divine and human together on the strength of the
short space which they may tread side by side, and the anthropomorphic
spirit which subjects the one to the other by presenting the illimitable
in human form.

Mr. Browning defends his position by an illustration of the use (as also
abuse) of symbols spiritual and material; Carlyle retorts somewhat
impatiently that in thinking of God we have no need of symbolism; we
know Him as Immensity, Eternity, and other abstract qualities, and to
fancy Him under human attributes is superfluous; and Mr. Browning
dismisses this theology, with the intellectual curiosities and
intellectual discontents which he knows in the present case to have
accompanied it, in a modification of the Promethean myth--such a one as
the more "human" Euripides might have imagined. "When the sun's light
first broke upon the earth, and everywhere in and on this there was
life, man was the only creature which did not rejoice: for he said, I
alone am incomplete in my completeness; I am subject to a power which I
alone have the intellect to recognize, hence the desire to grasp. I do
not aspire to penetrate the hidden essence, the underlying mystery of
the sun's force; but I crave possession of one beam of its light
wherewith to render palpable to myself its unseen action in the
universe. And Prometheus then revealed to him the 'artifice' of the
burning-glass, through which henceforward he might enslave the sun's
rays to his service while disrobing them of the essential brilliancy
which no human sight could endure."

In the material uses of the burning-glass we have a parallel for the
value of an intellectual or religious symbol. This too is a gathering
point for impressions otherwise too diffuse; or, inversely conceived, a
sign guiding the mental vision through spaces which would otherwise be
blank. Its reduced or microcosmic presentment of facts too large for
man's mental grasp suggests also an answer to those who bemoan the
limitations of human knowledge. Characteristic remarks on this subject
occur at the beginning of the poem.

Bernard de Mandeville figures throughout the "parleying" as author of
"The Fable of the Bees"; and it is in this work that Mr. Browning
discovers their special ground of sympathy. "The Fable of the Bees,"
also entitled "Private Vices Public Benefits," and again "The Grumbling
Hive, or Knaves turned Honest," is meant to show that self-indulgence
and self-seeking carried even to the