tmas-Eve and Easter-Day_, _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, _A Death in the
Desert_, or in _The Ring and the Book_; nor even in _Fifine at the
Fair_. In these works we are not perplexed by the strange combination of
a nature whose principle is love, and which is capable of infinite
progress, with an intelligence whose best efforts end in ignorance.
Rather, the spirit of man is regarded as one, in all its manifestations;
and, therefore, as progressive on all sides of its activity. The
widening of his knowledge, which is brought about by increasing
experience, is parallel with the deepening and purifying of his moral
life. In all Browning's works, indeed, with the possible exception of
_Paracelsus_, love is conceived as having a place and function of
supreme importance in the development of the soul. Its divine origin and
destiny are never obscured; but knowledge is regarded as merely human,
and, therefore, as falling short of the truth. In _Easter-Day_ it is
definitely contrasted with love, and shown to be incapable of satisfying
the deepest wants of man. It is, at the best, only a means to the higher
purposes of moral activity, and, except in the _Grammarian's Funeral_,
it is nowhere regarded as in itself a worthy end.

"'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.
And thence I conclude that the real God-function
Is to furnish a motive and injunction
For practising what we know already."[A]

[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day_.]

Even here, there is implied that the motive comes otherwise than by
knowledge; still, taking these earlier poems as a whole, we may say that
in them knowledge is regarded as means to morality and not as in any
sense contrasted with or destructive of it. Man's motives are rational
motives; the ends he seeks are ends conceived and even constituted by
his intelligence, and not purposes blindly followed as by instinct and
impulse.

"Why live,
Except for love--how love, unless they know?"[B]

[Footnote B: _The Ring and the Book_--_The Pope_, 1327-1328.]

asks the Pope. Moral progress is not secured apart from, or in spite of
knowledge. We are not exhorted to reject the verdict of the latter as
illusive, in order to confide in a faith which not only fails to receive
support from the defective intelligence, but maintains its own integrity
only by repudiating the testimony of the reason. In the distinction
between knowledge as means and love as end, it is easy, inde