ctivity of love
would be futile. In the first case, it would be thwarted and arrested by
despair; for, if evil be evil, it must remain evil for aught that man
can do. Man cannot effect a change in the nature of things, nor create a
good in a world dominated by evil. In the second case, the saving effect
of moral love would be unnecessary; for, if evil be only seeming, then
all things are perfect and complete, and there is no need of
interference. It is necessary, therefore, that man should be in a
permanent state of doubt as to the real existence of evil; and, whether
evil does exist or not, it must seem, and only seem to exist to man, in
order that he may devote himself to the service of good.[B]

[Footnote A: See Chapter VIII., p. 255.]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

Now, if this view of the poet be taken in the strict sense in which he
uses it in this argument, it admits of a very easy refutation. It takes
us beyond the bounds of all possible human experience, into an imaginary
region, as to which all assertions are equally valueless. It is
impossible to conceive how the conduct of a being who is moral would be
affected by absolute knowledge; or, indeed, to conceive the existence of
such a being. For morality, as the poet insists, is a process in which
an ideal is gradually realized through conflict with the actual--an
actual which it both produces and transmutes at every stage of the
progress. But complete knowledge would be above all process. Hence we
would have, on Browning's hypothesis, to conceive of a being in whom
perfect knowledge was combined with an undeveloped will. A being so
constituted would be an agglomerate of utterly disparate elements, the
interaction of which in a single character it would be impossible to
make intelligible.

But, setting aside this point, there is a curious flaw in Browning's
argument, which indicates that he had not distinguished between two
forms of optimism which are essentially different from each
other,--namely, the pantheistic and the Christian.

To know that evil is only apparent, that pain is only pleasure's mask,
that all forms of wickedness and misery are only illusions of an
incomplete intelligence, would, he argues, arrest all moral action and
stultify love. For love--which necessarily implies need in its
object--is the principle of all right action. In this he argues justly,
for the moral life is essentially a conflict and progress; and, in a
world in which "white rule