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 Tennyson as a religious teacher. 
 
 3 1924 013 561 182 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013561182 
 
TENNYSON 
 AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
ADHUC • MODICUM ALIQUANTULUM 
 QUI • VENTURUS ■ EST ■ VENIET • ET • NON • TARDABIT 
 JUSTUS • AUTEM • MEUS ■ EX • FIDE • VIVIT 
 
TENNYSON 
 
 AS A 
 
 RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES F. G. MASTERMAN, M.A. 
 
 Christ's college, Cambridge 
 
 190a 
 
 KNIGHT & MILLET 
 BOSTON 
 
 H. 
 
 n^^ 
 
A^x-^^i \^€' 
 
TO 
 
 MY OLD HEADMASTER 
 
 THE REVEREND JOHN MILLER 
 
 WITH UNCHANGING 
 RESPECT AND AFFECTION 
 
BURNEY PRIZE ESSAY i8 
 
PREFACE 
 
 A COPIOUS literature has already gathered round the work 
 of the most widely influential English poet of the nine- 
 teenth century ; and a few words need to be said as to 
 the points in which I venture to hope that this present 
 essay may differ from some that have preceded it. 
 
 I have patiently investigated the contents of in- 
 numerable volumes on the poetry of Tennyson ; I 
 have found the sentiments invariably amiable, and 
 the opinions occasionally interesting. But, from the 
 point of view of this work, I have been able to derive 
 but little enlightenment. Many authors enlarge upon 
 the beauty of one passage, the profundity of another, 
 the artistic excellence of a third ; the teaching of 
 Tennyson as a whole, more especially in relation to the 
 thought of his age, despite its immense influence upon 
 the opinions of his contemporaries, appears rarely treated 
 in an adequate manner. On the other hand, vague 
 and contradictory statements are continually to be seen 
 in popular periodicals and heard in common conversa- 
 tion, concerning the philosophical positions or religious 
 beliefs advocated by Tennyson ; and the wildest argu- 
 ments based on isolated passages are employed to testify 
 to his adherence to diverse and grotesque creeds. I 
 therefore venture to entertain the hope that an attempt, 
 for which I claim honesty, although no other excellence, 
 to establish "Tennyson's main positions from a critical 
 examination of his work as a whole, may find acceptance 
 with some, at least, of that class who really desire to 
 study the relation of Tennyson's position to thev thought 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 of his age, and have no particular views to read into 
 his poetry, 
 
 A word of explanation is, perhaps, not unnecessary as 
 to the method pursued in the following pages. Many of 
 these may appear only remotely to deal with Tennyson's 
 position, and mainly to be occupied with the comments 
 and suggestions of the author. The chapters on Vastness, 
 Evolution, Immortahty, and others, may seem but in- 
 adequate attempts to discuss contemporary problems, 
 with only scattered allusions to the work of Tennyson. 
 
 But the mere extraction from the work of any great 
 author of certain categorical propositions is a dismal 
 though easy task. To place these propositions in their 
 correct relation to the changing thought of any given 
 time requu'es a clear explanation of the exact meaning 
 of the theories and the terms so glibly utilised, and so 
 readily misunderstood. Such a task is as much harder 
 as it is better worth the doing. 
 
 From one point of view my treatment of these problems 
 will seem too full; from another, it will appear alto- 
 gether inadequate. A book, instead of a chapter, on 
 each of these questions would but give a bare discus- 
 sion of outlines. Yet, perhaps, even this slight sketch 
 may contribute towards a better understanding of the 
 problems which confronted Tennyson and his contem- 
 poraries — problems of an age " which already in its 
 methods of thought, its difficulties, and its ideals, is 
 rapidly passing away." 
 
 Amid much that appears unsatisfactory in the literature 
 that has accumulated around Tennyson's poetry, I may 
 mention certain writings that, judged by however high 
 a standard, must command respect and admiration. Pro- 
 fessor Dowden's " Tennyson and Browning," in his " Essays 
 and Studies " ; Mr W. H. Mallock's Essay on Tennyson, in 
 " Atheism, and the Value of Life " ; the last chapter in the 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 brilliant little study of " Tennyson," by Professor W. M. 
 Dixon ; and " Tennyson as Prophet," in " Science and a 
 Future Life," by Mr F. W. H. Myers : these appear to me 
 to be the best things that have been said upon Tennyson's 
 position as a philosophical or religious teacher; to these 
 I gladly acknowledge my obligation. In the pleasant 
 task of personal acknowledgment, I would express my 
 thanks to my brother. Rev. H. B. Masterman, for many 
 suggestions, and to my friend. Rev. J. N. Figgis, for 
 reading through the proofs, and for many helpful 
 criticisms. For the kind advice and encouragement I 
 have received from Mr Frederick W. H. Myers and from 
 Canon J. Armitage Robinson I cannot adequately express 
 my gratitude. 
 
 17 Dean's Yard, Westminster, 
 September 1899. 
 
 Note. — I am indebted to the courtesy of Messrs Macmillan for their 
 kind permission to illustrate this work with full quotation. 
 
 b 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Introduction 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 
 
 II. Vastness .... 
 
 9 
 
 III. The Just shall live by Faith 
 
 30 
 
 IV. God . . . 
 
 47 
 
 V. Self. .... 
 
 61 
 
 VI. Immortality 
 
 73 
 
 VII. Evolution .... 
 
 95 
 
 VIII. Evolution and Immortality 
 
 110 
 
 IX. Practical Philosophy 
 
 129 
 
 X. Natural Theology . 
 
 145 
 
 XI. Spiritual Religion . 
 
 163 
 
 XII. Social Religion 
 
 180 
 
 XIII. Christianity 
 
 194 
 
 XIV. Tennyson and his Age 
 
 216 
 
 XV. Summary and Conclusion 
 
 234 
 
 Index 
 
 251 
 
TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS 
 TEACHER 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 
 
 A LL great writers arCj in a very real sense, the products 
 ^ of the age of which they are the children ; their work 
 is modified and their range is limited by the sentiments 
 and opinions prevalent in their time. This is shown not 
 only by the fact that the fashions and feelings peculiar to 
 the period in which they live are depicted in their writ- 
 ings, but also in their whole outlook upon life. Their 
 selection of subjects of criticism and their methods of 
 treatment of the problems of their age are profoundly 
 influenced by the atmosphere surrounding them. Not 
 merely their picture of contemporary life, but their 
 examination of those universal questions of human 
 interest, which have attracted or troubled mankind from 
 the first dawn of intelligence, testifies their depend- 
 ence upon current opinion and the conditions of life 
 around them. No poet can altogether transcend the 
 limitations of the mental development of the period in 
 which he lives. Perfection of style, depth and sincerity 
 of thought, may ensure that the influence of his work 
 shall endure into a remote future : but the thought will 
 be coloured by the .setting of his surroundings ; the style 
 will be influenced by the peculiar conditions of his en- 
 vironment; and, however far-reaching his generalisations, 
 or however subtle and illuminating his teaching, his work 
 must needs be the utterance of one who speaks from the 
 
 A 
 
2 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 period which has produced him to present or to succeeding 
 generations. 
 
 More fully to emphasise this fact we may consider the 
 examples of two English poets, often compared together, 
 and in a unique sense representative of their surround- 
 ings — Pope and Tennyson. Tennyson has been termed, 
 not unjustly, the Pope of his own time. Pope was 
 emphatically the child of his age ; in his smooth, graceful, 
 facile verse we can see a perfect reflection of the gay, 
 happy, superficial life of the early years of the eighteenth 
 century. Moral apophthegms delivered with an air of pro- 
 found wisdom ; the wit and satire of the coffee-houses ; 
 ballads of ladies' fans or lovers' bows ; love not exhibited 
 as a great passion but as a courtly manner of life: these 
 are the characteristics alike of his time and of his poetry. 
 Above all, sanity, common-sense, a cheerful optimism, a 
 hatred of sentiment and emotion, a deliberate refusal to 
 penetrate below the surface of things, were the elements 
 which made up the popular philosophy of English society 
 in the time of Queen Anne and her immediate successors. 
 In Pope, it may be said, this age has become articulate ; 
 here, if nowhere else, its outlook upon the world, its 
 aspirations, its depth or shallowness of thought, are 
 stereotyped for ever. It would seem possible, from a 
 critical examination of his poetry, to construct an adequate 
 picture of the sentiments and ideals prevalent in the 
 time in which he lived. 
 
 And what Pope accomplished for the eighteenth 
 century Tennyson effected for the middle period of the 
 nineteenth. Marvellously sensitive as he was to the 
 changing currents of thought surrounding him, in his 
 poetry can be discovered most of its cherished ideals. 
 But the connection of any writer with his age is not 
 to be sought only in the nature of the doctrines he 
 maintains, and the first principles he accepts. The whole 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 choice of material for the subject of his art, and the 
 manner in which this material is utilised, reveal his 
 dependence upon his environment. The period in which 
 Tennyson lived exhibits, amongst many diverse features, 
 two that are especially prominent. It was a period 
 of immense material progress ; it was a period of 
 feverish speculation. Life had grown infinitely more 
 complex : with greater conscious strength, with greater 
 unconscious weakness ; the broad river of thought had 
 split up into numberless currents, and eddies, and 
 branch streams, falling over waterfalls, or sluggishly flow- 
 ing into marshy shallows. The mind of man, confronted 
 with huge masses of imperfectly apprehended facts, was 
 passing through one of its great periods of change. 
 Nothing was established as indubitably certain, every- 
 thing stable and firm seemed crumbling away, the 
 ultimate result of this corroding process no man could 
 foretell. Thought therefore presented a bewildering 
 complexity : uncertainty and conviction, optimism and 
 pessimism, progress and reaction, the new claims of 
 empirical knowledge, the protests of the older religion, 
 inextricably mingled in a universal seething and turmoil 
 of speculation in which the wisest might find himself 
 astonished and the simplest dismayed. 
 
 And of all this Tennyson's poetry is the perfect reflection. 
 No other writer has exhibited in his work so many con- 
 flicting principles of thought. The claims advanced for 
 him as a teacher of religion may prove to be unfounded ; 
 but one thing at least is incontestable : that religious 
 problems, and the questions arising out of religious 
 problems, occupy a larger place in his writings than in 
 those of almost any other English poet. Whenever from 
 the troubled speculation of the nineteenth century some 
 distinct truth emerges, and a temporary resting-place is 
 attained in religious and philosophical controversy, men 
 
4 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 will turn to the writings of Tennyson, to find delineated 
 in perfect language the many contradictory ideals of 
 his active and disordered time. 
 
 It is, then, as the representative of a period of religious 
 speculation that Tennyson as a poet is a religious teacher ; 
 as a child of his age he was compelled to apply his 
 marvellous poetical faculty to the problems and the 
 struggles which were characteristic of his spiritual en- 
 vironment. Had he lived in another time his work 
 would have been profoundly modified. He can never 
 escape from the influence of his surroundings. Much of 
 his work he devotes to the re-statement of the stories 
 of Greek mythology and the great romances of the 
 Middle Age. But to write of a dead past is not to 
 be filled with the spirit of a time that cannot live 
 again. Tithonus and Ulysses and Tiresias, no less 
 than Arthur and the spiritual chivalry of Camelot, are 
 discussing the problems, and troubled with the difficul- 
 ties, and striving to attain the ideals of the men of the 
 nineteenth century. 
 
 In this sense, then, Tennyson was representative of his 
 period : — that he inherited the tone of deep seriousness, 
 of interest in ultimate problems, of determined search 
 for explanation so manifest in the surrounding atmos- 
 phere. But a further limitation has been demanded 
 for him. He has been acclaimed as being in a narrower 
 sense essentially the prophet of his time, the preacher 
 of the popular movement, the representative in whom the 
 Zeitgeist became manifestly articulate. And a superficial 
 inspection appears to justify this statement. At one time 
 Tennyson seemed to yield complete adherence to the new 
 ideal ; and the result was a popularity unique indeed 
 for a writer who was also so perfect an artist. Faith 
 in progress, material advance, scientific development, un- 
 dogmatic religion, ordered freedom, in all the panacese 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 so strenuously proclaimed by the loudest -voiced party 
 about the middle of the nineteenth century^ is to be 
 found conspicuously manifested in the early poetry of 
 Tennyson. Did this represent the whole of the teaching 
 left by him for future generations, it is probable that he 
 would be finally estimated as the representative prophet 
 of that phase of thought which succeeded the Revolu- 
 tionary period and exercised the minds of men until 
 almost the close of the century. 
 
 But such an estimation of Tennyson's position as a 
 religious teacher would be one-sided and untrue. Even 
 while enunciating these ideals, Tennyson had gone 
 behind them, and developed from his personal needs 
 principles which ultimately drove him into opposition 
 to the party of progress and left him protesting against 
 its later developments. During the greater part of 
 his poetical career, Tennyson was waging open warfare 
 with the tendencies of thought and the popular philo- 
 sophies most characteristic of his age ; assailed by their 
 leaders, and, in his turn, attacking their most cherished 
 ideals. 
 
 This divergence from the positions accepted by many of 
 the most influential thinkers amongst his contemporaries 
 was manifested in his advocacy of the very principles 
 which made his greatness as a religious teacher. It was 
 due to the fact that Tennyson maintained a certain theory 
 of the universe, which, although modified in its manner of 
 statement by the facts of his age, was ultimately inde- 
 pendent of them. This religion he would have main- 
 tained in whatever age he had written ; for he upheld 
 it not only as being necessary for mankind in a certain 
 stage of progress, but as being essential for the continual 
 existence of the human race. 
 
 It was his strenuous advocacy of this theory which gave 
 him his influence as a religious teacher ; and the disentang- 
 
6 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 ling of its essential principles, and the expression of their 
 relation to the ebb and flow of contemporary thought 
 around him, is the object of the following pages. This 
 is the part of Tennyson's work that must live, if his 
 influence as a teacher is to increase in the future. The 
 greater part of his poetic achievement will survive 
 only for the researches of the commentators on out- 
 worn philosophies or for the lovers of the artistically 
 beautiful ; each of these classes comprising a small 
 and apparently a decreasing number of adherents. 
 
 In considering the work of any great writer it is some- 
 times expedient to examine his writings in chronological 
 order, to trace the gradual progress of his mind as it 
 develops through successive stages of thought. And 
 in writing the history of the progress of any individual 
 mind this method of working is essential. 
 
 But we are not here concerned with the historical 
 development of Tennyson's mind ; we are rather attempt- 
 ing to outline his philosophy, as a coherent whole, both 
 in itself as a system and in its relation to philosophies 
 surrounding him. And for such an outline it is essential 
 to consider his work as a unity. 
 
 But the task of summarising the religious teaching of 
 a poet is a task of peculiar difficulty. For a poet is not 
 necessarily a philosopher or a theologian : he is primarily 
 an artist. A writer may indeed outline philosophy in 
 verse — as, for example, Robert Browning — or teach theology 
 in poetry, as Dante and, in a sense, Milton. Tennyson 
 made no pretence of essaying so arduous a task : he was 
 an artist in words, of extraordinary power, compelled to 
 gaze at the facts of life through the troubled atmosphere 
 of the thought of his time. He possessed in no slight 
 degree the peculiar artistic temperament, a marvellous 
 sensitiveness to the thought of those amongst whom he 
 lived. He has depicted it all, in its many shades, in a 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 way no other writer of the century has attempted. It 
 is therefore sometimes difficult to disentangle his own 
 personal opinions from the opinion of others whom he has 
 represented. And only by comparison of widely diiFerent 
 poems, and a careful examination of his work as a whole, 
 shall we be able adequately to summarise the teaching 
 that he has left as permanent evidence of his own philo- 
 sophy of life. 
 
 Such a method is attempted in the following pages. 
 We shall begin with an endeavour to exhibit Tenny- 
 son's method of approaching the one problem of the 
 age which advancing knowledge had made strenuously 
 insistent, the result of far-reaching generahsations and 
 of the use for three centuries of the inductive method 
 in the consideration of the external world ; the problem 
 of the apparent vastness of space and the apparent 
 littleness of Man. Not until this problem has been 
 fairly faced can any religious teacher pass to the con- 
 sideration of the more definite questions of philosophy 
 and religion. 
 
 We shall then consider how Tennyson dealt with the 
 apprehension of God, the existence of Self, the hope 
 of Immortality — the three great questions to which 
 all other speculative inquiries are subsidiary. Con- 
 sideration of the last of these will lead on to the 
 method of Tennyson's recognition of the principle of 
 Evolution, which marks his more distinctively original 
 teaching. After this will follow an examination of 
 those elements of Tennyson's teaching in which he has 
 most clearly dealt with the thought of his age ; his 
 thoughts concerning Natural Theology, Spiritual and 
 Social Religion, Practical Ethics, and the Christian 
 Theology. Lastly, it will be necessary to attempt a 
 brief estimate of his relation to the general spirit 
 of his age, — how far he found himself in agreement 
 
8 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 with his contemporaries, how far time has justified his 
 contentions or falsified his prophecy. Such an examina- 
 tion should be able to yield a clear outline of the 
 teaching of perhaps the most widely influential thinker 
 among all the poets of the century which is now at 
 its close. 
 
II. VASTNESS 
 
 "T^HE discovery of the vastness of material things is a dis- 
 -*- covery which has been producing a vague disquietude 
 in the minds of men for the past three centuries ; but 
 a discovery, the far-reaching consequences of which most 
 thinkers during this period have refused to accept and to 
 consider in all its logical results. What are we justified 
 in assuming, at the present day, concerning the position 
 of man in the universe ? How far can he still maintain 
 ideals of life formulated under different conditions, when 
 he was able to regard himself as the centre and un- 
 challenged lord of creation ? What is the worth of his 
 speculation or his effort in the light of the revelation of 
 the immensities of space and time .'' These are questions 
 which, too long neglected, have at length forced them- 
 selves to the forefront of speculation — questions which 
 must in some manner be answered before a system of 
 religion or philosophy can be established in any way 
 adequate to the demands of the human intelligence. 
 
 In the philosophy of the mediaeval age, before the dis- 
 coveries of the Copernican astronomy, the difficulties 
 connected with this problem had not arisen. However 
 perplexing life might appear to the individual, however 
 impossible he might find the maintenance of the moral 
 standard put before him, his duties, his present import- 
 ance, his future greatness, were indisputably certain. 
 To the mass of the people of this time, and even to 
 most of its deepest thinkers, the ultimate realities of 
 the universe presented themselves as material, solid 
 entities. This earth, stretched out between the dwell- 
 ing-place of God above and the abode of evil spirits 
 9 
 
lo TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 beneath, had been fitted and prepared by Omnipotent 
 Wisdom as the place of man's trial and probation. All 
 natural things, the wonders and beauties and marvellous 
 mechanisms of the natural world, were designed and 
 constructed in conformity with this end. The whole 
 material system exhibited a scene of conflict between 
 the powers of good above and the powers of wicked- 
 ness beneath. The first parents of mankind had been 
 placed by God in a realm constructed for His pleasure, 
 which He had seen to be very good. The powers of 
 evil, desirous of thwarting the schemes of the Almighty, 
 had tempted them and caused them to fall. Sin had 
 entered into the world, and with sin had entered suffer- 
 ing and death. Now before the assembled hosts, amidst 
 the breathless interest of the great powers behind the 
 visible universe, man's salvation was being attained in 
 perpetual conflict with evil. The earth is the stage on 
 which the great drama is being played ; a stage in 
 which the scenery changes with the varpng action of 
 the performers. Goodness produces fruitful seasons and 
 boundless blessing ; wickedness is punished by storm and 
 blasting and ruin. This world-stage is a scene of music 
 and colour, of wonder and mystery. Common things are 
 endowed with strange spiritual significance, passionate 
 loves or hates reveal or embody invisible forces ; all 
 natural objects form but a thin veil over the super- 
 natural, for ever almost bursting through. Men and 
 women possess unknown powers over the fates and the 
 fortunes of others ; irrevocable decisions are being re- 
 corded every moment, angels and demons visibly contend 
 for mastery over the human soul ; encompassed by this 
 unseen, mysterious, spiritual realm, the victim and the 
 master of so great forces, the individual journeys forward 
 on the way to his future destiny. Below, so near, per- 
 haps, that the cries of the lost can almost be heard, in 
 
VASTNESS II 
 
 the moaning of the storm-wind, when all is hushed at 
 midnight, hell flares, red with flame, material, burning 
 fire. And overhead, just above the blue curtain of the 
 sky, visible in some faint reflection in the brightness of 
 sunrise, in the glories of sunset, rises with tower beyond 
 tower, the home and dwelling-place of the Blessed, 
 ' the spiritual city and all her spires and gateways in 
 a glory like one pearl ' : material, tangible, with gates 
 flashing with jewels, and streets of gold, with the shrine 
 of prayer and the tree of life, aureoled saints, and maidens 
 in white, and over all the Mother of God reigning as Queen 
 of Heaven ; all the reveries of monachism and the dreams 
 of chivalry combining to illuminate the vision seen by the 
 Apostle of old, when the heavens broke up for a moment 
 disclosing the glory behind them, 'that great city, the 
 holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God.' 
 
 It is easy to understand how such a view of the posi- 
 tion of men in the universe emphasised the dignity and 
 importance of human life. The earth was the battlefield 
 of the eternal warfare ; every man's choice was watched 
 with intense anxiety from above and below ; powers of 
 good and evil, mysterious visitants from other worlds, 
 bearing succour or suggesting sin, visibly walked to and 
 fro upon the earth. Once, at least, the solid ground 
 had opened : hell had enlarged herself, and swallowed 
 up her victims, who went down alive into the pit. From 
 dark forests and marshy places, from the burning moun- 
 tains the visible outlets of the forces of the underworld, 
 swarmed up demons to tempt the souls of men. They 
 seized their victims, and bore their bodies away to the 
 place of endless torment. They were encountered by 
 the Saints of God, smitten and discomfited by the power 
 of the Cross. Heaven was above ; thither turned the 
 eyes of the soldier seeking help, and the saint desiring 
 rest. In the daytime the firmament hid its glory ; the 
 
12 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 night disclosed the floor of Paradise studded with its 
 
 thousands of stars. 
 
 There's heaven above; and night by night 
 I look right through its glorious roof. 
 
 For I intend to get to God.' 
 
 So to the eye of faith the two invisible worlds were 
 ever displayed^ the reulities which one day would be 
 manifestly revealed to all. 
 
 For as I lie smiled on, full fed 
 
 By unexhausted power to bless, 
 I gaze below on hell's fierce bed, 
 
 And those its waves of flame oppress. 
 
 Swarming in ghastly wretchedness. 
 Whose life on earth appeared to be 
 
 One altar smoke so pure — to win, 
 If not love like God's love for me. 
 
 At least to keep his anger in, 
 
 And all their striving turned to sin.^ 
 
 With these two tremendous visions ever before them, 
 as real as their daily existence; with the knowledge of 
 the infinite importance of this world as the scene of 
 struggle between God and His rebellious creatures ; with 
 the firm conviction that the whole scheme of nature, and 
 all material things were directed towards, and influenced by, 
 the presence and the probation of man ; the great thinkers 
 of the Middle Age were enabled to frame a philosophy of 
 life which in its broad principles was comprehensible to 
 the simplest, and in its overwhelming importance claimed 
 universal authority over the hearts and the lives of men. 
 
 Upon this system there suddenly fell with crush- 
 ing force the discoveries of the Copernican Astronomy. 
 The strenuous resistance of the leaders of the Church to 
 
 ' Browning : "Johannes Agricola in Meditation." 
 2 Ibid. 
 
VASTNESS 13 
 
 the theories of Galileo was a resistance that could have 
 been easily foreseen ; for their philosbpical conceptions of 
 the universe were totally incompatible with his conclusions. 
 Founded as their theory was on a view of reality as in 
 its essential nature material, the discovery of the im- 
 mensity of material things shattered it to fragments. 
 The infinity of space suddenly opened in yawning black- 
 ness. ' The blue curtain of the sky no longer veiled the 
 floor of heaven inlaid with stars ' ; it became a mere 
 covering to the immense void of unfathomable greatness, 
 strewn with planets and suns and galaxies of solar systems, 
 and growing and dying worlds. The choice, the progress, 
 the whole intellectual and moral life of the human race 
 shrivelled into infinitesimal proportions. Man found him- 
 self violently dethroned from his position at the centre of 
 the universe, and relegated to an obscure position in one 
 of its least important elements. The conclusions drawn 
 from these discoveries were no less disturbing. If a Deity 
 did indeed exist, he was far removed ' somewhere beyond 
 the fixed stars ' ; how different from that God previously 
 apprehended as delighting in His servants, and bending 
 down from Heaven to succour the creatures of His making. 
 The words of the Psalmist took upon themselves a new 
 and sinister meaning. " When I consider Thy heavens, 
 the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which 
 Thou hast ordained, what is man, that Thou art mindful 
 of him ; and the son of man that Thou visitest him .i" " 1 
 What indeed in the light of this new knowledge was the 
 whole life of humanity but a speck of animated dust, 
 the transitory existence of 'a parasite of one of the 
 meanest of the planets ' } 
 
 This vast revolution in the estimate of the position of 
 man in the universe has not even yet been clearly appre- 
 hended by the mass of mankind ; but the history of the 
 ' Psalm viii. 
 
14 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 past three centuries is the history of the attempts of the 
 greatest human minds to grapple with the problem thus 
 disclosed. In popular imagination, even until the middle 
 of the nineteenth century, man is the centre of the 
 material universe, and Nature is still adapted to his ends. 
 Milton, setting out to 'justify the ways of God to man,' 
 could in his day accept this view, showing the heavens 
 revolving round the earth, and God and His angels visibly 
 interfering in human affairs. But ever since its original 
 discovery the greatest minds of the age have thrown 
 themselves against the fact of physical vastness and shrunk 
 back appalled. ' Combien de royaumes nous ignorent ! ' 
 says Pascal, troubled in spirit ; * Le silence Hemel de 
 ces espaces infinis m'effraie.' And the effect is to make 
 him feel ' comme un komme qu'on aurait porti endormi 
 dans une ile deserte et effroyable, et qui s'iveillerait sans 
 connaitre oH il est, et sans moyen d'en sortir.' ' The 
 heavens declare no glory but that of Newton and Kepler ' 
 is the conclusion of modern science. " I have swept the 
 heavens with my telescope,'' said Lelande, " and have not 
 found a God." And the sentiment is re-echoed by many 
 modern thinkers : — ' We have learnt to look upon the sun 
 shining out of a godless heaven upon a soulless earth,' is 
 the boast of a great scientist. 
 
 The stars that watch blind earth in the deep night swim 
 Laugh, saying, what God is your God that ye call on Him ? 
 What is man that the God Who is guide of our way should care 
 If a day for a man be golden, his night be grim? ' 
 
 A new sentiment has arisen demanding a sense of the 
 proportion of things in the theories and the systems of 
 men. The spectacle, it is said, of such unimportant 
 factors in the real universe as the successive generations 
 of mankind, striving painfully after righteousness and call- 
 ing upon the God who ruleth the courses of the stars to 
 ' Swinburne: "Astrophel," etc. 
 
VASTNESS 15 
 
 interest Himself in their infinitely petty affairs, appears 
 but calculated to provide any disinterested spectator with 
 food for 'inextinguishable laughter.' To 'trouble deaf 
 heaven with our bootless cries ' is to expend effort in vain. 
 If all the human race should perish, if the earth itself 
 were blotted out from the solar system, it would make no 
 effectual difference to the great onward sweep of material 
 systems through an empty and illimitable sky. 
 
 "The more our thoughts widen and deepen," says a 
 great writer, "as the universe grows upon us and we 
 become accustomed to boundless space and time, the more 
 petrifying is the contrast of our own insignificance, the 
 more contemptible becomes the pettiness, shortness, 
 fragility of the individual life. A moral paralysis creeps 
 over us. For a while we comfort ourselves with the 
 notion of self-sacrifice ; we say, what matter if I pass, let 
 me think of others. But the other has become con- 
 temptible no less than the self; all human griefs alike 
 seem little worth assuaging, human happiness too paltry 
 at the best to be worth increasing. The whole moral 
 world is reduced to a point ; the spiritual city, ' the goal of 
 all the saints,' dwindles to the least of httle stars ; good 
 and evil, right and wrong, become infinitesimal ephemeral 
 matters ; while eternity and infinity remain attributes of 
 that only which is outside the realm of morality. Life 
 becomes more intolerable the more we know and discover, 
 so long as everything widens and deepens except our own 
 duration, and that remains as pitiful as ever. The affec- 
 tions die away in a world where everything great and 
 enduring is cold ; they die of their own conscious, feebleness 
 and bootlessness." ^ 
 
 And early in the nineteenth century the paralysing 
 effect produced on human effort by the revelation of the 
 
 1 "Natural Religion," p. 251. 
 
i6 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 vastness of the material universe was intensified by the 
 further discoveries of modern science. For these have 
 done for time what astronomy had accomplished for space. 
 Time until then had appeared a possible refuge for the 
 imagination crushed by the immensity of material things. 
 "They shall perish," could still be asserted, "but Thou 
 shalt endure ; and they all shall wax old, as doth a gar- 
 ment ; and as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they 
 shall be changed ; but Thou art the same, and Thy years 
 shall not fail." Man might be infinitely little in space, 
 compared to the vastness of sun and star ; but in time he 
 might survive them all. 
 
 The stars shall fade away, the sun himself 
 Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years-, 
 But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth 
 Unhurt amid the war of elements. 
 The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.' 
 
 But this despairing retreat was destroyed by the 
 evolutionary theories of Natural Science, which swept 
 down upon the astonished mind of man, and left him 
 bewildered and dismayed. For these disclosed to him 
 a world stretching backward through immense periods 
 of time before the first appearance of men, peopled by 
 a thousand types that had for ever passed away. They 
 described an evolution towards more complex life ; but 
 an evolution which appears indifferent to man's ideals of 
 goodness and beauty ; and an evolution which ' in the 
 precession of the Great Year ' must presently attain 
 its zenith and commence its downward course towards 
 ultimate dissolution. They disclosed a moral law, not, as 
 Kant held, of a sublimity competent to counterbalance 
 the burden of the immensity of the starry heavens above ; 
 but as a series of rules and ingenious devices for the 
 preservation of the species, the inherited instincts of 
 
 » Addison: " Cato." 
 
VASTNESS 17 
 
 that race which had survived in the long and arduous 
 struggle for existence. And they anticipated a future 
 when the upward progress would cease, when life would 
 vanish from this planet, and the whole solar system sink 
 into a state of stagnation, a universe of motion without 
 energy, ' worn with the dust of its own grinding." 
 Humanity has warred ceaselessly with the Time-Spirit ; 
 and although in the life of each unit Time has proved 
 victorious and the individual has been compelled to 
 acknowledge defeat ; yet by perpetual renewal in the 
 race, and the transmission to succeeding generations of 
 the stored-up results of past effort, it seemed possible 
 that although men might perish man might ultimately 
 triumph. But the empirical theories of Natural Science 
 have destroyed this last desperate hope. They have 
 demonstrated that, "by the working of the same immut- 
 able laws that are at present operating, after a period 
 long compared with the individual life, but short indeed 
 compared with the divisions of time open to our 
 investigations, the energies of our system will decay, 
 the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, 
 tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which 
 has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go 
 down into the pit and all his thoughts will perish. . . . 
 Nor will anything that is be better or be worse for all 
 that the labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of men 
 have striven through countless generations to effect."^ 
 
 It is very evident that this disquieting apprehension of 
 the littleness of man and the greatness of the Universe, 
 with all its inevitable consequences, must be fairly 
 considered by any writer who would claim the function 
 of a religious teacher during this present age ; and 
 either accepted as necessary and permanent, or explained 
 as illusory. Unless definitely encountered it remains as 
 1 Balfour : " Foundations of Belief," p. 31. 
 
1 8 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 a disturbing phantom behind any philosophic or religious 
 system^ urging continually the futility of moral effort and 
 the absurdity of mental speculation, and 
 
 the exceeding weight 
 Of God's intolerable scorn 
 Not to be borne. 1 
 
 The inherited and organised faiths of mankind were 
 largely based on principles formulated during the survival 
 of the older system, when man could regard himself as 
 the centre of all things ; if retained at all they must be 
 profoundly modified by the newer conceptions of the 
 Universe. However much relief may be given by 
 some temporary and wilful blindness, no constructive 
 system which refuses to face this problem boldly can 
 ever provide sufficient sanction for the acceptance of 
 the moral law, or stifle a feeling of contempt for a 
 creature in imagination so great, in actual importance 
 so little. The question stands in front of any attempted 
 speculation : before dealing with the problems of life 
 as they appear to each one of us in his limited sphere 
 of action, it is essential first to establish some kind 
 of relation between this limited sphere of action and 
 the real world beyond. 
 
 Tennyson, more perhaps than any other great writer 
 of the century, felt the full force of the revolution in 
 thought produced by the knowledge of the physical 
 immensity of the Universe. In his early poems he had 
 described the vision of the soul contemplating 
 
 Regions of lucid matter taking forms, 
 Brushes of fire, hazy gleams, 
 Clusters and beds of worlds and bee-like swarms 
 Of suns and starry streams.' 
 
 ' Swinburne : " Felise." 
 
 ' " Palace of Art " (unpublished stanzas) : "Life," vol. i. p. 120. 
 
VASTNESS 19 
 
 And the poet utters his own sentiment through the 
 mouth of his hero when he makes him lament his 
 knowledge of 
 
 A sad astrology, — the boundless plan 
 That made you tyrants in your iron skies, 
 Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes. 
 Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand 
 His nothingness into man.' 
 
 Again and again the thought troubles him, recurring at 
 intervals all through his writings. Twenty years later, 
 speaking in his own person, he can reject the phrase 
 applied to him, ' A star among the stars,' acknowledging 
 half-playfuUy yet half-mournfully that the sphere is too 
 serious to dally with, as old Horace did, half in jest ; who 
 
 Scarce could see, as now we see, 
 
 The man in Space and Time, 
 
 So drew perchance a happier lot 
 
 Than ours, who rhyme to-day. 
 
 The fires that arch this dusky dot — 
 
 Yon myriad-worlded way — 
 
 The vast sun clusters' gathered blaze. 
 
 World-isles in lonely skies. 
 
 Whole heavens within themselves, amaze 
 
 Our brief humanities.* ' 
 
 The realisation of this knowledge is never far from him, 
 and always bringing the same thought, the ' cold fires,' 
 with their ' power to burn and brand his nothingness 
 into man.' 
 
 What are men that He should heed us ? cried the King of sacred song ; 
 Insects of an hour, that hourly work their brother insect wrong. 
 
 While the silent Heavens roll, and Suns along their fiery way. 
 All their planets whirling round them, flash a million miles a day.' 
 
 1 " Maud." " Epilogue. " Charge of the Heavy Brigade." 
 
 s " Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After." 
 
20 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 Or in that awful vision of ' Despair ' introduced by the 
 bald explanation, " A man and his wife . having lost faith 
 in a God and hope of a life to come, and being utterly 
 miserable in this, resolve to end themselves by drowning," 
 he can show how much this despair is fostered by the 
 contemplation of the immensities of space : — 
 
 And the suns of the limitless Universe sparkled and 
 
 shone in the sky, 
 Flashing with fires as of God, but we knew that their 
 
 light was a lie — 
 Bright as with deathless hope — but, however they 
 
 sparkled and shone, 
 The dark little worlds running round them were 
 
 worlds of woe like our own — 
 No soul in the heaven above, no soul on the earth 
 
 below, 
 A fiery scroll written over with lamentation and woe.' 
 
 Even when he had provided a solution satisfactory to the 
 human reason, at any time when ' faith had fallen asleep ' 
 the horror of vastness returned to disturb his rest. Man 
 seemed to be but the one little spot illuminated, with all 
 around the dark unfathomable abysses of Time and Space. 
 He accepted completely the conclusions of modern science 
 as to the development and probable fate of life on this 
 world : — 
 
 Many an JEon moulded earth before her highest, Man, 
 
 was born, 
 Many an ^on too may pass when earth is manless and 
 
 forlorn.^ 
 
 How many changes in these eternities had already 
 passed ! ' There rolls the deep where grew the tree,' 
 he exclaims, ' O earth what changes hast thou seen ! ' ^ 
 How many forms of life had vanished ! Man inquiring 
 
 » "Despair." » " Sixty Years After." » " In Memoriam," cxxiii. 
 
VASTNESS 21 
 
 of Nature, could bring back ' from scarped cliff and quarried 
 stone ' but the same terrible message : — 
 
 She cries, A thousand types are gone : 
 I care for nothing, all shall go.' 
 
 One shifting of the scene, and humanity with all its hopes 
 and fears will have disappeared for ever. At the gates of 
 the grave he is troubled with the same haunting fear of the 
 ' silent and gigantic stars.' ' Will my tiny spark of being 
 wholly vanish in your deeps and heights?' he asks in 
 one of his last poems of the 'rush of Suns, and roll of 
 systems, and your fiery clash of meteorites.' ^ And in 
 that tremendous vision of 'Vastness,' half in despair, 
 half in a kind of fierce satisfaction, recognising that 
 ' many a planet by many a sun may roll with the dust 
 of a vanished race,' he inquires of all the heat and the 
 hurry and the dust of man 
 
 What is it all but the trouble of ants, in the gleam 
 of a million million of suns.' 
 
 Tennyson's first attempts to solve, this great problem 
 consist of mere affirmation without explanation — affirma- 
 tion of the reality of self through the reality of love. 
 He deliberately turns away from the immensity of Space, 
 and refuses any longer to comtemplate it. I am : I love : 
 this, at least, is certain. All the rest may be illusion and 
 a dream : whatever reality may pertain to these masses 
 of dead matter, this is real for me, and no discovery of 
 physical vastness can take it from me. There is that 
 in my love which matter 'does not possess, something 
 which can provide 'the countercharm of space and 
 hollow sky,' a reality of the world not seen and eternal. 
 This is the reply of the hero of 'Maud' to the 
 maddening thoughts suggested by his ' sad astrology.' 
 
 ^ " In Memoriam," Ivi. ^ " God and the Universe." 
 3 "Vastness." 
 
22 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 But now shine on, and what care I, 
 
 Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl 
 
 The countercharm of space and hollow sky, 
 
 And do accept my madness, and would die 
 
 To save from some slight shame one simple girl.'' 
 
 This, again, is Tennyson's final answer to the question 
 in 'Vastness.' What is it all, he had asked of the 
 ' raving politics never at rest ' and the ceaseless 
 turmoil of men, but 'a murmur of gnats in the gloom, 
 or a moment's anger of bees in their hive': and his 
 answer was that it is very much more than these, because 
 it is the love of the human spirit, which no mass of 
 matter can possess or destroy : — 
 
 Peace, let it be ! For I loved him, and love him for ever : the 
 dead are not dead but alive.* 
 
 One who has loved, says Tennyson, need no longer be 
 appalled at the thought of the contrast between his own 
 littleness and the greatness of things; in loving he has 
 shown himself greater than any material system. My exist- 
 ence may be a ' tiny spark of being ' ; but it is a real spark, 
 not a phantom one : part of a world which no immensity 
 of space and time can render illusory. The reality of love 
 for the living testifies to him the reality of the living 
 self: the survival of the affection, long after the object 
 of it has vanished from the earth and his bodily form 
 has crumbled into dust, yields him hope for an im- 
 mortality beyond the material world. ' Love will 
 conquer at the last.' By the strength of the love in 
 himself for someone outside himself the individual 
 personality, insignificant in space, a mere speck of 
 living dust amid the stellar systems, is able to stand up 
 and confront these with a stout heart and undismayed. 
 
 But in this first attempt to encounter the problem the 
 human intellect cannot rest satisfied ; it must go forward 
 
 1 ' ' Maud," xviii. ^ ' ' Vastness. " 
 
VASTNESS 23 
 
 in an effort to escape from this unsatisfactory dualism, the 
 reality of the macrocosmos without us, the reality of the 
 microcosmos within. The mind incessantly craves for 
 some kind of harmony, and refuses to acquiesce in the 
 discord between these two entities. And so Tennyson 
 was compelled to essay an explanation. He found it 
 in the form of idealism taught by that philosopher who 
 had never wearied of contemplating the sublimity both 
 of the starry heavens without and the moral law within. 
 This was the assertion of the subjective element in space ; 
 that space is not a reality outside our own consciousness, 
 but, at least as apprehended by us, a product of this 
 consciousness itself. 
 
 " Space is nothing but the form of all phenomena of the 
 external senses," says Kant; "it is the subjective condition 
 of our sensibility, without which no external intuition is 
 possible for us " ^ ; and again, " If we drop our subject, or 
 the subjective form of our senses, all qualities, all relations 
 of objects in Space and Time, nay. Space and Time them- 
 selves, would vanish."^ 
 
 The world, as we know it, the whole material universe, 
 Tennyson maintains, is but a vision or a picture in our 
 minds and the minds of beings possessing organisations 
 similar to our own. Impressions have rained down upon 
 us from something beyond ourselves ; each of us has 
 woven these impressions into a unity, which he terms the 
 Natural World. How different this may be from the real 
 world outside ourselves we cannot at present apprehend ; 
 but we can at least emphasise the impossibility of being 
 content with the first naive view of things, the impossi- 
 bility of the assertion that this manifestation of conscious- 
 ness, must possess a real tangible existence outside the 
 minds which apprehend it. In this sense it is untrue 
 to affirm that humanity could be removed from the 
 1 Kant : " Critique of Pure Reason," p. 21. "^ Ibid, p. 34. 
 
24 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 solar system without making any practical difference in 
 the economy of the universe : for if all consciousness 
 were simultaneously to cease, the whole material system 
 would suddenly disappear; 'the great globe itself and all 
 which it inherit ' would vanish like a dream, leaving ' not 
 a rack behind.' There must indeed be a real world out- 
 side ourselves from which originate these impressions : 
 but the world of matter and motion, the world of the 
 immensities of space and innumerable stars and suns is 
 a world created by consciousness, which with the destruc- 
 tion of mind would also vanish quite away. 
 
 That Tennyson recognised and accepted this method 
 of escape from the difficulties of the greatness and in- 
 explicable contradictions of the external woi-ld is shown 
 by the allusions scattered at intervals throughout his 
 poetry. ' All the suns,' he considers, are but 
 
 symbols of innumerable man, 
 Man or Mind that sees a shadow of the planner or the plan.' 
 
 The world, he says in another poem, is a dream of the 
 conscious spirit : ' dreams are true while they last, and 
 do we not live in dreams ? ' ^ But dreams, in the end, 
 will vanish with the spirit's awakening. Space and Time 
 are but symbols, the garments worn by the living soul, in 
 which it clothes itself for a season. Examination of this 
 dream-world shows how completely incomprehensible it 
 is, if assumed to possess a real objective existence : a 
 world full of contradiction : a 
 
 divisible-indivisible world 
 Among the numerable-innumerable 
 Sun, sun, and sun, thro' finite-infinite space 
 In finite-infinite Time.^ 
 
 Such a theory, indeed, can result in nothing but the 
 
 ' " Sixty Years After." 2 "The Higher Pantheism." 
 
 ' "DeProfundis." 
 
VASTNESS 25 
 
 abandonment of the problem in despair, and in the recog- 
 nition of things as ultimately unintelligible. But it is 
 the living spirit that lives, the world that is phantom ; 
 and we, the poor earth's dying race, and yet no phantoms, 
 watch from a phantom shore, and await the fading of the 
 ' phantom walls of this illusion.' 1 ' The Sun, the Moon, 
 the Stars,' these immensities which once affrighted uS, 
 are but the ' Vision of Him who reigns ' ^ : ' shadows con- 
 cealing the spiritual Being behind them,' 'making Him 
 broken gleams, and a stifled splendour and gloom' sign 
 and symbol of a division that will not everlastingly endure. 
 So man, in his 'little life,' can triumph over the vastness 
 of the sense-given world. Above the ' Giant Ages ' 
 stands the human soul, greater than them all, because the 
 creator of them all : behind the ebb and flow is the 
 spirit that cannot die. 
 
 For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill 
 And break the shore, and evermore 
 Make and break, and work their will : 
 Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll 
 Round us, each with different powers. 
 And other forms of life than ours, 
 What know we greater than the soul ? ' 
 
 Materia] things will go when their function is fulfilled ; 
 the thought of man is higher than them all. 
 
 Not raised for ever and ever. 
 
 But when their cycle is o'er, 
 The valley, the voice, the peak, the star 
 
 Pass, and are found no more. 
 
 The Peak is high and flush'd 
 
 At his highest with sunrise fire ; 
 The Peak is high, and the stars are high, 
 
 And the thought of a man is higher. * 
 
 1 "The Ancient Sage." = "The Higher Pantheism." 
 
 = "Death of the Duke of Wellington." 
 * " The Voice and the Peak." 
 
26 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 He that has made us with the power for such knowledge, 
 who has 'set the sphere of all the boundless Heavens 
 within the human eye/i has also 'sent the shadow of 
 Himself, the boundless, thro' the human soul': He 
 has ' meant us to be mightier by and by.' We can go 
 forward in the knowledge that ' the highest Hurnan Nature 
 is divine ' : till we ' find the deathless Angel seated in the 
 vacant tomb ' ; till we apprehend that this ' myriad 
 world ' 2 is but ' the shadow of the silent opener of the 
 gate ' : and that ' not one life shall be destroyed, . . . 
 when God hath made the pile complete.' ^ 
 
 So that Tennyson is able to return to the examination 
 of the problems of existence in the little corner in 
 which each of us lives with the conviction that the 
 ultimate questions connected with them may not, after 
 all, have been so completely changed since the time of 
 the formulation of the older ideas. Before, man was con- 
 ceived as journeying forward in time between two limiting 
 boundaries, behind which he could not penetrate ; the 
 solid earth beneath him, the curtain of the sky above 
 his head. Between these he possessed a real knowledge 
 of things ; beyond was the Eternal world, only visible 
 to the eye of faith. The disclosure of that which lay 
 behind these limitations appeared to throw back the 
 Eternal world somewhere beyond the confines of the 
 visible Universe. But now he recognises that it only 
 drew the limitations tighter around him ; for he has 
 discovered these limitations to be within himself; he 
 has learnt that he possesses no knowledge even of the 
 region between earth and sky of which he thought 
 himself to have acquired so clear an apprehension ; only 
 just outside himself is the horizon of the unknown. He 
 sees, as in a vision, darkly ; he is shut in by the veil 
 
 » " Sixty Years After." » "God and the Universe." 
 
 ^ " In Memoriam." 
 
VASTNESS 27 
 
 of the flesh ; as things appear to his senses, so only can 
 he apprehend them. And these can give him no 
 guarantee of the truthfulness of their representations 
 of the region behind them. We pass forward through 
 time, journeying- to an unknown future, as if swathed 
 in cotton-wool : of the nature of the forces which 
 beat upon the other side of our bandages we have 
 no means of comprehension. Or as if gazing through 
 smoked, distorting glasses, we cannot apprehend, by the 
 dim light that alone is able to penetrate through 
 them, the hidden glories of the Eternal World. Those 
 overpowering distances in Space, those unfathomable 
 periods of Time, what are they but the constructions 
 of our own minds, the attempts of our limited finite 
 intelligence to measure, and estimate, and gather 
 into unity, the infinite world beyond us; the abstraction 
 of the shadow of reality as thrown upon our minds ? 
 These may, indeed, represent symbolically something in 
 the real world. But they cannot be identified with 
 this real world ; they are a construction of our own 
 imagination ; a synthesis of shadows. For like prisoners 
 in a den of dim twilight, and chained so that they can- 
 not move, men see only their shadows, or the shadows 
 of others, thrown by the fire on to the opposite 
 wall of the cave : confined to this knowledge of reflec- 
 tions and echoes, they mistake these for real things, and 
 from them construct the picture of a permanent Universe. 
 But could they but once turn round and through the 
 opening of the cave behold the sun, never again would 
 they tremble at shadows : bom blind or deaf, and 
 suddenly healed, how they would 'glory in all the 
 splendours and the voices of the world ' ^ ; filled with 
 knowledge of this Beatific Vision, the illusion of the 
 senses would trouble them no more.^ 
 
 1 " The Ancient Sage." ^ Cf. Plato : " Republic," Bk. vii. 
 
28 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 This is Tennyson's answer to the problem of the 
 intolerable greatness of Space ; and by this answer he 
 declares his conviction jthat the results of empirical 
 investigation, however synthesised into broad, sweeping 
 generalisations, can never yield us knowledge of the 
 ultimate reality of the world. For empirical science 
 is but the unifying of sense impressions apprehended 
 by our minds and woven into a single picture ; but of 
 the cause of these impressions, or of the mechanism 
 producing this design, it can yield us no knowledge. 
 
 For all we know to the contrary there may be those 
 about us, the Powers of Good and Powers of 111, whom 
 we can neither see nor name ; ^ our • whole life may 
 be soaking in a spiritual atmosphere of which we have 
 no conception.' There is 
 
 The Abysm of all Abysms, beneath, within 
 The blue of sky and sea, the green of earth, ^ 
 
 to which human science can never penetrate. And for 
 the apprehension of the real nature of this we shall 
 require a method different from that by which we con- 
 structed the material world. Only, we may refuse to 
 be oppressed by the Vastness of this Universe. It is 
 a phantom — a phantom of our own dreams — a phantom 
 destined to vanish away. 
 
 And we, the poor earth's dying race, and yet 
 No phantoms, watching from a phantom shore 
 Await the last and largest sense to make 
 The phantom world of this illusion fade. 
 And show us that the world is wholly fair.' 
 
 Tennyson has exhibited the course of reasoning where- 
 by physical vastness loses its terrors. He can, henceforth, 
 
 ^ "Sixty Years. After." * "The Ancient Sage." '^ Ibid. 
 
VASTNESS 29 
 
 put aside the clashing of suns and stars, and con- 
 sider the problems ^ of life as they present themselves 
 in his own consciousness. And these in themselves 
 are sufficiently difficult of comprehension. The Universe 
 need no longer affright us through its greatness. But 
 what indeed is behind it.'' What is this reality for 
 which the human mind must continue to search, which 
 it has sought throughout so many generations ? Is it 
 for ever to be Unknowable to us ? Is everything a 
 phantom dream, life a ' series of phenomena cast upon a 
 background of nothingness ' } Or are we indeed justified 
 in re-stating the older principle, postulating the visible 
 world as the 'vision of Him who reigns,' and 'behind 
 the veil ' a God ' closer than breathing, nearer than hands 
 or feet ' .'' With the removal of the horror of Vastness, 
 this becomes the fundamental problem of the speculative 
 intellect. 
 
III. THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH 
 
 T^ENNYSON had escaped from the oppression of vast- 
 -'- ness by his apprehension of the sjnaabolic nature 
 of our sense-given knowledge. He was therefore able to 
 exhibit the individual boldly confronting and no longer 
 terrified by a Universe to the creation of which he has 
 himself contributed. The knowledge of the senses, he 
 finally concluded, yields us no direct knowledge of the 
 reality behind phenomena. But the recognition of this 
 fact has but little lightened the mystery of the world. 
 The nature of the reality which these changes symbolise ; 
 the relation between this ultimate source of being and 
 those persistent groups of sensations which we call in- 
 animate and living things ; this pain which is so real to 
 each individual consciousness ; the meaning of life to each 
 person and the plan of the life of the whole ; all the old 
 questions connected with these inexplicable elements of 
 existence arise again with all their constant importunity. 
 We may have logically established that space and spatial 
 change cannot be regarded as the final solution of the 
 riddle of the Universe ; but this is only a negative state- 
 ment, and advances us but a little way towards the desired 
 explanation. Are we driven by inexorable reasoning to 
 the assertion of the opposite position, the re-echo of 
 the whisper of the ' lying lip ' of Sorrow ? 
 
