"To each mortal peradventure earth becomes a new machine,
Pain and pleasure no more tally in our sense than red and green."[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]

The first result of this subjective view of knowledge is clearly enough
seen by the poet. He is well aware that his convictions regarding the
high matters of human destiny are valid only for himself.

"Only for myself I speak,
Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers strong and weak."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

Experience, as he interprets it, that is, present consciousness, "this
moment's me and mine," is too narrow a basis for any universal or
objective conclusion. So far as his own inner experience of pain and
pleasure goes,

"All--for myself--seems ordered wise and well
Inside it,--what reigns outside, who can tell?"[A]

[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]

But as to the actual world, he can have no opinion, nor, from the good
and evil that apparently play around him, can he deduce either

"Praise or blame of its contriver, shown a niggard or profuse
In each good or evil issue."[B]

[Footnote B: _La Saisiaz_.]

The moral government of the world is a subject, regarding which we are
doomed to absolute ignorance. A theory that it is ruled by the "prince
of the power of the air" has just as much, and just as little, validity
as the more ordinary view held by religious people. Who needs be told

"The space
Which yields thee knowledge--do its bounds embrace
Well-willing and wise-working, each at height?
Enough: beyond thee lies the infinite--
Back to thy circumscription!"[C]

[Footnote C: _Francis Furini_.]

And our ignorance of God, and the world, and ourselves is matched by a
similar ignorance regarding moral matters.

"Ignorance overwraps his moral sense,
Winds him about, relaxing, as it wraps,
So much and no more than lets through perhaps
The murmured knowledge--' Ignorance exists.'"[D]

[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]

We cannot be certain even of the distinction and conflict of good and
evil in the world. They, too, and the apparent choice between them to
which man is continually constrained, may be mere illusions--phenomena
of the individual consciousness. What remains, then? Nothing but to
"wait."

"Take the joys and bear the sorrows--neither with extreme concern!
Living here means nescience simply: 'tis next life that helps to
learn."[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]

It is hardly necessary to enter upon any detailed criticism of such a
theory of knowledge as this, which is proffered by the poet. It is well
known by all those who are in some degree acquainted with the history of
philosophy--and it will be easily seen by all who have any critical
acumen--that it leads directly into absolute scepticism. And absolute
scepticism is easily shown to be self-contradictory. For a theory of
nescience, in condemning all knowledge and the faculty of knowledge,
condemns itself. If nothing is true, or if nothing is known, then this
theory itself is not true, or its truth cannot be known. And if this
theory is true, then nothing is true; for this theory, like all others,
is the product of a defective intelligence. In whatsoever way the matter
is put, there is left no standing-ground for the human critic who
condemns human thought. And he cannot well pretend to a footing in a
sphere above man's, or below it. There is thus one presupposition which
every one must make, if he is to propound any doctrine whatsoever, even
if that doctrine be that no doctrine can be valid; it is the
presupposition that knowledge is possible, and that truth can be known.
And this presupposition fills, for modern philosophy, the place of the
_Cogito ergo sum_ of Descartes. It is the starting-point and criterion
of all knowledge.

It is, at first sight, a somewhat difficult task to account for the
fact, that so keen an intellect as the poet's did not perceive the
conclusion to which his theory of knowledge so directly and necessarily
leads. It is probable, however, that he never critically examined it,
but simply accepted it as equivalent to the common doctrine of the
relativity of knowledge, which, in some form or other, all the schools
of philosophy adopt. But the main reason will be found to lie in the
fact that knowledge was not, to Browning, its own criterion or end. The
primary fact of his philosophy is that human life is a moral process.
His interest in the evolution of character was his deepest interest, as
he informs us; he was an ethical teacher rather than a metaphysician. He
is ever willing to asperse man's intelligence. But that man is a moral
agent he will in no wise doubt. This is his

"Solid standing-place amid
The wash and welter, whence all doubts are bid
Back to the ledge they break against in foam."[A]

[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]

His practical maxim was

"Wholly distrust thy knowledge, then, and trust
As wholly love allied to ignorance!
There lies thy truth and safety."[B]

[Footnote B: _A Pillar of Sebzevar_.]

