The gain of every life. Death reads the title clear--
What each soul for itself conquered from out things here:
Since, in the seeing soul, all worth lies, I assert."[A]

[Footnote A: _Fifine at the Fair_, lv.]

In this passage, Browning gives expression to an idea which continually
reappears in his pages--that human life, in its essence, is movement to
moral goodness through opposition. His fundamental conception of the
human spirit is that it is a process, and not a fixed fact. "Man," he
says, "was made to grow not stop."

"Getting increase of knowledge, since he learns
Because he lives, which is to be a man,
Set to instruct himself by his past self."[B]

[Footnote B: _A Death in the Desert_.]

"By such confession straight he falls
Into man's place, a thing nor God nor beast,
Made to know that he can know and not more:
Lower than God who knows all and can all,
Higher than beasts which know and can so far
As each beast's limit, perfect to an end,
Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more;
While man knows partly but conceives beside,
Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact,
And in this striving, this converting air
Into a solid he may grasp and use,
Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone,
Not God's and not the beasts': God is, they are,
Man partly is and wholly hopes to be."[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_.]

It were easy to multiply passages which show that his ultimate
deliverance regarding man is, not that he is, nor that he is not, but
that he is ever becoming. Man is ever at the point of contradiction
between the actual and ideal, and moving from the latter to the former.
Strife constitutes him. He is a war of elements; "hurled from change to
change unceasingly." But rest is death; for it is the cessation of the
spiritual activity, whose essence is acquirement, not mere possession,
whether in knowledge or in goodness.

"Man must pass from old to new,
From vain to real, from mistake to fact,
From what once seemed good, to what now proves best."[A]

[Footnote A: _A Death in the Desert_.]

Were the movement to stop, and the contradiction between the actual and
ideal reconciled, man would leave man's estate, and pass under "angel's
law."

"Indulging every instinct of the soul
There, where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

But as long as he is man, he has

"Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to