 • The stars,' she whispers ' blindly run ' ; 
 A web is wov'n across the sky ; 
 From out waste places comes a cry. 
 And murmurs from the dying sun : 
 
 30 
 
THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH 31 
 
 ' And all the phantom, Nature stands — 
 With all the music in her tone, 
 A hollow echo of my own, — 
 A hollow form with empty hands. '^ 
 
 And is the final word on the problem to be the re-assertion 
 of the conclusion of the eastern philosopher that " human 
 existence is not a dark spot in an ocean of dazzling 
 splendour, but a will-o'-the-wisp that merely intensifies 
 the murkiness of everlasting night ? " ^ Or is the forward 
 progress of things simply indifferent to the ends and 
 objects of man, with behind the visible scene an un- 
 knowable world of things in themselves standing ever 
 immutably apart from the phantom flux and flow of this 
 world of striving and change? Or, on the other hand, 
 may the contrary assertions be justified; of a Power 
 behind, working through darkness, speaking indirectly to 
 men through the realm of Nature or immediately as Spirit 
 to Spirit, guiding, moulding man, assisting his efforts, 
 interested in his upward progress, ensuring his final 
 triumph over 
 
 The steps of Time — the shocks of Chance, 
 The blows of Death?' 
 
 Never perhaps have these questions seemed more impor- 
 tunate than during the age of unrest which occupied the 
 middle period of the nineteenth century. It was an age 
 of great intellectual advance ; old landmarks were dis- 
 appearing, old systems crumbling away. Theories that 
 had once appeared indisputable had ceased to satisfy. 
 Men's minds had not yet been enabled to swing round 
 to the novel point of view : many looked out on the 
 astounding conclusions of natural science surprised and 
 bewildered ; numbers gave up in despair any attempt at 
 explanation and took refuge in an empty empiricism or a 
 
 ^ " In Memoriam," iii. 
 
 " Dillon : " Sceptics of the Old Testament," p. 33. 
 
 ' " In Memoriam," xcv. 
 
32 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 forced indifference. Tennyson, like others of the more 
 earnest thinkers, refused this easy course ; he .pressed 
 forward, striving to wrest the secret from the limits of 
 knowledge ; ever seeking to formulate some philosophy 
 which might appease the craving of humanity for light ; 
 determined to omit nothing from the range of his specula- 
 tion, never to shut his eyes to any facts however in- 
 explicable, never to rest until he had apprehended some 
 system which would satisfy the need and justify the 
 effort of man. 
 
 The whole difficulty arose from the apparent impossi- 
 bility of reconciling the present and past condition of the 
 world with any Divine or moral government ; the whole 
 problem which all recognised, although finding many 
 different solutions to it, was summed up by a contemporary 
 of Tennyson in one of the greatest passages of modern 
 literature : — 
 
 " I look out of myself into the world of men, and there 
 I see a sight which fills me with unspeakable distress. 
 The world seems simply to give the lie to that great 
 truth, of which my whole being is so full ; and the effect 
 upon me is, in consequence, as a matter of necessity, as 
 confusing as if it denied that I am in existence myself. 
 If I looked into a mirror, and did not see my face, I should 
 have the sort of feeling which actually comes upon me 
 when I look into this living busy world and see no re- 
 flection of its Creator. . . . The sight of the world is 
 nothing else than the prophets' scroll, full of lamentations, 
 and mourning, and woe. 
 
 "To consider the world in its length and breadth, its 
 various history, the many races of men, their starts, their 
 fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts ; and then 
 their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship ; their 
 enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achieve- 
 ments and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long- 
 
THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH 33 
 
 standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a 
 superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn 
 out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, 
 as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes, 
 the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, 
 his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the 
 disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of 
 evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and 
 intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, 
 the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole 
 race so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle's 
 words ' having no hope and without God in the world ' — 
 aU this is a vision to dizzy and appal, and inflicts upon 
 the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is 
 absolutely beyond human solution." ^ 
 
 A ' vision to dizzy and appal ' it is to all contem- 
 plating it in its entirety ; ' and although few possess the 
 courage thus to consider it as Tennyson or as Newman 
 considered it, in its wide sweep and all-inclusive greatness, 
 yet even the broken fragments of this vision have per- 
 plexed the minds and troubled the hearts of all too many 
 inquirers. The question is there, staring before all, im- 
 peratively demanding an answer ; the difficulties only 
 increase with the advancement of knowledge, the neces- 
 sity of insistence upon some sort of reply grows more 
 emphatic. What solution can we obtain which will 
 recognise the true facts and yet reconcile them, which 
 will be capable of combining the apparent existence now 
 of blind chance, now of definite evil, with the faith in an 
 Omnipotent Providence who is All-Merciful and All- Wise .'' 
 
 With varying force but always present, the problem has 
 pressed upon the minds of thinkers from the days of 
 remote antiquity. And those who have attempted an 
 answer, and not relinquished in despair the search for light, 
 
 ^ Newman, "Apologia," p. 241. 
 C 
 
34 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 have adopted in the main one of two possible alternatives, 
 have formulated replies which, in effect, have been re- 
 peated with but little variation until our own time. 
 There is first the answer of Fatalism; the answer, for 
 example, given by some pious scribe in the speech of Elihu 
 interpolated in the Book of Job, one of the earliest 
 attempts to consider adequately and fearlessly the problem 
 of evil. The author of the drama cannot reconcile the 
 spectacle of innocent suffering with belief in an All- 
 Perfect God. Elihu's answer to his difficulty is that any 
 such speculation is an impious questioning of the designs 
 of a Power so infinitely transcending our finite minds that 
 we cannot hope to comprehend His methods of working. 
 God is all-powerful ; our duty is not to trouble ourselves 
 concerning His actions, but to take with thankfulness 
 whatever He is pleased to send us. Our inquiries vidll only 
 provoke Him to anger and sore displeasure. God is 
 great, is the reply to all difficulty, and we are but as 
 worms in His sight. ' I will answer thee that God is 
 greater than man,' says Elihu, ' why dost thou strive 
 against Him ; for He giveth not account of any of His 
 matters.' i ' Remember that thou magnify His work 
 which men behold.'^ 'Behold God is great and we 
 know Him not ; neither can the number of His years be 
 searched out.' ^ ' Shall it be told Him that I speak } If 
 a man speak surely he shall be swallowed up.'* 
 
 Elihu's answer to the difficulty which troubled the 
 author of the Book of Job has been repeated at intervals 
 throughout the long progress of human history. Behold 
 God is in heaven: He hath done whatsoever pleaseth 
 Him. Canst thou by searching find out God .? His ways 
 are wonderful, and past finding out. This solution of 
 the problem has been adopted again and again by the 
 orthodox adherents of dead religions, to stifle speculative 
 ^ Jobxxxiii. 12, 13. ^ job xxxvi. 24. ' Job xxxvi. 26. ^Jobxxxix. 20. 
 
THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH 35 
 
 inquiry amongst those who could not accept their teach- 
 ing, or reconcile the divergent evidences of facts as to 
 His Nature. 'Who art thou that judgest thy Maker? 
 Be thankful lest some worse judgment befal thee.' And 
 the reply has been petrified into religious systems, in 
 which worship is offered to this unknown God, designed 
 to appease His wrath by blind acceptance of His doings. 
 Such, for example, was the creed of Calvinism, which 
 acknowledged the incompatibility of its conception of 
 the originating will with its conception of an All-Merciful 
 Goodness, but holding that some souls were created only 
 for dishonour and others for divine election, was forced 
 to take refuge in the inscrutable power of God, and to 
 praise Omnipotent Might, even where it appeared irrecon- 
 cilable with ethical perfection. 
 
 God whom I praise : how could I praise 
 If such as I might understand, 
 Make out, and reckon on His ways 
 And bargain for His love?' 
 
 And the same answer appears in many modern forms 
 of religion, from the speculative theology which would 
 invite us to worship a Deity of Omnipotent power, 
 although His justice is not as our justice, nor His ways 
 as our ways, nor His mercy as the mercy of men ; down 
 to that philosophy which finds a vague emotional satis- 
 faction in the contemplation of an Unknowable, lying 
 behind phenomena, in its own essential nature for ever 
 concealed from us. 
 
 But none of these systems based on the mere assertion 
 of the Magnitude and Infinite Strength of the power 
 forming the reality behind material things can ever per- 
 manently satisfy the aspirations of humanity and the 
 yearning of the soul towards God. Although they may 
 form a refuge, in times of perplexity, from the mass of 
 1 Browning : "Johannes Agricola in Meditation." 
 
36 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 facts which appear hopelessly confused and chaotic ; yet 
 they are unable to provide either justification for moral 
 effort or the spiritual consolation which is demanded 
 by the religious consciousness. And in consequence they 
 -^all inevitably fall back into either a blind fatalism or 
 a system of fierce defiance. The first of these, the 
 'Atheism of force,' the worship of mere might apart 
 from goodness, ultimately produces a dull acquiescence in 
 things as they are accompanied by the pious assertion that 
 God is great. The reaction from this, on the other hand, 
 throws men into resolute opposition to a God who appears 
 unconformable with their highest ethical ideal. Why, it 
 is said, should I obey Him .'' Why should I be crushed 
 by His greatness ? What right has mere overwhelming 
 power to demand my allegiance or my love .'' Suppose, 
 despite all, I defy Him : the worst He can do is to send 
 me to hell, and what then ? Such is the ' Everlasting,No ' 
 of Carlyle. " ' Behold thou art fatherless, outcast, and the 
 universe is Mine,' to which my whole Me now made answer, 
 ' I am not Thine but Free, and forever hate thee.' " i 
 
 Something more is required, then, beyond belief in the 
 infinite greatness of God and the unsearchableness of His 
 ways among men. And a thinker living before the writer 
 of the Book of Job had found a different solution to a 
 problem essentially of the same nature. The prophet 
 Habakkuk, in the dying days of the kingdom of Judah, 
 beholding the apparent triumph of the wicked, and 
 oppressed with doubts as to the possibility of reconciling 
 this fact with his faith in the goodness of God, had 
 passionately sought for the removal of his difficulty. 
 " Upon my watch-tower I will stand and take my post on 
 the rampart. I will watch to see what He will say to me, 
 and what answer I get to my plea.'' ^ " How long, O 
 
 1 Carlyle: " Sartor Resartus"—" The Everlasting No." 
 '■ Habakkuk ii. i. 
 
THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH 37 
 
 Jehovah, have I called, and Thou hearest not ? I cry to 
 Thee violence^ and thou sendest no help." 1 And down 
 from his watch-tower the prophet had brought back his 
 answer. " The Vision is for an appointed time ; yet it 
 hurries to the end and shall not fail. Though it tarry, 
 wait thou for it ; because it will surely come, it will 
 not tarry : . . . but the just shall live by faith." ^ The 
 just shall live by faith ; only by faith that His postulate 
 is true, that God is not simply great, but ' All-loving too,' 
 can the seeker after righteousness find adequate motive 
 in his effort after personal and universal good. And 
 the eifort called forth by the acceptance of this faith 
 will react on his belief itself, until gradually but con- 
 tinually the darkness is lightened and the burden of 
 doubt rolls away. 
 
 This is the second answer to the perpetual inquiry. 
 And all through the disordered transitory centuries since 
 that first message from the watch-tower of the prophet 
 this answer has been re-echoed by those who have been 
 able to discern but little good in the present, or guidance 
 for the future. It is the basing of the whole personality 
 in all its actions upon the assumption that the aspiration 
 and the effort of men is not being expended entirely for 
 nought. By 'faith and faith alone' man prays to a God 
 whom he asserts to be not only Infinite Power but also 
 ' Immortal Love ' ; believing where he cannot prove, 
 trusting that the little systems of human knowledge are 
 but broken lights of the glory which no man can approach 
 unto, ' he thinks he was not made to die ' ; and his highest 
 life is dependent on belief in the justice of the Maker of 
 Life and of Death. ^ Absolute proof of the existence of a 
 Perfect God is from the nature of our present limitations 
 impossible. But the ' one hope of our poor wayward race ' 
 rests on faith in a God 'behind the veil,' All- Powerful, 
 ' Habakkuk i. 2. ' Ibid. ii. 3. ^ " In Memoriam," Introduction. 
 
38 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 yet All-Just and All-Mercifulj who delighteth in goodness 
 and hateth evil, who will ensure in some way that at 
 present we cannot even dimly comprehend that ' good 
 will be the final goal of ill.' By steadfast adherence to 
 this faith, despite all facts which apparently deny it, by 
 faithfulness in basing our whole conduct on the possibility 
 of its truth despite absence of logical proof, apprehen- 
 sion of its reality will gradually come home to us, things 
 which were dark will become clear, and justification for 
 the effort and the toil which we have accepted will 
 ultimately be assured. 
 
 This position of the prophet of Israel is the substantial 
 position adopted by the poet of the nineteenth century. 
 Knowledge of facts, making towards belief in a beneficent 
 Providence has immensely increased since that far-distant 
 time ; but so also has the knowledge of facts appearing 
 to run directly counter to this belief. Doubts and 
 difficulties pressed around Tennyson with relentless force : 
 one problem after another faced him ; — premature death, 
 blind forces working through the darkness, the doubtful 
 proofs of a life hereafter, the carelessness, the indifference, 
 the apparent waste of love and effort and life in the 
 world of Nature and of Man. What did it all mean ? 
 To what end was all this tumultuous strife directed ? 
 Is it directed by an indifferent God, or a powerless God, 
 or no God at all but the blind drift of things through 
 an empty sky } Tennyson replies. We have no means of 
 certainly judging. Take the whole problem, the Universe 
 as we know it in all its contradictory elements, and by 
 pure logical argument we can arrive at no indubitable 
 conclusion as to its ultimate nature. Somewhere we must 
 make the leap in the dark ; somewhere we must start for- 
 ward on the venture of faith. And by this faith we shall 
 be justified. The truth will come home to us if we stake 
 our whole personality on its reality ; if we act as if human 
 
THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH 39 
 
 effort did count for something, and the struggle after 
 goodness was not only a grotesque and transient dream. 
 
 This man throws himself on God, and unperplexed, 
 Seeking, shall find Him.^ 
 
 We must trust in the goodness of God ; trust in God 
 as our Father who will hear our cry, though we be 
 but as children ' crying in the night ' : that all our 
 striving is not wasted breath ; that, in the full knowledge 
 of the end, the progress towards it will be made clear ; — 
 
 that somehow good 
 Will be the final goal of ill. 
 
 That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
 
 That not one life shall be destroy'd, 
 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 When God hath made the pile complete.^ 
 
 Though the vision tarry, "wait thou for it : because it 
 will surely come, it will not tarry : but the Just shall 
 live by faith. 
 
 To put the whole question in another form : the 
 problem is, how to reconcile the existence of evil with 
 any form of Theism whatever. To this question, it has 
 been said, there are many replies, but no answer. 
 'Against this immovable barrier of the existence of evil 
 the waves of philosophy have dashed themselves unceas- 
 ingly since the birthday of human thought, and have 
 retired broken and powerless, without displacing the 
 minutest fragment of the stubborn rock, without softening 
 one feature of its dark and rugged surface.' ^ In the 
 pursuit of that systematic thought concerning the problems 
 of experience which we call philosophy, we can continue 
 satisfactory development along two lines, unifying diverse 
 
 * Browning: " A Grammarian's Funeral." 
 
 ^ " In Memoriam," liv. 
 
 2 Mansel on the " Limits of Religious Thought," Lect. vii. 
 
40 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 phenomena, ascertaining general laws behind particular 
 examples, until we finally arrive at two universally- 
 established and apparently clear principles. And here 
 we suddenly come to a full stop. We have reduced 
 everything to two fundamental propositions, and these 
 appear mutually destructive. On the one hand, that the 
 Universe is fundamentally perfecfT on the other, the 
 presence of imperfection : in theological language, the 
 existence of God and the existence of evil. And appar- 
 ently we can go no farther. We can retrace our steps 
 along each line, without finding a flaw in any link in the 
 chain ; but placing one proposition against the other, 
 both representing facts, we can see no possibility of 
 subordinating the one to the other, or of including 
 both in some higher synthesis. If the adoption of im- 
 perfection was necessary for the attainment of greater 
 perfection, then God was not originally perfect. If the 
 adoption of imperfection was not necessary, then why 
 does imperfection exist ? From this dilemma, to our 
 finite intellects, there appears no way of escape.^ 
 
 The same problem is presented in a thousand different 
 ways wherever the two lines of reasoning, conflicting in 
 their ultimate divergence, encounter each other on 
 lower planes of thought. The direct experience of 
 evil, innocent suffering, aimless pain, apparent waste, 
 are all elements in the general proposition declaring 
 the presence of imperfection in the world. Over against 
 these can be set the effort of man, the consciousness of 
 beauty and moral goodness, the continual strife after 
 the ideal, the progress of humanity ever upward ' working 
 out the beast' as if towards higher life, the passionate 
 yearning towards ' the New Heavens and the New Earth 
 wherein dwelleth righteousness.' And so at length we 
 
 ' Cf. McTaggart ; " Studies in Hegelian Dialectic"—" The relation 
 of the Dialectic to Time." 
 
THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH 41 
 
 arrive at a blank outlook, and realise that, with our present 
 limited imperfect knowledge, intellectual consideration 
 will carry us no farther. 
 
 Tennyson declines to be content with this impossible 
 conclusion. He clearly recognises this knowledge, and 
 the limitation of human intelligence. Yet he will not 
 adopt the ready expedient of shutting his eyes to either 
 set of facts. To take refuge in a blank atheism would 
 be to neglect the one chain of reasoning. To refuse to 
 acknowledge the evil of the world, and assert a blind 
 optimism, would be to neglect the other. To suspend 
 judgment, and refuse to commit oneself to either 
 alternative, is impossible in a world where action is 
 imperative : every word and deed, every conscious choice 
 of daily life must depend implicitly, if not explicitly, 
 on the decision which is accepted. We are compelled, by 
 the conditions of our existence in a world of change, to 
 act as if we had solved the problem ; and the theoretical 
 oscillation, which might be possible in a world of thought, 
 becomes intolerable in a world of free choice between 
 conflicting claims. 
 
 And here, Tennyson asserts, is the true sphere for the 
 operation of faith. Faith furnishes the impulse and 
 predominant motive demanded for action, by the bold 
 assertion that, in some manner unknown to us, these 
 contradictory propositions are reconcilable. It emphasises 
 our refusal to shut our eyes to either facts of experience ; 
 but it trusts that in some higher unity, the nature of 
 which we cannot even conceive, these two contrary proposi- 
 tions may be harmonised. To every man, to the determined 
 Pyrrhonist or most convinced Sceptic, some measure of 
 faith is necessary for the transition from his metaphysic 
 to his practical philosophy. Recognise that evil possesses 
 real existence, and we can assail it, and battle with it, 
 and spend our lives in conflict with it; but for support 
 
42 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 in this combatj and for motive in the long day's struggle, 
 we must also maintain faith in the reality of goodness, 
 and the unity of the world, and the ultimate triumph of 
 righteousness. And although, intellectually, we may have 
 no glimmerings of a possible harmony ; yet if we are 
 faithful to our belief we may find other reasons for ad- 
 hering to it. Doubts will still trouble us ; but deep in 
 the human heart there will arise a conviction which no 
 logical argument can destroy, a confident apprfehension 
 that 'all is well.' ' Le cceur a ses raisons,' says Pascal; 
 ' que la raison ne connait pas.' ^ In the love of the highest, 
 in the basing of the whole life on the possibility of 
 the reality of righteousness, in the assertion of the 
 ultimate triumph of goodness, there will come to each 
 one moments when he seems to see into the heart of 
 things by direct spiritual insight ; when the sickly cloud 
 of doubt surrounding him is dispelled for a brief space, 
 during which he can attain renewed strength for the 
 continuance of that long ' battle in the mist,' where ' all 
 of high and holy dies away.' 
 
 This, the central principle of Tennyson's teaching, is 
 summed up and clearly expressed in that great poem in 
 which he traces his own mental progress from doubts 
 born of sorrow, through wild unrest, to ultimate peace. 
 It is the principle to which he always eventually returns 
 from ' the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts ' ; 
 and its acceptance is lus final word on the whole contro- 
 versy. The thought of the poem advances in periodical 
 rhythmic progress : doubts and difficulties, followed 
 by an answer ; more difficulties, again an answer ; and, 
 finally, a summary and conclusion of the whole matter. 
 And in each of the answers, and in the final sum- 
 mary, the same result is attained ; each essentially con- 
 sists of an appeal from the hard logic of facts to that 
 ^ Pascal: " Pensees." 
 
THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH 43 
 
 faith which refuses to acquiesce in the counsels of 
 despair. 
 
 But there is in each case a definite advance from the 
 preceding position ; the confidence increases, the doubts 
 become shaken ; finally, ' steadfast rather than trium- 
 phant ' at the close of the poem, although worn and 
 wearied with the long struggle, faith remains master of 
 the field. 
 
 The bald statement of the alternative, and the definite 
 refusal to accept it, is the first result attained. Here is 
 no trace of the subsequent note of victory ; the poet 
 simply turns away from the terrible doubt, casting himself 
 blindly upon the ' great world's altar stairs ' ; stretching 
 ' lame hands of faith ' in the despairing hope of ulti- 
 mately attaining light beyond the darkness. From over- 
 whelming sorrow at the death of his friend, he passes to 
 the consideration of death as Universal ; and from the 
 realisation of this inevitable destruction, to the contem- 
 plation of Nature, lending ' evil dreams,' apparently so 
 careless of the single life. And then there rises before 
 him^ the awful vision of a progress, not merely wasteful of 
 the individual alone, but careless of the type also, in 
 ceaseless change, in continual, apparently purposeless, 
 production of new forms, developing, flourishing, and 
 passing away. And so at length he is brought face to 
 face with the final question — Is it all blind chance ? 
 Is man to perish in a similar manner ? Shall he 
 
 Man her last work, who seemed so fair. 
 Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 
 Who roU'd the psalm to wintry skies, 
 
 Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer. 
 
 Who trusted God was love indeed 
 
 And love creation's final law — 
 
 The' Nature, red in tooth and claw 
 With ravine, shriek'd against his creed. 
 
44 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 Who loved, who sufFer'd countless ills, 
 Who battled for the True, the Just, 
 Be blown about the desert dust. 
 
 Or seal'd within the iron hills ? 
 
 No more ? A monster then, a dream, 
 
 A discord. Dragons of the prime 
 
 That tare each other in their slime 
 Were mellow music match'd with him. ' 
 
 And such is his first answer : to state the whole problenij 
 and from the mere statement to obtain courage to resist 
 a premature solution, which must be destructive of hope 
 and paralysing to effort. The clear recognition of the 
 alternatives throws him back on the assertion that, unless 
 proved beyond the possibility of doubt, he will not accept 
 the hopeless conclusion : that man, who possesses these 
 capacities and potentialities, cannot heedlessly perish ; 
 that fate must demand a different answer, and a purpose 
 ' behind the veil.' 
 
 And so he passes on, through many changes of thought 
 and varied speculation, to his second reply to the difficul- 
 ties surrounding him. The same process is here repeated : 
 once again the individual is thrown back from ' the tokens' 
 so faint of a protecting Providence ' in ' eagle's wing and 
 insect's eye,' to the contemplation of the possibility of 
 an ' ever-breaking shore that tumbled in the Godless 
 deep.' And once again he definitely refuses to accept 
 this solution of the enigma of human life. But the answer 
 here is not, as in the first case, one of simple denial : 
 experience has brought knowledge, and a clearer insight : 
 the belief that all is not in vain has received confirmation 
 other than that given by the logical reason : and it is now 
 'like a man in wrath' that the heart protests the faith 
 by which the righteous shall be justified. 
 
 1 " In Memoriam," Ivi. 
 
THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH 45 
 
 That which we dare invoke to bless ; 
 
 Our dearest faith, our ghastliest doubt ; 
 
 He, They, One, All : within, without ; 
 The power in darkness whom we guess ; 
 
 1 found Him not in world or sun. 
 
 Or Eagle's wing, or insect's eye ; 
 
 Nor thro' the questions men may try, 
 The petty cobwebs we have spun : 
 
 If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep, 
 
 I heard a voice ' believe no more,' 
 
 And heard an ever-breaking shore 
 That tumbled in the Godless deep ; 
 
 A warmth within the breast would melt 
 The freezing reason's colder part, 
 ^ And like a man in wrath the heart 
 
 Stood up and answered ' I have felt.' 
 
 No, like a child in doubt and fear ; 
 
 But that blind clamour made me wise : 
 
 Then was I as a child that cries, 
 But, crying, knows his father near ; 
 
 And what I am beheld again . 
 
 What is, and no man understands ; 
 
 And out of darkness came the hands 
 That reach thro' nature, moulding men.^ 
 
 These stanzas sum up the fundamental principle of 
 Tennyson's teaching. By the aid of this faith, sometimes 
 triumphant, based on immediate conviction, sometimes 
 weak and uncertain, almost overwhelmed by fresh mani- 
 festations of evil, but always maintained, never relin- 
 quished, never quite destroyed, Tennyson can sum up 
 his great poem in words of direct triumphant appeal to 
 that ' Immortal love ' which he postulates behind the 
 ' vain show of things.' 
 
 ^ " In Memoriam," cxxiv. 
 
46 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
 
 Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
 By faith, and faith alone embrace 
 
 Believing where we cannot prove ; 
 
 We have but faith : we cannot know ; 
 
 For knowledge is of things we see ; 
 
 And yet we trust it comes from Thee, 
 A beam in darkness.' 
 
 ThiSj then, was Tennyson's message. It was no new dis- 
 covery, no suddenly announced gospel, carrying immediate 
 conviction to all who listened. But it was accepted and 
 reiterated despite facts and theories of the connections of 
 facts which seemed to vitiate its conclusions. Established 
 near to the commencement of his poetical career, it was 
 maintained until the end with passionate emphasis as 
 the only possible clue to the tangled maze of life. 
 All his discussion and speculation concerning the nature 
 of God, Self, or Immortality ultimately termmated in 
 this position: — There are indications pointing to the 
 existence of an all-perfect God, to the reality of the 
 Self, to the Immortality of each individual personality. 
 And then again there are facts of experience which 
 seem directly to deny these possibiUties. The only 
 possibility is faith that these represent realities and not 
 illusions ; all other theories leave life meaningless, and 
 effort vain. We must cling to the hope that some day 
 we shall be answered and vindicated in our belief. The 
 righteous shall live by his stedfastness : the just shall 
 live by faith. 
 
 ' " In Memoriam," Introduction. 
 
IV. GOD 
 
 T^O those who have once affirmed Spirit to be the 
 -^ reality of the Universe, who have definitely accepted 
 the idealistic position as being the only position in any 
 way reconcilable with the facts of the world, a further 
 problem presents itself. A contest arises between the 
 claims of the particular and the universal, the individual 
 and the whole, the self and God. Are we to conceive 
 as ultimate the selves, the personalities of which alone 
 we are directly conscious ? Or are we to attempt to 
 resolve these into some more ultimate element ? If 
 we adopt the first course we are naturally led on to 
 regard each individual as' immortal, enduring, indestruc- 
 tible, beyond the influence of change, existing firm and 
 unmoved amidst the ebb and flow of the transitory 
 phenomena surrounding it. If we emphasise the second 
 we acknowledge only God as real, and determine the 
 individual self either as possessing no real existence, or 
 as part of the One, the apparent separateness being a 
 delusion caused by the subjective illusory forms of Time 
 and Space ; or as an emanation from the essential Spiritual 
 reality, coming out from Him into the phantom world of 
 phenomena and passing back to Him again in the 
 extra-phenomenal world. 
 
 And so we can recognise two distinct tendencies in 
 idealistic philosophy, according as the claims of God or 
 the claims of self are emphasised. The former view has 
 obtained the adherence of many great names, through 
 many changing systems. It varies from the pantheism 
 of Spinoza finding the existence of all things in God, 
 to the modern idealism of Lotze apprehending God as 
 47 
 
48 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 a personality and the Universe as an aesthetic unity 
 but unable from this to deduce the immortality or 
 permanence of the individual self The former views 
 the world of time and change as illusion, and regards 
 the one unchangeable Substance beneath all things as 
 alone real. The latter acknowledge a certain separate- 
 ness in the conscious personality, but, asserting that the 
 importance of any part lies solely in its relation to 
 the whole, is compelled to acknowledge that only as 
 necessary for the fulfilment of the plan of that whole 
 will the individual come into being, and therefore that 
 when no longer needed it will disappear for ever. 
 On the other side, amongst those who have strenuously 
 asserted the indubitable reality of the isolated self we 
 find Leibniz with his developing monads, each real, 
 each eternally existing, each for ever separate and alone ; 
 and Kant with his emphatic insistence, in the sphere 
 of the practical reason, on the power of the uncon- 
 ditioned Will. The tendency of the former class is 
 towards a pantheistic position, the sanction for morality 
 being based on the ideal of the whole more than on 
 the development of the individual, the ' harmony of 
 things ' rather than personal happiness. The tendency 
 of the latter is to neglect or to deny the essential 
 relation of the self to the whole, to found its ethical 
 systems on the redressing of present inequalities in a 
 future life, and as the goal of effort to look to the final 
 perfection of the individual soul. 
 
 Of these two classes Tennyson by all his instincts was 
 drawn towards the latter. The certain and absolute con- 
 viction of the reality of the self had first driven him to his 
 spiritual philosophy. In a world where all else might be 
 dreams and shadows he asserted with unshaken conviction 
 the reality of the self here and now. This assertion from 
 the nature of the case was unprovable by logical reasoning, 
 
GOD 49 
 
 being the starting-ground of all reason, the one hypothesis 
 necessary before reason could commence to operate. It 
 was the re-echo of the ' Cogito, ergo sum ' of Descartes ; 
 or rather the granting of a more perfect certainty, based 
 on the consciousness of the present existence of the whole 
 personality, one and undivisible : more especially on that 
 feeling which is most indubitably real : ' amo, ergo sum.' 
 I am, I love : loving, I know that I am : and this con- 
 viction no argument can move or destroy. This reality 
 of self is the groundwork or basis of any further con- 
 structive belief; and no other principle possesses for 
 Tennyson the same validity. 
 
 Descartes, after the assertion of the self, passed on to 
 an assertion with equal certainty of God, as a reality of 
 whose existence the self possessed clear and distinct ideas, 
 and a consciousness no less firm and unchangeable. And 
 since his day other thinkers, confronted with endless 
 difficulties in their attempts by empirical reasoning to 
 deduce the being of God, have fallen back on this 
 'illative sense,' on the direct intuition of His existence. 
 ''Of all points of faith," said a great contemporary of 
 Tennyson, " the being of God is, to my own apprehension, 
 encompassed with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon 
 our minds with most power." ^ Tennyson could not re- 
 echo this statement. It could not be said of him as was 
 said of another that 'he at least . . . was very sure of 
 God.' ^ Termyson apprehended himself, here and now ; 
 Tie found himself drawn with passionate affection towards 
 others like himself; through the reality of this love, he 
 was assured of their existence also. But he appears to 
 have possessed no direct consciousness of the permanent 
 Being of God ; the attitude of mind of those who are 
 filled with the Divine Presence, who can live 'as ever 
 in the Great Taskmaster's eye,' he could not follow ; and 
 
 ' Newman : "Apologia," p. 239. " Browning: "La Saisiar.'' 
 
 D 
 
50 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 the existence of a Personality behind phenomena, which 
 he was compelled to maintain from ethical and moral 
 considerations, never yielded to him that direct know- 
 ledge of the presence of God which has been an 
 illuminating influence on so many of the greatest religious 
 thinkers throughout all ages. 
 
 But Tennyson found, as all other inquirers have found, 
 that it is impossible to rest in this mere affirmation of the 
 reality of the personal self, in the midst of a world of 
 inexplicable phenomena. He was compelled to go on 
 searching, to attempt to explain the existence of this self, 
 its power of choice, its consciousness of a moral law which 
 it ought to obey, its history, its progress, its apparent 
 final destruction. The knowledge of God does not come 
 to him as a direct intuition, expressing absolute conviction 
 despite contradictory appearances, but as a secondary 
 deduction, obtainable only after long and painful journey- 
 ings, and 'by faith and faith alone' maintained. In this 
 pilgrimage it was the intellectual craving for unity, the 
 recognition of the impossibility of resting content in an 
 unreconciled dualism which drove him forward. 
 
 Tennyson never appears to have experienced that desire 
 for union with the Infinite Being who is the source of all 
 life and the Guide of all mankind, which has driven so 
 many along 'the road to God.' "My soul is athirst for 
 God," is the cry of the Psalmist of old, " yea, even for 
 the living God : when shall I come to appear before the 
 presence of God ? " i " Too late have I known Thee," is 
 the lament of a modern thinker, " O Thou ancient Truth ; 
 too late have I found Thee, First and only Fair." This 
 is a feeling ahen to Tennyson ; even in his firmest faith 
 God remained for him but dimly apprehended, and 
 symbolically only, under the conception of personality; 
 never became a Presence with which he could enter into 
 1 Psalm xlii. 
 
GOD 51 
 
 relation, the satisfaction of the yearning and the desire of 
 men. 
 
 It was the difficulties of life, 'the burden and the 
 mystery ... of all this unintelligible world/ which started 
 him on his search for a solution. This search was intensi- 
 fied by the tremendous shock of the death of Arthur 
 Hallam ; the craving for light upon the meaning of this 
 blow urged him forward to inquiry as to the possibility of 
 the existence of an Eternal Justice, which should one day 
 make ' the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.' 
 
 The premature death of his dearly-loved friend aroused 
 him from acceptance of things as they appear and from 
 acquiescence in orthodox explanations to face the realities 
 of life ; and in the long battle with doubt which resulted, 
 Tennyson found himself compelled to abandon one after 
 another the older statements of the proofs of the existence 
 of God. 'Doubts of sorrow born,' gradually destroyed 
 for him the validity of the arguments which might have 
 satisfied him in times of ease and contentment. The 
 evidence from teleology of a beneficent Creator, the 
 interpretation of God in Nature as a reasoned proof from 
 the goodness and skill and adaptation of means to ends, as 
 formally stated proved powerless to withstand the new 
 principles of evolution. Death, apparently purposeless, pro- 
 duced the fear whether Life itself may not be purposeless 
 also, ' a striving and a striving and an ending in nothing.' 
 
 ' The stars,' she whispers, ' blindly run ' ; 
 A web is wov'n across the sky ; 
 From out waste places comes a cry. 
 And murmurs from the dying sun : 
 
 ' And all the phantom, Nature stands — 
 With all the music in her tone, 
 A hollow echo of my own, — 
 A hollow form with empty hands.' ^ 
 
 1 " In Memoriam," iii. 
 
52 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 Final causes appeared to him no longer discoverable in 
 the world of phenomena, or only read into it by the 
 anthropomorphic tendencies in the mind of man. Man 
 has ends which he designs, by the conscious forecasting 
 which is the motive - power and guide of his volition ; 
 Nature drifts on around him, indifferent, careless, ap- 
 parently without purpose, or as if ruled by 'a maniac 
 scattering dust.' Arthur Hallam had seemed fitted to 
 take the highest place, to direct and influence the ways 
 of men ; a sudden chance shock and he had vanished 
 without a cry. So all Nature seemed to regard with 
 indifference the passions and strivings of men ; no 
 reasonable end was discernible in her action, but 'mere 
 weather, doing and undoing without end.' 
 
 Nor could Tennyson find satisfaction in the other formal 
 proofs of the existence of God. The ontological argument 
 assumed the necessity of the conception of a Being 
 comprehending all reality. And in later years this 
 demonstration of God's existence had come into favovir, 
 as a premature attempt to find a common ground of 
 reconciliation of all speculative creeds. Whatever is 
 real, it was said, is God. Something is real ; therefore 
 something is God : an argument as logically indisputable 
 as it was spiritually unsatisfying. God, for Tennyson, to 
 satisfy the aspirations of man, and make life worth the 
 living, must be something more than a name for whatever 
 is ; equally applicable to a ' God of Eternal Rage ' or an 
 ' idiot power ' ' controlling a Fatherless Hell,' i or a limit- 
 less and soulless Universe drifting no whither through 
 everlasting night. 
 
 From these proofs Tennyson was driven back to the 
 assertion of the existence of God as necessary for the 
 satisfaction of the demands of the human race. Voltaire's 
 statement that If there be no God it would be necessary 
 
 ^ See " Despair." 
 
GOD 53 
 
 to invent one, although enunciated first in a spirit of 
 mockery, yet contains this germ of truth : that men cannot 
 be content in a Godless Universe. With a clear acknow- 
 ledgment that there is no purpose behind the changes of 
 things, and no working towards an end, all striving must 
 become aimless and life eventually intolerable. "What 
 ' In Memoriam ' did for us," says a great thinker, " was to 
 impress on us the ineffaceable and ineradicable conviction 
 that humanity will not and cannot acquiesce in a Godless 
 world : the ' man in men ' will not do this, whatever in- 
 dividual man may do, whatever they may temporarily feel 
 themselves driven to do, by following methods which they 
 cannot abandon to the conclusions to which these methods 
 at present seem to lead." i 
 
 So that time after time we find Tennyson, confronted 
 with the difficulties of life and the 'tokens so faint and 
 broken of a superintending design,' suddenly throw his 
 doubts from him and fall back on the simple assertion 
 of faith and the appeal to the one that he feels is Lord 
 of All. 
 
 I falter where I firmly trod, 
 
 And falling with my weight of cares 
 Upon the great world's altar-stairs 
 
 That slope thro' darkness up to God, 
 
 I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope 
 And gather dust and chaif, and call 
 To what I feel is Lord of all. 
 
 And faintly trust the larger hope.^ 
 
 This trust is the only refuge from despair and self- 
 inflicted escape from the persistent tragedy of life. 
 
 My God, I would not live 
 Save that I think this gross hard-seeming world 
 Is our misshaping vision of the Powers 
 Behind the world, that make our griefs our gains.' 
 
 ^ H. Sidgwick in Tennyson's " Life," vol. i. p. 302. 
 2 "In Memoriam," Iv. ' " The Sisters." 
 
54 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 'Take away belief in the self-conscious personality of 
 God/ he said, ' and you take away the backbone of the 
 world.' ' On God and God-like men we build our trust.' 
 ' I should infinitely rather feel myself the most miserable 
 wretch on the face of the earth with a God above, than 
 the highest type of man standing alone.' ^ And this 
 postulate of faith in the end becomes justified : the 
 reaching out into the darkness is not without response 
 from the region beyond ; and the promise is as true now 
 as when first delivered, ' If with all your hearts ye truly 
 seek Me, ye shall ever surely find me.' The faith that is 
 at first blind and despairing, gathering only 'dust and 
 chaff,' by persistence and strenuous effort ultimately rises 
 into something like a triumphant certainty, able to con- 
 front with calm steadfastness, the 'burden and the 
 mystery' of the world. So that, at the end of the long 
 search Tennyson can speak of the definite knowledge, 
 asserted by his whole being, of 
 
 That friend of mine who lives in God, 
 
 That God, which ever lives and loves, 
 One God, one law, one element. 
 And one far-off divine event, 
 
 To which the whole creation moves." 
 
 Of the nature of God as' Infinite Reality in whom all things 
 live and move and have their being, Tennyson acknowledges 
 that finite minds can have but imperfect comprehension. 
 '"I dare hardly name His Name,' he would say, and 
 accordingly he named Him in ' the Ancient Sage ' the 
 Nameless." ^ Only he would postulate that God must be 
 at least equal to the highest development we know. The 
 highest thing we know is human Personality : God must 
 be at least personal. Although ' our little systems ' are 
 but ' broken lights ' of the One eternal Being, yet in 
 
 ^ " Life," vol. i. p. 311. " " In Memoriam," Epilogue. 
 
 ' " Life,'' vol. i. p. 311. 
 
GOD 5S 
 
 the highest manifestations of Personality, in the self which 
 we now but imperfectly comprehend, we come nearest to 
 the knowledge of that God who in His fulness must 
 infinitely transcend any of our finite conceptions.^ 
 Reality cannot consist of blind impersonal forces, evolv- 
 ing the human consciousness by some chance aiTange- 
 ment, or ' collocations of matter in motion ' ; indeed, this 
 hypothesis needs only to be clearly stated to be seen to 
 carry in itself its own refutation. We are progressing 
 towards God, not away from God : God may be supra- 
 personal. He cannot be less than personal : He must 
 comprehend in His ultimate Nature the fundamental 
 principles of Personality. It is the materialist view which 
 is unreal, an abstraction from data incompletely com- 
 prehended ; Personality, in man or God, remains the reality 
 of the Universe. 
 
 God, then, is affirmed by Tennyson to be perfect Truth, 
 perfect Will, perfect Love ; not a Demiurge dragged in 
 to account for the start of the Material Universe and 
 subsequently retiring from his handiwork, but a God who 
 is ever present, ever working, sustaining all things, 
 interested in His Creations, desiring their progress and 
 their happiness and their love. " If God were to with- 
 draw Himself for one single instant from this Universe," 
 he once said, "everything would vanish into nothing- 
 ness."^ Just 'behind the veil,' if we could only see 
 Him, God is working 'in the shadow keeping watch 
 upon His own.' 
 
 Speak to him thou for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet^ 
 Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.^ 
 
 But, as our conception of our own personalities is ever 
 
 1 See " Life," vol. i. p. 312. ^ " Life of Tennyson," vol. i. p. 319. 
 5 "The Higher Pantheism." 
 
56 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 developing with a clearer realisation of our own powers, 
 and even now is but imperfectly comprehended, so our 
 conception of God must necessarily be limited, and cannot 
 yet be regarded as final. As the consciousness of Person- 
 ality widens and broadens to future generations, so also 
 will widen and broaden the apprehension of God. God is 
 a person ; but He is not bound down by the limitations of 
 human personality : He must infinitely transcend them. 
 But, fundamentally, God must be symbolised to us as 
 Knowledge, Power, Love. And, as it was the evidence 
 of the last which gave to Tennyson the absolute con- 
 viction of His own personal existence, so it is this also 
 that he would especially emphasise as the very vital 
 Essence of the Divine Personality. God does not love. 
 God is love. Love is of God : it is when we manifest 
 love, that God is most ' manifest in us^' working in us 
 to His own purposes. And it is his insistence on this 
 view that enables Tennyson to claim the power of direct 
 appeal to the infinite God, and to vindicate His title of 
 ' Immortal Love.' This alone can give to the imperfect 
 minds of men the right to demand help from the God 
 ' who sitteth above the Cherubim and ruleth the courses 
 of the stars.' And so we find Tennyson at the close of 
 his long life confidently praying for knowledge and guid- 
 ance from 'that Love which is and was my Father and 
 my Brother and my God.' 
 
 Tho' sin too oft, when, smitten by Thy rod, 
 
 Rail at ' blind Fate ' with many a vain ' Alas ! ' 
 From sin thro' sorrow into Thee we pass 
 
 By that same path our true forefathers trod ; 
 
 And let not Reason fail me, nor the sod 
 
 Draw from my death Thy living flower and grass. 
 Before I learn that Love which is, and was 
 
 My Father, and my Brother, and my God ! 
 
 Steel me with patience ! soften me with grief ! 
 Let blow the trijmpet strongly while I pray, 
 
GOD 57 
 
 Till this embattled wall of unbelief 
 
 My prison, not my fortress, fall away ! 
 
 Then, if Thou wiliest, let my day be brief, 
 So Thou wilt strike Thy glory thro' the day.' 
 
 This note of triumph and passionate assertion is, indeed, 
 rare in the poetry of Tennyson. For the most part he is 
 content to cling in trust to ' the truths that never can 
 be proved ' ; to the assertion of faith that God lives 
 and works and loves behind the outward show of things ; 
 to the belief that all that is now difficult and obscure will 
 one day be clearly revealed and justified. 
 
 But, in spite of his affirmation of the existence of God, 
 his assertion of the real separate existence of the individual 
 still remains. Reverence and Love and Trust are due from 
 us : but Tennyson accepts no pantheistic system, deny- 
 ing individuality, or advocating the losing of the self 
 in God. The personality remains : God will speak to it, 
 guide it, finally bring it to Himself, in harmony with all 
 things : but it is the self as in some inexplicable manner 
 independent, with power of unconditioned choice, which 
 can directly address its Creator; — 
 
 Hallowed be Thy name — Halleluiah ! — 
 Infinite Ideality ! 
 
 Immeasurable Reality ! 
 
 Infinite Personality ! 
 Hallowed be thy name. — Halleluiah ! 
 
 We feel we are nothing — for all is Thou and in Thee ; 
 We feel we are something — thai also has come from Thee ; 
 We know we are nothing — but Thou wilt help us to be. 
 Hallowed be thy name. — Halleluiah ! ' 
 
 God, then, to Tennyson, is not some absentee ruler sitting 
 > " Doubt and Prayer." . •' " The Human Cry." 
 
58 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 above the heavens, having set the machine of the Universe 
 going and then withdrawn Himself: not simply a God of 
 Infinite Power, whose mandates we are compelled dumbly 
 to accept and blindly to obey. But he is a "^ living God/ 
 moving and working and sustaining all things, whose plan 
 we can but dimly descry, whose purpose in the world we 
 are unable to discover, but who is ' not far from any one of 
 us,' who is guiding us imperceptibly, communing with us, 
 reaching hands through the darkness and moulding us to 
 His ends, who will ultimately bring us to Himself. The 
 analogy of a machine once started is altogether false ; the 
 creative act and the sustaining act are the same. Identity 
 through changes, as in our Personality, is present in the 
 divine Personality : with God is an eternal Now ; and yet 
 God changes. 
 
 But with the Nameless is nor Day nor Hour ; 
 
 Tho' we, thin minds, who creep from thought to thought, 
 
 Break into ' Thens ' and ' Whens ' the Eternal Now.^ 
 
 God is Will and Knowledge and Love : we can seek after 
 Him in the arduous pursuit of Truth, in the search after 
 beauty, in the hunger and thirst after righteousness. 
 Beauty and Truth and Goodness are but different 
 methods of apprehending Him, the reflection in our 
 finite minds of that Glory, which no man can see un- 
 veiled and live. 
 
 And if proofs are demanded for this tremendous 
 assumption, Tennyson can ultimately but throw us back 
 on faith. Any other hypothesis of the reality of the 
 world if once clearly stated becomes inconceivable. But 
 with faith we shall obtain increasing insight : the times 
 will become more numerous when we shall 
 
 seem to hear a Heavenly Friend 
 And through thick veils to apprehend 
 A labour working to an end.' 
 
 ' " The Ancient Sage." " " The Two Voices." 
 
GOD S9 
 
 And through all our doubts and difficulties and ' the pain 
 of this divisible-indivisible virorld,' there will come to 
 each man also, if he clings to 'faith beyond the forms 
 of faith/ moments of direct spiritual apprehension : 
 moments when 
 
 He feels he cannot die, 
 And knows himself no vision to himself, 
 Nor the high God a vision.^ 
 
 In the light of this principle of faith, we can recognise 
 a more definite advance in Tennyson's method of approach- 
 ing the problem of the Material Universe. The naive 
 realism of the natural man assumes that the Unknown some 
 thing outside himself consists of matter and space and 
 motion, projections of abstractions of his own personality 
 into the region beyond. But Tennyson continuously 
 asserts that the nearest apprehension we can obtain of 
 this Reality is by the projection of the whole personality 
 outside ourselves, and not of some abstracted limited 
 portion of it ; that in asserting God to be personal, we 
 are, at least, nearer to His ultimate nature, than in assert- 
 ing only blind matter or force or motion. 'Everywhere 
 throughout the Universe he saw the glory and greatness 
 of God.' 2 The Eternal world is living, spiritual, alive. 
 The material world is an illusion of the senses : Spirit is 
 real, the Spiritual is around us and within us : death may 
 be the liberation of the soul from these limitations, the 
 breaking down of the division. 
 
 Letting us pent up creatures through 
 Into Eternity our due.' 
 
 All that we call the material world is merely the 
 vision in our imperfect minds, the 'broken gleams' and 
 ' stifled splendour,' of the glory of God. 
 
 ' "The Holy Grail." = "Life," vol. i. p. 312. 
 
 ' " Dis Aliter Visum " (Browning). 
 
6o TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains — 
 Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns ? 
 
 Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb. 
 Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him ? ^ 
 
 God is no longer relegated to some ' region beyond the 
 fixed stars.' He is around uSj close to us, manifesting 
 Himself to us through the senses, speaking directly to 
 our souls, although ' the ear of men cannot hear ' the 
 music of the world, and ' the eye of man cannot see ' the 
 fulness of the Vision. 
 
 Were the spiritual principle behind the material Uni- 
 verse for one moment withdrawn, the farthest star and 
 vastest sun, as well as the tiniest flowers, would crumble 
 at once into nothingness. 
 
 And if the Nameless should withdraw from all 
 Thy frailty counts most real, all thy world 
 Might vanish like a shadow in the dark.^ 
 
 Some day for each of us, the heavens will roll away dis- 
 closing the eternal world behind them : that world whose 
 ruler is God, and whose sustaining power is Love. 
 
 The pain 
 Of this divisible-indivisible world 
 Among the numerable-innumerable 
 Sun, sun, and sun, thro' finite-infinite space. 
 In finite-infinite Time — 
 
 will then be clearly apprehended, as being merely 
 
 Our mortal veil 
 And shatter'd phantom of that infinite One, 
 Who made Thee unconceivably Thyself 
 Out of His whole World-self and all in all.' 
 
 1 < 
 
 ' The Higher Pantheism." ^ " The Ancient Sage." 
 
 ' "De Profundis." 
 
V. SELF 
 
 \ ^ /"E have seen that the principle upon which Tennyson 
 bases all his subsequent religious speculation is the 
 affirmation of the certain reality of the self. 'I am 1/ 
 the starting-point of modern philosophy, he reasserts, with 
 unshakable conviction : and all attempts to explain this 
 direct intuition as an illusion leave him unmoved. This 
 self thus apprehended is not a temporary manifestation 
 of an absolute Spirit, a bubble on the surface, breaking 
 and vanishing away : not a wave or aura, accompanying 
 without influencing the real world of material change ; it 
 is the one and only thing of which by direct conviction we 
 can assert reality. God may be incomprehensible ; the 
 world around us may be some strange disordered dream ; 
 ' all that seems ' may ' suffer shock ' ; I am I ; I remain 
 persistent throughout change, the only indisputable fact 
 in a world where all else may be shadow. 
 
 And the self thus experienced is not apprehended 
 through cognition alone, as the permanent Subject to 
 which all changing thought must be referred ; it is 
 recognised as the whole indivisible personality; and the 
 self as feeling, and the self as willing, Tennyson especially 
 emphasises. Through feeling, through love, we first 
 awake to the consciousness of our own personality. This 
 knowledge of self first clearly discerned through awakening 
 love is depicted in symbolic imagery in one of his earliest 
 poems. The Lady of Shalott, heedless of the changeful, 
 moving life outside her casement, weaves magic shapes 
 in the mirror that hangs before her all the year; and, 
 seeing only dim reflections of the great world beyond, 
 becomes 'half sick of shadows.' Until at length the 'new- 
 6i 
 
62 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 born love for something . . . takes her out of the region of 
 shadows into that of realities,' ^ and with the birth of this 
 new experience the old dream-world of fancy is shattered 
 to fragments, and the old life perishes for ever. And so 
 throughout all Tennyson's poetry the consciousness of love 
 provides for him a guarantee of the reality of his being : 
 the strength of his affection, and the depth of his feeling, 
 yield him, the firmest conviction of his own personal 
 reality. 
 
