Browning and His Century Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration: PARACELSUS]

At the end of his life and the end of the century Herbert Spencer, who had spent years of labor to prove the fallacies in all religious dogmas, and who had insisted upon religion's being entirely relegated to intellectually unknowable regions of thought, spoke in his autobiography of the mysteries inherent in life, in the evolution of human beings, in consciousness, in human destiny--mysteries that the very advance of science makes more and more evident, exhibits as more and more profound and impenetrable, adding:

"Thus religious creeds, which in one way or other occupy the sphere that rational interpretation seeks to occupy and fails, and fails the more, the more it seeks, I have come to regard with a sympathy based on community of need: feeling that dissent from them results from inability to accept the solutions offered, joined with the wish that solutions could be found."

Loyal to the last to his determination to accept as knowledge only what the intellect could prove, he never permitted himself to come under the awakening influence of an Aprile, yet like Browning's ancient Greek, Cleon, he longed for a solution of the mystery.

At the dawn of the century, and in his youth, Browning ventured upon a solution. In the remainder of this and the next chapter I shall attempt to show what elements in this solution the poet retained to the end of his life, how his thought became modified, and what relation his final solution bears to the final thought of the century.

In this first attempt at a synthesis of life in which the attributes peculiar to the mind and to the spirit are brought into harmonious relations.h.i.+p, Browning is more the intuitionalist than the scientist. His convictions well forth with all the force of an inborn revelation, just as kindred though much less rational views of nature's processes sprang up in the mind of the ancient Hindu or the ancient Greek.

The philosophy of life herein flashed out by the poet was later to be elaborated fully on its objective or observational side by Spencer--the philosopher par excellence of evolution--and finally, also, of course, on the objective side, to become an a.s.sured fact of science through the publication in 1859 of Darwin's epoch-making book, "The Origin of Species," wherein the laws, so disturbing to many at the time, of natural selection and the survival of the fittest were fully set forth.

While the genetic view of nature, as the phraseology of to-day goes, had been antic.i.p.ated in writers on cosmology like Leibnitz and Laplace, in geology by such men as Hutton and Lyall, and had entered into the domain of embryology through the researches of Von Baer, and while Spencer had already formulated a philosophy of evolution, Darwin went out into the open and studied the actual facts in the domain of living beings. His studies made evolution a certainty. They revealed the means by which its processes were accomplished, and in so doing pointed to an origin of man entirely opposed to orthodox views upon this subject. Thus was inaugurated the last great phase in the struggle between mind and spirit.

Henceforth, science stood completely revealed as the unflinching searcher of truth. Intuition was but a handmaid whose duty was to formulate working hypotheses, to become scientific law if provable by investigation or experiment, to be discarded if not.

The aspects which this battle has a.s.sumed in the latter half of the century have been many and various. Older sciences with a new lease of life and sciences entirely new have advanced along the path pointed out by the doctrines of evolution. Battalions of determined men have held aloft the banner of uncompromising truth. Each battalion has stormed truth's citadel only to find that about its inmost reality is an impregnable wall.

The utmost which has been attained in any case is a working hypothesis, useful in bringing to light many new objective phenomena, it is true, but, in the end, serving only to deepen the mystery inherent in the nature of all things.

Such a working hypothesis was the earlier one of gravitation whose laws of action were elaborated by Sir Isaac Newton, and by the great mind of Laplace were still further developed with marvelous mathematical precision in his "Mechanique Celeste."

Such another hypothesis is that of the atomic theory of the const.i.tution of matter usually a.s.sociated with the name of Dalton, though it has undergone many modifications from other scientific thinkers. Of this hypothesis Theodore Merz writes in his history of nineteenth-century scientific thought:

"As to the nature of the differences of the elements, the atomic view gives no information; it simply a.s.serts these differences, a.s.sumes them as physical constants, and tries to describe them by number and measurement. The atomic view is therefore at best only a provisional basis, a convenient resting place, similar to that which Newton found in physical astronomy, and on which has been established the astronomical view of nature."

