expect from a youthful poet, but as one of the great fundamental
"faculties" of man. Love, "blind, oft-failing, half-enlightened,
often-chequered trust," though it be, still makes man

"The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false."

In that poem, love is definitely lifted by the poet to the level of
knowledge. Intellectual gain, apart from love, is folly and futility,
worthless for the individual and worthless to the race. "Mind is nothing
but disease," Paracelsus cries in the bitterness of his disappointment,
"and natural health is ignorance"; and he asks of the mad poet who
"loved too rashly,"

"Are we not halves of one dissevered world,
Whom this strange chance unites once more? Part? Never!
Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower,
Love--until both are saved."[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]

And, at the end of the poem, Paracelsus, coming to an understanding with
himself as to the gain and loss of life, proclaims with his last
strength the truth he had missed throughout his great career, namely,
the supreme worth of love.

"I saw Aprile--my Aprile there!
And as the poor melodious wretch disburthened
His heart, and moaned his weakness in my ear,
I learned my own deep error; love's undoing
Taught me the worth of love in man's estate,
And what proportion love should hold with power
In his right constitution; love preceding
Power, and with much power, always much more love;
Love still too straitened in his present means,
And earnest for new power to set love free."

As long as he hated men, or, in his passionate pursuit of truth, was
indifferent to their concerns, it was not strange that he saw no good in
men and failed to help them. Knowledge without love is not _true_
knowledge, but folly and weakness.

But, great as is the place given to love in _Paracelsus_, it is far less
than that given to it in the poet's later works. In _Ferishtah's
Fancies_ and _La Saisiaz_ it is no longer rivalled by knowledge; nor
even in _Easter Day_, where the voice beside the poet proclaiming that

"Life is done,
Time ends, Eternity's begun,"

gives a final pronouncement upon the purposes of the life of man. The
world of sense--of beauty and art, of knowledge and truth, are given to
man, but none of them satisfy his spirit; they merely sting with hunger
for something better. "Deficiency gapes every side," till love is known
as the essence and worth of all things.

"Is this thy final choice?
Love is the best? 'Tis somewhat late!
And all thou dost enumerate
Of power and beauty in the world,
The righteousness of love was curled
Inextricably round about.
Love lay within it and without,
To clasp thee,--but in vain! Thy soul
Still shrunk from Him who made the whole,
Still set deliberate aside
His love!--Now take love! Well betide
Thy tardy conscience!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Easter Day._]

In his later reflective poems, in which he deals with the problems of
life in the spirit of a metaphysician, seeking a definite answer to the
questions of the intelligence, he declares the reason for his preference
of love to knowledge. In _La Saisiaz_ he states that man's love is God's
too, a spark from His central fire; but man's knowledge is man's only.
Knowledge is finite, limited and tinged with sense. The truth we reach
at best is only truth _for us_, relative, distorted. We are for ever
kept from the fact which is supposed to be given; our intellects play
about it; sense and even intellect itself are interposing media, which
we must use, and yet, in using them, we only fool ourselves with
semblances. The poet has now grown so cautious that he will not declare
his own knowledge to be valid for any other man. David Hume could
scarcely be more suspicious of the human intellect; nor Berkeley more
surely persuaded of the purely subjective nature of its attainments. In
fact, the latter relied on human knowledge in a way impossible to
Browning, for he regarded it as the language of spirit speaking to
spirit. Out of his experience, Browning says,

"There crowds conjecture manifold.
But, as knowledge, this comes only,--things may be as I behold
Or may not be, but, without me and above me, things there are;
I myself am what I know not--ignorance which proves no bar
To the knowledge that I am, and, since I am, can recognize
What to me is pain and pleasure: this is sure, the rest--surmise."[A]

[Footnote A: _La Saisiaz_.]

Thought itself, for aught he knows, may be afflicted with a kind of
colour-blindness; and he knows no appeal when one affirms "green as
grass," and another contradicts him with "red as grass." Under such
circumstances, it is not strange that Browning should decline to speak
except for himself, and that he will

"Nowise dare to play the spokesman for my brothers strong or weak,"

or that he will far less presume to pronounce for God, and pretend that
the truth finds utterance from lips of clay--

"Pass off human lisp as echo of the sphere-song out of reach."

"Have I knowledge? Confounded it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare!
Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to the Infinite Care!

