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THE IMMORTALITY OF THE 
 
 SOUL IN THE POEMS OF 
 
 TENNYSON AND 
 
 BROWNING 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY JONES, LL.D., D.Litt. 
 
 Fellow of the British Academy 
 Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Glasgow 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 
 
 1907 
 

 \i\C 
 
 1 
 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In doing me the honour of inviting me to 
 deliver ' The Essex Hall Lecture ' for 1905, 
 the British and Foreign Unitarian Associa- 
 tion expressed the desire that it should be 
 pubhshed. I could wish that the lecture 
 better repaid their courtesy. 
 
 It is not merely that the treatment I 
 have been able to offer of the theme is 
 inadequate ; but I have ventured to apply 
 the methods of philosophy to the poets. 
 And if I have done wrong, I can offer no 
 apology, for the wrong is deliberate. 
 
 It has long seemed to me that the current 
 distinctions between the methods of the 
 philosopher and the poet, and of the 
 scientific and the common consciousness, are 
 less significant than they seem to be : that 
 
4 PREFACE 
 
 in the last resort there is only one way of 
 seeking to know what is true, and one way 
 of holding it when it is found. 
 
 This fact has not been overlooked by 
 recent writers on philosophy. But, on the 
 whole, the use they have made of it has been 
 destructive. They have sought to expose 
 the h5^othetical and imaginative character 
 of reasoned thought, rather than to bring 
 into view the broad principles that give 
 coherence to our great imaginative literature, 
 and stabiUty and sanity to the ordinary 
 experience of mankind. 
 
 I have sought in this lecture to put this 
 conception of the ultimate affinity of all 
 forms of human experience to another use ; 
 and especially in its reference to the objects 
 of reUgious faith. I have tried to show that 
 to these, too, belong the cogency that 
 comes from reason. In so far as religious 
 conceptions serve to make the world more 
 intelligible and man's practice more rational, 
 they share the right to convince which belongs 
 
PREFACE 5 
 
 to the most secure of all the human sciences. 
 The function of reason in religious life is 
 denied or limited only because its nature 
 is little understood. And we wrong our 
 great poets, even as they wronged themselves, 
 when we treat the truths they bring as if 
 they were but rapt, unreasoned utterances, 
 expressing nothing more than their individual 
 moods. 
 
 Henry Jones. 
 
 The University of Glasgow. 
 
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 
 
 ' The Immortality of the Soul ' is one 
 of those grave matters on which most men 
 of refinement are naturally reticent. They 
 break their silence, as a rule, only when they 
 are deeply moved : the solemn thoughts 
 that lie in the still recesses of their soul 
 are brought to the surface only by the 
 swinging of the waters after a great storm. 
 It was the death of Socrates, the apparent 
 victory of the wicked and ignorant over 
 ' the wisest and justest and best of all the 
 men of his time,' which led Plato to speak 
 of Immortality, as almost no other has done. 
 With that consummate art which is perfect 
 truth, he makes Socrates discuss the meaning 
 of death and of that which may lie beyond 
 death, during the solemn hours between 
 the dawn and the evening twilight of his 
 last day upon earth. * As I am going to 
 
8 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 another place, it is very meet for me to be 
 thinking and talking of the nature of the 
 pilgrimage which I am about to make. 
 What can I do better in the interval between 
 this and the setting sun ? ' 
 
 It is in a similar way and similar spirit 
 that Tennyson and Browning raised this 
 great question. Their thoughts had often 
 ranged along the line of the horizon where 
 man's destiny dips out of sight. But it 
 was the death of Arthur Hallam that, for 
 once, disturbed the even equipoise and well- 
 nigh broke down the strong restraints of 
 Tennyson's spirit, which ordinarily moved 
 like a star to its own music in the twihght 
 sky of his thoughts. Browning was habitu- 
 ally less reticent on all matters that concern 
 the human soul, and the speculative impulse 
 in him was more daring. He often spoke 
 of the future Hfe during the fifty years and 
 more of his poetic labour. But if it was the 
 death of Arthur Hallam that brought the 
 wild grief, the sustained reflection, and the 
 solemn joy of In Memoriam, it was the 
 sudden death of Browning's young friend 
 at La Saisiaz — she who was ' summoned in 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 9 
 
 that dread way, without premonitory touch 
 as she talked and laughed,' which startled 
 his knightly spirit to put on its armour, 
 and led him to challenge his own faith, and 
 to dare his own doubts of Immortality. 
 
 It would thus seem that ' Death ' and 
 ' Immortality ' are not subjects for speech 
 in ordinary moods or amongst ordinary 
 circumstances. A certain preparation of 
 spirit — some impressive ghmpse of the nar- 
 row and uncertain limits of the present life 
 or of the exceeding weight of things eternal 
 — is required before we can profitably raise 
 these grave questions. 
 
 Indeed, there are many men, and these 
 amongst the best and the most wise, who 
 maintain that we do not well in concerning 
 ourselves with these matters. ' Let us think 
 on living,' they say. ' Let us keep faithful 
 sentry at our post, in the midst of the 
 impenetrable darkness that surrounds our 
 little lives, and refuse to perplex our souls 
 with questions which we cannot answer. 
 Sufficient unto the day is the duty thereof. 
 To a man who is within his duty, Death 
 does not count' 
 
10 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 Now, I cannot withhold my reverence 
 for the men who in the strength of their 
 moral faith assume this attitude, and who 
 rank loyalty to simple truth, even when 
 truth is silent, above whatever peace those 
 hopes may bring which may turn out false. 
 In the marvellous picture that Plato draws 
 of the last hours of his master, there is 
 nothing more perfect in its beauty than the 
 utter loyalty of Socrates to the truth. He 
 is afraid lest the nearness of death and the 
 magnitude of the issues which are at stake 
 should lead him to pervert the truth in 
 his own favour and to argue falsely for the 
 life hereafter. ' I would ask you,' he says, 
 *to be thinking of the truth and not of 
 Socrates. Agree with me, if I seem to you 
 to be speaking the truth ; or, if not, with- 
 stand me might and main, that I may 
 not deceive you, as well as myself, in my 
 enthusiasm, and, like the bee, leave my 
 sting in you before I die.* 
 
 But, you will ask, should not the reticence 
 of the wise, the sufficiency of duty for the 
 good, and the uncertainty of the matter, 
 teach us to fortify ourselves against these 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING II 
 
 questionings ? I believe not, for several 
 reasons. 
 
