be evolved by interaction with circumstances. The process of growth is one wherein the ideal is always present, as a reconstru

nd deepens into the consciousness of the man, is best made intelligible from the point of view of evolution. It is like an organic process, in which each new acquirement finds its place in an old order, each new fact is brought under t

of knowing is one that presses onward towards an ideal, that ideal is never completely missed even in the poorest knowledge. If it grows, the method of fixed alternatives must be inapplicable to it. The ideal, whatever it may be, must be

acknowledge. It is implied in his condemnation of knowledge as merely phenomenal, that there is possible a knowledge of real being. That thought and reality can be brought together, or rather, that they are always together, is presupposed in all knowledge and in all experience. The effort to know is the effort to explain the relation of thought and reality, not to create it. The ideal of perfect knowledge is present from the first; it generates the effort, directs it, distinguishes between truth and error. And that which man ever aims at, whether in the ordinary activities of daily thought, or through the patient labour of scientific investigation, or in the reflective self-torture of philosophic thought, is to know the world as it is. No failure damps the ardour of this endeavour. Relativists, phenomenalists, agnostics, sceptics, Kantians or Neo-Kantians-all the crowd of thinkers who cry down the human intellect, and draw a charmed circle around reality so as to make it unapproa

ntellectual effort. But that distinction cannot be drawn except by reference to a criterion of truth, which condemns our actual knowledge; as it is the absolute good, which condemns the present character. The ideal may be indefinite, and its content confused and poor; but it is always sufficient for its purpose, always better than the actual achievement. And, in this sense, reality, the truth, the veritable be

ity, it is evident that they cannot avail themselves of any doctrine of sensations or impressions as a medium between them, or postulate any other form of connection or means of communication. Connection of any kind must, in the end, imply some community of nature, and must put the unity of thought and being-here denied-beneath their difference. Hence, the

st be some effluence from the world of reality, some manifestations of the thing (though they are not the reality of the thing, nor any part of the reality, nor connected with the reality!) to assist the mind and supply it with data. The "phenomenal world" is a hybrid, generated

ed to his material in all that he knows, just as he is ruled by the laws of thought. He cannot go one step beyond it. To transcend "experience" is impossible. We have no wings to sustain us in an empty region, and no need of any. It is as impossible for man to create new ideas, as it is for him to create new atoms. Our thought is essentially connected with reality. There is no mauvais pas from thought to things. We do not need to leap out of ourselves in order to get in

thing. It is their unity. It is both reality and thought: it is existing thought, or reality knowing itself and existing through its knowledge of self; it is self-consciousness.

eality. But, on the other hand, the real world of existing things exists all the same whether he knows it or not. It did not begin to be with any knowledge he may have of it, it does not cease to be with his extinction, and it is not in any way affected by his valid, or invalid, reconstruction of it in thought. The world which depends on his

wth as a character. Goodness for him directly depends upon his recognition of it. Animals, presumably, have no moral ideal, because they have not the power to constitute it. In morals, as in knowledge, the mind of man constructs its own world. And yet, in both alike, the world of truth or of goodness exists all the

us being? Is it the quality or motive or ideal of a mere thing? Manifestly not. Its relation to self-co

re self-conscious. The reality, which man sets over against his own inadequate knowledge, is posited by him; and it has no meaning whatsoever except in this contrast. And to ende

egarded as not thoughts, and as partaking in no way of the nature of thought. And yet "reality" is virtually assumed to be given at the beginning of knowledge; for the sensations are supposed to be emanations from it, or roused in consciousness by it. These sensations, it is said, man does not make, but receives, and receives from the concealed reality. They flow from it, and are the manifestations of its activity. Then, in the next moment, reality is regarded as not given in any way, but as something to be di

ternately. Its denial of the possibility of knowing reality is refuted by its own starting-point; for it begins with a given something, regarded as real, and its very effort to know is an attempt to know that reality by thinking

we shall regard his knowledge, neither as purely phenomenal and out of all contact with reality, nor as an actual identification with the real being of things in all their complex variety. For, in morality, we do not say either that the individual is absolutely evil, because his actions never realize the supreme ideal of goodness; nor, that he is at the last term of development, and "taking the place of God," because he lives as "ever in his great Taskmaster's eye." Just as every moral action, however good, leaves something still to be desiderated, something that may become a stepping-stone for new movement towards the ideal which it has failed to actualize; so all our knowledge of an object leaves something

d up in his hand the very heart of the simplest thing in the world. For the world is an organic totality, and its simplest thing will not be seen, through and through, till everything is known, till every fact and event is related to every other under principles which are universal: just as goodness cannot be fully achieved in any act, till the agent is in all ways lifted to the level of absolute goodness. Physics cannot reveal the forces which keep a stone in its place on the earth, till it has traced the forces that maintain the starry systems in their

zed. Our very errors are the working of reality within us, and apart from it they would be impossible. The process towards truth by man is the process of truth in man; the movement of knowledge towards reality is the movement of reality into knowledge. A purely subjective consciousness which knows, such as the poet tried to describe, is a self-contradiction: it would be a consciousness at once related, and not related, to the actual world. But man has no need to re

st in the moral development of man, and his penetrative moral insight, acting upon, and guided by the truths of the Christian religion, warned him, on this side, against the absolute separation of the ideal and actual, the divine and human. Human love, however poor in quality and limited in range, was to him God's love in man. It was a wave

e of science to reach the whole truth as to any particular object, into a qualitative discrepancy between knowledge and truth. Because knowledge is never complete, it is always mere lacquered ignorance; and man's apparent intellectual victories are only conquests in a land of unrealities, or mere phenomena. He occupies in regar

ralist and the poet dwell on the negative relation of the ideal and actual, and forget that the negative has no meaning, except as the expression of a deeper affirmative. Carlyle had to learn that we know our moral imperfection, only because we are conscious of a better within us; and Browning had to learn that we are aware of our ignorance, only because we have the consciousness of fuller truth with which we contrast our knowledge. Browning, indeed, knew that the consciousness of evil was itself evidence of the presence of good, that perfection means death, and progress is life, on the side of morals; but he has missed the corresponding truth on the

, except by turning his back on knowledge; but whether it is possible for hi