All phenomena must, in some way or other, be reconciled by the poet with
the fundamental and indubitable fact of the progressive moral life of
man. For the fundamental presupposition which a man makes, is
necessarily his criterion of knowledge, and it determines the truth or
illusoriness of all other opinions whatsoever.

Now, Browning held, not only that no certain knowledge is attainable by
man, but also that such certainty is incompatible with moral life.
Absolute knowledge would, he contends, lift man above the need and the
possibility of making the moral choice, which is our supreme business on
earth. Man can be good or evil, only on condition of being in absolute
uncertainty regarding the true meaning of the facts of nature and the
phenomena of life.

This somewhat strange doctrine finds the most explicit and full
expression in _La Saisiaz_. "Fancy," amongst the concessions it demands
from "Reason," claims that man should know--not merely surmise or
fear--that every action done in this life awaits its proper and
necessary meed in the next.

"I also will that man become aware
Life has worth incalculable, every moment that he spends
So much gain or loss for that next life which on this life depends."[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]

But Reason refuses the concession, upon the ground that such sure
knowledge would be destructive of the very distinction between right and
wrong, which the demand implies. The "promulgation of this decree," by
Fancy, "makes both good and evil to cease." Prior to it "earth was man's
probation-place"; but under this decree man is no longer free; for
certain knowledge makes action necessary.

"Once lay down the law, with Nature's simple 'Such effects succeed
Causes such, and heaven or hell depends upon man's earthly deed
Just as surely as depends the straight or else the crooked line
On his making point meet point or with or else without incline,'
Thenceforth neither good nor evil does man, doing what he must."[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_, 195.]

If we presuppose that "man, addressed this mode, be sound and sane" (and
we must stipulate sanity, if his actions are to be morally judged at
all)--then a law which binds punishment and reward to action in a
necessary manner, and is known so to bind them, would "obtain prompt and
absolute obedience." There are some "edicts, now styled God's own
nature's," "which to hear means to obey." All the laws relating to the
preservation of life are of this character. And, if the law--"Would'st
thou live again, be just"--were in all ways as stringent as the other
law--

"Would'st thou live now, regularly draw thy breath!
For, suspend the operation, straight law's breach results in death"--[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

then no one would disobey it, nor could. "It is the liberty of doing
evil that gives the doing good a grace." And that liberty would be taken
away by complete assurance, that effects follow actions in the moral
world with the necessity seen in the natural sphere. Since, therefore,
man is made to grow, and earth is the place wherein he is to pass
probation and prove his powers, there must remain a certain doubt as to
the issues of his actions; conviction must not be so strong as to carry
with it man's whole nature. "The best I both see and praise, the worst I
follow," is the adage rife in man's mouth regarding his moral conduct.
But, spite of his seeing and praising,

"he disbelieves
In the heart of him that edict which for truth his head receives."[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]

He has a dim consciousness of ways whereby he may elude the consequences
of his wickedness, and of the possibility of making amends to law.

"And now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin',
A certain Bardie's rantin', drinkin',
Some luckless hour will send him linkin'
To your black pit;
But, faith, he'll turn a corner jinkin',
And cheat you yet."

The more orthodox and less generous individual is prone to agree, as
regards himself, with Burns; but, he sees, most probably, that such an
escape is impossible to others. He has secret solacement in a latent
belief that he himself is an exception. There will be a special method
of dealing with him. He is a "chosen sample"; and "God will think twice
before He damns a man of his quality." It is just because there is such
doubt as to the universality and necessity of the law which connects
actions and consequences in the moral sphere, that man's deeds have an
ethical character; while, to disperse doubt and ignorance by the
assurance of complete knowledge, would take the good from goodness and
the ill from evil.

