146 TRANSFORMED IN GOD but also in habit, so that not only voluntary acts of imperfection must be got rid of, but the habit thereof as well. And because no creature can, by any actions or powers of its own, attain to that which is God, the soul must be therefore detached from all created things, from all actions and powers of its own; that is, from its own understanding, liking, and feeling, so that passing by everything which is unlike to, and not in conformity with, God, it may attain to the receiving of His likeness, and resting upon nothing which is not His will, it may be thus transformed in Him. Though it be true, as I have said, that God is always in every soul, bestowing upon it, and preserving to it by His presence, its natural being, yet for all this He does not always communicate the supernatural life. For this is given only by love and grace, to which all souls do not attain; and those who do, do not in the same degree, for some rise to higher degrees of love than others. That soul, therefore, has greater communion with God which is most advanced in love, that is, whose will is most conformable to the will of God. And that soul which has reached perfect conformity and resemblance is perfectly united with and supernaturally transformed in God."1 1 Ascent of Mount Carmel, Bk. II., chap. v. CHAPTER VIII TRUTH MAN is impelled in his search for Truth by a divine necessity; he can no more cease from the pursuit of Truth than he can cease to respire while he lives. This is one of the proofs of the existence of God, for "Truth is God."1 "There's nothing in nor out o' the world Man, however, is unable to digest pure truth; he may get to bear strong meat some day, but here he must feed on truth with falsehood,3 must learn his Proper play with truth in part, before So all the truth we have to do with must perforce be casual truth; mean sparks elicited and dispread at intervals so rarely. The world 1 Parleyings with Fust and his Friends. 4 Parleyings with Bernard de Mandeville. 148 LIES HAVE A GERM OF TRUTH has never been without truth; some few sparks struck out by chance blows, yet never enough of it to let its light stream skyward.1 So mankind has groped in the darkness of savage rites, of cruel blood-customs, of gloomy superstitions and distorted views of God; yet in all the darkness, gloom, and cruelty ever and again some bright light has flickered for an instant, that instant being as long as man could bear its beautiful gleam. And all the lies that men have believed, all the falsehoods they have fostered Those lies were necessary, says Browning, for "every lie is quick with a germ of truth." 2 and treasured! If we could but appreciate the truths we possess aright! "One truth leads right to the world's end." "3 So we must " count it crime to let a Truth slip." Though "fire is in the flint" of myriad stones, the fire is seldom liberated. In the inmost centre of us all truth, as we have seen, exists in fullness. Yet wall upon wall of gross flesh hems it in, and knowledge, says Browning, is rather the letting out the light than letting light enter; 5 how seldom the escape is made! In the lowest, truth, in greater or less degree, is hidden away; each one of us carries the divine spark in his own bosom. "It is a 1 Sordello. 2 Mr. Sludge: The Medium. 3 Ibid. 4 Fra Lippo Lippi. 5 Paracelsus. MAN IS FORCED TO LOVE TRUTH 149 great age this of ours," says Mr. Ruskin, "for traction and extraction, if it only knew what to extract from itself, or where to drag itself to." There is light enough, if we did not do our best to obscure it. "Truth's golden o'er us although we refuse it.” 1 1 In every soul, weak, deformed as it may be, Browning sees such love of truth, such appreciation of the Divine standard of right, that it is compelled perforce to go on "striving to combine with what shall right the wrong," bring to the standard what is under or above, "supplement unloveliness by love." And so he calls Art "The love of loving, rage Of knowing, seeing, feeling the absolute truth of things For truth's sake, whole and sole.” 2 The love of truth impressed in the artist's breast compels him to reconstruct out of the poor fragment before him the ultimate entire, so he contributes to defect, and toils till he has "restored the prime, the individual type." In painting, then, we have "truth made visible in man." "Man, poor elf, Striving to match the finger-mark of Him, The immeasurably matchless." 4 1 Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha. 2 Fifine at the Fair. 3 Pictor Ignotus. 4 Parleyings with Francis Furini. 150 ART AND TRUTH That he does strive proves his relationship to the Eternal truth he desires in his feeble way to express. So "in Art the soul uplifts man's best of thanks," for he at least strives to "limn truth not falsehood." He states "What truth is from his point of view, Mere pin-point though it be."1 The soul gets to know itself through the body, "the stuff decreed thereto "; this fleshy frame of ours is empowered by the soul to reveal its moods of love and hate, the painter's work is to seize and give "permanence to truth, else fugitive." The lesson is the same in Fra Lippo Lippi. The artist lends out his mind for us to see with. God impresses the truth in the artist's soul, "Art was given for that," and God uses him to express the truth to us. The world "means intensely and means good": the artist's meat and drink is to find what it does mean. In Andrea del Sarto the tragedy is that the artist's ideal cannot be realized by him, "faultless painter" though he be. The truth was in his soul right enough, but he has become the slave of lower motives, the noble ideal has partly faded, he cannot seize it, and is condemned to work on a lower level than was his by right-God's beaconlight dimmed by earthly smoke. Truth would 1 Parleyings with Francis Furini. |