 But the power of Will is also an essential part 
 of the self; in volition the ' I ' is also manifest, striving 
 to realise itself in the external world : and free choice, 
 of which we each possess the immediate certainty, 
 remains for Tennyson an ultimate fact which we cannot 
 resolve into anything more fundamentally simple. This 
 freedom, unconditioned by the material world around 
 each individual, lifts him above and beyond the influence 
 of his surroundings. By the power of this free choice 
 man can formulate his own ends of action, accepting the 
 good, rejecting the evil : and no external influences can 
 destroy this gift. If this doctrine of free will clashes with 
 the mechanical conception of a world of causal necessity, 
 the conflict proves that the mechanical scheme, although 
 useful, is incomplete ; for we each possess in our own 
 selves a direct certitude of our own power of choice, 
 which no system of laws deducible from phenomena can 
 destroy. This power is that 
 
 Living Will that shalt endure 
 
 When all that seems shall suffer shock ; '^ 
 
 and it is by ' this main miracle ' of the choice of the 
 will between good and evil that the character is fashioned 
 and the soul progresses. By the deliberate choosing of 
 the highest we gradually bring our wills more into 
 
 1 " Life of Tennyson," vol. i. p. 117. " " In Memoriam," cxxxi. 
 
SELF 63 
 
 accordance with the Divine Will, and grow nearer and 
 nearer to God. 
 
 Live thou ! and of the grain and husk, the grape 
 
 And ivy berry, choose ; and still depart 
 
 From death to death thro' life and life, and find 
 
 Nearer and ever nearer Him, who wrought 
 
 Not Matter, nor the finite-infinite. 
 
 But this main miracle, that thou art thou. 
 
 With power on thine own act and on the world.^ 
 
 "Assuredly, however unfathomable the mystery, if one 
 cannot believe in the freedom of the human will, as of 
 the Divine, life is hardly worth having." ^ Tennyson was 
 willing to acknowledge the limitations of this freedom ; 
 of the fact itself he was never doubtful. "Man's free 
 will Is but a bird in a cage," he said; "he can stop at 
 the lower perch or he can mount to a higher. Then that 
 which is and knows will enlarge his cage, give him a 
 higher and a higher perch, and at last break off the top 
 of his cage and let him out to be one with the Free Will 
 of the Universe." ^ 
 
 Self as knowing, the subject to which all thought must 
 be referred, and without which thought itself becomes 
 inexplicable ; self as feeling and loving, reaching outside 
 itself towards those personalities of which it can possess 
 no direct knowledge ; self as willing, making its own 
 ends and striving for their attainment : these form the 
 three indivisible elements of that Ego which in its fulness 
 we cannot at present comprehend, but of whose existence 
 we are directly aware by an intuition which no argument 
 can destroy. 
 
 And this conviction of the reality of his own individual 
 self came to acquire additional strength for Tennyson 
 from certain mystical states, of which, at intervals during 
 
 ' "De Profundis." ^ "Life of Tennyson," vol. i. p. 317. 
 ^ "Life of Tennyson," vol. i. p. 318. 
 
64 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 his life he seems to have possessed immediate experience. 
 In these trance stages with the apparently partial with- 
 drawal of consciousness from the bodily habitation he 
 appeared to see with direct, inward vision, into the 
 heart of things. They were comparable to the state of 
 ecstacy described by Plotinus and the older mystics, as 
 communion with the One Soul of the Universe, accom- 
 panied by an apprehension of the region beyond that 
 phenomenal product of consciousness which we term 
 the visible world. Allusions to this experience are 
 scattered throughout his poetry : and> in a statement 
 made by himself, he affirms them to be based on personal 
 knowledge. In the ' Holy Grail ' his hero King - confesses 
 that to him also, many a time, ' visions come ' — 
 
 Until this earth he walks on seems not earth, 
 This light that strikes his eyeball is not light, 
 This air that smites his forehead is not air 
 But vision.^ 
 
 And Tennyson returns to these ' visions ' again, and 
 interprets them as yielding direct evidence of the reality 
 of the self, and the possibility of its future intercourse 
 with the ' Nameless ' in the ' Ancient Sage ' : — 
 
 More than once when I 
 Sat all alone, revolving in myself 
 The word that is the symbol of myself. 
 The mortal limit of the Self was loosed. 
 And past into the Nameless, as a cloud 
 Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs 
 Were strange, not mine — and yet no shade of doubt. 
 But utter clearness, and thro' loss of self 
 The gain of such large life as matched with ours 
 Were sun to spark.'^ 
 
 And in his own words he describes this state "utterly 
 1 " The Holy Grail." ^ " The Ancient Sage." 
 
SELF 65 
 
 beyond words" as a kind of waking trance. 'This has 
 generally come upon me through repeating my own name 
 two or three times to myself silently, till all at once, 
 as it were, out of the intensity of the consciousness of 
 individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve 
 and fade away into boundless being ; and this not a 
 confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the 
 surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly 
 beyond words, where death was an almost laughable im- 
 possibility, the loss of personality seeming no extinction 
 but the only true life." ^ 
 
 This trance experience, usually confined to devotees of 
 mystical religion, but not uncommonly found in the lives 
 of great poets, had a marked influence on Tennyson's 
 view of the self, as providing him an additional guarantee 
 of its spiritual worth, and a conviction of its ultimate 
 reality. The self passes for the moment from the 
 sensible world into the supersensible, the outward world 
 so largely its own product fading for a moment from its 
 vision ; and in this passage it obtains direct consciousness 
 of the spiritual region beyond. Or, it is as if it woke 
 for a moment from the dream of life, before settling 
 down to dream again. These are only feelings, it may 
 be urged, vague emotions, mystical states which cannot 
 appeal to reason. Yet they are feelings which yield 
 indubitable certainty beyond their own duration ; which 
 have come to many in time past, and provided them with 
 a basis for action ; which can yield sufficient certitude of 
 the truth of their teaching, to induce men to venture 
 life upon their lessons. And they are feelings carrying 
 with them such intensity of conviction that, to those 
 who possess them, any further doubt as to the reality 
 of the personality as a spiritual consciousness becomes 
 an almost ' laughable impossibility.' 
 
 1 " Life of Tennyson,'' vol. i. p. 320. 
 
66 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 These mystical states may then be visions : but 
 ' dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in 
 dreams ? ' It is only for the sake of the dreams that visit 
 it, says Tennyson, that this world of shifting phenomena 
 has any value for us ; nay, is not this the reality, and life 
 itself the dream : so that when all this outward show has 
 vanished, leaving ' not a rack behind,' the self shall 
 endure beyond the reach of time and the shocks of 
 change. 
 
 And so this firm statement of the reality of personality 
 here and now leads on to further considerations. ' To- 
 day : but what of yesterday ? ' What of the past and of 
 the future } How has this self, now so indubitably real, 
 attained to its present condition ; and what shall be 
 its future fate ? ' Whence .'' O Heavens, whither ? ' These 
 are the questions always lurking in the background 
 of consciousness, and perpetually clamouring for some 
 answer. Shall we assert, with Carlyle, ' Science knows 
 not ; thought knows not ; only that it is from mystery 
 to mystery, from God and to God ' }'^ Or shall we sus- 
 pend judgment and say that the present at least is real, 
 whatever the past may have offered, or the future may 
 bring? Or shall we definitely maintain the phenomenal 
 nature of consciousness as an accompaniment of molecular 
 change, growing and developing with bodily develop- 
 ment, fading with the dissolution of the material elements 
 at death, the whole phantom procession of human life 
 resolving itself into 
 
 A life of nothings, nothing- worth. 
 From that first nothing ere his birth 
 To that last nothing under earth ? ^ 
 
 Now the individual consciousness, Tennyson asserts, 
 as we apprehend it in the present, or rather in the 
 
 1 " Sartor Resartus." 2 <. y^^ Voices." 
 
SELF 67 
 
 immediate past (for the actual present is for ever un- 
 known to us), is the most entirely separate and isolated 
 thing we know. The world outside ourselves, as viewed 
 by the conscious mind, presents a certain unity ; some 
 connection is, at least, apprehended between its separate 
 parts ; without this connection all science, all knowledge, 
 would be impossible. But the individual mind is apart. 
 No other minds can directly affect it. Through nerve 
 change and bodily sensation, indeed, currents flow inwards 
 from the sense organs towards us ; and in some mysteri- 
 ous, inexplicable manner originate changes in the in- 
 dividual consciousness. ' Hidden away in the dark 
 chamber of the skull,' these currents come into contact 
 with some incomprehensible entity, and produce mental 
 changes. But with other personalities the self has no 
 direct relation. All communication, all intercourse, must 
 be performed by clumsy sign language, by changes pro- 
 jected outward into the phenomenal world, to be re-in- 
 terpreted from this into terms of mental change again. 
 No man ever saw into another man's mind. ' In stern and 
 bitter moments of life we are each of us alone.' 
 
 What then of the past and the future .'' Is this self 
 eternally and timelessly One, unique, peculiar, forever 
 separate .^ or is it part of a spiritual consciousness 
 only differentiated in this material world, here develop- 
 ing personality, afterwards to be re-absorbed into the 
 Universal .^ Is it, that is to ask, an entity passing out 
 from an original state of Unity into a real diversity, 
 traversing the world of time and change, ultimately 
 again returning to Unity ? Or is the world of Space and 
 Time and Causality the illusion, and the spiritual Universe 
 as at present existing in reality, one and undivided behind 
 it all? 
 
 Upon these great questions the statements of Tennyson 
 are somewhat vague and uncertain, and his opinion 
 
68 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 appears to waver at difTerent periods. He refused to 
 acknowledge the purely natural development of the 
 individual soul ; and holding as he did most firmly to the 
 belief in its spiritual continuance after deathj he ^was 
 compelled to assume also some kind of a spiritual ex- 
 istence before birth. Spirit is not^ indeed, a new creation 
 at the birth of each individual. Yet it exhibits progress 
 and development ; the time-process is a process of real 
 change, and not an illusion. So that at first Tennyson 
 was content to insist on the possibility of a spiritual pre- 
 natal life, without attempting to distinguish whether this 
 was in the Individual or the Universal soul. Early in his 
 poetical career, when confronted with doubts as to the 
 future survival of the human personality, he attempted to 
 answer them by the assertion of the probability of its 
 pre-existence, based on certain spiritual intuitions : — 
 
 Yet how should I for certain hold, 
 Because my memory is so cold, 
 That I first was in human mould ? 
 
 It may be that no life is found, 
 Which only to one engine bound 
 Falls off, but cycles always round. 
 
 Moreover, something is or seems, 
 That touches me with mystic gleams. 
 Like glimpses of forgotten dreams — 
 
 Of something felt, like something here ; 
 Of something done I know not where ; 
 Such as no language may declare.^ 
 
 And this emphasis upon the Platonic doctrine Tennyson 
 supports by evidence somewhat parallel to that advanced 
 by Wordsworth in his famous ' Intimations of Immortality.' 
 This is the direct experience of certain emotional states of 
 
 ' " The Two Voices.'' 
 
SELF 6^ 
 
 mind, giving him the suggestion of the possibility of a 
 transcendental knowledge. In the ' vague feelings of 
 delight ' and wonder ' in gazing up an Alpine height ' ; 
 in the unique inexplicable thrill of conviction of the 
 present having been previously experienced ; in the re- 
 cognition of places never before visited; in that strong 
 yearning sense arising occasionally in all of us of being on 
 the brink of some great discovery almost apprehended, 
 similar to the strain of incomplete reminiscence in actual 
 memory, Tennyson found evidence and indications of the 
 self s previous existence. In his earliest poems he de- 
 scribes certain emotional states when he appeared to 
 
 Ebb into a former life, or seem 
 To lapse far back in some confused dream 
 To states of mystical similitude ; 
 If one but speaks or hems or stirs his chair, 
 Ever the wonder waxeth more and more, 
 So that we say ' All this hath been before, 
 All this hath been, I know not when or where.' ^ 
 
 In 'The Ancient Sage,' again, where Tennyson ex- 
 presses his mature convictions concerning some of the 
 deepest problems of life, he advances as an example of 
 the 'gleams of more than mortal things,' which the 
 young poet scornfully admitted, his own experience of 
 the 'Passion of the Past,' the inexplicable feeling of 
 something 'lost and gone,' roused by the beauty of the 
 Natural World. 
 
 The first grey streak of earliest Summer-dawn, 
 The last long stripe of waning crimson gloom, 
 As if the late and early were but one — 
 A height, a broken grange, a grove, a flower 
 Had murmurs ' Lost and gone and lost and gone ! ' 
 A breath, a whisper — some divine farewell 
 
 1 " Early Sonnets," i. 
 
70 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 Desolate sweetness — far and far away^ 
 
 What had he loved, what had he lost, the boy ? ^ 
 
 And late in his life the mystical intuitions yielded by 
 the sight of distant horizons and far spaces and the sound 
 of evening bells appeared to him as a voice from 'o'er 
 the gates of birth.' 
 
 A whisper from his dawn of life : a breath 
 From some fair dawn beyond the doors of death.^ 
 
 an emotion similar to that of Wordsworth^ when 'in a 
 season of calm weather' he discerns sight 
 
 Of that immortal sea 
 Which brought us hither : 
 Can in a moment travel thither : 
 And see the children sporting on the shore 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.^ 
 
 But throughout ' In Memoriam ' when he commenced 
 under the pressure of doubts born of sorrow systematic- 
 ally to consider the whole question, he was inclined to 
 emphasise the original Unity, the spiritual principle in man 
 becoming divided into separate units in the world of sense 
 and time ; and to recognise as one of the main purposes of 
 life the differentiation of this into the developing person- 
 alities of individuals in the gradual progress, both of the 
 single man and of the race, towards self-consciousness. 
 The baby, at first regarding things as all one, learns by 
 degrees ' the use of I and me ' and finds that he is other 
 than the things he touches ; and so, through the teaching 
 of experience, rounds to a separate mind 
 
 As thro' the frame that binds him in 
 His isolation grows defined. 
 
 1 "The Ancient Sage." = " Far-Far- Away." 
 
 •* Wordsworth : " Ode on Intimations of Immortality in Childhood." 
 
SELF 71 
 
 This use may lie in blood and breath, 
 
 Which else were fruitless of their due, 
 Had man to learn himself anew 
 
 Beyond the second birth of death. ^ 
 
 Yet again in his later poems he reiterates his conviction of 
 the spiritual origin of the human personality ; while at the 
 same time the nature of its pre-existence, whether in- 
 dividual or universal, he leaves as a problem of which we 
 have no means of solution. 
 
 Thus, in the ' De Profundis,' perhaps on the whole the 
 most important of all his religious poems, suggested by the 
 thoughts arising at the birth of his eldest child, he 
 emphasises the double nature and double origin of the 
 individual, material and spiritual — the material body ul- 
 timately traceable back to that vast seething mass of 
 nebulous matter from which, according to modem science, 
 the earth arose : — 
 
 Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep, 
 Where all that was to be, in all that was, 
 Whirl'd for a million aeons through the vast 
 Waste dawn of multitudinous-eddying light — 
 Out of the deep, my child, out of the deep, 
 Through all this changing world of 'changeless law. 
 And every phase of ever-heightening life. 
 And nine long months of ante-natal gloom, 
 
 thou comest darling boy.^ 
 
 And at the same time he greets the soul coming ' out of 
 the deep ' ' from that true world vidthin the world we see, 
 whereof our world is but the bounding shore,' passing from 
 the Spiritual realm into the 'prison of the flesh' in the 
 material world. 
 
 1 "In Memoriam," xlv. ^ " De Profundis." 
 
72 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 For in the world which is not ours, They said 
 ' Let us make man ' and that which should be man, 
 From that one light no man can look upon, 
 Drew to this shore lit by the suns and moons 
 And all the shadows.^ 
 
 So that even to the end Tennyson gives no definite answer 
 to the question. But all his later speculation on the sub- 
 ject became modified and coloured by the influence of two 
 factors. One was his clearer and clearer apprehension of 
 the principle of Evolution, and its application in the 
 spiritual, as well as in the material world. The other was 
 the accumulation of evidence which seemed to him to 
 show that the individual personality was not so entirely 
 cut off from direct communication with other conscious 
 spirits as he had at first asserted; that not only the 
 Eternal power behind Things, but also the personalities 
 of the living and the dead, may directly communicate 
 with each other by other channels than those of the 
 senses ; that some common connection between minds 
 could be provisionally assumed ; and hence the hypothesis 
 strengthened of a common origin and a common end. 
 Under the influence of these two theories his conception 
 of the present condition and future progress of personality 
 became widened and deepened ; and this result reacted 
 upon his whole theory of the nature and condition of the 
 self. The influence of these speculations, however, can 
 best be estimated after an examination of Tennyson's 
 treatment of the question of the possibility of the per- 
 sistence of human consciousness beyond the grave. 
 
 1 "De Profundis." 
 
VI. IMMORTALITY 
 
 (~\F the three ultimate subjects of religious speculation, 
 ^-^ God, Self, Immortality, it was the third which 
 Tennyson made most completely his own, and defended 
 most strenuously against doubt and denial. Belief in a 
 future existence appeared to him essential to the con- 
 tinued upward development of the human race. The 
 survival of the individual personality after death was the 
 fundamental principle of all his teaching; upon this alone 
 did he find it possible to establish a practical system of 
 ethics, and a faith in the moral government of the world : 
 with this belief destroyed, the whole of his religion would 
 crumble away. Life without striving for something be- 
 yond life is to him life 'without hope and without God 
 in the world,' 'a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and 
 fury, signifying nothing.' If, as one class of thinkers 
 confidently anticipate, belief in personal immortality be- 
 comes universally repudiated by the progressive races of 
 Europe, the poetry of Tennyson may still be studied for 
 the charm of its style, and the marvellous felicity of its 
 language ; but the teaching of Tennyson, based on an 
 altogether erroneous hypothesis of the conditions and 
 possibilities of human life, will be discovered to possess 
 but little of permanent value. 
 
 Early in his life the question of immortality appears to 
 have been troubling him, producing the sadness noticeable 
 throughout all the gorgeous description of natural beauty 
 in his juvenile poems. As is customary with youth 
 suddenly aroused to the consciousness of the inevitable 
 approach of ' quick coming death ' it is the mere physical 
 accessories which first impress him with a morbid attraction, 
 73 
 
74 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 the ' heavy clod ' and the ' sharp headed worm ' and 
 ' the gross blackness underneath ' ; and it is in terror 
 of these that he appeals to the 'Lord of AH' for light 
 on the insoluble mystery. 
 
 Let thy love 
 Shadow me over, and ray sinS 
 Be unremember'd, and Thy Love 
 Enlighten me. Oh teach me yet 
 Somewhat before the heavy clod 
 Weighs on me, and the busy fret 
 Of that sharp-headed worm begins 
 In the gross blackness underneath.-' 
 
 Later he describes the sorrow at this time cast upon his 
 life by the shadow whose reality seemed attested by the 
 evidence of the senses, and the knowledge of the destruc- 
 tion and decay of the mortal body. 
 
 1 found him when my years were few ; 
 A shadow on the graves I knew, 
 And darkness in the village yew. 
 
 From grave to grave the shadow crept : 
 In her still place the morning wept : 
 Touch'd by his feet the daisy slept. 
 
 The simple senses crowned his head : 
 ' Omega ! thou art Lord,' they said, 
 ' We find no motion in the dead.' ^ 
 
 And yet, even in this earlier time, before death and the 
 problems aroused by death had loomed so large in his 
 mind as to exclude consideration of all other questions, he 
 refused to accept the verdict of the senses as the final 
 decision; and attempted to find escape from it in the ex- 
 
 ^ "Confessions of a Sensitive Mind." 
 
 2 "The Two Voices." 
 
IMMORTALITY 75 
 
 pectation of a continued existence common to all humanityj 
 and the universal longing for a future life. 
 
 Why, if man rot in dreamless ease, 
 Should that plain fact, as taught by these. 
 Not make him sure that he shall cease ? 
 
 He owns the fatal gift of eyes. 
 That read his spirit blindly wise. 
 Not simple as a thing that dies. 
 
 Here sits he shaping wings to fly ; 
 His heart forebodes a mystery : 
 He names the name Eternity.^ 
 
 That Tennyson should thus, in his earliest speculations, 
 have attempted to throw off the weight of the evidence 
 for mortality, was inevitable from the nature of his mind. 
 For he was one of those in whom the sense of vigorous 
 personality was developed to a far fuller intensity than in the 
 majority of mankind ; and, in consequence, onte to whom 
 the possibility of death being annihilation seemed all the 
 more repugnant. To many, indeed, such a consummation 
 appears not only inevitable but desirable. " No blessings 
 that could be bestowed upon me," said a modern scientist, 
 ". could compensate for the intolerable burden of continued 
 existence." To those animated with feelings such as these 
 the conviction is welcome that ' we shall sleep tranquilly 
 through the hazardous future as we slept tranquilly 
 through the raging past.' The ' grim suspicion ' has 
 " stolen into many a heart, that we do in truth feel within 
 us, as years go by, a mortality of spirit as well as flesh : 
 that the 'bower of unimagined flower and tree' withers 
 inevitably into a frozen barrenness from which no new life 
 can spring." ^ And the thought of a modern poet, repre- 
 senting half scornfully the final result of the satiation of 
 desire, but expresses the hope and the longing of whole 
 nations and races of men. 
 ' "The Two Voices." " Myers : " Modern Poets and Cosmic Law." 
 
^6 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 From too much love of living, 
 
 From hope and fear set free, 
 We thank with brief thanksgiving 
 
 Whatever gods may be 
 That no life lives for ever ; 
 That dead men rise up never ; 
 That even the weariest river 
 
 Winds somewhere safe to sea.' 
 
 To this feeling Tennyson seemed always to have been a 
 stranger. It is an emotion found either in those with 
 weak personalities, unable to confront and successfully 
 encounter the not-self outside them ; or in those who, 
 being sated with manifold experience of all forms of 
 passionate pleasure and finding all alike unsatisfying, 
 loathe themselves and Ufe, and crave only for utter 
 silence and rest. 
 
 I give the fight up ; let there be an end, 
 A privacy, an obscure nook for me, 
 I want to be forgotten even by God.^ 
 
 To neither of these two classes did Tennyson belong. 
 Often, indeed, as we see both in his life and in his 
 poetry, 'he longed eagerly for death' :^ but it was as an 
 escape from some active evil, overwhelming sorrow, the 
 inextricable tangle of the world, or the bitterness of the 
 memory of irrecoverable things. Desire simply for rest 
 from the fitful fever of life ; that craving for extinction 
 which comes upon nations in their later degeneration, 
 and in Modem Europe has been made the basis of a 
 new system of philosophy ; the abandonment of the 
 struggle, and the grateful turning to sleep 'like a tired 
 child ' : such feelings never to any appreciable extent 
 influenced Tennyson's life or his poetry. All through 
 
 ' Swinburne: "The Garden of Proserpine." 
 ^ Browning : " Paracelsus." 
 See " Life of Tennyson," vol. i. p. log. 
 
IMMORTALITY 77 
 
 his doubts and difficulties he reaUsed that the cure for 
 the evils of existence is Life and not death : a wider, 
 deeper consciousness, the strengthening and intensifying 
 of the personality to enable ^it to meet the world outside 
 it, and freely to continue along its appointed course of 
 change. 
 
 Wliatever crazy sorrow saith, 
 
 No life that breathes with human breath 
 
 Has ever truly longed for death. 
 
 'Tis life, of which our nerve was scant, 
 Oh life not death, for which we pant ; 
 More life, and ftiUer, that I want.^ 
 
 The same suggestion of the same remedy for the evils of 
 a declining civilisation as that which carried Christianity 
 forward in its earliest triumphs. "We that are in this 
 tabernacle do groan being burdened," said St Paul. But 
 he found the remedy not in the cessation of the struggle 
 but in renewal of the power of endurance : " not for that 
 we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, thai mortality 
 might he swallowed up in life." ^ 
 
 Death, however, in Tennyson's earlier speculation has 
 little of that harsh reality which it afterwards possessed 
 for him. To the young and healthy annihilation is some- 
 thing inconceivable ; they know directly what life means ; 
 they cannot know, they cannot have any conception, of 
 the meaning of the word Death. Non-existence for 
 them appears merely 'an absurd impossibility.' So that 
 in the earlier poems of Tennyson we find the question 
 merely touched upon, glanced at, and passed by. Their 
 subject-matter is made up of classical and romantic 
 studies, attempted interpretations of the Grecian spirit 
 and the romance of the Middle Ages, characterised by a 
 search after beauty in all its varied manifestations ; with 
 
 ^ " The Two Voices." ^ 2 Cor. v. 4. 
 
78 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 in each a hint of the- possibility behind all of ' quick 
 coming death' intensifying the eagerness of the search 
 after beauty ; and, in the backgroundj the knowledge of 
 ' that deep grave to which I go/ and that ' all things 
 must die.' 
 
 But this was suddenly changed by the death of Arthur 
 Hallam in 1833. It was like a bolt from the blue sky, 
 forcing the question upon the poet with rude and startling 
 abruptness. Without a moment's warning, in 'Vienna's 
 fatal walls,' 
 
 God's finger touched him, and he slept. 
 
 The friendship was of an intensity rarely found in modern 
 life : a community of spirit in which the one seemed to 
 become almost a part of the other. All their thoughts, 
 dreams, and aspirations, for the present and the future, 
 were shared together. It seemed an affection that might 
 defy the shocks of time and the finger of change. Then 
 something intervened ; the ' fair companionship ' was 
 broken ; and the man he loved was suddenly hurried out 
 of sight. Death was striking visibly in a manner which 
 drove his whole being into revolt and fierce protest ; 
 not coming as a welcome friend at the close of the long 
 day's toil, to round off and complete a well-spent life ; 
 not as the reply to persistent prayer for relief from the 
 burden of existence ; but unasked for and unbidden, 
 defying, mocking, as it were, the intensity of the love 
 between them, striking at the ' human-hearted man ' 
 with all his genius just unfolding, with unfathomed 
 possibilities, with limitless affections and ambitions and 
 desires, stricken down without warning, and swept into 
 the darkness without a cry. One moment the two spirits 
 were growing together without a barrier between them ; 
 the next one had disappeared for ever and no answer 
 remained. Here was death indeed in its most intolerable 
 
IMMORTALITY 79 
 
 form ; and here was a question which threatened sanity 
 and reason, and clamoured ceaselessly for answer. 
 
 The death of Arthur Hallam left Tennyson under a 
 cloud 'which for a while blotted out all joy from his 
 life and made him long for death.' 1 The shock was 
 overpowering, destroying at first all hope and interest 
 in the world. It was only after the first numbness had 
 passed off that his mind awoke to the problems which he 
 must grapple with until he could find some solution 
 compatible alike with the demand of the intellect and 
 the passionate craving of the heart. With the restora- 
 tion of the circulation came the renewal of pain : and 
 all the questions, apparently unanswerable, imperatively 
 demanded an answer. Henceforth, like ' Paul with 
 beasts' he must 'fight with death,' until he can obtain 
 some reply to the question, and discern some faint 
 glimmering of light beyond the veil of darkness that 
 at present threatened for ever to obscure his vision. 
 
 What did it all mean ? What had become of that 
 friend, and that friendship which seemed to have 
 ' mastered time ' ? What was the fate of all those powers, 
 apparently wasted ? Was it all blind chance, or was 
 there some inscrutable purpose behind it? Was death 
 destruction, or simply removal to another sphere, and, 
 if this latter, was there any manifestation of its existence, 
 or any possibility of communication with the spirits of 
 those who had passed ' behind the veil ' .'' Revolving 
 such questions in his mind, Tennyson searched around 
 him for any evidence which would throw light on this 
 great problem : considered the arguments which have 
 been advanced on the one side or the other : and only after 
 long periods of despair, and journeyings in strange places, 
 finally arrived at his conclusions. 
 
 The history of the travail of a human soul is displayed 
 ^ " Life of Tennyson," vol. i. p. 109. 
 
8o TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 in that volume of poems, covering the experience of many 
 yearsj entitled ^In Memoriam.' This is the real object 
 of the work ; doubts of many kinds arise, but they are 
 the doubts born of sorrow ; speculation takes place in 
 many fields of inquiry ; but all revolve around, and ulti- 
 mately return to, the same question — the question of 
 Immortality, of personal survival beyond the grave. 
 
 And the only answer that Tennyson could at length 
 give is the assertion of this survival by his whole person- 
 ality. All through his spiritual progress this had been 
 his attitude. Doubts had come to him, but he had 
 always fought them : difficulties seemed insuperable : 
 there had been periods when ' faith had fallen asleep ' : 
 but he never once definitely accepted the other possible 
 alternative, never passed through a stage when he actually 
 disbelieved in Immortality. Faith lives at the end as at 
 the beginning; the definite refusal to acquiesce in any other 
 solution ; the clutching at the conviction that there is a 
 purpose underlying all changes, and a life beyond death. 
 Reason at the end might emphasise this belief, instead of 
 opposing it ; and the faint glimmer of a light, after sinking 
 to a dull spark, might rise ultimately to a clear and steady 
 flame. But never was this spark of faith extinguished ; 
 never did Tennyson adopt the attitude of negation. 
 Personal survival may not be probable ; it was a truth 
 that ' never could be proved ' ; no certain answer came 
 from 'behind the veil' to all our desperate inquiry; the 
 one indubitable fact appeared to be the disappearance of 
 the human spirit and the decay and crumbling into dust 
 of the mortal body : no arguments, however logical, could 
 overcome the evidence of the reality of this awful change. 
 Yet Tennyson maintained the necessity for the rejection 
 of this suggestion. At least, until 'some voice that we 
 can trust' shall finally proclaim its falsity, we must cling 
 to the ' larger Hope ' : must base our whole scheme of 
 
IMMORTALITY 8i 
 
 life on the possibility that ' earthly flower will be heavenly 
 fruit,' and that powers and aspirations here stunted, and 
 maimed, and apparently destroyed by death, will ultimately 
 find their fiill development. The attitude of faith on this 
 subject is the only attitude compatible with mental sanity ; 
 and the final conclusion is the belief that 
 
 We may lift from out of dust - 
 
 A voice as unto Him that hears, 
 
 A cry above the conquered years 
 To one that with us works, and trust, 
 
 With faith that comes of self-control, 
 The truths that never can be proved 
 Until vve close with all we loved, 
 
 And all we flow from, soul in soul.^ 
 
 We must briefly consider the lines of thought which 
 assisted Tennyson to this faith in the future existence of 
 the human spirit. And first it is noteworthy that the 
 belief in immortality founded on the evidence for the 
 truth of the Revelation of Christianity and the promises 
 of Christ never seemed to yield him satisfaction. The 
 ' sure and certain Hope ' based on the conviction that 
 Jesus Christ had triumphed over death and had promised 
 a similar victory to His followers aiforded little consolation 
 to Tennyson in his pilgrimage of sorrow. 'The cardinal 
 point of Christianity,' he said once, 'is the life after death' :2 
 and it was on account of the assertion by the Christian 
 creed of the reality of that life, in a fuller and more un- 
 qualified manner than in the creed of any other of the 
 great religions of the world, that Tennyson maintained 
 his allegiance to its teaching. But it never seemed to 
 him to provide evidence for immortality, suflicient to raise 
 
 1 " In Memoriam," cxxxi. ^ " Life," vol. i. p. 321. 
 
 F 
 
82 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 this belief to the level of a living faith able of itself to 
 give the consolation of the promise of the life beyond. 
 At the conclusion of 'In Memoriam' he can indeed 
 appeal to that ' Immortal Love ' who was Lord of death 
 as well as of life : 
 
 . . . And lo, thy foot 
 
 Is on the skull which thou hast made. 
 
 Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : 
 
 Thou madest man, he knows not why, 
 He thinks he was not made to die ; 
 
 And Thou hast made him : Thou art just.^ 
 
 But this is a summary of results obtained by other lines of 
 thought. The natural arguments for survival appeal to 
 Tennyson more than the so-called supernatural ; and it is 
 noticeable and perhaps somewhat strange that he found 
 little real help from evidence which has provided com- 
 fort and consolation and final triumph over sorrow to 
 thousands suddenly bereaved of all that made life dear to 
 them — faith in the words of Him who ' cannot lie ' : " I 
 am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord ; he that 
 believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live ; 
 and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." 
 The first and most important evidence of belief in the 
 future continuance of the individual, is for Tennyson pro- 
 vided by the inexpugnable conviction of the reality of the 
 self, and the reality of love. I am : I cannot conceive of 
 myself as non-existent. I love : not a mere temporary 
 collocation of changing atoms, gathered up for a moment 
 from the dust, and returning into the dust again ; but a 
 living, thinking, self, one who can respond to my love, a 
 spirit that cannot die. My love is as real to-day, so many 
 
 ^ " In Memoriam," Introduction. 
 
IMMORTALITY 83 
 
 years after he has gone from ray sight, as when I first 
 shared his daily companionship, and held unfettered inter- 
 course with ray friend. 
 
 Peace let it be ! For I loved him, and love him for ever : 
 '" the dead are not dead but alive.' 
 
 And this consciousness of the reality of his love persist- 
 ing through change became afterwards strengthened for 
 Tennyson by the conviction that he had held actual 
 communion with the spirits of the dead. We could not 
 see them with the eyes of the flesh : they had gone for 
 ever from our bodily presence ; but beyond the world of 
 sense, in the spiritual region which more and more came 
 for Tennyson to be the only reality, they still lived, and 
 still remembered their former state, and still watched 
 over and influenced their friends 'pent up' in the 
 prison of the body. In one famous passage he attempts 
 to describe the experience of one of these moments of 
 communion : — 
 
 So word by word, and line by line. 
 
 The dead man touched me from the past, 
 And all at once it seem'd at last 
 
 His living soul was flash'd on mine, 
 
 And mine in this was wound, and whirl'd 
 About empyreal heights of thought, 
 And came on that which is, and caught 
 
 The deep pulsations of the world.'' 
 
 And although he partially drew back from the full con- 
 sequences of the tremendous assumption here made,^ yet 
 ' he still maintained that close to him, just behind the 
 curtain of the visible world, was the Spiritual Universe : 
 and he could still address his unseen friend in words of 
 direct appeal to one who is very near to him, and watches 
 
 ' "Vastness." ^ " In Memoriam," xcv. 1st edition. 
 
 ^ " His living soul " was subsequently changed to " The living Soul." 
 
84 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 ' like God . . . with larger other eyes than ours ' the 
 progress of human life. 
 
 Be near me when my light is low, 
 
 When the blood creeps, and the nerves prick 
 And tingle ; and the heart is sick, 
 
 And all the wheels of Being slow. 
 
 Be near me when the sensuous frame 
 
 Is rack'd with pangs that conquer trust ; 
 And Time, a maniac scattering dust 
 
 And Life, a Fury slinging flame. 
 
 Be near me when I fade away, 
 
 To point the term of human strife. 
 
 And on the low dark verge of life 
 The twilight of Eternal day.^ 
 
 But the chief consideration which induced Tennyson to cling 
 to faith in immortality, and the argument which he asserts 
 almost defiantly throughout the remainder of his poetical 
 career, is the impossibility of the deliberate acceptance of 
 the negative belief. If there be any meaning to the world, 
 he says, immortality must be assured ; for life, regarded 
 simply as life terminating in death, yields no meaning 
 whatever. All the evidences that point towards develop- 
 ing powers in man : all the faint indications of a purpose- 
 ful power working towards a beneficent end ; all the 
 manifestations of beauty, and order, and law, become 
 empty and meaningless, if man perishes utterly at 
 death. The Universe ceases to bear any intelligible 
 interpretation ; consciousness and life become equally 
 inexplicable, effort and toil futile, and all endurance vain. 
 The conception of future existence may be attended 
 with difficulties, perhaps insuperable, for our finite con- 
 scious minds : no intelligible idea can be formulated of 
 a consciousness surviving the decay of the body. But 
 
 ^ " In Memoriam,"X i^\^\i 
 
IMMORTALITY 85 
 
 still more insuperable are the difficulties involved in the 
 acceptance of annihilation of personality at death. The 
 sudden break-down of the life so laboriously built up 
 through toil and effort and pain ; the waste and destruc- 
 tioHj as of some clumsy power, well-meaning but blunder- 
 ing in the darkness, or of some malignant deity mocking 
 the ' fruitless prayer ' of his creations ; ' the striving and 
 striving and ending in nothing ' : these present a solution 
 of the problem which the human mind must refuse to 
 accept, so long as any other alternative is possible. 
 Reason, religion, morality, are deprived of all their 
 meaning; they become names surviving to frighten or 
 allure men, after the entities they once represented have 
 vanished ; fables useful for the guidance of children, to be 
 rejected as grotesque or absurd by grown men. 
 
 My own dim life should teach me this. 
 
 That life shall live for evermore, 
 
 Else earth is darkness at the core. 
 And dust and ashes all that is : 
 
 This round of green, this orb of flame, 
 
 Fantastic beauty ; such as lurks 
 
 In some wild Poet, when he works 
 V/ithout a conscience or an aim. 
 
 What then were God to such as I? 
 
 'Twere hardly worth my while to choose 
 
 Of things all mortal, or to use 
 A little patience ere I die ; 
 
 'Twere best at once to sink to peace, 
 
 Like birds the charming serpent draws. 
 To drop head foremost in the jaws 
 
 Of vacant darkness and to cease.' 
 
 This, was Tennyson's absolute conviction ; not here a 
 matter of faith, but of certainty. It may be true, he 
 says, that there is no life after death ; ' nil igitur mors 
 ^ "In Memoriam," xxxiv. 
 
86 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 est ' ; but this much is certain, that if that be indeed the 
 final conclusion J life for me is not worth living. The 
 trouble and toil are spent on empty abstractions, and 
 ' all is vanity and a grasping of wind ' ; endurance of 
 pain becomes a mere foolish suffering, if love itself, love 
 strong as death, will become as though it had never been. 
 Work for others is equally meaningless ; where all can 
 seek rest so easily and so speedily, what futihty to suffer 
 in order to save them ' an hour of torture ' or a ' moment 
 of pain ' ' from that eternal silence.' " With death as 
 my friend I tremble not at shadows." A bitter contempt 
 arises for this troubled race of men ; specks in the 
 eternities and immensities of space and of time ; surely 
 it would be better that the sorry farce should cease, 
 and the curtain ring down on a play which has lost 
 attraction or interest. Yet sorrow and a great pity 
 mingles with this scorn for toiling humanity, condemned 
 to meaningless effort and struggle without purpose, 
 striving for they know not what, seeking that which 
 they will never attain, deluded with false hope and 
 vain fancy, which yet have the power to die : — 
 
 I often grow 
 Tired of so much within our Uttle life. 
 Or of so Httle in our little life — 
 Poor little life that toddles half an hour 
 Crown'd with a flower or two, and there an end.' 
 
 For if the prophetic power is not so much the foretelling 
 of the future as a keener insight into the things of the 
 present, Tennyson in no small degree possessed this 
 capacity ; and in this case he saw clearly. The age in 
 which he wrote was loudly proclaiming, not so much 
 that belief in immortality was incredible, as that it was 
 needless ; a mere unnecessary adjunct, coming in unasked 
 to trouble and disturb men's work in the real living 
 ' " Lucretius." 
 
IMMORTALITY 87 
 
 world which they knew. And preachers of the new 
 spirit were urging the replacement of this belief by- 
 sundry strange phantoms ; natural morality, the re- 
 ligion of humanity, devotion to Truth, the worship of 
 the 'holy spirit of man,' the sanction of effort in an 
 immortality provided by reputation in future ages. 
 All these Tennyson pierced through to their inner 
 hollowness, and scornfully brushed aside. However 
 much such ideas might animate passionate minds, and 
 provide motives for self-sacrificing action ; however much, 
 for a time, men could fill themselves with the con- 
 viction that these provided adequate gods for worship : 
 once they are thoroughly assured, he says, that life ceases 
 with death, and that death is within the sudden reach 
 of all, the only philosophy which can consistently be 
 maintained is the philosophy which, exhibiting the 
 craving for life as the worst enemy of the human race, 
 advocates its resistance and its final extinction as the 
 ' Summum Bonum' of mankind. 
 
 For the mortality of the individual is the mortality of 
 the race ; and Humanity is only man writ large. Nor 
 is there anything more worthy of the effort of man 
 in the survival of a race which has not the courage to 
 terminate its existence and so attain to rest. Given 
 material plenty and warfare abandoned and disease over- 
 come, what, after all, has mankind attained but leisure 
 to permit the more constant fretting of the continual 
 thought of the sadness of departing youth, and the 
 sureness of approaching decay ? — a thought which will 
 only become more and more intolerable as life becomes 
 richer and more worth the living. 'All we grow old 
 and wither like the leaf ; no material progress, no 
 development of the arts and luxuries of life, can ever 
 soften the tragedy of such a change. 'A little fruit a 
 little while is ours, and the worm finds it soon.' All 
 
88. TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 earthly goods only possess value as leading to something 
 beyond; take the mystery of the Infinite from Art, 
 from Nature, from human life, and at once they cease 
 to yield satisfaction to mankind. Firmly establish belief 
 in the mortality of the individual and the eventual 
 destruction of the race, and youth relapses into a 
 passionate pursuit of pleasure, and old age into hopeless 
 regret after pleasure for ever gone. The impotence of 
 eflFort, the futility of aspiration, the impossibility of ethical 
 advance without an accompanying belief in immortality, 
 provide for Tennyson sufficient justification for the main- 
 tenance of this truth, despite the absence of direct 
 proof of its validity, and the crushing effects of evidence 
 appearing to lead to an opposite conclusion.^ 
 
 Against this statement, which Tennyson so firmly 
 asserts, it has been maintained that many religions have 
 previously existed in the world, teaching a high and 
 stern morality, which yet have declined to consider, or 
 definitely denied, the immortality of the individual con- 
 scious spirit. It is doubtful, however, if much weight 
 can be attached to such an argument. It rests mainly 
 on a wrong interpretation of the actual facts ; there has 
 never been any religious system of long-continued exist- 
 ence having at its fundamental basis the assertion of 
 death as annihilation. Buddhism, often instanced as an 
 example, appears a singularly ill-chosen one ; for its 
 essential tenet consists in the belief that the respon- 
 sibilities and results of the acts performed by each in- 
 dividual are carried forward into a future life, and that 
 each person will continue to suffer in successive cycles of 
 existence, until he has purged himself from all earthly 
 stain, and is worthy of the attainment of rest. And the 
 
 ^ For thought here summarised see especially "In Memoriam,'' 
 "Lucretius," "Epilogue to Tiresias," "The Ancient Sage," "Vast- 
 ness," and "God and the Universe.'' 
 
IMMORTALITY 89 
 
 religion of the Jews, despite its high ethical fervour, and 
 its conviction that in this life the wicked suffer and the 
 righteous receive their reward, exhibits throughout its 
 long course a continually-growing consciousness of the 
 unsatisfactory nature of this explanation. It exhibits 
 the impossibility of permanent acquiescence in a view of 
 human life by which the manifestation of Divine approval 
 of righteousness is limited to the gift of a few brief 
 years of comfort, and in which those who have chosen 
 evil can always trick the Eternal Justice by the ready 
 refuge of death. 
 
 But even if this has been true at any time in the 
 past, it could scarcely be maintained that it is necessarily 
 tenable at the present or in the future. For man is 
 advancing towards a fuller consciousness, revealing a 
 stronger development of varied experience, and a widen- 
 ing conception of personality. That which could satisfy 
 him once will not satisfy him always. Earthly rewards 
 and punishments might have provided sufficient sanction 
 for a morality based on unquestioning obedience to 
 incomprehensible laws ; the setting of the wicked in 
 slippery places, the bestowing upon the righteous of 
 long life and plenteousness. But such an ideal can be 
 received no longer. We have ' emerged from the heroic 
 childhood of the race ' ; we can no longer yield un- 
 qualified obedience to externally-imposed demands. The 
 highest ideal refuses to be content with the conception 
 of a Deity edified by the transitory adoration of his 
 creatures, and doling out material comfort for a brief 
 space to those whom He approves, before finally con- 
 siffning them to extinction ; the lowest and crudest 
 selfishness laughs at the terrors of a punishment which 
 can at any time be eluded by self-inflicted death. 
 Isolated individuals still assert, although with fainter 
 voice and hope less confident, the possibility of a natural 
 
90 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 system of ethics, and a satisfaction of the human spirit 
 with the things of this world. But their followers are 
 few, and their statements unconvincing ; the systems 
 they have elaborated seemed scarcely, at the present 
 time, to possess sufficient vitality to be worthy of the 
 scorn lavished upon them by Tennyson in his later 
 poems. 
 
 If the world has a meaning it is possible to deduce 
 the necessity for the survival of consciousness ; but the 
 alternative can always be advanced, May not the world, 
 after all, be without any meaning whatever.'' To this 
 doubt, from which he never quite escaped, Tennyson's 
 answer appears the only one possible. 'Thou canst 
 not prove the Nameless.' i We must acknowledge that 
 this may he the truth ; but the demands of the practical 
 reason insist upon the other conclusion ; and so long 
 as the other possibility remains open we cannot accept 
 for a basis of life, that which would destroy all life, and 
 even the desire for life, reducing earth to 'darkness at 
 the core,' and 'all that is' to 'dust and ashes.' Our 
 only hope is to 
 
 Cleave ever to the sunnier sight of doubt, 
 And cling to faith beyond the forms of faith.^ 
 
 And just as in the 'small experience of every day' we 
 are compelled to act on hypotheses from their very 
 nature unprovable, to venture forward into the dark, 
 to assume that memory of the past will aflFord us a safe 
 guide for the future, and that the ' solid ground ' will 
 not ' fail beneath our feet ' ; so in the greater ventures 
 of life we must perforce make our choice upon incon- 
 clusive evidence, and stake all upon the unknown. And 
 as in the one case we find that our theories lead us 
 aright, that things do not suddenly elude us, that, within 
 
 ^ "The Ancient Sage " ; see the whole context. ^ Ibid. 
 
IMMORTALITY 91 
 
 limits, our forecast of the future has been correct ; so in 
 this ' short stormful passage between two eternities ' 
 we must be sustained by faith that in these greater 
 matters our trust will be justified ; that those who have 
 clung to the nobler view of man's purpose and man's 
 duty will ultimately be vindicated, and the meaner and 
 lower views proved to have been wrong. " I believe 
 in the immortality of the soul," says a modern philosopher, 
 "not in the sense in which I accept the demonstrable 
 truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the 
 reasonableness of God's work." 1 
 
 But if indeed all this be illusion and mind be but a 
 'transitory manifestation upon a background of nothing- 
 ness,' and all the effort and struggle of man after ideals 
 from their nature unattainable in the temporal world 
 prove futile and vain, then it seems to matter but little 
 who has been right and who has been wrong. For 
 the one will never know that he has been following 
 phantoms, and the other will never know that he appre- 
 hended the truth ; in the universal ruin, amid the clash 
 of dying worlds, the ' tiny spark of being ' of the 
 righteous, who sacrificed all things for the imperfect 
 fulfilment of the ideal, and the indifferent, who refused 
 to consider it, and the scornful, who definitely rejected 
 it, will all together vanish into ' the sleep eternal, of an 
 eternal night.' 
 
 The argument for Immortality based on the goodness of 
 God, as stated in Butler's famous ' Analogy ' carried little 
 weight in Tennyson's mind. For him the difficulties of the 
 belief in a Beneficent Deity are as manifest as the difficul- 
 ties of the belief in a future existence ; the one demands 
 as great an effort of faith as the other; and unless the 
 Ruler of the Universe is assumed to be good, to consist 
 in His essence of that which we interpret as Love, the 
 1 Fiske : " Destiny of Man," 113. 
 
92 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 Natural evidence becomes weak and uncertain. The 
 mere recognition of a spiritual principle behind the 
 phenomenal world yields him no guarantee of the future 
 survival of the human personality. Belief in a God who 
 is in this sense Moral, who will identify happiness with 
 goodness, who permits nothing to walk ' with aimless 
 feet,' who is fashioning the Individual Soul for Himself, 
 may indeed be considered to involve a belief in a future 
 state to round off the ragged edges caused by Death. 
 'Why hast thou made all men for nought'? would 
 remain an unanswerable reproach against a God who 
 had set ' men to labour, and given them as guerdons 
 death and great darkness after death.' ^ Satisfaction of 
 the passionate craving for the presence of the departed, 
 the bringing to fruition of powers here seemingly wasted 
 and destroyed, the justification of those who have clung 
 to the Highest ideal against the claims of self and sense : 
 these are the necessary acts of an All-Just, All-Merciful 
 God. But for Tennyson the postulate of such a Being 
 is involved with as many difficulties, and the tokens of 
 His existence are as hard to discern as the evidence for 
 individual Immortality. 
 
 Yet although Tennyson was unable to find intellectual 
 satisfaction in this line of argument, there was a certain 
 class of evidence which more and more with advancing 
 years he welcomed as likely to provide the desired 
 certitude. In his earlier writings he had expressed his 
 belief in the direct influence upon the minds of the living, 
 of the spirits of the dead ; and all through his life he 
 remained convinced that some supernatural intercourse 
 was possible. Towards the close of his life all the new 
 scientific investigations into powers of the personality 
 but little comprehended, and faculties of consciousness 
 imperfectly developed, attracted him with a strange 
 ' See "Life of Tennyson," vol. i. p. 312. 
 
IMMORTALITY 93 
 
 fascination. The revelation of apparitions of the living 
 far from their bodily presence ; the newly-discovered 
 powers of telepathy, and the direct communications from 
 one mind to another without the translation of thought 
 into the symbolism of the senses ; the evidence for 
 appearances at or immediately after death ; the influence 
 of one Will over another in hypnotic phenomena : all 
 these with their many allied manifestations appeared to 
 him to point to a wider conception of mind, and to the 
 possibility of obtaining knowledge by the strictest method 
 of empirical investigation, of the life of the Spirit World. 
 All his later poems are full of references to this newer 
 research. 
 
 Star to star vibrates light :■ may soul to soul 
 Strike through a finer element of her own ? ' 
 
 And the inquiry develops later into a more positive 
 assertion : — 
 
 As the likeness of a dying man, 
 
 Without his knowledge, from him flits to warn 
 
 A far-off friendship that he comes no more.^ 
 
 And in 'The Ring,' a poem full of speculation on the 
 mysterious influence of the living and the dead : 
 
 The Ghost in Man, the ghost that once was Man, 
 But cannot wholly free itself from Man, 
 Are calling to each other through a dawn 
 Stranger than earth has ever seen ; the veil 
 Is rending, and the Voices of the day 
 Are heard across the Voices of the dark.' 
 
 Tennyson seems indeed to have held that the hope for 
 the immediate future lay in the pursuit of this new 
 investigation. The present was the blackest hour before 
 the dawn. Faith would no longer continue to have 
 imposed upon it a burden greater than it could bear. 
 
 1 " Aylmer's Field." ' " Demeter and Persephone." ' " The Ring." 
 
94 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 The worst was over. The morning was already breaking. 
 The new knowledge, continuing by the same methods 
 as those already adopted, would itself rebuild that which 
 it had done so much to destroy. It was for those still 
 living in the darkness to ' strengthen the weak hands 
 and confirm the feeble knees ' ; to maintain the larger 
 hope against the despair of the good, and the indifference 
 of the evil, until the night should quietly vanish before 
 the coming day. 
 