In this ingenious manner, the poet turns the imperfect intellect and
delusive knowledge of man to a moral use. Ordinarily, the intellectual
impotence of man is regarded as carrying with it moral incapacity as
well, and the delusiveness of knowledge is one of the strongest
arguments for pessimism. To persons pledged to the support of no theory,
and to those who have the _naivete_, so hard to maintain side by side
with strong doctrinal convictions, it seems amongst the worst of evils
that man should be endowed with fallacious faculties, and cursed with a
futile desire for true knowledge which is so strong, that it cannot be
quenched even in those who believe that truth can never be attained. It
is the very best men of the world who cry

"Oh, this false for real,
This emptiness which feigns solidity,--
Ever some grey that's white, and dun that's black,--
When shall we rest upon the thing itself,
Not on its semblance? Soul--too weak, forsooth,
To cope with fact--wants fiction everywhere!
Mine tires of falsehood: truth at any cost!"[A]

[Footnote A: _A Bean-Stripe_.]

The poet himself was burdened in no small degree with this vain desire
for knowing the truth; and he recognized, too, that he was placed in a
world which seems both real and beautiful, and so well worth knowing.
Yet, it is this very failure of knowledge--a failure which, be it
remembered, is complete and absolute, because, as he thinks, all facts
must turn into phantoms by mere contact with our "relative
intelligences,"--which he constitutes into the basis of his optimistic
faith.

So high is the dignity and worth of the moral life to Browning, that no
sacrifice is too great to secure it. And, indeed, if it were once
clearly recognized that there is no good thing but goodness, nothing of
supreme worth, except the realization of a loving will, then doubt,
ignorance, and every other form of apparent evil would be fully
justified--provided they were conditions whereby this highest good is
attained. And, to Browning, ignorance was one of the conditions. And
consequently, the dread pause in the music which agnosticism brings, is
only "silence implying sound"; and the vain cry for truth, arising from
the heart of the earth's best men, is only a discord moving towards
resolution into a more rapturous harmony.

I do not stay here to inquire whether sure knowledge would really have
this disastrous effect of destroying morality, or whether its failure
does not rather imply the impossibility of a moral life. I return to the
question asked at the beginning of this chapter, and which it is now
possible to answer. That question was: How does Browning reconcile his
hypothesis of universal love with the natural and moral evils existing
in the world?

His answer is quite explicit. The poet solves the problem by casting
doubt upon the facts which threaten his hypothesis. He reduces them into
phenomena, in the sense of phantoms begotten by the human intellect upon
unknown and unknowable realities.

"Thus much at least is clearly understood--
Of power does Man possess no particle:
Of knowledge--just so much as shows that still
It ends in ignorance on every side."[A]

[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]

He is aware of the phenomena of his own consciousness,

"My soul, and my soul's home,
This body ";

but he knows not whether "things outside are fact or feigning." And he
heeds little, for in either case they

"Teach
What good is and what evil,--just the same,
Be feigning or be fact the teacher."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

It is the mixture, or rather the apparent mixture, of shade and light in
life, the conflict of seeming good with seeming evil in the world, that
constitutes the world a probation-place. It is a kind of moral
gymnasium, crowded with phantoms, wherein by exercise man makes moral
muscle. And the vigour of the athlete's struggle is not in the least
abated by the consciousness that all he deals with are phantoms.

"I have lived, then, done and suffered, loved and hated, learnt and taught
This--there is no reconciling wisdom with a world distraught,
Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in the aim,
If--(to my own sense, remember! though none other feel the same!)--
If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil's place,
And life, time--with all their chances, changes,--just probation-space,
Mine, for me."[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]

And the world would not be such a probation-space did we once penetrate
into its inmost secret, and know its phenomena as veritably either good
or evil. There is the need of playing something perilously like a trick
on the human intellect if man is to strive and grow.

