stop short of its final secret. Even when it has discovered its law,
there is still apparently something over and above which science 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 meet and which the sciences
fail to lift into knowledge, is regarded as just the reality of the
thing. Thus the reality is supposed, at the close of every
investigation, to lie outside of knowledge; and conversely, all that we
do know, seeing that it lacks this last element, seems to be only
apparent knowledge, or knowledge of phenomena.

In this way the process of knowing seems always to stop short at the
critical moment, when the truth is just about to be reached. And those
who dwell on this aspect alone are apt to conclude that man's intellect
is touched with a kind of impotence, which makes it useless when it gets
near the reality. It is like a weapon that snaps at the hilt just when
the battle is hottest. For we seem to be able to know everything but the
reality, and yet apart from the real essence all knowledge seems to be
merely apparent. Physical science penetrates through the outer
appearances of things to their laws, analyzes them into forms of energy,
calculates their 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 pretension of showing how things behave,
not what they are; what effects follow the original noumenal causes, but
not the veritable nature of these causes. Nor can the metaphysician, in
his turn, do more than suggest a hypothesis as to the nature of the
ultimate reality in things. He cannot detect or demonstrate it in any
particular fact. In a word, every minutest object in the world baffles
the combined powers of all forms of human thought, and holds back its
essence or true being from them. And as long as this true being, or
reality is not known, the knowledge which we seem to have cannot be held
as ultimately true, but is demonstrably a makeshift.

Having made this confession, there seems to be no alternative but to
postulate an utter discrepancy between human thought and real existence,
or between human knowledge and truth, which is the correspondence 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 reality of its objects. What remains,
then, except to regard human knowledge as completely untrustworthy, as
merely of phenomena? If we cannot know _any_ reality, does not knowledge
completely fail?

Now, in dealing with the moral life of man, we saw that the method of
hard alternatives is invalid. The moral life, being progressive, was
shown to be the meeting--point of the ideal and the actual; and the
ideal of perfect goodness 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 expression in a better character. The
ideal was present as potency, as realizing itself, but it was never
completely realized. The absolute good was never reached in the best
action, and never completely missed in the worst.

The same conflict of real and unreal was shown to be essential to every
natural life. As long as anything grows it neither completely attains,
nor completely falls away from its ideal. The growing acorn is not an
oak tree, and yet 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 reconstructive power gradually changing its whole
vehicle, or organism, into a more perfect expression of itself. The
ideal is reached in the end, just because it is present in the
beginning; and there is no end as long as growth continues.

Now, it is evident that knowledge, whether it be that of the individual
man or of the human race, is a thing that grows. The process by means of
which natural science makes progress, or by which the consciousness of
the child expands and 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 the permanent principles of
experience, and absorbed into an intellectual life, which itself, in
turn, grows richer and fuller with every new acquisition. No knowledge
worthy of the name is an aggregation of facts. Wisdom comes by growth.

Hence, the assertion that knowledge never attains reality, does not
imply that it always misses it. In morals we do not say that a man is
entirely evil, although he never, even in his best actions, attains the
true good. And if the process 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 considered as
active in the present, guiding the whole movement, and gradually
manifesting itself in each of the passing forms, which are used up as
the raw material of new acquirement; and yet no passing form completely
expresses the ideal.