 The assertion of a survival, of a persistence beyond the 
 grave, was all that Tennyson required. Of the nature of 
 this new life in the spiritual world, he was ready to 
 acknowledge we can possess but little comprehension. 
 Yet it was impossible altogether to refrain from inquiry ; 
 and here his speculations were modified in no small degree 
 by his acceptance in its fullest significance, of the newly- 
 apprehended principle of Evolution, and his interpreta- 
 tion of the Universe by this Cosmic Law, as a process 
 towards an end. We must now consider the meaning 
 of this conception, and its special application by Tenny- 
 son to the progress of the human spirit. 
 
VII. EVOLUTION 
 
 ' I *HE theory most characteristic of the speculative 
 -'- thought of the nineteenth century is the theory of 
 Evolution ; and the substitution of a dynamical for a 
 statical conception of the Universe has been the work of 
 its greatest thinkers. The accomplishment of this change^ 
 not effected without much keen conflictj was mainly 
 completed in the controversy which raged round the 
 appearance of the ' Origin of Species/ and the attempted 
 application of Evolutionary ideas in the realm of living 
 organisms. But the principle had been recognised far 
 earlier in the century : Hegel had endeavoured to apply 
 it to history, in his Philosophy of the Spirit ; Lyell and 
 others had utilised it to explain Geological facts ; Herbert 
 Spencer had already commenced the laborious construction 
 of the Synthetic philosophy, with its all-embracing Evolu- 
 tionary system. Darwin's conclusions form part of a wider 
 movement of thought, resulting not only in a changed 
 interpretation of the facts of the world presented to 
 human consciousness, but also in the adoption of a diiferent 
 attitude of Mind towards the Universe as a whole ; in the 
 ' replacement of the idea of a product by the idea of a 
 process.' Tennyson had recognised the necessity for this 
 re-statement of first principles even before the stir of the 
 struggle with the older beliefs had forced the question 
 before the minds of all men ; and this work of re-state- 
 ment in the philosophy of religion, and the conception of 
 personality, and the ideal of a future existence, was the 
 work on account of which he has been especially dis- 
 tinguished as a teacher of the newer generation. 
 
 To appreciate the magnitude of this work it is necessary 
 95 
 
^6 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 clearly to comprehend the meaning of this new principle 
 of Evolution. At the birth-time of thought man looked 
 out upon the Universe outside himself, and could only 
 apprehend a perpetual flux, change apparently without law 
 and without order. He was unable to descry any unity in 
 this hurrying, transitory world surrounding him ; and the 
 only method by which he could provide any explanation 
 for its phenomena was by hypotheses assuming that these 
 were controlled by beings animated by spontaneous wills 
 like his own. In his imagination behind all natural 
 objects were personalities which could be appeased or 
 offended. 'Caprice was the rule of existence,' conscious 
 intelligence its guiding force ; the gods demanded worship 
 under threat of calamity, which would assuredly follow its 
 omission ; it was necessary to walk warily, not to refuse 
 sacrifice, not to excite jealousy by the exhibition of too 
 conspicuous happiness ; yet even the most careful humility 
 and liberal offering could not guarantee a satisfactory 
 guidance of the course of events in the future. 
 
 Gradually,however, with the development of intelligence 
 and the widening of knowledge this theory of the world- 
 order gave place to another. A certain rhythmical result 
 was discovered to recur ; things did not act, in the present, 
 according to a method altogether different from their be- 
 haviour in the past ; it was found possible within narrow 
 limits to predict the operations of the future. Certain 
 definite and universal principles commenced to dis- 
 entangle themselves from the phenomenal chaos ; the 
 assumption of independent volitions behind natural 
 objects slowly died away. The principle of causality, 
 also a product of the human mind, replaced it ; and 
 Causality, instead of Unconditioned Will, was projected 
 outward into nature. So there arose the great concep- 
 tion of an orderly universe, ruled by fixed and unalterable 
 laws. Liberated from the overwhelming fear of investiga- 
 
EVOLUTION 97 
 
 tion, caused by terror lest impious attempts to penetrate 
 their secrets would arouse the wrath of the gods, men 
 rushed into the study of the Universe around them, 
 filled with eagerness for knowledge of the laws behind 
 phenomena, and the real firm materials of the world. 
 Facts were collected in larger and larger store : wider 
 and wider spheres of knowledge were embraced by this 
 all-devouring activity of thought : confident search was 
 pursued for the immutable elements, the interaction 
 between which, controlled by unalterable laws, produced 
 all the appearance of diversity and change exhibited in 
 the sensible world. 
 
 In these far-reaching generalisations of natural science, 
 men held that at length they had attained to the truth 
 of the constitution of material things. They rejoiced in 
 the order and the fixity, feeling themselves for the first 
 time upon firm ground. The same law controlled the 
 rush of the comet and the fall of the petals of the 
 rose ; the same substance, inanimate in the world of 
 lifeless matter, caught up by the living protoplasm, 
 manifested itself in the phenomena of life. Change 
 became mere appearance and illusion ; the changeless 
 atoms, the unalterable energy, the great Eternal laws 
 of being, were independent of the temporaiy experiences 
 and transitory existence of humanity. Were all con- 
 sciousness to cease, the natural world would still maintain 
 its progress, the planets move on their ordered paths, 
 the seasons return in their accustomed courses, the motion 
 of the atoms persist, the elements and energy and un- 
 alterable laws of their being continue everlastingly the 
 same. 
 
 This vast structure of empirical knowledge, slowly 
 being erected by the labour of countless workers, was 
 essentially dependent on a statical view of the Cosmos ; 
 both of the Macrocosmos without, the Universe known 
 
98 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 to us through the senses, and the Micrpcosmos within, 
 the consciousness of man. The world without presents 
 itself to us as a world of ceaseless change, never 
 repeating itself, no two facts being exactly the same. 
 It was the function of scientific generalisation to 
 exhibit the changelessness behind the change, the un- 
 alterable laws of nature. Underlying all things were the 
 eternal matter and energy. The atoms of the different 
 elements, each with their definite proportional weights, 
 weaving by their interaction the properties of things, 
 were themselves unchangeable. No effort of any con- 
 ceivable power could add another unit of mass to the 
 amount present in the Universe. The mysterious energy 
 was also one, despite its diverse manifestations, measur- 
 able in definite quantity, which nothing could increase 
 or diminish. And over all worked and guided the 
 Eternal Laws, as they had worked from the founda- 
 tions of the world, and as they would work far into 
 the world to come. 
 
 And so also in the Microcosmos, the world of con- 
 sciousness, the personal self was tacitly assumed to be 
 ever the same as now. Knowledge, indeed, grows, but 
 the principles of the personality remain unalterable, 
 and the same tests of truth must remain for ever valid ; 
 the empirical investigation into the nature of conscious- 
 ness may be considered to reveal truths applicable 
 alike to the human mind before the birth-time of 
 thought, and to men whatever may be their develop- 
 ment in the infinite future. 
 
 And so the development of natural knowledge advanced 
 under the general influence of this statical ideal, and the 
 principles became frozen into stability. As the ever- 
 lasting hills looked down upon the fleeting generations 
 of man, so soon hurried away into nothingness, so the 
 Eternal Laws of Nature remained immutably enduring. 
 
EVOLUTION 99 
 
 while all other things passed away. The diverse species 
 of plants and animals, the definite chemical elements, 
 the unchanging atoms, the mechanical movements of 
 matter controlling the movements of star and sun ; these, 
 at least, were sure and permanent. Consciousness inside 
 us, unchangeable from generation to generation, natural 
 law outside us, for ever eternal, were the fundamental 
 principles from which men essayed to construct the 
 Universe of Real being. 
 
 It is obvious that into this conception the idea of a Deity 
 can be only introduced as the constructor of the self-sus- 
 taining Universe. This Universe was regarded as a great 
 machine, wound up to go ; marvellously adjusted, carefully 
 balanced, contrived, and set working by a God who had 
 ordained the laws of its action, and subsequently with- 
 drawn Himself from His handiwork. The Laws of Nature 
 were the laws controlling this machine ; any interposition 
 of the Deity to check or violate these principles became ■ 
 inconceivable. Men had but to accept, without a useless 
 murmur, these externally-imposed principles, and regulate 
 their lives accordingly. So also animals and plants 
 were regarded as special creations of the Almighty 
 Artificer, who for His pleasure had created them, that 
 His works might show forth His glory. The atoms 
 were the minted products of His energy, each existing 
 unalterable, as first formed ; these having been given, 
 and the modicum of energy provided, and the laws con- 
 trolling them, the Universe carried on its work without 
 unnecessary interference from an Unknowable God, who, 
 having made all things good, ceased henceforth to 
 interfere with the work of His hands. 
 
 And the same conception controlled the interpretation 
 of the dealings of God with men. Morality was regarded as 
 something outwardly imposed, a system of law which men 
 ought to follow. Obedience to this system was enforced 
 
100 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 under penalty of everlasting punishment. The moral 
 law appeared as a set of rules which changed not with 
 the passing generations. Men appeared individually 
 separate, through the creative power of God, created 
 in His own image ; they could choose between the good 
 or evil presented before them ; but the time for choice 
 was brief, and the choice was endless ; for after their 
 short passage through this world, they passed into a 
 fixed state for ever — Paradise, where they 'rest from 
 their labours,' in the consciousness of perfect bliss, their 
 trial over, their work finished, in the 'land where no 
 more change shall be ' ; or Hell, to which they have 
 been condemned, by an All-wise Inscrutable Deity for 
 having chosen the evil and refused the good, where 
 ' the smoke of their burning goeth up for ever and 
 ever.' 
 
 Such were the religious ideas developed while the 
 Statical ideal of the Universe prevailed in the minds 
 of men ; and it is easy to recognise that they were 
 religious ideas which must inevitably decay. The ethical 
 principle in men revolted against such moral conceptions 
 of a Deity ; the understanding could find no reason for 
 the existence, and no satisfactory evidence of the being, 
 of this absentee God, withdrawn from the woi-ks of His 
 creation. So that such a theology rapidly fell into 
 neglect ; Nature herself became the object of worship ; 
 and men transferred to the Great Laws and Eternal 
 principles those feelings of awe and adoration which 
 they had once cherished, for a Personal God, behind 
 the outward show of things. 
 
 Now the speculation of the latter portion of the nine- 
 teenth century has been largely engaged in the slow 
 destruction of this goodly edifice. The all-devouring 
 thought of man, ceaselessly pressing forward, must in- 
 evitably consume the products of its own creation. The 
 
EVOLUTION loi 
 
 fact has been gradually apprehended that Causality, as 
 much as Personality, is an illegitimate projection of our 
 own experience into the world behind phenomena. The 
 great system of natural laws, the permanent elements 
 of the Universe, have been seen to be the products of 
 our own consciousness thrown outside us, endowed with 
 properties of our own making, and postulated as real 
 behind the phenomenal world. '' Lichtenberg," says a 
 modern philosopher, "once contrasted the early ages of 
 the world, when mankind was equally ready to believe 
 in God and in ghosts, with the present age, which 
 denies existence to both ; he feared compensation 
 in a future when all that would be believed in 
 would be ghosts. Something like this seems to have 
 happened." ^ 
 
 The new spirit, undermining this great structure, was 
 compelled to interpret these laws in the light of the 
 principle of Evolution. And this substituted the idea 
 of reality as change for the idea of reality as rest. In 
 this conception, the fixed world suddenly dissolved and 
 disappeared; the old notion of perpetual flux revived. 
 It was the replacement of the individual standpoint by 
 the universal. By thus compressing time through a 
 vaster outlook, and gazing at the world as if from afar, 
 men came back to the conclusion of the old Grecian 
 philosopher : ' All things give way ; nothing remaineth.' 
 The everlasting hills themselves, gazing indifferently upon 
 so many hot and striving generations of men, suddenly 
 lost their bold outlines, and dissolved in the perpetual 
 flow of things. The boundary lines between species 
 became blurred and indistinct. "The eye and the sun 
 itself are literally in constant extinction and renewal, the 
 sun only going out more gradually than the human eye, 
 the system, meanwhile, of which it is the (;entre, in 
 ^Lotze: " Metaphysik,'' vol. ii. sec. 213. 
 
to2 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 ceaseless movement no whither." ^ All things flow for- 
 ward ; nothing is stable, firm, abiding ; all things move ; 
 all things are growing or dying ; nowhere is anything at 
 rest. The idea of Becoming has replaced the idea of 
 Being. The laws themselves, once regarded as change- 
 less, are found only to be relative conceptions, possessing 
 no guarantee of permanence or finality. Far back in the 
 past, other ideas of nature held sway ; far in the future, 
 others may be again triumphant. 
 
 " That which endures," says a great exponent of the 
 new Faith, " is not one or another association of living 
 forms, but the process of which the Cosmos is the product, 
 and of which these are among the transitory expressions. 
 . . . The state of Nature at any time is a temporary 
 phase of a process of incessant change. ... As no man 
 fording a swift stream can dip his foot twice in the same 
 water, so no man can, with exactness, affirm of anything 
 in the sensible world that it is. As he utters the words, 
 nay, as he thinks them, the predicates cease to be appli- 
 cable ; the present has become the past ; the ' is ' should 
 be ' was.' The most obvious attribute of the Cosmos 
 is its impermanence. It assumes the aspect, not so much 
 of a permanent entity, as of a changeful process." ^ The 
 same principle passes into the region of human conscious- 
 ness. " The essence of thought itself is perpetual motion, 
 from the dead past to a present itself deceased ere we 
 can say. It is here." ^ The human Personality, as we 
 know it, becomes a stage in an onward progress, with no 
 guarantee of stability. Change is recognised as the funda- 
 mental necessity of conscious life, without which coii- 
 
 ' Pater: " Plato and Platonism," p. 9. i> . 
 
 ' Huxley: " Evolution and Ethics" ( "Collected Essays,'' vol. ix. 
 
 PP- 49> 50)- 
 
 ^ Pater: " Plato and Platonism," p. 10. 
 
EVOLUTION 103 
 
 sciousness vanishes. The human mind, growing from 
 jinlike beginnings, passes on to an indefinitely variable 
 future. The ideas of men decay and change and fade 
 away; those which have proved unalterably true to one 
 age become manifestly false to another. The history of 
 philosophy, morality, and religion, is a record of ideas 
 which, from their very nature, are transitory. 
 
 So that, without and within, just when men began 
 to feel themselves on firm foundations, the still world 
 had suddenly taken upon itself motion. With a wider 
 view, they felt the solid ground falling from beneath 
 their feet. Nothing is firm ; nothing is substantial ; 
 nothing is permanent ; and the world around us, 
 and the world "within us, whether we acquiesce, or 
 whether we resist, are being ceaselessly swept forward 
 under this ' ■ perpetual impulse of restless, inexorable 
 change. 
 
 The first effect of the sudden dissolution of the elements 
 which men had deemed most abiding was bewilderment 
 and dismay. Now, as at its origin, the doctrine of the 
 perpetual flux causes pessimism and soitow. The ' weep- 
 ing philosophy' was the source of much of the sadness of 
 the old world ; and, in its latest development, the con- 
 sciousness of the perpetual onward flow of all things to 
 an unknown goal results in philosophies of despair. Men 
 seem as if clutching at something for ever eluding their 
 grasp ; no sooner have they seized it than it has swept 
 forward into some other state of being. " All reality," 
 •says a modern philosopher, "is immersed in the flux of 
 Becoming, which glides before our eyes in a Protean 
 stream of change, interminable, indeterminate, indefinite, 
 indescribable, impenetrable, a boundless and groundless 
 abyss, into which we cast the frail network of our cate- 
 gories, fruitlessly, and in vain." 1 Life is only a long process 
 1 " Riddles of the Sphinx," p. 79. 
 
I04 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 of dying, commencing at the moment of birth. Man, 
 gazing at the region outside him, can only see 'an ever- 
 breaking shore that tumbles in a godless deep ' ; and, 
 desiring the secret of the Universe, can only discern 
 'a drift of all material things through an empty and 
 godless sky.' The life of humanity becomes a mere 
 ' ripple of the boundless deep ' ; and the nightmare 
 vision of the old Roman poet is invested with a new 
 significance : — 
 
 A void was made in Nature ; all her bonds 
 Cracked ; and I saw the flaring atom-streams 
 And torrents of her myriad universe, 
 Running along the illimitable inane, 
 Fly on to clsish together again and make 
 Another and another frame of things 
 For ever.' 
 
 ' All hollow as the hopes and fears of men ' ; the 
 cosmic process, the solid material earth, the 'little 
 lives of men ' but phantoms lost in the eternal spaces : 
 the whole some day destined to vanish, leaving 'not a 
 rack behind' in the Everlasting Quiet beyond the 
 final change. 
 
 That hour perhaps 
 Is not so far when momentary man 
 Shall seem no more a something to himself, 
 But he, his hopes and hates, his homes and fanes. 
 And even his bones long laid within the grave, 
 The very side of the grave itself shall pass. 
 Vanishing, atom and void, atom and void. 
 Into the unseen for ever.° 
 
 But almost before the horror of this old dream had 
 been fully realised, a new principle was enunciated, 
 bringing comfort to the minds of men. And this was 
 the principle of Evolution. It accepted the facts in 
 
 '"Lucretius." ^Jbid. 
 
EVOLUTION 105 
 
 the newer lights the reality of change, the continuous 
 advance forward ; only, it discerned an order under- 
 lying this progress. It conceived of change forming a 
 process from a definite beginning to a definite end, 
 and not a series of recurring cycles of restlessness 
 throughout an empty sky. Change is not blind and 
 aimless, but rational and orderly ; not a drift, but an 
 evolution. The laws may change, yet there is a higher 
 law controlling the law of change itself. The universe 
 as we know it is a Urtiverse of Becoming ; . we can 
 faintly discern a rational advance in the narrow 
 sphere illuminated by our consciousness ; we must 
 have faith in the validity of the principle, in a Uni- 
 versal progress towards a rational end. The world 
 is not simply an interaction of changing elements, a 
 building up and a breaking down, a making and un- 
 making without purpose or plan. But the Universe is 
 evolving ever higher and higher forms, developing con- 
 tinually towards the God who has created it that it 
 might grow to Himself. 
 
 This is the view of change and Evolution, of which 
 Tennyson was so strenuous an advocate. He accepted 
 perhaps more completely than any other poet of the 
 century, the principle of change in its fullest applica- 
 tion. 'We sleep, and wake, and sleep, but all things 
 move,' 1 he says. ' Then came a change as all things 
 human change.' All the conclusions of modern science 
 he thankfully welcomed. Evolution, the watchword of 
 the new thought, was received by him as the fundamental 
 principle of the Cosmos, behind which we cannot penetrate. 
 But instead of confronting this with astonishment and 
 despair, he accepted it as providing a much fuller and more 
 satisfactory explanation of the world. For Evolution 
 meant for him the recalling of God to His world, the 
 
 '"The Golden Year." 
 
io6 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 complete abandonment of the older doctrine of an absent 
 Providence. Now, as of old, the spirit of God moves upon 
 the face of the waters ; and the power that is directing 
 the forward progress of the Universe is essentially the 
 same Power that started it on its changeful journey. 
 The progress of things is not an aimless clash of 
 elementSj producing any chance products, that will be 
 subsequently devoured in the same unmeaning chaos. 
 But the change is orderly, with a purpose behind it, 
 and a guiding hand directing it, producing harmony 
 from apparent discord, developing it towards its pre- 
 destined end. 
 
 And so Tennyson again and again asserts his faith in 
 Evolution, as expressing a much less difficult explanation 
 of the contradictions of the world than the older statical 
 ideal. In the natural world identity accompanying change 
 must be accepted. The only form of identity with change 
 of which we have any conception, is change in personality : 
 I am identical, yet I change. The fundamental principle 
 of the world can thus only be apprehended as personality. 
 Evolution brings back to Nature an immanent and a personal 
 God. Without Him the progress of things remains in- 
 explicable. With him it ceases to be a mere drifting 
 forward : it becomes the working of a spiritual principle, 
 realising itself through many diverse forms. 
 
 So also in the world of men, in that changing conscious- 
 ness of which alone we possess the direct knowledge, 
 religious systems rise and flourish and die, and nothing 
 seems fixed and established, until men cry aloud for 
 something firm and sure, behind the continual corrosion 
 and decay. Yet by penetrating below the surface a certain 
 process can be discerned, a spiritual principle developing 
 towards self-consciousness. And this can be seen attempt- 
 ing to realise itself in many forms. These are not in- 
 harmonious, not out of tune ; ' through the ages ' one 
 
EVOLUTION 107 
 
 ' increasing purpose runs ' ; and the lower, more imperfect 
 stage is a necessity for a higher which could not have 
 existed without it. The 'old order' must indeed 
 change, ' yielding place to new ' ; but such a change 
 is directed by the guiding hand of a God who 'fulfils 
 Himself in many ways, lest one good custom should 
 corrupt the world.' Tennyson has expressed all this 
 in one of his deepest utterances on Evolution, in the 
 vision of the wife in 'Sea Dreams.' A luminous vapour 
 lies round the North ; from it issue long waves breaking on 
 the line of cliffs ; and as they break it is seen that these 
 are no longer cliffs, 'but great Cathedral fronts of every 
 age ' ; and one by one they totter and fall under the 
 continual shock of the never-resting sea. And people 
 cry in agony ' set them up,' or in triumph ' cast them 
 down.' And even the figure of the Virgin and Child 
 over all seems to totter. But all is in harmony : the 
 luminous cloud, the breakers on the cliffs, the wailings 
 of the crowd, all have blended and united in one musical 
 sound ; and, although the wave sweep away faiths and 
 peoples together, nothing is ever out of tune. The 
 passage will bear quoting in full : it is one of the great 
 passages of Tennyson's poetry. 
 
 Round the North, a light, 
 A belt it seem'd, of luminous vapour, lay, 
 And ever in it a low musical note 
 Swell'd up and died ; and as it swell'd, a ridge 
 Of breaker issued from the belt, and still 
 Grew with the growing note, and when the note 
 Had reached a thunderous fulness, on those cliffs 
 Broke, mixed with awful light (the same as that 
 Living within the belt) whereby she saw 
 That all those lines of cliffs were cliffs no more, 
 But huge Cathedral fronts of every age, 
 Grave, florid, stern, as far as eye could see, 
 One after one : and then the great ridge drew. 
 Lessening to the lessening music, back, 
 
io8 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 And pass'd into the belt and swell'd again 
 Slowly to music : ever when it broke 
 The statues, king or saint, or founder fell : 
 Then from the gaps and chasms of ruin left 
 Came men and women in dark clusters round, 
 Some crying " Set them up ! they shall not fall ! " 
 And others, " Let them lie for they have fall'n ! " 
 And still they strove and wrangled : and she grieved 
 In her strange dream, she knew not why, to find 
 Their wildest wailings never out of tune 
 With that sweet note ; and ever as their shrieks 
 Ran highest up the gamut, that great wave 
 Returning, while none marked it, on the crowd 
 Broke, mixt with awfiil light, and show'd their eyes 
 Glaring, and passionate looks, and swept away 
 The men of flesh and blood, and men of stone. 
 To the waste deeps together.' 
 
 Here is Tennyson's philosophy of Evolution — the cease- 
 less changes^ the trouble and consternation caused by 
 the passing away of those things once deemed firm and 
 indissoluble, the recoil of the human spirit from the 
 restless progress, the necessity for its continuance ; yet 
 the harmony underlying it all, and the ' note never out 
 of tune.' The old Statical idea of the world has been 
 swept away beyond recall. Change, as an ultimate 
 factor in the world, is the principle upon which any 
 religious or philosophical system must now be based. 
 Tennyson's merit as a teacher was the frank recognition 
 of this revolution, and the insistence on the purpose in 
 the restlessness, and the harmony behind the change. 
 Evolution is not simply a progress from homogeneity to 
 heterogeneity, followed by dissolution and continual 
 repetition ; not simply a series of meaningless cyclic 
 sweeps through an empty sky. It is a process with a 
 purpose, a spiritual principle preserving identity in change 
 realising itself through many varied forms ; a continual 
 
 ' "Sea Dreams." 
 
EVOLUTION 109 
 
 advance upwards to a fuller self-consciousness and a 
 richer life. 
 
 I see in part 
 That all, as in some piece of art 
 Is toil co-operant to an end.^ 
 
 The progress is a moral progress ; the end, the attainment 
 of the full realisation of the Spirit, the Restitution of all 
 things in God. 
 
 ^ " In Memoriam," cxxviii. 
 
VIII. EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY 
 
 ' I ■'HE frank acceptance of change as good, Tennyson 
 -*- maintains, instead of the condemnation of change 
 as evil, is essential to an optimistic view of Evolution. 
 To preserve this faith it is necessary to 'hold it good 
 good things must pass ' ; ^ to acknowledge that the state 
 of rest, the 'continuing in one stay,' is not the Summum 
 Bonum, the highest life of man. ' Meet is it ' that 
 change should control our being, lest we ' rust in ease.' ^ 
 Change must be welcomed as leading on to a fuller,' 
 ampler existence ; rest must be rejected as evil, that 
 which once possessed life now 'slowly mouldering into 
 lower forms.' To adhere to the lower ideal, when the 
 higher is revealed ; to attempt to escape from the intoler- 
 able burden of advance by dull clinging to the present ; 
 the craving for rest, the endeavour to avoid that continual 
 pressing forward which is the law of our being; these 
 are actions and desires which we must oppose. It is 
 for us to overcome these tendencies, to acclaim the great 
 world spinning ' for ever do wn the ringing grooves o f 
 change ' ^ to acknowledge that as conscious personalities 
 progress is for us the highest duty^ the fulfilment in us 
 of the Divine purpose. 
 
 Tennyson showed that he had accepted this point of 
 view in his early poems, in which he contrasted the ideal 
 of rest with the ideal of change. In the ' Lotos Eaters,' 
 he depicts the former ideal ; the gradually increasing 
 languor, the yearning for freedom from the strain of 
 continual activity, the forgetting and abandonment of 
 
 1 "Will Waterproof's Monologue." ^ " Love thou thy land." 
 
 » "Locksley Hall." 
 
EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY in 
 
 that hard stern upward toil which alone can produce 
 the higher development. 
 
 Why are we weighed upon with heaviness, 
 And utterly consumed with sharp distress, 
 When all things else have rest from weariness? 
 
 Hateful is the dark blue sky, 
 
 Vaulted o'er the dark blue sea. 
 
 Death is the end of life ; ah why 
 
 Should life all labour be ? 
 Let us alone. Time driveth onward fast. 
 And in a little while our lips are dumb. 
 Let us alone. What is it that will last ? 
 All things are taken from us, and become 
 Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past. 
 Let us alone. What pleasure can we have 
 To war with evil ? Is there any peace 
 In ever climbing up the climbing wave ? 
 All things have rest, and ripen towards the grave ; 
 In silence : ripen, fall and cease ; 
 Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.^ 
 
 Under the influence of this ideal^ God Himself, as 
 choosing for Himself the highest good^ is apprehended 
 as at rest — the ' Quiet ' above all things ; and the Lotos 
 Eaters picture their deities lying 'beside their nectar^' 
 careless of the strife and turmoil of human life, enjoying 
 the calm which they themselves are longing to obtain. 
 All through this age, indeed, men turned wistfully from 
 the perpetual motion of things around them, towards 
 
 The gods who have attained 
 Rest in a happy place, and quiet seats 
 Above the thunder : ^ 
 
 and the mind can conceive of no better existence than 
 
 the existence of 
 
 Those who far aloof 
 From envy, hate and pity and spite and scorn, 
 Live the great life which all our greatest fain 
 Would follow, centr'd in Eternal calm.* 
 
 1 "The Lotos Eaters." " « Lm-rgtius." ' "CEnone." 
 
112 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 ' What pleasure can we have to war with evil ? ' 
 ' There is confusion worse than death, trouble on trouble, 
 pain on pain ' ; surely here we can recognise an echo of 
 that philosophy of life which in the East has been 
 crystallised into great religious systems, whose end has 
 been the escape from the intolerable burden of living the 
 life of change. And with the development of evolutionary 
 theories, and the reassertion of the fleeting nature of all 
 things, the same spirit has exhibited a revival in the 
 western world. Confronted with the ceaseless motion of 
 all things no whither, ' the self acknowledges the not 
 self to be too strong for it ' ; it finds the harmful source 
 of all the turmoil and restlessness, in that will-to-live 
 which is continually forcing men along the path of 
 change ; it advocates resistance to this impulse, a refusal 
 to be driven forward by it, a final destruction of desire. 
 And how many older thinkers, hurried from change to 
 change, and watching with anguish all things slipping 
 away from them, and all that seemed good overwhelmed 
 in fresh confusion which they could not interpret, have 
 looked out sadly upon the transitory world, and prayed 
 earnestly for rest. Plato, finding his highest good 
 in the immutable ideas stored up in heaven, and 
 seeing the temporary effect of the restless activity of 
 Athens hurrying to destruction the body politic, finds 
 in changefulness, in motion, the embodiment of every- 
 thing evil. So Dante also, the greatest mind of the 
 Middle Ages, compares the feverish activity of the people 
 of Florence to the writhings of a sick man who 
 
 Turns and turns again 
 To ease him of his pain, 
 
 and is never satisfied. And, as long as man has estab- 
 lished a worldly ideal of perfection, he must continue 
 to gaze with sorrow upon that activity of the human 
 
EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY 113 
 
 spirit which refuses to acquiesce in a mere temporal 
 paradise. But a different ideal has been framed by others^ 
 who recognise that ' here we have no continuing city' ; and 
 with these the conception of change has superseded the 
 conception of rest as the highest good. The human mind 
 is not satisfied, nor can ever be satisfied. It is the 
 restless activity of the Gothic spirit which Ruskin discerns 
 in its architecture that is representative of all that is 
 highest in the life of man. "It is this strange dis- 
 quietude . . . that is its greatness ; that restlessness of 
 the dreaming mind that wanders hither and thither 
 among the niches, and flickers feverishly around the 
 pinnacles, and frets and fades in labyrinthine knots and 
 shadows along wall and roof; and yet is not satisfied, 
 nor shall be satisfied. The Greek could stay in his 
 triglyph furrow, and be at peace ; but the work of the 
 Gothic art is fretwork still, and it can neither rest in, 
 nor from its labour, but must pass on, sleeplessly, until 
 its love of change shall be pacified for ever, in the change 
 that must come alike on them that wake and them 
 that sleep." 1 
 
 So Tennyson, in the light of Evolution, would accept 
 change as good ; and would exalt a different ideal from 
 that craving for rest manifested by the Lotos Eaters. 
 
 How dull it is to pause, to make an end, 
 To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use ! 
 As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life 
 Were all too little .... 
 
 .... But every hour is saved 
 From that eternal silence, something more, 
 A bringer of new things. , , .^ 
 
 Here he fully accepts the principle of change as good ; 
 
 ^ Ruskin : " Stones of Venice " — On the Nature of Gothic. 
 2 " Ulysses." 
 
ii4 Tennyson as a religious teacher 
 
 and although later weakness prevailed, and he recoiled 
 from the full consequences of his position, he never 
 relinquished this faith as alone justifying the doctrine 
 of Evolution. Even God Himself can be no longer 
 conceived as resting ; the older ideal of the ' Quiet ' 
 above all things, must be relinquished. It is the Spirit 
 of God that moves still, moves in every form of real 
 power everywhere — in Nature, and in man. Or, better, 
 it must be asserted that God is neither rest nor change, 
 but somehow transcending both, in a manner incom- 
 prehensible to our changeful personalities ; ' Stahilis et 
 incomprehensibilis,' in the words of St Augustine, ' im- 
 mutabilis mutans omnia nunquam novus nunquam vetus, 
 semper agens semper quietus.' But to us God may 
 be conceived as resting, or as changing ; and it is 
 the latter view which now needs emphasis — God as 
 activity, ceaseless, all-continued, all-embracing, the Giver 
 of life, the Sustainer of all things, working towards His 
 appointed end." The inclination to remain still, the re- 
 vulsion against change, the clinging to the old, the 
 resistance of the languid soul, must be fought and con- 
 quered. No system of Ethics can, in the future, be 
 content with the conservation of the past, or with 
 acquiescence in the conclusions of the present : unless 
 progressing, it is dying or dead. No theology can again 
 hold out as its ultimate ideal a state of changeless, ever- 
 lasting rest. 
 
 To make this assertion, Tennyson was compelled to 
 have faith in Evolution as the unfolding through Time 
 of a definite, spiritual progress, and the continual advance 
 of humanity towards a predestined end. He held. that 
 in the period of the past, illuminated by our limited 
 knowledge, he could trace the evidence of this advance ; 
 he believed that by thus 'forgetting those things that 
 are behind' and perpetually 'pressing to those things 
 
EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY 115 
 
 that are before,' mankind could co-operate with God, 
 in the fulfilment of the Divine plan. The symbolic 
 sculptures round the Hall of Merlin summarise the past 
 history of this development : — 
 
 In the lowest beasts are slaying men, 
 And in the second men are slaying beasts, 
 And on the third are warriors, perfect men. 
 And on the fourth are men with growing wings.' 
 
 And more and more did he come to regard Sin as 
 representing in this evolution the survival of the older 
 stages, which ought to have vanished before the advance 
 of the newer. These had their work, their place in the 
 design of Him who made ' the darkness and the light ' ; 
 • but it was the cUnging to these, despite the progressive 
 advance of spirit, the refusal to accept the necessaiy 
 changes, which produced in man an alienation from God 
 and a thwarting of the Divine purpose. The elimination 
 of the ' ape and tiger,' the ' working out of the beast,' 
 was the labour of this long process — a labour as yet only 
 partially completed, for man is still ' being made.' 
 "Our bodies are those of animals, our feelings those of 
 savages, our reason that of men, while our destiny and 
 duties seem those of angels." ^ " The lusts of the 
 flesh, the incubus of ancestral sins, are ever at war with 
 the aspiration of the spirit " ; ^ and the painful upward 
 toil is the fruitful cause of the groaning and travailing 
 in pain of the whole creation. It is the duty of man 
 to abandon that which is outworn, to throw oif the husks 
 that he has outgrown, to continually struggle forward 
 towards the light, to that unity which sin as the estranger 
 destroys, and to that ' Life which is life indeed,' only 
 ultimately attainable after ' many changes.' * 
 
 1 "The Holy Grail." ^ « Riddles of the Sphinx," p. 107. 
 ' Ibid. p. 104. ^ See " The Progress of Spring." 
 
ii6 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 Influenced by this wide and far-reaching principle, 
 Tennyson approaches the consideration of Immortahty, 
 and the fut-ure condition of the Soul. It is very evident 
 that his treatment of this question will be different from 
 that essayed by former speculators who regarded change 
 as evil. To him the human earthly existence is merely 
 a stage in the onward progress of the spirit; we come 
 ' out of the deep/ we pass ' into the deep ' again. 
 In this future life there will be no rest, no standstill ; 
 the progress is not summarily arrested by death. The 
 spirit passes into larger, ampler life — a life but dimly 
 conceivable to those left behind, but a life of upward 
 endeavour, accompanied by the revelation of larger powers, 
 and the outputting of wider energies, and the attain- 
 ment of a deeper love. Death's ' truer name is onward ' ; 
 utilised by God for His purpose ; it cannot check or 
 thwart that pui'pose ; and the sudden, and, to us, in- 
 explicable destruction exhibits in reality 
 
 No discordance in the roll 
 And march of that Eternal Harmony 
 Whereto the worlds beat time.'' 
 
 So that in all Tennyson's varied speculations on the 
 future life of his friend, he contemplates him, not resting 
 in a Paradise of peaceful bliss, but filled with 
 
 A life that bears immortal fruit, 
 In those great offices that suit 
 The full-grown energies of heaven, 
 
 still striving, still advancing, still pressing continually 
 forward, nearer and nearer to God. So also in his fare- 
 well to the great soldier who had saved his country, he 
 no longer considers him as entering into rest ; but 
 
 We doubt not that for one so true 
 There must be other nobler work to do 
 
 1 " Death of the Duke of Clarence." 
 
EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY 117 
 
 Than when he fought at Waterloo, 
 And Victor he must ever be.^ 
 
 Evolution must be applied universally : — 
 
 Eternal process moving on, 
 From state to state the spirit walks.^ 
 
 Death must be regarded as no real break in the forward 
 progress ; but a step, great indeed as a severance from 
 those behind, but yet carrying forward the personality 
 as developed here, through continual striving after the 
 best, into the Eternal world. 
 
 The Voices of the day 
 Are heard across the Voices of the dark. 
 No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for man. 
 But through the Will of One who knows and rules — 
 And utter knowledge is but utter love — 
 Ionian evolution, swift or slow, 
 Through all the Spheres — an ever-opening height, 
 An ever-lessening earth.^ 
 
 We have only to contrast this position with that main- 
 tained by some of the representatives of the older ideal, 
 to appreciate the immense difference which the accept- 
 ance of the principle of Evolution has made in human 
 conceptions of the future. In the earlier time, such a 
 vision of the other world would have been regarded with 
 horror. The almost universal object of desire was that 
 'rest that remaineth for the people of God.' The 
 incompatibility of this 'little life that toddles half-an- 
 hour ' with the tremendous powers and aspirations of 
 men had never been completely realised. So to these 
 older poets, bewildered in a world which denied them 
 stability, rest seemed the one desirable state for troubled 
 
 > " Death of the Duke of Wellington." 
 
 ^ " In Memoriam," Ixxxv. ^ "The Ring." 
 
Ti8 TENNYSON- AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 humanity. To Spenser, change as good is inconceivable. 
 ' Mutabilitie,' the subject of the last uncompleted canto 
 of the ' Faerie Queen,' he regarded with fear and con- 
 demnation. He is driven to the sad conclusion that 
 she reigns on earth. The thought fills him with melan- 
 choly. His only hope is to look forward to a future 
 ' changelessness beyond the change.' ' The time shall 
 come when all shall changed be,' he says ; ' and from 
 henceforth none no more change shall see.' And in the 
 last two stanzas of the last broken canto of his great 
 poem, he sums up the conclusion of the older philosophy 
 concerning the life of change. 
 
 When I bethinke me on that speech, why-leare 
 Of Mutabilitie, and well it way, 
 Me seemes, that though she all unworthy were 
 Of the Heav'n's Rule : yet, very sooth to say, 
 
 In all things else she bears the greatest sway : 
 Which makes me loath this state of life so tickle, 
 
 And love of things so vaine to cast away ; 
 Whose flowing pride, so fading and so fickle. 
 Short time shall soon cut down with his consuming sickle. 
 
 Then gin I thinke on that which Nature sayd, 
 
 Of that same time when no more Change shall be 
 But steadfast rest of all things, firmly stayd 
 
 Upon the pillons of Eternity, 
 
 That is contrayr to Mutabilitie. 
 For all that moveth doth in change delight : 
 But henceforth all shall rest eternally 
 
 With him that is the God of Sabaoth hight : 
 O ! that great Sabaoth God, grant me that Sabaoth's sight.^ 
 
 How great a divergence from the ideal of the later poet ! 
 From the yearning for that ' land where no more change 
 shall be,' to the passionate aspiration, ' forever alive, 
 forever forward.' Though Tennyson sometimes, in weak- 
 ness desired only rest, and, unable to see light through 
 
 1 "Faerie Queen"— "On Mutabilitie." 
 
EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY 119 
 
 the darkness, cried backward instead of forward, yet this 
 remained to the end the vital principle of his life and 
 his religious teaching ; the only principle by which the 
 theories of Evolution were saved from producing despair. 
 And so from his death-bed he can but reiterate the same 
 message, craving for progress, 'on and always on.' 
 
 When the dumb Hour, clothed in black, 
 
 Brings the Dreams about my bed, 
 Call me not so often back. 
 
 Silent Voices of the dead. 
 Toward the lowland ways behind me, 
 
 And the sunlight that is gone ! 
 Call me rather, silent voices, 
 
 Forward to the starry track 
 Glimmering up the heights beyond me. 
 
 On and always on ! ^ 
 
 This ready acceptance by Tennyson of the theory of the 
 Evolution of Spirit produced in his views as to the nature 
 of personality and the future conditions of existence a 
 distinct modification with advancing years. He com- 
 menced with the Particular, the individual self, completely 
 isolated, possessing firm conviction of its own reality. 
 This individual he regarded as eternally persisting ; any 
 merging of the personal consciousness into a higher life 
 is to him inconceivable ; under the influence of his 
 personal love for Arthur Hallam, and the desire for the 
 reuniting of the severed parts of the ' friendship that had 
 mastered time,' he refused to be satisfied with any semi- 
 pantheistic idea of the absorption of the personal con- 
 sciousness in the 'general Soul.' 
 
 That each, who seems a separate whole, 
 Should move his rounds, and fusing all 
 The skirts of self again, should fall, 
 
 Remerging in the general Soul, 
 
 ^ " The Silent Voices," 
 
I20 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 Is faith as vague as all unsweet ; 
 
 Eternal form shall still divide 
 
 The eternal soul from all beside : 
 And I shall know him when we meet.' 
 
 But gradually with his firmer grasp of the idea of Evolu- 
 tion Tennyson's belief broadened and deepened. Spirit 
 to him was the ultimate reality of the world : and the 
 spiritual principle is developing through change, towards 
 an end. The forms of things as we know them^ the shift- 
 ing phenomena of that which we term the material world, 
 represent the different stages in the upward development. 
 Each new law can be recognised as a higher imposed upon 
 a lower ; each step must be judged by the end rather than 
 by the beginning. Every temporary manifestation becomes 
 inadequate, as the spirit advances towards self-conscious- 
 ness and freedom. The higher law absorbs the lower and 
 in absorbing supersedes it. This spirit cannot consist in 
 its ultimate form of all the innumerable personalities of 
 the past the present and the future for ever separated 
 and apart ; there must be a progress, and a progress 
 towards a unity. The world process must be conceived 
 as the realisation of an anterior idea or purpose in the 
 Divine consciousness. The One from which it starts has 
 become differentiated, in order that it may ultimately 
 attain to a unity which is conscious of itself; a oneness 
 which has developed from diversity, by conscious choice 
 of a unity, exhibiting a higher order of connection than 
 the former undivided simplicity. This world, as we 
 apprehend it, is only a stage in the upward progress ; and 
 the process, which we can discern as working in this 
 limited arena in the upward evolution of humanity, is 
 being continued in other spheres with each individual 
 soul. Men possess common knowledge and similar 
 faculties ; they appear to construct within themselves the 
 ' "In Memoriam," xlvii. 
 
EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY 121 
 
 same picture, which they term the external world. 
 Modem research is demonstrating that minds are not so 
 completely cut off from each other as was once assumed, 
 that soul can directly influence soul through powers of 
 personality at present only in rudimentary stages of 
 development. The reality of Love, the hunger and 
 yearning for union with those whom we love in a fuller 
 and more complete sense than any union to which we can 
 at present attain, the passionate desire to subordinate 
 personal good to the good of the beloved, seem to indicate 
 the existence of a real working towards unity, a real link 
 uniting separate personalities. Ultimately, it is conceiv- 
 able that, through the further development of this 
 principle to include all men, and through the purification 
 of the individuals until they have all accepted the same 
 end, and merged their egoistic desires in the good of the 
 whole, humanity may become One, forming a unity in a 
 much more literal interpretation of the term than is 
 possible in our present limited sphere. 
 
 For here the trammels of the flesh separate us, the one 
 from the other : ' in the sea of life enisled ... we mortal 
 millions live alone.' Yet at times, when 'the moon their 
 hollows lights,' with ' a longing like despair ' these islands 
 feel that they are surely 'parts of a single continent'; 
 their prayer must ever be for the restoration of this unity, 
 by the destruction of the ' unplumbed, salt, estranging 
 sea.' 1 The limitations of Space and Time keep us apart ; 
 but in the Eternal World space and time are no more. 
 Yet these are not the only dividing and isolating factors. 
 Sin is the great separating principle, driving men apart 
 in the pursuit of their own separate, personal, selfish 
 ends ; Unity is only attainable by the development of 
 the opposing principle of Love. ' That we all may be one,' 
 must be the highest universal aspiration. The whole 
 
 ^ See Matthew Arnold : "To Marguerite," 
 
122 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 course of Evolution in its vast onward sweep, must be 
 regarded as the development, on the one hand, of con- 
 scious spiritual personality in its fullest manifestation in 
 the perfect individual life ; and, on the other hand, of pro- 
 gress towards a richer unity by the conscious subordination 
 in these personalities of their own ends to the Universal 
 good, by the continued increase of that love which is 
 eternal, the real bond of union beyond space and time, 
 in the land where 'love will conquer at the last.'' This 
 indeed is not conceivable directly at death. It must be 
 the termination of a lengthy process, the goal towards 
 which the human race is advancing. Love draws us 
 together here, more perhaps in the world beyond the 
 grave ; absolute love might produce absolute unity. The 
 struggle towards this unity must be the work of the 
 highest religion. 
 
 So we find in Tennyson's later poems -the -ideal-ofJIifaw 
 developing as distinct from the ideal of men. The toil of 
 men throughout all history exhibits an upward progress ; 
 'millions of ages' had already gone to the 'making of 
 Man.' ^ The individual labours, the species benefits. 
 Only the latest comers, says Kant, can have the good 
 fortune of inhabiting the dwelling which the long series 
 of their predecessors have toiled, though without any 
 conscious intent, to build up.^ Gradually we may get to 
 treat the whole life of the- race as if it were the con- 
 tinuous development of an immortal being realising the 
 idea only in the species, not in the individual.* 
 
 If twenty million of summers are stored in the sunlight still, 
 
 We are far from the noon of man, there is time for the race to grow.* 
 
 ' " Locksley Hall Sixty Years After.'' 
 2 "Making of Man." 
 
 ' See Kant : " Idea for a Universal History.'' 
 *Ibiii. 5 "The Dawn." 
 
EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY 123 
 
 Through the development towards perfection of each 
 individual life, 'Man is being made.' 
 
 Man as yet is being made, and ere the crowning Age of ages, 
 Shall not aeon after seen pass and touch him into shape ? 
 
 All about him shadow still, but, while the races flower and fade, 
 Prophet-eyes may catch a glory slowly gaining on the shade, 
 Till the peoples all are one, and all their voices blend in choric 
 Hallelujah to the Maker ' It is finish'd. Man is made.' ^ 
 
 This is the key „Jto_ the process of evolution; the 
 ' working ~^ut of the beast/ ,jjie^ perpetual. .a4yance to 
 a higher stage of being. That which was good for a 
 fbirmer agFcahnot be good for the next. The individual 
 as well as the race advances, ' forgetting those things 
 that are behind,' ever pressing forward. Men must 
 have faith, despite the backward eddies of the current, 
 that this process will continue, until the end is attained. 
 Iijhis old age Tennyson .ga?es out-on the._world around 
 him and sees much that at first sight seems to^exhibit 
 progress as evil, producing nothing, but -social disorder 
 andThe perishing of the good. The Yoice of the Earth 
 go"e¥ ' wailingly past him, ' and says : — 
 
 I would that my race were run, 
 For teeming with liars, and madmen, and knaves, 
 And wearied of Autocrats, Anarchs, and slaves. 
 And darken'd with doubts of a Faith that saves. 
 And crimson with battles, and hollow with graves. 
 To the wail of my winds, and the moan of my waves 
 
 I whirl and I follow the sun.^ 
 
 The change is sure; the progress sweeps forward 'into 
 the younger day.' Faith-m)ist maintain Jjiat the progress 
 is guidedj-^that- the _eiFort is not vain ; with the_^ Making 
 of Man ' all will be seen to have been good, in the final 
 triumph, ' When God has made the pile complete.' 
 
 1 "The Making of Man." " " The Dreamer." 
 
124 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 Mourning your losses, O Earth, 
 
 Heart-weary and overdone ! 
 But all 's well that ends well. 
 
 Whirl, and follow the sun ! 
 
 He is racing from heaven to heaven 
 
 And less will be lost than won, 
 For all 's well that ends well, 
 
 Whirl, and follow the sun ! 
 
 For moans will have grown sphere-music 
 
 Or ever your race be run ! 
 And all 's well that end's well. 
 
 Whirl and follow the sun ! ' 
 
 This cannot indeed be interpreted as the sacrifice of 
 the individual for the benefit of future generations, the 
 expenditure of the efforts of countless numbers in order 
 that their remote descendants may find life a little more 
 comfortable or a little less burdensome before their final 
 extinction. Men can never be satisfied with mere earthly 
 perfection. Granted all the changes advocated, the old 
 difficulty would still return. " I felt that the flaw in 
 my life must be a flaw in life itself; that the question 
 was, whether, if the reformers of society and government 
 could succeed in their objects, and every person in the 
 community were free and in a state of physical comfort, 
 the pleasures of life, being no longer kept up by struggle 
 and privation, would cease to be pleasures." ^ Any state- 
 ment of the possibility of future happiness in this earth 
 is found to be unsatisfying. ' Robed in universal harvest,' 
 ' the kindly earth may slumber lapt in universal law ' ; 
 ' Universal Peace ' may ' lie like a shaft of light across 
 the land through all the circle of the golden year ' ; ^ and 
 men may dwell in safety, ' gathering all the fruits of earth, 
 and crown'd with all her flowers.' * Yet even in this 
 
 ' "The Dreamer." = Mill: " Autobiography," p. 145. 
 
 ^ "The Golden Year." 
 
 * " Ode at Opening of the Exhibition," 1851. 
 
EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY 125 
 
 state men would be compelled once more to acknowledge 
 themselves as pilgrims and strangers on the earth as 
 their fathers were. The ' one ripple of the boundless 
 deep feels that the deep is boundless, and itself for ever 
 changing form, but ever more one with the boundless 
 motion of the deep.' 1 And, however pleasant the port and 
 friendly the company, ever beneath the outward rejoicing 
 can be heard that clear call from the sea which will 
 finally overpower all other voices, and compel the mariner 
 to put forth again towards the soul's true home 'beyond 
 the sunset.' This world to the human Spirit is a place of 
 effort, not of happiness ; and the effort will be as great or 
 greater when all the conceivable objects which at present 
 we set before us have been gained. El Dorado is never 
 attainable in this world ; but the pattern of the heavenly 
 city is ' laid up in heaven ' ; and there it is being built 
 by the constant effort of the workers here. The Man 
 that, with Tennyson, is being made is not a vague 
 metaphorical abstraction, as expressed by some enthusiastic 
 writers, setting forth the development to fuller earthly 
 life of the individual selves who shall succeed us. Such 
 an ideal cannot satisfy the aspirations of man. Death 
 must remain, cutting off the individual just as he appears 
 fitted for infinite possibilities ; death of the race is only 
 a more prolonged agony than the death of the individual. 
 And even without death, supposing that life could be 
 indefinitely lengthened through the increase of natural 
 knowledge, yet the condition of the human spirit ' pent 
 up ' within its earthly limitations would be ever more 
 wretched ; and the experience of mankind would be the 
 experience of Tithonus of old : — 
 
 I asked thee, ' Give me immortality.' 
 
 Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile. 
 
 Like wealthy men who care not how they give. 
 
 i"The Ancient Sage." 
 
126 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 But thy strong Hours indignant work'd their wills, 
 And beat me down and marr'd and wasted me, 
 And tho' they could not end me, left me maim'd 
 To dwell in presence of immortal youth, 
 Immortal age beside immortal youth, 
 And all I was in ashes. 
 
 Let me go : take back thy gift ; 
 Why should a man desire in any way 
 To vary from the kindly race of men. 
 
