Chapter 15

for they farther declare that though we aim at truth, our words cannot always be trusted to hit it. The best cannon ever rifled will sometimes deflect. Words do this also. We recognize the conviction of the inadequacy of language which was so forcibly expressed in the Pope's soliloquy in "The Ring and the Book," but in what seems a more defined form.

"BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S APOLOGY."

"Bishop Blougram's Apology" is a defence of religious conformity in those cases in which the doctrines to which we conform exceed our powers of belief, but are not throughout opposed to them; its point of view being that of a Roman Catholic churchman, who has secured his preferment by this kind of compromise. It is addressed to a semi-freethinker, who is supposed to have declared that a man who could thus identify himself with Romish superstitions must be despised as either knave or fool; and Bishop Blougram has undertaken to prove that he is not to be thus despised; and least of all by the person before him.

The argument is therefore special-pleading in the full sense of the word; and it is clear from a kind of editor's note with which the poem concludes, that we are meant to take it as such. But it is supposed to lie in the nature of the man who utters, as also in the circumstance in which it is uttered: for Bishop Blougram was suggested by Cardinal Wiseman;[57] and the literary hack, Gigadibs, is the kind of critic by whom a Cardinal Wiseman is most likely to be assailed: a man young, shallow, and untried; unused to any but paper warfare; blind to the deeper issues of both conformity and dissent, and as much alive to the distinction of dining in a bishop's palace as Bishop Blougram himself. The monologue is spoken on such an occasion, and includes everything which Mr. Gigadibs says, or might say, on his own side of the question. We must therefore treat it as a conversation.

Mr. Gigadibs' reasoning resolves itself into this: "_he_ does not believe in dogmas, and he says so. The Bishop cannot believe in them, but does not say so. He is true to his own convictions: the Bishop is not true to his." And the Bishop's defence is as follows.

"Mr. Gigadibs aims at living his own life: in other words, the ideal life. And this means that he is living no life at all. For a man, in order to live, must make the best of the world he is born in; he must adapt himself to its capabilities as a cabin-passenger to those of his cabin. He must not load himself with moral and intellectual fittings which the ship cannot carry, and which will therefore have to be thrown overboard. He (the Bishop) has chosen to live a real life; and has equipped himself accordingly."

"And, supposing he displays what Mr. Gigadibs considers the courage of his convictions, and flings his dogmas overboard,--what will he have gained? Simply that his uncertainty has changed sides. Believing, he had shocks of unbelief. Disbelieving, he will have shocks of belief (note a fine passage, vol. iv. p. 245): since no certainty in these matters is possible."

"But," says Gigadibs; "on that principle, your belief is worth no more than my unbelief."

"Yes," replies the Bishop, "it is worth much more in practice, if no more in theory. Life cannot be carried on by negations. Least of all will religious negations be tolerated by those we live with. And the more definite the religion affirmed, the better will the purposes of life be advanced by it."

"Not those of a noble life," argues Gigadibs, "nor in the judgment of the best men. You are debasing your standard by living for the many fools who cannot see through you, instead of the wiser few who can."

To which the Bishop replies that he lives according to the nature which God has given him, and which is not so ignoble after all; and that he succeeds with wise men as well as with fools, because they do not see through him either: because their judgment is kept in constant suspension as to whether he can believe what he professes or cannot; whether, in short, he is a knave or a fool. The proposition is vividly illustrated; and a few more obvious sophistries complete this portion of the argument.

Gigadibs still harps upon the fact that conformity cannot do the work of belief; and the Bishop now changes his ground. "He conforms to Christianity in the _wish_ that it may be true; and he thinks that this wish has all the value of belief, and brings him as near to it as the Creator intends. The human mind cannot bear the full light of truth; and it is only in the struggle with doubt and error that its spiritual powers can be developed." He concedes, in short, that he is much more in earnest than he appeared; and the concession is confirmed when he goes on to declare that we live by our instincts and not by our beliefs. This is proved--he alleges--by such a man as Gigadibs, who has no warrant in his belief for living a moral life, and does so because his instincts compel it. Just so the Bishop's instincts compel a believing life. They demand for him a living, self-proving God (here the doctrine of expediency re-asserts itself), and they tell him that the good things which his position confers are the gift of that God, and intended by Him for his enjoyment. "You," he adds, "who live for something which never is, but always is _to be_, are like a traveller, who casts off, in every country he passes through, the covering that will be too warm for him in the next; and is comfortable nowhen and nowhere."

One of his latest arguments is the best. Gigadibs has said: "If you must hold a dogmatic faith, at all events reform it. Prune its excrescences away."

