--
*1* `The Ring and the Book', The Pope, v. 1853.
*2* `Bishop Blougram's Apology', vv. 198, 199.
*3* `Bishop Blougram's Apology', vv. 650-671.
--

There is a remarkable passage to the same effect in `Paracelsus',
in which Paracelsus expatiates on the "just so much of doubt
as bade him plant a surer foot upon the sun-road."

And in `Easter Day': --

"You must mix some uncertainty
With faith, if you would have faith BE."

And the good Pope in `The Ring and the Book', alluding to the absence
of true Christian soldiership, which is revealed by Pompilia's case,
says: "Is it not this ignoble CONFIDENCE, cowardly hardihood,
that dulls and damps, makes the old heroism impossible?
Unless. . .what whispers me of times to come? What if it be
the mission of that age my death will usher into life,
to SHAKE THIS TORPOR OF ASSURANCE FROM OUR CREED,
reintroduce the DOUBT discarded, bring the formidable danger back
we drove long ago to the distance and the dark?"

True healthy doubt means, in Browning, that the spiritual nature
is sufficiently quickened not to submit to the conclusions of
the insulated intellect. It WILL reach out beyond them,
and assert itself, whatever be the resistance offered by the intellect.
Mere doubt, without any resistance from the intuitive,