 Of happy men that have the power to die.* 
 
 " Our breast is parched and fretted and at last crushed,' 
 says Jean Paul, " by the slow fever-fire of an infinite love 
 for an infinite object, and must be assuaged by nothing 
 better than the hope that this heart-sickness,like a physical 
 heat, will sometime be removed by laying on it the ice- 
 slab of death." 
 
 Tennyson's conception of the Man that was being made 
 was something very different. It was the ultimate perfec- 
 tion of the Self-conscious Spirit through individual effort 
 continued in this world and the world beyond the grave ; 
 the coming into one, the bringing all things back to unity, 
 through the harmony of the will and the perfection of 
 Love. 
 
 And this was no pantheistic ideal, comparable to the 
 ideal which he rejected in the earlier stages of his 
 thought. The breaking of the bubble of life, the know- 
 ledge that though we perish as individuals the energy 
 which has sustained us will become part of the great 
 energy of Nature, cannot afford satisfaction to the con- 
 sciousness of man. For this would be a process of 
 degradation, the higher life passing back into the lower, 
 not a progress upward. Consciousness, the highest 
 development of spirit known to us, cannot finally de- 
 generate into something less than consciousness. The 
 ' "Tithonus." 
 
EVOLUTION AND IMMORTALITY [27 
 
 unity attainable will not be the unity of formless chaotic 
 energy. It will be the conscious merging of self in the 
 higher Consciousness^ in which the individual is not 
 destroyed but only come to its ultimate fruition. 
 
 It is "the infinite Subject in eternal movement, the 
 process by which it died that it might live, as it were, 
 sacrificing its infinitude to finitude, dissolving its abstract 
 and universal in order to concrete and particular being, 
 yet ever only that it might return out of the finite and ' 
 the particular into the infinite and universal again, 
 though as articulated and reconciled consciousness." 1 
 " The process by which the Absolute is evolved into the 
 relative and the relative returns, reconciled, into the 
 bosom of the Absolute, represents at once the life of 
 God and the history of the Universe." ^ 
 
 This is the object towards which is working the Spirit 
 behind the drama of the Evolution of the Cosmic process ; 
 the fulfilment of the ideal shall be accomplished ' in the 
 serene result of all' when 'God shall be all and in all.' 
 Then only at length shall each individual be able to 
 participate in his own work, to 'see of the travail 
 of his soul and be satisfied.' Nothing will be lost, 
 nothing will be destroyed ; all will be gathered up into 
 One ; all discord will vanish ; the toil and pain of the 
 countless generations now forgotten will attain to its 
 fruition. The age-long effort, the continued suffering, 
 the hunger and search after truth and beauty and 
 righteousness, will find their full satisfaction. The^laims 
 of the individual will bereconcilei with the claims of the 
 universal : Man will be made.^ 
 
 ' Fairbairn : "Christ in Modern Theology," p. 217 (Hegel and 
 Modern Theology). 
 
 ^ Ibid. p. 219. 
 
 2 See "In Memoriam," "The Making of Man," "By an Evolu- 
 tionist," " The Dawn," etc. 
 
128 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 Such is the faith of Tennyson in the goal of all things, 
 which he accepted towards the close of his life. It had 
 been received by him on trust, as perhaps the least 
 difficult to believe of the many contradictory hypotheses. 
 The method of its working he never clearly apprehended. 
 How humanity was to be gathered into one, how the self 
 could find its highest good in the apparent sacrifice of 
 self, how all things could be brought into unity, he never 
 understood ; and the absence from his vision of any 
 method, and the faintness of the tokens of its operation, 
 and the existence of much that appeared to be working 
 directly contrary to his ideal, caused him often to relapse 
 into sad contempt or despair. 
 
 Yet confident belief in this progress had been manifested 
 many centuries ago, and the philosophy of Evolution only 
 came to provide confirmation to opinion at first accepted 
 on faith alone. The purpose had been announced, and 
 the principles of that purpose asserted ; that the way to 
 the highest life lay in the renunciation of self; that sin 
 was the cause of estrangement, and love the principle of 
 union ; that ultimately all discord and division would 
 cease, and all things again be gathered into one. The 
 purpose had been announced, and the ideal hfe lived, 
 and the machinery for the tranquil attainment of this 
 world end had been working throughout eighteen dis- 
 ordered centuries. Tennyson never clearly apprehended 
 the doctrine of the divine Economy by which 'through 
 the Christ' the restitution to unity of all things will be 
 effected ; a revelation necessary to complete the acceptance 
 of the spiritual interpretation of the evolutionary process, 
 as exhibiting the working towards this goal of the effort of 
 men, helped and guided by the effort of God. 
 
IX. PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 
 
 'HPENNYSON regarded as the goal of all his speculations 
 -*- the claims of the practical reason ; and the final test 
 of all constructive theories of philosophy was for him 
 their influence upon the course of right conduct. Morality 
 was the fundamental keystone of all his system ; not what 
 men think, but what men do, he held to be the really 
 important question : ' the end of man is an action not 
 a thought, though it were the noblest.' Anything which 
 tends to draw away human energies from the common 
 duties and immediate demands for the alleviation of human 
 suffering he condemned as harmful and pernicious. The 
 ordinary world, the everyday life of men, the way in which 
 they conduct themselves, their relations more especially 
 Mdth other persons around them, are, in his view, the 
 things of fundamental importance. His whole progress 
 of constructive thought, all his inquiry after the know- 
 ledge of God or the Immortality of the human spirit, 
 was stimulated by the fact that without these two 
 beliefs he was unable to formulate any system of 
 practical ethics. 'How shall I act.'' 'Why shall I 
 act .'' ' are the questions for which he demands definite 
 replies. 'What is the highest good for me to strive 
 after ? ' ' Why should I sacrifice immediate pleasure for 
 problematical benefit in the future .?' 'Why should I 
 perform any unselfish action ? ' — all the difficult problems 
 connected with the ethical 'ought,' which have been 
 the subject of discussion of moralists for so many ages, are 
 the questions to answer which all Tennyson's speculations 
 were endeavours, the questions which for him represented 
 the ultimate problems alike of philosophy and religion. 
 I 129 
 
130 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 And in the realm of practical ethics Tennyson main- 
 tained a working creed, which, although based on his 
 theology, and in its turn reacting upon it, was in a sense 
 independent, resting on its own fundamental principles. 
 Of these principles the first and most important was 
 the assertion of the freedom of the Will. Will, for 
 Tennyson, is the ultimate power of the Universe ; if 
 the postulate of its freedom be abandoned, he is unable 
 to formulate any satisfactory system of morality. With 
 Kant, he can see nothing finally good in the world except 
 a good will ; with Lotze, he is compelled to recognise 
 unconditioned Will as a reality behind which no investiga- 
 tion can penetrate. This Will is realised in choice ; and 
 the moral element in any action is . dependent upon the 
 free choice of the individual, the acceptance by his whole 
 being of the higher principle, and the rejection of the 
 lower. A man's volition is uncontrolled by bhe state of 
 things around him ; in a sense it is independent of his 
 environment, independent even of his past choice." So 
 long as a man remains a moral being he can always 
 choose between the lower and the higher course ; if he 
 cannot, his action ceases to be a subject of moral approval 
 or condemnation. But the alternatives as presented to 
 consciousness are modified by his past actions ; if a man 
 continues to choose the lower, the lower becomes the 
 easier and simpler choice, the definite acceptance of the 
 higher becomes the harder ; ultimately, he may be unable 
 to realise in his action this higher ideal, through its lack of 
 attractive power in his mind ; just as in the ' Vision of 
 Sin' after a long course of selfish indulgence, the man 
 was unable even to apprehend any beauty or attrac- 
 tion in unselfishness and purity and truth. Moral 
 eflbrt, the acceptance by the person of a motive which 
 he arduously attempts to realise, is one of the real forces 
 of the world. The putting forth of this efl^ort makes 
 
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 131 
 
 the choice moral ; the stronger the inclination towards 
 sin, the greater the effort required to realise the weaker 
 but higher motive ; the more completely and more 
 emphatically the higher is chosen, the easier such a choice 
 is made in the future. In the end it is possible to 
 conceive of a state in which the lower motive will be 
 present in consciousness, but inoperative as a power urging 
 to action, the Will being fixed in its acceptance of the 
 higher ; and then we shall at length have attained true 
 fi-eedom, having the power of completely realising our 
 highest nature, that is, our real selves. But in this world 
 ' such a state appears impossible ; for here the scale of 
 Duty stretches ever before us, and the path ' winds 
 upward all the way ' ; and although we may be ever 
 climbing the mountain-side, yet the summit stretches 
 far beyond us toward those ' shining table-lands to 
 which our God Himself is moon and sun.' ^ 
 
 Tennyson asserts morality as dependent on choice, the 
 choice of the Will between conflicting motives. Yet one 
 of his deepest convictions was the universality of law 
 and order in the spiritual no less than in the material 
 world. Our wills are free and independent ; but they 
 are free in order that we may make them conformable 
 to law, that moral law which is the true law of our 
 true being. With Tennyson, disorder is an unpardonable 
 sin, Uberty becoming licence, the subject of his severest 
 strictures. Choosing to act according to law is a 
 necessity of moral progress ; ' Our wills are ours, we know 
 not how ' ; but — 
 
 Our wills are ours, to make them thine. ^ 
 
 Knowledge of self, reverence for self, control of self, form 
 the three necessities of moral , action : ^ none of these 
 
 1 " Death of the Duke of Wellington." 
 
 ^ "In Memoriam," Prologue. ^ "CEnone." 
 
132 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 can be complete in the world with its present limitations. 
 The will possesses a limited range ; finite consciousness 
 cannot contemplate the unveiled truth; a little circle is 
 illuminated, outside is darkness. But within that circle 
 the choice is made ; and, however contracted the horizon, 
 that choice is a real one — a decision in one sense irrevoc- 
 able, a real change in the eternal world beyond the 
 limitations of the phenomenal. 
 
 To live by law 
 Acting the law we live by without fear,' 
 
 is the duty of the individual ; and the highest task of 
 the patriot and statesman is to control the aimless im- 
 pulse and reduce the chaos to order : — 
 
 To make 
 The ever-changing world of circumstance 
 In changing chime with never- changing Law.* 
 
 With Tennyson sin is disorder, violation of the law ; not 
 simply the law imposed from vidthout, but the law vidthin 
 us ; so that, in sinning, we are sinning as much against 
 ourselves as against God ; or, better, against the light 
 that lighteth every man, the God that is in ourselves. 
 Only the will is in itself partially conditioned by previous 
 choice ; and so we ourselves mould our own characters. 
 So long as we are responsible and moral beings we are 
 compelled to acknowledge a choice, an alternative between 
 two possible courses, a selection of ends put before us, 
 the adoption of one of them being absolutely Right and 
 the other absolutely Wrong. But every choice of the 
 lower will make the higher harder to attain. By neglect- 
 ing or violating the moral ideal we can corrupt our divine 
 power of will; we am injure it by weakness or irresolu- 
 tion, or by the refusal to put forth effort where effort is 
 
 1 " CEnone." * c< ^o the Duke of Argyll." 
 
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 133 
 
 demanded. Ultimately, we can conceive of a condition 
 where right choice is impossible. In this sense the 
 Will is not unconditioned ; for by deliberate choice of 
 the bad, as an end, the desire 'evil be thou my good,' 
 the power of choosing the good may be destroyed ; 
 
 Like one 
 That all in later, sadder age begins 
 To war against ill uses of a life. 
 But these from all his life arise, and cry, 
 ' Thou hast made us Lords, and canst not put us down.' ' 
 
 All high morality depends, then, on the development 
 of the unfettered will, the power of such a Will becoming 
 stronger with each choice of the good, but at the same 
 time less liable to deviate from this choice ; so that, 
 ultimately the will is perfectly free and yet perfectly 
 determined in the assertion of the highest ideal. Then, 
 indeed, the consummation is attained when the 'limited 
 individual Will is made one with the Will of the 
 Universe ' ; and 
 
 The full-grown will 
 Circled through all experience, pure law, 
 Commeasure perfect freedom. 
 
 But for the weak vrill, corrupted by indolence or by 
 excess, what prospect is there but of ultimate servitude 
 to the lowest passions of man, slavery to something outside 
 itself and final negation of that freedom, the attainment 
 of which is the object of its existence ? 
 
 But ill for him who, bettering not with time, 
 
 Corrupts the strength of heaven-descended Will, 
 
 And ever weaker grows thro' acted crime, 
 
 Or seeming-genial venial fault. 
 
 Recurring and suggesting still ! 
 
 He seems as one whose footsteps halt, 
 
 1 "GarethandLynette." 
 
134 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 Toiling in immeasurable sand, 
 
 And o'er a weary sultry land, 
 
 Far beneath a blazing vault. 
 
 Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill, 
 
 The city sparkles like a grain of salt. ^ 
 
 All the characters Tennyson pourtrays are depicted 
 in iJie act of choice between two alternatives. In this 
 choice and its results hes the whole interest and tragedy 
 of their history ; and according as they identify themselves 
 with the one or the other^ so we are to judge their actions 
 good or evil. Lancelot, entangled by his guilty passion 
 for the Queen, is unable to break it unless she wills 
 it. ' Would I break it if she did ? ' he asks. He cannot 
 answer ; only he can assert that, if not, if he would not 
 choose the good when the choice for once was simple 
 and clear before him, the best that he can hope for is 
 death and utter annihilation ; because the adherence to 
 evil when definitely recognised as evil means the final 
 destruction of the power of freedom, which is his divine 
 right as a man. 
 
 If I would not, then may God, 
 I pray Him, send a sudden Angel down 
 To seize me by the hair and bear me far. 
 And fling me deep in that forgotten mere. 
 Among the tumbled fragments of the hills." 
 
 What, then, is to decide this infinitely important choice ? 
 How am I to know which is the right course of action 
 and which the wrong ? Our human life here is such 
 a compUcated tangle, the motives are so mingled and 
 intricately woven together, that often the good must 
 appear as the evil and the evil as the good. Action 
 in this uncertain world seems in most cases to resemble 
 that in the vision of Queen Guinevere, in which ' a great 
 God's Angel' offered her red and blue cloths to choose 
 
 1 "Will." 2 " Lancelot and Elaine." 
 
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 135 
 
 between, asserting that one was Heaven and one was 
 Hellj the choice being for ever, with nothing to guide 
 her in her irrevocable decision.^ And many cases of 
 necessary action resemble this offer; a good and evil 
 presented to us which we are unable to discriminate, 
 and a choice to be made between them, 'brief and yet 
 endless.' 
 
 For guidance_,Ja..-±h8s#— feonriy^xletasions Tennyson 
 accepts the moral la;^;^ as , at .p5esent»- recognised, as 
 immediately, if not ultinaately ,sali4,4.iHlt.»*t, tb& same 
 time he is" willing to acknowledge that, , tbjs jcau^t ,. be 
 judged by some more fundamental principle-.. And this 
 fSniiciple, the final test of the morality of any action is 
 \Hth~ Tennyson, Love. Sin against Love is for him the 
 unpardonable sin ; and the rejection of love the one hope- 
 less condition of the human soul. A soul that cannot 
 lovfe cannot perform a moral act. Lovefetherealitv of 
 the Universe, the link that unites persons together, the 
 bondwhich will finally draw into one the diverse con- 
 sciousness of men. God is Love : it is as ' immortal 
 Love,' that Tennyson addresses Him ; and his aspiration 
 at the closeof hisiifeisforftilte-fcnowledge of 
 
 ■"'-'■ That Xove which is and was 
 My father, and my brother, and my God." 
 
 He that has chosen love has chosen all things ; he that 
 has rejected love has rejected the whole purpose of his 
 being, and made an utter ruin of his hfe. 
 
 And he that shuts Love out, in turn shall be 
 Shut out from Lovej and om her threshold lie 
 Howling in outer darkness.^ 
 
 This lesson Tennyson insists upon in almost every one of 
 
 1 Cf. W. Morris, "Defence of Guinevere." 
 
 2 "Doubt and Prayer." " Introduction to " Palace of Art." 
 
136 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 his earlier poems. In the ' Palace of Art ' the soul fell 
 into dread and deep loathing of herself, because she had 
 surrounded herself with beauty, and neglected human 
 love. In 'The Princess' the whole airy fabric falls to 
 the ground, because in the pursuit of knowledge Ida and 
 her companions had left no place for love. The hero in 
 ' Maud ' in attaining love, has attained to the true secret of 
 existence ; with this success, what mattered earthly failure ? 
 
 O let the solid ground 
 Not fail beneath my feet 
 Before my life has found 
 What some have found so sweet ; 
 
 Then let come what come may, 
 What matter if I go mad, 
 I shall have had my day .^ 
 
 And, on the other hand, the tragedy of the dying painter 
 lies just in this fact, that, in order to realise some false 
 ideal concerning Art, he had sacrificed the one thing for 
 the attainment of which he was sent into the world. 
 
 Ay, but when the shout 
 Of His descending peals from Heaven, and throbs 
 Thro' earth, and all her graves, if He should ask 
 
 ' Why left you wife and children ? for my sake. 
 According to my word ? ' And I replied 
 
 ' Nay, Lord, for Art^ why, that would sound so mean 
 That all the dead, who wait the doom of Hell 
 For bolder sins than mine, 
 
 Would turn, and glare at me, and point and jeer. 
 And gibber at the worm, who, living, made 
 The wife of wives a widow-bride, and lost 
 Salvation for a sketch.^ 
 
 In the Eternal world, Tennyson consistently maintains, 
 it is love which unites men together ; in love we approach 
 
 •"Maud." « "Romney's Remorse." 
 
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 137 
 
 nearest to God. And those who do not possess this love, 
 or who have killed it in their earthly lives, must dwell 
 henceforth in awful loneliness cast out from His Presence. 
 ' Love is and was my Lord and King/ he says, offering 
 his utter allegiance to the power that not only binds 
 together persons in the present world, but still joins with 
 a real bond of unity those living to those already passed 
 ' behind the veil ' ; and in the strength of this surviving 
 love he can addi'ess his 'dear heavenly friend' with the 
 knowledge that he cannot die : — 
 
 Dear friend, far off, my lost desire, 
 So far, so near in woe and weal ; 
 O loved the most when most I feel 
 
 There is a lower and a higher : 
 
 Known and unknown : human, divine : 
 Sweet human hand and lips and eye ; 
 Dear heavenly friend that canst not die, 
 
 Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine ; 
 
 Strange friend, past, present, and to be ; 
 
 Loved deeplier, darklier understood ; 
 
 Behold, I dream a dream of good. 
 And mingle all the world with thee.^ 
 
 To Tennyson, sins against love are the greatest sins. 
 In ' Aylmer's Field' the high pride of ancient line warred 
 against, and triumphed over, the right of love, and re- 
 sulted in a terrible punishment : — ' Behold your house is 
 left unto you desolate.' In the 'Idylls of the King' the 
 fellowship of the Round Table was broken up by the 
 triumph of Lust over Love. The two, indeed, so often 
 superficially confused, are as far apart as the poles ; the 
 one an earthly passion, the other a Spiritual Reality. 
 Love is the complete sacrifice of the personal good for 
 the good of the beloved ; lust the sacrifice of the other 
 
 ' " In Memoriam,'' cxxix. 
 
138 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 for the personal end, the gratification, heedless of conse- 
 quence, of the individual desire. The one is essentially 
 estranging and selfish, throwing back the individual more 
 and more upon himself: the other is non-personal, and 
 results in an ever- widening development. The one is 
 sterile, and works itself out in final satiety ; the other is 
 fruitful, continually developing from the personal to the 
 universal standpoint, until the love of one broadens into 
 the love of all things, ' rising from the love of one to the 
 love of two, and from the love of two to the love of all 
 fair forms, and from fair forms to fair deeds, and from fair 
 deeds to fair thoughts, till from fair thoughts he reaches 
 on to the thought of the Uncreated loveliness, and at last 
 knows what true beauty is.' ^ 
 
 My love involves the love before ; 
 
 My love is vaster passion now ; 
 
 Tho' mix'd with God and Nature thou, 
 I seem to love thee more and more.^ 
 
 The contrast of these two is shown in two poems which 
 should be considered together, the 'Vision of Sin' and 
 ' Love and Duty.' In the first the soul desires lust, and 
 is satisfied ; has yielded itself freely to the demands of the 
 flesh, and obtained the satiation of its craving; received 
 its heart's desire, and ' leanness into the soul.' And the 
 result is a 'gray and gap-tooth'd man,' not only sick of 
 himself and loathing his own condition, but unable even 
 to conceive of what pure Love can be, and scornful of the 
 existence of that which he has himself rejected : — 
 
 Friendship ! — to be two in one — 
 
 Let the canting liar pack ! 
 
 Well I know, when I am gone, 
 How she mouths behind my back. 
 
 Plato: "Symposium." ^ " In Memoriam,'' cxxx. 
 
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 139 
 
 Fill the can and fill the cup : 
 
 All the windy ways of men 
 
 Are but dust that rises up, 
 And is lightly laid again.^ 
 
 And although the disgust here displayed^ and the bitter 
 knowledge of his own utter failure to attain anything like 
 satisfaction in fleshly pleasures, seems to show that a 
 ' grain of conscience ' remains ; yet to one that has lost 
 the power of loving it is difficult to conceive what hope 
 the future can bring ; and the end must be left uncertain. 
 
 At last I heard a voice upon the slope 
 Cry to the summit, ' Is there any hope ? ' 
 To which an answer peal'd from that high land, 
 But in a tongue no man could understand ; 
 And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn 
 God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.^ 
 
 In contrast with this is the poem ' Love and Duty,' 
 asserting that to 'love that never found his earthly 
 close ' there will be a sequel ; the acceptance of Duty 
 with the retention of Love has lifted both souls into a 
 higher sphere ; and, even although this means bitter 
 suffering without earthly fruition, yet they are the nobler 
 through it, or 'three times less unworthy.' It is better 
 to have loved and to have lost than never to have loved 
 at all ; 
 
 Wait, and Love himself will bring 
 The drooping flower of knowledge changed to fruit 
 Of Wisdom. Wait : my faith is large in Time 
 And that which shapes it to some perfect end.' 
 
 It was better to pass through this suffering, to love and yet 
 to part, to have 
 
 Caught up the whole of life and uttered it 
 And bade adieu for ever,* 
 
 1 "The Vision of Sin." « Ibid. 
 
 5 " Love and Duty. " * Ibid. 
 
140 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 than to have remained content with the 
 
 Narrow brain, the stony heart, 
 The staring eye glazed o'er with sapless days, 
 The long mechanic pacings to and fro. 
 The set gray life, and apathetic end.^ 
 
 So also in the ' Idylls of the King ' this is the lesson of 
 the final ruin : Lancelot and Guinevere had sinned against 
 love^he against the King's love for him and his love for 
 the King ; she against the King's love for her. Had they 
 maintained their love pure and each kept faithful to the 
 King then" love for each other might have been lifted 
 into this high region, and each, even on account of it, 
 proved 'three times less unworthy.' But they had sought 
 their own gratification ; Love in each had become lust ; 
 and the consequence was the glorification of lust until it 
 almost seemed to them to possess the binding force of 
 true love, as something to which they must each yield 
 faithfulness. 
 
 Despite the didactic and superior tone adopted by 
 Arthur in his last farewell to Guinevere, this truth here 
 at length becomes manifest. He had been 'too wholly 
 true to dream untruth ' in her ; he can forgive her, despite 
 all things ; despite all things, he loves her still. And so, 
 in the strength of this Love, Love conquers at the last ; 
 Guinevere recognises her sin, and acknowledges her terrible 
 mistake : — 
 
 Ah, my God, 
 
 What might I not have made of thy fair world, 
 
 Had I but loved thy highest creature here ? 
 
 It was my duty to have loved the highest : 
 
 It surely was my profit had I known : 
 
 It would have been my pleasure had I seen. 
 
 We needs must love the highest when we see it. 
 
 Not Lancelot, nor another." 
 
 ' " Love and Duty." " "Guinevere." 
 
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 141 
 
 Will and the power of choice remain, for Tennyson, the 
 fundamental conditions of morality; Love the ultimate 
 test of the rightness of any action. Tennyson would 
 agree with the statement of his fellow-poet : — 
 
 For life, with all its yields of joy and woe 
 And hope and fear, 
 
 Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, 
 How love might be, has been indeed, and is.^ 
 
 The same truth he has expressed in his own words : — 
 
 Were there nothing else 
 For which to praise the heavens, but only love. 
 That only love were cause enough for praise.' 
 
 The sacrifice of personal happiness to the happiness of 
 others, the deadening of the love of self, the paradox of 
 the attainment of the highest development of the individual 
 by the conscious sacrifice of the individual—' if I lose my- 
 self I find myself,' — this is the principle to be developed 
 in the world, the object of human life. Here in Ethics 
 there has been no advance on the ideal, because ethical 
 advance was iinpossible. Intellectually, the world has 
 changed ; to us it presents a different appearance, it is, 
 in effect, a different world from the world our 'true 
 forefathers trod ' ; ethically it is the same. Love remains 
 eternal ; still, as of old time, the choice is offered to 
 each individual — love against selfish absorption in himself, 
 the claims of others against his own. Only by rejecting 
 his own happiness and living for others, can his self find 
 its true realisation ; only by projecting himself beyond 
 himself can he fulfil the law of his being. ' He that 
 would find his life shall lose it ; and he that shall lose his 
 life shall find it,' is as clearly emphasised by the poet of 
 
 ' Browning : " A Death in the Desert." 
 ^ "The Gardener's Daughter.'' 
 
142 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 the nineteenth century as by the Founder of the religion 
 of love. 
 
 When this principle is recognised we can see how 
 mistaken are the charges levied against Tennyson's 
 ethical teaching, that it was a preaching of the old 
 doctrine of rewards and punishments, an establishment of 
 virtue on the sanction of future individual success. In a 
 sense, indeed, this is true ; there is a reward which is 
 imperatively required for unselfish action ; but this is not 
 a compensation, but a guarantee that this action is a real 
 benefit, and not a shadowy illusion. It is one of the funda- 
 mental conditions of the human spirit that the Will, in 
 constructing and striving towards ideal ends, shall believe 
 in the possibility of these ends being realised. ' He shall 
 see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied ' must 
 ever remain the wages which morality can justly demand. 
 And, because without immortality this is impossible, be- 
 cause the knowledge must gradually settle down upon 
 mankind that it is futile to work for ends which from the 
 nature of the case can never be attained, Tennyson is 
 assured that ethical commands without the postulate of a 
 future life lack the sanctions which would make them 
 practically effective. 
 
 But in this it is not the reward that is sought, not 
 the careful selection of the 'longest paying investment,' 
 nor the anticipation of fourfold pleasures for all the effort 
 expended and the pain endured. Virtue ' desires no 
 isles of the blest, no golden seats of the just.' She 
 can survive without any of these external aids. But 
 what she does require, and what it is impossible for her 
 to hve without, is the 'Glory of going on, and not to 
 die ' ; ^ the assurance that it is not, afber all, an illusion, 
 a mere temporary disturbance, an unreal phenomenon ; 
 but that in the heart of things Virtue endures as part of 
 
 I "Wages." 
 
PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 143 
 
 the Eternal world. Existence in the minds and the 
 live* of men cannot satisfy her ; for she knows that in a 
 little while the whole human race will have crumbled into 
 dust. Virtue can persist, only if there is a survival beyond, 
 and if the right Will continues in an immaterial world. 
 
 It is less the individual reward that Tennyson requires, 
 than the guarantee that we 'have not lived in vain' ; 
 that all our strivings, all the ideals we construct, all the 
 efforts we make after unselfish action, pass beyond the 
 limitations of this world. Without this possibility they 
 become meaningless. 
 
 The Good, the True, the Pure, the Just- 
 Take the charm ' For ever ' from them, and they crumble into dust.^ 
 
 Even Love itself, the fundamental element of morality, 
 must die out or degenerate into mere self-gratification, if 
 we are but once convinced of being 'magnetic mockeries,' 
 handfiils of dust gathered up from the ground, and 
 sinking back into the dust again. 
 
 Yet if some voice that man could trust 
 
 Should murmur from the narrow house, 
 ' The cheeks drop in ; the body bows ; 
 Man dies : nor is there hope in dust ' : 
 
 Might I not say ? ' Yet even here. 
 
 But for one hour, O Love, I strive 
 
 To keep so sweet a thing alive : ' 
 But I should turn mine ears and hear 
 
 The moanings of the homeless sea, 
 
 The sound of streams that swift or slow 
 Draw down Ionian hills, and sow 
 
 The dust of continents to be : 
 
 And Love would answer with a sigh, 
 ' The sound of that forgetful shore 
 Will change my sweetness more and more, 
 Half-dead to know that I shall die.' 
 
 1 "Sixty Years After." 
 
144 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 O me, what profits it to put 
 
 An idle case ? If Death were seen 
 At first as Death, Love had not been. 
 
 Or been in narrowest working shut, 
 
 Mere fellowship of sluggish moods, 
 Or in his coarsest Satyr-shape 
 Had bruised the herb and crush'd the grape. 
 
 And bask'd and batten'd in the woods.' 
 
 The requirement of the religious consciousness is the 
 guarantee of the continuance of this love. It is the 
 guarantee which to many is alone provided by that 
 religion which reveals a God suffering with and dying 
 for men and assuring Everlasting Life to Eternal Love. 
 
 ' " In Memoriam," xxxv. 
 
X. NATURAL THEOLOGY 
 
 IVr ATURAL THEOLOGY, the interpretation of reason 
 in the phenomena of the external world, flourished un- 
 checked in the writings of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries. Those who abandoned beUef in a God of revela- 
 tion yet professed complete acceptance of a God of 
 Nature. All philosophies, from the orthodoxy of Butler 
 through the Deists of the Encyclopaedia, to the timid 
 scepticisms of Hume, demonstrated satisfactory evidence 
 of the existence of a Divine Artificer. Yet all the time 
 that men were thus engaged in formulating theories, 
 Nature was not really being seen at all. The poets of 
 the period dealt in studied and recognised formulas ; and a 
 conventional framework of stage pictures had taken the 
 place of the wonder and beauty of the world of natural 
 things. While optimistic theory abounded, accurate 
 observation was abandoqed; the complacent Deism, of 
 which the ' Essay on Man ' is the most famous , example, 
 depended on a view of Nature essentially artificial and 
 unreal. 
 
 The re-discovery of Nature for the modem world is 
 the work of the hterature of the nineteenth century. 
 Only at the commencement of the Romantic revival did 
 Nature begin to exercise a real living influence upon 
 Literature and upon Life. The doctrine taught by 
 Rousseau and universally proclaimed by the writers of 
 the revolutionary era, was the doctrine of the ' return 
 to nature ' ; and this was soon interpreted to mean 
 not only the adoption of a natural simplicity of hfe, but 
 also the return to the sympathetic study of Nature herself, 
 as the mighty Mother of humanity, and the Power able 
 K 145 
 
t^6 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 to give healing to the souls of men. And, more especially 
 when the first fervour of that period had spent itself, 
 and men recoiled from its darker developments, turning 
 with disgust from the scene of sordid motives and 
 conflicting passions, they were able to find comfort 
 and consolation in the contemplation of natural things. 
 So, more and more. Nature commenced to occupy an 
 increasing space in their imaginations. Wordsworth, 
 recoiling from the 'heavy and the weary weight of all 
 this unintelligible world,' found this lightened by com- 
 munion with the Great Spirit which he discovered in 
 the world outside him, in the voices of the mountains 
 and the sea. The beauty and calm and majesty of 
 Nature gave him the rest he desired. And this was 
 not simply his youthful feeling of delight in the obvious 
 beauty of natural things appealing to the artistic sensi- 
 bility — the colours and forms of ' the sounding cataract,' 
 the 'tall rock,' 'the mountain, and the deep and 
 gloomy wood ' ; not only satisfaction in the external 
 presentation of Nature to the eye : it was the apprehen- 
 sion of a spiritual reality, responding to his own soul 
 from the majesty and calm of the solitude that is 'among 
 the lonely hills,' and of the rapture that is 'by the sound- 
 ing shore.' It was an adventure below the surface view, 
 resulting in the discovery of 
 
 A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
 Of elevated thoughts : a sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things.' 
 
 ' " Lines written at Tintern Abbey.'' 
 
NATURAL THEOLOGY 147 
 
 He found, below the external beauty, a Spiritual 
 principle ; he recognised himself as one with the great 
 World-Soul ; in communion with this he was able to 
 find a satisfaction denied to him in the contemplation 
 of the fretful, troubled world of humanity around him. 
 And so the other poets of the period, penetrating beneath 
 the surface of things, had obtained messages of peace 
 and consolation. However wearied and disgusted with 
 the littleness and petty passions of men, they had always 
 been able, as a recompense, to find God in Nature. To 
 Shelley, Nature was the Life of Life, with her lips 
 ' burning through the vest which seems to hide them ' ; 
 the external form, but half concealing the spiritual beauty 
 over which it forms but a thin veil.^ To Goethe, Nature 
 was the living garment of God, woven by the 'roaring 
 loom of Time.' ^ And to many others the harmony so 
 lacking in their own souls was discoverable in the world 
 outside them. And so a kind of Natural Religion had 
 grown up — the calm, the serenity of Nature preaching 
 to the troubled souls of men, and bringing them rest 
 and peace. 
 
 A look of passionate desire 
 
 O'er the sea and to the stars I send : 
 ' Ye who from my childhood up have calm'd me, 
 
 Calm me, ah, compose me to the end.'* 
 
 But in the later development of thought in the century 
 a change passed over the scene. Before the advance of 
 natural knowledge this natural religion shrivelled up and 
 disappeared. Looming larger and larger in the imagina- 
 tion. Nature threatened to overwhelm man altogether. 
 In the light of modern theories, the calm and the 
 harmony were found to be illusory. Nature resolved 
 
 1 " Prometheus Unbound." 
 
 2 The Song of the Earth Spirit in Faust. 
 ^ Matthew Arnold : "Self-Dependence."' 
 
148 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 itself into a continual struggle for existence, none the 
 less strenuous because silent, in which, through, appar- 
 ently, the clumsiest methods, amid waste, suffering, and 
 indifference, the fittest triumphed. Law, indeed, could 
 be discovered, but it was a law from which morality 
 seemed completely absent. The development of a higher, 
 more complex hfe, was the result ; but only at the 
 seemingly unjust sacrifice of innumerable lower forms. 
 Everything that is most characteristic of human morality 
 and goodness appeared in direct opposition to the natural 
 ' Cosmic Process ' as interpreted by the conclusions of 
 natural science. The contemplation of Nature ceased to 
 satisfy either the intellect or the heart ; to the heart it 
 presented itself as a system blundering blindly forward, 
 guided by laws either indifferent or opposed to the laws 
 of goodness and of love ; the intellect was relentlessly 
 driven to the conception of a 'blind Nature impregnated 
 by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from 
 her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed 
 and aborted children ' ; ^ it could discern nothing in the 
 external world but ' mere weather, doing and undoing 
 without end.' 
 
 With the realisation of this knowledge a marked 
 reaction set in against the satisfying Nature-worship of 
 the early part of the century. " The visible surfaces of 
 heaven and earth," says a great psychologist, "refuse 
 to be brought by us into any intelhgible unity at all. . . . 
 Beauty and hideousness, love and cruelty, life and death, 
 keep house together in indissoluble partnership ; and 
 there gradually steals over us, instead of the old warm 
 notion of a man-loving Deity, that of an awful power 
 that neither hates nor loves, but rolls all things together 
 meaninglessly to a common doom. . . . Visible Nature 
 is all plasticity and indifference . . . already we know 
 
 ' Hume. 
 
NATURAL THEOLOGY 149 
 
 Nature too impartiallyj and too well, to worship unre- 
 servedly any God of whose character she can be an 
 adequate expression. . . . The sick shudder of the 
 fi'ustrated religious demand proclaims the inevitable 
 bankruptcy of Natural Religion." 1 
 
 And this bewilderment caused by the new knowledge, 
 and rejection of the worship of God as revealed in Nature, 
 is reflected also by Tennyson. He approached Nature 
 from a standpoint different to that of Wordsworth. 
 Wordsworth knew Nature before he knew himself; 
 Tennyson knew himself first. Wordsworth regarded man 
 as a part of Nature ; Tennyson contemplated man as 
 opposed to Nature, judging Nature by a standard of 
 morality above Nature, weighing up and condemning its 
 methods. Wordsworth himself noted this difference. 
 " He is- not so much in sympathy with what I should 
 myself most value in my attempts," he said of the younger 
 poet ; " the spirituality with which I have endeavoured 
 to view the material universe, and the moral relations 
 under which I have wished to exhibit its most ordinary 
 appearances." For Termyson, accepting more fully, 
 perhaps, than any other poet the conclusions of modern 
 science, is at times unable to find anything in Nature 
 but trouble, confusion, and purposeless strife. He would 
 endorse the principle laid down by Kant, that ' we cannot 
 derive from Nature the idea of a moral being determined 
 by the idea of a highest end.' Nature, in the light of 
 modem thought, exhibits to him only apparently aimless 
 conflict, continual struggle, and stress, extinction of in- 
 dividuals and types, development, with appalling waste 
 and callousness, by the crudest methods, inability to 
 satisfy the highest demands of the human spirit. ' I 
 believe in God, not from what I see in Nature, but from 
 what I see in men,' he once said ; and many years after- 
 
 1 James : "The Will to Believe,'' pp. 41^42, 43- 
 
ISO TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 wards he reiterated the same sentiment. ' God is love, 
 transcendent, all-pervading ; we do not get this faith from 
 Nature or the world. If we look at Nature alone, full of 
 perfection and imperfection, she tells us that God is 
 disease, murder, and rapine.' ^ ' The lavish profusion 
 of the natural world appals me.' ^ ' Ah me ! ' says his 
 hero-king — 
 
 Why is all around us here 
 As if some lesser God had made the world, 
 But had not force to shape it as he would, 
 Till the high God behold it from beyond, 
 And enter it, and make it beautiful ? ' 
 
 The contemplation of Nature, instead of being a help to 
 religious faith, is rather the chief difficulty with which 
 religious faith is forced to contend ; it is now despite 
 Nature, and not on account of Nature, that Tennyson 
 clings to faith in a loving deity, trusting that God is 
 love indeed. 
 
 And love creation's final law — 
 Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 
 With ravine, shrieked against his creed.* 
 
 The direct apprehension of Divinity in Nature, then, 
 Tennyson is unable to recognise. The old comfortable 
 natural theology, with its naive teleological systems, and 
 interpretation of wonderful adaptations to the needs of 
 man, has vanished before the onward progress of scientific 
 discovery ; the reconcilement, the new teleology, has not 
 yet been formulated. Man stands over against Nature, 
 summing up and condemning her systems of progress. 
 ' The threat that runs through all the winning music of 
 the world ' has become only too manifest, and destroys 
 
 ^ " Life of Tennyson,'' vol. i. p. 314. ' /did. 
 
 ' "The Passing of Arthur." ■> " In Memoiiam." 
 
NATURAL THEOLOGY 151 
 
 the satisfaction to be derived from the contemplation of 
 the reign of law, or the beauty of natural things. Nature 
 presents itself as a blind system blundering forward, 
 continually evolving types only to destroy them, care- 
 less of the single life, careless of the wastefulness, 
 careless of death and pain. 'AH the music in her 
 tone ' becomes merely a ' hollow echo ' of the music 
 in the mind of man,^ the projection from himself 
 into the world behind phenomena of something which 
 is not really there present. The objects, formerly rest- 
 bringing and peaceful, have now acquired a new and 
 awful significance. 'The light of setting suns' reflect 
 to the observer the transitoriness of his own existence, 
 and the existence of the race with which are bound 
 up all his highest aspirations and desires ; the sight of 
 the stars convinces him of his own infinitesimal littleness, 
 and burns and brands ' his nothingness into man.' ^ 
 Trees and flowers and the living garment of the hills 
 and the strange innumerable forms of animal life but 
 re-echo the tale of changing types produced by the 
 exigencies of a blind craving for existence, and an evolu- 
 tion forward from a primitive chaos to an unknown goal. 
 Under these circumstances, and with Nature no longer 
 helpful, but 'lending evil dreams,' the poet turns from 
 the contemplation of her workings, or only occupies 
 himself with the superficial aspect of things — the play 
 of colour, the beauty of form, the music of sound — natural 
 objects as presenting themselves to the artist limiting 
 his vision to the outward show, without attempting to 
 probe beneath the surface, and ascertain their real 
 secrets. No poet possessed a more delicate sensitiveness 
 to this aspect of the external world. No poet has 
 described with such unique accuracy and fidelity, its 
 
 ^ "In Memoriam," iii. 
 2 "Maud." 
 
152 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 fascinating changeful beauty. In a series of exquisite 
 cameos, exhibiting most careful observation with a very 
 real consciousness of her charm, Tennyson has drawn 
 Nature in all her sad and happy moods. The quiet of a 
 summer evening, the tranquil peace of a summer night, 
 cloud wrack and tempest, the sunshine on the hills, the 
 mystery of the forests, the glory of the sea with its 
 ' stormy crests that smoke against the skies,' every 
 changing aspect of the changeful season, the fruitfulness 
 of Spring, the gorgeous exuberance of Summer, the 
 'happy Autumn fields,' all these Tennyson depicts with 
 a faithfulness and a beauty which stamp him as at once 
 in the very first rank of poets of Nature. The general 
 result of the study of his work is a deeper and firmer 
 realisation of the marvellous attractiveness of the varie- 
 gated sceneiy of the natural world. 
 
 But all this, it must be noted, is very different from its 
 treatment by the older poets, and from the assertion of a 
 Natural Theology and a Natural ReUgion. Below the 
 surface. Nature to Tennyson exhibits a chaos, in many 
 ways doubtful of interpretation, in most ways unmeaning. 
 And after one great struggle with the conclusions ap- 
 parently involved in this study, he refused to re-open the 
 question. The end of Nature, if end there be, we cannot 
 at present ascertain ; to us with our limited knowledge 
 it seems something altogether divergent from the end of 
 humanity. 'Back to Nature,' the old panacea for the 
 difficulties of human life, provides now no cry of satis- 
 faction ; it merely presents the same problems in a more 
 inexplicable form. Once Tennyson had dealt with the 
 whole problem ; and the result had been a final appeal 
 to faith. 
 
 Falling with my weight of cares 
 Upon the great world's altar stairs 
 That slope through darkness up to God. 
 
NATURAL THEOLOGY 153 
 
 I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, 
 
 And gather dust and chaff, and call 
 
 To what I feel is Lord of all, 
 And faintly trust the larger hope.^ 
 
 And having once passed through this stage of feeling, he 
 refused again to allow the question to disturb him, and put 
 it resolutely aside. He confined his thought to the world 
 of men, and the aspect of Nature as immediately exhibited 
 to the observer : — 
 
 I saw him in the shining of the stars, 
 
 I marked him in the flowering of the fields.' 
 
 And so long as these are taken as they appear, the beauty 
 of the starht sky as presented to the eye, the external 
 glory of the summer- flowers, then the difficulties cease. 
 Whilst one can rest content in this feeling, contemplating 
 Nature in all its changing beautiful manifestations, one 
 can be satisfied ; to penetrate below the surface, to seek 
 unity, purpose, or moral law behind phenomena, can only 
 produce confusion and despair. 
 
 Nor would Tennyson accept premature answers to the 
 difficulty, propounded by those, who, with our imperfect 
 knowledge, would justify the ways of God to man, 
 and attempt at the expense either of our intelligence or 
 of our ideal of goodness, to bring the laws of Nature, as 
 at present revealed to us, into agreement with our highest 
 moral ideals. We may consider for example the one 
 question of suffering in Nature — ■ ' the whole creation 
 groaning and travailing in pain,' as exhibited to all careful 
 observers. Tennyson would . not repeat the answers 
 proposed by would-be optimists, deeming them mere 
 special pleadings or ingenious misconceptions. 'Animals 
 suffer Uttle,' says one class of apologists, who laboriously 
 endeavour to prove the exaggeration of the suffering of 
 
 1 " In Memoriam," Iv. = " Passing of Arthur." 
 
154 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 the sentient world. This is no answer. The difficulty 
 is that they should suffer at all. One single pang of pain, 
 if purposeless, is enough to destroy belief in an all-wise, 
 all-merciful God. Pain as such is real ; no future pleasure 
 can destroy that pain. However little in amount, it 
 remains as great a difficulty as ever. The pain of one 
 conscious being, if real, presents the problem in all its 
 perplexity. Either it could not have been prevented, 
 in which case God is not all-powerful; or it could have 
 been prevented with the attainment of the same end, 
 in which case God is not all-good ; for we know at least 
 that our highest human ideal of goodness is not com- 
 patible with the imposition of the slightest amoimt of 
 purposeless suffering. Not by minimising its amount, but 
 by showing either its unreality or its purposeful effect, 
 not only for others, but for the individual who suffers it, 
 can the moral demands of man be satisfied. 
 
 'Given the necessity of susceptibility to pain as the 
 condition of an organism capable of enjoying pleasure,' 
 says another, ' the matter becomes simple ' ; but it may 
 be fairly demanded, why thus given ? There is no such 
 necessity controlling an All-Powerful Providence. With 
 God all things are possible. To talk of necessity in His 
 case is meaningless. Nor is the necessity as a matter 
 of fact present. Pleasure is , a positive feeling, and not 
 dependent on pain for its existence, however much it 
 may appear to be so under present conditions. "To 
 suppose that pleasure must always have pain as a back- 
 ground would be to misunderstand the law of relativity ; 
 it is most impressive when it follows upon pain, but it 
 may also perfectly well have as background a weaker 
 feeling of pleasure." i 
 
 ' Development and progress are dependent on the 
 suffering of the individual,' says a third ; ' the individual 
 
 ' Hofifding : "Psychology.'' 
 
NATURAL THEOLOGY 155 
 
 perishes, but the race progresses.' But where is the 
 justice of the sacrificing of the individual for the race, 
 if the sacrifice is enforced and not consciously accepted. 
 Why should the men of the present be compelled to 
 suffer pain in order that in the future the men of a 
 coming race may be more highly organised to appreciate 
 pleasure ? Why should the lower be sacrificed for the 
 development of the higher.? 
 
 Moreover, pain is not measurable by its purpose, at 
 least to finite intelligence. Could mankind be assured 
 that each single consciousness of pain was producing some 
 ^compensating good somewhere, how much more readily 
 would pain be endured. Did one know that by cheerful 
 acceptance of even the worst physical agony someone 
 else was relieved from suffering, how much less impatience 
 would be exhibited at its continuance. The unendurable 
 thought is purposeless pain, pain that is real and torturing 
 while it lasts, and yet results in no definite good to any- 
 one when over. If God was a consistently malevolent 
 being the world might be endurable, and a system of 
 ethics contrived in defiance of His power, or elusion of 
 His punishment. Were God simply capricious, a theory 
 for which indeed there appears much apparent evidence, 
 it would be possible to organise action designed to appease 
 His anger and placate His wrath ; as Caliban, thinking 
 ' He dwelleth in the cold of the moon,' and ' hating 
 that He cannot change his cold nor cure his ache,' holds 
 that in return He plays with the pleasures and the pains 
 of men ; and upon this basis devises rules of conduct, which 
 enable him to escape His jealousy, and elude His anger. 
 
 Lo ! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos : 
 'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip : 
 Will let these quails fly, will not eat this month, 
 One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape. ' 
 
 ' Browning : " Caliban on Setebos." 
 
156 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 But the one unendurable thoughtj and the one thought to 
 which the arguments of these would-be interpreters of 
 the incomprehensible ways of God seem inevitably to 
 lead, is the thought of an amiable, well-meaning, but 
 blundering Intelligence, a God who dislikes suffering, 
 but could not devise means to give happiness without 
 pain ; a God who delights in upward Evolution, but can 
 only promote it by a costly and clumsy process ; a God 
 who presents certain beauties, but is unable to overcome 
 the difficulties of constructing a perfect world ; who 
 consequently, contemplates in the work of His creation 
 a certain amount of meaningless misery, but hopes that 
 somehow the end will justify the means, and the past 
 sadness will be forgotten in future joy. 
 
 Tennyson was surely right to reject premature syntheses 
 on these conditions, and, with our present imperfect 
 knowledge, to throw back the argument from reason to 
 faith. This impious doctrine of a Divine Government, 
 which seems to be the more or less avowed position of 
 many who at present attempt to produce a consistent 
 system of Natural Theology, could not be accepted as a 
 satisfactory theory of the world. Things are j it is futile 
 to argue why they are not different ; ingenious explanation 
 but increases the difficulty of the problem. We can but 
 recognise that knowledge at present is a ' beam in dark- 
 ness ' ; perhaps, much now obscure to us will in the 
 future be made clear. But with only our present data 
 Upon which to reason, our attitude must be that of faith ; 
 trust that the good is overcoming the ill. 
 
 That not a moth with vain desire 
 Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire, 
 Or but subserves another's gain ; ^ 
 
 " In Memoriam," liv. 
 
NATURAL THEOLOGY 157 
 
 trust that all things are sweeping forward in steady, 
 irresistible progress towards their consummation in that 
 
 One far-off divine event, 
 
 To which the whole creation moves.' 
 
 Tennyson having once clearly grasped this position, and 
 having frankly recognised that at present Natural Theology 
 can be developed into no consistent system, was yet able 
 to return to Nature with fresh interest and fresh satis- 
 faction. For there is much in the Natural World which 
 appeals to the strong unchangeable belief, lying deep 
 in the heart of man, that, despite outward appearance, 
 'all is well.' He found there, for example, the ascer- 
 tainable order in Nature, present despite the apparent 
 changefulness of change ; and this, with his instinctive 
 reverence for Law, especially appealed to him. 'As he 
 exulted in the wilder aspects of Nature,' says his son, 
 ' so he felt a joy in her orderliness ; he felt a rest in 
 her steadfastness, patient progress and hopefulness ; the 
 same seasons ever returned, the same stars wheeled in 
 their courses ; the flowers and trees blossomed, and the 
 birds sang yearly in their appointed months.' ^ Taking 
 the Universe in the widest sweep of human thought 
 indeed, nothing remained fixed, everything pressed for- 
 ward, all was Becoming ; the very laws of change them- 
 selves were changing. But in the experience of men 
 Nature presented a system of laws which could be 
 reckoned upon, which could be regarded as valid, which 
 could, within certain limits, be trusted not to fail. Day 
 and night, seed-time and harvest, summer and winter, had 
 not ceased from the earth ; and man could direct his move- 
 ments upon firm ground in the present, and base his action 
 
 ' " In Memoriam," Epilogue. 
 
 * "Life of Tennyson," vol. i. p. 312. 
 
158 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 upon a faith which would not prove him false, in the 
 constancy of Law in the immediate future. 
 
 And, in addition to this order and steadfastness, Tennyson 
 emphasised another aspect of Nature, as exhibited in her 
 fascinating Beauty, when regarded even in her superficial 
 aspects. To the observant eye Nature presents a series 
 of marvellous pictures ; and through long-continued 
 association, the mere combinations of form and colour 
 take upon themselves a real spiritual significance, from 
 the reading into them of the passions and the hopes of 
 
 The clouds that gather round the setting sun 
 Do take a sober colouring from the eye 
 That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality.' 
 