*       *       *       *       *

"And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew
(With that stoop of the soul, which in bending upraises it too)
The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete,
As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to His feet."[B]

[Footnote B: _Saul_, III.]

But David finds in himself one faculty so supreme in worth that he keeps
it in abeyance--

"Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I worst
E'en the Giver in one gift.--Behold, I could love if I durst!
But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'ertake
God's own speed in the one way of love: I abstain for love's sake."[A]

[Footnote A: _Saul_, III.]

This faculty of love, so far from being tainted with finitude, like
knowledge; so far from being mere man's, or a temporary and deceptive
power given to man for temporary uses, by a Creator who has another
ineffably higher way of loving, as He has of truth, is itself divine. In
contrast with the activity of love, Omnipotence itself dwindles into
insignificance, and creation sinks into a puny exercise of power. Love,
in a word, is the highest good; and, as such, it has all its worth in
itself, and gives to all other things what worth they have. God Himself
gains the "ineffable crown" by showing love and saving the weak. It is
the power divine, the central energy of God's being.

Browning never forgets this moral or religious quality of love. So pure
is this emotion to the poet, "so perfect in whiteness, that it will not
take pollution; but, ermine-like, is armed from dishonour by its own
soft snow." In the corruptest hearts, amidst the worst sensuality, love
is still a power divine, making for all goodness. Even when it is
kindled into flame by an illicit touch, and wars against the life of the
family, which is its own product, its worth is supreme. He who has
learned to love in any way, has "caught God's secret." How he has caught
it, whom he loves, whether or not he is loved in return, all these
things matter little. The paramount question on which hangs man's fate
is, has he learned to love another, any other, Fifine or Elvire. "She
has lost me," said the unloved lover; "I have gained her. Her soul's
mine."

The supreme worth of love, the mere emotion itself, however called into
activity, secures it against all taint. No one who understands Browning
in the least, can accuse him of touching with a rash hand the sanctity
of the family; rather he places it on the basis of its own principle,
and thereby makes for it the strongest defence. Such love as he speaks
of, however irregular its manifestation or sensuous its setting, can
never be confounded with lust--"hell's own blue tint." It is further
removed from lust even than asceticism. It has not even a negative
attitude towards the flesh; but finds the flesh to be "stuff for
transmuting," and reduces it to the uses of the spirit. The love which
is sung by Browning is more pure and free, and is set in a higher
altitude than anything that can be reached by the way of negation. It is
a consecration of the undivided self, so that "soul helps not flesh
more, than flesh helps soul." It is not only a spiritual and divine
emotion, but it also "shows a heart within blood-tinctured with a veined
humanity."

"Be a God and hold me
With a charm!
Be a man and hold me
With thine arm!

"Teach me, only teach, Love!
As I ought
I will speak thy speech, Love!
Think thy thought--

"Meet, if thou require it,
Both demands,
Laying flesh and spirit
In thy hands."[A]

[Footnote A: _A Woman's Last Word_.]

True love is always an infinite giving, which holds nothing back. It is
a spendthrift, magnificent in its recklessness, squandering the very
essence of the self upon its object, and by doing so, in the end
enriching the self beyond all counting. For in loving, the individual
becomes re-impersonated in another; the distinction of Me and Thee is
swept away, and there pulses in two individuals one warm life.

"If two lives join, there is oft a scar
They are one and one with a shadowy third;
One near one is too far.

"A moment after, and hands unseen
Were hanging the night around us fast;
But we knew that a bar was broken between
Life and life: we were mixed at last
In spite of the mortal screen."[B]

[Footnote B: _By the Fireside_.]