The vibratory theories of the ether, the theories of the conservation of energy, the vitalistic view of life, the theory of parallelism of physical and psychical phenomena are all such hypotheses. They have been of incalculable value in helping to a larger knowledge of the appearances of things, and in the formation of laws of action and reaction, but in no way have they aided in revealing the inner or transcendent realities of the myriad manifestations of nature and life!

During the last half of the century this truth has forced itself with ever increasing power upon the minds of scientists, and has resulted in many divisions among the ranks. Some rest upon phenomena as the final reality; hence materialistic or mechanical views of life. Some believe that the only genuine reality is the one undiscoverable by science; hence new presentations of metaphysical views of life.

During these decades the solid phalanx of religious believers has continued to watch from its heights with more or less of fear the advance of science. Here, too, there has been division in the ranks. Many denounced the scientists as the destroyers of religion; others like the good Bishop Colenso could write such words as these in 1873: "Bless G.o.d devoutly for the gift of modern science"; and who ten years earlier had expressed satisfaction in the fact that superst.i.tious belief in the letter of the Bible was giving way to a true appreciation of the real value of the ancient Hebrew Scriptures as containing the dawn of religious light.

From another quarter came the critical students of the Bible, who subjected its contents to the keen tests of historical and archaeological study. Serene, above all the turmoil, was the small band of genuine philosophers who, like Browning's own musician, Abt Vogler, knew the very truth. No matter what disturbing facts may be brought to light by science, be it man's descent from Anthropoids or a mechanical view of sensation, they continue to dwell unshaken in the light of a transcendent truth which reaches them through some other avenue than that of the mind.

Browning belonged by nature in this last group. Already in "Sordello" his attention is turned to the development of the soul, and from that time on to the end of his career he is the champion of the soul-side of existence with all that it implies of character development--"little else being worth study," as he declared in his introduction to a second edition of the poem written twenty years after its first appearance.

On this rock, the human soul, he takes his stand, and, though all the complex waves of the tempest of nineteenth-century thought break against his feet, he remains firm.

Beginning with "Sordello," it is no longer evolution as applied to every aspect of the universe but evolution as applied to the human spirit which has his chief interest. Problems growing out of the marvelous developments of such sciences as astronomy, geology, physics, chemistry or biology do not enter into the main body of the poet's thought, though there are allusions many and exact which show his familiarity with the growth of these various objective sciences during his life.

During all the middle years of his poetic career the relations of the mind and the spirit seemed to fascinate Browning, especially upon the side of the problems connected with the supernatural bases of religious experience. These are the problems which grew out of that phase of scholarly advance represented by biblical criticism.

Such a poem as "Saul," for example, though full of a humanity and tenderness, as well as of a sheer poetic beauty, which endear it alike to those who appreciate little more than the content of the poem, and to those whose appreciation is that of the connoisseur in poetic art, is nevertheless an interpretation of the origin of prophecy, especially of the Messianic idea, which places Browning in the van of the thought of the century on questions connected with biblical criticism.

At the time when "Saul" was written, 1845, modern biblical criticism had certainly gained very little hearing in England, for even as late as 1862 Bishop Colenso's enlightened book on the Pentateuch was received, as one writer expresses it, with "almost unanimous disapprobation and widespread horror."

Critics of the Bible there had been since the seventeenth century, but they had produced a confused ma.s.s of stuff in their attacks upon the authenticity of the Bible against which the orthodox apologists had succeeded in holding their own. At the end of the eighteenth and the dawn of the nineteenth century came the more systematic criticism of German scholars, echoes of whose theories found their way into England through the studies of such men as Pusey. But these, though they gave full consideration to the foremost of the German critics of the day, ranged themselves, for the most part, on the side of orthodoxy.

