ich binds brute-parent to brute-offspring, is a
kind of spiritual law in the natural world: it, like all law, guarantees
the continuity and unity of the world, and it is scarcely akin to merely
physical attraction. No doubt its basis is physical; it has an organism
of flesh and blood for its vehicle and instrument: but mathematical
physics cannot explain it, nor can it be detected by chemical tests.
Rather, with the poet, we are to regard brute affection as a kind of
rude outline of human love; as a law in nature, which, when understood
by man and adopted as his rule of conduct, becomes the essence and
potency of his moral life.

Thus Browning regards love as an omnipresent good. There is nothing, he
tells us in _Fifine_, which cannot reflect it; even moral putridity
becomes phosphorescent, "and sparks from heaven transpierce earth's
coarsest covertures."

"There is no good of life but love--but love!
What else looks good, is some shade flung from love,
Love gilds it, gives it worth."[B]

[Footnote B: _In a balcony_.]

There is no fact which, if seen to the heart, will not prove itself to
have love for its purpose, and, therefore, for its substance. And it is
on this account that everything finds its place in a kosmos and that
there is

"No detail but, in place allotted it, was prime
And perfect."[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_. xxxi.]

Every event in the history of the world and of man is explicable, as the
bursting into new form of this elemental, all-pervading power. The
permanence in change of nature, the unity in variety, the strength which
clothes itself in beauty, are all manifestations of love. Nature is not
merely natural; matter and life's minute beginnings, are more than they
seem. Paracelsus said that he knew and felt

"What God is, what we are,
What life is--how God tastes an infinite joy
In finite ways--one everlasting bliss,
From whom all being emanates, all power
Proceeds: in whom is life for evermore,
Yet whom existence in its lowest form
Includes."[B]

[Footnote B: _Paracelsus_.]

The scheme of love does not begin with man, he is rather its
consummation.

"Whose attributes had here and there
Been scattered o'er the visible world before,
Asking to be combined, dim fragments meant
To be united in some wondrous whole,
Imperfect qualities throughout creation,
Suggesting some one creature yet to make,
Some point where all those