Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him.
What Does, what Knows, what Is; three souls, one man.
I give the glossa of Theotypas.}

--
82-104. The supposed narrator, Pamphylax, gives in these
bracketed verses, on the authority of an imagined Theotypas,
a doctrine John was wont to teach, of the trinal unity of man--
the third "person" of which unity, "what Is", being man's essential,
absolute nature. The dying John is represented as having won his way
to the Kingdom of the "what Is", the Kingdom of eternal truth
within himself. In Luke 17:20-21, we read: "And when he was
demanded of the Pharisees, when the Kingdom of God should come,
he answered them and said, The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for, behold,
the Kingdom of God is within you." In harmony with which,
Paracelsus is made to say, in Browning's poem, "Truth is within ourselves;
. . . there is an inmost centre in us all, where truth abides in fulness";
etc. See pp. 24 and 25 of this volume. {In this etext, see Chapter I,
`The Spiritual Ebb and Flow, etc.', of the Introduction.
Excerpt is shortly before the poem `Popularity'.} "Life,
you've granted me, develops from within. But INNERMOST OF THE INMOST,
MOST INTERIOR OF THE INTERNE, GOD CLAIMS HIS OWN,
DIVINE HUMANITY RENEWING NATURE" (Mrs. Browning's `Aurora Leigh').
Mrs. M. G. Glazebrook, in her paper on `A Death in the Desert',
read at the 48th meeting of the Browning Society, Feb. 25th, 1887,
paraphrases these lines: "The first and lowest {soul} is that
which has to do with earth and corporeal things, the animal soul,
which receives primary sensations and is the immediate cause of action
--`what Does'. The second is the intellect, and has its seat
in the brain: it is superior to the first, but dependent on it,
since it receives as material the actual experience which
the animal soul supplies; it is the feeling, thinking, willing soul
--`what Knows'. The third, and highest, is the spirit of man,
the very principle of life, the divine element in man linking him
to God, which is self-subsistent and therefore independent of
sensation and knowledge, but nevertheless makes use of them,
and gives them existence and energy--`what Is'."
--

And then, "A stick, once fire from end to end; {105}
Now, ashes save the tip that holds a spark!
Yet, blow the spark, it runs back, spreads itself
A little where the fire