rvice and attainment, Luigi's
wavering purpose of self-sacrifice for his country's good is
strengthened, the Monsignor is held back from connivance at a crime. In
all these cases the external loss is as nothing compared to the gain in
spiritual knowledge and energy.

Contact with magnetic and superior personalities is a way of growth
particularly noted by Browning. There are men, he says, who bring new
feeling fresh from God, and whose life "reteaches us what life should
be, what faith is, loyalty and simpleness." Pompilia says of
Caponsacchi:

Through such souls alone
God stooping shows sufficient of his light
For us i' the dark to rise by.

The highest souls are "seers" in the noblest sense and they "impart the
gift of seeing to the rest." But the helpful personality need not be
great in knowledge or rank. In Pippa Browning emphasizes the power of
unconscious goodness in clarifying the spiritual vision of others and in
thus stimulating to right action. And in David he shows the power of
poetic charm, innocence, and eager love to drive away from another heart
a mood of black despair.

But outside influences are, after all, says Browning, of secondary
importance. They can, at best, do no more than stimulate and guide. When
Andrea del Sarto attributes his general lowering of ideals and power to
the influence of Lucrezia, he evades the real issue. Incentives must
come from the soul's self. Growth is dependent on personal struggle. Man
is, by his very nature,

forced to try and make, else fail to grow--
Formed to rise, reach at, if not grasp and gain
The good beyond him--which attempt is growth.

So, also, is it better that youth

should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made.

It is in the independence and originality of such striving that the soul
discovers and frees its innate potentialities.

An inevitable corollary of this idea of progress is the emphasis put
upon aspiration as a habit of the mind. The pursuit of an ideal, a
divine discontent with present accomplishment, are enjoined upon man.
The gleams of heaven on earth are not meant to be permanent or
satisfying, but only to sting man into hunger for full light. When a
human being has achieved to the full extent of his perceptions or
aspirations, he has, thinks Browning, met with the greatest possible
disaster, that of arrested development. Man's powers should ever climb
new he