 In the first place, it is very doubtful if 
 we can do so. 
 
 Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, 
 A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, 
 A chorus-ending from Euripides, — 
 And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears 
 As old and new at once cis nature's self. 
 To rap and knock and enter in our soul. 
 Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring. 
 Round the ancient idol, on his base again, — 
 The grand Perhaps I 
 
 Bishop Blowgram's Apology. 
 
 In the second place, it is doubtful whether 
 it is wise to shut down these thoughts and 
 seek to reconcile ourselves to ignorance, 
 even if that were in our power. Those who 
 do not sometimes pause to reflect upon the 
 ultimate problems of human destiny while 
 the tide of life is still at the flood and its 
 interests are many, are liable, when the ebb 
 comes, and life is sinking into emptiness, 
 to welcome the crudest superstition that is 
 next to hand. And that most certainly is 
 not good. 
 
12 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 In the last place, it is only by coming to 
 a reckoning with death that those magnificent 
 convictions of which we have spoken can be 
 gained by man. ' That death does not 
 count,' that ' Come what may, the duty of 
 the moment sufiftceth,' are not beUefs which 
 can be possessed by the thoughtless. Those 
 who have gained them, so far from avoiding 
 the thought of death and what may come 
 after, have looked it in the face and seen 
 that there are things to be feared more than 
 death. They have put the thought of death 
 in so vast and so spiritual a context that its 
 significance is dwarfed ; and all the meaning 
 that remains for it is not natural any more, 
 but spiritual. 
 
 This, it seems to me, is, in its essence, 
 what has been done by both of these great 
 poets. Each, in his own way, has challenged 
 death ; and each has found that, provided 
 the moral world stands and God remains, 
 death cannot in itself mean much, and what 
 it does mean is good. To understand this 
 is to appropriate their thought upon this 
 question of the Immortality of the Soul. 
 
 Now, there are two ways of considering 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 13 
 
 what they have said. One is to examine 
 tlieir utterances critically, in order to bring 
 out the similarities and differences in the 
 details of their faith and the subtle nuances 
 of the spiritual disposition which finds 
 expression in these utterances. This is the 
 method of the commentator, and it is 
 full of interest and instruction. The other 
 method is to dwell upon the broad features 
 of their belief with the view of discovering 
 the basis on which they made it to rest : 
 to find out what validity, what value for 
 others, there is in their trust. This is the 
 method I shall follow, I shall look to the 
 poets for help for myself in the contempla- 
 tion of this problem of death and immor- 
 tality — dealing with them as teachers of 
 truth, rather than as poets or ministers 
 of beauty. 
 
 . Perhaps the first thing that impresses the 
 student of Tennyson and Browning is the 
 fulness of their belief in the Immortality 
 of the Soul._ ] If they did ever doubt its 
 truth — which is very questionable — doubt 
 only shook the torpor of assurance from their 
 creed : it left the belief itself more strong 
 
14 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 and fixed. Its roots travelled deeper into 
 their experience and intertwined itself with 
 it ever the more vitally as their life matured 
 to its close. 
 
 ^ A close examination of Tennyson*s poems 
 would show that he entertained, at different 
 times, different conceptions regarding the 
 state of the soul after death. He repudiates 
 the view that the soul ' passes at once into 
 a final state of bliss or woe.' 
 
 No sudden heaven, nor sudden hell, for man, 
 But thro' the will of One who knows and rules — 
 And utter knowledge is but utter love — 
 iEonian Evolution, swift or slow, 
 Thro' all the Spheres — an ever opening height, 
 An ever lessening earth. 
 
 The Ring. 
 
 Browning emphatically sets aside both 
 the final woe and the final extinction of the 
 wicked. The first of these notions he discards 
 in a passage of extraordinary force in the 
 Inn Album — probably the most powerful 
 exposure in our language of the astounding 
 doctrine of eternal punishment. 
 
 After death. 
 Life : man created new, ingeniously 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING I5 
 
 Perfect for a vindictive purpose now 
 
 That man, first fashioned in beneficence. 
 
 Was proved a failure ; intellect at length 
 
 Replacing old obtuseness, memory 
 
 Made mindful of delinquent's bygone deeds 
 
 Now that remorse was vain, which life-long lay 
 
 Dormant when lesson might be laid to heart ; 
 
 New gift of observation up and down 
 
 And round man's self, new power to apprehend 
 
 Each necessary consequence of act 
 
 In man for well or ill — things obsolete — 
 
 Just granted to supplant the idiocy 
 
 Man's only guide while act was yet to choose. 
 
 With ill or well momentously its fruit ; 
 
 A faculty of immense suffering 
 
 Conferred on mind and body, — mind, erewhile 
 
 Unvisited by one compunctious dream 
 
 During sin's drunken slumber, startled up, 
 
 Stung through and through by sin's significance 
 
 Now that the holy was abolished — just 
 
 As body which, alive, broke down beneath 
 
 Knowledge, lay helpless in the path to good, 
 
 Failed to accomphsh aught legitimate, 
 
 Achieve aught worthy, — which grew old in youth, 
 
 And at its longest fell a cut-down flower, — 
 
 Dying, this too revived by miracle 
 
 To bear no end of burden now that back 
 
 Supported torture to no use at all. 
 
 And Uve imperishably potent — since 
 
 Life's potency was impotent to ward 
 
 One plague off which made earth a hell before. 
 
' l6 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 This doctrine, which one healthy view of things, 
 
 One sane sight of the general ordinance — 
 
 Nature, — and its particular object, — Man, — 
 
 Which one mere eye-cast at the character 
 
 Of Who made these and gave man sense to boot, 
 
 Had dissipated once and evermore, — 
 
 This doctrine I have dosed our flock withal. 
 
 The Inn Album. 
 
