CHAPTER XIV SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY 'HE later poems of Tennyson are full of speculative TH theology, and of an interesting kind; that kind. which not only reveals character, but also opens out those more uncommon regions of the mind where life and character combining have produced strange gardens of thought. The poet does not move here in the moral world, or as the emotional imager of life, or as the builder of tales by the harp of imagination; but in the world beyond the senses, where things are felt and thought, not seen and proved; in the great deeps of passionate conjecture. And what he thinks there, and how he feels in that spaceless and timeless country, unveil to us some of the secret places of his character. I have used the word "passionate" above, because, unless such speculations are warmed by fire from the heart, they are not fit subjects for poetry. Tennyson's speculative subjects-such as, Where was the soul before its birth ?—take their rise always from the cries of love within him for satisfaction, and, since they come from that source, their treatment by him is always poetical. I have also used the word "conjecture" above, in order to distinguish these subjects from others which he did. not regard as matters of speculation, but of faith. Tennyson believed in God and that God cared for men ; and he naturally wrote with glowing warmth about One in whom he thus believed. I might quote many passages to prove this, but I quote only one. It is his great hymn, a solemn anthem rather, into which he drew all the thoughts and their attendant emotions which during his life and in his poems he had conceived, felt, and expressed concerning the Father of men : I. Hallowed be Thy name-Halleluiah! Infinite Ideality! Immeasurable Reality! Infinite Personality! Hallowed be Thy name-Halleluiah! II. We feel we are nothing-for all is Thou and in Thee; This, then, is not matter of speculation to Tennyson; but, in what special ways, independent of an outward revelation, this mighty Spirit communicated Himself to the individual soul; and how He was connected with the universe of Nature-these were matters of conjecture, and the poet made many speculations concerning them. Then again, immortality (that is the continuous consciousness of one's own personality after death) was a matter of faith to Tennyson! It was fully set forth in In Memoriam. It became troubled after that poem, as I have said; but his faith in it fought like a hero against armies of doubt. It finally settled down into absolute conviction. But, in what way we were immortal; whether we were instantly alive and active after dissolution or slept for a time; whether we were still in connection with those we loved on earth; whether we moved onward in that new world as slowly as on earth; what our relation to the universe was after death; whether we returned in a new life to earth, losing memory but retaining our essential personality; whether we existed before we were born into this world, and if so, of what kind was that existence ;-these and many others were matters of speculation. The first of these is his conjecture with regard to the origin of the soul, that is, according to him, that essential part of infinite Being which, joined to the infant, becomes personal on earth. He assumes its existence; and he held, as a speculation, that it was in God before it took form on earth. Whether he adopted the further view that it was conscious then of a separate life, I cannot make out with any clearness from his poems. Sometimes it seems as if he did think this, but chiefly not. The soul was a part of God's life, but in that general life it had no self-consciousness. When a man was to be born, a part, a spark of the divine essence, was taken forth, as it were, out of the vast Deep of Spirit, and for the time of life on earth was enfolded in that which we call matter, with all its relative limitations, in order that this piece of immortal essence, the soul, might develop and realise a separate personality, understanding that he was himself, and always to be himself: Eternal form shall still divide The eternal soul from all beside. The new being learnt slowly the Me and the Not-me, learnt his personal apartness. The baby does not think that this is I: But as he grows he gathers much, And learns the use of "I" and "Me"; And finds, "I am not what I see, And other than the things I touch." So rounds he to a separate mind From whence clear memory may begin, As thro' the frame that binds him in The use of blood and breath" is to outline personality. When the man dies, he has secured for ever a distinct being. The other faith-That we shall remerge ourselves in the general soul, is faith, he says, as vague as it is unsweet. The soul comes, then, out of the vast Deep of God and returns to it again.* It comes im *In The Two Voices, a poem of 1833, this speculation of preexistence has already occupied his mind. The dark vague voice suggests that beginning implies ending. How do I know, the other voice within answers, that the first time I was, I was human, or that personal; it returns to it a personality. This is his view. It is a common view, but in a great poet's hands it is expressed so imaginatively that it ceases to be common. In the epilogue to In Memoriam, when he is thinking about the child who will be born of the marriage he then celebrates in song, he says: A soul shall draw from out the vast, In the Idylls of the King, Arthur is born, according to the body, of Uther and Ygerne, but the coming of the soul into him (and this is made more forcible by the allegory which makes Arthur symbolise the rational soul) is mystically represented by the babe who descends from heaven with the divine ship into the sea, and is washed to Merlin's feet by the wave. The two wizards, standing in Tintagil Cove, Beheld, so high upon the dreary deeps It seem'd in heaven, a ship, the shape thereof my life now is in truth my beginning? Life cycles round, and I may have been in another world before I came here, though I remember nothing of it. I may have been in a nobler place, or in lower lives, and have forgotten all I was. Or I may have floated free as naked essence (and to this theory Tennyson finally clung), and then of course I should remember nothing of it. Whatever I may have been, there is something That touches me with mystic gleams, |