Canto the Fifth. A cheery Theorist.
1. Ranolf goes over old ground. 2. ‘Will’—First Cause—displays
‘Mental’ powers. 3. Man could invent Geometry: long after,
knowledge of the Universe proved that ‘God geometrizes’ too. Resemblance
so far between Finite and Infinite ‘Mind.’
4. Perhaps a like resemblance in the ‘Moral’ Sphere. Science virtually
admits the possibility. 5. Does existence of Evi lnegative it? Evil
revolts our divinely-given Finite Moral Nature; may revolt the
Infinite too; though permitted for a purpose.
6. Our Moral standard (Love, etc.) should be as true as that Mental one.
7. Is it? The Will Divine shown by a dominant Power. Such
Power certainly the Good. So the Moral Universe tends to harmony
with our Moral standard. 8. This, if not satisfied here, why not
elsewhere?
9. And as the mental standard foretold stars to fill gaps it found in the
Physical, may not our moral one foretell completion of defects in the
Moral Universe? 10. Ranolf concludes optimistically.
I.
Pondering on Amo's questions, while the Maid
So lightly slumbered, lulled in noontide rest
So still, the golden spots that flecked its shade
Moved only with her moving half-hid breast,
Perplexed and doubtful Ranolf lay.
“What must I teach her? how impress
This pliant Spirit's willingness?
On this unlettered Soul so white
What characters am I to write?
What truths in sooth have I to tell
To one whose native instincts might,
For aught I know, teach me as well?—
For I know nothing; could but play
With some results our Sages say
Are truths—and let them take their way.
Where are we? let us run again
O'er what of old seemed clear and plain.
With nothing else have we to do
But what we know or feel is true.”—
His train of thought we cannot far pursue:
How the old grounds for hopeful faith—some few
And intellectual mainly, from the mass
Too vast for swift reviewal, he ran through.
All but some slight analogies we pass;
Themselves but shadows in a darkling glass;
Faint inklings of itself—imperfect hints
On Finite Mind the Infinite imprints.
II.
“Cause—say a Power that causes—this
Long since we saw must be and is.
Dead Matter too we saw and see
The cause of Force could never be.
Saw while through Nature's circling zone
None but results of Force are shown,
One kind of source or cause of Force—
One kind of Causal Power alone
The Mind as thinkable could seize:
The Will that in ourselves we own
Sets Thought in motion when we please.
So then we found it fair to hold
This Will might some faint hint unfold
Of what in its unboundedness
Is different still beyond all guess—
The Infinite Power—unknown—untold—
That still unfolding—still o'erseeing—
Still sets the glories we behold
For ever whirling into Being!
Sunclear we found it too—there shine
Throughout the works that Cause Divine
In its high Universe effects,
Proofs of all powers (perhaps its least
Although to infinite increased)
Which by the human Mind displayed
Infinitesimal in grade,
This last in some slight way reflects.
Nor feared nor fear we this maybe
Anthropomorphic fallacy—
Treading the path so often trod—
In Man's own image making ‘God!’
III.
“For say—for powers so proved—what name
But ‘Mind’—could reason find or frame?—
And does not one strange fact proclaim,
Nay, prove this bounded Mind of Man
In some accordance made, or grown,
With that all-boundless Mind unknown
That did the mighty Cosmos plan—
Faint spark from its omnific Flame?—
A thousand years that human Mind
Its subtle sciences designed
Of numbers—angles—ratios—lines—
Complex ingenious symbol-signs—
Pure brainwork as the wildest dream!
Then, when the long research of Time,
For Man's rapt gaze withdraws the veil
That hides the Universe sublime,
To his amazement, lo! the scheme
Of the majestic fabric stands
Before him, fitting to the Scale
So long prepared by his own hands;
In strictest keeping ranged and wrought
With fine gradations, ratios, rules,
Spun out of his unaided Thought
So many an age before, and taught
As abstract Science in his schools.
'Tis as if God himself blazed out
A moment there! beyond all doubt
Perceived—the still small voice profound
Speaking for once with trumpet-sound!
A glimpse of the All-Puïssant say
A moment deigning to display
Some kinship of its mind with ours—
Its infinite with our finite powers!
To prove how in our mind could lurk
Some power to scale some little way
Unconsciously the self-same heights
Where soared its own imperial flights;
Power to invent, construct, do work,
Though far-off, faint, in thought alone,
In strict accordance with its own!
IV.
“But the Infinite Echo the Finite could waken
When the Intellect's rockier region it tried—
Can it tempt from that Mystery tones unmistaken
When it calls in the far-aloft forest-recesses
Where the Heart and its finer-winged progeny hide?—
Well—to speak not of ‘Duty’; all ‘Conscience’ impresses;
All the hints and the hopes in the consciousness pleading
For kinship more close with the Boundless and Blest;
Even Science allows that the ‘Energy’ feeding
The Universe-Life and Mankind's at its best,
(Like the meaner blood-life though unconscious, unheeding,
With the life of the Man co-existent, agreeing)
But a lower subordinate function may prove
Of some Life more sublime—a still loftier Being!