 ^ — The idea of the extinction of the wicked 
 is rejected by Browning at the close of the 
 Pope's soliloquy in the Ring and, the Book, in 
 another of his most splendid passages. 
 Speaking of the sentence of death he has 
 just passed on Guido, the main criminal, 
 the Pope says : — 
 
 For the main criminal I have no hope 
 
 Except in such a suddenness of fate. 
 
 I stood at Naples once, a night so dark 
 
 I could have scarce conjectured there was eairth 
 
 Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all : 
 
 But the night's black was burst through by a blaze — 
 
 Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bote, 
 
 Through her whole length of mountain visible : 
 
 There lay the city thick and plain with spires, 
 
 And. like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea. 
 
 So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, 
 
 And Guido see, one instant, and be saved. 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING I7 
 
 Eke I avert my face, nor follow him 
 Into that sad obscure sequestered state 
 Where God unmakes but to remake the soul 
 He else made first in vain ; which must not be. 
 
 The Pope : The Ring and the Booh. 
 
 Neither could Tennyson adopt the beUef 
 that any soul would in the end be excluded 
 from a God of love. 
 
 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. 
 
 In Memoriam, Iv. 
 
 L/Both of the poets recur again and again 
 to the conception of the soul as entering 
 on a second individual life after death, and, 
 indeed, on a series of lives — whether on 
 earth or elsewhere — ' The soul in each em- 
 bodiment reaching a higher stage of being, and 
 approaching more and more nearly to God.' 
 
 Live thou ! and of the grain and husk, the grape 
 And ivyberry, 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. 
 
 De Profundis 
 
1 8 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 This is the habitual attitude of Tennyson ; 
 and to him the final union with God in 
 which the process culminates, ' the loss of 
 personality (if so it were), seemed to be not 
 extinction but the true life.' 
 
 In like manner, Browning gives frequent 
 expression to this idea of continued evolution 
 from life to life. 
 
 It seethes with the morrow for us and more. 
 Things learned on earth, we shall practise in heaven. 
 
 There's a fancy some lean to and others hate — 
 
 That, when this life is ended, begins 
 New work for the soul in another state. 
 
 Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins : 
 Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries. 
 
 Repeat in large what they practised in small, 
 Through life after Ufe in unUmited series ; 
 
 Only the scale's to be changed, that's all. 
 
 Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen 
 
 By the means of Evil that Good is best. 
 And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's 
 serene — 
 
 When our faith in the same has stood the test — 
 Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod, 
 
 The uses of labour are surely done ; 
 There remaineth a rest for the people of God : 
 
 And I have had troubles enough, for one. 
 
 Old Pictures in Florence. 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING I9 
 
 With this note, as of momentary weariness, 
 rarely heard from this strong and strenuous 
 spirit, we shall turn aside from these 
 secondary questions as to the manner of 
 the soul's hfe after death, and take up the 
 question of Immortality itself — meaning 
 simply by that ' the conscious and indefinitely 
 prolonged life of the soul beyond death.' 
 This was ' undoubtedly a matter of fixed 
 belief ' for both the poets ; and of ' an 
 importance so great that life without the 
 belief in it seemed to them to have neither 
 sense nor value.' ^ 
 
 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. 
 
 In Memoriatn, xxxiv. 
 
 I have lived, then, done and suffered, loved and hated, 
 
 learnt and taught 
 This — there is no reconcihng wisdom with a Avorld 
 
 distraught. 
 Goodness with triumphant evil, power with failure in 
 
 the aim. 
 
 * See Professor A. C. Bradley's ' Commentary on In 
 Memoriam ' : Macmillan & Co. 
 
20 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 If — (to my own sense, remember ! though none other 
 
 feel the same ! ) — 
 If you bar me from assuming earth to be a pupil's place. 
 And life, time, — ^with all their chances, changes, — just 
 
 probation-space. 
 Mine, for me. La Saisiaz. 
 
 But there is no need that I should dwell 
 further upon this matter. They have given 
 expression to this belief so frequently, and 
 in such a variety of ways, both in their poems 
 and in their letters, that no one can doubt 
 that the ' Grand Perhaps ' of Immortality 
 was for them a final and inexpressibly 
 significant conviction. 
 
 In nothing did they reveal their affinity 
 to their times, more than in this. For at 
 the heart of the thought, nay of the very 
 disposition of the mind of their age and ours 
 is the conception that the natural world 
 and the natural life of man signify much 
 more than that which at first meets the eye. 
 Ever since the days of Lessing and Kant 
 mankind has been travelling away from the 
 narrow infinitude and hard-lined limitedness 
 of the days of Hume. Philosophers and 
 poets aUke — almost all of the greatest of 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 21 
 
 them — Fichte and Schelling, Hegel and 
 Goethe, Carlyle and Wordsworth, Shelley, 
 Tennyson, and Browning, have steeped the 
 present hfe in the life to come. Thought 
 and sense, spirit and nature interpenetrate ; 
 time is saturated with eternity. The universe 
 is spirit- woven, God is immanent in it, and 
 every meanest object is in its way ' filled 
 full of magical music, as they freight a star 
 with light.' There has been no age in the 
 world's history when doubt was more deep 
 or stem. The lines of science were never 
 drawn more stringently, binding together 
 in an ever closer phalanx the ranks of 
 necessity, and limiting ever more remorse- 
 lessly the charter of an irresponsible 
 imagination. But the doubt itself contains 
 the promise, and is even the reflex of a larger 
 faith — faith in an order whose sweep is 
 wider and its spiritual significance indefinitely 
 deeper. This faith, as Tennyson says, 
 
 . . Reels not in the storm of warring words. 
 She brightens at the clash of ' Yes ' and ' No,' 
 She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the Worst, 
 She feels the sun is hid but for a night. 
 She spies the summer thro' the \v'inter bud. 
 She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls. 
 
22 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 She hears the lark within the songless egg. 
 She finds the fountain where they wail'd ' Mirage ! ' 
 
 The Ancient Sage. 
 
 But what I desire to ask is the stern ques- 
 tion : Have we verily any right to such a 
 triumphant conviction ? What gave it to 
 our poets ? On what grounds did they 
 hold it ? And what validity have those 
 grounds ? 
 