Nor is it difficult to say what that ideal of knowledge is, although we
cannot define it in any adequate manner. We know that the end of
morality is the _summum bonum_, although we cannot, as long as we are
progressive, define its whole content, or find it fully realized in any
action. Every failure brings new truth, every higher grade of moral
character reveals some new height of goodness to be scaled; the moral
ideal acquires definiteness and content as humanity moves upwards. And
yet the ideal is not entirely unknown even at the first; even to the
most ignorant, it presents itself as a criterion which enables him to
distinguish between right and wrong, evil and goodness, and which guides
his practical life. The same truth holds with regard to knowledge. Its
growth receives its impulse from, and is directed and determined by,
what is conceived as the real world of facts. This truth, namely, that
the ideal knowledge is knowledge of reality, the most subjective
philosopher cannot but 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 unapproachable to the mind of man--ply this
useless labour. They are seeking to penetrate beneath the shows of sense
and the outer husk of phenomena to the truth, which is the meeting-point
of knowledge and reality; they are endeavouring to translate into an
intellectual possession the powers that play within and around them; or,
in other words, to make these powers express themselves in their
thoughts, and supply the content of their spiritual life. The irony,
latent in their endeavour, gives them no pause; they are in some way
content to pursue what they call phantoms, and to try to satisfy their
thirst with the waters of a mirage. This comes from the presence of the
ideal within them, that is, of the implicit unity of reality and
thought, which seeks for explicit and complete manifestation in
knowledge. The reality is present in them as thinking activity, working
towards complete revelation of itself by means of knowledge. And its
presence is real, although the process is never complete.

In knowledge, as in morals, it is necessary to remember both of the
truths implied in the pursuit of an ideal--that a growing thing not only
always fails to attain, but also always succeeds. The distinction
between truth and error in knowledge is present at every stage in the
effort to attain truth, as the distinction between right and wrong is
present in every phase of the moral life. It is the source of the
intellectual 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 being
of things, is always reached by the poorest knowledge. As there is no
starved and distorted sapling which is not the embodiment of the
principle of natural life, so the meanest character is the product of an
ideal of goodness, and the most confused opinion of ignorant mankind is
an expression of the reality of things. Without it there would not be
even the semblance of knowledge, not even error and untruth.

Those who, like Browning, make a division between man's thought and real
things, and regard the sphere of knowledge as touching at no point the
sphere of actual existence, are attributing to the bare human intellect
much more power than it has. They regard mind as creating its phenomenal
knowledge, or the apparent world. For, having separated mind from
reality, 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 world of phenomena which we know, and which as known, does
not seem to consist of realities, must be the product of the unaided
human mind. The intellect, isolated from all real being, has
manufactured the apparent universe, in all its endless wealth. It is a
creative intellect, although it can only create illusions. It evolves
all its products from itself.

But thought, set to revolve upon its own axis in an empty region, can
produce nothing, not even illusions. And, indeed, those who deny that it
is possible for thought and reality to meet in a unity, have,
notwithstanding, to bring over "something" to the aid of thought. There
must 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 by
thought and "something"--which yet is not reality; for the real world is
a world of things in themselves, altogether beyond thought. By bringing
in these data, it is virtually admitted that the human mind reaches down
into itself in vain for a world, even for a phenomenal one.

Thought apart from things is quite empty, just as things apart from
thought are blind. Such thought and such reality are mere abstractions,
hypostasized by false metaphysics; they are elements of truth rent
asunder, and destroyed in the rending. The dependence of the
intelligence of man upon reality is direct and complete. The foolishest
dream, that ever played out its panorama beneath a night-cap, came
through the gates of the senses from the actual world. Man is limited 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 into the world. We are in
it from the first, both as physical and moral agents, and as thinking
beings. Our thoughts are expressions of the real nature of things, so
far as they go. They may be and are imperfect; they may be and are
confused and inadequate, and express only the superficial aspects and
not "the inmost fibres"; still, they are what they are, in virtue of
"the reality," which finds itself interpreted in them. Severed from that
reality, they would be nothing.

Thus, the distinction between thought and reality is a distinction
within a deeper unity. And that unity must not be regarded as something
additional to both, or as a third something. 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. The distinguished elements have no existence or
meaning except in their unity. Like the actual and ideal, they have
significance and being, only in their reference to each other.

