66 INFERIOR CREATURES COMPLETE earth's tenantry from worm to bird." Before the advent of man all was seen perfect, and a scientific beholder could have deduced the perfectness of other creatures yet unseen. Had the Creator then questioned such a spectator of the animal life he saw around him, it is conceivable that God might have asked him— "Shall I go on a step, improve on this, Do more for visible creatures than is done?" Had a competent naturalist been thus addressed, he might reasonably have answered that there was nothing left to do but make "each grow conscious in himself"; in every other way all is perfection, the shell-fish sticks fast to the rock, the fish swims, the snake both swims and slides, the beasts range the forests, and the birds the air, "life's mechanics can no further go." The Creator's finger endues each with lifelike fire, all is exquisitely perfect— "But 'tis pure fire, and they mere matter are ; It has them, not they it; and so I choose For man, thy last premeditated work (If I might add a glory to the scheme), That a third thing should stand apart from both, A quality arise within his soul, Which, intro-active, made to supervise And feel the force it has, may view itself, And so be happy." The man at first might live the animal life; MAN ALONE PROGRESSES 67 but there is more in him than this: let him begin to learn how he lives; let him know something of his adaptabilities, thus will his life become more joy-giving, and man possessed of such a faculty is better than the animals; he is of created things on earth the best. Man progresses because he is not merely "a better beast." His failures began "Only since he left The lower and inconscious forms of life." Without failure there can be no advance. The brutes have perfection of a sort; man alone advances because he is imperfect; he takes " each step higher over the brute's head" by adding new learning to the old. There is a "world of capability" in man, "and still the soul craves all"; yet life is inadequate to the joy it demands, the soul sees the joy but can never grasp it. The soul sees God's joy, but can only use her own. It is no mere poet's dream that some future state may await us "Unlimited in capability For joy, as this is in desire for joy." The joy-hunger forces us to pursue it, till freed by death we burst as the worm into the fly, who while still a worm wants his wings. Browning has left us a wonderful and most remarkable example of his genius in the dying 68 GOD REJOICES IN CREATION speech of his Paracelsus.1 The man of science in his last moments has a vision of Creation. He tells his faithful friend Festus how all Nature is "hungry for joy." How God Himself "Tastes an infinite joy In infinite ways-one everlasting bliss, The poet traces the history of the earth from its central fires, its volcanic eruptions, and its glacial period, till it becomes the verdant home of the savage creatures. God joys in the fine sand where sunbeams bask, tastes a pleasure in the uncouth pride of the young volcanoes, renews His ancient rapture while the wild creatures seek their loves in wood and plain, dwelling in all, from minutest insect up to the consummation of this scheme of being-Man. Scattered o'er the world the attributes of man had asked to be combined, united in a wondrous whole, imperfect qualities distributed here and there in numberless species had suggested some one creature yet to make in whom all the scattered rays should converge into the faculties of man. In man should be power, not to be used blindly, nor always to be controlled by perfect know 1 Paracelsus. THE WORLD LIVES FOR MAN 69 ledge; the force at his command must be used at risk; hope should inspire, and fear should check the power with which he should be endued. There should be knowledge too, not intuition, but the slow, painful, and uncertain fruit of toil, which should enhance its value while strengthening it by love born of pain. Love, man's highest endowment, not pure but strong from weakness; love enduring, doubting, oppressed, cherished, suffering much and much sustained; blind, oft-failing yet believing; a heart half-enlightened, often-chequered; love whose faculties are hinted at, prevised, and strewn confusedly everywhere about the inferior creatures, all leading up to the superior race "The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false, And thus God completes the scheme of one stage of being, from which looking backward we see and understand the steps by which the grand result has been achieved, and how "Man, once descried, imprints for ever His presence on all lifeless things." Not till the advent of man had the world any meaning as a whole; no creature understood it, for none questioned it. Man appears, and the world begins to live for him; the winds are voices, no senseless gust is the storm now. 70 "MAN IS NOT MAN AS YET" The trees commune and whisper their deep thoughts, the water-lily becomes an urn borne by a nymph, the birds have an audience for their concert, the morn has enterprise and the evening quiet. Sunset glory and voluptuous moonlight are displayed for man's regard. The whole phenomena of Nature are displayed for him. Yet says the poet-" Man is not Man as yet"; as prognostics told man's approach, so there arise in him now grand anticipations of something nobler still, here and there a towering mind appears, overlooking its prostrate fellows. All mankind is to be perfected alike, then man's general infancy will begin, and he will start on a long triumphant march; for "In completed man begins anew This noble speech of the dying Paracelsus was published in 1835, Darwin's Origin of Species appeared in 1859, and his Descent of Man in 1871. Darwin taught that man was gradually evolved from the lowest form of animal life. In 1844, a work entitled Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, in which the doctrine of progressive development as a hypothetic history of the animal creation occasioned much controversy; but Browning's poem long antedated these works, and he could hardly have been influenced in his theory by any atmosphere |