n many ways: for instance, in Browning's
protest against the one-sidedness of nineteenth-century scientific
thought, the sharp distinction or gulf set up between science and
religion. This sharp cleavage, to the mystic, is impossible. He knows,
however irreconcilable the two may appear, that they are but different
aspects of the same thing. This is one of the ways in which Browning
anticipates the most advanced thought of the present day.

In _Paracelsus_ he emphasises the fact that the exertion of power in the
intelligence, or the acquisition of knowledge, is useless without the
inspiration of love, just as love is waste without power. Paracelsus
sums up the matter when he says to Aprile--

I too have sought to KNOW as thou to LOVE
Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge....
We must never part ...
Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower,
Love--until both are saved.

Arising logically out of this belief in unity, there follows, as with
all mystics, the belief in the potential divinity of man, which
permeates all Browning's thought, and is continually insisted on in such
poems as _Rabbi ben Ezra, A Death in the Desert_, and _The Ring and the
Book_. He takes for granted the fundamental position of the mystic, that
the object of life is to know God; and according to the poet, in knowing
love we learn to know God. Hence it follows that love is the meaning of
life, and that he who finds it not

loses what he lived for
And eternally must lose it.

_Christina._

For life with all it yields of joy and woe
And hope and fear ...
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love.

_A Death in the Desert._

This is Browning's central teaching, the key-note of his work and
philosophy. The importance of love in life is to Browning supreme,
because he holds it to be the meeting-point between God and man. Love is
the sublimest conception possible to man; and a life inspired by it is
the highest conceivable form of goodness.

In this exaltation of love, as in several other points, Browning much
resembles the German mystic, Meister Eckhart. To compare the two writers
in detail would be an interesting task; it is only possible here to
suggest points of resemblance. The following passage from Eckhart
suggests several directions in which Browning's thought is peculiarly
mystical:--

Intelligence is the youngest faculty in man....