He dwells on this again and again:—­

                                       God is seen
    In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod.

And through all these forms there is growth upwards.  Indeed, it is only upon this supposition that the poet can account for

      many a thrill

Of kinship, I confess to, with the powers
Called Nature:  animate, inanimate
In parts or in the whole, there’s something there
Man-like that somehow meets the man in me.

    Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.

The poet sees that in each higher stage we benefit by the garnered experience of the past; and so man grows and expands and becomes capable of feeling for and with everything that lives.  At the same time the higher is not degraded by having worked in and through the lower, for he distinguishes between the continuous persistent life, and the temporary coverings it makes use of on its upward way;

    From first to last of lodging, I was I,
    And not at all the place that harboured me.

Humanity then, in Browning’s view, is not a collection of individuals, separate and often antagonistic, but one whole.

    When I say “you” ’tis the common soul,
    The collective I mean:  the race of Man
    That receives life in parts to live in a whole
    And grow here according to God’s clear plan.

    Old Pictures in Florence.

This sense of unity is shown in many ways:  for instance, in Browning’s protest against the one-sidedness of nineteenth-century scientific thought, the sharp distinction or gulf set up between science and religion.  This sharp cleavage, to the mystic, is impossible.  He knows, however irreconcilable the two may appear, that they are but different aspects of the same thing.  This is one of the ways in which Browning anticipates the most advanced thought of the present day.

In Paracelsus he emphasises the fact that the exertion of power in the intelligence, or the acquisition of knowledge, is useless without the inspiration of love, just as love is waste without power.  Paracelsus sums up the matter when he says to Aprile—­

I too have sought to KNOW as thou to LOVE
Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge.... 
We must never part ... 
Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower,
Love—­until both are saved.

Arising logically out of this belief in unity, there follows, as with all mystics, the belief in the potential divinity of man, which permeates all Browning’s thought, and is continually insisted on in such poems as Rabbi ben Ezra, A Death in the Desert, and The Ring and the Book.  He takes for granted the fundamental position of the mystic, that the object of life is to know God; and according to the poet, in knowing love we learn to know God.  Hence it follows that love is the meaning of life, and that he who finds it not