Eichhorn, one of the first of the Germans to be studied in England, had found a point of departure in the celebrated "Wolfenb.u.t.tel Fragments,"

which had been printed by Lessing from ma.n.u.scripts by an unknown writer Reimarus discovered in the Wolfenb.u.t.tel library. These fragments represent criticism of the sweepingly destructive order, characteristic of what has been called the naturalistic school. Although Eichhorn agreed with the writer of the "Fragments" that the biblical narratives should be divested of all their supernatural aspects, he did not interpret the supernatural elements as simply frauds designed to deceive in order that personal ends might be gained. He restored dignity to the narrative by insisting at once upon its historical verity and upon a natural interpretation of the supernatural--"a spontaneous illumination reflected from antiquity itself," which might result from primitive misunderstanding of natural phenomena, from the poetical embellishment of facts, or the symbolizing of an idea.

Doctor Paulus, in his commentary on the Gospels (1800), carried the idea still farther, and the rationalistic school of Bible criticism became an a.s.sured fact, though Kant at this time developed an entirely different theory of Bible interpretation, which in a sense harked back to the older allegorical interpretation of the Bible.

He did not trouble himself at all about the historical accuracy of the narratives. He was concerned only in discovering the idea underlying the stories, the moral gist of them in relation to human development. With the naturalists and the rationalists, he put aside any idea of Divine revelation. It was the moral aspiration of the authors, themselves, which threw a supernatural glamour over their accounts of old traditions and turned them into symbols of life instead of merely records of bona fide facts of history. The weakness of Kant's standpoint was later pointed out by Strauss, whose opinion is well summed up in the following paragraph.

"Whilst Kant sought to educe moral thoughts from the biblical writings, even in their historical part, and was even inclined to consider these thoughts as the fundamental object of the history: on the other hand he derived these thoughts only from himself and the cultivation of his age, and therefore could seldom a.s.sume that they had actually been laid down by the authors of these writings; and on the other hand, and for the same reason, he omitted to show what was the relation between these thoughts and those symbolic representations, and how it happened that the one came to be expressed by the other."

The next development of biblical criticism was the mythical mode of interpretation in which are prominent the names of Gabler, Sch.e.l.ling, Bauer, Vater, De Wette, and others. These critics among them set themselves the difficult task of cla.s.sifying the Bible narratives under the heads of three kinds of myths: historical myths, philosophical myths, and poetical myths. The first were "narratives of real events colored by the light of antiquity, which confounded the divine and the human, the natural and the supernatural"; the second, "such as clothe in the garb of historical narrative a simple thought, a precept, or an idea of the time"; the third, "historical and philosophical myths partly blended together and partly embellished by the creations of the imagination, in which the original fact or idea is almost obscured by the veil which the fancy of the poet has woven around it."

This sort of interpretation, first applied to the Old Testament, was later used in sifting history from myth to the New Testament.

It will be seen that it has something in common with both the previously opposed views. The mythical interpretation agrees with the old allegorical view in so far that they both relinquish historical reality in favor of some inherent truth or religious conception of which the historical semblance is merely the sh.e.l.l. On the other hand it agrees with the rationalistic view in the fact that it really gives a natural explanation of the process of the growth of myths and legends in human society.

Immediate divine agency controls in the allegorical view, the spirit of individuals or of society controls in the mythical view.

Neither the out-and-out rationalists nor the orthodox students of the Bible approved of this new mode of interpretation, which was more or less the outcome of the study of the sacred books of other religions. In 1835, however, appeared an epoch-making book which subjected the New Testament to the most elaborate criticism based upon mythical and legendary interpretation. This was the "Life of Jesus, Critically Examined," by Dr.

David Friedrich Strauss. This book caused a great stir in the theological world of Germany. Strauss was dismissed from his professors.h.i.+p in the University of Tubingen in consequence of it. Not only this, but in 1839, when he was appointed professor of Church History and Divinity at the University of Zurich, he was compelled at once to resign, and the administration which appointed him was overthrown. This veritable bomb thrown into the world of theology was translated by George Eliot, and published in England in 1846.

