116 STARVING THE SOUL in the strength afforded for future assaults which none can avoid. To put ourselves "out of the world" by running away from its dangers and difficulties may be one way of "saving our souls," but it must often be the means of so starving those souls that they become hardly worth the saving. A half-developed human being could perhaps be kept alive for a few months if wrapped in cottonwool in a suitable temperature in a hatching machine, with good and sufficient food and air, but the resulting product could scarcely be called man or woman. Few of us would care to have as companions those who had been so carefully kept from the struggles, sorrows, and temptations we have had to endure, that they know no more about the stern realities of life than Sakya Muni did when he left his father's palace and first heard of death, disease, and poverty. We are meant to mingle with and re-act on our fellow-men. There are within us a hundred faculties which can only manifest themselves in the great world which lies outside the hermit's cell. Browning does not, of course, mean to suggest that we are to throw ourselves into the way of temptation. "They who fear the adder's sting will not come near her hissing." We are not to invite danger; we should not keep barrels of gunpowder in the chimney corner, and we must avoid temptation as much FACING TEMPTATION 117 as possible, but when it thrusts itself upon us it is to be resisted. We have often seen a cat pursued by a dog; while the cat fled the dog ran after her, but when puss turned and faced him, arched her back, and prepared for combat, the dog trotted off and left her unmolested. CHAPTER VI "HIS OWN WORLD FOR EVERY MORTAL" BROWNING again and again insists that "the world is made for each of us."1 This is the correlative of the philosopher's axiom: "I think, therefore I am." The one great fact that we know is our own existence. All else may be illusion; this at least, in a world of dreams, is reality. "I think-I exist therefore"; and so the poet tells us— "Soul was born and life allotted; ay, the show of things unfurled For thy summing-up and judgment,-thine, no other mortal's world!" 2 Contemplate the cemeteries of the millions of the unknown dead; the crowds in the thoroughfares of a great city; the countless hosts who have lived and turned to impalpable dust, and grasp the thought that for every one of these the world was made-the panorama of life unrolled for each individual as La Saisiaz. 1 By the Fireside. THE LONELINESS OF OUR SOULS 119 if for him alone it was painted. All may be illusion there is at least one truth 'mid falsehood, "Myself the sole existence." Browning, in his arguments for the value of life, is always careful to explain— "Only for myself I speak, Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers."1 Life, time, all their chances and changes, are just "probation space-mine for me." His own experience is the only knowledge he possesses : outside that narrow circle "free surmise may sport and welcome." He cannot say whether pains and pleasures affect the rest of mankind as they affect himself. His neighbour is colourblind, and though to all appearance his eyes are just like Browning's, to whom grass is green, grass to the other man appears red. Who is right? Suppose they were the only tenants of the earth," with no third for referee," how should he tell what may be the colour of grass? So "To each mortal peradventure earth becomes a new machine, Pain and pleasure no more tally in our sense than red and green."2 This loneliness of man is due to the fact that he is a personal being; as man knows himself to exist because he thinks, so he knows that he possesses a rational free will, and is the subject 120 PERSONALITY SUPERNATURAL of the moral law, and can do right and wrong, and possess what we call character. Such a person does not act from necessity, or he would be a machine, not a man, and, as has been well said, "he cannot be a clock and a man too." A personal being is a supernatural being: his individuality proves this. His mind is not conditioned in space. I can send my thoughts at will wandering over the world; none can control me or bind me down to the ground on which I stand. I am conditioned in consciousness and time, and that consciousness is spontaneous and self-conditioned. Such a personal being is not mere matter: he is called Spirit. "In his personality every man is individual and alone; others can approach the barriers of this solitude and send in intelligence, influence, or sympathy; but no man can scale the barriers into the personality of another to think, or feel, or determine, or act for him; to take his responsibility, or to participate in his consciousness."1 Browning has been charged with rank Agnosticism for his determination to speak for no man's thought but his own. "Myself I solely recognize. They too may recognize themselves, not me, "2 1 Harris, The Philosophical Basis of Theism, p. 414. 2 Ferishtah's Fancies: "A Bean-Stripe." |