V.


Such a result could not be finally satisfying, and Browning's thought
fastened with increasing predilection and exclusiveness upon one intense
kind of vitality in which the hard antagonism of good and evil seems to
be transcended, and that complete immersion of the soul in a nature not
its own appears not as self-abnegation but as self-fulfilment. He did
not himself use this phraseology about Love; it is that of a school to
which he, at no time, it would seem, made any conscious approach. But it
is clear that he found in the mysterious union and transfusion of
diverse being which takes place in Love, as Hegel found in the union of
opposites, the clue to the nature of reality, the very core of the heart
of life. He did not talk of the union of opposites, but of "infinitude
wreaking itself upon the finite." God himself would have been less
divine, and so, as God, less real, had he remained aloof in lonely
infinity instead of uniting himself with all creation in that love
which "moves the world and the other stars"; the "loving worm," to
quote his pregnant saying once more, were diviner than a loveless God.
We saw how his theology is double-faced between the pantheistic yearning
to find God everywhere and the individualist's resolute maintenance of
the autonomy of man. God's Love, poured through the world, inextricably
blended with all its power and beauty, thrilled with answering rapture
by all its joy, and striving to clasp every human soul, provided the
nearest approach to a solution of that conflict which Browning's
mechanical metaphysics permitted. One comprehends, then, the profound
significance for him of the actual solution apparently presented by
Christian theology. In one supreme, crucial example the union of God
with man in consummate love had actually, according to Christian belief,