The sole spark from God’s life “at strife”
With death, so, sure of range above
The limits here.
but there is a recognition of the general principle that that work alone is worth beginning here and now, which “cannot grow complete,” and which “heaven (not earth) must finish.” Even where, as in Rabbi Ben Ezra, Browning lays strongest emphasis upon “the unity of life”; where age is regarded as the completion of the physical life begun in youth, the question is put, and left unanswered:
Thy body at its best,
How far can it project thy soul on its lone way?
These years of mortal life are to be devoted to the best use, so that it shall not be possible to say that “soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul.” Nevertheless, the final result is to be that man, in yielding his physical life, passes
A man, for aye removed
From the developed brute; a god though in the germ.
It cannot be denied that the Bishop is taking a distinctly lower position than that suggested by any of the theories thus advanced. Nevertheless, he holds himself, and probably with reason, to be upon higher ground than that occupied by his critic. Recognizing his incapacity for experiencing the enthusiasm of a Luther, he does not, therefore, feel constrained to adopt the coldly critical attitude of a Strauss. In his own words—
My business is not to remake myself,
But make the absolute best of what God made. (ll. 355-356.)
So Luigi, in calculating his fitness for the office of assassin assigned him, is found reckoning his very insignificance as of greater worth, under the given conditions, than his strength—extending his philosophy in a general application to human life.
Every one knows for what his excellence
Will serve, but no one ever will consider
For what his worst defect might serve: and yet
Have you not seen me range our coppice yonder
In search of a distorted ash? I find
The wry, spoilt branch, a natural, perfect bow.[58]
There is a possible vocation in life for a Blougram as for a Luther.