"And where," he retorts, "am I to stop, when once that process has begun? I put my knife to the _liquefaction_,[58] and end, like Fichte, by slashing at God Himself. And meanwhile, we have to control a mass of ignorant persons whose obedience is linked to the farthest end of the chain (to the first superstition which I am called upon to lop off). We have here again a question of making the best of our cabin-fittings, the best of the opportunities which life places to our hand." In conclusion, he draws a contemptuous picture of the obscure and inconsequent existence which Gigadibs accepts, as the apostle without genius and without enthusiasm, of what is, if it be one at all, a _non-working_ truth.

Gigadibs is silenced, and, as it proves, impressed; but the Bishop is too clever to be very proud of his victory; for he knows it has been a personal, much more than a real one. His strength has lain chiefly in the assumption (which only the entire monologue can justify or even convey) that his opponent would change places with him if he could; and he knows that in arguing from this point of view he has been only half sincere. His reasonings have been good enough for the occasion. That is the best he can say for them.

MR. SLUDGE, THE MEDIUM.

"Sludge, the Medium," is intended to show that even so ignoble a person as a sham medium may have something to say in his own defence; and so far as argument goes, Sludge defends himself successfully on two separate lines. But in the one case he excuses his imposture: in the other, he in great measure disproves it. And this second part of the monologue has been construed by some readers into a genuine plea for the theory and practice of "spiritualism." Nothing, however, could be more opposed to the general tenour of Mr. Browning's work. He is simply showing us what such a man might say in his own behalf, supposing that the credulity of others had tempted him into a cheat, or that his own credulity had made him a self-deceiver; or, what was equally possible, in even the present case, that both processes had gone on at the same time. The amount of abstract truth which the monologue is intended to convey is in itself small, and more diluted with exaggeration and falsehood than in any other poem of this group.

Sludge has been found cheating in the house of his principal patron and dupe. The raps indicating the presence of a departed mother have been distinctly traced to the medium's toes. There is no lying himself out of it this time, so he offers to confess, on condition that the means of leaving the country are secured to him. There is a little bargaining on this subject, and he then begins:--

"He never meant to cheat. It is the gentlefolk who have teased him into doing it; they _would_ be taken in. If a poor boy like him tells a lie about money, or anything else in which they are 'up,' they are ready enough to thrash it out of him; but when it is something out of their way, like saying: he has had a vision--he has seen a ghost--it's 'Oh, how curious! Tell us all about it. Sit down, my boy. Don't be frightened, &c. &c.;' and so they lead him on. Presently he is obliged to invent. They have found out he is a medium. A medium he has got to be. 'Couldn't you hear this? Didn't you see that? Try again. Other mediums have done it, perhaps you may.' And, of course, the next night he sees and hears what is expected of him."

"He gets well into his work. He sees visions; peeps into the glass ball; makes spirits write and rap, and the rest of it. There is nothing to stop him. If he mixes up Bacon and Cromwell, it only proves that they are both trying to speak through him at once. If he makes Locke talk gibberish, and Beethoven play the Shakers' hymn, and a dozen other such things: 'Oh! the spirits are using him and suiting themselves out of his stock.' When he guesses right, it shows his truth. When he doesn't, it shows his honesty. A hit is good and a miss is better. When he boggles outright, 'he is confused with the phenomena.' And when this has gone on for weeks, and he has been clothed and cosseted, and his patrons have staked their penetration upon him; how is he to turn round and say he has been cheating all the time? 'I should like to see you do it!' It isn't that he wouldn't often have liked to be in the gutter again!"

This amusing account is diversified with expressions of Sludge's hearty contempt for all the men and women he has imposed upon: above all, for their absurd fancy that any scrap of unexpected information must have come to him in a supernatural way. "As if a man could hold his nose out of doors, and one smut out of the millions not stick to it; sit still for a whole day, and one atom of news not drift into his ear!" This idea recurs in various forms.

Well! he owns that he has cheated; and now that he has done so, he is not at all sure that it _was_ all cheating, that there wasn't something real in it after all. "We are all taught to believe that there is another world; and the Bible shows that men have had dealings with it. We are told this can't happen now, because we are under another law. But I don't believe we are under another law. Some men 'see' and others don't, that's the only difference. I see a sign and a message in everything that happens to me; but I take a small message where you want a big one. I am the servant who comes at a tap of his master's knuckle on the wall; you are the servant who only comes when the bell rings. Of course I mistake the sign sometimes. But what does that matter if I sometimes don't mistake? You say: one fact doesn't establish a system. You are like the Indian who picked up a scrap of gold, and never dug for more. You pick up one sparkling fact, and let it go again. I pick up one such, then another and another, and let go the dirt which makes up the rest of life."