 To these questions we shall now turn. 
 And the answer offered plainly, both by 
 Tennyson and Browning, is that these 
 grounds are not intellectual grounds. 
 
 Thou canst not prove the Nameless, O my son, 
 
 Nor canst thou prove the world thou movest in. 
 
 Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone. 
 
 Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone. 
 
 Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one : 
 
 Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no 
 
 Nor yet that thou art mortal. . . . 
 
 For nothing worthy proving can be proven, 
 
 Nor yet disproven : wherefore thou be wise, 
 
 Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt. 
 
 And cling to Fciith beyond the forms of Faith ! 
 
 The Ancient Sage. 
 
 The same conviction we find almost any- 
 where in Browning, and especially in his 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 23 
 
 later poems, where imagination passes into 
 philosophic reflection. Human knowledge, 
 he beheves, fails at every great crisis, and 
 he bids us 
 
 Take the joys and bear the sorrows — neither with 
 
 extreme concern ! 
 Living here means nescience simply : 'tis next Ufe 
 
 that helps to learn. 
 
 La Saisiaz. 
 
 What need to confess again 
 
 No problem this to solve 
 By impotence ? Asolando. 
 
 In some of his poems, and especially in 
 La Saisiaz, he develops an argument that 
 sure knowledge of the hereafter might destroy 
 our liberty of choice here. So that hope of 
 immortality is not only all that we can 
 have, but all that we ought to desire in this 
 sphere of probation — hope alternating with 
 fear. 
 
 This argument, you will observe, gives 
 a positive value to ignorance, making it 
 a condition of the moral life : ' Neither 
 good nor evil does man, doing what he 
 must ' {La Saisiaz). But it is not hard to 
 meet. It can be shown to rest on confusion 
 
24 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 between the natural necessity which compels, 
 and the moral necessity which is self-imposed. 
 And, besides, the whole course of human 
 history, in so far as it is progressive, consists 
 in escaping from the yoke of the former 
 in order to pass into the willing service of 
 the latter. ' Behold how I love thy law,' 
 says the Psalmist. 
 
 But what we have to deal with is the main 
 conclusion of these poets. 
 
 We have but faith : we cannot know ; 
 For knowledge is of things we see. 
 
 In Memoriam. 
 
 Thus much at least is clearly understood — 
 Of power does Man possess no particle : 
 Of knowledge — just so much as shows that still 
 It ends in ignorance on every side. 
 
 Francis Furini. 
 
 ' Sad summing up of all ' is Browning's 
 own verdict on this conclusion. Ignorance, 
 necessary, inexpugnable, rooted in the very 
 nature of our minds, ignorance of precisely 
 those matters which, if true, are momentous 
 beyond aU else — how can man call such 
 a condition good, or not cry out 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 25 
 
 Oh, this false for real, 
 This emptiness which feigns solidity. — 
 Ever some grey that's white, and dun that's black — 
 When shall we rest on the thing itself, 
 Not on its semblance ? Soul — too weak, forsooth, 
 To cope with fact — wants fiction everywhere ! 
 Mine tires of falsehood : truth at any cost I 
 
 A Bean-Stripe. 
 
 Now, I believe that this impatience of 
 mere seeming is the proper attitude of the 
 human spirit. Amongst the needs of man, 
 meant to be satisfied, is the need of knowledge. 
 But a faith that is separated from reason 
 cannot satisfy this need. Those who rest 
 on such a faith, or have recourse to ' intuition ' 
 which is only tradition and habit in disguise, 
 or to ' feeling ' which in fact can give neither 
 truth nor error, are distinguished from the 
 Agnostic in nowise except that 'he is better 
 aware of his ignorance and more frank in 
 the confession of it. 
 
 This solution by means of an Agnostic 
 faith is much too easy to be right. It heals 
 the wounds of the soul too slightl}' : they 
 bleed afresh when touched by doubt. This, 
 indeed, is the universal e^Tperience of all 
 who have really doubted. Man has neither 
 
26 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 the right nor the power to be satisfied with 
 a faith that is divorced from reason. And 
 the rehgious man who reUes on such a 
 faith, gives away his case. 
 
 I beheve, moreover, that he is entitled 
 to take stronger ground. Nay, I shall try 
 to show that our poets, in spite of all they 
 say of knowledge, themselves take stronger 
 grounds. So far from ousting reason from 
 this great quest of Immortahty, they have 
 employed it as their guide ; and reason, so 
 far from failing them in their hour of need, 
 is just that which has gained for them 
 those splendid convictions which they 
 attribute to faith. Using the well-known 
 phrase of Kant, I may say that their faith is 
 the ' faith of reason.' It was reason that 
 selected the elements which it contains, 
 and it was reason that compacted these 
 elements into a consistent, congruous, and 
 self -sustained whole. 
 
 Their doubt of reason and despair of 
 knowledge arose, I believe, from confusion 
 as to their nature. And it is to confusion 
 of thought regarding these that we must 
 attribute much of that acknowledged and 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 27 
 
 unacknowledged Agnosticism of this and 
 other times, which is the insecure refuge of 
 intellectual despair. The importance of the 
 matter more than justifies us in dwelling 
 upon it with some fulness, for it is the joint 
 in the armour of religious behef at which 
 doubt always aims its fatal shaft. 
 
