s a good in evil, and a hope in ill
success," and recognizes that mankind are

"All with a touch of nobleness, despite
Their error, upward tending all though weak;
Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,
But dream of him, and guess where he may be,
And do their best to climb and get to him."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

"All this I knew not," adds Paracelsus, "and I failed. Let men take the
lesson and press this lamp of love, 'God's lamp, close to their
breasts'; its splendour, soon or late, will pierce the gloom," and show
that the universe is a transparent manifestation of His beneficence.

CHAPTER VII.

BROWNING'S IDEALISM, AND ITS PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION.

"Master, explain this incongruity!
When I dared question, 'It is beautiful,
But is it true?' thy answer was, 'In truth
Lives Beauty.'"[A]

[Footnote A: _Shah Abbas_.]

We have now seen how Browning sought to explain all things as
manifestations of the principle of love; how he endeavoured to bring all
the variety of finite existence, and even the deep discrepancies of good
and evil, under the sway of one idea. I have already tried to show that
all human thought is occupied with the same task: science, art,
philosophy, and even the most ordinary common-sense, are all, in their
different ways, seeking for constant laws amongst changing facts. Nay,
we may even go so far as to say that all the activity of man, the
practical as well as the theoretical, is an attempt to establish a
_modus vivendi_ between his environment and himself. And such an attempt
rests on the assumption that there is some ground common to both of the
struggling powers within and without, some principle that manifests
itself both in man and in nature. So that all men are philosophers to
the extent of postulating a unity, which is deeper than all differences;
and all are alike trying to discover, in however limited or ignorant a
way, what that unity is. If this fact were more constantly kept in view,
the effort of philosophers to bring the ultimate colligating principles
of thought into clear consciousness would not, at the outset at least,
be regarded with so much suspicion. For the philosopher differs from the
practical man of the world, not so much in the nature of the task which
he is trying to accomplish, as in the distinct and conscious purpose
with which he enters upon it.

Now, I think that those, who, like Browning, offer an explicitly
optimi