Sludge combats the probable objection that the heavenly powers are too great, and he is too small for the kind of services he expects of them. Everything, he delares, serves a small purpose as well as a great one. Moreover, nothing nowadays _is_ small. It is at all events the lesser things and not the greater which are spoken of with awe. The simple creature which is only a sac is the nearest to the creative power; and since also man's filial relation to the Creator is that most insisted on, the more familiar and confiding attitude is the right one.

He lastly declares and illustrates his view that many a truth may stagnate for want of a lie to set it going, and thinks it likely enough that God allows him to imagine he is wielding a sham power, because he would die of fright if he knew it was a real one. He adds one or two somewhat irrelevant items to his defence; then finding his patron unconvinced, discharges on him a volley of abuse, and decides to try his luck elsewhere. "There must be plenty more fools in other parts of the world."

ARGUMENTATIVE POEMS CONTINUED.

(REFLECTIONS.)

To the second class of these poems, which are of the nature of reflections, belong--taking them in the order of their importance:--

"Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day." (1850.) "La Saisiaz." (1878.) "Cleon." ("Men and Women.") (1855.) "An Epistle containing the strange medical experience of Karshish, the Arab physician." ("Men and Women.") (1855.) "Caliban upon Setebos; or Natural Theology in the Island." (Dramatis Personæ.) (1864.)

CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY are two distinct poems, printed under this one head: and each describing a spiritual experience appropriate to the day, and lived through in a vision of Christ. This vision presents itself to the reader as a probable or obvious hallucination, or even a simple dream; but its utterances are more or less dogmatic; they contain much which is in harmony with Mr. Browning's known views; and it is difficult at first sight to regard them in either case as proceeding from an imaginary person who is only feeling his way to the truth. This, however, they prove themselves to be.

The first poem is a narrative. Its various scenes are enacted on a stormy Christmas Eve; and it opens with a humorous description of a little dissenting chapel, supposed to stand at the edge of a common; and of the various types of squalid but self-satisfied humanity which find their spiritual pasture within its walls. The narrator has just "burst out" of it. He never meant to go in. But the rain had forced him to take shelter in its porch, as evening service was about to begin: and the defiant looks of the elect as they pushed past him one by one, had impelled him to assert his rights as a Christian, and push in too. The stupid ranting irreverence of the pastor, and the snuffling satisfaction of the flock, were soon, however, too much for him, and in a very short time he was again--where we find him--out in the fresh night air.

Free from the constraint of the chapel, he takes a more tolerant view of what he has seen and heard there. He gives the preacher credit for having said a great deal that was true, and in the manner most convincing to the already convinced who were assembled to hear him. For his own part, he declares, Nature is his church, as she has been his teacher; and he surrenders himself with a joyful sense of relief to the religious influences of the solitude and the night: his heart glowing with the consciousness of the unseen Love which everywhere appeals to him in the visible power of the Creator. Suddenly a mighty spectacle unfolds itself. The rain and wind have ceased. The barricade of cloud which veiled the moon's passage up the western sky has sunk riven at her feet. She herself shines forth in unbroken radiance, and a double lunar rainbow, in all its spectral grandeur, spans the vault of heaven. There is a sense as of a heavenly presence about to emerge upon the arc. Then the rapture overflows the spectator's brain, and the Master, arrayed in a serpentining garment, appears in the path before him.

But the Face is averted. "Has he despised the friends of Christ? and is this his punishment?" He prostrates himself before Him; grasps the hem of the garment; entreats forgiveness for what was only due to the reverence of his love, to his desire that his Lord should be worshipped in all spiritual beauty and truth.

The Face turns towards him in a flood of light. The vesture encloses him in its folds, and he is borne onwards till he finds himself at Rome, and in front of St. Peter's Church. He sees the interior without entering. It swarms with worshippers, packed into it as in the hollow of a hive. All there is breathless expectation, ecstatic awe; for the mystery of the mass is in process of consummation, and in another moment the tinkling of the silver bell will announce to the prostrate crowd the actual presence of their Lord; will open to them the vision of the coming heavenly day. Here, too, is faith, though obscured in a different manner. Here, too, is _love_: the love which in bygone days hurled intellect from its throne, and trampled on the glories of ancient art--which instructed its votaries to feel blindly for its new and all-sufficient life, as does the babe for its mother's breast--which consecrates even now the deepest workings of the heart and mind to the service of God. And Christ enters the Basilica, into which, after a momentary doubt, he himself follows Him.

