ecstatic
contemplation. Wordsworth, though his own home was a happy one, does
not supply this link in the mystical chain. The most noteworthy
attempt to do so is to be found in the poetry of Robert Browning,
whose Mysticism is in this way complementary to that of
Wordsworth.[392] He resembles Wordsworth in always trying "to see the
infinite in things," but considers that "little else (than the
development of a soul) is worth study." This is not exactly a return
to subjective Mysticism, for Browning is as well aware as Goethe that
if "a talent grows best in solitude," a character is perfected only
"in the stream of the world." With him the friction of active life,
and especially the experience of human love, are necessary to realise
the Divine in man. Quite in the spirit of St. John he asks, "How can
that course be safe, which from the first produces carelessness to
human love?" "Do not cut yourself from human weal ... there are
strange punishments for such" as do so.[393] Solitude is the death of
all but the strongest virtue, and in Browning's view it also deprives
us of the strongest inner witness to the existence of a loving Father
in heaven. For he who "finds love full in his nature" cannot doubt
that in this, as in all else, the Creator must far surpass the
creature.[394] Since, then, in knowing love we learn to know God, and
since the object of life is to know God (this, the mystic's minor
premiss, is taken for granted by Browning), it follows that love is
the meaning of life; and he who finds it not "loses what he lived for,
and eternally must lose it.[395]" "The mightiness of love is curled"
inextricably round all power and beauty in the world. The worst fate
that can befall us is to lead "a ghastly smooth life, dead at
heart.[396]" Especially interesting is the passage where he chooses or
chances upon Eckhart's image of the "spark" in the centre of the soul,
and gives it a new turn in accordance with his own Mysticism--

"It would not be because my eye grew dim
Thou could'st not find the love there, thanks to Him
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.[397]"

Our language has no separate words to distinguish Christian love
([Greek: agape]--_caritas_) from sexual love ([Greek: eros]--_amor_);
"charity" has not established itself in its wider meaning. Perha