Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher Part 9

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 G.o.d! Miserable Me!"

This humility and contrition, this discontent verging on hopelessness, const.i.tuted, as we have seen, the characteristic att.i.tude 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d." 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 a.s.sumption 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 pa.s.sing phenomenon, and does not look to that which reveals itself in it and causes it to pa.s.s 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 ident.i.ty of ideal and actual, so that no process is necessary, is to a.s.sume 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 pa.s.sing 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 G.o.d," 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-s.h.i.+ft. 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 G.o.d 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 kins.h.i.+p 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 t.i.ttle can in any wise pa.s.s away." The individual does not inst.i.tute 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 G.o.d must create and redeem the world in order to be G.o.d; or that creation and redemption,--the outflow of the universe from G.o.d as its source, and its return to Him through the salvation of mankind,--reveal to us the nature of G.o.d. Apart from this outgoing of the infinite to the finite and its return to itself through it, the name G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sive 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 pa.s.ses 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 s.h.i.+nes 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d is His communication of Himself. Hence the so-called religious humility, which makes G.o.d different in nature from His work, really degrades the object of its wors.h.i.+p. It puts mere power above the gifts of spirit, and it indicates that the wors.h.i.+pper has not been emanc.i.p.ated from the slavishness, which makes a fetish of its G.o.d. Such a religion is not free, and the development of man destroys it.

"I never realized G.o.d's birth before-- How He grew likest G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d with man as a spiritual being. The moral ideal is man's idea of perfection, that is, his idea of G.o.d. While theology and philosophy are often occupied with the vain task of bridging a chasm between the finite and the infinite, which they a.s.sume 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 G.o.d within him. The activity that man is,

"tending up, Holds, is upheld by, G.o.d, 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_.]

"G.o.d, perchance, Grants each new man, by some as new a mode, Inter-communication with Himself Wreaking on finiteness infinitude."[B]

[Footnote B: _Prince Hohenstiel-Schw.a.n.gau._]

And while man's moral endeavour is thus recognized as the activity of G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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, G.o.d With man--the thunder glow from pole to pole Abolis.h.i.+ng, a blissful moment-s.p.a.ce, 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-Schw.a.n.gau_.]

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.

CHAPTER VI.

BROWNING'S TREATMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE OF LOVE.

"G.o.d! Thou art Love! I build my faith on that!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_]

It may be well before going further to gather together the results so far reached.

Browning was aware of the conflict of the religious and moral consciousness, but he did not hesitate to give to each of them its most uncompromising utterance. And it is on this account that he is instructive; for, whatever may be the value of compromise in practical affairs, there is no doubt that it has never done anything to advance human thought. His religion is an optimistic faith, a peaceful consciousness of the presence of the highest in man, and therefore in all other things. Yet he does not hesitate to represent the moral life as a struggle with evil, and a movement through error towards a highest good which is never finally realized. He sees that the contradiction is not an absolute one, but that a good man is always both moral and religious, and, in every good act he does, transcends their difference.

He knew that the ideal apart from the process is nothing, and that "a G.o.d beyond the stars" is simply the unknowable. But he knew, too, that the ideal is not _merely_ the process, but also that which starts the process, guides it, and comes to itself through it. G.o.d, emptied of human elements, is a mere name; but, at the same time, the process of human evolution does not exhaust the idea of G.o.d. The process by itself, _i.e._, mere morality, is a conception of a fragment, a fiction of abstract thought; it is a movement which has no beginning or end; and in it neither the head nor the heart of man could find contentment. He is driven by ethics into philosophy, and by morality into religion.

It was in this way that Browning found himself compelled to trace back the moral process to its origin, and to identify the moral law with the nature of G.o.d. It is this that gives value to his view of moral progress, as reaching beyond death to a higher stage of being, for which man's attainments in this life are only preliminary.