The human soul is regarded in Browning's poetry as
a complexly organized, individualized divine force,
destined to gravitate towards the Infinite. How is this force,
with its numberless checks and counter-checks, its centripetal
and centrifugal tendencies, best determined in its necessarily
oblique way? How much earthly ballast must it carry,
to keep it sufficiently steady, and how little, that it may not be
weighed down with materialistic heaviness? How much certainty
must it have of its course, and how much uncertainty,
that it may shun the "torpor of assurance", *1* and not lose the vigor
which comes of a dubious and obstructed road, "which who stands upon
is apt to doubt if it's indeed a road." *2* "Pure faith indeed,"
says Bishop Blougram, to Gigadibs, the literary man, "you know not
what you ask! naked belief in God the Omnipotent, Omniscient,
Omnipresent, sears too much the sense of conscious creatures,
to be borne. It were the seeing him, no flesh shall dare.
Some think, Creation's meant to show him forth: I say, it's meant
to hide him all it can, and that's what all the blessed Evil's for.
Its use in time is to environ us, our breath, our drop of dew,
with shield enough against that sight till we can bear its stress.
Under a vertical sun, the exposed brain and lidless eye
and disimprisoned heart less certainly would wither up at once,
than mind, confronted with the truth of Him. But time and earth
case-harden us to live; the feeblest sense is trusted most:
the child feels God a moment, ichors o'er the place,
plays on and grows to be a man like us. With me, faith means
perpetual unbelief kept quiet like the snake 'neath Michael's foot,
who stands calm just because he feels it writhe." *3*