POETRY AND TRUTH 151 have lifted him "above the lowness of a lie," but Andrea was not true to himself. Truth comes to us, again, from the poets "The best Impart the gift of seeing to the rest.” 1 They see the truth for themselves, and for us they are "the Makers-See." "All direct truth comes to us from the poet; whether he be of the smaller kind who only see, or the greater, who can tell what they have seen, or the greatest, who can make others see it." "All poets, God ever meant tell us what common folk feel 3. "Poets know the drag-net's trick." 4 From the depths of our souls they can draw mysterious, long-hidden spirit treasures we never knew before were sunk there. "What's poetry except a power that makes, And speaking to one sense, inspires the rest, Musicians, too, have this power over truths— "Music! Dredging deeper yet, Drag into day,-by sound, thy master-net, 152 MUSIC AND TRUTH Browning seems to say that proud as are the artist and the poet of their possession of and power of expressing so much truth, the musician is still closer to the Divine "God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear; The rest may reason and welcome; 'tis we musicians know." 1 The soul has moods and motives which are too poetical for poetry, and music alone has the power to breathe them. The suggestions of the Divine are not always to be narrowed into words or expressed in a syllogism, these mysterious truths are confided to music. When some one asked Mendelssohn what he meant by his Lieder ohne Worte, the musician replied that "they meant what they said." This is why we love "Music (which is earnest of a heaven, Seeing we know emotions strange by it, So yearned Aprile the poet, who would show his love for man through art, poetry, and music— "I would supply all chasms with music, breathing To be defined save in strange melodies." 3 Sirs, there is nothing new possible to be revealed to us in the moral world; we know all we shall ever know; and it is for simply reminding us, by their various respective expedients, how 3 Paracelsus. 1 Abt Vogler. 2 Pauline. NO NEW TRUTHS 153 we do know this and the other matter, that men get called prophets, poets, and the like. A philosopher's life is spent in discovering that of the halfdozen truths he knew when a child, such an one is a lie, as the world states it in set terms; and then, after a weary lapse of years, and plenty of hard thinking, it becomes a truth again after all, as he happens to newly consider it and view it in a different relation with the others; and so he re-states it, to the confusion of somebody else, in good time. As for adding to the stock of truths, -impossible! Thus, you see, the expression of them is the grand business-you have got a truth in your head about the right way of governing people, and you took a mode of expressing it which now you confess to be imperfect. But what then? There is truth in falsehood, falsehood in truth. No man ever told one great truth, that I know, without the help of a good dozen of lies at least, generally unconscious ones. And as when a child comes in breathlessly and relates a strange story, you try to conjecture from the very falsities in it what the reality was, -do not conclude that he saw nothing in the sky because he assuredly did not see a flying horse there as he says,—so, through the contradictory expression, do you see, men should look painfully for, and trust to arrive eventually at, what you call the true principle at bottom." 1 1 A Soul's Tragedy, Act II. CHAPTER IX FAITH AND DOUBT "How very hard it is to be a Christian!"1 says Browning, and by this he means not the mere living up to the Christian ideal, that we all acknowledge to be difficult, but hard to realize what such a faith implies. Belief is difficult enough, but once convince a man that the least command of God is God's indeed, none but an idiot would dispute it. Martyrdom itself would be easy, could we be assured that God would be served that way. It is the uncertainty makes all the difficulty. We are so apt to argue that perhaps there is no God who is interested in our affairs, no laws which He cares whether we keep or break. A Simeon Stylites on his pillar, a St. Anthony in the desert, or a Xavier perishing in the Indies, may please Him no more than the lotus-eater in his luxury. It may be as pleasing to the Supreme Being, if He have any interest in our affairs at all, that we should eat, drink, and be merry as if we sacrificed our 1 Easter Day. "A SCIENTIFIC FAITH'S ABSURD 155 selves for others, or poured out our blood in the arena as witness to what we conceive to be His truth. Science teaches us how to ensure certain results by such and such processes and expenditure of energy. We reap precisely in proportion to what we have sown. In all this we know what we are about; but when it is demanded of us that we assent to certain propositions about God, the soul, and future life, and endeavour to shape our lives in accordance with that assent, we are invited to invest in a speculation for which no guarantee whatever is offered by any responsible person. You demand a scientific faith? asks Browning; but "a scientific faith's absurd."1 Faith may be God's touchstone "You must mix some uncertainty With faith, if you would have faith be." 2 Plato said, "God geometrizes," and men demand that the exact laws of the natural should obtain in the spiritual world; but our moral and religious character does not "Grow as a natural tree, Stand as a rock, soar up like fire." 3 "A faith that is commanded," says Kant, "is nonsense." "We cannot prove God, freedom, and immortality by speculative reason, although 1 Easter Day. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. |