"Here and there a touch
Taught me, betimes, the artifice of things--
That all about, external to myself,
Was meant to be suspected,--not revealed
Demonstrably a cheat--but half seen through."[B]

[Footnote B: _A Bean-Stripe._]

To know objects as they veritably are, might reveal all things as locked
together in a scheme of universal good, so that "white would rule
unchecked along the line." But this would be the greatest of disasters;
for, as moral agents, we cannot do without

"the constant shade
Cast on life's shine,--the tremor that intrudes
When firmest seems my faith in white."[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]

The intellectual insight that would penetrate through the vari-colour of
events into the actual presence of the incandescent white of love, which
glows, as hope tells us, in all things, would stultify itself, and lose
its knowledge even of the good.

"Think!
Could I see plain, be somehow certified
All was illusion--evil far and wide
Was good disguised,--why, out with one huge wipe
Goes knowledge from me. Type needs antitype:
As night needs day, as shine needs shade, so good
Needs evil: how were pity understood
Unless by pain? "[A]

[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]

Good and evil are relative to each other, and each is known only through
its contrary.

"For me
(Patience, beseech you!) Knowledge can but be
Of good by knowledge of good's opposite--
Evil."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

The extinction of one of the terms would be the extinction of the other.
And, in a similar manner, clear knowledge that evil is illusion and that
all things have their place in an infinite divine order would paralyze
all moral effort, as well as stultify itself.

"Make evident that pain
Permissibly masks pleasure--you abstain
From out-stretch of the finger-tip that saves
A drowning fly."[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]

Certainty on either side, either that evil is evil for evermore,
irredeemable and absolute, a drench of utter dark not illuminable by
white; or that it is but mere show and semblance, which the good takes
upon itself, would alike be ruinous to man. For both alternatives would
render all striving folly. The right attitude for man is that of
ignorance, complete uncertainty, the equipoise of conflicting
alternatives. He must take his stand on the contradiction. Hope he may
have that all things work together for good. It is right that he should
nourish the faith that the antagonism of evil with good in the world is
only an illusion; but that faith must stop short of the complete
conviction that knowledge would bring. When, therefore, the hypothesis
of universal love is confronted with the evils of life, and we ask how
it can be maintained in the face of the manifold miseries everywhere
apparent, the poet answers, "You do not know, and cannot know, whether
they are evils or not. Your knowledge remains at the surface of things.
You cannot fit them into their true place, or pronounce upon their true
purpose and character; for you see only a small arc of the complete
circle of being. Wait till you see more, and, in the meantime, hope!"

"Why faith--but to lift the load,
To leaven the lump, where lies
Mind prostrate through knowledge owed
To the loveless Power it tries
To withstand, how vain!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Reverie_--_Asolando_.]

And, if we reply in turn, that this necessary ignorance leaves as little
room for his scheme of love as it does for its opposite, he again
answers: "Not so! I appeal from the intellect, which is detected as
incompetent, to the higher court of the moral consciousness. And there I
find the ignorance to be justified: for it is the instrument of a higher
purpose, a means whereby what is best is gained, namely, _Love_."

"My curls were crowned
In youth with knowledge,--off, alas, crown slipped
Next moment, pushed by better knowledge still
Which nowise proved more constant; gain, to-day,
Was toppling loss to-morrow, lay at last
--Knowledge, the golden?--lacquered ignorance!
As gain--mistrust it! Not as means to gain:
Lacquer we learn by: ...
The prize is in the process: knowledge means
Ever-renewed assurance by defeat
That victory is somehow still to reach,
But love is victory, the prize itself:
Love--trust to! Be rewarded for the trust
In trust's mere act."[A]

[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]

Now, in order to complete our examination of this theory, we must follow
the poet in his attempt to escape from the testimony of the intellect to
that of the heart. In order to make the most of the latter, we find that
Browning, especially in his last work, tends to withdraw his accusation
of utter incompetence on the part of the intellect. He only tends to do
so, it is true. He is tolerably consistent in asserting that we know our
own emotions and the phenomena of our own consciousness; but he is not
consistent in his account of our knowledge, or ignorance, of external
things. On the whole, he asserts that we know nothing of them. But in
_Asolando_ he seems to imply that the evidence of a loveless power in
the world, permitting evil, is irresistible.[A] To say the least, the
testimony of the intellect, such as it is, is more clear and convincing
with regard to evil than it is with regard to good. Within the sphere of
phenomena, to which the intellect is confined, there seems to be,
instead of a benevolent purpose, a world ruled by a power indifferent to
the triumph of evil over good, and either "loveless" or unintelligent.