Through this translation the most advanced German thought must have become familiar to many outside the pale of the professional scholar, and among them was, doubtless, the poet Browning, if indeed he had not already become familiar with it in the original. When the content and the thought of Browning's poems upon religious subjects are examined, it becomes certain that he was familiar with the whole trend of biblical criticism in the first half of the century and of its effect upon certain of the orthodox churchmen, and that with full consciousness he brought forward in his religious poems, not didactically, but often by the subtlest indirections, his own att.i.tude toward the problems raised in this department of scientific historical inquiry.

Some of the problems which occupied his attention, such as that in "The Death in the Desert," are directly traceable to the influence of Strauss's book. Whether he knew of Strauss's argument or not when he wrote "Saul,"

his treatment of the story of David and Saul is not only entirely in sympathy with the creed of the German school of mythical interpreters, but the poet himself becomes one of the myth makers in the series of prophets--that is, he takes the idea, the Messianic idea, poetically embellishes an old tradition, making it glow with humanness, throws into that idea not only a content beyond that which David could have dreamed of, but suggests a purely psychical origin of the Messianic idea itself in keeping with his own thought on the subject.

The history of the origin and growth of the Messianic ideal as traced by the most modern Jewish critics claims it to have been a slow evolution in the minds of the prophets. In Genesis it appears as the prophecy of a time to come of universal happiness promised to Abraham, through whose seed all the peoples of the earth shall be blessed, because they had hearkened unto the voice of G.o.d. From a family ideal in Abraham it pa.s.sed on to being a tribal ideal with Jacob, and with the prophets it became a national ideal, an aspiration toward individual happiness and a n.o.ble national life. Not until the time of Isaiah is a special agent mentioned who is to be the instrument by means of which the blessing is to be fulfilled, and there we read this prophecy: "There shall sprout forth a shoot from the stem of Jesse, upon whom will rest the spirit of Yahveh, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and strength, of the knowledge and fear of G.o.d. He will not judge according to appearance, nor will he according to hearsay. He will govern in righteousness the poor, and judge with equity the humble of the earth. He will smite the mighty with the rod of his mouth, and the wicked with the breath of his lips."

The ideal expressed here of a great and wise national ruler who would bring about the realization of liberty, justice and peace to the Hebrew nation, and not only to them but to all mankind, becomes in the prophetic vision of Daniel a mystic being. "I saw in the visions of night, and behold, with the clouds of heaven came down as a likeness of the son of man. He stepped forward to the ancient of days. To him was given dominion, magnificence and rule. And all the peoples, nations and tongues did homage to him. His empire is an eternal empire and his realm shall never cease."

In "Saul" Browning makes David the type of the prophetic faculty in its complete development. His vision is of an ideal which was not fully unfolded until the advent of Jesus himself--the ideal not merely of the mythical political liberator but of the spiritual saviour, who through infinite love would bring redemption and immortality to mankind. David in the poem essays to cheer Saul with the thought of the greatness that will live after him in the memory of others, but his own pa.s.sionate desire to give something better than this to Saul awakens in him the a.s.surance that G.o.d must be as full of love and compa.s.sion as he is. Thus Browning explains the sudden awakening of David, not as a divine revelation from without, but as a natural growth of the human spirit G.o.dward. This new perception of values produces the ecstasy during which David sees his visions, the "witnesses, cohorts" about him, "angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the aware."

This whole conception was developed by Browning from the single phrase in I Samuel: "And David came to Saul, and stood before him: and he loved him greatly." In thus making David prophesy of an ideal which had not been evolved at his time, Browning indulges in what the biblical critic would call prophecy after the fact, and so throws himself in on the side of the mythical interpreters of the Bible.