But confess, there's no Life we can think of, above
The highest this human can reach at its height,
Save what may to Reason all-perfect unite—
And to Will that could never be swerved from the Right,
The ideal of boundless Benevolence—Love!
Then, as we found betwixt the two—
The Finite and the Infinite—
In mental working—sound if slight
Resemblance—kinship faint yet true;
We might with less of self-conceit
And with assurance more complete
Expect (what seems ev'n requisite
For Nature's harmony alone)
In high emotions of the Heart,
The human Being's nobler part,
A like resemblance should be shown.
V.
“Ah, here we strike the stubborn rock!—
One boundless Mind—First Cause of All—
That mighty Fact not Physics, no,
Nor metaphysics can o'erthrow!
And ‘Infinite Will’—without a shock
To Reason we may dimly deem
The Force that works the Wondrous Scheme!
Thus much will pass. But how to call
That Cause all good—that Infinite Will
Omnipotent? with Evil still
So rampant? even the babe unborn
By reckless Sires' diseases torn?
The ‘God-made’ cat before your hearth
Torturing the ‘God-made’ mouse for mirth?
Well, these things outrage all our sense
Of Justice—Love—Benevolence—
All the instinctive moral powers
That most exalt this soul of ours;
These instincts now, howe'er they grew,
From inner impulse—outer force,
Or interaction of the two,
Weaving in brain the fibres due,
With all ‘like breeding like’ might do,—
Yet surely sprang from that sole source—
Were caused by Prescient Will divine—
Made spring and grow so by design;
These instincts so ‘God-made’ we say,
Make what allowances you list
For Evil's uses, ends, excuses—
Are jarred, revolted every way
That any Evil should exist!
Then may we not deem that the Power whence came
Those diviner emotions, whatever its name,
Though we never may prove for what reason or aim
It permits all the Evil, may yet in the vast
Unknown of its Being—its schemes undisclosed,
Be accordant so far with the highest we claim,
As to will that this Evil be hated—opposed—
By the Good it is used for be one day outcast—
In the end overcome—done away with at last?
VI.
“Why should indeed the Power that gave
To man that mental standard, found
As true, complete, as wish could crave
To gauge the sensuous Universe
As its majestic shows unfurled—
Be deemed to mock, as stinted, bound
By some defect, some flaw unsound,
Man's dearer need with any worse
A standard of his moral World?
Our Love, distinctly his own dower
As is that calculating power—
As surely our one gauge, the best—
His spiritual Creation's test;
Why should it be less true, complete?
Why should it only prove a cheat?
VII.
“Or does that ‘Will Divine’ in fact
As in this world we see it act—
Permitting Evil—prove thereby
Our standard false, that ‘Love’ a lie?—
Long since we learnt one true reply.
For own—the Will Divine must be
Denoted by some power at least
Of overmastering energy,
Throughout the Universe we see
Or that we see not; one whose sway
Is active—in the ascendant—free—
Ever increasing and increased;
Not one that flourish how it may—
Is worsted—weaker—giving way.
In the material World, we know,
Though Action and Re-action show
Equal and needed both; although
Both motion and inertness seem
Balanced—essential to the scheme;
Yet so-called Matter, in the last
Result of that harmonious strife,
Is whirled into victorious life;
Resistance in the glorious sum
Of things, is overborne, surpassed—
If still renewed, is still o'ercome.
Well, what results is what is willed—
The intended—that which is fulfilled.
So in the moral World—the Good
Is counteracted and withstood
By Evil; yet this last, 'tis clear
(The matter of the moral sphere)
Is found, as the long centuries roll,
Still more and more subdued—outdone;
Of those two forces, on the whole
The losing and the lessening one.
Although the contest ceases never,
Though nothing may the two dissever,
Though Evil may the stuff supply
Good works on—here has being by;
Yet, as Time flies, who can deny,
For guerdon of the World's endeavour,
Good triumphs—there is Progress ever!—
No doubt, the single Will Divine
Decrees and works both powers; as, when
A rower directs a pair of sculls,
With one hand backs, the other pulls—
Both acts are caused by one design.
So Evil seconds Good; but then
The most triumphant element,
The victor principle, must best
That Universal Will suggest,
Best argue the Supreme Intent.
So even in the World we see,
Good grows—and grows unceasingly:
This Will must therefore be confessed—
As far as our Experience shows,
Or finite faculties disclose
Its working—on the whole to tend
Triumphantly to some great end
In harmony with that high test
Itself first planted in Man's breast,
With this intent among the rest.