[Footnote A: _See passage just quoted._]

"Life, from birth to death,
Means--either looking back on harm escaped,
Or looking forward to that harm's return
With tenfold power of harming."[B]

[Footnote B: _A Bean-Stripe._]

And it is not possible for man to contravene this evidence of faults and
omissions: for, in doing so, he would remove the facts in reaction
against which his moral nature becomes active. What proof is there,
then, that the universal love is no mere dream? None! from the side of
the intellect, answers the poet. Man, who has the will to remove the
ills of life,

"Stop change, avert decay,
Fix life fast, banish death,"[C]

[Footnote C: _Reverie_--_Asolando_.]

has not the power to effect his will; while the Power, whose
limitlessness he recognizes everywhere around him, merely maintains the
world in its remorseless course, and puts forth no helping hand when
good is prone and evil triumphant. "God does nothing."

"'No sign,'--groaned he,--
No stirring of God's finger to denote
He wills that right should have supremacy
On earth, not wrong! How helpful could we quote
But one poor instance when He interposed
Promptly and surely and beyond mistake
Between oppression and its victim, closed
Accounts with sin for once, and bade us wake
From our long dream that justice bears no sword,
Or else forgets whereto its sharpness serves.'"[A]

[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville._]

But he tells us in his later poems, that there is no answer vouchsafed
to man's cry to the Power, that it should reveal

"What heals all harm,
Nay, hinders the harm at first,
Saves earth."[B]

[Footnote B: _Reverie--Asolando._]

And yet, so far as man can see, there were no bar to the remedy, if
"God's all-mercy" did really "mate His all-potency."

"How easy it seems,--to sense
Like man's--if somehow met
Power with its match--immense
Love, limitless, unbeset
By hindrance on every side!"[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]

But that love nowhere makes itself evident. "Power," we recognize,

"finds nought too hard,
Fulfilling itself all ways,
Unchecked, unchanged; while barred,
Baffled, what good began
Ends evil on every side."[A]

[Footnote A: _Reverie--Asolando_.]

Thus, the conclusion to which knowledge inevitably leads us is that mere
power rules.

"No more than the passive clay
Disputes the potter's act,
Could the whelmed mind disobey
Knowledge, the cataract."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

But if the intellect is thus overwhelmed, so as to be almost passive to
the pessimistic conclusion borne in upon it by "resistless fact," the
heart of man is made of another mould. It revolts against the conclusion
of the intellect, and climbs

"Through turbidity all between,
From the known to the unknown here,
Heaven's 'Shall be,' from earth's 'Has been.'"[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]

It grasps a fact beyond the reach of knowledge, namely, the possibility,
or even the certainty, that "power is love." At present there is no
substantiating by knowledge the testimony of the heart; and man has no
better anchorage for his optimism than faith. But the closer view will
come, when even our life on earth will be seen to have within it the
working of love, no less manifest than that of power.

"When see? When there dawns a day,
If not on the homely earth,
Then, yonder, worlds away,
Where the strange and new have birth,
And Power comes full in play."[D]

[Footnote D: _Ibid_.]

Now, what is this evidence of the heart, which is sufficiently cogent
and valid to counterpoise that of the mind; and which gives to "faith,"
or "hope," a firm foothold in the very face of the opposing "resistless"
testimony of knowledge?

Within our experience, to which the poet knows we are entirely confined,
there is a fact, the significance of which we have not as yet examined.
For, plain and irresistible as is the evidence of evil, so plain and
constant is man's recognition of it as evil, and his desire to annul it.
If man's mind is made to acknowledge evil, his moral nature is made so
as to revolt against it.