He has taken a historical narrative, embellished it poetically as in the imaginary accounts of the songs sung by David to Saul, and given it a philosophical content belonging on its objective side to the dawn of Christianity in the coming of Jesus himself and on its subjective side to his (the poet's) own time--that is, the idea of internal instead of external revelation--one of the ideas about which has been waged the so-called conflict of Science and Religion as it was understood by some of the most prominent thinkers of the latter half of the century. In this, again, it will be seen that Browning was in the van of the thought of the century, and still more was he in the van in the psychological tinge which he gives to David's experience. Professor William James himself could not better have portrayed a case of religious ecstasy growing out of genuine exaltation of thought than the poet has in David's experience.

This poem undoubtedly sheds many rays of light upon the feelings, at the time, of its writer. While he was a profound believer in the spiritual nature and needs of man, he was evidently not opposed to the contemporary methods of biblical criticism as applied to the prophecies of the Old Testament, for has he not himself worked in accord with the light such criticism had thrown upon the origin of prophecy? Furthermore, the poem is not only an instance of his belief in the supremacy of the human spirit, but it distinctly repudiates the Comtian ideal of a religion of humanity, and of an immortality existing only in the memory of others. The Comte philosophy growing out of a material conception of the universe and a product of scientific thought has been one of the strong influences through the whole of the nineteenth century in sociology and religion.

While it has worked much good in developing a deeper interest in the social life of man, it has proved altogether unsatisfactory and barren as a religious ideal, though there are minds which seem to derive some sort of forlorn comfort from this religion of positivism--from such hopes as may be inspired by the wors.h.i.+p of Humanity "as a continuity and solidarity in time" without "any special existence, more largely composed of the dead than of the living," by the thought of an immortality in which we shall be reunited with the remembrance of our "grandsires" like Tyltyl and Mytyl in Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird."

Here, as always, the poet throws in his weight on the side of the paramount worth of the individual, and of a conception of life which demands that the individual shall have a future world in which to overcome the flaws and imperfections incident to earthly life.

Although, as I have tried to show, this poem undoubtedly bears witness to Browning's awareness to the thought currents of the day, it is couched in a form so dramatic, and in a language so poetic, that it seems like a spontaneous outburst of belief in which feeling alone had played a part.

Certainly, whatever thoughts upon the subject may have been stowed away in the subconscious regions of the poet's mind, they well up here in a fountain of pure inspiration, carrying the thought forward on the wings of the poet's own spirit.

Poems reflecting several phases of the turmoil of religious opinion rife in mid-century England are "Christmas Eve" and "Easter Day." Baffling they are, even misleading to any one who is desirous of finding out the exact att.i.tude of the poet's mind, for example, upon the rival doctrines of a Methodist parson and a German biblical critic.

The Methodist Chapel and the German University might be considered as representative of the extremes of thought in the more or less prescribed realm of theology, which largely through the influence of the filtering in of scientific and philosophic thought had divided itself into many sects.

Within the Church of England itself there were high church and low church, broad church and Lat.i.tudinarian, into whose different shades of opinion it is not needful to enter here. Outside of the Established Church were the numerous dissenters, including Congregationalists, Baptists, Quakers, Methodists, Swedenborgians, Unitarians, and numerous others.

There was one broad line of division between the Established Church and the dissenting bodies. In the first was inherent the ancient principle of authority, while the principle of self-government in matters of faith guided all the dissenters in their search for the light.

It is not surprising that with so many differing shades of opinion within the bosom of the Anglican Church it should, in the earlier half of the century, have lost its grip upon not only the people at large, but upon many of its higher intellects. The principle of authority seemed to be tottering to its fall. In this crisis the Roman Catholic Church exercised a peculiar fascination upon men of intellectual endowment who, fearing the direction in which their intellect might lead them, turned to that church where the principle of authority kept itself firmly rooted by summarily dismissing any one who might question it. It is of interest to remember that at the date when this poem was written the Tractarian Movement, in which was conspicuous the Oxford group of men, had succeeded in carrying over four hundred clergymen and laity into the Catholic Church.