I believe that it is possible, by the help of the intuitions of Browning's highest artistic period, to bring together again the elements of his broken faith, and to find in them suggestions of a truer philosophy of life than anything which the poet himself achieved. Perhaps, indeed, it is not easy, nor altogether fair, to press the passionate utterances of his religious rapture into the service of metaphysics, and to treat the unmeasured language of emotion as the expression of a definite doctrine. Nevertheless, rather than set forth a new defence of the faith, which his agnosticism left exposed to the assaults of doubt and denial, it is better to make Browning correct his own errors, and to appeal from the metaphysician to the poet, from the sobriety of the logical understanding to the inspiration of poetry.
I have already indicated what seems to me to be the defective element in the poet's philosophy of life. His theory of knowledge is in need of revision; and what he asserts of human love, should be applied point by point to human reason. As man is ideally united with the absolute on the side of moral emotion (if the phrase may be pardoned), so he is ideally united with the absolute on the side of the intellect. As there is no difference of nature between God's goodness and man's goodness, so there is no difference of nature between God's truth and man's truth. There are not two kinds of righteousness or mercy; there are not two kinds of truth. Human nature is not "cut in two with a hatchet," as the poet implies that it is. There is in man a lower and a higher element, ever at war with each other; still he is not a mixture, or agglomerate, of the finite and the infinite. A love perfect in nature cannot be linked to an intelligence imperfect in nature; if it were, the love would be either a blind impulse or an erring one. Both morality and religion demand the presence in man of a perfect ideal, which is at war with his imperfections; but an ideal is possible, only to a being endowed with a capacity for knowing the truth. In degrading human knowledge, the poet is disloyal to the fundamental principle of the Christian faith which he professed—that God can and does manifest himself in man.
On the other hand, we are not to take the unity of man with God, of man's moral ideal with the All-perfect, as implying, on the moral side, an absolute identification of the finite with the infinite; nor can we do so on the side of knowledge. Man's moral life and rational activity in knowledge are the process of the highest. But man is neither first, nor last; he is not the original author of his love, any more than of his reason; he is not the divine principle of the whole to which he belongs, although he is potentially in harmony with it. Both sides of his being are equally touched with imperfection—his love, no less than his reason. Perfect love would imply perfect wisdom, as perfect wisdom, perfect love. But absolute terms are not applicable to man, who is ever on the way to goodness and truth, progressively manifesting the power of the ideal that dwells in him, and whose very life is conflict and acquirement.
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for? All is silver-grey
Placid and perfect with my art: the worse."A
A: Andrea del Sarto.
Hardly any conception is more prominent in Browning's writings than this, of endless progress towards an infinite ideal; although he occasionally manifests a desire to have done with effort.
"When a soul has seen
By the means of Evil that Good is best,