Preface
This Book Is Dedicated to My Dear Friends
Miss Harriet MacArthur
and
Miss Jane MacArthur.
The purpose of this book is to deal with Browning, not simply as a poet,
but rather as the exponent of a system of ideas on moral and religious
subjects, which may fairly be called a philosophy. I am conscious that
it is a wrong to a poet to neglect, or even to subordinate, the artistic
aspect of his work. At least, it would be a wrong, if our final judgment
on his poetry were to be determined on such a method. But there is a
place for everything; and, even in the case of a great poet, there is
sometimes an advantage in attempting to estimate the value of what he
has said, apart from the form in which he has said it. And of all modern
poets, Browning is the one who most obviously invites and justifies such
a method of treatment. For, in the first place, he is clearly one of
that class of poets who are also prophets. He was never merely "the idle
singer of an empty day," but one for whom poetic enthusiasm was
intimately bound up with religious faith, and who spoke "in numbers,"
not merely "because the numbers came," but because they were for him the
necessary vehicle of an inspiring thought. If it is the business of
philosophy to analyze and interpret all the great intellectual forces
that mould the thought of an age, it cannot neglect the works of one who
has exercised, and is exercising so powerful an influence on the moral
and religious life of the present generation.
In the second place, as will be seen in the sequel, Browning has himself
led the way towards such a philosophical interpretation of his work.
For, even in his earlier poems, he not seldom crossed the line that
divides the poet from the philosopher, and all but broke through the
strict limits of art in the effort to express–and we might even say to
preach–his own idealistic faith. In his later works he did this almost
without any disguise, raising philosophical problems, and discussing all
the pros and cons of their solution, with no little subtlety and
dialectical skill. In some of these poems we might even seem to be
receiving a philosophical lesson, in place of a poetic inspiration, if
it were not for those powerful imaginative utterances, those winged
words, which Browning has always in reserve, to close the ranks of his
argument. If the question is stated in a prosaic form, the final answer,
as in the ancient oracle, is in the poetic language of the gods.
From this point of view I have endeavoured to give a connected account
of Browning's ideas, especially of his ideas on religion and morality,
and to estimate their value. In order to do so, it was necessary to
discuss the philosophical validity of the principles on which his
doctrine is more or less consciously based. The more immediately
philosophical chapters are the second, seventh, and ninth; but they will
not be found unintelligible by those who have reflected on the
difficulties of the moral and religious life, even although they may be
unacquainted with the methods and language of the schools.
I have received much valuable help in preparing this work for the press
from my colleague, Professor G.B. Mathews, and still more from Professor
Edward Caird. I owe them both a deep debt of gratitude.
Henry Jones.
1891.
Chapter I. Introduction.
"Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und gr�n des Lebens goldner Baum." (Faust.)
There is a saying of Hegel's, frequently quoted, that "a great man
condemns the world to the task of explaining him." The condemnation is a
double one, and it generally falls heaviest on the great man himself,
who has to submit to explanation; and, probably, the last refinement of
this species of cruelty is to expound a poet. I therefore begin with an
apology in both senses of the term. I acknowledge that no commentator on
art has a right to be heard, if he is not aware of the subordinate and
temporary nature of his office. At the very best he is only a guide to
the beautiful object, and he must fall back in silence so soon as he has
led his company into its presence. He may perhaps suggest "the line of
vision," or fix the point of view, from which we can best hope to do
justice to the artist's work, by appropriating his intention and
comprehending his idea; but if he seeks to serve the ends of art, he
will not attempt to do anything more.
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In order to do even this successfully, it is essential that every
judgment passed should be exclusively ruled by the principles which
govern art. "Fine art is not real art till it is free"; that is, till
its value is recognized as lying wholly within itself. And it is not,
unfortunately, altogether unnecessary to insist that, so far from
enhancing the value of an artist's work, we only degrade it into mere
means, subordinate it to uses alien, and therefore antagonistic to its
perfection, if we try to show that it gives pleasure, or refinement, or
moral culture. There is no doubt that great poetry has all these uses,
but the reader can enjoy them only on condition of forgetting them; for
they are effects that follow the sense of its beauty. Art, morality,
religion, is each supreme in its own sphere; the beautiful is not more
beautiful because it is also moral, nor is a painting great because its
subject is religious. It is true that their spheres overlap, and art is
never at its best except when it is a beautiful representation of the
good; nevertheless the points of view of the artist and of the ethical
teacher are quite different, and consequently also the elements within
which they work and the truth they reveal.