The throwing down of the limits that wall a man within himself, the
mingling of his own deepest interests with those of others, always marks
love; be it love of man for maid, parent for child, or patriot for his
country. It opens an outlet into the pure air of the world of objects,
and enables man to escape from the stuffed and poisonous atmosphere of
his narrow self. It is a streaming outwards of the inmost treasures of
the spirit, a consecration of its best activities to the welfare of
others. And when this is known to be the native quality and quintessence
of love, no one can regard it anywhere, or at any time, as out of place.
"Prize-lawful or prize-lawless" it is ever a flower, even though it
grow, like the love of the hero of _Turf and Towers_, in slime. Lust,
fleshly desire, which has been too often miscalled love, is its worst
perversion. Love spends itself for another, and seeks satisfaction only
in another's good. But last uses up others for its own worst purposes,
wastes its object, and turns the current of life back inwards, into the
slush and filth of selfish pleasure. The distinction between love and
its perversion, which is impossible in the naive life of an animal,
ought to be clear enough to all, and probably is. Nor should the sexual
impulse in human beings be confused with fleshly desire, and treated as
if it were merely natural, "the mere lust of life" common to all living
things,--"that strive," as Spinoza put it, "to persevere in existing."
For there is no purely natural impulse in man; all that he is, is
transfused with spirit, whether he will or no. He cannot act as a mere
animal, because he cannot leave his rational nature behind him.

He cannot desire as an innocent brute desires: his desire is always love
or lust. We have as little right to say that the wisdom of the sage is
_nothing but_ the purblind savagery of a Terra del Fuegian, as we have
to assert that love is _nothing but_ a sexual impulse. That impulse
rather, when its potency is set free, will show itself, at first
confusedly, but with more and more clearness as it expands, to be the
yearning of soul for soul. It puts us "in training for a love which
knows not sex, nor person, nor partiality; but which seeks virtue and
wisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom." The
height to which this passion lifts man, is just what makes possible the
fall into a sensuality and excess of brutishness, in comparison with
which animal life is a paradise of innocence.

If this is clearly recognized, many of the idle questions of casuistry
that are sometimes raised regarding sexual love and marriage will cease
to trouble. For these questions generally presuppose the lowest possible
view of this passion. Browning shows us how to follow with serene
security the pure light of the emotion of love, amidst all the confused
lawlessness of lustful passion, and through all the intricacies of human
character. Love, he thinks, is never illicit, never unwise, except when
it is disloyal to itself; it never ruins, but always strives to enrich
its object. Bacon quotes with approval a saying "That it is impossible
to love, and to be wise." Browning asserts that it is impossible to love
and _not_ be wise. It is a power that, according to the Christian idea
which the poet adopts, has infinite goodness for its source, and that,
even in its meanest expression, is always feeling its way back to its
origin, flowing again into the ocean whence it came.

So sparklingly pure is this passion that it could exorcise the evil and
turn old to new, even in the case of Leonce Miranda. At least Browning,
in this poem, strives to show that, being true love, though the love of
an unclean man for an unclean woman, it was a power at war with the
sordid elements of that sordid life. Love has always the same potency,
flame is always flame,

"no matter whence flame sprung,
From gums and spice, or else from straw and rottenness."[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, lv.]

"Let her but love you,
All else you disregard! what else can be?
You know how love is incompatible
With falsehood--purifies, assimilates
All other passions to itself."[B]

[Footnote B: _Colombe's Birthday._]

"Ne'er wrong yourself so far as quote the world
And say, love can go unrequited here!
You will have blessed him to his whole life's end--
Low passions hindered, baser cares kept back,
All goodness cherished where you dwelt--and dwell."[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]

But, while love is always a power lifting a man upwards to the level of
its own origin from whatever depths of degradation, its greatest potency
can reveal itself only in characters intrinsically pure, such as
Pompilia and Caponsacchi. Like mercy and every other spiritual gift, it
is mightiest in the mighty. In the good and great of the earth love is
veritably seen to be God's own energy;

"Who never is dishonoured in the spark
He gave us from His fire of fires, and bade
Remember whence it sprang, nor be afraid
While that burns on, though all the rest grow dark."[A]

[Footnote A: _Any Wife to Any Husband_, III.]

It were almost an endless task to recount the ways in which Browning
exhibits the moralizing power of love: how it is for him the
quintessence of all goodness; the motive, and inspiring cause, of every
act in the world that is completely right; and how, on that account, it
is the actual working in the man of the ideal of all perfection. This
doctrine of love is, in my opinion, the richest vein of pure ore in
Browning's poetry.

But it remains to follow briefly our poet's treatment of love in another
direction--as a principle present, not only in God as creative and
redeeming Power, and in man as the highest motive and energy of the
moral life, but also in the outer world, in the "material" universe. In
the view of the poet, the whole creation is nothing but love incarnate,
a pulsation from the divine heart. Love is the source of all law and of
all beauty. "Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night speaketh
knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not
heard." And our poet speaks as if he had caught the meaning of the
language, and believes that all things speak of love--the love of God.

