{This is the doctrine he was wont to teach,
How divers persons witness in each man,
Three souls which make up one soul: first, to wit,
A soul of each and all the bodily parts, {85}
Seated therein, which works, and is what Does,
And has the use of earth, and ends the man
Downward; but, tending upward for advice,
Grows into, and again is grown into
By the next soul, which, seated in the brain, {90}
Useth the first with its collected use,
And feeleth, thinketh, willeth,—is what Knows:
Which, duly tending upward in its turn,
Grows into, and again is grown into
By the last soul, that uses both the first, {95}
Subsisting whether they assist or no,
And, constituting man’s self, is what Is—
And leans upon the former, makes it play,
As that played off the first: and, tending up,
Holds, is upheld by, God, and ends the man {100}
Upward in that dread point of intercourse,
Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him.
What Does, what Knows, what Is; three souls, one man.
I give the glossa of Theotypas.}
— 82-104. The supposed narrator, Pamphylax, gives in these bracketed verses, on the authority of an imagined Theotypas, a doctrine John was wont to teach, of the trinal unity of man— the third “person” of which unity, “what Is”, being man’s essential, absolute nature. The dying John is represented as having won his way to the Kingdom of the “what Is”, the Kingdom of eternal truth within himself. In Luke 17:20-21, we read: “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the Kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.” In harmony with which, Paracelsus is made to say, in Browning’s poem, “Truth is within ourselves; . . . there is an inmost centre in us all, where truth abides in fulness”; etc. See pp. 24 and 25 of this volume. {In this etext, see Chapter I, ‘The Spiritual Ebb and Flow, etc.’, of the Introduction. Excerpt is shortly before the poem ‘Popularity’.} “Life, you’ve granted me, develops from within. But INNERMOST OF THE INMOST, MOST INTERIOR OF THE INTERNE, GOD CLAIMS HIS OWN, DIVINE HUMANITY RENEWING NATURE” (Mrs. Browning’s ‘Aurora Leigh’). Mrs. M. G. Glazebrook, in her paper on ‘A Death in the Desert’, read at the 48th meeting of the Browning Society, Feb. 25th, 1887, paraphrases these lines: “The first and lowest {soul} is that which has to do with earth and corporeal things, the animal soul, which receives primary sensations and is the immediate cause of action —‘what Does’. The second is the intellect, and has its seat in the brain: it is superior to the first, but dependent on it, since it receives as material the actual experience which the animal soul supplies; it is the feeling, thinking, willing soul —‘what Knows’. The third, and highest, is the spirit of man, the very principle of life, the divine element in man linking him to God, which is self-subsistent and therefore independent of sensation and knowledge, but nevertheless makes use of them, and gives them existence and energy—‘what Is’.” —
And then, “A stick, once fire from end to end; {105}
Now, ashes save the tip that holds a spark!
Yet, blow the spark, it runs back, spreads itself
A little where the fire was: thus I urge
The soul that served me, till it task once more
What ashes of my brain have kept their shape, {110}
And these make effort on the last o’ the flesh,
Trying to taste again the truth of things”—
(He smiled)—“their very superficial truth;
As that ye are my sons, that it is long
Since James and Peter had release by death, {115}
And I am only he, your brother John,
Who saw and heard, and could remember all.
Remember all! It is not much to say.
What if the truth broke on me from above
As once and oft-times? Such might hap again: {120}
Doubtlessly He might stand in presence here,
With head wool-white, eyes, flame, and feet like brass,
The sword and the seven stars, as I have seen—
I who now shudder only and surmise
‘How did your brother bear that sight and live?’ {125}
— 113. superficial truth: phenomenal, relative truth; that which is arrived at through the senses, and belongs to the domain of the “what Knows”. Essential, absolute truth can be known only through a response thereto of the essential, the absolute, the “what Is”, in man’s nature. John has attained to a measure of absolute truth, and smiles on reverting to the very superficial truth of things.
121-123. See The Revelation of St. John, chap. 1.
125. your brother: he means himself, of course. —
“If I live yet, it is for good, more love
Through me to men: be naught but ashes here
That keep awhile my semblance, who was John,—
Still, when they scatter, there is left on earth
No one alive who knew (consider this!) {130}
—Saw with his eyes and handled with his hands
That which was from the first, the Word of Life.
How will it be when none more saith ‘I saw’?
“Such ever was love’s way: to rise, it stoops.
Since I, whom Christ’s mouth taught, was bidden teach, {135}
I went, for many years, about the world,
Saying, ‘It was so; so I heard and saw’,
Speaking as the case asked: and men believed.
Afterward came the message to myself
In Patmos isle; I was not bidden teach. {140}
But simply listen, take a book and write,
Nor set down other than the given word.
With nothing left to my arbitrament
To choose or change: I wrote, and men believed.
Then, for my time grew brief, no message more, {145}
No call to write again, I found a way,
And, reasoning from my knowledge, merely taught
Men should, for love’s sake, in love’s strength, believe;
Or I would pen a letter to a friend,
And urge the same as friend, nor less nor more: {150}
Friends said I reasoned rightly, and believed.