 It will assist us to remove this confusion 
 if we begin by distinguishing between Reason 
 and Logic. That distinction is precisely 
 parallel to the difference between Geology 
 and the earth, or Astronomy and the stars 
 and planets, or Botany and plants. Geology, 
 Astronomy, and Botany are sciences, or 
 more or less systematic bodies of knowledge ; 
 but the earth, the stars, the planets, the 
 plants, are the facts for which these sciences 
 offer an explanation. This is evident. We 
 do not confuse these, nor speak of the 
 theories as if they were the facts themselves. 
 But we are less careful in matters that pertain 
 to our mental life . We often confuse theology 
 which is the science of religion, with rehgion 
 which is the fact — and the supremest of 
 all the facts of our experience — much to the 
 detriment and dispeace of both private 
 
28 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 and public life. And still more frequently, 
 and with still wider ill effects, we confuse 
 between Logic, which is the science of 
 reason, and the process of reasoning for 
 which this science, even at its best, lamely 
 and most inadequately accounts. As a rule 
 ancient theories are accepted regarding this 
 psychological process, by which reason moves 
 from the httle to the better known ; and the 
 most general laws of logic are treated as if 
 they were adequate descriptions of the 
 operation of those most complex forces by 
 means of which experience grows. These 
 laws must, of course, be kept, just as the 
 merchant must add and subtract correctly 
 when he makes up his accounts. But just 
 as British commerce is more than addition 
 and subtraction, so the reason of man is 
 more than the logician's laws. Whether in 
 ordinary human intercourse or in the pursuit 
 of scientific knowledge, the elements which 
 lead us to our conclusions are so numerous 
 and so subtly interwoven as to render our 
 theoretic account of them entirely inadequate. 
 Here as elsewhere facts are larger than our 
 knowledge, and are known only imperfectly 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 29 
 
 and gradually. It is one thing to make use 
 of nerves and muscles in walking — this a 
 little child can do ; but not every physiologist 
 could name all the nerves and muscles that 
 the child calls into play. In Uke manner, 
 it is one thing to proceed from fact to fact 
 in knowledge, to bind truth to truth in the 
 ever more complex organism of experience ; 
 it is another thing to be able to set forth 
 one by one the organic filaments that give 
 it unity and order. A child may reason, 
 and he is always reasoning and he builds 
 up his world by reasoning ; but not all the 
 theorists in the world can tell us all about 
 the way in which he does it — so complex 
 is the process. 
 
 The complexity of the process is easily 
 accounted for. It arises from the fact that in 
 reasoning we bring the whole of our past 
 experience to bear upon the particular 
 statement we wish to test, or the object or 
 event we wish to comprehend. The mathe- 
 matician brings the knowledge, the literary 
 critic brings the experience of his lifetime, 
 to bear on each new problem. All our yester- 
 days are concentrated upon our to-day, and 
 
30 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 all our experience is in the field when we 
 reject or adopt a truth and try to form a 
 judgment. So wonderful is the accumulative 
 power of the human spirit. 
 
 Now, if this be really the rational process 
 which takes place, important consequences 
 follow. And especially this consequence : 
 that the truth which we test by means 
 of our experience and accept when tested 
 is built into the system of experience and 
 is supported by that system. This is as 
 much as to say that in such a case the 
 grounds on which we accept the fact, the 
 premises of our conclusion, are the totality 
 of our experience. So bound up are experi- 
 ence and the particular fact, that we cannot 
 admit the former without admitting the 
 latter, or deny the latter without over- 
 throwing the former. 
 
 This is the case with all those convictions 
 which we say are ' deeply felt.' They are 
 deeply felt. But their strength lies not in 
 the feeling. The feeling arises from the 
 consciousness of their strength, and their 
 strength from the fact that they have been 
 made one with our rational life by a thousand 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 3I 
 
 judgments and practical experiences. The 
 feeling of their vital truth is the result of 
 a satisfied intelligence, and the intelligence 
 is satisfied only when experience seems to 
 be a congruous whole. This truth is seen, 
 for example, in ordinary argumentation : 
 you endeavour to refute your opponent by 
 showing that his error carries some other 
 error with it, that this second error carries 
 still another, and that ultimately his whole 
 rational experience is imperilled by his 
 clinging to his false idea. You give him the 
 highwayman's choice — ' Your error, or your 
 intellectual hfe.' ' Deny this,' we say„ ' and 
 nothing remains,' for behind this, nay, incor- 
 porated with it and implicated in its fate, is 
 the whole system of your associated thoughts. 
 
 Such, then, is proof or the psychological 
 process called reasoning. It is the bringing 
 of facts together within a congruous or 
 systematic experience. The proof of any 
 fact or belief is at its strongest and completest 
 when its premises ramify into experience 
 as a whole, so that to deny it is to uproot 
 and destroy experience. 
 
 This is precisely the proof of Immortality 
 
32 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 that is offered by our poets. Grant us this 
 conception they say, make this life the prelude 
 to a life to come and the present world a 
 part of a larger cosmos, then its sin and sorrow 
 will have some significance, and God be at 
 least conceivably wise and just and merciful. 
 But refuse us this conception, and the 
 world becomes the scene either of iron 
 necessity or of bhnd chance ; man a pathetic 
 compound of greatness and littleness — great- 
 ness in his needs and aims and utter weakness 
 in the satisfaction of them ; while the Being 
 who could set so great a burden on so weak 
 a back, who could call the incongruity into 
 existence, is not a God but either a blundering 
 or a cruel monster. 
 
 Now, it is possible that the argument is 
 not sound, in the sense that there are false 
 steps in it ; but I desire to emphasize the 
 fact that, even if it be imperfectly applied, 
 the method is legitimate. It is in truth the 
 method followed by us in all our knowing, 
 and the one way we have of reasoning. 
 And hence, in this respect, it is not less and 
 not more open to the assault of scepticism 
 than the surest knowledge we possess. 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 33 
 
 Let me illustrate this identity of method 
 by reference to our scientific knowledge. 
 
 There is, I suppose, no physicist in the 
 world who would deny the truths which 
 Newton sought to express in his laws of 
 motion. He will tell us that they are the 
 presuppositions on which his whole science 
 rests. No sooner, however, has he said this 
 than the modem metaphysician seizes upon 
 the word ' presupposition,' and answers : 
 ' Yea, verily, your science rests upon pre- 
 suppositions, but " presupposition," like 
 " hypothesis," is only another word for an 
 assumption, a guess, a fabrication of the 
 mind, an intellectual construct which you use 
 for purposes of explanation.' And the 
 answer is right, and altogether irrefutable 
 so far as it goes. But only so far as it goes : 
 it is a truth, but not the whole truth. For 
 a presupposition, or hypothesis, is something 
 more than a guess, which man may concoct 
 at his own pleasure. It is a guess imposed 
 upon his mind by the facts, it is the mind's 
 first intuition of their meaning, it is the con- 
 struct of an intellect guided by the realm of 
 the real, and it is maintained only so long 
 