There is one more difficulty connected with this matter which I must
touch upon, although the discussion may already be regarded as prolix.
It is acknowledged by every one that the knowledge of the individual,
and his apparent world of realities, grow _pari passu_. Beyond his
sphere of knowledge there is no reality _for him_, not even apparent
reality. 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 thought
is his world, and not the world of really existing things. And this is
true alike of every individual. The world is independent of all human
minds. It existed before them, and will, very possibly, exist after
them. Can we not, therefore, conclude that the real world is independent
of thought, and that it exists without relation to it?

A short reference to the moral consciousness may suggest the answer to
this difficulty. In morality (as also is the case in knowledge) the
moral ideal, or the objective law of goodness, grows in richness and
fulness of content with the individual who apprehends it. _His_ moral
world is the counterpart of _his_ moral growth 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 same whether the individual knows it or not. He does not
call the moral law into being, but finds it without, and then realizes
it in his own life. The moral law does not vanish and reappear with its
recognition by mankind. It is not subject to the chances and changes of
its life, but a good in itself that is eternal.

Is it therefore independent of all intelligence? Can goodness be
anything but the law of a self-conscious being? Is it the quality or
motive or ideal of a mere thing? Manifestly not. Its relation to
self-consciousness is essential. With the extinction of
self-consciousness all moral goodness is extinguished.

The same holds true of reality. The question of the reality or unreality
of things cannot arise except in an intelligence. Animals have neither
illusions nor truths--unless they are 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
endeavour to conceive a reality which no one knows, is to assert a
relative term without its correlative, which is absurd; it is to posit
an ideal which is opposed to nothing actual.

In this view, so commonly held in our day, that knowledge is subjective
and reality unknowable, we have another example of the falseness and
inconsistency of abstract thinking. If this error be committed, there is
no fundamental gain in saying with Kant, that things are relative to the
thought of all, instead of asserting, with Berkeley or Browning, that
they are relative to the thought of each. The final result is the same.
Things as known, are reduced into mere creations of thought; things as
they are, are regarded 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 discovered by
the effort of thought; for we always strive to know things, and not
phantoms. Lastly, the knowledge thus acquired being regarded as
imperfect, and experience showing to us continually that every object
has more in it than we know, the reality is pronounced to be unknowable,
and all knowledge is regarded as failure, as acquaintance with mere
phantoms. Thus, in thought, as in morality, the ideal is present at the
beginning, it is an effort after explicit realization, and its process
is never complete.

Now, all these aspects of the ideal of knowledge, that is, of reality,
are held by the unsophisticated intelligence of man; and abstract
philosophy is not capable of finally getting rid of any one of them. It,
too, holds them _alternately_. 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. But it forgets these facts, when it is
discovered that knowledge at the best is incomplete. It is thus tossed
from assertion to denial, and from denial to assertion; from one
abstract or one-sided view of reality, to the other.

When these different aspects of truth are grasped together from the
point of view of evolution, there seems to be a way of escaping the
difficulties to which they give rise. For the ideal must be present at
the beginning, and cannot be present in its fulness till the process is
complete. What is here required is to lift our theory of man's knowledge
to the level of our theory of his moral life, and to treat it frankly as
the process whereby reality manifests itself in the mind of man. In that
way, we shall avoid the absurdities of both of the abstract schools of
philosophy, to both of which alike the native intelligence of man gives
the lie. We shall say neither that man knows nothing, nor that he knows
all; 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 over that we have not apprehended, which is
truer and more real than anything we know, and which in all future
effort we strive to master. And, just as the very effort, to be good
derives its impulse and direction from the ideal of goodness which is
present, and striving for realization; so the effort to know derives its
impulse and direction from the reality which is present, and striving
for complete realization in the thought of man. We know reality
confusedly from the first; and it is because we have attained so much
knowledge, that we strive for greater clearness and fulness. It is by
planting his foot on the world that man travels. It is by opposing his
power to the given reality that his knowledge grows.

