“Will of man create? 
  No more than this my hand, which strewed the beans
  Produced them also from its finger-tips."[A]

[Footnote A:  A Bean-Stripe.]

All that man is and has is a mere loan; his love no less than his finite intellect and limited power, has had its origin elsewhere.

“Back goes creation to its source, source prime
And ultimate, the single and the sole."[B]

[Footnote B:  Ibid.]

The argument ends by bringing us back

    “To the starting-point,—­
  Man’s impotency, God’s omnipotence,
  These stop my answer."[A]

[Footnote A:  A Bean-Stripe.]

I shall not pause at present to examine the value of this new form of the old argument, “Ex contingentia mundi.”  But I may point out in passing, that the reference of human love to a divine creative source is accomplished by means of the idea of cause, one of the categories of the thought which Browning has aspersed.  And it is a little difficult to show why, if we are constrained to doubt our thought, when by the aid of causality it establishes a connection between finite and finite, we should regard it as worthy of trust when it connects the finite and the infinite.  In fact, it is all too evident that the poet assumes or denies the possibility of knowledge, according as it helps or hinders his ethical doctrine.

But, if we grant the ascent from the finite to the infinite and regard man’s love as a divine gift—­which it may well be although the poet’s argument is invalid—­then a new light is thrown upon the being who gave man this power to love.  The “necessity,” “the mere power,” which alone could be discerned by observation of the irresistible movement of the world’s events, acquires a new character.  Prior to this discovery of love in man as the work of God—­

  “Head praises, but heart refrains
    From loving’s acknowledgment. 
  Whole losses outweigh half-gains: 
    Earth’s good is with evil blent: 
  Good struggles but evil reigns."[A]

[Footnote A:  Reverie—­Asolando.]

But love in man is a suggestion of a love without; a proof, in fact, that God is love, for man’s love is God’s love in man.  The source of the pity that man shows, and of the apparent evils in the world which excite it, is the same.  The power which called man into being, itself rises up in man against the wrongs in the world.  The voice of the moral consciousness, approving the good, condemning evil, and striving to annul it, is the voice of God, and has, therefore, supreme authority.  We do wrong, therefore, in thinking that it is the weakness of man which is matched against the might of evil in the world, and that we are fighting a losing battle.  It is an incomplete, abstract, untrue view of the facts of life which puts God as irresistible Power in the outer world, and forgets that the same irresistible Power works, under the higher form of love, in the human heart.