 c 
 
34 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 as the realm of reality seems to support it. 
 * Implicated with the truth of these laws of 
 motion is the whole of my science,' replies 
 the physicist ; nay, the whole of your own 
 daily doings as a physical agent. Deny these 
 truths and stand by your denial of them, 
 and it is not only my science which will fall 
 down in ruins, but your own practical life : you 
 will be able to move neither hand nor foot, 
 nor even the tongue that makes the denial. 
 Every act of yours, every muscle you expand 
 or contract in your standing or walking or 
 lying down, is a proof of the truth of these 
 principles. And surely what is proved by 
 every one, everywhere, at all times, and 
 whether he will or no, is tolerably secure, 
 even although it is still called a hypothesis.' 
 Now, there is no department of human life 
 in which analogous truths do not evince 
 themselves in similar ways ; in which, in 
 other words, there are not found broad 
 assumptions that are assumptions, but that 
 are assumptions secured, rendered more 
 and more impregnable, ratified, by every 
 new experience ; and which, therefore, 
 constitute just the surest knowledge that 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 35 
 
 we have. They are not undeniable. Nothing 
 is undeniable : sophistry can find nurture 
 in any garbage. But if they are denied, 
 the world becomes for the spirit of man a 
 Golgotha — a place of skulls — and amongst 
 the dead skulls is the sophist's own ; for 
 scepticism refutes itself as well as its 
 opponent and denies its own denial. 
 
 Nowhere does this truth appear more 
 clearly than in the matters of so-called 
 ' faith ' ; nowhere, in other words, is it 
 more evident that there are some principles 
 so vital to experience and therefore so 
 secured by experience {which is just the thing 
 that reasons) that to deny them is to reduce 
 the world into chaos. Doubt of them is 
 impossible : it turns into absurdity and 
 madness. ' The mere discussion by anyone 
 of the existence of God,' said that subtle 
 spirit, Heine, ' causes me to feel a strange 
 disquietude, an uneasy dread, such as I once 
 experienced in visiting New Bedlam, when, 
 for a moment, losing sight of my guide, 
 I was surrounded by madmen. God is all 
 that is, and doubt of his existence is doubt 
 of hfe itself ; it is death.' Heine had made 
 
36 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 the discovery that God was essentially 
 immanent in all his experience — the principle 
 of sanity in all his life. And if that was so, 
 then, indeed, had he attained the highest 
 proof of God's existence ; for all he was and 
 knew proved it. 
 
 Now, it is the use of this same method 
 of proof, however unconscious they were 
 of its value, that has lent such power to the 
 utterances of our poets. It is not the 
 strength of their conviction, in the sense of 
 the intensity of their feeling, that gives it 
 cogency, but the broad grounds on which 
 it rested. For the grounds were as broad 
 as their experience. 
 
 This world's no blot for us, 
 Nor blank ; it means intensely, and means good. 
 
 Fra Lippo Lippi. 
 
 O world, as God has made it ! All is beauty : 
 And knowing this is love, and love is duty. 
 Wliat further may be sought for, or declared ? 
 
 How can we account for the fact that 
 Browning who had sat so near the heart of 
 humanity and felt the depths of its sorrow 
 and crime and foolishness and frailty, could 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 37 
 
 SO consistently throughout his hfe strike a 
 note so free and full of joy ? Who told him 
 that failure is but success in the making 
 and that shadow implies light ? ' His heart,' 
 you will reply. And I agree. But what is 
 ' the heart ' in such a context, except the 
 whole rational experience of the man 
 chastened and purified and enlightened by 
 observation up and down the broad order 
 of things and the ways of men, and made 
 wise by much reflection. His faith was, 
 indeed, ' the faith of reason.' It was reason 
 that penetrated through the shows of life 
 to the reality, and recognized, amidst the 
 rubble, the fair proportions of the spiritual 
 edifice that was being built. It was reason 
 that stretched forth its hands and firmly 
 held the principle that gives meaning and 
 sanity and substance to the whole process. 
 And the method which his reason employed 
 is, in the last resort, identical with that 
 which distinguishes between seeming and 
 reality, first appearance and real meaning, 
 in the sciences ; and identical, too, with 
 that which establishes more and more 
 securely the broad hypothesis on which we 
 
38 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 base our common knowledge of common 
 things and our ordinary conduct and ways 
 of life. 
 
 Our poets, all unconsciously, follow the 
 methods of science and ordinary knowledge 
 in still other ways. They employ the nega- 
 tive tests to these hypotheses, just as is 
 done in other departments of knowledge. 
 Supposing, asks Tennyson, we deny man's 
 immortality, make the highest in man 
 end in extinction, disintegrate him into dust, 
 or shut him up into the rocks like a fossil — 
 what follows ? 
 
 Shall he, 
 
 Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, 
 Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 
 Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies. 
 
 Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, 
 
 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 ? 
 
 Is this his whole history ? Then, indeed, 
 is he a self-contradictory being, a standing 
 absurdity in the world. 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 39 
 
 No more ? A monster then, a dream. 
 A discord. Dragons of the prime, 
 That tare each other in their sUme, 
 
 Were mellow music match'd with him. 
 
 In Memoriam, Ivi* 
 
 In this answer there is implied the sense 
 of uttermost incongruity which comes from 
 the denial of a great principle, and whose 
 denial, therefore, only serves to make it 
 more sure. Again, they employ the opposite 
 or positive test. ' Grant us these great 
 truths,' they seem to say, ' and what follows ? 
 They become as a lamp to our feet and a 
 light to our path.' They show all things 
 in their proper place and order ; just as a 
 hypothesis brings system and significance 
 into the facts of natural science. 
 
 You groped your way across my room i' the dear dark 
 
 dead of night. 
 At each fresh step a stumble was : but, once your 
 
 lamp was alight. 
 Easy and plain you walked again : so soon all wTong 
 
 grew right ! Shah Abbas. 
 
 In the wide context of the lives to come, 
 sub specie aeternitatis, as Spinoza used to 
 say, the present hfe and its natural setting 
 become at least to some degree intelligible. 
 
40 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound. 
 
 Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing 
 
 might issue thence ? 
 Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should 
 
 be prized ? 
 
 Abt Vogler. 
 
