"Friend," quoth Ferishtah, "all I seem to know
Is—I know nothing save that love I can
Boundlessly, endlessly."
If there be knowledge it shall vanish away; but charity never faileth. As for knowledge, the prize is in the process; as gain we must mistrust it, not as a road to gain:—
Knowledge means
Ever-renewed assurance by defeat
That victory is somehow still to reach,
But love is victory, the prize itself.
Grasping at the sun, a child captures an orange: what if he were to scorn his capture and refuse to suck its juice? The curse of life is this—that every supposed accession to knowledge, every novel theory, is accepted as a complete solution of the whole problem, while every pleasure is despised as transitory or insubstantial. In truth the drop of water found in the desert sand is infinitely precious; the mirage is only a mirage. Browning, who in this volume puts forth his own doctrine of theism, his justification of prayer, his belief in a superintending providence, his explanation of the presence of evil in the world, is, of course, no Pyrrhonist. He profoundly distrusts the capacity of the intellect, acting as a pure organ of speculation, to unriddle the mysteries of existence; he maintains, on the other hand, that knowledge sufficient for the conduct of our lives is involved in the simple experiences of good and evil, of joy and sorrow. In reality Browning's attitude towards truth approaches more nearly what has now begun to style itself "Pragmatism" than it approaches Pyrrhonism; but philosophers whose joy is to beat the air may find that it is condemnatory of their methods.
In his distrust of metaphysical speculation and in regarding the affections as superior to the intellect, Browning as a teacher has something in common with Comte; but there is perhaps no creed so alien to his nature as the creed of Positivism. The last of Ferishtah's discourses is concerned with the proportion which happiness bears to pain in the average life of man, or rather—for Browning is nothing if he is not individualistic—in the life of each man as an individual. The conclusion arrived at is that no "bean-stripe"—each bean, white or black, standing for a day—is wholly black, and that the more extended is our field of vision the more is the general aspect of the "bean-stripe" of a colour intermediate between the extremes of darkness and of light. Before the poem closes, Browning turns aside to consider the Positivist position. Why give our thanks and praise for all the good things of life to God, whose existence is an inference of the heart derived from its own need of rendering gratitude to some Being like ourselves? Are not these good things the gifts of the race, of Humanity, and its worthies who have preceded us and who at the present moment constitute our environment of loving help? Ferishtah's reply, which is far from conclusive, must be regarded as no discussion of the subject but the utterance of an isolated thought. Praise rendered to Humanity and the heroes of the race simply reverts to the giver of the praise; his own perceptions of what is praiseworthy alone render praise possible; he must first of all thank and praise the giver of such perceptions—God. It is strange that Browning should fail to recognise the fact that the Positivist would immediately trace the power of moral perception to the energies of Humanity in its upward progress from primitive savagery to our present state of imperfect development.
It has been necessary to transcribe in a reduced form the teaching of Ferishtah, for this is the clearest record left by Browning of his own beliefs on the most important of all subjects, this is an essential part of his criticism of life, and at the same time it is little less than a passage of autobiography. The poems are admirable in their vigour, their humour, their seriousness, their felicity of imagery. Yet the wisdom of Ferishtah's Fancies is an old man's wisdom; we perceive in it the inner life, as Baxter puts it, in speaking of changes wrought by his elder years, quitting the leaves and branches and drawing down to the root. But when in prologue or epilogue to this volume or that Browning touches upon the great happiness, the great sorrow of his own life, he is always young. Here the lyrical epilogue is inspired by a noble enthusiasm, and closes with a surprise of beauty. What if all his happy faith in the purpose of life, and the Divine presence through all its course, were but a reflex from the private and personal love that had once been his and was still above and around him? Such a doubt contained its own refutation:
Only, at heart's utmost joy and triumph, terror
Sudden turns the blood to ice: a chill wind disencharms
All the late enchantment! What if all be error—
If the halo irised round my head were, Love, thine arms?
All the more, if this were so, must the speaker's heart turn Godwards in gratitude. The whole design of the volume with its theological parables and its beautiful lyrics of human love implies that there is a correspondency between the truths of religion and the truths of the passion of love between man and woman.