“Is not God now i’ the world His power first made? 
  Is not His love at issue still with sin,
  Visibly when a wrong is done on earth? 
  Love, wrong, and pain, what see I else around?"[B]

[Footnote B:  A Death in the Desert.]

In this way, therefore, the poet argues back from the moral consciousness of man to the goodness of God.  And he finds the ultimate proof of this goodness in the very pessimism and scepticism and despair, that come with the view of the apparently infinite waste in the world and the endless miseries of humanity.  The source of this despair, namely, the recognition of evil and wrong, is just the Godhood in man.  There is no way of accounting for the fact that “Man hates what is and loves what should be,” except by “blending the quality of man with the quality of God.”  And “the quality of God” is the fundamental fact in man’s history.  Love is the last reality the poet always reaches.  Beneath the pessimism is love:  without love of the good there were no recognition of evil, no condemnation of it, and no despair.

But the difficulty still remains as to the permission of evil, even though it should prove in the end to be merely apparent.

  “Wherefore should any evil hap to man—­
  From ache of flesh to agony of soul—­
  Since God’s All-mercy mates All-potency? 
  Nay, why permits He evil to Himself—­
  Man’s sin, accounted such?  Suppose a world
  Purged of all pain, with fit inhabitant—­
  Man pure of evil in thought, word, and deed—­
  Were it not well?  Then, wherefore otherwise?"[A]

[Footnote A:  Mihrab Shah.]

The poet finds an answer to this difficulty in the very nature of moral goodness, which, as we have seen, he regards as a progressive realization of an infinitely high ideal.  The demand for a world purged of all pain and sin is really, he teaches us, a demand for a sphere where

          “Time brings

No hope, no fear:  as to-day, shall be
To-morrow:  advance or retreat need we
At our stand-still through eternity?"[A]

[Footnote A:  Rephan—­Asolando.]

What were there to “bless or curse, in such a uniform universe,”

“Where weak and strong,
The wise and the foolish, right and wrong,
Are merged alike in a neutral Best."[B]

[Footnote B:  Ibid.]

There is a better way of life, thinks Browning, than such a state of stagnation.

“Why should I speak?  You divine the test. 
When the trouble grew in my pregnant breast
A voice said, So would’st thou strive, not rest,

  “Burn and not smoulder, win by worth,
  Not rest content with a wealth that’s dearth,
  Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Earth."[C]

[Footnote C:  Ibid.]

The discontent of man, the consciousness of sin, evil, pain, is a symbol of promotion.  The peace of the state of nature has been broken for him; and, although the first consequence be