 Thus did Browning find in this wider 
 conception that links the here to the here- 
 after and all to God, ' his resting place again,' 
 the C major of his life. ' His hypothesis 
 worked,' as we say ; and how much better 
 than any other ! 
 
 But there is still another way of testing 
 a hypothesis than this of forecasting the 
 broad consequences which result from its 
 assertion or its denial. It is that of detailed 
 experiment, and especially experiment by 
 ' negative instances,' to use the phrase 
 famihar to scientific men. And this, too, 
 our poets employed. They challenged their 
 doubts, and brought their behefs to the 
 proof of facts. Their virtue was no cloistered 
 virtue, nor their race won without the dust 
 and heat. This, above all, is the reason why 
 they have strengthened the faith of so many 
 thoughtful men and women, and exercised, 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 4I 
 
 justly I believe, so profound an influence upon 
 the religious life of their day. They had 
 themselves been ' perplcxt in faith ; but pure 
 in deeds ' ; and themselves ' they beat 
 their music out.' Men of vast learning and 
 a wide outlook, hating unbelief, but pre- 
 ferring even that to the sleepy confidence 
 of uninquiring ignorance, they were able 
 to look at the world through the eyes of 
 modem science, and they observed science, 
 neither without sympathy nor yet without 
 fear, build up step by step a natural world 
 of an order immutable and of laws inexorable, 
 apparently a blind mechanism at war with 
 weak humanity. And they at once ask the 
 ultimate question : ' Is the discord final, 
 then ? ' 
 
 Are God and Nature then at strife, 
 That Nature lends such evil dreams ? 
 So careful of the type she seems. 
 
 So careless of the single life ? 
 
 In Memortam, Iv. 
 
 ' Nay ! Is nature careful even of the 
 type ? ' Tennyson asks again, deepening 
 still further the strain of doubt. 
 
42 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 ' So careful of the type ? ' But no. 
 
 From scarped cliff and quarried stone 
 She cries, ' A thousand types are gone : 
 I care for nothing, all shall go.' 
 
 In Memoriam, Ivi. 
 
 ' The ideas of God and immortality are 
 not for the poet the result of reasoning upon 
 the phenomena of external Nature, He 
 appears to have held consistently throughout 
 his life, that if we did not bring them with us 
 to the examination of Nature, but simply 
 used our reason upon it without taking into 
 account the evidence derived from our own 
 nature, we should not believe either in 
 God or in immortality.' ^ And his conclu- 
 sion from such premises was just. Nature 
 severed from man and the spiritual possi- 
 bilities he brings with him is, indeed, a 
 defective witness. But Nature with man 
 left out is not Nature, but a fragment of 
 her real self — a fragment, too, that leaves 
 the highest unexpressed. But place man in 
 Nature, and Nature in man ; let Nature 
 produce him and let him express her meaning, 
 and we have no longer the impossible task 
 
 ^ Professor A. C. Bradley, ' Commentary on lu Memoriam.' 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 43 
 
 to confront of deducing the living from the 
 dead. Main throws fresh hght upon the 
 processes which have brought him into 
 being. 
 
 From the grand result 
 A supplementary- rcllux of light, 
 Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains 
 Each back step in the circle. . . . 
 .... Man, once descried, imprints for ever 
 His presence on all life-less tilings : the winds 
 Are henceforth voices, wailing or a shout, 
 A querulous mutter, or a quick gay laugh. 
 Never a senseless gust now man is bom. 
 The herded pines commune and have deep thoughts, 
 A secret they assemble to discuss. 
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 and so on, throughout the close of that 
 magnificent early poem of Browning, wherein 
 his promise shows so vast that even his great 
 hfe-work has never seemed to me quite to 
 fulfil it. With man come intelligence, with 
 man come spiritual qualities, weak enough 
 at first, but spiritual all the same ; and 
 amongst them come love and with love, 
 God himself. And Love explains all, for 
 it finds itself everywhere^^ It makes Para- 
 celsus wise at length 
 
44 TH^ IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 To trace love's faint beginnings in mankind. 
 
 To know even hate is but a mask of love's, 
 
 To see a good in evil, and a hope 
 
 In ill-success ; to sympathise, be proud 
 
 Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim 
 
 Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies. 
 
 Their prejudice and fears and cares and doubts ; 
 
 All with a touch of nobleness, despite 
 
 Their error, upward tending all though weak. 
 
 Like plants in mines which never saw the sun, 
 
 But dream of him, and guess where he may be, 
 
 And do their best to climb and get to him. 
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 Here at last, do Tennyson and Browning 
 find a conception which is adequate to their 
 needs. Nature impMes man ; man, in virtue 
 of his spiritual qualities, and especially of 
 his love, implies God ; and God, who is 
 most of all God in his love, brings with him 
 all the things that man can need, and amongst 
 these ' Immortality, or something better ' — 
 if better there can be. Such, in the last 
 resort, is the argument advanced by both 
 our poets. Love is the good supreme, the 
 veritable substance beneath the shows of 
 hfe, the reality within their seeming. 
 
 There is no good of hfe but love — but love ! 
 
 What else looks good, is some shade flung from love. 
 
 Love gilds it, gives it worth. 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 45 
 
 There is no fact which, if seen to the heart, 
 will not prove to have love for its purpose, 
 and, therefore, for its real being and essence. 
 It is the one positive and constitutive 
 principle in the nature of things. And it is 
 through it, as the bursting into some new 
 form of an elemental, all-per\'ading power, 
 that every event in the history of the world 
 and of man is ultimately to be explained. 
 This is the light, the logos, the divine word, 
 which makes all things plain ; which shows 
 that 
 
 No detail but, in place allotted it, was prime 
 And perfect. 
 
 If I stoop 
 Into a dark tremendous sea of cloud. 
 It is but for a time : I press God's lamp 
 Close to my breast ; its splendour, soon or late, 
 Will pierce the gloom : I shall emerge one day. 
 
 Paracelsus. 
 
 Both Teimyson and Browning would 
 attribute this final assurance to something 
 else than knowledge, and they would not 
 call it proof. 
 