When once we recognize that reality is the ideal of knowledge, we are
able to acknowledge all the truth that is in the doctrine of the
phenomenalists, without falling into their errors and contradictions. We
may go as far as the poet in confessing intellectual impotence, and
roundly call the knowledge of man "lacquered ignorance." "Earth's least
atom" does veritably remain an enigma. Man is actually flung back into
his circumscribed sphere by every fact; and he will continue to be so
flung to the end of time. He will never know reality, nor be able to
hold 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 course.
No fact can be thoroughly known, _i.e._, known in its reality, till the
light of the universe has been focussed upon it: and, on the other hand,
to know any subject through and through would be to explain all being.
The highest law and the essence of the simple fact, the universal and
the particular, can only be known together, in and through one another.
"Reality" in "the least atom" will be known, only when knowledge has
completed its work, and the universe has become a transparent sphere,
penetrated in every direction by the shafts of intelligence.

But this is only half the truth. If knowledge is never complete, it is
always _completing_; if reality is never known, it is ever _being
known_; if the ideal is never actual, it is always _being actualized_.
The complete failure of knowledge is as impossible as its complete
success. It is at no time severed from reality; it is never its mere
adumbration, nor are its contents mere phenomena. On the contrary, it is
reality partially revealed, the ideal incompletely actualized. 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 relate himself to the world. He is already
related, and his task is to understand that relation, or, in other words,
to make both its terms intelligible. Man has no need to go out from
himself to facts; his relation to facts is prior to his distinction from
them. The truth is that he cannot entirely lift himself away from them,
nor suspend his thoughts in the void. In his inmost being he is
creation's voice, and in his knowledge he confusedly murmurs its deep
thoughts.

Browning was aware of this truth in its application to man's moral
nature. In speaking of the principle of love, he was not tempted to
apply fixed alternatives. On the contrary, he detected in the "poorest
love that was ever offered" the veritable presence of that which is
perfect and complete, though never completely actualized. His interest
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 breaking
in the individual of that First Love, which is ever flowing back through
the life of humanity to its primal source. To him all moral endeavour is
the process of this Primal Love; and every man, as he consciously
identifies himself with it, may use the language of Scripture, and say,
"It is not I that live, but Christ lives in me."

But, on the side of knowledge, he was neither so deeply interested, nor
had he so good a guide to lean upon. Ignorant, according to all
appearances, of the philosophy which has made the Christian maxim, "Die
to live,"--which primarily is only a principle of morality--the basis of
its theory of knowledge, he exaggerated the failure 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 regard to knowledge, a position strictly
analogous to that of Carlyle, in regard to morality; his intellectual
pessimism is the counterpart of the moral pessimism of his predecessor,
and it springs from the same error. He forgot that the ideal without is
also the power within, which makes for its own manifestation in the mind
of man.

He opposed the intellect to the world, as Carlyle opposed the weakness
of man to the law of duty; and he neglected the fact that the world was
there for him, only because he knew it, just as Carlyle neglected the
fact that the duty was without, only because it was recognized within.
He strained the difference between the ideal and actual into an absolute
distinction; and, as Carlyle condemned man to strive for a goodness
which he could never achieve, so Browning condemns him to pursue a truth
which he can never attain. In both, the failure is regarded as absolute.
"There is no good in us," has for its counterpart "There is no truth in
us." Both the moralist 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 side of knowledge. If he
acknowledges that the highest revealed itself to man, on the practical
side, as love; he does not see that it has also manifested itself to
man, on the theoretical side, as reason. The self-communication of the
Infinite is incomplete love is a quality of God, intelligence a quality
of man; hence, on one side, there is no limit to achievement, but on the
other there is impotence. Human nature is absolutely divided against
itself; and the division, as we have already seen, is not between flesh
and spirit, but between a love which is God's own and perfect, and an
intelligence which is merely man's and altogether weak and deceptive.

This is what makes Browning think it impossible to re-establish faith in
God, except by turning his back on knowledge; but whether it is possible
for him to appeal to the moral consciousness, we shall inquire in the
next chapter.




CHAPTER X.

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.