Ethel M. Naish

“ Yet Cleon deals with the question as might have been anticipated. Genius, even in its highest form, culture, art, learning, alike fail to satisfy the restless soul, tossed upon the waves of uncertainty, unanchored by any reasonable hope for the future. All these fail where the satisfaction derivative from wealth and power honourably wielded has already failed. The genius ruling in the kingdom of intellectual life has no consolation to offer the sovereign ruling the outer life—the material and moral welfare—of his subjects. ”

“ To Cleon such hopes, but vaguely suggested, leading upwards and onwards towards a recognition of the soul’s immortality, are too fair for truth, their very beauty leads him to question their reality.
Admitted then that in “all earth’s tenantry, from worm to bird,” perfection is to be found, in what direction may advance be made? Impossible in degree, it must, therefore, be in kind: some new faculty shall be added to those which man, the latest born of the creatures, shall share in common with his predecessors in the world of animal life—the knowledge and realization of his own individuality. ”

“ Love does not admit of measurement, since it is by nature infinite. As with eternity, so with Love. By no relative estimate of time can any possible realization of eternity be approached; the sole result of any such attempt at exposition being necessarily conducive to a wholly erroneous impression on the mind, since that which is in its essence infinite admits of no defined measure. Thus infinite Love remains infinite in spite of human limitations. Whilst absolute truth remains, though the revelation to man is gradual, so does Love remain unimpaired, though man may profit by or abuse it. ”

“ If death is not the ending of the soul’s life, what is the nature of that immortality, the actuality of which the speaker seeks to establish? We have already seen Cleon emphatically repudiating the theory of Protus as to the satisfaction afforded by a vicarious immortality, “what thou writest, paintest, stays: that does not die.” Equally unsatisfactory to human nature is the suggestion in the present instance of a prolongation and renewal of life by influences transmitted to succeeding generations. And yet is the certainty of the thirteenth century possible to the nineteenth? ”

“ By postponement, the exemplary effect of punishment is rendered void: the connection between offence and penalty is obscured, and sympathy with the sufferer will result, rather than avoidance of the offence for which the suffering is inflicted. Such is the estimate by Ferishtah, or Browning, of the punishment of a future Hell of fire. From a merely human point of view it is illogical. For the purification of the sinner, or for the admonition of the onlooker, it is alike useless. And the deduction? Man can but work and, therefore, teach as man, and not as God. ”

“ What satisfaction to be derived from the continuance of a loveless existence? Without love, life to the author of Caliban upon Setebos would have lost its use, would be fearful of contemplation; the “can it be, and must, and will it?” of La Saisiaz [15] finds no faintest echo on Prospero’s isle. In the one case the utterances are the utterances of Caliban, in the other those of Browning himself. From the calculations of the one the doctrine of immortality is as inevitably excluded as it is inevitably included in those of the other. ”

“ But the attraction peculiar to the grotesque in any form is here present in a marked degree: an attraction frequently stronger than that exerted by the purely beautiful, involving as it does a more direct intellectual appeal; since grotesqueness, whether in Nature or in Art, does not usually denote simplicity. And Caliban is by no means a simple being, rather is he a singularly remarkable creation even for the genius of Browning. ”

“ The logical and critical faculties have not been developed. But in the mind of the thinker, the logician, the metaphysician, reason will assert itself; judgment will not be blindfolded. If the postulates of faith are capable of proof by reason, then is faith no longer necessary; its sphere is usurped by reason which has become all-sufficient. To the man, therefore, whose intellect questions, analyses, dissects truths as they present themselves to him, a proportionately stronger faith is a necessity: the doubts so arising being, “the most consummate of contrivances to teach men faith.” ”

“ After the final choice has been made in favour of Love, “leave to love only,” the fuller explanation follows; the secret of life’s success or failure. Failure through the inability to recognize the Divine Love in the visible creation, or in the more immediate revelation to man: in either case ample proof being afforded to him who had eyes to see, intelligence to grasp, and heart to respond to the Love so taught. Yet the soliloquist of Easter Day had proved himself incapable of such recognition of the highest truth. ”

“ But even when the heart rises triumphantly, and in defiance of the arguments of reason asserts “I have felt,” the faith so expressed is not the faith of Browning. Beyond all the temporary darkness of La Saisiaz we recognize that the author of Asolando is speaking nothing more than the truth when he tells us that he “never doubted clouds would break.” The dispersal of the clouds gathered over La Salève added confidence to the Epilogue which constitutes so fitting a close to the life’s work. ”

“ For whilst far more than the belief necessarily implied in the confession on La Salève must be held essential to the fulness of life, without it no superstructure of faith is possible. Its very strength would seem to lie in the fact that, avoiding the limitations of strictly defined dogma, it “leaves place” for all subsequent revelations of spiritual truth.
And what is “the Christian revelation” on these matters? The questions concerning death, immortality, and future recognition and reunion, ever suggesting themselves in new form to the human heart and intellect, are yet unanswered. ”

“ In the light of that flash of intuition, it at once became clear that such an attitude of compromise had meant, in fact, a decision in favour of the world; a choice of things temporal to the virtual exclusion of things eternal. That he, too, had been doing that which he to-night reproaches the Christian of placid assurance for doing: he had been but using his faith “as a condiment” wherewith to “heighten the flavours” of life. The final issue being assured, the true relations of life and faith became manifest. ”

“ The old theory is advanced beneath the illustration of relationship to an absent friend, proofs of whose affection, of whose very existence, rest upon the evidence of letters, the genuineness of which has been called in question by experts. Nevertheless, the friend at home, the soliloquist of the poem, refuses to yield credence to calumny. His faith in the friend, if misplaced, has been hitherto a source of spiritual elevation and inspiration. Even though the truth be ultimately proved but falsehood, he is yet the better for those days in which he deemed it truth. ”