 Like an /Eolian harp that wakes 
 
 No certain air, but overtakes 
 
 Far thought with music that it makes : 
 
46 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 Such seem'd the whisper at my side : 
 
 ' What is it thou knowest, sweet voice ? ' I cried. 
 
 ' A hidden hope,' the voice repUed : 
 
 So heavenly-toned, that in that hour 
 From out my sullen heart a power 
 Broke, like the rainbow from the shower. 
 
 To feel, altho' no tongue can prove. 
 That every cloud, that spreads above 
 And veileth love, itself is love. 
 
 The Two Voices. 
 
 Their certainty was what is usually called 
 immediate, intuitive ; it anticipated know- 
 ledge and outran proof. But we have found 
 the same so-called intuition, the same out- 
 running of proof — which is really the forecast 
 of reason and the first step of proof — in 
 aU our knowledge. We have examples of 
 it in every science, and above all in the 
 conception of the world as ruled by law 
 that somehow secures permanence amidst 
 change, unity in variety, and the strength 
 that clothes itself with beauty. It is in 
 this faith, or on this hypothesis, that science 
 seeks to know and man leads his daily life. 
 And this hypothesis is not proved, for there 
 are still in the natural world causes we 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 47 
 
 cannot trace, effects we cannot account for. 
 Ihit it is being proved. Science, philosophy, 
 nay, the common thoughts of men and their 
 common actions are, in the last resort, 
 nothing else but one continuous and unresting 
 proof of it. It remains a hypothesis, and 
 will remain a hypothesis to the end of time ; 
 but it is a hypothesis surer than any particular 
 fact, for it is a condition of the meaning of 
 every fact. This is why I should call it 
 knowledge. And in the same sense, I call 
 that knowledge which our poets call ' faith.' 
 
 Now, it is no new thing in our days thus 
 to assimilate rehgious behef to the creed of 
 science, and to say that the latter like the 
 former rests on hypothesis. But it is in- 
 tended thereby to disarm the reason that 
 questions as well as the reason that answers. 
 This is to defend the weakness of the one 
 by the weakness of the other, and to seek 
 refuge in the darkest depths of despair. 
 
 And yet even this argument is not without 
 its truth or without its use. It is true 
 that all our knowledge — not philosophy, not 
 science only, but the knowledge that ' thou 
 art thou and hast hands and feet ' — rests 
 
48 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 on hypothesis. The element of truth in 
 this argument is, Uke every truth, a useful 
 truth. And its use lies here : it shows 
 this, at least, that Agnosticism, Positivism, 
 Scepticism have no right to concentrate 
 their attacks upon man's religious beliefs 
 alone. The argument they direct against 
 these behefs apphes in the same manner 
 and has precisely the same validity when 
 directed against all other knowledge, even 
 that which appears to be most immediate 
 and direct. The argument, therefore, proves 
 too much. It destroys the very engines of 
 attack, for it destroys the knowledge with 
 which knowledge is assailed. 
 
 ' You play the order of Nature, against 
 the higher order of moral law and religious 
 faith,' we can say to them. ' But your 
 probing is not deep enough, and your doubts 
 lack courage. Probe further, intensify your 
 doubt, use your weapons and spare not. 
 You will then find that your weapons are 
 turned against your own breast, and that 
 you are rending your own vitals. You have 
 a half-truth in your hands, and it is the sure 
 mark of a half-truth that it refutes itself, 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 49 
 
 and makes room for a fuller truth. You 
 have remembered that your beliefs rest on 
 hypotheses : you have forgotten that tliere 
 are some hypotheses which are so inwrought 
 into the very texture of rational experience 
 that to deny them is to destroy experience.' 
 
 Such a hypothesis, I believe, is the hypo- 
 thesis in which our poets found an anchor 
 that held. And if I have not misunderstood 
 the most daring and, on the whole, the most 
 successful of all the schemes which modern 
 thought has employed to bring some order 
 into this strange world, and into the still 
 stranger life of man, it rests upon the same 
 hypothesis and brings the same message to 
 mankind. It is the hypothesis of God. 
 
 Harbouring no error that it can detect, 
 fostering no hope however fair that merely 
 flatters, fearing no failure, or contradiction, 
 or sorrow or sin that darkens human life, 
 but confronting them all with open brow, 
 nay, recognizing that on every hand and in 
 every detail of the simplest fact there are 
 meanings it cannot fathom, it still finds its 
 hypothesis work. That which the idea of 
 cause is to the common mind, or the concep- 
 
50 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 tion of the order of nature to the man of 
 science — a principle he must hold true or 
 cease to think, and which he is always proving 
 though no proof is final — such is the concep- 
 tion of God to the Idealist. He finds it 
 implied in all his knowledge, the final premise 
 of all his Ufe. To this conception he returns 
 from all his wanderings ; indeed it has 
 followed him all the way, for it is the very 
 life of aU his thinking. 
 
 That it is ' only a hypothesis ' is true ; 
 and being only a hypothesis, designed to 
 bring order into the Ufe of man and intelligible 
 coherence into the scheme of things, it must 
 stand side by side with other hypotheses — 
 with chance, or fate, with matter or blind 
 necessity. And need we fear the comparison? 
 Can we not ask of this conception what 
 order is there in the hfe of man or in the 
 world, which is not at least conceivably 
 of its bringing ; what achievement, whether 
 in knowledge or in goodness, which it has 
 not inspired and guided ? Ultimate proof 
 of its truth can only come when there is 
 no enigma which in its light does not become 
 plain, and the Universe is seen to be the 
 
IN TENNYSON AND BROWNING 51 
 
 transparent garment of God. But what 
 advance is there which is not a progressive 
 proof that it is valid ? What is the move- 
 ment of civilization itself except a gradual 
 revelation of God, and the coming of his 
 kingdom ? Or is there a better fate that 
 we can desire for man, who ' learns through 
 evil that God is best,' than this of finding 
 ever more fuUy as the ages move that he 
 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. 
 
 In Memoriam, cxxxi. 
 
 Man has the right of reason to this faith, 
 and this faith brings with it, to quote the 
 wise words of Dr. Edward Caird, ' If not 
 Immortality, then something better, if better 
 there can be.' 
 

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