 The sight of distant horizons give him a whisper 'from 
 some fair dawn beyond the doors of death ' ; the ' happy 
 autumn fields ' fill him with the sadness of irrecoverable 
 things and ' the days that are no more.' And this is 
 not simply the ' pathetic fallacy,' the interpreting of Nature 
 by his own emotions ; the spirituality is in a sense ob- 
 jective ; there is a real beauty in itself, and a message 
 appealing to those who will be attentive to its mani- 
 festation. Apart altogether from scientific interpretation 
 and the 'reign of Law,' Nature exhibits an inexplicable 
 mystery and beauty ; ' the glory of the sum of things ' 
 speaks at times with an insistence that cannot be 
 neglected ; something from without appears to touch 
 chords in the harp of life, which otherwise would never 
 vibrate into music ; and in moments of high rapture, the 
 conviction is irresistibly borne home that ' all is well.' 
 ' Looking out on the great landscape he had wonderful 
 thoughts about God and the Universe, and felt as if 
 looking into the other world.'^ Tennyson has felt this 
 
 ' Wordsworth: "Ode on Immortality.'' " "Life." 
 
NATURAL THEOLOGY 159 
 
 indestructible conviction that there is some spiritual 
 reality behind all things^ which nothing can altogether 
 destroy ; a beauty, not simply in the form and colour, 
 but a Power that can touch us to deeper thoughts and 
 higher feelings ; as if someone is striving to speak to us, 
 to whose message we may often be inattentive, but 
 which at times impresses us with a marvellous sense 
 of spiritual apprehension. We seem to be on the verge 
 of a great discovery, to catch a voice speaking in tones 
 almost loud enough for us to hear, giving a sense of 
 strain sometimes almost intolerable, that the real truth 
 of things is almost within our grasp. 
 
 All through the scattered visions of the Natural world 
 in ' In Memoriam,' this view is enforced. At first they 
 are nothing but wild and restless ; afterwards they are 
 found whispering peace and comfort to the sorrowful 
 heart. The wonder of the dawn, the appealing beauty of 
 the flowers, the evening star ' Hesper watching all things 
 dim and dimmer and a glory gone,' the fading snow, 
 the coming of Spring-time, 
 
 The songs, the stirring air, 
 The life re-orient out of dust, 
 Cry through the sense to hearten trust 
 In that which made the world so fair.' 
 
 And so Tennyson prays that the ' ambrosial air,' ' sweet 
 after showers,' may sigh 
 
 The full new life that feeds thy breath 
 Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death 
 Ill-brethren, let the fancy fly 
 
 From belt to belt of crimson seas, 
 
 On leagues of odour streaming far, 
 
 To where in yonder orient star, 
 A hundred voices whisper ' Peace. ' ^ 
 
 ' " In Memoriam," Ixxxvi. " Ibid. cxvi. 
 
i6o TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 Passages like these, scattered at intervals through his 
 poetry, and exhibiting a feeling not always manifested, 
 point towards a hope that, despite the abandonment of 
 the older teleology, and the acceptance of the dismal 
 conclusions of modern science, the last word has not 
 been said on the matter ; that in the future, with further 
 light, and by some process he did not apprehend, the 
 conception of the Divine in Nature might be restored. 
 The power of the external world to move us to sadness 
 and regret, inarticulate tears, or buoyant unreasoning 
 happiness, seems to indicate that we are not merely ' dying 
 Nature's earth and lime,' and that something is there, 
 congruous to ourselves, of which some day we may 
 apprehend the meaning. 
 
 Yet these moments of high rapture are all too short, 
 and all too scattered. ' Revealing visions come and go ' ; 
 when they come we feel that we know ; but in the 
 intervals we must pass though states in which all is 
 dark, and in which we can only struggle to hold the 
 conviction that 
 
 Power is with us in the night 
 Which makes the darkness and the light, 
 And dwells not in the light alone.' ^ 
 
 And these scattered thoughts lead Tennyson to the 
 acceptance of a possibility which he never clearly asserted, 
 but which appears to indicate the line along which future 
 speculation must travel. 
 
 My son, the world is dark with griefs and graves, 
 So dark that men cry out against the Heavens. 
 Who knows but that the darkness is in man ? ^ 
 
 ' Professor Sidgwick, in " Life of Tennyson," vol. i. p. 304. 
 2 "The Ancient Sage." 
 
NATURAL THEOLOGY i6i 
 
 In the Universe, as we apprehend it, how much is 
 provided from without, how much from within ? 
 
 Dark is the world to thee : thyself art the reason why.^ 
 
 And the real world contemplated sub specie aetermtatis 
 instead of sub specie temporis, by one who can see all 
 things as they are, and the 'serene result of all,' may 
 indeed appear ' wholly fair.' Tennyson does not go 
 so far as to insist on this point of view, does not fully 
 enter into the position of the Christian philosophy which 
 asserts, with such firm and triumphant faith, that by the 
 purification of the tainted personalities of men will be 
 effected the restitution of all things. 
 
 But he at least suggests that our knowledge is not 
 absolute ; that future generations may see things under 
 different aspects ; that with a deeper insight into 
 
 That true world within the world we see, 
 Whereof our world is but the bounding shore, ^ 
 
 the world which surrounds each one of us, but which we 
 can only apprehend as in a dream, a picture in our minds, 
 how distorted from reality we cannot tell, we may once 
 more be able to recognise the Divine in Nature, and 
 to acknowledge all things as very good. This is as much 
 as we can hope for in the present state of our ignorance ; 
 and although we may emphasise the trains of thought 
 which seem to suggest the possibility of this conclusion, 
 we must not do so at the expense of truth, or neglect 
 the darker aspect of the world. 
 
 Nature exhibits to us much that is inexplicable, and 
 much that seems to us incompatible with an all-loving 
 God. The attitude of mind towards these mysteries 
 must be the attitude of faith ; refusal to acquiesce in 
 
 1 " The Higher Pantheism." 
 
 2 "DeProfiindis." 
 
i62 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 attempts at synthesis, which serve only to weaken either 
 our intelhgence or our highest ideal of God as good. Yet 
 we must recognise that 'as the essence of courage is to 
 stake one's life on a possibility, so the essence of faith is 
 to believe that the possibility exists ' ; ^ and having once 
 grasped this faith, we must refuse to allow vain speculation, 
 to paralyse right action. And in the personal assertion 
 of that belief, which can justify and provide motive power 
 for practical effort, we may endeavour, by the fulfilment 
 of the highest Ethical demands of life, to attain to a 
 knowledge imperfectly revealed to the purely speculative 
 intellect ; until from the summit of this ' Mount of 
 Blessing ' we may behold the ' dawn of moi-e than 
 mortal day strike on the Mount of Vision.' 
 
 Since 
 The key to that weird casket, which for thee 
 But holds a skull, is neither thine nor mine 
 But in the hand of what is more than man. 
 
 Let be thy wail and help thy fellow men. 
 
 And lay thine uphill shoulder to the wheel, 
 
 And climb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thou 
 
 Look higher, then — perchance — thou mayest — beyond 
 
 A hundred ever-rising mountain lines, 
 
 And past the range of Night and Shadow — see 
 
 The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day 
 
 Strike on the Mount of Vision.^ 
 
 Salter, quoted by James : " The Will to Beheve," p. 62. 
 2 " The Ancient Sage." 
 
XL SPIRITUAL RELIGION 
 
 nPHE religion which Tennyson maintained, when trans- 
 -*- lated from the region of intellectual speculation 
 to the region of practical affairs and interpreted as a 
 motive power in daily life, took upon itself certain 
 characteristics in many ways differing from the practi- 
 cal morality advocated by those most in sympathy 
 with his intellectual beliefs. The nature of his mind, 
 and the effect of his early influences, became manifest 
 in all his teaching. Nothing is more noticeable, 
 in this connection, than his continual opposition and 
 hatred to the ideals of asceticism, and to the revival 
 of a purely spiritual religion which has formed such a 
 marked feature of the past century. A faith which did 
 not exhibit its practical side in a morality made clear 
 to the whole world, in the redressal of human wrongs 
 and the struggle with" manifest evil, was, for Tennyson, 
 a faith to be unreservedly condemned as lacking the 
 necessary characteristic of a true religion. Religion 
 unaccompanied by an ethical code, which even those 
 who refuse allegiance to its demands must unhesitatiagly 
 admire, received from Tennyson but scant tolerance. 
 And in consequence of this, together with a somewhat 
 warped view of history, that spiritual and ascetic religion 
 which developed throughout the early growth of the 
 Christian Church, and, flourishing unchecked in the 
 Middle Age, has partially died out during the last 
 few centuries amongst the progressive races of Europe, 
 was regarded by him as a grievous error, a misdirection of 
 the powers of the human soul, producing in the end evil 
 rather than good. So, in his poetry, we can find at 
 163 
 
164 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 intervals pictures of the ascetic ideal which can only 
 be regarded as caricatures. Such iSj for example, 
 St Simeon on his pillar, with his self-inflicted lacerations 
 designed to ' appease an angry God,' and his querulous 
 clamour for sainthood. So again, in the ' Idylls of the 
 King,' the ascetic ideal is depicted in Pellam the King, 
 who had been converted from Paganism to this harmful 
 form of belief ' Once a Christless foe of thine,' says 
 Arthur's ambassador ; — 
 
 But seeing that thy realm 
 Hath prospered in the name of Christ, the King 
 Took as in rival heat, to holy things ; 
 And finds himself descended from the saint. 
 
 He boasts his life as purer than thine own ; 
 Eats scarce enough to keep his pulse abeat ; 
 Hath pushed aside his faithful wife, nor lets 
 Or dame or damsel enter at his gates ' 
 Lest he should be polluted.' 
 
 And when we find, later on, that his shrine was a place 
 ' in which he scarce could spy the Christ for saints,' it 
 is not difficult for us to understand what form of religion 
 Tennyson thinks that he is here depicting. And the 
 moral is clearly enforced ; the court, left without guid- 
 ance, sinks into a hotbed of corruption, with Sir Garlon, 
 the deputy king, as head, mocking at all the common 
 sanctities of life ; and the outward ruin is but a type of 
 the inward destruction. 
 
 The hall 
 Of Pellam, lichen-bearded, grayly-draped. 
 With streaming grass, appeared, low-built but strong ; 
 The ruinous donjon as a knoll of moss, 
 The battlement overtopt with ivy tods, 
 A home of bats^ in every tower an owl.^ 
 
 i " Balin and Balan." 2 Ibid. 
 
SPIRITUAL RELIGION 165 
 
 And Tennyson's views on this subject are still more 
 emphatically enforced in the ' Holy Grail/ in which 
 the spiritual religion, the pursuit of the Grail, drawing 
 the knights of the Roimd Table away from their duty of 
 subduing the heathen, and speeding order and civilisa- 
 tion, leaves them, for the most part, 'lost in the quag- 
 mires,' following ' wandering fires,' and furnishes one 
 of the chief causes of the final catastrophe — the 
 destruction of the kingdom of Arthur. 
 
 Tennyson, indeed, was a poet as well as a religious 
 teacher ; and, as a poet, he was unable to refuse recog- 
 nition to the beauty of the ascetic ideal. So we find 
 occasional acknowledgment of its grandeur in such poems 
 as ' Sir Galahad ' and ' St Agnes' Eve,' in which one 
 moment's emotion is caught up and crystallised for ever. 
 But this high spiritual fervour he only regards as possible, 
 or in any way desirable, for the few ; and the admiration 
 is reluctantly extorted, while the principle, as applied 
 to the many, is firmly condemned. Even in the most 
 perfect picture of the ascetic saint, the sister of Percivale 
 in the 'Holy Grail,' the emotion is only the result of 
 rejected human love : 
 
 Such a fervent flame of human love, 
 
 Which, being rudely blunted, glanced and shot 
 
 Only to Holy things.^ 
 
 And we may conclude that had it not thus been ' rudely 
 blunted,' the love would have been more naturally 
 lavished upon some earthly husband. Indeed, Tennyson's 
 bitterness on this subject appears mainly due to his 
 condemnation of the ascetic doctrine of flie glorification 
 of celibacy over the married state. Tennyson, like his 
 friend and contemporary poet, Charles Kingsley, had 
 experienced a perfect marriage ; both, consequently, were 
 1 "The Holy Grail." 
 
1 66 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 totally unable to appreciate the strength of the celibate 
 ideal. And just as the latter writer felt impelled to war 
 against it in all his varied novels, and to introduce dis- 
 cussions on the respective merits of the single or man-ied 
 condition amongst the Elizabethan seamen, or the last of 
 the Saxons, or the Christians of Alexandria in the fifth 
 century, so Tennyson's ideal of the love of one maiden, 
 and the cleaving to her, furnishes for him a fundamental 
 principle, the denial of the validity of which he doubts 
 not, partakes of the nature of a sin. 
 
 Tennyson compares the ascetic ideal with the selfish 
 isolation of the individual in the pursuit of beauty, and 
 prophesies for it a similar result. In the ' Palace of 
 Art,' the soul built itself a lordly pleasure-house ; and, 
 surrounding itself with everything that could appeal to 
 the refined and delicate taste, determined to live for the 
 worship of beauty alone. Men outside were neglected 
 and forgotten, or only thought of as 'darkening di-oves 
 of swine that range on yonder plain.' Art and beauty 
 were to minister to the ideal life ; everything ugly, coarse, 
 or distracting was to be abolished ; all the turmoil and 
 petty passions of men were to be excluded from this calm 
 serenity. And the result was corruption, loathing, and 
 despair ; a hatred equally of death and life ; ruin of the 
 soul, and a passionate crying : — 
 
 I am on fire within. 
 There comes no murmur of reply. 
 What is it that will take away my sin, 
 And save me lest I die ? ' 
 
 Tennyson places on a similar footing, and condemns with 
 a similar judgment, the withdrawal of the soul within 
 herself for a spiritual religion. Goodness, no less than 
 beauty, he maintains, cannot be pursued divorced from 
 
 1 "The Palace of Art." 
 
SPIRITUAL RELIGION 167 
 
 ' the kindly race of men.' Pride, vain-glory, scorn of 
 self, neglect of duty, these are the natural results of such 
 a mistake ; and the whole lesson of his teaching is the 
 same as that of the modern philosopher, that there is no 
 path to the higher and nobler life except the path of 
 duty, and the fulfilment of the offices of a good parent, 
 and an honest citizen.^ 
 
 But in thus insisting on the selfishness of asceticism, 
 and emphasising its more grotesque forms, and associat- 
 ing it with the solitary worship of beauty, Tennyson mis- 
 understands the true nature of its ideal. It has been 
 said that in ' St Simeon Styhtes,' ' the true Middle Age 
 of Missal and Cathedral speaks through Tennyson's 
 ' St Simeon upon his pillar.' ' ^ Never was a state- 
 ment more untrue. The finer elements of this religion 
 Tennyson could never understand, because he was himself 
 lacking in their necessary features ; for the religion of 
 Catholicism at its highest, the religion of the great 
 ascetics who have been the wonder or despair of future 
 generations, was altogether dependent on one fact, and 
 on one fact alone — the certainty of the presence of God, 
 and the direct consciousness of Sin — the consciousness 
 of Sin intensified by the presence of God. Asceticism 
 is not an endeavour to appease God by grotesque self- 
 inflicted suffering ; not an attempt to obtain honour or 
 credit with God by voluntary endurance of pain. It 
 is the consciousness, presented in a great modern writer, 
 'making me rest in the thought of two, and two only, 
 absolute and luminously self-evident beings in the 
 LTniverse — myself and God ' ; ^ and the feeling result- 
 ing from this, as expressed by the Psalmist when the 
 thought fills him, ' Thou hast set our misdeeds 
 
 1 Cf. Green : "Prolegomena to Ethics." 
 
 2 Scudder: "The Life of the Spirit," p. 151. 
 ^ Newman: "Apologia." 
 
1 68 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 before Thee; and our secret sins in the light of thy 
 countenance.' This it was that drove men into those 
 wild outbreaks of self-laceration, and hurled them forth 
 from the haunts of men into the wilderness and the 
 desert ; if only they could escape from that body of 
 death ; if only they could tear out from themselves this 
 desire after Sin. The awful majesty and purity of God, 
 the littleness and utter sinfulness of men, the ever- 
 present consciousness of the presence of their Maker and 
 Judge, formed the motive power of ascetic and spiritual 
 religion. The whole spirit is gathered up in the ' Dies 
 Irae,' the flower of the poetry of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Judex ergo cum sedebit, 
 Quid-quid latet apparebit, 
 Nil inultum remanebit. 
 
 Rex tremendae magestatis, 
 Qui salvandos salvas gratis 
 Salva me, fons pietatis. 
 • • . i . . 
 Ingemisco tanquam reus. 
 Culpa rubet vultus meus, 
 Supplicanti parce, Deus. 
 
 Before this sudden revelation the claims of humanity 
 around, a humanity visibly dying, suddenly shrank into 
 insignificance. The joys of this earthly existence ceased 
 to allure ; even effort to alleviate pain or restore social 
 order seemed strangely misdirected ; the world was a 
 place of probation all too short, the passing years were 
 hunting men forward with but a brief period of prepara- 
 tion towards the day when each would stand alone in 
 the visible presence of God. 
 
 And this haunting realisation of God's presence in the 
 world was characteristic of the minds of the Middle Ages ; 
 stronger in some, weaker in others, never quite absent. 
 With this feeling Tennyson could never adequately 
 
SPIRITUAL RELIGION 169 
 
 sympathisBj because he never thus directly apprehended 
 the existence of a personal Deity. For Tennyson self is 
 real, and other selves are real, and love between these and 
 mutual help and assistance are the foundations of religion 
 and morality. With the mystics self is real, and God 
 is real, and all else is but shadow. Sin must be fought 
 with heroic remedies, torn out, if by bodily suffering ; 
 otherwise the soul cannot survive the burning fire of the 
 purity of God. For Tennyson a righteous Deity is a 
 secondary deduction from phenomena around him, not 
 a direct personal experience of the soul. He is forced 
 to postulate a God ruling and working behind the out- 
 ward show of things — a God ' in whom we live and move 
 and have our being ' ; but a God who rarely, if ever, 
 comes into direct personal relation with His creatures, 
 never contemplating the soul laid bare before Him who 
 is all Holy, all Perfect, and all Pure. 
 
 And, consequently, the consciousness of Sin as alienating 
 from God never seems to enter into Tennyson's poetry. 
 Sin with him is always violation of appointed law, or 
 refusal of common duty, or neglect of the right action 
 clearly evident. Its effects are only too manifest in the 
 world around ; the cause of disorder and ruin, outrage 
 against love, the fruitful origin of misery and of pain. 
 But sin against humanity, sin as practical adherence to 
 the lower course, is different from sin as directly chosen 
 in the presence of God. 'Against Thee only have I 
 sinned,' says the Psalmist, ' and done this evil in Thy 
 sight.' In the face of this tremendous fact all the minor 
 effects of sin appeared unimportant. And the same 
 feeling is the motive power of the spiritual religion ; no 
 renunciation was too great, no asceticism too extreme, no 
 self-imposed suffering too hard to bear, if only by the 
 sacrifice of the body the sin might be extirpated, and 
 the soul one day stand perfect before God. 
 
i7o TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 But with Tennyson God is a God 'who hideth Him- 
 self,' -who shows Himself only in His works, through 
 dim and cloudy visions ; and consequently this direct 
 certainty of His presence is not to be found in his poems. 
 But this was the feeling of the hermits and the saints ; 
 and recognising this we can see how false is the com- 
 parison of their religion with the satisfaction of the soul 
 in the contemplation of beauty. There was no with- 
 drawal, as in the case of the ' Palace of Art,' no solitude 
 in which the soul could moulder into deep loathing of 
 itself; rather was the world around more alive, and the 
 spiritual world more real, and the air peopled with 
 angelic and demoniacal watchers, and evei-ything luminous 
 in the great searching light of the presence of God. 
 
 So that we can understand how completely Tennyson, 
 in such a poem as ' St Simeon Stylites,' has misunderstood 
 the ascetic ideal. The hermit on his pillar here exhibits a 
 somewhat contemptible figure, enduring hardship, racked 
 with pains 
 
 Thrice ten years. 
 Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs, 
 In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold. 
 In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes and cramps,^ 
 
 for what object ? — to be recognised as a saint, to gain a 
 little higher place in the company of Heaven. ' I will 
 not cease to grasp the hope I hold of saintdom,' he says, 
 ' Who may be made a Saint if I fail here .i* ' And he 
 proceeds to draw the contrast ; — 
 
 Bethink Thee, Lord, while Thou and all the Saints 
 Enjoy themselves in heaven, .... 
 I 'twixt the spring and downfall of the light. 
 Bow down one thousand and two hundred times, 
 To Christ, the Virgin Mother, and the Saints.'' 
 
 1 " St Simeon Stylites." » Hid. 
 
SPIRITUAL RELIGION 171 
 
 This was not the spirit of the martyrs and the saints of 
 old. The shortness of time, the immensity of eternity, 
 the hunger of the soul for God, the consciousness of its 
 own sinfulness keeping it back from that union, the 
 determination to destroy this sin — this is the secret of 
 the strength of the ascetic life. And these emotions, 
 which have never been completely eradicated, which 
 appear now stronger, now weaker, at diiferent periods of 
 the world's history, will prevent this ideal from ever 
 altogether fading from the minds of men. 'Si I'homme 
 nest pas fait pour Dieu, pourquoi n'est-il heureux qu'en 
 Dieu ? ' 1 ' Thou hast fashioned us, O Lord, for Thee ; 
 and the human heart is restless, till it finds rest in Thee.' ^ 
 'Vanity of Vanities, and all is vanitj, save the love of 
 God and the serving Him alone.' ' 
 
 In considering Tennyson's treatment of this subject, 
 we are not merely dealing with problems of historical 
 importance, or misread motives of past generations. All 
 his interest was with the present ; and in these poems, 
 at first sight concerned only with old forgotten far-off 
 things, he was really combating an ideal which in his own 
 time was exhibiting a surprising renaissance. It is in this 
 light that we must consider 'The Holy Grail'; an allegory, 
 yet in a sense a real story unfolding Tennyson's clearest 
 teaching of the evil effects of the ascetic conception of 
 the object of life. Marking as it does perhaps the very 
 high watermark of his poetic inspiration, its influence 
 cannot easily be overrated ; and its deliberate purpose 
 merits a careful consideration of the problem set forth, 
 and the answer given. 
 
 Tennyson's condemnation of Spiritual ReUgion in this 
 poem, is intensified by two other elements in his mind — 
 his abhorrence of all extremes, of sentiment that appears to 
 
 ' Pascal: "Pensees."' ' " St Augustine : Confessions." 
 
 ^ "De Imitatione Christi." 
 
172 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 him extravagant or exaggerated ; and his inability to com- 
 prehend the real success of apparent failure. He deplores 
 the excesses of asceticism as much as those of passionate 
 political idealism, because both presented too high an 
 ideal for the attainment of the ordinary man. A Galahad 
 may reveal its beauty ; a Percivale may come unscathed 
 from the great trial ; the rest will perish miserably on 
 the journey. And it seems to him better not to set out 
 on the pursuit of the Holy GraU, unless success can be 
 assured. 
 
 The search for the Holy Grail combined with an out- 
 break of Sensuality, its natural consequence to destroy 
 the great cause, and ensure the final destruction of 
 Arthur's kingdom, and the fellowship of the Round Table. 
 In the spiritual intoxication produced by the sight of 
 the beatific vision the knights had sworn to follow it 
 throughout the world ; leaving ' human wrongs to right 
 themselves,' they had ridden forth on their long journey ; 
 and most of them, as the King bitterly prophesied, had 
 followed 'wandering fires, lost in the quagmire.' But 
 the failure was itself due to their own sinfulness ; had 
 they been pure and single-hearted they would all have 
 attained their desire, and entered the Spiritual City. 
 And might it not perhaps, after all, have been better to 
 pursue phantom lights, with the hunger for the vision 
 of the Grail in the heart, than to continue to lead the 
 old pleasant life at Camelot, wdth its acquiescence in the 
 imperfect condition accompanied by the protest that the 
 Quest was not for them. ' We needs must love the 
 highest when we see it ' ; this is surely the noblest ideal, 
 even if for ever unfulfilled. ' But we desire not the fair, 
 but the fairest of all ; if we find aught else we shall 
 have failed.' 
 
 'Lost to me and gone,' says the King bitterly, at 
 the end of the year's search. 
 
SPIRITUAL RELIGION 173 
 
 And left me gazing at a barren board, 
 
 And a lean Order — scarce returned a tithe — 
 
 And out of those to whom the vision came 
 
 My greatest hardly will believe he saw ; 
 
 Another hath beheld it afar off, 
 
 And leaving human wrongs to right themselves, 
 
 Cares but to pass into the silent life. 
 
 And one hath had the vision face to face. 
 
 And now his chair desires him here in vain. 
 
 However they may crown him otherwhere.^ 
 
 And this one side of the picture is conspicuous ; the 
 ruin of the earthly kingdom^ the apparent undoing of the 
 life-work of the king, the Christian monarchy, so labori- 
 ously erected, reehng back 'into the beast.' But there 
 is another side also to be considered. The earthly 
 kingdom is not all ; sooner or later the earthly kingdom 
 must go. The Perfect vision once having been seen, 
 was it not better to make the choice of the fairest, even 
 if it was for ever unattainable ? " Plato has profoundly 
 defined man ' the hunter of truth ' ; for in this chase, 
 as in others, the pursuit is all in all, the success com- 
 paratively nothing. ' Did the' Almighty,' says Lessing, 
 ' holding in his right hand Truth, and in his left 
 search after Truth, deign to proffer me the one I 
 might prefer, in all humility, but without hesitation, I 
 should request ' Search after Truth.' " ^ 
 
 To Lancelot the vision was denied. Yet Lancelot, 
 searching after the glory of the Grail, bUnded because 
 of his sin, yet urged on his fruitless quest by the hope 
 that the touch and sight of the Holy Thing might pluck 
 his sin from him, is surely a greater figure than Lancelot 
 at Camelot, an open friend and secret traitor to the 
 King. And although in his search madness came upon 
 
 1 "The Holy Grail." 
 
 ' Sir W. Hamilton : " Philosophy of Perception," p. 39. 
 
174 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 him, and 'whipt him into waste fields far away/ and 
 he was 'beaten down by Uttle men,' and drifted over 
 the great sea, and at length only descried dimly the 
 cup of God's wrath, in anger seven times heated, sur- 
 rounded by ' great angels, awful shapes and wings and 
 eyes,' he was yet the greater for his quest, and, although 
 failing, higher for his failure. And not only Galahad, 
 with the Holy Grail ever present before him night and 
 day, finally guiding him to 
 
 The spiritual city and all its spires 
 And gateways, like a glory of one pearl, 
 
 but Sir BorSj a prisoner to the Pajrnims, and Percivale, 
 journeying through the land of sand and thorns, with 
 everything he meets turning into dust at his touch, and 
 all the nameless host who had perished in the marshes 
 and the dark forests had yet perhaps risen, despite the 
 failure, to a higher success than they could attain in 
 the life of the camp and the court and the city. ' Came 
 you on none but phantoms on your quest ? ' asks the 
 patient old monk Ambrosius, ' no men nor women } ' 
 ' On such a quest,' says Percivale, ' men and women are 
 but as phantoms.' The spiritual has become the reality ; 
 the eternal world has become revealed beneath the 
 material ; and even if this results in destruction, to those 
 who perish without hope, but enduring faithful to the 
 end, shall one day be given the revelation of the Glory 
 of the Lord. 
 
 ' Have ye seen a cloud .'' ' says Arthur to his knights, 
 on finding they have sworn the vow ; ' What went ye 
 in the wilderness to see } ' And he had cause for his 
 anger ; for, a year after, the few surviving knights return 
 to Camelot, through the grass-grown streets, amid the 
 crumbling i-uins of their once goodly city and palace, 
 to find the old order gone for ever. Yet it was better 
 
SPIRITUAL RELIGION 175 
 
 to fail in such a quest, even if it meant unknown death 
 without the sight of the vision, than to succeed in some 
 lower ideal. ' One hath seen,' says Arthur, ' and all 
 the blind will see.' In the spiritual realm it is better 
 for the blind to seek the sight, even if it means their own 
 destruction ; and not only he that attains, but he that 
 endures to the end, shall be saved. , Gawain had failed, 
 because he had abandoned the quest as not for him. 
 But those who had sought steadfastly, though sought in 
 vain, had not failed ; those who had perished still faith- 
 ful to the Quest had not failed. They had vowed to 
 follow the Fairest ; they had seen for one moment 
 the revelation of the Eternal Beauty ; in their 
 choice of the Unattainable, they would be justified 
 rather than those who had refused the task as impos- 
 sible. The 'desire of the moth for the star,' the yearn- 
 ing of the soul for God, in its very earthly failure may 
 be heavenly success. It may be the duty of mankind 
 here to pursue a hopeless ideal ; to seek after ' the high 
 that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard,' 
 trusting that, by ' clinging to the highest,' despite 
 inability through weakness to behold the Vision, the 
 fleshly, stained, imperfect, human soul may 'one day 
 see God.' 
 
 The laments and the accusations of Arthur are the 
 common reproaches of the world. ' One has seen and 
 all the blind will see.' ' Have ye seen a cloud .'' ' 
 ' What go ye to the wilderness to see .'' ' These are the 
 scornful queries addressed by the world to those who 
 refuse to bow down to its idols. Little comprehending 
 the motives of those who have 'passed into the silent 
 life,' it sees many who might have ministered to its 
 necessities, or attained greatness according to its standard, 
 withdraw themselves from its councils, and decline to 
 acquiesce in its conventional and comfortable morality. 
 
176 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 The sight of these fills it with a blind and inarticulate 
 fury ; it accuses them, now of self-absorption in their 
 own salvation, now of hypocrisy, and spiritual pride, now 
 of destrojring powers which were intended for develop- 
 ment, and of alienating the good by the preaching of 
 an impossible ideal. But not until the final judgment, 
 when ' all things that are reproved are made manifest 
 by the light,' can it be decided who have succeeded and 
 who have failed. "The Son of Man came eating and 
 drinking, and they say, ' Behold a man gluttonous and 
 a wine-bibber' ; and John came neither eating nor 
 drinking, and they say, ' He hath a devil ' ; but Wisdom 
 is justified of all her children." 
 
 ' There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit ' ; 
 and 'God fulfils Himself in many ways lest one good 
 custom should corrupt the world.' ^ Tennyson had leamt 
 from his master Maurice a noble ideal of rehgion in the 
 common life of humanity ; the kingdom of God among 
 men, the 'glory slowly growing on the shade'; the gradual 
 destruction of the ' feud of rich and poor,' ' the want, the 
 care, the sin, the faithless coldness of the times ' ; the 
 gradual development of 'the valiant man and free, the 
 larger heart the kindlier hand.' ^ 
 
 How best to help the slender store, 
 How mend the dwellings of the poor ; 
 How gain in life as life advances, 
 Valour and Charity more and more.' 
 
 It was a high ideal of the religious life ; perhaps the 
 highest. Yet acknowledgment of this should not blind 
 us to the greatness and the beauty of other no less sincere 
 manifestations of the reUgious consciousness. 
 
 In the Middle Ages the sense of conscience, the dic- 
 
 1 "The Passing of Arthur." = " In Memoriam," cvi. 
 
 » "To Rev. F. D. Maurice." 
 
SPIRITUAL RELIGION i77 
 
 tates of morality, were but dimly developed; and men 
 did deeds that ' earth should blush to look upon ' without 
 any great display of public condemnation. But over all 
 their higher or their baser lives brooded the haunting 
 realisation of the presence of God. Those who do not 
 apprehend this fact can never appreciate in all its con- 
 trasts the strange life of that time. It is manifested in 
 the great Cathedrals, built to God ; in the mystic religion, 
 craving for union with God; in the whole elaborate 
 system of ritual and ceremony and Church organisation, 
 designed to impress the worshippers with the certainty of 
 God's presence here, and to prepare them for His 
 presence beyond the grave. 
 
 And it is Tennyson's inability to comprehend this as 
 the characteristic feature of the Middle Ages which causes 
 the comparative failure of ' The Idylls of the King.' He 
 takes the scenery of the mediaeval age, forest and abbey 
 and castle crowned hills ; he adopts the outward form, the 
 city of Camelotj the narrow streets and winding lanes, 
 with the hall of Merlin, and its great rose windows, high 
 above the old Gothic roofs of the town ; he fills his canvas 
 with the outward show, jousts, tourneyings, knights riding 
 forth in armour to redress human wrongs, enchanters and 
 heathen robbers lurking in the sun'ounding forests. But 
 into this scenery, he places men filled with the ideals of 
 six centuries later. The characteristic of modem develop- 
 ment is to emphasise the morality of rehgion, and to 
 minimise the spiritual elements. The characteristic of 
 the Middle Ages was to emphasise the spiritual and make 
 light of the morality. Arthur's ideal — 
 
 To reverence the King, as if he were 
 
 Thy conscience, and thy conscience as thy King 
 
 — would be strange to the ideals of Chivalry. Their 
 morality when present was more outward performance 
 M 
 
178 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 than dictated by conscience; fierce impulsCj uncon- 
 trollable passion, mingling to cause deeds of the noblest 
 and deeds of the basest; but, whether noble or base, 
 whether revealed or secret, all performed under the 
 searching eye of God. 
 
 And secondly, Tennyson failed to appreciate, spiritual 
 and ascetic religion because of his inability everywhere 
 to discern the glory of effort after ideals from their nature 
 unattainable. The ideal, he says in effect, may be the 
 highest ; but we ' who want the warmth of double Ufe ' 
 cannot attain to it ; therefore it is better that we should 
 not try. Because we cannot all be Galahads and 
 Percivales, it is better that we should not endeavour 
 vainly to emulate their lives. This may be wisdom, the 
 wisdom of the world ; it is not the teaching of a religion, 
 whose lesson is that heavenly success is attainable only 
 through earthly defeat, and whose founder in His life 
 exhibited apparently the most tremendous failure of all 
 time. Here, at least, the ideal must be the highest ; 
 and so long as this is strenuously maintaiaed, so long as 
 the Quest of the Holy Grail is continued, even if the 
 vision is never seen, and the ' old order ' breaks up and 
 the ' whole round table is dissolved,' yet in the mainten- 
 ance of the Quest itself the Eternal triumph is assured. 
 In these matters as in others, as in his criticism of attempts 
 at reorganisation of society, Tennyson is too apt to judge 
 by the immediate and obvious result. And because in the 
 ' silent life,' and the mortification of the flesh induced by 
 asceticism, there seems no manifest redressal of human 
 wrong, and no direct effect on the happiness or the pro- 
 gress of the surrounding people, he would condemn these 
 as vain outbreaks of exaggerated devotion, based on an 
 unreal conception of the Deity. There may be another side 
 to this question, some truth in the old theory that the 
 voluntary sacrifices of the individual contribute to lighten 
 
SPIRITUAL RELIGION 179 
 
 the whole dead mass of human suffering and human pain. 
 This view has been maintained through many generations, 
 the motive power of much of that grotesque and exagger- 
 ated asceticism that Tennyson condemns. Considering the 
 wide sweep of time, and the little that is really known 
 concerning the spiritual world, it is well not to judge 
 hastily an ideal because immediate success seems lacking. 
 Voluntary suffering may be as necessary now for the 
 continued healthfulness of the Christian Church as it 
 appeared necessary eighteen centuries ago ; and no form 
 of spiritual religion, if the motive be pure and the aims 
 high and sincere, should be condemned because the 
 immediate effect is not manifest in the direct and con- 
 spicuous increase in the sum-total of human happiness. 
 Vicarious endurance, in some mysterious manner appears 
 to be a law of human life ; not until the ' serene result of 
 all' is manifested can we venture to denounce any form 
 of self-mortification, any kind of self-sacrifice, however 
 repugnant in these times such forms may be to our 
 softer and ease-loving nature. 
 
XII. SOCIAL RELIGION 
 
 TN considering the application of Tennyson's more 
 general principles to the particular political and social 
 problems of his time, we must note a certain timidity or 
 refusal to accept in a concrete form the results of his bolder 
 theoretical generalisations. Tennyson, indeed, so extra- 
 ordinarily sensitive to the outward impression of external 
 things, could not consistently maintain any one general 
 rule as universally applicable to the actual world of his 
 experience. The conservative elements of his own nature, 
 the influences of his education, and more than all, a 
 certain shrinking from everything that was extravagant, 
 harsh, and uncouth, and an instinctive distrust of the 
 unknown, kept him, on the whole, in opposition to the 
 more daring and heroic movements towards social 
 reconstruction and the realisation of ideals in action, 
 and caused him to be usually foimd in opposition to those 
 who, nothing doubting, ventured forward into the untried 
 future. 
 
 His guiding principle in theoretical judgments, as we 
 have seen, was the acceptance of change as good ; and, 
 in the case of the individual self, he advocated this in its 
 fullest interpretation, acknowledging that all our beliefs 
 must be modified in accordance with this position ; that 
 action, not rest, continually pressing forward, not ' con- 
 tinuing in one stay,' must be the ideal of the highest 
 good of the personality. But in the application of this 
 principle to the world around him, and the organised 
 system of society, he shrank from its full logical conclu- 
 sions. He lived in a time of ferment and disorder ; he saw 
 change, as he held, leading to irretrievable destruction; 
 
 i8o 
 
SOCIAL RELIGION i8i 
 
 he saw reckless leaping into the dark without the 
 counting of the inevitable result ; he saw high ideals 
 ■and generous faith terminating in hopeless ruin. Andj 
 in consequencCj he was filled with doubt and perplex- 
 itjTj his principles urging him forward, his disposition 
 leading him to cry back ; and, although willing to acknow- 
 ledge that progress is real in this world, and, as real, 
 desirable, the working out of a Divine plan, yet at the 
 actflal workings of progress, as he saw one thing after 
 another that he loved submerged in the universal flood, 
 he was filled with dismay and despau-. And so he was 
 found generally in opposition to these social creeds of his 
 time which were so ardently proclaimed as the appUca- 
 tion of religious creeds ; ' the golden Age ' became to 
 him a vision ever receding into a remoter future ; in the 
 present he could often discern little but ' clouds and 
 darkness, and the light darkened in the heavens thereof.' 
 And this tendency towards mistrust was due to the 
 fundamentally conservative nature of his mind, to his 
 love of law and order, and to a kind of constitutional 
 timidity in embarking on unknown realms of speculation 
 and of pivactical change. Tennyson shrank from the 
 rugged, the rough, the strenuous, the untamed ; his 
 spirit was always more in sympathy with Classical than 
 with Romantic Art ; even in his verse, the one permanent 
 characteristic is smoothness and gi-ace. The uncouth 
 and grotesque, in all its forms, filled him with repulsion. 
 The high, impossible things of life, the great ventures, 
 the staking of everything upon one chance, the bold 
 casting away of the lower life through faith in the ability 
 to attain the higher, all the forlorn hopes of thought 
 and action received from him no enthusiastic praise. 
 The fervent idealist, the thinker who drives his creed 
 to its logical conclusion, the speculator who is 'for ever 
 voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone,' the 
 
1 82 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 ascetic who would sacrifice now that he may gain ' for 
 ever/ the social teacher who would press boldly forward, 
 through change apparently harmful, in the hope of attain- 
 ing good beyond the change : these Tennyson regarded 
 with distrust. The ideal ingrained in his very nature 
 was order ; disorder he regarded as the one hopeless 
 condition of existence. It was the absence of this ideal 
 in the world around him, the apparent feverish disorder 
 of society and of belief, that filled him with much of 
 his sadness. He could never gladly acquiesce in the 
 violation of law for the possibiUty of the attainment of 
 some higher end. 
 
 Tennyson, in fact, in his treatment of contemporary 
 life around him, directly opposes the principle of Evolu- 
 tion, which, in theory, he had accepted. In religious 
 speculation, and in practical affairs, he never did actually 
 launch out into the deep. He always was one of those 
 who hugged the shore, ever directing the prow of his 
 ship towards the illimitable ocean, but ever again seeking 
 shelter under the shadow of the land. Once, indeed, 
 he almost gave up his settled position, and resolved to 
 boldly sail forth into the unknown ; whatever the cost, to 
 asce rtain 
 
 If any golden harbour be for man 
 
 In seas of Death and sunless gulfs of Doubt.' 
 
 It was the death of his friend that had determined 
 him to undertake this voyage ; and it was under the 
 influence of this resolution that he wrote that poem in 
 which he asserts his purpose 
 
 To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths 
 Of all the Western stars, until I die.^ 
 
 ' Sonnet to the Nineteenth Century." ^ " Ulysses." 
 
SOCIAL RELIGION 183 
 
 But the mood in which he composed ' Ulysses ' did not 
 long continue. The 
 
 Yearning in desire, 
 To follow knowledge like a sinking star, 
 Beyond the utmost bounds of human thought,' 
 
 and the resolve to encounter with a ' frolic welcome ' 
 the ' thunder and the sunshine ' yielded before his 
 constitutional dread of the unknown. It might be^ he 
 seems to have reasoned, if they ventured on this voyage, 
 that they would 'touch the happy isles/ and 'see the 
 great Achilles ' whom they knew ; but how great the 
 chances, on the other hand, that they would be driven 
 on sunken rocks, or founder in the deep seas, or be 
 engulfed by alien shores. 
 
 Tennyson never left the sheltered water by the land. 
 He always clung to the older traditions, the older faiths, 
 the established order in politics and society. 'The 
 calling of strange places,' ' in desire of many marvels 
 oversea,' the impulse to cut moorings and in faith 
 conunit one's self to the deep, preferring even bold 
 failure to timid success : these he strenuously resisted. 
 And, although he gained much by this, and escaped the 
 shipwreck and the total destruction which overwhelmed 
 many of his contemporaries, his influence as a religious 
 teacher was weakened by the refusal. For the most 
 trustworthy guides are those who have essayed the great 
 journey, and can tell, from direct experience, of its 
 dangers ; who have ' touched the happy isles,' and 
 can bring news of their real existence ; who, having 
 'proved all things,' have yet been able to 'hold fast 
 that which is good.' In thought and in action the 
 bold way is still the better way ; and, in order to attain 
 to something greater than commonplace success, it is 
 
 1 " Ulysses." 
 
1 84 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 necessary continually to 'speak imto the people that 
 they go forward.' The good in evil, the glory of high 
 enterprise, the ultimate justification of those who venture 
 all things, who throw themselves against the current of 
 the age, who dash themselves to pieces against the 
 rocks of prejudice, who perish that those coming after 
 may attain the promised land, these have been sung by 
 others, but not by Teimyson. ' The high that proved 
 too high, the heroic for earth too hard ' never received 
 approval in his poetry. Rather it is his function to exhibit 
 the beauty of quiet, orderly life ; ' the small experiences 
 of every day, concerns of the particular hearth and home'; 
 to disclose, ' not by the comet's rush but the rose's bu"th ' 
 the reality of goodness ; to be content, like his patient 
 old monk Ambrosius, ' to see the yew-tree smoke, spring 
 after spring for half a hundred years,' and learn half- 
 fearfully from those who have returned from the Great 
 Quest and still bear the marks of the struggle, the 
 story of those who have succeeded and of those who 
 have failed. 
 
 Yet those who have ventured have pronounced them- 
 selves not um'ewarded. Those who have seen the vision 
 of the Holy Grail must rehnquish all their happy com- 
 panionships, and the old pleasant life, and pass out into 
 the forest and the desert to follow the Fairest wherever 
 it may lead them. Those who hurl themselves against 
 the social order around them, misunderstood by all, 
 hated alike by the evil and by the good, dangerous 
 enemies to society, have yet perchance chosen the better 
 way. ' A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or 
 what 's a heaven for ? ' 
 
 He ventured neck or nothing — heaven's success 
 Found, or earth failure. 
 
SOCIAL RELIGION 185 
 
 That low man seeks a little thing to do, 
 
 Sees it and does it : 
 This high man, with a great thing to pursue. 
 
 Dies ere he knows it. 
 That low man goes on adding one to one. 
 
 His hundred's soon hit : 
 This high man, aiming at a million. 
 
 Misses an unit. 
 That, has the world here — should he need the next. 
 
 Let the world mind him ! 
 This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed 
 
 Seeking shall find him.^ 
 
 It was the safe rather than the heroic course that 
 Tennyson exalted in the world of thought and of action. 
 In his own speculation he never launched out on the 
 turmoil of modem doubt. He was always crushing his 
 doubts, refusing to let them shake his belief in the older 
 ideal. ' In Memoriam ' is a record of doubts ' of sorrow 
 boruj' driven relentlessly home to him by the pressure 
 of his loss, externally imposed, which he was compelled 
 to meet and fight. Here is struggle against sorrow in 
 its overwhelming force, not the voluntary intellectual 
 voyaging in strange seas. Sorrow he would have come 
 live with him, ' No casual mistress but a wife ' ; but 
 the undesirable following brought in her train he 
 energetically combats ; never for a moment permitting 
 himself to lose grasp of the older beliefs, never passing 
 through a time of actual denial of faith. Neither in the 
 world of thought nor in the world of action would 
 Tennyson advocate any step without clearly seeing whither 
 it might lead him. 
 
 And the consequence of all this is, that for the more 
 adventurous minds Tennyson, as a teacher, can never 
 give that full satisfaction which they can derive from 
 
 ' Robert Browning : "A Grammarian's Funeral." 
 
1 86 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 those who have journeyed freely, and gone forward 
 wherever they may be led. He is too much prepared 
 to judge success and failure by the mere worldly standard ; 
 he cannot see that ' earth's failure ' may be necessary 
 for ' heaven's success,' and that it is better to have 
 failed in a great cause than to have contentedly acquiesced 
 in a lower ideal. It is well to remember the lesson 
 insisted on by a great contemporary writer. " While 
 in all things that we see or do we are to desire perfec- 
 tion, and to strive for it, we are, nevertheless, not to set 
 the meaner thing, in its narrow accomphshment, above 
 the noble thing, in its mighty progress ; not to esteem 
 smooth minuteness above shattered majesty; not to 
 prefer mean victory to honourable defeat, not to lower 
 the level of our aim, that we may surely enjoy the 
 complacency of success." ^ 
 
 Nowhere is this warning more necessary than in the 
 treatment by Tennyson of the social philosophies of his 
 time. The new outburst of devotion to Liberty, the 
 preaching of the Gospel of the People, the pathetic 
 clinging to heroic ideals despite their proved incapacity 
 to realise themselves in action, have furnished for many 
 men in this century a religion to which they have gladly 
 devoted their lives. 
 
 The most melancholy, yet in a sense most glorious 
 example of this, is furnished by the history of modern 
 France. In a very real sense France has been sacri- 
 ficed that Europe might be free. The ideals of the 
 Revolution, preached with heroic earnestness, accepted 
 with child-like faith, resulted only in an inundation of 
 cruelty and corruption. Following an unattainable ideal, 
 the nation has gone forward, never satisfied, striving after 
 she knows not what, seeking principles of Liberty and 
 Fraternity, which, from their very nature, she has found 
 ' Ruskin t " Stones of Venice." 
 
SOCIAL RELIGION 187 
 
 herself unable to realise in the ' troubled world of men.' 
 And yet, from the steadfast adherence to this higher 
 idealj although she has yielded her people as the prey 
 to false teachers, and di-iven them astray into almost 
 hopeless anarchy, she has yet shown a lesson to the whole 
 world, from which every country has benefited except her 
 own. Such a history affords, in the highest degree, the 
 spectacle of a tragedy to purge the onlookers with terror 
 and pity. This is Tennyson's method of viewing it : — 
 
 But yonder, whiff ! there comes a sudden heat. 
 
 The gravest citizen seems to lose his head, 
 
 The king is scared, the soldier will not fight. 
 
 The little boys begin to shoot and stab, 
 
 A kingdom topples over with a shriek 
 
 Like an old woman, and down rolls the world 
 
 In mock heroics stranger than our own ; 
 
 Revolts, republics, revolutions, most 
 
 No graver than a schoolboys' barring out : 
 
 Too comic for the solemn things they are, 
 
 Too solemn for the comic touches in them. 
 
 God bless the narrow seas ! 
 I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad.' 
 
 Here is Tennyson at his worst : insular pride, British 
 Pharisaism, his natiu-al timidity of spirit, and his worship 
 of mere tangible success, all combined into an unlovely 
 sneer at a nation which had essayed the nobler ideal, and, 
 in failing, missed the attainment of the lower. The heroic 
 conception of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, the lives freely 
 devoted towards its attainment, the tragedy of the failure 
 of the religion of humanity when forced into conflict 
 with the hard realities of life, and, throughout all, the 
 child-like earnestness of purpose and faith in human 
 nature, which is so manifest in the history of Revolutions 
 
 ' " The Princess," Conclusion. 
 
1 88 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 and upheavals of society during the past century : these 
 are worthy of treatment very different from this contented 
 self-complacency and pious thanks that we are not as 
 they are, which so often disfigures the pages of 
 Tennyson's poetry. 
 
 Partly, indeed, Tennyson was narrow because he was 
 national. At a time when there was little consciousness 
 of Empire or Imperial Mission amongst the mling classes 
 of England, he was proclaiming the greatness of her 
 heritage, and the duties of her power. When the Man- 
 chester School contested alone the dull ideals of the 
 country classes, he had thrown scorn upon the conception 
 of a 
 
 Third-rate isle half lost among her seas, 
 
 and had proclaimed to those who regarded his words but 
 as idle dreams the divine mission of the English race. 
 
 The loyal to their crown 
 Are loyal to their own fair sons, who love 
 Our ocean-empire with her boundless homes 
 For ever-broadening England, and her throne 
 In our vast Orient, and one isle, one isle 
 That knows not her own greatness.^ 
 
 And this Imperial view of the mission of the English race 
 was not, like so much of modern Imperialism, mere vulgar 
 pride in power, or desire for increased wealth through 
 extended commerce. Tennyson's faith in his countrymen 
 was essentially part of his religion ; it is as ' God's English- 
 men,' as Milton called them, that he welcomes their 
 acceptance of the burden of empire ; and it is as guided 
 by God to do His work that he possesses faith in the 
 future of his nation. All through his historical plays, he 
 is tracing out the history of their development, especially 
 at great crises, the struggle to throw off foreign suprem- 
 acy, to realise their own national existence. And in his 
 
 ' Epilogue, ' ' Idylls of the King. " 
 
SOCIAL RELIGION 189 
 
 modern poems he appeals to God for help in somewhat the 
 same spirit as that shown by the Hebrew prophets. ' God 
 as a man of war ' is called in to aid the forces of His people 
 in the ordeal of battle. England's wars, to Tennyson, are 
 religious crusades ; and His people are doing His work in 
 wreaking ' God's just wrath on a giant liar.' Such a faith, 
 associated with such a criminal blunder as the Crimean 
 War, appears half laughable, half pathetic ; but at the 
 time it was very real to the poet, and very real to the 
 people. So, at the end of his life he will still appeal 
 to God to guide His people ' through the troublous 
 years to come.' 
 
 Are there thunders moaning in the distance ? 
 Are there spectres moving in the darkness ? 
 Trust the Hand of Light will lead her people, 
 Till the thunders pass, the spectres vanish, 
 And the light is victor, and the darkness 
 Dawns into the jubilee of ages.' 
 