"I think," says the heroine of the _Inn Album_,

"Womanliness means only motherhood;
All love begins and ends there,--roams enough,
But, having run the circle, rests at home."[A]

[Footnote A: _The Inn Album_.]

And Browning detects something of this motherhood everywhere. He finds
it as

"Some cause
Such as is put into a tree, which turns
Away from the north wind with what nest it holds."[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_Canon Caponsacchi_, 1374-1376.]

The Pope--who, if any one, speaks for Browning--declares that

"Brute and bird, reptile and the fly,
Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant
And flower o' the field, are all in a common pact
To worthily defend the trust of trusts,
Life from the Ever Living."[C]

[Footnote C: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1076-1081.]

"Because of motherhood," said the minor pope in _Ivan Ivanovitch_,

"each male
Yields to his partner place, sinks proudly in the scale:
His strength owned weakness, wit--folly, and courage--fear,
Beside the female proved males's mistress--only here
The fox-dam, hunger-pined, will slay the felon sire
Who dares assault her whelp."

The betrayal of the mother's trust is the "unexampled sin," which scares
the world and shames God.

"I hold that, failing human sense,
The very earth had oped, sky fallen, to efface
Humanity's new wrong, motherhood's first disgrace."[A]

[Footnote A: _Ivan Ivanovitch_.]

This instinct of love, which binds brute-parent to brute-offspring, is a
kind of spiritual law in the natural world: it, like all law, guarantees
the continuity and unity of the world, and it is scarcely akin to merely
physical attraction. No doubt its basis is physical; it has an organism
of flesh and blood for its vehicle and instrument: but mathematical
physics cannot explain it, nor can it be detected by chemical tests.
Rather, with the poet, we are to regard brute affection as a kind of
rude outline of human love; as a law in nature, which, when understood
by man and adopted as his rule of conduct, becomes the essence and
potency of his moral life.

Thus Browning regards love as an omnipresent good. There is nothing, he
tells us in _Fifine_, which cannot reflect it; even moral putridity
becomes phosphorescent, "and sparks from heaven transpierce earth's
coarsest covertures."

"There is no good of life but love--but love!
What else looks good, is some shade flung from love,
Love gilds it, gives it worth."[B]

[Footnote B: _In a balcony_.]

There is no fact which, if seen to the heart, will not prove itself to
have love for its purpose, and, therefore, for its substance. And it is
on this account that everything finds its place in a kosmos and that
there is

"No detail but, in place allotted it, was prime
And perfect."[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_. xxxi.]

Every event in the history of the world and of man is explicable, as the
bursting into new form of this elemental, all-pervading power. The
permanence in change of nature, the unity in variety, the strength which
clothes itself in beauty, are all manifestations of love. Nature is not
merely natural; matter and life's minute beginnings, are more than they
seem. Paracelsus said that he knew and felt

"What God is, what we are,
What life is--how God tastes an infinite joy
In finite ways--one everlasting bliss,
From whom all being emanates, all power
Proceeds: in whom is life for evermore,
Yet whom existence in its lowest form
Includes."[B]

[Footnote B: _Paracelsus_.]

The scheme of love does not begin with man, he is rather its
consummation.

"Whose attributes had here and there
Been scattered o'er the visible world before,
Asking to be combined, dim fragments meant
To be united in some wondrous whole,
Imperfect qualities throughout creation,
Suggesting some one creature yet to make,
Some point where all those scattered rays should meet
Convergent in the faculties of man.

*       *       *       *       *

"Hints and previsions of which faculties,
Are strewn confusedly everywhere about
The inferior natures, and all lead up higher,
All shape out divinely the superior race,
The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false,
And man appears at last."[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]

Power, knowledge, love, all these are found in the world, in which

"All tended to mankind,
And, man produced, all has its end thus far:
But, in completed man begins anew
A tendency to God."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

For man, being intelligent, flings back his light on all that went
before,

"Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains
Each back step in the circle."[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. 189.]

He gives voice to the mute significance of Nature, and lets in the light
on its blind groping.

"Man, once descried, imprints for ever
His presence on all lifeless things."