But at the last, why, I seemed left alive
Like a sea-jelly weak on Patmos strand,
To tell dry sea-beach gazers how I fared
When there was mid-sea, and the mighty things; {155}
Left to repeat, ‘I saw, I heard, I knew’,
And go all over the old ground again,
With Antichrist already in the world,
And many Antichrists, who answered prompt
‘Am I not Jasper as thyself art John? {160}
Nay, young, whereas through age thou mayest forget:
Wherefore, explain, or how shall we believe?’
I never thought to call down fire on such,
Or, as in wonderful and early days,
Pick up the scorpion, tread the serpent dumb; {165}
But patient stated much of the Lord’s life
Forgotten or misdelivered, and let it work:
Since much that at the first, in deed and word,
Lay simply and sufficiently exposed,
Had grown (or else my soul was grown to match, {170}
Fed through such years, familiar with such light,
Guarded and guided still to see and speak)
Of new significance and fresh result;
What first were guessed as points, I now knew stars,
And named them in the Gospel I have writ. {175}
For men said, ‘It is getting long ago:
Where is the promise of His coming?’—asked
These young ones in their strength, as loth to wait,
Of me who, when their sires were born, was old.
I, for I loved them, answered, joyfully, {180}
Since I was there, and helpful in my age;
And, in the main, I think such men believed.
Finally, thus endeavoring, I fell sick.
Ye brought me here, and I supposed the end,
And went to sleep with one thought that, at least, {185}
Though the whole earth should lie in wickedness,
We had the truth, might leave the rest to God.
Yet now I wake in such decrepitude
As I had slidden down and fallen afar,
Past even the presence of my former self, {190}
Grasping the while for stay at facts which snap,
Till I am found away from my own world,
Feeling for foot-hold through a blank profound,
Along with unborn people in strange lands,
Who say—I hear said or conceive they say— {195}
‘Was John at all, and did he say he saw?
Assure us, ere we ask what he might see!’
— 156. I saw, I heard, I knew: expressions which occur throughout John’s Revelation.
188-197. The poet provides, in these lines, for the prophetic character of John’s discourse, its solution of the difficulties destined to beset Christianity in the future, and especially of those which have been raised in our own times. The historical bulwarks which the Strausses and the Renans have endeavored to destroy, Christianity, in its essential, absolute character, its adaptiveness to spiritual vitality, and the wants of the soul, can do without. Indeed, there will be much gained when the historical character of Christianity is generally disregarded. Its impregnable fortress, namely, the Personality, Jesus Christ, will remain, and mankind will forever seek and find refuge in it. Arthur Symons, in his ‘Introduction to the Study of Browning’, remarks: . . ."it is as a piece of ratiocination—suffused, indeed, with imagination— that the poem seems to have its raison d’etre. The bearing of this argument on contemporary theories, may to some appear a merit, to others a blemish. To make the dying John refute Strauss or Renan, handling their propositions with admirable dialectical skill, is certainly, on the face of it, somewhat hazardous. But I can see no real incongruity in imputing to the seer of Patmos a prophetic insight into the future—no real inconsequence in imagining the opponent of Cerinthus spending his last breath in the defence of Christian truth against a foreseen scepticism.” —
“And how shall I assure them? Can they share
—They, who have flesh, a veil of youth and strength
About each spirit, that needs must bide its time, {200}
Living and learning still as years assist
Which wear the thickness thin, and let man see—
With me who hardly am withheld at all,
But shudderingly, scarce a shred between,
Lie bare to the universal prick of light? {205}
Is it for nothing we grow old and weak,
We whom God loves? When pain ends, gain ends too.
To me, that story—ay, that Life and Death
Of which I wrote ‘it was’—to me, it is;
—Is, here and now: I apprehend naught else. {210}
Is not God now i’ the world His power first made?
Is not His love at issue still with sin,
Visibly when a wrong is done on earth?
Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around?
Yea, and the Resurrection and Uprise {215}
To the right hand of the throne—what is it beside,
When such truth, breaking bounds, o’erfloods my soul,
And, as I saw the sin and death, even so
See I the need yet transiency of both,
The good and glory consummated thence? {220}
I saw the Power; I see the Love, once weak,
Resume the Power: and in this word ‘I see’,
Lo, there is recognized the Spirit of both
That moving o’er the spirit of man, unblinds
His eye and bids him look. These are, I see; {225}
But ye, the children, His beloved ones too,
Ye need,—as I should use an optic glass
I wondered at erewhile, somewhere i’ the world,
It had been given a crafty smith to make;
A tube, he turned on objects brought too close, {230}
Lying confusedly insubordinate
For the unassisted eye to master once:
Look through his tube, at distance now they lay,
Become succinct, distinct, so small, so clear!
Just thus, ye needs must apprehend what truth {235}
I see, reduced to plain historic fact,
Diminished into clearness, proved a point
And far away: ye would withdraw your sense
From out eternity, strain it upon time,
Then stand before that fact, that Life and Death, {240}
Stay there at gaze, till it dispart, dispread,
As though a star should open out, all sides,
Grow the world on you, as it is my world.