Tennyson's ideas are relatively
novel, though as old as Plotinus, for they are applied to a novel, or
at least an unfamiliar, mental situation. Doubt was abroad, as it
always is; but, for perhaps the first time since Porphyry wrote his
letter to Abammon, the doubters desired to believe, and said, "Lord,
help Thou my unbelief." To robust, not sensitive minds, very much in
unity with themselves, the attitude seems contemptible, or at best
decently futile. Yet I cannot think it below the dignity of mankind,
conscious that it is not omniscient. The poet does fail in logic (In
Memoriam, cxx.) when he says -
"Let him, the wiser man who springs
Hereafter, up from childhood shape
His action like the greater ape,
But I was BORN to other things."
I am not well acquainted with the habits of the greater ape, but it
would probably be unwise, and perhaps indecent, to imitate him, even
if "we also are his offspring." We might as well revert to polyandry
and paint, because our Celtic or Pictish ancestors, if we had any,
practised the one and wore the other. However, petulances like the
verse on the greater ape are rare in In Memoriam. To declare that "I
would not stay" in life if science proves us to be "cunning casts in
clay," is beneath the courage of the Stoical philosophy.
Theologically, the poem represents the struggle with doubts and hopes
and fears, which had been with Tennyson from his boyhood, as is
proved by the volume of 1830.
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