“ Finally, seeing that Power must within itself include the force known as Will, could that indeed rank as omnipotence, which was incapable of securing for man even the enjoyment of life possessed by the worm which, on the hypothesis of the non-existence of a future world, becomes “man’s fellow-creature,” man too being thus but the creature of an hour? Since with the loss of his immortal destiny passes also the reason (according to Browning’s reiterated theory) of his imperfection as compared with the more complete physical perfection of the lower world of animal life. ”

“ Though the life which the Bishop defends may not be the highest measured by the standard of his own ideal, yet, “truth is truth, and justifies itself in undreamed ways.” And there is truth in the recognition that the faith to which he looks for inspiration and guidance is a faith barely capable of holding its own in face of the battalion of assailant doubts. ”

“ The hell designed for this man is one in which externals inevitably take no part. The world and its inhabitants apparently pursue their course, “as they were wont to do,” before the time of probation was at an end. The sole difference is to be found in the spiritual outlook. The interest attaching to these things of time is no longer existent; no longer is the soul “visited by God’s free spirit.” Thus is again suggested that central doctrine of Browning’s creed: the superlative worth of the individual soul in the divine scheme of the universe. ”

“ That in proportion as satisfaction is found in formula does faith lose its life-giving power. Progress being the law of life, he would, therefore, enforce upon no man as binding formulae of which the comparative inelasticity might tend to fetter mental or spiritual development. On the contrary, he would have the seeker after Truth prepared to relinquish in due time definitions once essential, since threatening to become restrictive to growth. Before all things, is to be avoided the danger of resting on that which is not the Truth itself, but merely a necessary introduction to the Truth. ”

“ For Cleon, equally with the Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages, accepts the entire subserviency of man to his creator. Both alike recognize the value of life, human life; its unity, its perfection in itself: both alike realize that this life means growth. “Why stay we on the earth unless to grow?” asks the Greek. ”

“ Nevertheless, the negations of the sceptic’s creed bear for him no attraction. In either case remains the risk that faith or absence of faith may prove error. The uncertainty on both sides being equal, it is not as well to be Strauss as Luther. Better even the mere desire for belief in the story of the Gospels, than a dispassionately critical attempt to reconcile discrepencies in that which has no personal interest for the enquirer: the one means spiritual vitality, the other stagnation. ”

“ The original statement has never been satisfactorily controverted. “How hard it is to be a Christian”; hard on account of the uncertainty bound to be attendant on all matters in which faith is requisite. It is hard to be a Christian since the difficulty but shifts its ground and is not actually removed by any venture of faith. After all argument, all reasoning, the possibility remains that the Christian’s hope is a mistaken one; that death is not the gateway to fuller life but the annihilation of life ”

“ Here all is perfection, man sees himself as he wishes he were, as he “might have been,” as he “cannot be.” In such finished work no room is left for “man’s distinctive mark,” progress,—growth. When, then, according to Browning, did growth once more begin? When was the depression of Cleon’s day out-lived? Vitality, he asserts, once more became apparent when the eye of the artist was turned from externals to that which externals may denote or conceal, not outwards but inwards, from the form betokening the existence of Soul to Soul itself. ”

“ Does he intend us to accept the scepticism of the Journalist as genuine, the justification of the Bishop as offered in entire good faith? Do his sympathies indeed belong wholly to either side? To hold that he necessarily sets forth a direct expression of his own opinions is to misunderstand the spirit in which he is accustomed to approach his subject. As well believe Caliban [Pg 64] to give utterance to his conception of a Supreme Being as the personification of irresponsible and capricious power; and Cleon to estimate his recognition of Christianity as “a doctrine to be held by no sane man.” ”

“ For if the complexity of human nature and character is fully recognized by any writer whether poet, novelist, or biographer, it has surely been so recognized by the author of Paracelsus, of Sordello, of The Ring and the Book. It has been so frequently remarked that it seems but reiterating a truism to repeat the assertion that he writes of the individual, not of the race, not of man but of men; of men with much indeed which is common to the race, but with peculiar attention also to those idiosyncrasies which establish individuality. ”

“ With Cleon follows the substitution of the Greek conception of life at the beginning of the Christian era, speculations as to the design of Zeus in his intercourse with man. The speculator, at once poet, musician, artist, to whom have been accessible all the stores of Greek philosophy and Greek culture, feels inevitably the necessity for the existence of a Deity differing from that of the monster of Prospero’s isle. Nevertheless to the Greek thinker the immortality of the soul is not yet more than a vague suggestion, the outcome of desire. ”

“ Even that main pillar of faith, a belief in the immortality of the soul, lies temporarily shattered. Such failure suggests itself as the result of an insufficiently considered acceptance of dogma; an acceptance without question, rather than in spite of doubts and questionings. This distinction we have seen Bishop Blougram drawing between the position of the man who implicitly believes, since, his logical and reasoning faculties being undeveloped or inactive, no cause for question arises ”

“ The continued popularity of In Memoriam is undoubtedly due in large measure to the fact that the author has there given poetic utterance to those questionings and aspirations of the human soul, peculiar to no time or place, to no nation or form of creed—to the cry wrung from the heart when inexorable Death brings with it the hour of separation. ”

“ For an Andrea del Sarto—to a less profound student of character appearing as “an easy-going plebeian” satisfied with a social life among his compeers, as an artist “resting content in the sense of his superlative powers as an executant”—is offered the Andrea of the poem bearing his name; a sometime aspiring nature, now embittered by the struggle, wellnigh ended within the soul, between yearnings towards future greatness and the desire for present gain; a nature of insight sufficient to realize that the bonds of materialism are galling, of moral force inadequate to effect their rupture. ”