Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher

by Sir Henry Jones

And what proportion love should hold with power

In his right constitution; love preceding

Power, and with much power, always much more love;

Love still too straitened in his present means,

And earnest for new power to set love free."

As long as he hated men, or, in his passionate pursuit of truth, was indifferent to their concerns, it was not strange that he saw no good in men and failed to help them. Knowledge without love is not true knowledge, but folly and weakness.

But, great as is the place given to love in Paracelsus, it is far less than that given to it in the poet's later works. In Ferishtah's Fancies and La Saisiaz it is no longer rivalled by knowledge; nor even in Easter Day, where the voice beside the poet proclaiming that

"Life is done,

Time ends, Eternity's begun,"

gives a final pronouncement upon the purposes of the life of man. The world of sense—of beauty and art, of knowledge and truth, are given to man, but none of them satisfy his spirit; they merely sting with hunger for something better. "Deficiency gapes every side," till love is known as the essence and worth of all things.