VIII.
“But why, because that mighty Will
Cannot be said, within the bound
Of our perceptions to fulfil
All that the test, so true and sound,
Demands—insists on; why declare
Its wondrous working ceases where
Our poor perceptions do?—why fear
To say that what it breaks off here
It perfects in some other sphere?
Why carry through all Time and Space
The flaw we only know has place
Within the narrow field we trace?
Why this avowed, yet finite Wrong,
Into the Infinite prolong?—
More true to Reason 'tis, to trust
That standard of the Good and Just
And Loving—trust its dictates too.
If this world wrongs that standard true,
It wrongs God's Love, God's Right no less;
That wrong His justice must redress:
And how? but by some other state
Where compensation must await
All wrongs endured by small or great;
All Love's requirements be supplied—
The God-given standard justified?
IX.
“Aye truly! and as when by mere appliance
Of that brain-fashioned scale of Abstract Science
To the Star-worlds on high, diviners bold
Have sometimes found a gap—declared a flaw
In our serenest dance of sister spheres;
And with a god-like confidence foretold
The missing Planet needed by their law:
And when the optic tube, redoubling sight,
Comes in the course of long-revolving years
To test the startling prophecy aright—
Lo! there the cinders of the crumbled World,
Of proper weight, in fitting orbit hurled!
Or down in some obscure recess of Space,
Lo! there the lurking lost one they will trace,
And in some shining crowd you least suspect,
The furtive golden fugitive detect!—
Even so—when Love, that test diviner far,
Finds mightier flaws the moral fabric mar,
With full assurance may he not foretell
Some compensating cure must somewhere dwell—
Some good that shall the sense of wrong dispel?
And if immortal Life and nothing less
Be needed that deficience to redress,
Is it a splendour of too vast an orb,
Too bright for those whose gloom it should absorb—
Too grand a boon by Man to be enjoyed,
With his material kinship to the clod?—
Nay—'tis a speck to Him who left the void;
A World to us—a tiny Asteroid
To the infinite Munificence of God!
Well then—through all that glittering mystery
Man sees that each demand brings its supply;
Responsive forces each stray force correct,
All waste restored, all aberrations checked;
Till perfect in all parts before him stands
The mighty structure from the Master's hands.
With no harsh note—no inharmonious noise,
Vast Worlds in myriads wing their flight sublime;
Their balanced whirl no chance, no change destroys;
But every pebble finds its counterpoise,
And every Star comes rounding up to time!—
So were the Spirit-World found perfect too
Could we its whole completed cycle view;
No wrong its neutralizing right would miss;
No sorrow some equivalent of bliss;
And every Soul whate'er its make or mood,
Though long or short the circuit it pursued,
Come brightening back at last to happiness and good!”
X.
But why prolong the sanguine strain?
When even to Ranolf's self 'twas plain,
The coolest, soberest argument,
With or without his own intent
(Nor made thereby, perhaps, less true)
Although no kindling orb firenew
Whirled freshly off some teeming train
Of heated vapours of the brain;
Say but a cinder of dead thought
From smashed-up creed or theory brought;
Soon by the heart's attraction caught,
By feeling's friction set aflame,
Straightway a shooting-star became—
A mildly-flashing Meteorite
That haply shed a shadowy light
O'er nooks which Doubt had steeped in night!
His glad conclusions this, we said,
From Truth not more aberrant made.
For will not, in all likelihood,
The Future's final faith (or growth
In faith—if faith be understood
A thing of no finality)
Some joint result and compound both
Of Intellect and Feeling be—
Outcome of Heart as well as Mind
Of universal Humankind?—
But these will never loose their hold
Or lessen their august demands
On Hope! or from her Angel hands
Take brass for all her promised gold!
Small wonder then, and less reproach
To Ranolf, if the soothing hour—
That silvery-crimson crystal bower
Of bliss—and all the bloom and pride
Of Love and beauty by his side—
Lapping his soul in such excess
And luxury of loveliness—
On Reason's sphere might so encroach
With subtler, more persuasive power
And rosy light their radiance lent,—
Soon to a close his musings drew
In hardihood of rich content
That half to careless rapture grew!
“Enough—enough! I know—I knew
To sense and reason's widest view,
The cheerful still must be the true!
Look up, my love! nor longer keep
That sweet pretence of trustful sleep;
I know beneath each full-orbed lid
The coiled-up living lustre hid
Lurks ready for an innocent dart—
Not aimed at—sure to hit—the heart;
And round the placid lips the while
Dawns the faint twilight of a smile!
Then listen, sweet! and let me try
To queries wide what seems to me
In this our great obscurity
A true—albeit a trite reply?”
