NO PERFECT HAPPINESS HERE 211 from a universe some find so dead and cold. These beams pass into the soul, add worth to worth, and send it conquering and to conquer through all eternity. Browning says he cannot see what purpose serves the soul that strives, or world it tries conclusions with, unless the fruit of victories stay stored up and guaranteed its own for ever in some way that shall make clear the gain of every life. After death we shall learn what our souls have conquered from our past life. We shall see this plainly, and the sooner we begin to see what we are storing up for the future the better. All worth lies in the seeing soul; all the world is inert, null and void, till man evokes the beautiful, and by his alchemy extracts from it light and warmth. The desire of perfect happiness which exists in every human heart is an argument for a better and brighter world, where the reasonable and pure desire of happiness may be satisfied. An ethical writer says "It follows that the desire of perfect happiness is in man by the normal growth of his nature and for the better. But it would be a vain desire, and objectless, if it were essentially incapable of satisfaction; and man would be a made and abiding piece of imperfection, if there were no good accessible to his intellectual nature sufficient to meet its proper exigence of perfect happiness. But no such perfect happiness is 212 LOVE GAINS HEAVEN attainable in this world. Therefore there must be a world to come, in which he who was man, now a disembodied spirit, but still the same person, shall under due conditions find a perfect good, the adequate object of his natural desire. Else is the deepest craving of human nature in vain, and man himself is vanity of vanities." And this future happiness comes as the reward of love. Love gains God, and gaining Him gains Heaven. Love is not to be realized here at all, but is to be completed in another life; this is the lesson of many of Browning's most beautiful poems, notably Cristina, Evelyn Hope, and The Last Ride Together. "Such is life's trial, as old earth smiles and knows. If you loved only what were worth your love, Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you. Make the low nature better by your throes! Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!"1 1 Song from James Lee. CHAPTER XIV THE MYSTERY OF PAIN, DEATH, AND SIN subject as IN Browning's philosophy of life we have seen that he holds that all the obstacles and troubles of our existence are intended by the Creator to make true men and women of us. We might perhaps dismiss this part of our having been sufficiently explained. But the poet's works so constantly recur to the mystery of pain, death, and sin, and so uniformly emphasize his doctrine of evil, that justice would not be done to his teaching if we neglected to set forth his treatment of the principle of evil a little more fully. Briefly, then, it may be said that Browning never wearies of insisting that the existence of evil is necessary for the development of the soul, that evil has its uses in stimulating the growth of good, that our moral perfection can only be attained by fighting against evil; for life is a passage to a higher state of existence, and we can only mount thither by making our obstacles "stepping-stones on which we may rise to higher things." St. Augustine says-"Of our vices we 214 NO PAIN, NO PLEASURE can frame a ladder, if we will but tread beneath our feet each deed of shame." Pain and death have been contrived either by a benevolent or a malignant Creator, or they have merely arisen by chance. If they were contrived by a malevolent Being, it is inconceivable that they should almost uniformly tend to evolve the most beautiful and holy faculties of our nature, and bring in their train the highest blessings to the race. If we say they came by chance, it passes comprehension that these means should have effected such admirable ends without the intention and influence of an all-wise Contriver, and it is easier and more natural to attribute them to God than to believe that blind chance could create saints, and make martyrs welcome the cruelest deaths, for an idea. The mystery of pain has often been urged against the doctrine of an all-loving Creator, yet any physiologist will tell us that without a nervous system capable of suffering pain, no pleasure could be enjoyed, nor the means of enjoying it preserved. Often the line between pain and pleasure is so finely drawn that it is hardly possible to say where one begins and the other ends. Hunger is painful, yet who would not wish to be hungry when invited to a banquet? Thirst is painful: who would know the delights of a deep draught of pure refreshing water in a thirsty land if he had not suffered it? PAIN IS CONSERVATIVE 215 If fire did not cause the pain of burning, we should handle hot coals with our fingers and soon destroy them. If the fur of an animal could be torn from the skin without pain as it ran through the bushes, he would soon be naked. A grain of dust in the eye will cause intense pain, but if foreign bodies could rest on the delicate surface of the organ of sight without causing irritation, the eye for seeing purposes would soon be destroyed. Pain, therefore, is of the first necessity for our protection and safety. Pain always lasts while there is a possibility of cure. Says Pompilia "The guardian angel discontinued pain It needs be pained no longer. . . All pain must be to work some good in the end.” 1 Susceptibility to pain is essential to every part of our bodily life; if hunger were not painful we should often neglect to take food; if falling about were not painful we should break many more bones than we do. Self-protection Then, again, if there were no pain there could be no pleasure, constituted as we are in this stage of our existence is the direct consequence of pain. 1 The Ring and the Book: "Caponsacchi," ll. 1220-25. |