 This national faith helped to make Tennyson minimise 
 the faults of his own race, and exaggerate the deficiencies 
 of others. ' The great, broad-shouldered, genial English- 
 man ' is his loved ideal ; limited in ideas, filled with no 
 nonsense about freedom or equality, honest and truthful, 
 sensitive to human suffering, willing out of his superfluity 
 to help the poor. All through the time that Tennyson 
 wrote, a bitter and fierce conflict was being waged by a few 
 writers against the appalling suffering and waste produced 
 by an evil ideal of social organisation. One after another, 
 almost all the great literary figures of the century in 
 England were found abandoning their own particular 
 work in order to participate in this new crusade. 
 Carlyle, from philosophy and history, passed to assail 
 the ideals of a people that ' had forgotten God ' ; 
 Ruskin abandoned art criticism to denounce ' a nation 
 
 1 "Jubilee Ode." 
 
ipo TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 that has done iniquity by proclamation.' Kingsley 
 and the 'men of '48,' William Morris and his followers 
 denouncing the comfortable creed of wealth, the poets 
 who assailed the unjust system upon wMch England's 
 commercial greatness was being founded ; all these 
 were struggling with ' the working creed, the com- 
 fortable scheme of all society, the sanction of property 
 as then constituted, and the justification of life as then 
 lived.' And all these consequently spent the greater part 
 of their lives fiercely assailed, hated and vilified by the 
 great mass of their fellow-countrymen. Tennyson was 
 not of them ; not one of those whose struggles towards 
 the new age will stand out in the future brightest among 
 the dark shadows of the nineteenth century. While they 
 were proclaiming the essential wrongfulness of society, 
 he was singing of the advance of Science, the dawning 
 of the golden age, the greatness of his people and of 
 the land 
 
 That freemen till, 
 That sober suited Freedom chose, 
 The land where girt with friends or foes, 
 A man may speak the thing he will.^ 
 
 And this subject was found more congenial to the 
 people than the unpleasant truths enforced by his con- 
 temporaries ; he attained a more rapid popularity, en- 
 countered less strenuous opposition. His interests were 
 all with those in possession, not with those coming into 
 power. In much of this struggle after 'the day of 
 better things,' he could discern little but 'the yells 
 and counter-yells of feud and faction,' 
 
 With thousand shocks that come and go 
 With agonies and energies. 
 With overthrowings and with cries, 
 
 And undulations to and fro,' 
 
 1 "InMemoriam." ^ IbU. 
 
SOCIAL RELIGION 191 
 
 most of which seemed to him unnecessary and unwise. 
 It was not thinkers and leaders hke Tennyson that saved 
 England in the dark and cloudy days from something 
 far worse than ' the mad fool fury of the Seine,' the 
 certain approach of which observers confidently foretold 
 sixty years ago. 
 
 Tennyson's ideals were all of the older time, gracious 
 courtesy, chivalrous condescension, the old-time manners 
 of court or country house ; above all, with order as the 
 one essential virtue, and disorder as the one unpardonable 
 sin. He gazed out into the world around him, and saw 
 disorder everywhere triumphant : uncertain guidance, 
 conflict in Church and State, the revolt of the poor 
 against the rich, the minor graces of life passing away ; 
 and, he was filled with a sort of hopeless disgust at the 
 prospect. 
 
 ' Forward ' rang the voices then, and of the many mine was one ; 
 Let us hush the cry of ' Forward ' till ten thousand years have gone.^ 
 
 He would, indeed, have no objection to ordered, 
 tempered freedom, 'slowly broadening down from pre- 
 cedent to precedent.' But freedom that is harsh and 
 grating, and speaks in noisy and strident tones, involving 
 the breaking up of the social organisation and all the 
 misery of conflict — freedom that drags ugly shapes in 
 its train — such freedom he cannot abide. He possessed, 
 indeed, none of the old aristocratic contempt for the 
 hfe and the actions of the poor. He upheld, with 
 enthusiasm. Lady Godiva's action in taking off the tax 
 from the citizens of Coventry. He had learnt, only too 
 keenly, the modern feeling of sensibility, realised deeply 
 all the misery and the vice of the world, and the ceaseless 
 cry of pain. He lamented, with his hero in 'Maud,' 
 
 ' "Sixty Years After." 
 
192 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 some of the most outrageous iniquities of society — 
 adulteration of food, overcrowding of the poor, and 
 'Tiraour-Mammon ' 'grinning on a pile of children's 
 bones.' i His remedy was the voluntary beneficence of 
 the aristocratic order. He unsparingly condemned those 
 of that class who will not help the people. But he had 
 no sympathy with the newer ideals of these people 
 themselves. And, seeing them blundering helplessly, 
 and in their blundering destroying, half unconsciously, 
 most of that which he held dear, he turned round and 
 lashed them with fury. In his social poems, as results 
 of the new social ' gospel all men's good,' he could 
 see only vitriol madness, the maiming of cattle, the 
 decay of reverence, wild assertions of equality, the 
 growth of a new tyranny worse than the old; and, in 
 consequence, he lavished unsparing invectives on the 
 leaders — ' blind leaders of the blind ' — and gloomily 
 prophesied ruin. 
 
 'Trim hedges, smooth lawns, butterflies, posies, and 
 nightingales ' — a quiet English scenery — is the scenery 
 loved by Tennyson. This is peopled by contented 
 peasants, who bow deferentially to their superiors, a 
 society organised in a hierarchy culminating in the great 
 house. Here dwell a select and cultured ffew, who discuss 
 mild philosophy, profess a languid enthusiasm for slowly 
 broadening freedom, and, in moments of leisure, thank 
 God for the existence of the narrow seas that protect 
 them from ' the mad fool fury of the Seine.' Such was 
 Tennyson's ideal of the perfect life. And it was because 
 he lived to see the gradual destruction of this order, and 
 seemed powerless to restrain the incoming tide, that in 
 his latter years his voice so often rose in a melancholy 
 cry of despair. His ideal was benevolence descending, 
 halo-crowned, from above, received with enthusiastic 
 
 ' "Maud," Parti. 
 
SOCIAL RELIGION 193 
 
 gratitude by those below. 'Why,' he asked, as if 
 suddenly discovering some marvellous act of kindness, 
 
 Why should not these great Sirs 
 Give up their parks some dozen times a year 
 To let the people breathe ? ^ 
 
 He lived, alas ! to see ' the people ' claiming as their 
 own right that which was to be granted as a gracious 
 favour ; the hedges broken down, the motley crowd flood- 
 ing in on to the pleasant preserves ; strange shapes, 
 sociahsts, democrats, anarchists, each preaching some new 
 creed, which was to create the new heavens and the new 
 earth ; the downfall of the older ideal ; the stormful 
 birth of the new era. Small wonder, if he turned away 
 in disgust from 
 
 This earth a stage so gloomed with woe 
 You all but sicken at the shifting scenes ? ^ 
 
 if he cried passionately for the hushing of the idea of 
 forward ; if he could even find a sort of grim consolation 
 in the thought which once had appeared so terrible : — 
 
 What is it all but the trouble of ants, in the 
 gleam of a million million of suns.' 
 
 ' " The Princess," Conclusion. 
 
 2 "The Play." 
 
 3 "Vastness." 
 
XIII. CHRISTIANITY 
 
 nPHE relation of Tennyson's religious teaching to the 
 -*- accepted theology of Christianity has been a subject 
 of somewhat acrimonious discussion. The passages in 
 his poetry in which this theology, or any portion of it, is 
 explicitly treated, are for the most part scattered and 
 uncertain ; often put in the mouths of his characters, and 
 not necessarily endorsed by himself. Hence, while many 
 deny any distinctively Christian elements in his work, 
 and find there only a vague and rather misty Theism, 
 combined with admiration for the historical figure of 
 Jesus and for the morality taught by Him, others main- 
 tain that the definite assertion of all the essential verities 
 of the Christian faith is conspicuous throughout his poetry. 
 The facts seem to lie between these two extreme views. 
 Tennyson's own personal religion we are not at present 
 discussing ; within such a short time of his death an 
 inquiry concerning this would be both fruitless and 
 impertinent. It is the faith manifested in his poetry, 
 his teaching as it appears to those who only know him 
 through the medium of his published work, that forms 
 the subject of our consideration. And in this we seem 
 to discover a certain variation in the strength of his 
 belief in the different dogmas of the Christian creeds. 
 Some of these he firmly maintains as an essential part of 
 his faith, and is never weary of emphasising. Others he 
 maintains, but with a grasp less firm and a faith less sure ; 
 others, again, he never seems clearly to advocate or even 
 adequately to comprehend. 
 
 On the whole, however, we shall find that Tennyson 
 adopts infinitely more than he rejects in the current 
 
 194 
 
CHRISTIANITY 195 
 
 conceptions of Christianity ; and that many of its doctrines 
 he only failed to emphasise because of the somewhat 
 inchoate shape which they took in his mind, owing to 
 his habitual distrust of all dogma. We are not stretching 
 words beyond their just meaning when we class him 
 amongst the defenders of the faith which has been so 
 fiercely assailed throughout the greater part of the 
 century. 
 
 First, then, there can be little doubt of his admiration 
 for the ethical teaching of Christianity, and of his love for 
 the Christian ideal of life as exemplified in its greatest 
 exponents, and especially in the person of its Founder. 
 It represents for him the highest organised system of 
 morality which the world has ever seen ; and although 
 he would reject the dogmatic teaching of a theology, 
 he would accept the practical application of a moral code 
 of law. Emphatically advocating both any system of 
 law and order above any manifestation of lawlessness, and 
 the older system as established, against the uncertainties 
 of a newer still untried, he was drawn by all his instinctive 
 impulses into a defence of the accepted system of morals. 
 The child of a country parsonage, educated in the 
 sheltered atmosphere of a Christian home, all his tenderest 
 associations gathered round the Christian ideal of life ; and 
 it is the .fulfilment of this ideal in real and imaginaiy 
 persons, without undue exaggeration of any of its principles, 
 which receives his sincerest admiration. 
 
 Consequently, we never find in his poetry glorification 
 of those who have violated the established ethical code ; 
 never even any indication that, under any circumstances, 
 such a course could be justified. The difficulties of the 
 individual confronted with some intricate problem of life, 
 and unable to conceive which is the right course to 
 pursue ; the violation of the orthodox rules of conduct in 
 order to conform to some higher law ; the exhibiting of 
 
196 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 the unreal character of so much of our current proverbial 
 philosophy, and its incapacity to furnish a sure guide for 
 action in the great crises of Ufe — all those problems of 
 moral casuistry and doubtful choice in which his great 
 contemporary delighted, find no echo in the poetry of 
 Tennyson. The duty is there, clear and plain, before 
 each one ; he may choose the evil, he may oppose the 
 good ; but of v^hich is evil and which is good there is no 
 doubt whatever. 
 
 So that, as a system of practical ethics, the moral law 
 which was promulgated in Palestine two thousand years 
 ago, and has been tested by the experience of the 
 Christian Church through numberless generations, remains 
 for Tennyson the valid system, to which he holds it our 
 duty to bestow our allegiance. Chivalry towards the 
 weak and helpless, a high standard of personal honour, 
 active combat with evil, the love for one woman only, 
 the assertion of the sanctity of marriage, the desire for 
 fame in noble deeds, forgiveness of injuries, love and 
 charity with all men : these form the elements which 
 make up Tennyson's ideal man ; and all are distinctive, 
 many are characteristic, of the Christian teaching. He 
 has depicted in Arthur, ' the flower of Christian Chivalry,' 
 his ideal character, with all its excellences and all its 
 limitations ; and he has traced the strength of such a 
 character directly to the free acceptance of the Christian 
 ideal of life. 
 
 The King will follow Christ, and we the King 
 In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing. 
 
 And although humility may be partly concealed in the 
 pride of high honour, and consciousness of perfection 
 produce a somewhat painful intolerance for human frailty, 
 and the desire for fame may not be so characteristic a 
 Christian virtue as the desire to serve, and the assertion 
 
CHRISTIANITY 197 
 
 of the self be almost too insistent^ yet few can doubt that 
 on the whole the ideal is a noble idealj and conformable 
 with the ideal of Christian manhood in one of its highest 
 and most unique developments. 
 
 But here, and in all his consideration of the Christian 
 teaching, Tennyson exhibits a reluctance to develop or 
 represent its sterner and darker elements. The danger 
 of his system is the tendency to water down morality 
 into a mild sentiment of love and charity, and a 
 glorified principle of universal comfort. 'He's a good 
 fellow and 'twill all be well ' is the feeUng ultimately 
 produced by the further development of this creed — a 
 sentiment, which, however attractive and pleasing, is 
 utterly irreconcilable with the facts of Ufe. And moralists 
 contemplating the condition of the world as it is, are 
 unable to banish evil in this light-hearted manner, and 
 to resolve everything into a widespread good-tempered 
 tolerance. God, if existing, is something more than a 
 philanthropist ; and other ends appear to be sought in the 
 world than the immediate happiness of man. Christianity 
 appeals to deeper feelings in the human heart than the 
 simple desire that everything should be pleasantly 
 smoothed over. It accepts as one of its iirst principles 
 the existence of evil as something real, with a strange, 
 uncertain life of its own, flourishing not only as disorder 
 outside, but also as a corroding disease, present within 
 the souls of men. Jesus came not simply to compel men 
 to admire His life and to follow His example. He 
 furnished a test also, drawing towards himself those 
 who accepted Him, but producing in those who rejected 
 Him a repulsion which drove them into worse con- 
 dition than any they would have experienced if He had 
 never come. His fan was in His hand ; and although 
 in the separation effected by His call He will 'gather 
 the wheat into His gamer ' ; yet ' the chaff he will burn 
 
198 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 with unquenchable fire.' There is much in this world, as 
 manifested to us, to yield us hope of the ultimate triumph 
 of goodness. But there is a darker side which it would be 
 vain to ignore. Evil cannot be resolved into ignorance, 
 nor into an unreality, the mere shadow of the good ; it 
 may be necessary for the development of the good, but yet 
 as evil it is evil and cannot be identified with its opposite. 
 Now, as of old time, sin brings punishment ; and the 
 misdeeds of the father are visited upon the children ; and 
 vicarious suffering, and apparent failure, and deliberate 
 choice of darkness instead of light, are facts to which 
 we cannot be blind. The sufferings of Christ 'to save 
 His people from their sins ' witness to the reality of those 
 sins ; the facts of the Atonement, however interpreted, 
 attest at least to the tremendous significance of the force 
 and the reality of evil. Christianity is something more 
 than universal good-fellowship, and the Christian Church 
 more than a mutual improvement society. The tendency 
 to slur over and neglect the darker side of human char- 
 acter, and of the teachings of religion concerning it, was 
 a tendency very prevalent in that age of cheery optimism 
 and contented belief in Progress and the ultimate happi- 
 ness of all, to which Tennyson in his earlier period be- 
 longed. But it is a tendency that cannot maintain itself 
 for long against the whole teaching of human ex- 
 perience, and a tendency which invariably produces a 
 reaction. The condemnation of ascetism as vain 
 superstition, and of the harsher side of Christianity as 
 that portion of its teaching which we have outgrovra and 
 can consequently neglect, leaves untouched one great 
 phase of human life and human character, which any 
 living religion must explain and satisfy. 
 
 But this direct consciousness of sin as something inside 
 one's self to be fought and conquered at whatever cost of 
 suffering, never seems to have entered into Tennyson's 
 
CHRISTIANITY 199 
 
 experience. Lacking in hinij it is lacking in all the 
 characters of his creation. Only once does he pourtray 
 this feeling-^in ' St Simeon Stylites ' : — 
 
 Pain heap'd ten hundredfold to this, were still 
 ^ Less burden, by ten hundredfold, to bear. 
 
 Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crush'd 
 My spirit flat before thee. 
 
 Have mercy, mercy ; take away my sin. 
 
 And here it is only exhibited as an abnormal, unhealthy, 
 almost grotesque development, mingled with spiritual 
 pride and a querulous clamour for sainthood — a feeling 
 little praiseworthy, and certainly an undesirable possession 
 for the sane and healthy individual. And yet the reality 
 of sin and the intense conviction of this reality have been 
 experienced by men of all ages, and are the feelings of 
 the human heart to wliich Christianity directly appeals. 
 ' If thy right hand offend thee, cut it oflf and cast it from 
 thee ; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members 
 should perish and not that thy whole body should be cast 
 into heU.' These mysterious words of Christ seem to point 
 to some reality in this evil, to be fought and destroyed 
 even at the cost of maimed life and physical pain. And 
 the passionate cry of the Apostle, ' O wretched man that I 
 am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death,' is 
 not the solitary outburst of a gloomy fanatic ; but a cry 
 that has been re-echoed through all ages, and far beyond 
 the limits of Christian history. 
 
 Video meliora proboque, 
 Deteriora sequor 
 
 is the experience of the Roman poet. Sin, and the loath- 
 ing of self produced by sin, and the need of deliverance 
 from this by the interposition of a higher power, are the 
 facts which Christianity encounters, and the need which it 
 
200 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 satisfies. And no system which does not realise this fact 
 can ever apprehend in its entirety the Christian system of 
 morality or the Christian philosophy of hfe. • 
 
 But, as we have already pointed out, Termyson never 
 reveals this consciousness in his teaching or in his char- 
 acters. Other poets have manifested this feeling through 
 the characters of their creation. 
 
 Yea, what if dried-up stems wax red and green, 
 Shall that thing be which is not nor has been ? 
 
 Yea, what if sapless bark wax green and white. 
 Shall any good fruit grow upon my sin ? ^ 
 
 None of Tennyson's characters ever utter such a human 
 cry as this. In many of them aspiration after good, 
 consciousness of greatness, the realisation of the beauty 
 of holiness, even the sense of inexpUcable failure and 
 impotence, are all exhibited ; but nowhere this unique 
 realisation of sin as a taint of personahty, and as a 
 crime against God. Sin, as disorder, is depicted in the 
 Idylls as destroying the goodly kingdom of Arthur; 
 but its action is objective not subjective ; as producing 
 evil consequences, not as in reality and altogether evil ; 
 ' red ruin, and the breaking up of Laws,' rather than 
 an insult on the Divine Stainlessness and Purity. Arthur 
 himself is subUmely unconscious of any possible deficiencies 
 in his own character ; how far removed from the ideal 
 of the Christian saint, always maintaining warfare against 
 the powers of evil not only without but also within his 
 own soul. No trace of the possibility of sinfulness in 
 himself softens his last speech to Guinevere. Regarded 
 as an allegory of ' sense at war with soul,' the tone may 
 be justified ; but certainly this is not the natural meaning 
 of the poem ; but rather the portrayal of an heroic, an 
 ideal character. And no man, however perfect, has a 
 
 ' Swinburne: "Laus Veneris.'' 
 
CHRISTIANITY 201 
 
 right to address another human creature, however 
 degraded, as Arthur addresses Guinevere in his farewell ; 
 no man possesses the right to forgive 'as Almighty God 
 forgives.' And if this consciousness of imperfection is 
 absent in Arthur, how much graver an absence does it 
 become in Guinevere, when she at length fully realises 
 the result of her action. Remorse for injury to Arthur, 
 the thought that her name will live through the centuries 
 as a name of scorn, the determination to live down the 
 sin in her heart that she may be his mate hereafter in 
 the heavens before God : these are the emotions she 
 experiences. But the sense of sin as sin, as done in 
 the sight of God, as something that must demand 
 inevitable expiation, she never experiences; and the 
 simple life she adopts at Alnesbury, living as a nun 
 vrith the nuns, and her final selection for Abbess on 
 account of her ' good deeds and pure life,' is a very 
 different life from that in reality chosen by those to 
 whom the consciousness has once come home of the 
 impossibility of the restoration of a lost innocence, and 
 the horror of an irrevocable past. 
 
 A spotless child sleeps on the flowering moss — 
 
 'Tis well for him ; but when a sinful man, 
 
 Envying such slumbers, may desire to put 
 
 His guilt away, shall he return at once 
 
 To rest by lying there ? Our sires knew well 
 
 (Spite of the grave discoveries of their sons) 
 
 The fitting course for such : dark cells, dim lamps, 
 
 A stone floor one may writhe on like a worm : 
 
 No mossy pillow blue with violets. ^ 
 
 Lancelot is the only one of Tennyson's leading char- 
 acters who seems to possess, in any degree, this con- 
 
 ^ R. Browning : " Paracelsus." 
 
202 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 sciousness — and that only for a time, and at the sight 
 of the vision of the Holy Grail ; and it is rather contempt 
 of self than passionate hatred of sin that he possesses ; 
 it is a ' dying fire of madness in his eyes ' which was 
 chiefly manife'st in his story ; and apparently madness, 
 wliich came upon him as of old and ' whipt him into 
 waste fields far away,' was the motive cause of his self- 
 hatred, rather than the apprehension of his own vileness. 
 In fact, Tennyson was unable to depict in his characters 
 an experience denied to himself. Only to some is this 
 consciousness given ; had he realised its tremendous 
 forces he would have better comprehended the severer 
 and sterner sides of the Christian morality. 
 
 This neglect to note the real conditions of human Ufe, 
 and this somewhat light-hearted treatment of the great 
 problem of sin, threw Tennyson into fierce opposition 
 to the doctrine, which was currently accepted in his day, 
 of the eternal existence of evil, of the eternal punishment 
 of sinfulness. Here is not, indeed, a definite conflict 
 with the Christian teaching ; for it is at least doubtful 
 if the words of Christ and of His Church can be inter- 
 px-eted as asserting this dogma. But the emphatic 
 manner in which the doctrine is repudiated, and the 
 contempt exhibited for those still unable to deny it, are 
 very conspicuous in the latter portion of Tennyson's 
 writings ; and the treatment of the whole subject is far 
 from satisfactory. The man in 'Despair,' unwillingly 
 rescued from death, denounces belief in eternal punish- 
 ment ; he ' broke away from Christ ' because he seemed 
 to speak ' of a Hell without hope without end ' ; and 
 asserts that ' the God of love and the God of Hell 
 together — that cannot be thought.' And although it 
 would be unfair to insist on Tennyson's endorsement 
 of all the utterances of his characters, yet the opinion 
 
CHRISTIANITY 203 
 
 here somewhat crudely advanced seems to represent 
 Tennyson's own mature conviction on the matter : — 
 
 Hell ? If the souls of men were immortal, as men have been told, 
 The lecher would cleave to his lusts, and the miser would yearn for 
 
 his gold ; 
 And so there were hell for ever ! But were there a God, as you say. 
 His love would have power over Hell till it utterly vanish'd away.^ 
 
 And we find the same position asserted in his own 
 conversations. 
 
 It is hardly necessary here to state the impossibility 
 of disposing of the problem in such a cursory manner. 
 The mere assertion that God as love is incompatible with 
 Eternal suffering, or the ultimate existence of evil, does 
 not solve anything; for it is as difficult to comprehend 
 how a loving God can permit any suffering, which is 
 certainly real and as certainly evil ; or how a Perfect God 
 can at any time tolerate sin. ' Art thou not from ever- 
 lasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One .'' Purer of eyes 
 than to behold evil, and can'st not look upon iniquity .'' ' 
 This inquiry is as unanswerable now as of old. If the 
 unconditioned volition of man be resolved into determined 
 action, and the whole progress of the Universe into a 
 process, fore-ordained in every detail, before the founda- 
 tion of the world, then it is indeed possible to conceive 
 that the ultimate end of this process may be individual 
 perfection, and the final triumph of righteousness. But 
 if, as Tennyson most emphatically asserts, the free choice 
 of man must 'be accepted as real and not imaginary, 
 it is difficult to see why it should be impossible for him 
 always to choose the evil, rather than the good. To 
 Tennyson the freedom of the Will is the ultimate fact 
 of man's personahty ; upon it he bases his whole ethical 
 
 1 "Despair." 
 
204 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 system. And this is immortal ; ' the living will that 
 shall endure ' when ' all that seems shall suffer shock.' 
 Either, then, the personality remains with its power 
 of choice, in which case it may always choose hell 
 rather than heaven, or, as it may be better expressed, in 
 which case heaven for it would be hell ; or else it can 
 only be made to choose good by the destruction of the 
 iadividual power of choice, in which case the man as 
 man ceases to exist, and the result is annihilation of 
 personality, which to Tennyson is inconceivable. If the 
 man himself, by his own volition, deliberately chooses 
 evil as his good, if to him the higher pleasures are hateful, 
 and selfish gratification the only possible happiness, it is 
 difficult to conceive how even God's love can have power 
 over such a one till Hell ' utterly vanish away.' To be 
 consistent with the facts of life, the darker as well as 
 the lighter, we cannot thus definitely assert the im- 
 possibility of such a future. Tennyson's earUer attitude 
 was more consistent with fact ; the reliance on the 
 strenuous faith and trust, without the dogmatic statement 
 of what must be ; trust that ' not one life will be destroyed 
 when God has made the pile complete ' ; faith in the 
 ' larger hope ' ; belief that ultimately, and in some way, 
 and by methods that at present we can only imperfectly 
 comprehend, ' love will conquer at the last ' and ' God 
 be all and in all.' 
 
 In its relation to Christian morality, then, we find 
 Tennyson's teaching, on the whole, in agreement with 
 it, although neglecting its sterner statements, and empha- 
 sising its gentler and benigner aspects. Of Christianity 
 as a theology in its philosophical aspect, he also accepts 
 the fundamental tenets, while failing fully to grasp the 
 significance of certain of these propositions. 
 
 First, then, on the great question of immortality 
 Tennyson but emphasises the Christian standpoint ; and 
 
CHRISTIANITY 205 
 
 to him the assertion of the survival beyond the grave is 
 the vital principle of the faith. 'The cardinal point of 
 Christianity/ he once wrote, 'is the life after death.' 
 And hercj indeed, he does but re-echo the language of 
 the Apostle on the point. " If there be no Resurrection 
 of the dead, then is Christ not raised ; and if Christ be 
 not risen, then is our preaching vain and your faith is 
 also vain. . . . Then they also v>rhich are fallen asleep 
 in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope 
 in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." 1 On this 
 point, Christianity has never vacillated ; and all attempts 
 to reconstruct its teaching on a purely natural basis, 
 and to banish ' other worldliness ' irom its theology, have 
 signally failed. Tennyson did not, indeed, derive his 
 faith in immortality from Christian evidence ; rather he 
 accepted Christianity because it taught the doctrine of 
 Immortality, a belief which he held to be vital to the 
 continued existence of all that is best in mankind. And, 
 however much the teaching as to the conditions of the 
 future life has required modifications in different ages 
 and under altered conditions of knowledge, the continued 
 existence of the individual, the viewing of this life as 
 essentially a probation or trial for another, the judging 
 of the temporal by the Eternal, has always been enforced 
 by Christianity. With this belief it stands or falls. The 
 other-worldliness, denounced as harmful by enthusiasts 
 who desired that all the energies of men should be 
 devoted to the advance of material comfort, is now almost 
 universally acknowledged to be a necessity of all religious 
 faiths. The natural world, as such, cannot satisfy the 
 human spirit ; and everything in it only possesses signi- 
 ficance and worth as symbolic of the Eternal Realities 
 behind, pointing to a fuller realisation in a life beyond 
 
 * I Cor. XV. 
 
2o6 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 death. Here, at length, modem thought has come round 
 to Tennyson's standpoint ; and the alternatives are clearly 
 recognised — either the possibility of a future existence, 
 or the abandonment of positive religious belief. 
 
 The second great doctrine of the Christian faith, which 
 Tennyson entirely accepts, is the doctrme of God as Love. 
 The tremendous claim here involved, the recognition of 
 the Soul of the Universe, who controUeth the sea and 
 moveth the storm and telleth the number of the stars 
 as being essentially Love, is peculiar to Christianity. Love 
 is God ; in human love we are realising God, most fully 
 manifesting the Ultimate Reality. This, for Tennyson, 
 is the highest revelation of the nature of God which has 
 been given to the world ; it was the revelation of Christ. 
 " When ye pray say ' Our Father.' " God is not only in- 
 finite power ; not only exalted in righteousness, approving 
 of good, hating evil. God is Love, all-powerful, yet all- 
 merciful ; infinitely pitiful, willing that all men should 
 be saved and come to a knowledge of the Truth. 'The 
 All great is the All loving too.' In loving we come 
 nearest to God. This was the message of Christ to men, 
 which alone provided fresh power to combat the growing 
 sense of the evils of life, and to give to humanity the 
 strength to struggle forward towards its Maker and God. 
 There have been times when the faith has burnt dim, 
 and when, confronted with the physical vastness and 
 the apparent indifference of Nature, men have deemed 
 belief in a God of Love impossible to maintain. But such 
 belief has been the consistent teaching of that Christianity 
 which has endured through the confused turmoil of 
 eighteen disordered centuries — the gospel of good news 
 brought by Christ ; and it is the faith which, to others, 
 as to Tennyson, alone can render tolerable existence in 
 this unintelligible world. 
 
CHRISTIANITY 207 
 
 And from God as Love, willing that none shall perish, 
 and from the Immortality of the Soul postulated as 
 the fundamental tenet of His religion, Tennyson 
 could steadfastly assert the possibility of communion 
 with the Spiritual World, and the efBciency of prayer 
 for spiritual help and guidance. Nowhere, indeed, do 
 we find in his poetry any apprehension of the possibility 
 of effecting change in the material order, by prayer ; 
 God might be the God who ruled the tempest and 
 controlled the sea ; but his purposes were so vast, and 
 so little comprehensible, that it appeared impossible that 
 he should alter these universally apprehended realities, 
 for the satisfaction of an individual soul. The great 
 world passed on its way, guided by law. Tennyson's 
 sense of order was too great to allow of the possibility 
 of the violation of this law at the demand of personal 
 desire. ' O Thou Infinite, Amen ! ' 1 was his prayer in 
 contemplating the change and progress of material things. 
 The operation of prayer, the source from which health 
 could be drawn, was in the inmost 'deeps of person- 
 ality ' ; in that Will which seemed to him the essential 
 reality of individual consciousness. Here aid could be 
 obtained when needed, and here succour was given to 
 those who asked it of ' Immortal Love.' 
 
 Evermore, 
 Prayer from a living source within the will, 
 And beating up through all the bitter world. 
 Like fountains of sweet water in the sea, 
 Kept him a living soul.^ 
 
 And here, also, in those unfathomed depths, where the 
 high resolves and irrecoverable decisions are made which 
 
 1 See " Life," vol. i. 
 
 2 "Enoch Arden." 
 
2o8 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 cause the great revolutions of the soul, mysterious 
 Powers, visitants from the Eternal world, are found 
 working upon the human Spirit. 
 
 Nay, there may be those about us whom we neither see nor name, 
 Felt within us as ourselves, the Powers of Good, the Powers of 111, 
 Strowing balm, or shedding poison in the fountains of the Will.' 
 
 And it is in this uncertain region which we now but 
 dimly comprehend, that 'the Powers that tend the 
 Soul, to help it from the death that cannot die ' can 
 exert their influence ; it is the ' abysmal deeps of Per- 
 sonality ' in which God acts upon the individual. 
 
 Lest she should fail and perish utterly, 
 
 God, before whom ever lie bare 
 The abysmal deeps of Personality, 
 
 Plagued her with sore despair.^ 
 
 ' The reason why men find it hard to regard prayer 
 in the same light in which it was formerly regarded,' 
 he said, 'is that we seem to know more of the un- 
 changeableness of Law ; but I believe that God reveals 
 Himself in each individual soul. Prayer is, to take a 
 mundane simile, like opening a sluice between the great 
 ocean and our Uttle channels, when the great sea gathers 
 itself together and flows in at full tide.' ^ 
 
 The third tenet of the Christian faith which Tennyson 
 accepted, although not vsdth the living conviction of 
 the first two, was the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ. 
 He shrank, indeed, from all forms of dogmatism, and 
 refused to assert anything as to the nature of the Incar- 
 nation, and the self-limitation of the Deity. But he 
 accepted the fact without attempting to define it. ' I 
 
 ' " Sixty Years After." = " The Palace of Art." 
 
 ' "Life," vol. i. p. 324. 
 
CHRISTIANITY io^ 
 
 am not very fond of creeds/ he wrote ; ' it is enough for 
 me that I know God Himself came down from Heaven in 
 the Ukeness of men.' 
 
 But it was the loveliness of His earthly life and the 
 superlative excellence of His moral teaching, rather than 
 any manifestation of ' signs and wonders,' which yielded 
 for Tennyson evidence of His Divinity. The Eternal 
 God could only be revealed in the forms of flesh as 
 suiFering with His people, and symbolising by the Highest 
 life known to us here the realities of the spiritual world. 
 The most strenuous moral creed, the noblest ethical 
 life, must be interpreted as in a unique sense Divine. 
 Christ in His person is therefore most truly God, Reality 
 in its highest perfection, its ultimate development — 
 a fact which we symboUse under the title, ' Son of 
 God.' But in so far as we fulfil the law of love, so 
 do we become a part of this Divinity. We are partakers 
 of the life of Christ, realising Christ in ourselves ; at 
 length, with the complete attainment of the highest 
 life, we can say with the Apostle, ' Not I, but Christ 
 Uveth in me,' — 'The Christ that is to be.' 
 
 But the tremendous import of this fact in its far- 
 reaching results he never clearly grasped ; and the 
 allusions to it in his poems are but slight and scattered. 
 He was indeed fascinated by the sublimity of the char- 
 acter of Jesus, and recognised in His life the proof of His 
 Divine nature. He acknowledged that 
 
 The Word had breath, and wrought 
 With human hands the creed of creeds 
 In loveliness of perfect deeds, 
 More strong than all poetic thought.' 
 
 But the doctrine of the Incarnation never took for him 
 the great central position as the one supreme fact of 
 
 ' " In Memoriam," xxxvi. 
 
2io TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 history, beside which all else fades into insignificance. 
 And consequently there was a certain tendency for it to 
 disappear from his teaching ; so that they are not 
 altogether wrong who maintain that a vague Theism is 
 the only positive creed deducible from his later writings. 
 Tennyson never fully appreciated, as Browning or his 
 own master Maurice appreciated, the absolute necessity 
 for the Incarnation to satisfy the needs of men. He 
 looked for the ideal man in man and never found the 
 Christ ; Browning and Maurice took the real man as he 
 is, and derived from him the need of a Christ. 
 
 I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
 Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
 All questions in this world and out of it,^ 
 
 says Browning ; and to those who adopt this position the 
 fundamental fact of Christianity is at once the consumma- 
 tion of all previous development, the central fact of 
 progress, the starting-point of a new epoch in the history 
 of mankind. The ' Desire of all nations ' had come, the 
 Light of the world, illuminating the past, revealing as by 
 sudden insight much that had appeared dark and obscure. 
 And Tennyson never apprehended how completely har- 
 monious was this event with his philosophy of evolution, 
 as another step forward in the development of the Spirit, 
 and the progress of all things towards unity in God. At 
 intervals in the upward development of the world, new 
 life had come into the world ; a fresh start had been 
 accomplished ; from dull , matter to physical life, from 
 unconscious development into full consciousness, the 
 process was never retrograde, ever forward. But for 
 these sudden advances, evolution would have ceased, and 
 degeneration succeeded. And here once more was a 
 
 ^ Browning : "A Death in the Desert." 
 
CHRISTIANITY 211 
 
 forward step, an advance just at the time when progress 
 seemed turning back upon itself, and the highest 
 civilisation falling into decay. Life, new life, had 
 come into the world ; all previous religions, attempts to 
 seek after God, blind gropings and dim adumbrations 
 of the coming light, found their goal in this fact : — 
 ' the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us . . . full 
 of grace and truth.' God as man elevated humanity 
 from its own self-contempt, revealed possibihties yet 
 undreamt of; philosophies found here the highest needs 
 of mankind satisfied ; new purpose came to man- 
 kind, energy for the long struggle, hope for the final 
 victory. 
 
 And this doctrine of the Incarnation falling into its 
 rightful position in th6 natural evolution of Spirit, re- 
 quires the continued future presence of this Ufe, flowing 
 down from Christ, a new force in the world. And so, 
 indeed, the philosophers of the Church had taught from 
 earliest time ; the Incarnation was not simply an historical 
 fact satisfying the demands of men for the consecration 
 of manhood; it was a fresh start, an introduction from 
 the world beyond phenomena of a new form of energy. 
 This faith Tennyson never seems to have comprehended 
 or accepted. The example of Christ, the beauty of the 
 morality taught by Christ, he gladly acknowledges ; but 
 he never seemed to realise that that life for which he 
 yearned, the ' more life and fuller ' that he desired, was 
 just the desire satisfied by Him who introduced life to 
 the world and asserted ' I am come that they might 
 have life, and might have it more abundantly.' Tennyson 
 could see no method of its attainment, but the energetic 
 striving of the Will, unsupported from without; and he 
 was forced to acknowledge sadly that this alone could 
 guarantee no triumph over the lower impulses of 
 
212 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 What keeps a spirit wholly true 
 
 To that ideal which he bears ? 
 
 What record ? not the sinless years 
 That breathed beneath the Syrian blue.' 
 
 And he rightly judges that neither the memory of a Hfe 
 receding through the centuries into an ever remoter past, 
 nor the attraction of an ideal morality, however beautiful, 
 can by themselves successfully encounter 'those tre- 
 mendous forces — the passion and the pride of man.' 
 But the Incarnation was not an event ceasing with the 
 departure of Christ, not an appearance in time accompanied 
 by signs and wonders, dying out with the termination of 
 the ideal life. ' Behold I make all things new ' ; new 
 life was flowing into the world, and has poured down 
 through the centuries ; and Christ was still present 
 guiding His Church in the work of bringing all things 
 into one. It was the foundation of a new order of exist- 
 ence, a commencement of something never before present, 
 the building of that ' City of God,' for which men had 
 sighed in vain. 
 
 And through his inabiUty to see this, Tennyson never 
 clearly comprehended the method by which might be 
 affected that ' Restitution of all things ' which he so 
 passionately desired. Much of the pessimism of his later 
 poems may be attributed to this fact. The principles 
 which he had held to be working towards this end seemed 
 to have failed him ; and although he still clung to the 
 belief in the 'one far-off event,' he was forced to throw 
 it forward farther and farther into an ever remoter future. 
 It remained an article of faith, of which the evidence 
 seemed to be growing fainter. Progress had failed to 
 extirpate the beast; moral advance seemed but slight 
 from ' the passion of the primal clan ' ; knowledge had 
 
 ' " In Memoriam," lii. 
 
CHRISTIANITY 213 
 
 grown, but wisdom lingered ; belief in the satisfaction of 
 mankind by advancing science and material comfort, and 
 the future happiness of all, became weakened towards the 
 close of the century. The tokens of harmony grew less 
 discernible ; faith in humanity became clouded ; the 
 discord more manifest; the divine purpose harder to 
 define. 
 
 So that while Tennyson still firmly maintained his 
 belief in the end, the goal of the whole human race, 
 his faith in the means by which it would be attained 
 became fainter and more doubting. Natural progress, 
 human effort, advance of knowledge, admiration for moral 
 beauty, all these seemed to fail before the force of the 
 selfish and dividing impulses of men. Yet could he 
 have apprehended it, the work was being accomplished 
 before his eyes, and the instrument provided in the 
 Economy of God, guided by the life of His Spirit, visibly 
 working towards the Restitution of all things. Christian 
 philosophy acknowledges, as emphatically as the poet 
 himself, the imperfection of man, and the reality and 
 appalling power of sin in all its forms — 'sins of will, 
 defects of doubt, and taints of blood.' Christianity 
 emphasises also the aspect of sin as the dividing, isolating, 
 estranging principle, keeping men apart in selfish pursuit 
 of their own satisfaction, destroying that unity which is 
 the goal of all things. But Christianity can also point to 
 a means by which this sin is overcome, by which the 
 unity is gradually being attained. Chaos and trouble 
 appear in the Universe as apprehended to us ; the 
 harmony in nature is hard to discern, and the purpose of 
 God hidden. But the harmony is there, behind the 
 outward show of things ; the darkness is in ourselves. 
 By the new life from Christ, through the Church the 
 body of Christ, by the purifying of the individual 
 members, and by the conformity of their will to the virill 
 
214 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 of God, the harmony was being made manifest, in a very 
 real sense unity was being restored. Early in the 
 history of Christianity this wonderful interpretation of the 
 purpose of the Church had been advanced by its great 
 teachers ; in its darkest ages it had never been altogether 
 forgotten. "The purpose of God had commenced in 
 the Eternal Past to make Christ the summing into One 
 of all things. The mystery of Christ was consummated 
 on the Cross, by which Jew and Gentile passed into one 
 man. Now, by the unity of the Spirit, a unity in variety 
 and a unity ever growing, the body of Christ was moving 
 towards maturity." "That in the dispensation of the 
 fulness of the times," says the great Apostle, " He might 
 gather together in one all things in Christ, both which 
 are in the heavens and which are on the earth." i So 
 throughout the ages, by the patient working of the Divine 
 Instrument, this restitution was being accomplished ; im- 
 perfectly and incompletely here, but progressing always 
 in the invisible Church 'behind the veil.' Hampered 
 indeed by the weakness and unfaithfulness of its followers, 
 often failing, often untrue to its ideal, yet never quite 
 dead, the Christian Church continues through the centuries 
 its world mission in the bringing into one the things 
 which were divided and estranged ; looking forward 
 towards its goal, the final revelation of harmony, and the 
 consummation of all things in God ; " when we arrive, all 
 of us together, to the perfect Man, to the measure of the 
 stature of the fulness of the Christ." 
 
 Tennyson looked towards the same consummation ; his 
 faith in the final triumph of love, in the 'Glory slowly 
 growing on the shade,' in the making of Man, endured 
 until the end. But his teaching leaves its ragged edges ; 
 it requires for completion the manifestation of the evidence 
 
 ' Eph. i. 10. 
 
CHRISTIANITY 215 
 
 of the working towards that end, even in the limited 
 arena of human earthly life. With passionate hope he 
 clung to the ideal of 
 
 One God, one law, one element. 
 
 And one far-off divine event, 
 
 To which the whole creation moves.' 
 
 And in the fulness of the times, his hope would be 
 justified. ' Though the vision tarry wait for it ; because 
 it will surely come, it will not tarry.' For, to the eye of 
 faith, the work is being visibly accomplished, and the 
 prayer of the Church, the Commonwealth of God, not 
 remaining unanswered. " O God of unchangeable power 
 and eternal light, look favourably on Thy whole Church, 
 that wonderful and sacred mystery ; and, by the tranquil 
 dperation of Thy perpetual Providence, carry out the work 
 of man's salvation ; and let the whole world feel and see 
 that things which were cast down are being raised up, 
 and that which had grown old is being made new, 
 and all things are returning to perfection through Him 
 from Whom they took their origin, even through our 
 Lord Jesus Christ." ^ 
 
 ' " In Memoriam," Epilogue. 
 
 ^ Gelasian Collects, quoted in " Lux Mundi," v. p. 214. 
 
XIV. TENNYSON AND HIS AGE 
 
 "DEFORE attempting a summary of our examination of 
 -*-^ the position occupied by Tennyson as a religious 
 teacher, it is necessary to consider briefly his relation to 
 the conditions under which he wrote, and the ideals of 
 the age in which he Uved. Such a task presents almost 
 insuperable difficulties ; the tendencies and characteristics 
 of an age can never be clearly discerned by those living 
 almost under its shadow. It appears impossible from 
 such a short distance, with such a limited perspective, to 
 gain any clear notion of the general features of the 
 marvellously complex thought of the nineteenth century. 
 Never perhaps at any one time were so many different 
 elements simultaneously presented : cross-currents, counter- 
 streams, eddies, and whirlpools of thought, mingled and 
 interacting in bewildering multiplicity. The leading 
 thinkers scarcely knew whither they were tending, and 
 repudiated the logical conclusions of their own position; 
 others attempted to throw themselves directly against the 
 popular stream, or drew apart gloomily prophesying ruin. 
 Tennyson, with a poetical career commencing early and 
 prolonged far beyond the customary period of mental 
 activity, reflects in his work better perhaps than any 
 other single writer the multiform tendencies of his age. 
 
 Throughout his poetry, however, we can recognise the 
 influence of one general stream of thought, never perhaps 
 universally accepted, but presenting a progress and a 
 definite history which will perhaps be recognised by 
 future historians as the characteristic movement of the 
 time — a movement with which Tennyson came into direct 
 relation all through its career, and by which the whole 
 
 216 
 
TENNYSON AND HIS AGE 217 
 
 tone of his work and teaching was deeply coloured. This 
 movement, conspicuous in European as well as in English 
 thought, was composed of several elements fused together ; 
 but in its most general scope it represented attempts to 
 solve the problems of life by the application, in different 
 spheres, of the method of empirical analysis of experience. 
 Its first period, representing its triumphant rise, was 
 almost identical with the second quarter of the century ; 
 a time of great intellectual fermentation, characterised by 
 nothing so much as by an almost boundless optimism. 
 This optimism was derived largely from the sudden 
 consciousness of the possession of almost unlimited powers 
 by the human intellect. Natural Science, Natural Re- 
 ligion and Democracy were its most clamorous watch- 
 words. The discovery of means of controlling the great 
 forces of nature for the service of Man, and the capacity 
 of utilising these for the attainment of his desires, had 
 raised immense hopes of the future comfort and greatness 
 of humanity. 'The age of marvels' had returned to 
 earth. Steam, electricity, power everywhere bountifully 
 provided, were to be used by human wisdom for the 
 removal of the suflFering and the lightening of the 
 toil of men. By the aid of the good fairy Science, the 
 Golden Age was to return to the earth. All diseases were 
 to vanish before increasing knowledge ; everything that 
 could beautify or amphfy human existence was to be pro- 
 duced from the forces of nature by the ingenuity and skil- 
 fulness of the human intellect. Sorrow, pain, poverty, the 
 old spectres that had so long haunted mankind, and driven 
 men forward in continual strife with their fellows and 
 with Nature around them, were to finally disappear. The 
 good genii, it was fervently maintained, would be harnessed 
 to the car of progress ; under their painless guidance it 
 would triumphantly roll forward into an ever happier 
 future. Satisfied at length, and crammed with material 
 
2i8 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 comfort, mankind would 'bask in a summer sky/ with 
 their minds relieved for ever from the hard and sordid 
 struggle for existence, delighting more especially in the 
 pleasures of human intercourse, and in the composition of 
 optimistic poetry. 
 
 And this belief in science was accompanied and 
 assisted by an equally child-like faith in the advance 
 of Progress, under the influence of human reason. 
 Liberalism was the watchword of the new spirit. 
 Freedom should slowly 'broaden down from precedent 
 to precedent.' The artificial restraints which had pro- 
 duced so much of the suffering and sorrows of mankind, 
 were to dissolve under the influence of airy generalisations 
 concerning the brotherhood of man. The spread of 
 commerce and trade would bind together all the peoples 
 of the world in a firmer unity. Reason would exhibit to 
 an acquiescent world the absolute irrationality of war. 
 Under its benign influence the old futile disputes, the 
 artificial barriers dividing men into nations, would vanish 
 before advancing intelligence ; Patriotism would be sub- 
 merged in an enthusiasm for universal humanity. 
 
 And the third element in this three-fold instrument 
 for the securing of universal happiness, was the action of 
 the reason of man in the sphere of religion. Those chains 
 and fetters which had formerly been imposed upon the 
 'holy spirit of man' by religious teachers utilising 
 supernatural sanctions, would also disappear in this 
 universal solvent. The terrors of a future world, luridly 
 depicted by imaginative theologians, would no longer 
 render unendurable the pleasures of the present. The 
 long nightmare which had oppressed humanity, and 
 driven men into wild excesses of asceticism and panic fear, 
 would disappear with the coming of the day. Religion 
 would be natural, kind, gentle, comfortable ; all harshness 
 and bitterness would be banished. The ' cramping creeds 
 
TENNYSON AND HIS AGE 219 
 
 that had maddened the peoples ' would ' vanish at last ' ; 
 exaggerated devotion, the atrophy of human powers pro- 
 duced by religious mania, would be altogether abolished. 
 This new religion was to be universal ; no longer would 
 strife be stirred up concerning inexplicable dogmas, and 
 unjustified assumptions ; dissension or persecution on 
 account of rehgion would crumble before ridicule and 
 reason, and be relegated to a banished past. By a simple, 
 joyous, universal, undogmatic creed, with a delight in the 
 beauties of Nature, and in the healthy human instincts 
 unchecked by artificial restraints, the religious impulses of 
 the human race were to be permanently satisfied. 
 
 By the aid of this faith, then, in Universal Reason — 
 reason in nature as natural knowledge, reason in politics 
 as ordered progress, reason in religion as undogmatic 
 belief — the new heavens and the new earth were to 
 be speedily created. This spirit attained its consumma- 
 tion in England about the time of the Great Exhibition, 
 when all its characteristics were clearly manifested. 
 The display of marvellous scientific invention, the en- 
 thusiastic faith in progress, the universal conviction that 
 through the advance of reason and trade war between 
 civilised nations had been relegated to the past, the 
 rejection of dogmatic creeds and the consideration of 
 their adherents with a kind of contemptuous pity, all 
 reached their height at about this time. 
 
 This ideal Tennyson presented in his earlier poetry ; 
 in his verse men found their own thoughts reflected ; 
 and through this presentation he first attained to wide- 
 spread popularity. He became recognised as the poetical 
 exponent of the newer ideals ; and although in many 
 things he was absolutely divorced from and completely out 
 of sympathy with the opinions of their adherents, yet the 
 other elements in his work were largely subordinated 
 or neglected. At about this time he seemed to be 
 
220 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 perfectly accepting their ideas and reflecting their 
 enthusiasms. In 'Locksley Hall/ for long the most 
 popular of his poems, all the characteristics of this 
 movement were admirably and sympathetically depicted. 
 The hero had nourished his youth with 'the fairy tales 
 of science and the long result of Time ' ; he also 
 
 Dipt into the future far as human eye could see ; 
 
 Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that would be.' 
 
 And he found a somewhat speedy consolation for his 
 rejected love in the contemplation of all the marvellous 
 results which were being attained by this great age, 
 through the work of the human intellect. And this was 
 not only the dream of the owner of ' Locksley Hall ' ; it 
 was the vision spreading itself before the eyes of the 
 sanguine thinkers of the age — a. vision which they 
 anticipated time would speedily convert into reality. 
 They also 
 
 Saw the heavens filled with commerce, argosies of magic sails, 
 Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales ; 
 
 Till the war drum throbbed no longer, and the battle flags were furl'd 
 In the Parliament of man, the federation of the world. 
 
 There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, 
 And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.^ 
 
 They also rejoiced in the coming period of progress ; — 
 
 Not in vain the.distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range. 
 Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.' 
 
 The universal acclamation with which this was received 
 exhibited Tennyson as the accredited exponent of the 
 
 1 "Locksley Hall." ^ /Aid. ^Ibid. 
 
TENNYSON AND HIS AGE 221 
 
 newer ideal. "'Locksley Hall/" said Kingsley, "has 
 deservedly had so great an influence over the minds 
 of the young. It is a man . . . conquering his selfish 
 sorrow, and the moral and intellectual paralysis which 
 it produces, by faith and hope — faith in the progress 
 of science and civilisation, hope in the final triumph of 
 good." "I was but a boy," says another writer, "just 
 beginning to feel the stirring of hope and prompting 
 of ambition, when a volume of Tennyson's poems was 
 first put into my hand. By a happy chance I turned 
 to 'Locksley Hall,' and never shall I forget the thrill 
 of ecstasy with which I read and re-read the passionate 
 lines until they seemed to bum themselves into my 
 memory. New feelings of ardour were aroused in me, 
 my mind seemed to open to splendid revelations." 1 It 
 is " the passionate chant," said Professor Ingram, " in 
 which are so vividly uttered all the undisciplined thoughts, 
 the wayward fancies, the lofty but vague aspirations 
 that effervesce in the spirit of the cultivated youth of 
 the nineteenth century," 
 
 This cheerfully optimistic stage could not long endure. 
 It was soon succeeded by a period of disenchantment. 
 The newly accepted Trinity of Reason was found powerless 
 to control 'those two giants the passion and the pride 
 of man.' The car of progress travelled heavily along 
 the road towards the land of universal plenty and peace. 
 Natural Science, although continuing on its inventive 
 career, was found to bring but little immediate ameliora- 
 tion of the condition of the great mass of mankind. 
 ' What profits it,' men asked, ' to the human Prometheus, 
 that he had stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant, 
 and that the spirits of the earth and of the air obey 
 him, if the vulture of pauperism is eternally to tear his 
 
 ^ Walters : " Tennyson," p. 49. 
 