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In attempting, therefore, to discover Robert Browning's philosophy of
life, I do not pretend that my treatment of him is adequate. Browning
is, first of all, a poet; it is only as a poet that he can be finally
judged; and the greatness of a poet is to be measured by the extent to
which his writings are a revelation of what is beautiful.
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I undertake a different and a humbler task, conscious of its
limitations, and aware that I can hardly avoid doing some violence to
the artist. What I shall seek in the poet's writings is not beauty, but
truth; and although truth is beautiful, and beauty is truth, still the
poetic and philosophic interpretation of life are not to be confused.
Philosophy must separate the matter from the form. Its synthesis comes
through analysis, and analysis is destructive of beauty, as it is of all
life. Art, therefore, resists the violence of the critical methods of
philosophy, and the feud between them, of which Plato speaks, will last
through all time. The beauty of form and the music of speech which
criticism destroys, and to which philosophy is, at the best,
indifferent, are essential to poetry. When we leave them out of account
we miss the ultimate secret of poetry, for they cling to the meaning and
penetrate it with their charm. Thought and its expression are
inseparable in poetry, as they never are in philosophy; hence, in the
former, the loss of the expression is the loss of truth. The pure idea
that dwells in a poem is suffused in the poetic utterance, as sunshine
breaks into beauty in the mist, as life beats and blushes in the flesh,
or as an impassioned thought breathes in a thinker's face.
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But, although art and philosophy are supreme, each in its own realm, and
neither can be subordinated to the uses of the other, they may help each
other. They are independent, but not rival powers of the world of mind.
Not only is the interchange of truth possible between them; but each may
show and give to the other all its treasures, and be none the poorer
itself. "It is in works of art that some nations have deposited the
profoundest intuitions and ideas of their hearts." Job and Isaiah,
�schylus and Sophocles, Shakespeare and Goethe, were first of all poets.
Mankind is indebted to them in the first place for revealing beauty; but
it also owes to them much insight into the facts and principles of the
moral world. It would be an unutterable loss to the ethical thinker and
the philosopher, if this region were closed against them, so that they
could no longer seek in the poets the inspiration and light that lead to
goodness and truth. In our own day, almost above all others, we need the
poets for these ethical and religious purposes. For the utterances of
the dogmatic teacher of religion have been divested of much of their
ancient authority; and the moral philosopher is often regarded either as
a vendor of commonplaces or as the votary of a discredited science,
whose primary principles are matter of doubt and debate. There are not a
few educated Englishmen who find in the poets, and in the poets alone,
the expression of their deepest convictions concerning the profoundest
interests of life. They read the poets for fresh inspiration, partly, no
doubt, because the passion and rapture of poetry lull criticism and
soothe the questioning spirit into acquiescence.
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But there are further reasons; for the poets of England are greater than
its moral philosophers; and it is of the nature of the poetic art that,
while eschewing system, it presents the strife between right and wrong
in concrete character, and therefore with a fulness and truth impossible
to the abstract thought of science.
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"A poet never dreams:
We prose folk do: we miss the proper duct
For thoughts on things unseen."[A]
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[Footnote A: Fifine at the Fair, lxxxviii.]
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It is true that philosophy endeavours to correct this fragmentariness by
starting from the unity of the whole. But it can never quite get rid of
an element of abstraction and reach down to the concrete individual.
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The making of character is so complex a process that the poetic
representation of it, with its subtle suggestiveness, is always more
complete and realistic than any possible philosophic analysis. Science
can deal only with aspects and abstractions, and its method becomes more
and more inadequate as its matter grows more concrete, unless it
proceeds from the unity in which all the aspects are held together. In
the case of life, and still more so in that of human conduct, the whole
must precede the part, and the moral science must, therefore, more than
any other, partake of the nature of poetry; for it must start from
living spirit, go from the heart outwards, in order to detect the
meaning of the actions of man.
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On this account, poetry is peculiarly helpful to the ethical
investigator, because it always treats the particular thing as a
microcosm. It is the great corrective of the onesidedness of science
with its harsh method of analysis and distinction. It is a witness to
the unity of man and the world. Every object which art touches into
beauty, becomes in the very act a whole. The thing that is beautiful is
always complete, the embodiment of something absolutely valuable, the
product and the source of love; and the beloved object is all the world
for the lover–beyond all praise, because it is above all comparison.