"Man's heart is _made_ to judge
Pain deserved nowhere by the common flesh
Our birth-right--bad and good deserve alike
No pain, to human apprehension."[A]

[Footnote A: _Mihrab Shah_--_Ferishtah's Fancies_.]

Owing to the limitation of our intelligence, we cannot deny but that

"In the eye of God
Pain may have purpose and be justified."

But whether it has its purpose for the supreme intelligence or not,

"Man's sense avails to only see, in pain,
A hateful chance no man but would avert
Or, failing, needs must pity."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

Man must condemn evil, he cannot acquiesce in its permanence, but is,
spite of his consciousness of ignorance and powerlessness, roused into
constant revolt against it.

"True, he makes nothing, understands no whit:
Had the initiator-spasm seen fit
Thus doubly to endow him, none the worse
And much the better were the universe.
What does Man see or feel or apprehend
Here, there, and everywhere, but faults to mend,
Omissions to supply,--one wide disease
Of things that are, which Man at once would ease
Had will but power and knowledge?"[A]

[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]

But the moral worth of man does not suffer the least detraction from his
inability to effect his benevolent purpose. "Things must take will for
deed," as Browning tells us. David is not at all distressed by the
consciousness of his weakness.

"Why is it I dare
Think but lightly of such impuissance? What stops my despair?
This;--'tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do."[B]

[Footnote B: _Saul_.]

The fact that "his wishes fall through," that he cannot, although
willing, help Saul, "grow poor to enrich him, fill up his life by
starving his own," does not prevent him from regarding his "service as
perfect." The will was there, although it lacked power to effect itself.
The moral worth of an action is complete, if it is willed; and it is
nowise affected by its outer consequences, as both Browning and Kant
teach. The loving will, the inner act of loving, though it can bear no
outward fruit, being debarred by outward impediment, is still a complete
and highest good.

"But Love is victory, the prize itself:
Love--trust to! Be rewarded for the trust
In trust's mere act. In love success is sure,
Attainment--no delusion, whatso'er
The prize be: apprehended as a prize,
A prize it is."[A]

[Footnote A: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]

Whatever the evil in the world and the impotence of man, his duty and
his dignity in willing to perform it, are ever the same. Though God
neglect the world

"Man's part
Is plain--to send love forth,--astray, perhaps:
No matter, he has done his part."[B]

[Footnote B: _The Sun_.]

Now, this fact of inner experience, which the poet thinks
incontrovertible--the fact that man, every man, necessarily regards
evil, whether natural or moral, as something to be annulled, were it
only possible--is an immediate proof of the indwelling of that which is
highest in man. On this basis, Browning is able to re-establish the
optimism which, from the side of knowledge, he had utterly abandoned.

The very fact that the world is condemned by man is proof that there
dwells in man something better than the world, whose evidence the
pessimist himself cannot escape. All is not wrong, as long as wrong
_seems_ wrong. The pessimist, in condemning the world, must except
himself. In his very charge against God of having made man in His anger,
there lies a contradiction; for he himself fronts and defies the
outrage. There is no depth of despair which this good cannot illumine
with joyous light, for the despair is itself the reflex of the good.

"Were earth and all it holds illusions mere,
Only a machine for teaching love and hate, and hope and fear,

"If this life's conception new life fail to realize--
Though earth burst and proved a bubble glassing hues of hell, one huge
Reflex of the devil's doings--God's work by no subterfuge,"[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]

still, good is good, and love is its own exceeding great reward. Alone,
in a world abandoned to chaos and infinite night, man is still not
without God, if he loves. In virtue of his love, he himself would be
crowned as God, as the poet often argues, were there no higher love
elsewhere.

"If he believes
Might can exist with neither will nor love,
In God's case--what he names now Nature's Law--
While in himself he recognizes love
No less than might and will,"[B]