222 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 vitals and keep him on the brink of destruction.' i 
 Freedom, exalted for worship above all things, often 
 appeared a somewhat unstable Deity, at times becoming 
 ' Freedom free to slay herself, and dying while they 
 shout her name.' ^ Despite the progress of sweet 
 reasonableness, the whole of Europe plimged fiercely 
 into continual warfare. Even trade and commerce failed 
 to provide objects permanently satisfying to the soul 
 of man. The problems of poverty, of innocent suffering, 
 seemed little nearer settlement. The golden age receded 
 into an ever remoter future. In the realm of pure 
 thought, reason unaccountably declined to prove the 
 willing servant of a watery and sentimental enthusiasm 
 of humanity. Man merely found more firmly emphasised 
 by it the conviction of his own infinite littleness, and 
 the certainty of his own inevitable end. Natural religion 
 encountered pain, suffering, and death, and was unable 
 to present any satisfactory answer to the questions 
 they present with agonising insistence. Human selfish- 
 ness, the beast in man uncontrollably rising up at 
 intervals, the hunger after material pleasures, were found 
 rebellious against its mild moraUty, and, discovering in 
 it but faint power of resistance, seemed likely but to 
 increase with its advancing influence. 
 
 The second period of the movement, roughly repre- 
 sented by the third quarter of the century, exhibits the 
 attempts of its followers to reconstruct their creed in 
 the light of this new experience. The whole truth 
 was not yet recognised ; and desperate attempts were 
 essayed to bolster up some form of natural ethical creed, 
 even on a pessimistic instead of an optimistic basis. ' In 
 proportion as they thought it hopeless to formulate 
 what was divine, they sought to deify what was human.' ^ 
 
 1 Huxley : "Coll. Essays," vol. i. p. 423. " " Sixty Years After." 
 
 " Mallock: " Atheism,'' p. 131. 
 
TENNYSON AND HIS AGE 223 
 
 By cheerful illusions speciously wovenj by refusal to 
 recognise the logical consequences of their principleSj 
 by the adaptation of the phraseology of the older faiths, 
 the hollow dummy was made to assume some indistinct 
 semblance of life. The worship of Humanity was to 
 replace the worship of God. The 'holy spirit of 
 man ' was to arouse that awe and adoration formerly 
 associated with devotion to an All-righteous Deity. 
 Natural laws were to guarantee the sanctions of ethical 
 principles. ' Immortality in the race ' was to satisfy the 
 passionate hunger of man for some personal survival after 
 death. The morality preached was to be as strenuous, 
 as imperative, as absolute as in the older system ; a law 
 of man's being which he must not violate, ardently and 
 earnestly maintained by the disciples of progress. But 
 it was a morality whose end was hard to discover, whose 
 binding force could be freely repudiated, and whose 
 conclusions could with impunity be rejected by those 
 who declined to accept its principles. 
 
 The true representative in English Uterature of this 
 latter period, with its strong insistence on an ethical 
 creed after all its strong sanctions had departed, was 
 George Eliot. She realised, with terrible clearness, the 
 future prophesied by Science when 
 
 Human Time 
 Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky 
 Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb, 
 Unread for ever. 
 
 But she clung as desperately to a strong and stem 
 moraUty, repudiating the suggestion that belief in God 
 or in immortaUty was necessary for an imperative and 
 unbending law of duty. " Vain as life may be," she says, 
 "let us not lose heart utterly, for it is not wholly vain. 
 
224 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 That things are not so ill with you and me as they 
 might have been, is half owing to the number of those 
 who have lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited 
 tombs." 1 
 
 Seek only Truth, even if the future be darkness. " The 
 highest calling and election is to do without opium and 
 live through all our pain with conscious, clear -eyed 
 endurance." Maintain virtue, although virtue itself, 
 with all human things, is vanity. Life is vain ; but 
 kindness is possible, and mutual toleration and helpful- 
 ness, and unselfish sacrifice for the happiness of others 
 around us, and for the. generations of the future. And 
 the necessity for work while it is called day becomes all 
 the more imperative with the full appreciation of the 
 awful meaning of the words, ' because the night cometh ' ; 
 the night when no work shall be done. 
 
 Tennyson's attitude towards this development of the 
 party of Reason and Progress is one of rejection of their 
 principles, and refusal to acknowledge their conclusions. 
 He had represented the aspirations of his own time ; but 
 even in doing so he had gone beyond them. He had 
 seen clearly that progress, reason, commerce, invention, all 
 the idols of the newer age, could not permanently satisfy 
 mankind. From the strenuous emotion produced by his 
 own loss he had become convinced that faith in God and 
 faith in immortality were necessities for the existence 
 of the human race. And even in the triumph of the 
 progressive party, when all the world seemed stretching 
 fair before them and their principles acquiring universal 
 acceptance, he had stood aside and shown his divergence 
 from them on fundamental questions. A religion ex- 
 cluding these essential truths cannot be his religion. A 
 knowledge which can find no place for them must be a 
 
 ^ " Middlemarch," Conclusion. 
 
TENNYSON AND HIS AGE 225 
 
 knowledge omitting the most important questions which 
 have influenced the life of man. Before the open grave 
 all the vague platitudes concerning the choir invisiblej 
 and the future of the race prove but ' vacant chaff well 
 meant for grain.' And knowledge which would insist 
 on this as being the last word on the matter is empty 
 and worthless. 
 
 Half grown as yet, a child, and vain — 
 She cannot fight the fear of death, 
 What is she, cut from love and faith, 
 
 But some wild Pallas from the brain 
 
 Of Demons ?i 
 
 Not without result^ indeed^ like ' Paul with beasts/ had 
 he fought with Death ; and in this conflict he had finally- 
 apprehended that a purely natural view of life cannot 
 satisfy. With the whole force of his spirit he stands 
 up in protest^ to assert that we are ; — 
 
 Not only cunning casts in clay : 
 
 Let Science prove we are, and then 
 What matters science unto men, 
 
 At least to me ? I would not stay.^ 
 
 When, therefore, the time of dissolution arrived, 
 Tennyson could stand aside. He saw farther into the 
 future than his contemporaries. He could clearly discern 
 whither their conclusions were carrying them ; he 
 possessed in no small degree that prophetic insight, 
 which appeared to those around him to yield him the 
 power of forecasting the future. He knew that these 
 laborious attempts to construct religion without God 
 and Immortality were destined to failure ; and he was 
 never backward in exhibiting the hollowness of their pre- 
 tensions and the baselessness of their morality. It was 
 a painful experience ; it threw him into direct opposition 
 
 ^ " In Memoriam,'' cxiv. ^ Ibid. cxx. 
 
226 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 to many of those who had formerly acclaimed him as 
 their leader ; much of the time he was a voice crying in 
 the wilderness, foretelling disaster to a heedless genera- 
 tion. The age had gone past him, and left him as stranded 
 high and dry, and deemed him a reactionary accepting 
 dogmas which were needless and foolish and for ever 
 done with ; and they bitterly resented all his exposm-e 
 of their carefully constructed systems, and his continual 
 scorn of their 'know nothing creeds.' 
 
 Truth for truth and good for good : the Good, the True, the Pure, 
 
 the Just 
 Take the charm ' for ever ' from them and they crumble into dust.' 
 
 No argument nor invective could shake him from this 
 position. He found himself opposed to a fervent and 
 stern morality and an inherited love of right. This 
 is the only morality possible, said his contemporaries ; 
 why set yourself so eagerly to destroy it ? But Tenny- 
 son saw the inevitable consequences of their creed. If 
 this is the only morality possible, he would tell them, 
 then no morality is possible ; for this is no morality at all. 
 And, however much in the atmosphere of the older ideals 
 you may manage to retain an UTational prejudice in favour 
 of righteousness, your successors only too clearly will see 
 the real conse;quences of your conclusions, and throw off 
 a yoke which will have become to them simply burden- 
 some. 
 
 And here, also, the prophetic insight was justified by 
 results. In the third period of the movement — roUghly, 
 the last quarter of the nineteenth century — the naturalistic 
 system of ethics has broken down. Other ideals have 
 taken the place of the older principles so strenuously 
 asserted. Morality, always arduous and difficult, as 
 
 ' " Sixty Years After." 
 
TENNYSON AND HIS AGE 227 
 
 implying restraint upon ' natural ' instincts, becomes, when 
 supported only by dogmatic assertion of its necessity, 
 merely tedious and irksome. Men, compelled to relinquish 
 the satisfaction of a supernatural religion and a God of 
 Love, decline to be longer cramped by its discomforts. 
 The field is clear and the choice manifest to all. While 
 laborious attempts at ethical reconstruction were being 
 essayed, and Tennyson almost alone was prophesying their 
 futility, a translation appeared, by one of Tennyson's 
 greatest friends, of an old Persian poet, expressing in 
 perfect language the ideal of life alone logically consistent 
 with the postulates of Naturalism. This ' Rubaiyat, of 
 Omar Khayyam,' at first almost unnoticed, attained an 
 ever-growing influence, as a kind of rallying creed of the 
 latest developments of the great movement of Progress and 
 Reason. The logical result of denial of knowledge of 
 God and Immortality is here clearly accepted ; the 
 pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, the taking of ' the 
 cash,' and the letting of "^the credit go.' 
 
 With them the seed of wisdom did I sow, 
 
 And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow ; 
 
 And this was all the harvest that I reaped — 
 ' I came like water and like wind I go. 
 
 Into this Universe, and Why not knowing 
 
 Nor Whence, like water willy-nilly flowing ; 
 And out of it, as Wind along the Waste 
 
 I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.' ^ 
 
 And the conclusion is that of the hedonist philosophy of 
 old — ' Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die.' 
 
 Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend. 
 Before we too into the dust descend ; 
 
 Dust unto Dust, and under Dust to lie 
 Sans wine, sans song, sans singer, and — sans end. 
 
 1 " Omar Khdyyam " : Fit^erald. 
 
228 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 Outside is emptiness and chaos ; soon the ' phantom 
 caravan ' will return to the ' nothing it set out from.' 
 Knowledge is but 'lifting a corner of the delusion to 
 get a glimpse of the everlasting night beyond.' ^ But 
 one thing at least is certain ; the reality of pleasure while 
 it lasts, and the rapid passing of the pleasure-time of life. 
 
 O Threats of Hell and hopes of Paradise ! 
 One thing at least is certain — this life flies ; 
 One thing is certain, and the rest is lies ; 
 The flower that once has blown for ever dies. 
 
 Pleasure is the only thing worth striving for, and this 
 pleasure must be present delight ; for any foresight of 
 the future may be rendered vain by the increasing chances 
 of death. When this satisfaction of personal desire 
 conflicts with the pleasure of others, as in all the greater 
 crises of life it must necessarily conflict in a world in 
 which human goods are limited, it would be absurd and 
 irrational to subordinate this real pleasure to the doubtful 
 pleasure of those around us. For the present pleasure is 
 real and aU else is but uncertain shadow. ' In the sun 
 among the leaves, upon the flowers,' death waits for us all ; 
 behind the gorgeous beauty, as in the vision of the old 
 Roman poet, is the sadness of the knowledge that soon we 
 must leave these pleasant places, and pass out alone into 
 the darkness. By feasting and merriment this thought for 
 a time may be forgotten ; the successful man is the man 
 who, in his short transitory tenure of existence, has 
 crammed into his life as many distinct emotions of 
 pleasure as possible ; who has snatched at the gliding 
 irrecoverable hours and drunk to the full their sad 
 sweetness. " Every moment some form grows perfect 
 in hand or face, some tone on the hUls or the sea is 
 
 • Dillon : "Sceptics of the Old Testament,'' p. 5. 
 
TENNYSON AND HIS AGE 229 
 
 choicer than the rest, some mood of passion or insight 
 or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive 
 to us. ... A counted number of pulses only is given to 
 us of a varied dramatic life. . . . Not to discriminate every 
 moment some passionate attitude in those about us, 
 and in the very brilliancy of their gifts, some tragic 
 dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of 
 frost and sun, to sleep before evening. . . . We are all 
 under sentence of death, but with a sort of indefinite 
 reprieve ; we have an interval, and then our place knows 
 us no more. . . . Some spend this interval in listlessness, 
 some in high passions, the wisest, at least among the- 
 children of this world, in art and song. For our one 
 chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many 
 pulsations as possible into the given time."i 
 
 And so has arisen a new Epicureanism, destined to 
 grow with the wider acceptance of the naturalistic beliefs 
 upon which it is founded. Death waits for all, for all life 
 is uncertain ; but for all at least youth is slipping by, and 
 pleasure time will soon be over. Satisfy your desires 
 while you may ; snatch at the pleasure before it has gone 
 for ever beyond your grasp ; cram as many pulsations as 
 possible into your transitory life ; all too soon are the days 
 drawing nigh " when thou shalt say, ' I have no pleasure 
 in them.' " 
 
 We have said to the dream that caressed, to the terror that smote us, 
 Good-night and good-bye.^ 
 
 Put away care from the heart ; cease to be tormented with 
 the spectre of an unknown future ; live freely and well 
 all the days of thy vanity ; ' because there is no work, 
 nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave 
 whither thou goest.' 
 
 ^ W. Pater: " The Renaissance," Conclusion. 
 ^ Swinburne: " A Century of Rondels. " 
 
230 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 And as an alternative to these ideals, founded on the 
 same principle, there has also grown up a new Stoicism. 
 The days of life are few and evil ; nothing is sure, nothing 
 is certain. Pleasure cannot satisfy. Man is greater than 
 his desires, and can stand aside and apprehend his own 
 pitiable condition, can grow 'tired of so little in this 
 little life.' He 
 
 Cannot ease the labour of past years 
 Nor make quick coming death a little thing ; 
 
 but he can at least endure in silence without useless 
 murmuring. Bitter contempt of his condition, the in- 
 compatibility of the immensity of his aspirations with 
 their inadequate power of realisation, will cause him to 
 wrap himself up in his own stern endurance, and meet 
 the end in silence. The worst that life can bring he can 
 regard with serenity, knowing that some things, at least, 
 it can never take from him — 
 
 Two gifts perforce he has given us yet, 
 Though sad things stay and glad things fly : 
 Two gifts he has given us, — to forget 
 All glad and sad things that go by 
 And then — to die.' 
 
 ' Life is but a continually-checked process of dying,' 
 says the great pessimistic philosopher, ' an ever postponed 
 death. At last death must conquer ; for by the very fact 
 of birth we are made over to him, and he is only playing 
 with his prey before he swallows it.' ^ And the only 
 moral course open to the individual is the refusal to 
 acquiesce in this system of trickery and vain deceit, to 
 war with the craving for Ufe, finally to overpower it, not 
 by self-inflicted death but by the principle of renunciation, 
 
 ' Swinburne: "Fel^se.'' 
 
 ' Schopenhauer : "The World as Will and Idea,'' vol. i. p. 461. 
 
TENNYSON AND HIS AGE 231 
 
 of refusal to yield to its impulseSj of a definite extirpation 
 of Desire. 
 
 Tennyson's attitude to these latest developments of 
 Naturalism is one of acceptance and protest. He had 
 long foreseen this development of natural religion, and 
 consequently was not unprepared for its manifestations. 
 As his intellectual convictions protested against the 
 principles of the second period, so his moral and spiritual 
 instincts rise up against the principles of the third. His 
 attitude towards them is ' solemn in its steadfastness rather 
 than triumphant.' He knew that these beliefs formulate 
 no new gospel ; that they have previously appeared in the 
 world's history, and have previously failed as a working 
 creed of life. The fact that they invariably lead to 
 sOence and despair seems to him to justify the clinging 
 to others until these are finally disproved. But he 
 welcomes the new development as clearing the arena of 
 combat, as exhibiting beyond doubt the ultimate battle- 
 ground. Belief in God and belief in Immortality is thus 
 recognised as indissolubly bound up with the future ad- 
 vance and continuance of the human race. Goodness, 
 purity, moral effort are at length definitely assigned to the 
 believer in the unseen. Natural religion, natural morality 
 never again will be advocated as the religion of any large 
 numbers of mankind. The movement which started with 
 its unlimited optimism and sincere faith in human under- 
 standing has worked itself out ; some of its followers 
 sinking into pessimism, some advocating the hasty pursuit 
 of pleasure, some turning back to the older ideals they 
 had once despised, as the only means of satisfying the 
 needs of humanity. 'The wheel has come full circle.' 
 And as these results became more and more appreciated, 
 so more and more did the people turn for guidance 
 towards the poet who had foreseen the result, who had 
 
232 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 maintained steadfast faith through the darkest days of the 
 struggle. He had weighed up all the factors. He had 
 refused to shut his eyes to the darkest alternatives ; even 
 at the end he can interpret to themselves the results of 
 their own conclusions. 
 
 He is only a cloud and a smoke who was once a pillar of fire, 
 The guess of a worm in the dust and the shadow of its desire.^ 
 
 And, in the ' Ancient Sage,' are expressed the full deduc- 
 tions from this fact ; since 
 
 The nameless Power or Powers, that rule 
 Were never heard or seen, 
 
 therefore, 
 
 Vain the tears for darkened years 
 
 As laughter over wine ; 
 And vain the laughter as the tears 
 
 O brother, mine or thine, 
 For all that laugh, and all that weep. 
 
 And all that breathe are one 
 Slight ripple on the boundless deep 
 
 That moves, and all is gone.^ 
 
 And he could see and feel the sadness accompanying the 
 downfall of the older faith. The world to him also was 
 'dark vidth griefs and graves so dark that men cry out 
 against the Heavens.' 'Forward far and far from here 
 is all the hope of eighty years.' In his old age the 
 movement, the joyous birth of which he had sung at its 
 first origin, seemed sinking into hopeless apathy and 
 despair. But his faith is only growing brighter ; and 
 from ' this world so gloomed with woe you all but sicken 
 at the shifting scenes,' he can turn at the portal of the 
 grave and speak to the coming generations waiting for 
 
 I "Despair." « "The Ancient Sage." 
 
TENNYSON AND HIS AGE 233 
 
 his words of his confident, triumphant faith that 'all 
 is well.' 
 
 ' Spirit, nearing yon dark portal at the limit of thy human state 
 Fear not thou the hidden purpose of that Power which alone is great, 
 Nor the myriad world His Shadow, nor the silent Opener of the Gate." 
 
 I have climb'd to the snows of Age, and I gaze at a field in the Past, 
 Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of a low desire, 
 But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the Man is quiet at last, 
 As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of a height that is 
 higher." 
 
 ' God and the Universe." ^ "By an Evolutionist." 
 
XV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 
 
 T N attempting a summary and final estimate of any 
 poet as a religious teacher, it is necessary to explain 
 a certain ambiguity in the expression. From no po et 
 can there rightly be demanded an orderly system o f 
 philosophy or theology; no teaching satisfying doubt 
 by the presentation of an orfflnised and systematic c on- 
 st ruction of answers to the problem which relig ion 
 a ttempts to solve. The work of the poet must always 
 be intuitive rather than ratiocinative ; his primary function 
 is the presentation of beauty as an artist, not the elabora- 
 tion of an ethical creed or philosophic system. \ Only, 
 as all art must work in a medium, and through this 
 medium express certain principles having relation to 
 the world and to the ideals of men — as, more especially, 
 the material provided for the poet must primarily consist 
 of the aspirations and thoughts of his contemporaries — 
 the artist is perforce compelled to assert some form 
 of belief; compelled, whether he would or no, to become 
 a teacher. We have seen, in our study of Tennyson, 
 how far this teaching may extend. In his case it con- 
 sisted mainly in the adoption of a certain attitude towards 
 life, and in the possession of a power of insight into men 
 and movements, the seeing beyond the temporal and 
 the transitory, the apprehension of the essential nature 
 of the life of the world around him. The poet is not 
 cramped, as the philosopher is cramped, by being confined 
 to the steps of advance justified by reason ; he can 
 assert truths without being compelled to exhibit the 
 logical consistency of each link in the process whereby 
 he attained to knowledge of them. For this cause his 
 
 234 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 235 
 
 conclusions have been often the subject of contempt to 
 the thinker, bound down into the narrow groove of the 
 understanding, and regarding the poet's wide generalisa- 
 tions as unjustified, hazy, and obscure. But such methods 
 possess some compensating advantages. The poet can 
 allow free play to all the elements of his personality, 
 while the philosopher is confined to one element in it 
 illegitimately isolated. The understanding can be supple- 
 mented by Feeling, and justified by the demands of 
 the practical Reason. 
 
 The answer of the poet to the problems of existence 
 must not only satisfy the craving of the speculative 
 intellect for logical consistency ; it must also realise the 
 desire of the aesthetic judgment, and provide a motive 
 for action. It is the answer of the whole personality 
 acting as an undivided unity ; the philosopher's reply 
 is often the mere ingenious manipulation of the concepts 
 of the understanding. And consequently, though the 
 poet's results appear often less grounded upon fact than 
 those of organised thinkers, he usually in the end attains 
 a clearer insight" into the truth. The conclusions of the 
 philosophy of any age are rapidly outgrown and forgotten ; 
 the intuitions of the poet become incorporated in the 
 philosophy of the future. 
 
 This is true more especially in that sphere of specula- 
 tion which we term religion. And here we must carefuUy 
 distinguish -what we mean when we estimate the work 
 of any poet as a religious teacher. There have been 
 poets of all ages who can be definitely classed together 
 as religious poets. They are poets who express in verse 
 certain definite emotions, peculiarly associated with the 
 religious elements of consciousness. Their range of 
 thought is generally limited ; within that range they 
 sink deep. Adoration and worship, spiritual uplifting, 
 the awe, wonder, and reverence of the soul before its 
 
236 • TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 Maker, provide the subject-matter of their poems. In 
 Christian times God, Christ, the soul's probation and trial, 
 the soul's salvation, are the themes to which they mainly 
 confine themselves. The Latin poets of the Mediaeval 
 Church, Crawshaw and George Herbert in the seventeenth 
 century, Christina Rossetti and Francis Thompson in our 
 own time, are examples of poets who have thus attempted 
 to represent in verse these great emotions of the human 
 spirit. 
 
 Amongst those who are wanting in this definite 
 religious consciousness, or who have ceased to cultivate 
 it to any appreciable extent, this poetry is not received 
 with sympathy. To those, again, who regard it as 
 dealing with abstractions and relics of a past age of 
 superstition, and figments of an unhealthy mind, this 
 poetry will fail to appeal. Its scope is limited in range ; 
 it can only set vibrating chords already present ; it 
 expresses religious emotion, it does not assist or strengthen 
 religious faith. Such poets are religious poets ; they are 
 not teachers of religion. 
 
 There are other poets who more widely exemplify the 
 definition of poetry as a criticism of life. They possess, 
 in addition to the essential faculty of style, the large 
 sympathies and speculative insight necessary to teachers 
 of humanity. They penetrate below the surface ; they 
 make plain elements of existence hitherto concealed ; 
 they realise in their own mind as living difficulties 
 some of the fundamental problems that have troubled 
 mankind since the dawn of history. They 'justify 
 the ways of God to man,' or they exhibit motives, 
 which make life worth living ; they reveal the good 
 behind the evil or the firm ground beyond the change. 
 They are often startling in their sudden flashes of insight ; 
 they raise the cry of hope above despair ; they show the 
 thread running through the tangled maze of life ; to 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 237 
 
 those perplexed and troubled around thenij they bring 
 a new gospel. They may not seem to be, in the narrower 
 sense, definitely religious ; they may not adhere to any 
 recognised Church or creed ; they do not emphasise 
 the unique religious emotions. But they contribute 
 new reason for action, new hopes for the future ; they 
 enable men to take up the burden of living with a 
 fresh energy and a more intense purpose. And these 
 are, in the widest sense of the word, great religious 
 teachers. Such have been, in our own day, Walt Whitman 
 and Robert Browning. Browning has ' gone the whole 
 round of creation,' penetrated into the inmost 'depths, 
 the darkest crevasses of the human soul ; he can return 
 protesting his message — ' All 's love, yet all 's law.' 
 He can assert himself as ' one who never turned his 
 back, but marched breast forward ' ; he can maintain 
 that we ' fall to rise, are baifled to fight better, sleep 
 to wake.' Whitman, on the other hand, can contribute 
 a calm serenity, a grateful acceptance of life as it is, 
 a recognition of the beauty of common things, a steadfast 
 unassailable conviction that the Universe is good. And 
 both have been great teachers. Men have derived from 
 them new ideas of the worth of effort, and new convic- 
 tion of the goodness of the world, and new motives 
 for the struggle of existence. 
 
 Now, Tennyson does not directly fall into either of 
 these classes. In the narrower sense he was not a 
 religious poet ; in the wider sense he was not a teacher 
 of religion. 
 
 The definite religious emotions, the spiritual side of 
 religion, he rarely if ever depicted. In poems like 
 ' St Agnes' Eve ' and ' Sir Galahad,' experiments in 
 throwing himself into the position of others, he is only 
 viewing, as an outsider, feelings never actually experi- 
 enced. Personal devotion to Christ, personal experience 
 
238 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 of sin, direct consciousness of the presence of God, these 
 do not in any way furnish the motifs of his poems. On 
 the other hand, he did not maintain any unwavering 
 attitude of triumph and optimistic conviction, which 
 would have enabled him to teach a new creed, or proclaim 
 a new religion. He was too uncertain himself; his 
 faith often grew dim ; he was striving, for the most 
 part, in the dark, with only at intervals uncertain gleams 
 of light. He strenuously proclaimed, indeed, one 
 principle, and never forsook it all through his long life ; 
 but often the horizon appeared to him to be darkening, 
 and his religion rather the last refuge of despair, than the 
 jojrful assertion of firm belief. Right on until the end, 
 sadness and hope, doubt and faith alternately reveal 
 themselves in his writings. 
 
 For although he accepted all fresh evidence before 
 him, he had ever clung tenaciously to certain sets of 
 opinions, and had never launched out boldly into the 
 unknown. Browning shrunk at no enterprise, stopped 
 short nowhere ; no fresh facts could weaken his trium- 
 phant optimism. So, also, no fresh facts could shake 
 Whitman's imperturbable certainty of the goodness of 
 things. 
 
 I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all 
 oppression and shame ; 
 
 All these — all the meanness and agony without end I sit looking out 
 
 upon. 
 See, hear, and am silent.' 
 
 The one saw the good in the evil ; the other saw the 
 good despite the evil. With Tennyson the reader is never 
 on perfectly sure ground. Just as he seems confident and 
 clear, some fresh outbreak of brutality or wickedness 
 
 ' Whitman: " Leaves of Grass." 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 239 
 
 comes before his gaze, or some new discovery seems to 
 render invalid older arguments for the beneficence of 
 God ; or simply through the changes of life a time arises 
 when faith falls asleep. And the result is that his voice 
 becomes tremulous and uncertain, and difficulties loom 
 larger, and he is thrown back once again to that almost 
 blind faith in the ultimate reality and triumph of good- 
 ness which formed the one belief to which he ever 
 desperately clung. 
 
 And so, perhaps, more than either of his two great 
 contemporaries, he reflects the mind of his age ; an age, 
 in its later developments, doubting, yet struggling with 
 doubt, chaotic, discouraged, uncertain of the present, 
 distrustful of the future. He can see the futility of pre- 
 mature synthesis ; he can lament the destruction which 
 has overtaken beliefs once held indubitably vahd ; he 
 can look forward with hopefulness to the 'deeper voice 
 across the storm.' But to his troubled and tumultuous 
 generation he can provide little positive teaching for 
 those who would come to him for guidance, beyond a 
 passionate assertion of certain verities which seemed to 
 him necessary to human life, and a firm faith that out 
 of the complex currents and conflicts of thought all 
 around him, some satisfactory guiding belief would be 
 ultimately evolved. 
 
 Yet although, when we attempt to sum up his positive 
 contributions to religious speculation, we find them 
 meagre and uncertain, it cannot be doubted that he 
 possesses a real, and even an increasing, importance as 
 a religious teacher ; and this through his assertion of old 
 truths, with all the effect of his wonderful poetical faculty. 
 Perfection of style often passes for originality of thought ; 
 and the reflection, with all the charm of literary grace 
 of the ill-expressed thoughts of others, may well bring 
 them home to us with a force and a freshness which 
 
240 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 formerly they failed to possess. The Omnipotence and 
 Perfection of Godj the continual Evolution of the human 
 spiritj and the progress of the whole human race under 
 the divine guidance towards that unity which is the goal 
 of all things, are truths which have been advanced and 
 maintained by previous thinkers ; but, asserted by Tenny- 
 son with his marvellous command of language, they have 
 been endowed with a reality which they never before 
 possessed. 
 
 But Tennyson's influence in the world of thought was 
 perhaps negative rather than positive. During most of 
 his life he was in the attitude of protest, of refusal to 
 recognise certain principles whose praises were loudest 
 on every tongue. He did not, indeed, as so many have 
 done, set himself directly against the popular movement 
 in thought and philosophy ; nor did he consistently ignore 
 it. He accepted all facts as facts, acknowledging that 
 it is impossible to fight against the convictions of the 
 human reason. All the conclusions of modem science 
 and modern criticism, however unpalatable their results, 
 however desperate their apparent tendencies, he recog- 
 nised and welcomed. So that, in a sense, men were 
 compelled to acknowledge that Tennyson at least faced 
 the problems of the age ; that he did not refuse to 
 acknowledge facts because they disagreed with his own 
 theories ; that he did not twist facts to suit his own 
 prejudices ; that in the region of thought he was em- 
 phatically 'no skulker.' 
 
 And yet there were certain general principles which 
 Tennyson asserted near the beginning of his career and 
 never in his darkest moments disowned — principles which 
 seemed to him absolutely necessary for human existence. 
 Whatever the progress of knowledge may bring, he 
 maintained, it cannot ultimately affect these. Despite 
 much apparent contradiction, and much that seemed 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 241 
 
 misty, he clung to these verities with a faith that only 
 grew firmer as the evidence for them appeared to be 
 crumbling away. He acknowledged that consistent 
 theories at the present stage of thought were perhaps 
 impossible ; that the older view of things had broken 
 down ; the older evidence, which had once seemed so 
 satisfactory, had been swept away. Criticism, modem 
 scientific theories, had shattered the forms in which 
 past generations had represented the essential realities 
 of life. He frankly acknowledged the impossibility in 
 the present age of any completely satisfactory logical 
 synthesis. Always would be left ragged edges ; always 
 at the last the final appeal must be to faith. The time 
 for reconstruction was not yet. That such a reconstruc- 
 tion would take place after the din and cloud of battle 
 had cleared away, he had no manner of doubt. Mean- 
 while, the important work of the religious teacher was 
 to insist on the vitality of these principles of life, and 
 to protest that, despite the necessity for restatement of 
 the outward symbols, their ultimate truth remained firm 
 and unshaken. 
 
 God, Self, Immortality : these must be real, not 
 shadows ; else eifort is an aimless futility, and life a 
 miserable he. God, not an uncertain blind 'power that 
 makes for righteousness,' or a convenient name for an 
 imknowable something behind phenomena ; but, however 
 much transcending our finite ideals, at least a personality, 
 apprehended most readily as personal, with a purpose 
 guiding the world, and a plan directing the apparently 
 blind sweeping forward of things in perpetual change. 
 Self, not a bundle of sensations, nor a mere shadow 
 reflection of immutable laws of matter, but a self un- 
 conditioned by material things, preserving its identity 
 through change, helping to create the physical world 
 around it, possessing the inexplicable power of freedom, 
 
242 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 and of choice between good and evil. Immortality, 
 not a hollow trickery as absorption in the life of the 
 race and the memory of the future, nor a return of 
 unconscious energy to the chaos from which it arose ; 
 but a survival of the personality beyond death, a con- 
 tinual upward progress towards perfection, carried forward 
 from this world into the worlds beyond the grave. 
 
 These are necessary for a religion. Without them 
 universal suicide or a hungry pursuit of pleasure become 
 the only reasonable alternatives. For Tennyson, at least, 
 this appears certain ; however much one might deceive 
 one's self by the adoption of the older terminology, 
 sooner or later the ineffectual sanction of the other systems 
 must be discovered. And it was because he so clearly 
 realised this that he clung so firmly to these three 
 essential truths. He could not prove them ; in the 
 turmoil and conflict of this strange and disordered century 
 men had wandered away from them, and vehemently pro- 
 tested that they could do without them. Standing aloof, 
 and often doubtful of the future, Tennyson continuously 
 asserted that he would not worship shadows. 'The 
 ineffable longing for the Ufe of life baffled for ever' by 
 earthly things, compelled him to cling to faith, in 'a 
 clearer day than our poor twilight dawn on earth.' 
 
 If night what barren toil to be ! 
 What life, so maim'd by night, were worth 
 Our living out ? Not mine to me 
 Remembering all the golden hours 
 Now silent, and so many dead. 
 
 How far was Tennyson justified in this position, in the 
 assertion by faith of truths which never could be proved ? 
 Is it legitimate to read back results into primary con- 
 clusions ? Can we assert or deny a belief on account of 
 its consequences ? It may be certain that life is empty 
 and vain without belief in God and immortality ; but 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 243 
 
 why, after all, should life not be empty and vain? It 
 may be true that with this knowledge the world will grow 
 greyer, and enthusiasm and heroic effort finally die away ; 
 but is the fact any justification for asserting lies ? Is it not 
 better to follow truth alone, be the results what they may; 
 praying ' if our end be death, show light, and let us die.' 
 
 Such a position has been taken up by many in this 
 century, who have even been able to derive a kind of 
 grim consolation from the thought that truth persists, 
 although all else perishes. 
 
 It fortifies my soul to know 
 That though I perish truth is so, 
 
 says a contemporary poet. And fierce prophets of the 
 new reformation have lavished all their energies in 
 denunciation of those who would assert lies in the so- 
 called interests of morality. 
 
 It may perhaps be doubted if even in this extreme 
 position the advocates of the ' New Reformation ' are 
 justified in the blind worship of their deity. If the 
 pursuit of truth means the gradual acquisition of know- 
 ledge that will ultimately prove destructive to the higher 
 energies of the human race, it is difficult to conceive why, 
 except on some principle of faith, such enthusiasm should 
 animate its advocates. The relative validity of sense-given 
 knowledge is elevated into serious import only by the 
 possibility of its utilisation, by some Power beyond, for 
 the gradual revelation, in symbolic language, of Eternal 
 Reality. If the only consciousness in the Universe is the 
 accidental consciousness of the human race, and beyond 
 this is but blind drift and chaotical matter and ' the flux 
 of mortal things,' the distorted and doubtful information 
 which alone man is able to obtain concerning the un- 
 certainties of the external world seems scarcely worthy 
 of enthusiasm or adoration. 
 
244 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 What could he better wish than then to die. 
 
 Why should he pray to range 
 Down the long age of truth that ripens slow ; 
 
 And break his heart with all the baffling change 
 And all the tedious tossing to and fro ? 
 
 Tennyson, however, did not accept this extreme posi- 
 tion. He also maintains Truth as ultimate ; and in any 
 conclusion indubitably proven, however deplorable, he 
 would acknowledge that the human spirit must acquiesce. 
 If ' some voice that men could trust ' should finally 
 announce that 'death was the end of life,' that 'man 
 goeth down to the pit and all his thoughts perish,' he 
 would agree that, however hopeless, this position must 
 be frankly accepted and proclaimed. Only he says such 
 a voice has not yet spoken. The issue is still uncertain ; 
 reason cannot speak on the question with undisput- 
 able authority. And, while thus in half shadow and 
 dim light, he protests energetically not only against the 
 assumption of the negative conclusion but also against the 
 suspension of judgment accompanied by the statement 
 that data insufficient for certainty is provided. 
 
 Because we cannot conclusively prove a beneficent 
 Deity or a future continuance, therefore it is immoral 
 to assert them ; because the spiritual world is possibly 
 non-existent, therefore we must banish from us all interest 
 in it, fixing our attention on the things of earth and on 
 those alone ; — this is the position Tennyson condemns as 
 impossible. Humanity cannot thus put aside as of no 
 account divergences which must modify every act of 
 daily existence and produce change in its whole system 
 of living. Life shut up to its few and uncertain years, 
 never contented, never resting, always yearning for some- 
 thing beyond, with possibilities of unfulfilled realisation, 
 and infinite capacity of Love, must be based upon one 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 245 
 
 or other of the alternatives. Suspense of juiigment is 
 impossible when interpreted as suspense of action; the 
 conclusions of the theoretical reason must hourly be 
 converted into practical choice. 
 
 To refuse to assert God's existence is effectually the 
 same as dogmatically to deny it. And once this is realisedj 
 and the necessity for the choice between the assumption 
 of two alternatives neither of which is conclusively proved, 
 is clearly recognised, the venture of faith dependent on 
 the assertion of the highest morality and adherence to 
 the difficult path of duty becomes ' not the pitiful refuge 
 o^A credulous superstition, but the heroic assertion of 
 the forlorn hope of the human spirit.' 
 
 In the balancing of probabilities which decide individual 
 action, the practical results of the differing theories must 
 decide. In this, the question for each, compared with 
 which all other decisions sink into insignificance, is it not 
 the right course to stake all upon the high supra-mundane 
 belief, even if for the present the evidence is doubtful, 
 and the possibility always before us that the other alter- 
 native may after all be true and our whole life and action 
 a living lie. 'That man is morally unbelieving,' says 
 Kant, ' who does not accept that which, though impossible 
 to know, is morally necessary to suppose,' - — morally 
 necessary, when the alternative is 'dust and ashes.' 
 'Faith is the moral attitude of Reason as to belief in 
 that which is unattainable by theoretical cognition. It 
 is therefore the permanent principle of the mind to 
 assume as true that which it is necessary to pre-suppose 
 as the condition of the possibility of the highest moral 
 final purpose.' 
 
 And Tennyson's position is strengthened by consideration 
 of the history of philosophic thought. All through the 
 past centuries the assertion of the ultimate spirituality of 
 the world has been at intervals overthrown by its sceptics, 
 
246 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 and each time the defeat has appeared final. Pure 
 empiricism has been elevated as truth, and all men have 
 been commanded to worship. Yet each time the spiritual 
 principle, held to be destroyed, has been re-asserted, and 
 once more attained victory. It would be madness to 
 assume that finality in this periodic progress had been 
 attained in the middle of the nineteenth century. The 
 method by which light will again arise is never visible 
 at any particular period of darkness and disquietude ; and 
 in all these periods there have been those who have 
 yielded to despair and deemed that belief in God and a 
 future hfe must be finally abandoned. But in every age, 
 also, there have been a few ' Witnesses of the Unseen,' 
 isolated and rejected, who have by faith asserted the 
 truths beyond the storm, in confidence that the darkness 
 would once again vanish before the day. Out of sympathy 
 with the prevailing spirit, their conclusions have been 
 often regarded by their contemporaries with dislike or 
 contempt ; but when the reaction arrives and the ' red 
 of the dawn ' breaks upon the horizon, it is to those who 
 have kept faithful through the long night to whom the 
 people turn for guidance with gratitude and love. 
 
 It is as one of these 'Witnesses of the Unseen' 
 that Tennyson will be finally regarded; and it is his 
 constant adherence to these principles, more than any 
 direct constructive philosophy, which has given him his 
 wide-spread and increasing influence as a religious 
 teacher. All through the century he had protested his 
 faith ; and when, towards the close, men turned from their 
 dying systems and a world which refused to respond to 
 their efforts, it was from those who had remained stead- 
 fast, that they sought help and teaching. Never was 
 Tennyson's influence greater than at the close of his 
 long career. With the alternatives clearly laid before 
 them, men cried once again for the older faiths ; a life 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 247 
 
 ' without hope and without God in the world ' was a Hfe 
 which the human reason itself refused to accept. And 
 the fact that Tennyson had remained faithful to his ideal, 
 and refused to relinquish it or be hurried away by those 
 who clamoured around him, more perhaps than anything 
 in his actual teaching, gave him an almost unique influ- 
 ence in his old age. ' As seeing Him who is invisible '■ 
 he had endured until the end. For his early poetry he 
 had been hailed as the prophet of the new movements of 
 the century. Then their followers had broken away from 
 him, refusing to hear his voice, going out into the wilder- 
 ness to serve strange gods. He could not be indiiferent 
 to the change. His music sank into a minor key ; the 
 tone of sadness in it deepened and became predominant. 
 For years he seemed like his own blind prophet, com- 
 pelled to prophesy disaster to a generation heedless of 
 his presages and neglectful of his teaching; often the 
 thought must have come home to him: — 
 
 This power hath work'd no good to aught that lives, 
 And these blind hands are useless in their wars.^ 
 
 And the final prayer of ' Tiresias ' has a nearer application 
 than to the old Greek legend, and must have been the 
 reflection of a mood increasingly present as the years 
 went by. 
 
 But for me 
 I would that I were gather'd to my rest 
 And mingled with the famous kings of old 
 On whom about their ocean islets flash 
 The faces of the gods — the wise man's word 
 Here trampled by the populace underfoot 
 There crown'd with worship." 
 
 1 " Tiresias." " Ibid. 
 
248 TENNYSON AS A RELIGIOUS TEACHER 
 
 For many years he deliberately turned from contemporary 
 life^ from singing to a generation that refused to listen to 
 his message, confining himself to studies of a former time, 
 when faith was real and life more simple. 
 
 Then, at the end, he returns to the world around him ; 
 a world how changed from that new age of sanguine 
 hopefulness, in which he had commenced his career. 
 Already his predictions are being fulfilled. The wrecks 
 of the systems whose downfall he had prophesied lie 
 strewn on every shore. Tired of vain wandering, Uke 
 children gone astray, his people are seeking guidance. 
 Now, at length, when his life is drawing to its close, they 
 will again listen to his voice. And to this newer genera- 
 tion, regarding with strange awe and reverence one who 
 had survived the storm and emerged unbeaten from the 
 conflict, he asserts his steadfast adherence to the beliefs 
 that alone had rendered endurable the arduous struggle. 
 Doubt no longer that the Highest is the Wisest and the 
 Best ; Trust the God of light to guide His people ; Love 
 will conquer at the last. The faith which had sustained 
 him through the long day's toil, burns brighter as the 
 shadows fall. The young mariners with all the hope of 
 the future, from the ' haven under the sea-cliif,' are 
 watching with eyes of wonder, ' the gray Magician ' ; ' I 
 am MerUn,' he says, ' And I am dying ; I am dying, who 
 follow the Gleam.' And, ' on the borders of boundless 
 ocean,' he can but urge them to be faithful to the Quest, 
 to take up the journey, to follow the Gleam 'over the 
 margin,' beyond the confines of the world. The ' calling 
 from the sea ' had come at sunset ; ' that which drew 
 from out the boundless Deep,' was turning again Home- 
 ward. Only to those gathered by the shore, gazing with 
 troubled faces into the darkness, he will leave for his 
 latest message the assurance of the future and the 
 promise of the end. 
 
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION' 249 
 
 Twilight and evening bell, 
 
 And after that the dark ! 
 And may there be no sadness of farewell, 
 
 When I embark ; 
 
 For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place 
 
 The flood may bear me far, 
 I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
 
 When I have crossed the bar. 
 
 ' He maketli the storm a calm, so that the waves 
 thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be 
 quiet ; So He bringeth them into the haven where they 
 would be.' 
 
INDEX 
 
 Addison, i6. 
 
 'Ancient Sage,' The, 25, 27, 28, 
 
 54, S8, 60, 64, 69, 88, 90, 125, 
 
 160, 162, 232. 
 ' Apologia,' Newman, 32, 49, 167. 
 ■ Atheism of Force,' 36. 
 Augustine, 114, 171. 
 ' Aylmer's Field,' 93, 137. 
 
 Balfour, A. J., 17. 
 
 ' Balin anfl Balan,' 164. 
 
 Browning, R., 6, 12, 33, 38, 49, 
 
 59, 76, 141, 155, 184, 201, 210, 
 
 237. 
 Butler, 91, 145. 
 ' By an Evolutionist,' 233. 
 
 Calvinism, 35. 
 Carlyle, 36, .66, 189. 
 'Confession- of a Sensitive Mind,' 
 
 74- 
 Crawshaw, 236. 
 Crimean Wat, 189. 
 Crossing the Bar, 249. 
 
 Dante, 112. 
 Darwin, 95. • 
 V The Dawn,' 122. 
 ' Death of Duke of Clarence,' 116. 
 ' D eath of Duke of Wellington,' 
 
 25, 117, 131- 
 'De Imitatione,' 171. 
 ' Demeter and Persephone,' 93. 
 'De Profundis,' 24, 57, 60, 63, 
 
 71, 72, 161. 
 Descartes, 49. 
 
 ' Despair,' 20, 52, 202, 232. 
 ' Dies Irae,' 168. 
 Dillon, 31, 228. 
 ' Doubt and Prayer,' 56, 135. 
 ' The Dreamer,' 123, 124. 
 
 251 
 
 Early Sonnets, 69. 
 Elihu on Evil, 34. 
 ' Enoch Arden,' 207. 
 Epilogue. Charge of Heavy Bri- 
 gade, 19. 
 Essay on Man, 145, 
 ' Everlasting No,' 36. 
 
 Fairbairn, 127. 
 ' Far-far-away,' 70. 
 Fatalism, 36. 
 Fiske, 91. 
 France, 186. 
 
 'Gardener's Daughter,' 141 
 
 ' Gareth and Lynette,' 133. 
 
 ' Gelasian Collect,' 215. 
 
 George Eliot, 223. 
 
 George Herbert, 236. 
 
 ' The Gleam,' 248. 
 
 ' God and the Universe,' 21, 26, 
 
 88, 233. 
 ' Godiva,' 191. 
 Goethe, 147. 
 
 ' The Golden Year,' 105, 124. 
 Guinevere, 140, 200. 
 
 Habakkuk, 36. 
 
 Hallam, Arthur, 51, 52, 78, 79, 
 
 119. 
 Hamilton, Sir W., 173. 
 Hegel, 95. 
 ' The Higher Pantheism,' 24, 25, 
 
 55. 60. 161. 
 Hoffding, 154. 
 'The Holy Grail,' 59, 6^, 115, 
 
 165, 171, 178- 
 'The Human Cry,' 57.^ 
 Hume, 14s, 148. 
 Huxley, 102, 222. 
 
252 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Idylls of the King, 137, 138, 140, 
 
 164, 177, 188, 196. 
 Imperialism, 1 88. 
 Ingram, Prof., on ' Locksley 
 
 Hall,' 221. 
 ' Tt) Memoriam,' 21, 26, 30, 31, 
 
 37. 39. 43. 44, 4S. Si. S3, 54. 
 62, 71, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 
 88, 109, 116, 117, 120, 131, 
 137, 143, 144, ISO, 151. 153. 
 156, 157, 159. 176, 185, 190, 
 209, 212, 215, 225. 
 
 James, W., 149, 162. 
 Jean Paul, 126. 
 Job, 34. 
 'Jubilee Ode,' 189. 
 
 Kant, 23, 48, 122, 149, 245. 
 Kingsley, Charles, 165, 190, 221. 
 
 ' The Lady of Shalott,' 61. 
 
 ' Launcelot and Elaine,' 134. 
 
 Leibniz, 48, 
 
 Lelande, 14. 
 
 Lessing, 173. 
 
 ' Life of Tennyson,' 18, 53, 54, 
 
 55. 59. 62, 63, 65, 76, 79, 81, 
 
 92, 150, 157, 207, 208. 
 
 ^Locksley Hall,' 1 10, 220. 
 
 ' Love and Duty,' 138, 139. "" 
 
 ' Love thou thy Land,' 1 10. 
 
 ' Lotos Eaters, '^ 1 10. 
 
 Lotze, 47, loi. 
 
 'Lucretius,' 86, 88, 104, in. 
 
 Lyell, 95. 
 
 'The Making of Man,' 122, 123. 
 Mallock, W. H., 222. 
 Mansel on Evil, 39. 
 Matthew Arnold, 121, 147, 244. 
 'Maud,' 19, 22, 136, 151, 192. 
 Maurice, F. D., 176, 210. 
 M'Taggart, 40. 
 Mill, J. S., 124. 
 Milton, 6, 14, 188. 
 Morris, William, 134, 190. 
 ■Myers, F. W. H., 75. 
 
 ' Natural Religion,' 15. 
 Newman, J. H., 32, 49, 167. 
 
 Ode on Opening Exhibition, 124. 
 CEnone, in, 131, 132. 
 Omar Khayyam, 227, 228. 
 
 Pain, 153. 
 
 'Palace of Art,' l8, 135, 166, 
 
 170, 208. 
 Pantheism, 40. 
 Pascal, 14, 42, 171. 
 ' Passing of Arthur,' 150, 153, 
 
 176. 
 Pater, W., 102, 228. 
 Plato, 27, 112, 138, 173. 
 ' The Play,' 193. 
 Plotinus, 64. 
 Pope and Tennyson, 2. 
 'The Princess,' 136, 187, 193. 
 Prayer, 207. 
 Problem of Evil, 39. 
 'The Progress of Spring,' 115. 
 
 Riddles of the Sph3mx, 103, 
 
 115- 
 ' The Ring,' 93, 115. 
 ' Romney's Remorse,' 136. 
 Rossetti, Christina, 236. 
 Rousseau, 145. 
 Ruskin, 113, 1 86, 189. 
 
 ' St Agnes' Eve,' 165, 237. 
 "St Paul, 77. 
 ' St Simeon Stylites,' 164, 166, 
 
 170, 199. 
 Schopenhauer, 230. 
 Scudder, 167. 
 ' Sea Dreams,' 107. 
 Shelley, 147. 
 Sidgwick, Prof., on Tennyson, 
 
 S3, 160. 
 ' Silent Voices,' 1 19. 
 ' Sir Galahad,' 165, 237. 
 ' The Sisters,' 53. 
 ' Sixty Years After,' 19, 20, 24, 
 
 26, 28, 122, 143, 191, 208, 
 
 222. 
 ' Sonnet to XlXth Century,' 182. 
 Spencer, Herbert, 95. 
 Spenser — ' Faerie Queen,' 118. 
 Spinoza, 47. 
 Swinburne, 14, 18, 76, 200, 229, 
 
 230. 
 
INDEX 
 
 253 
 
 Thompson, Francis, 236. 
 ' Tiresias,' 88, 247. 
 'Tithonus,' 125. 
 ' To Edward Fitzgerald,' 242. 
 ' To the Duke of Argyll,' 132. 
 'The Two Voices,' 58, 66, 68, 
 74. 75, 77- 
 
 ' Ulysses,' 113, 182. 
 Unknowable, Worship of, 35. 
 
 ' Vastness,' 21, 22, 83, 88, 193. 
 ' Vision of Sin,' 130, 138. 
 ' Voice and the Peak,' 25. 
 
 ' Wages,' 142. 
 
 Walters on ' Locksley Hall,' 221, 
 
 Walt Whitman, 237, 238. 
 
 'Will,' 134. 
 
 ' Will Waterproof's Monologue,' 
 
 no. 
 Wordsworth, 70, 146, 149, 158. 
 
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