Excerpt: ...is as the lamp which overswims with oil, the stomach which flags from excess of food: his mind is being starved by the very abundance of what was meant to nourish it. Man was spiritually living, when he shrank appalled from the spectacle of Nature, and needed to be assured that there was a might beyond its might. But when he says, 'Since Might is everywhere, there is no need of Will;' though he knows from his own experience how Might may combine with Will, then is he spiritually dead. And man is spiritually ...
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Excerpt: ...is as the lamp which overswims with oil, the stomach which flags from excess of food: his mind is being starved by the very abundance of what was meant to nourish it. Man was spiritually living, when he shrank appalled from the spectacle of Nature, and needed to be assured that there was a might beyond its might. But when he says, 'Since Might is everywhere, there is no need of Will;' though he knows from his own experience how Might may combine with Will, then is he spiritually dead. And man is spiritually living, when he asks if there be love "Behind the will and might, as real as they?" (vol. vii. p. 140.) But when he reasons: since love is everywhere, and we love and would be loved, we make the love which we recognize as Christ: and Christ was not; then is he spiritually dead. For the loss which comes through gain is death, and the sole death." (b) The second objection he answers by reverting to his first statement. "Man is made for progress. He could not progress if his doubtings were at once changed to certainties, and all he struggles for at once found. He must yearn for truth, and grasp at error as a 'midway help' to it. He must learn and unlearn. He must creep from fancies on to fact; and correct to-day's facts by the light of to-morrow's knowledge. He must be as the sculptor, who evokes a life-like form from a lump of clay, ever seeing the reality in a series of false presentments; attaining it through them, God alone makes the live shape at a jet." The tenderness which has underlain even John's remonstrances culminates in his closing words. "If there be a greater woe than this (the doubt) which he has lived to see, may he," he says, "be 'absent, ' though it were for another hundred years, plucking the blind ones from the abyss." "But he was dead." (vol. vii. p. 146.) The record has a postscript, written not by the same person, but in his name, confronting the opinions of St. John with...
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Add this copy of A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th Ed.) to cart. $35.22, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2011 by Tredition Classics.
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Add this copy of A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th Ed. ) to cart. $60.33, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Hialeah, FL, UNITED STATES, published 2011 by Tredition Classics.
