philosophy
of life. And any such statements must be made with extreme caution
because of his dramatic method. He utters this caution himself when he
says of his poems, "Their contents are always dramatic in principle, and
so many utterances of so many imaginary people." Yet it is possible, by
taking the general trend and scope of his work, to make justifiable
deductions concerning the dominant ideas in the rich field of his poetry
and drama.

In Browning's philosophy of life, words of especial significance are
"growth" and "progress." Domizia in _Luria_ says:

How inexhaustibly the spirit grows!
One object, she seemed erewhile born to reach
With her whole energies and die content--
So like a wall at the world's edge is stood,
With naught beyond to live for--is that reached?--
Already are new undreamed energies
Outgrowing under, and extending farther
To a new object.

So, too, John in "A Death in the Desert" sums up his belief in the line,

I say that man was made to grow, not stop.

Growth here and growth hereafter are the essential elements of
Browning's creed. And there is no other poet in whom all kinds of
thinking and doing are so uniformly tested by their outcome in the
growth of the soul. Does joy stimulate to fuller life; does suffering
bring out moral qualities; do obstacles develop energy; do sharp
temptations become a source of strength and assured soldiership; does
knowledge of evil lead to a new exaltation of good; does sin lead to
self-knowledge and so to regeneration? Then all these are ministers of
grace, for through them the soul has reached greater heights and fuller
life. Whatever bids the soul "nor stand nor sit, but go" is to be
welcomed. The cost of this growth may be great, but the advances of
spirit are represented as worth any sacrifice. The lady in "The Flight
of the Duchess" goes from splendor and ease to hardship and obscurity,
but she wins freedom of thought and of act and the opportunity to test
the qualities of her soul. In _Pippa Passes_ Sebald might have had love
and wealth, Jules might have attained fame along the conventional path
marked out for him by the Monsignor, Luigi had the prospect of an easy
life and happy love, the Monsignor might have had enhanced honor from
the church into whose coffers he could have turned great revenues. But
instead each responds in turn to Pippa's songs; Sebald gains a true view
of sin, Jules gets a new conception of se