And how is this interpretation achieved? By penetrating behind force,
power, mechanism, and even intelligence, thinks the poet, to a purpose
which is benevolent, a reason which is all embracing and rooted in love.
The magnificent failure of Paracelsus came from missing this last step.
His transcendent hunger for knowledge was not satisfied, not because
human knowledge is essentially an illusion or mind disease, but because
his knowledge did not reach the final truth of things, which is love.
For love alone makes the heart wise, to know the secret of all being.
This is the ultimate hypothesis in the light of which alone man can
catch a glimpse of the general direction and intent of the universal
movement in the world and man. Dying, Paracelsus, taught by Aprile,
caught a glimpse of this elemental "love-force," in which alone lies the
clue to every problem, and the promise of the final satisfaction of the
human spirit. Failing in this knowledge, man may know many things, but
nothing truly; for all such knowledge stays with outward shows. It is
love alone that puts man in the right relation to his fellows and to the
world, and removes the distortion which fills life with sorrow, and
makes it

"Only a scene
Of degradation, ugliness and tears,
The record of disgraces best forgotten,
A sullen page in human chronicles
Fit to erase."[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]

But in the light of love, man "sees a good in evil, and a hope in ill
success," and recognizes that mankind are

"All with a touch of nobleness, despite
Their error, upward tending all though weak;
Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,
But dream of him, and guess where he may be,
And do their best to climb and get to him."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

"All this I knew not," adds Paracelsus, "and I failed. Let men take the
lesson and press this lamp of love, 'God's lamp, close to their
breasts'; its splendour, soon or late, will pierce the gloom," and show
that the universe is a transparent manifestation of His beneficence.




CHAPTER VII.

BROWNING'S IDEALISM, AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION.


"Master, explain this incongruity!
When I dared question, 'It is beautiful,
But is it true?' thy answer was, 'In truth
Lives Beauty.'"[A]

[Footnote A: _Shah Abbas_.]

We have now seen how Browning sought to explain all things as
manifestations of the principle of love; how he endeavoured to bring all
the variety of finite existence, and even the deep discrepancies of good
and evil, under the sway of one idea. I have already tried to show that
all human thought is occupied with the same task: science, art,
philosophy, and even the most ordinary common-sense, are all, in their
different ways, seeking for constant laws amongst changing facts. Nay,
we may even go so far as to say that all the activity of man, the
practical as well as the theoretical, is an attempt to establish a
_modus vivendi_ between his environment and himself. And such an attempt
rests on the assumption that there is some ground common to both of the
struggling powers within and without, some principle that manifests
itself both in man and in nature. So that all men are philosophers to
the extent of postulating a unity, which is deeper than all differences;
and all are alike trying to discover, in however limited or ignorant a
way, what that unity is. If this fact were more constantly kept in view,
the effort of philosophers to bring the ultimate colligating principles
of thought into clear consciousness would not, at the outset at least,
be regarded with so much suspicion. For the philosopher differs from the
practical man of the world, not so much in the nature of the task which
he is trying to accomplish, as in the distinct and conscious purpose
with which he enters upon it.

Now, I think that those, who, like Browning, offer an explicitly
optimistic idea of the relation between man and the world, have a
special right to a respectful hearing; for it can scarcely be denied
that their optimistic explanation is invaluable, _if it is true_--

"So might we safely mock at what unnerves
Faith now, be spared the sapping fear's increase
That haply evil's strife with good shall cease
Never on earth."[A]

[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville_.]

Despair is a great clog to good work for the world, and pessimists, as a
rule, have shown much more readiness than optimists to let evil have its
unimpeded way. Having found, like Schopenhauer, that "Life is an awkward
business," they "determine to spend life in reflecting on it," or at
least in moaning about it. The world's helpers have been men of another
mould; and the contrast between Fichte and Schopenhauer is suggestive of
a general truth:--"Fichte, in the bright triumphant flight of his
idealism, supported by faith in a moral order of the world which works
for righteousness, turning his back on the darker ethics of self-torture
and mortification, and rushing into the political and social fray,
proclaiming the duties of patriotism, idealizing the soldier,
calling to and exercising an active philanthrophy, living with
his nation, and continually urging it upwards to higher levels of
self-realization--Schopenhauer recurring to the idea of asceticism,
preaching the blessedness of the quiescence of all will, disparaging
efforts to save the nation or elevate the masses, and holding that each
has enough to do in raising his own self from its dull engrossment in
lower things to an absorption in that pure, passionless being which lies
far beyond all, even the so-called highest, pursuits of practical
life."[A]

[Footnote A: _Schopenhauer_, by Prof. Wallace.]