They float onwards again, and again he is left alone but for the hem of the garment; for Christ has entered the lecture-hall of a rationalistic German professor, and into this He will not bid His disciple follow Him; but the interior of the building is open, as before, to the disciple's mental sight. The lecturer is refreshing his hearers' convictions by an inquiry into the origin of the Christian Myth and the foundation of fact on which it rests; and he arrives at the conclusion that Christ was a man, but whose work proved Him all but Divine; His Gospel quite other than those who heard it believed, but in value nearly the same.

The spectator begins musing on the anomalies of this view. "Christ, only a man, is to be reverenced as something more. On what ground?--The ground of intellect?--Yet he teaches us only what a hundred others have taught, without claiming to be worshipped on account of it--The ground of goodness?--But goodness is due from each man to his fellows; it is no title to sovereignty over them." And he thus sums up his own conviction. "He may be called a _saint_ who best teaches us to keep our lives pure; he a _poet_ whose insight dims that of his fellow-men. He is no less than this, though guided by an instinct no higher than that of the bat; no more, though inspired by God. All gifts are from God, and no multiplying of gifts can convert the creature into the Creator. Between Him who created goodness, and made it binding on the conscience of man: and him who reduces it to a system, of which the merits may be judged by man: lies the interval which separates Nature, who decrees the circulation of the blood, from the observer Harvey, who discovered it. One man is Christ, another Pilate; beyond their dust is the Divinity of God."

"And the 'God-function' with regard to virtue was first to impress its truths on every human breast; and secondly, to give a motive for carrying them out; and this motive could be given only by one, who, being life's Lord, died for the sake of men. Whoever conceives this love, and takes this proof to his heart, has found a new motive, and has also gained a truth."

But Christ lingers within the hall "Is there something after all in that lecture which finds an echo in the Christian soul? Yes, even there. There is the ghost of love, if nothing more, in the utterance of that virgin-minded man, with the 'wan, pure look,' and the frail life burning itself away in the striving after truth. For his critical tests have reduced the pearl of price to ashes, and yet left it, in his judgment, a pearl; and he bids his followers gather up their faith as an almost perfect whole; go home and venerate the myth on which he has experimented, adore the man whom he has proved to be one. And if his learning itself be loveless, it may claim our respect when a tricksy demon has let it loose on the Epistles of St. Paul, as it claims our gratitude when expended on secular things. It is at least better than the ignorance which hates the word of God, if it cannot wholly accept it; while these, his disciples, who renounce the earth, and chain up the natural man on a warrant no more divine than this, are by so much better than he who at this moment judges them. Let them carry the doctrine by which they think themselves carried, as does the child his toy-horse. He will not deride nor disturb them."

The subject of these experiences has reached a state of restful indifference. "He will adhere to his own belief, and be tolerant towards his neighbour's: since the two only differ as do two different refractions of a single ray of light. He will study, instead of criticizing, the different creeds which are fused into one before the universal Father's throne."

But this is not the lesson he has been intended to learn. The storm, breaking out afresh, catches up and dashes him to the ground, while the vesture, which he had let slip during his last musings, recedes swiftly from his sight. Then he knows that there is one "way," and he knows also that he may find it; and in this new conviction he regains his hold of the garment, and at one bound has reentered the little chapel, which he seems never indeed to have left. The sermon is ending, and he has heard it all. He still appreciates its faults of matter and manner; but he no longer rejects the draught of living water, because it comes to him with some taste of earth. What the draught can do is evidenced by those wrecks of humanity which are finding renewal there. There his choice shall rest; for, nowhere else, so he seems to conclude, is the message of Love so simply and so directly conveyed.

A great part of the narrative is written in a humorous tone, which shows itself, not only in thought and word, but in a jolting measure, and even grotesque rhymes. The speaker desires it to be understood that he is not the less in earnest for this apparent "levity;" and the levity is quite consistent with religious seriousness in such a person as the poem depicts. But, as I have shown, it is alone enough to prove that the author is not depicting himself. The poem reflects him more or less truly in the doctrine of Divine Love, the belief in personal guidance, and the half-contemptuous admiration with which the speaker regards those who will mortify the flesh in obedience to a Christ-_man_. But it belies the evidence of his whole work when, as in Section XVII., it represents moral truth as either innate to the human spirit, or directly revealed to it; and we shall presently notice a still greater discrepancy which it shares with its companion poem.[59]

"_Easter-Day_"[60] deals with the deeper issues of scepticism and faith; and opens with a dialogue in which the two opposite positions are maintained. Both speakers start from the belief in God, and the understanding that Christianity is unproved; but the one accepts it in faith: the other regards it as, for the time being, negatived.