A: A Pillar at Sebzevar.
Whatever the evil in the world and the impotence of man, his duty and his dignity in willing to perform it, are ever the same. Though God neglect the world
"Man's part
Is plain—to send love forth,—astray, perhaps:
No matter, he has done his part."B
B: The Sun.
Now, this fact of inner experience, which the poet thinks incontrovertible—the fact that man, every man, necessarily regards evil, whether natural or moral, as something to be annulled, were it only possible—is an immediate proof of the indwelling of that which is highest in man. On this basis, Browning is able to re-establish the optimism which, from the side of knowledge, he had utterly abandoned.
The very fact that the world is condemned by man is proof that there dwells in man something better than the world, whose evidence the pessimist himself cannot escape. All is not wrong, as long as wrong seems wrong. The pessimist, in condemning the world, must except himself. In his very charge against God of having made man in His anger, there lies a contradiction; for he himself fronts and defies the outrage. There is no depth of despair which this good cannot illumine with joyous light, for the despair is itself the reflex of the good.
"Were earth and all it holds illusions mere,
Only a machine for teaching love and hate, and hope and fear,