A pessimism, which is nothing more than flippant fault-finding,
frequently gains a cheap reputation for wisdom; and, on the other hand,
an optimism, which is really the result of much reflection and
experience, may be regarded as the product of a superficial spirit that
has never known the deeper evils of life. But, if pessimism be true, it
differs from other truths by its uselessness; for, even if it saves man
from the bitterness of petty disappointments, it does so only by making
the misery universal. There is no need to specify, when "_All_ is
vanity." The drowning man does not feel the discomfort of being wet. But
yet, if we reflect on the problem of evil, we shall find that there is
no neutral ground, and shall ultimately be driven to choose between
pessimism and its opposite. Nor, on the other hand, is the suppression
of the problem of evil possible, except at a great cost. It presents
itself anew in the mind of every thinking man; and some kind of solution
of it, or at least some definite way of meeting its difficulty, is
involved in the attitude which every man assumes towards life and its
tasks.

It is not impossible that there may be as much to be said for Browning's
joy in life and his love of it, as there is for his predecessor's rage
and sorrow. Browning certainly thought that there was; and he held his
view consistently to the end. We cannot, therefore, do justice to the
poet without dealing critically with the principle on which he has based
his faith, and observing how far it is applicable to the facts of human
life. As I have previously said, he strives hard to come into fair
contact with the misery of man in all its sadness; and, after doing so,
he claims, not as a matter of poetic sentiment, but as a matter of
strict truth, that good is the heart and reality of it all. It is true
that he cannot demonstrate the truth of his principle by reference to
all the facts, any more than the scientific man can justify his
hypothesis in every detail; but he holds it as a faith which reason can
justify and experience establish, although not in every isolated
phenomenon. The good may, he holds, be seen actually at work in the
world, and its process will be more fully known, as human life advances
towards its goal.

"Though Master keep aloof,
Signs of His presence multiply from roof
To basement of the building."[A]

[Footnote A: _Francis Furini_.]

Thus Browning bases his view upon experience, and finds firm footing for
his faith in the present; although he acknowledges that the "profound of
ignorance surges round his rockspit of self-knowledge."

"Enough that now,
Here where I stand, this moment's me and mine,
Shows me what is, permits me to divine
What shall be."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

"Since we know love we know enough"; for in love, he confidently thinks
we have the key to all the mystery of being.

Now, what is to be made of an optimism of this kind, which is based upon
love and which professes to start from experience, or to be legitimately
and rationally derived from it?

If such a view be taken seriously, as I propose doing, we must be
prepared to meet at the outset with some very grave difficulties. The
first of these is that it is an interpretation of facts by a human
emotion. To say that love blushes in the rose, or breaks into beauty in
the clouds, that it shows its strength in the storm, and sets the stars
in the sky, and that it is in all things the source of order and law,
may imply a principle of supreme worth both to poetry and religion; but
when we are asked to take it as a metaphysical explanation of facts, we
are prone, like the judges of Caponsacchi, not to "levity, or to
anything indecorous"--

"Only--I think I apprehend the mood:
There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk,
The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth,
The titter stifled in the hollow palm
Which rubbed the eye-brow and caressed the nose,
When I first told my tale; they meant, you know--
'The sly one, all this we are bound believe!
Well, he can say no other than what he says.'"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--Canon Caponsacchi_, 14-20.]

We are sufficiently willing to let the doctrine be held as a pious
opinion. The faith that "all's love yet all's law," like many another
illusion, if not hugged too closely, may comfort man's nakedness. But if
we are asked to substitute this view for that which the sciences
suggest,--if we are asked to put "Love" in the place of physical energy,
and, by assuming it as a principle, to regard as unreal all the infinite
misery of humanity and the degradation of intellect and character from
which it arises, common-sense seems at once to take the side of the
doleful sage of Chelsea. When the optimist postulates that the state of
the world, were it rightly understood, is completely satisfactory,
reason seems to be brought to a stand; and if poetry and religion
involve such a postulate, they are taken to be ministering to the
emotions at the expense of the intellect.

Browning, however, was not a mere sentimentalist who could satisfy his