We are here, he thinks, to grow enough to be able to take our part in another life or lives. But we are surrounded by limitations which baffle and retard our growth. That is miserable, but not so much as we think; for the failures these limitations cause prevent us—and this is a main point in Browning's view—from being content with our condition on the earth. There is that within us which is always endeavouring to transcend those limitations, and which believes in their final dispersal. This aspiration rises to something higher than any possible actual on earth. It is never worn out; it is the divine in us; and when it seems to decay, God renews it by spiritual influences from without and within, coming to us from nature as seen by us, from humanity as felt by us, and from himself who dwells in us.
But then, unless we find out and submit to those limitations, and work within them, life is useless, so far as any life is useless. But while we work within them, we see beyond them an illimitable land, and thirst for it. This battle between the dire necessity of working in chains and longing for freedom, between the infinite destiny of the soul and the baffling of its effort to realise its infinitude on earth, makes the storm and misery of life. We may try to escape that tempest and sorrow by determining to think, feel, and act only within our limitations, to be content with them as Goethe said; but if we do, we are worse off than before. We have thrown away our divine destiny. If we take this world and are satisfied with it, cease to aspire, beyond our limits, to full perfection in God; if our soul should ever say, "I want no more; what I have here—the pleasure, fame, knowledge, beauty or love of this world—is all I need or care for," then we are indeed lost. That is the last damnation. The worst failure, the deepest misery, is better than contentment with the success of earth; and seen in this light, the failures and misery of earth are actually good things, the cause of a chastened joy. They open to us the larger light. They suggest, and in Browning's belief they proved, that this life is but the threshold of an infinite life, that our true life is beyond, that there is an infinite of happiness, of knowledge, of love, of beauty which we shall attain. Our failures are prophecies of eternal successes. To choose the finite life is to miss the infinite Life! O fool, to claim the little cup of water earth's knowledge offers to thy thirst, or the beauty or love of earth, when the immeasurable waters of the Knowledge, Beauty and Love of the Eternal Paradise are thine beyond the earth.
Two things are then clear: (1) The attainment of our desires for perfection, the satisfaction of our passion for the infinite, is forbidden to us on earth by the limitations of life. We are made imperfect; we are kept imperfect here; and we must do all our work within the limits this natural imperfection makes. (2) We must, nevertheless, not cease to strive towards the perfection unattainable on earth, but which shall be attained hereafter. Our destiny, the God within us, demands that. And we lose it, if we are content with our earthly life, even with its highest things, with knowledge, beauty, or with love.
Hence, the foundation of Browning's theory is a kind of Original Sin in us, a natural defectiveness deliberately imposed on us by God, which prevents us attaining any absolute success on earth. And this defectiveness of nature is met by the truth, which, while we aspire, we know—that God will fulfil all noble desire in a life to come.
We must aspire then, but at the same time all aspiring is to be conterminous with steady work within our limits. Aspiration to the perfect is not to make us idle, indifferent to the present, but to drive us on. Its passion teaches us, as it urges into action all our powers, what we can and what we cannot do. That is, it teaches us, through the action it engenders, what our limits are; and when we know them, the main duties of life rise clear. The first of these is, to work patiently within our limits; and the second is the apparent contradiction of the first, never to be satisfied with our limits, or with the results we attain within them. Then, having worked within them, but always looked beyond them, we, as life closes, learn the secret. The failures of earth prove the victory beyond: "For—
what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence
For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonised?
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?
Why rushed the discords in but that harmony should be prized?
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear.