Introduction to Robert Browning [66]
one must not be merely subjected to the other, not even the inferior to the superior. Let us cry, "All good things are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul."
Let, then, youth enter into its heritage, and use and enjoy it; let it then pass into an approved manhood, "for aye removed from the developed brute; a God, though in the germ"; let it pass fearless and unperplexed as to what weapons to select, what armor to indue for the battle which awaits that approved manhood.
Youth ended, let what it has resulted in, be taken account of; wherein it succeeded, wherein it failed; and having proved the past, let it face the future, satisfied in acting to-morrow what is learned to-day.
As it was better that youth should awkwardly strive TOWARD making, than repose in what it found made, so is it better that age, exempt from strife, should know, than tempt further. As in youth, age was waited for, so in age, wait for death, without fear, and with the absolute soul-knowledge which is independent of the reasoning intellect of youth. It is this absolute soul-knowledge which severs great minds from small, rather than intellectual power.
Human judgments differ. Whom shall my soul believe? One conclusion may, at least, be rested in: a man's true success must not be estimated by things done, which had their price in the world; but by that which the world's coarse thumb and finger failed to plumb; by his immature instincts and unsure purposes which weighed not as his work in the world's estimation, yet went toward making up the main amount of his real worth; by thoughts which could not be contained in narrow acts, by fancies which would not submit to the bonds of language; by all that he strived after and could not attain, by all that was ignored by men with only finite and realizable aims: such are God's standards of his worth.
All the true acquisitions of the soul, all the reflected results of its energizing after the unattainable in this life, all that has truly BEEN, belong to the absolute, and are permanent amid all earth's changes. It is, indeed, through these changes, through the dance of plastic circumstance, that the permanent is secured. They are the machinery, the Divine Potter's wheel, which gives the soul its bent, tries it, and turns it forth a cup for the Master's lips, sufficiently impressed.
"So take and use Thy work! Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! My times be in Thy hand! Perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same."
The following account of Rabbi Ben Ezra, I take from Dr. F. J. Furnivall's `Bibliography of Rober Browning' (`Browning Soc. Papers', Part II., p. 162): --
"Rabbi Ben Ezra, or Ibn Ezra, was a learned Jew, 1092-1167 A.D. Ibn Ezra and Maimonides, whom he is said to have visited in Egypt, were two of the four great Philosophers or Lights of the Jews in the Middle Ages. Ibn Ezra was born at Toledo in Spain, about 1092 or 1093 A.D., or in 1088 according to Graetz, `Geschichte der Juden', vi. 198. He was poor, but studied hard, composed poems wherewith to `Adorn my own, my Hebrew nation', married, had a son Isaac (a poet too), travelled to Africa, the Holy Land, Rome in 1140, Persia, India, Italy, France, England. He wrote many treatises on Hebrew Grammar, astronomy, mathematics, &c., commentaries on the books of the Bible, &c. -- many of them in Rome -- and two pamphlets in England `for a certain Salomon of London'. Joseph of Maudeville was one of his English pupils. He died in 1167, at the age of 75, either in Kalahorra, on the frontier of Navarre, or in Rome. His commentary on Isaiah has been englished by M. Friedlaender, and published by the Society of Hebrew Literature, Truebner, 1873. From the Introduction to that book I take these details. Ibn Ezra believed in a future life. In his commentary on Isaiah 55:3, `AND YOUR SOUL SHALL LIVE', he says, `That is, your soul shall live forever after the death of the body, or you will receive new
Let, then, youth enter into its heritage, and use and enjoy it; let it then pass into an approved manhood, "for aye removed from the developed brute; a God, though in the germ"; let it pass fearless and unperplexed as to what weapons to select, what armor to indue for the battle which awaits that approved manhood.
Youth ended, let what it has resulted in, be taken account of; wherein it succeeded, wherein it failed; and having proved the past, let it face the future, satisfied in acting to-morrow what is learned to-day.
As it was better that youth should awkwardly strive TOWARD making, than repose in what it found made, so is it better that age, exempt from strife, should know, than tempt further. As in youth, age was waited for, so in age, wait for death, without fear, and with the absolute soul-knowledge which is independent of the reasoning intellect of youth. It is this absolute soul-knowledge which severs great minds from small, rather than intellectual power.
Human judgments differ. Whom shall my soul believe? One conclusion may, at least, be rested in: a man's true success must not be estimated by things done, which had their price in the world; but by that which the world's coarse thumb and finger failed to plumb; by his immature instincts and unsure purposes which weighed not as his work in the world's estimation, yet went toward making up the main amount of his real worth; by thoughts which could not be contained in narrow acts, by fancies which would not submit to the bonds of language; by all that he strived after and could not attain, by all that was ignored by men with only finite and realizable aims: such are God's standards of his worth.
All the true acquisitions of the soul, all the reflected results of its energizing after the unattainable in this life, all that has truly BEEN, belong to the absolute, and are permanent amid all earth's changes. It is, indeed, through these changes, through the dance of plastic circumstance, that the permanent is secured. They are the machinery, the Divine Potter's wheel, which gives the soul its bent, tries it, and turns it forth a cup for the Master's lips, sufficiently impressed.
"So take and use Thy work! Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! My times be in Thy hand! Perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same."
The following account of Rabbi Ben Ezra, I take from Dr. F. J. Furnivall's `Bibliography of Rober Browning' (`Browning Soc. Papers', Part II., p. 162): --
"Rabbi Ben Ezra, or Ibn Ezra, was a learned Jew, 1092-1167 A.D. Ibn Ezra and Maimonides, whom he is said to have visited in Egypt, were two of the four great Philosophers or Lights of the Jews in the Middle Ages. Ibn Ezra was born at Toledo in Spain, about 1092 or 1093 A.D., or in 1088 according to Graetz, `Geschichte der Juden', vi. 198. He was poor, but studied hard, composed poems wherewith to `Adorn my own, my Hebrew nation', married, had a son Isaac (a poet too), travelled to Africa, the Holy Land, Rome in 1140, Persia, India, Italy, France, England. He wrote many treatises on Hebrew Grammar, astronomy, mathematics, &c., commentaries on the books of the Bible, &c. -- many of them in Rome -- and two pamphlets in England `for a certain Salomon of London'. Joseph of Maudeville was one of his English pupils. He died in 1167, at the age of 75, either in Kalahorra, on the frontier of Navarre, or in Rome. His commentary on Isaiah has been englished by M. Friedlaender, and published by the Society of Hebrew Literature, Truebner, 1873. From the Introduction to that book I take these details. Ibn Ezra believed in a future life. In his commentary on Isaiah 55:3, `AND YOUR SOUL SHALL LIVE', he says, `That is, your soul shall live forever after the death of the body, or you will receive new