his moral strenuousness and that ever present foretaste of victory,
which we may call his religious optimism.

Whether this principle receives adequate expression from the poet, we
shall inquire in the next chapter. For on this depends its worth as a
solution of the enigma of man's moral life.

CHAPTER VI.

BROWNING'S TREATMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE OF LOVE.

"God! Thou art Love! I build my faith on that!"[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_]

It may be well before going further to gather together the results so
far reached.

Browning was aware of the conflict of the religious and moral
consciousness, but he did not hesitate to give to each of them its most
uncompromising utterance. And it is on this account that he is
instructive; for, whatever may be the value of compromise in practical
affairs, there is no doubt that it has never done anything to advance
human thought. His religion is an optimistic faith, a peaceful
consciousness of the presence of the highest in man, and therefore in
all other things. Yet he does not hesitate to represent the moral life
as a struggle with evil, and a movement through error towards a highest
good which is never finally realized. He sees that the contradiction is
not an absolute one, but that a good man is always both moral and
religious, and, in every good act he does, transcends their difference.
He knew that the ideal apart from the process is nothing, and that "a
God beyond the stars" is simply the unknowable. But he knew, too, that
the ideal is not _merely_ the process, but also that which starts the
process, guides it, and comes to itself through it. God, emptied of
human elements, is a mere name; but, at the same time, the process of
human evolution does not exhaust the idea of God. The process by itself,
_i.e._, mere morality, is a conception of a fragment, a fiction of
abstract thought; it is a movement which has no beginning or end; and in
it neither the head nor the heart of man could find contentment. He is
driven by ethics into philosophy, and by morality into religion.

It was in this way that Browning found himself compelled to trace back
the moral process to its origin, and to identify the moral law with the
nature of God. It is this that gives value to his view of moral
progress, as reaching beyond death to a higher stage of being, for which
man's attainments in this life are only preliminary.

"What's time? Leave Now for dogs and apes,
Man has Forever.