It is the constant desire of the good to attain to such a convincing knowledge of the worth and dignity of the moral law that they shall be able to make themselves its devoted instruments.  Their desire is that “the good” shall supplant in them all motives that conflict against it, and be the inner principle, or necessity, of all their actions.  Such complete devotion to the good is expressed, for instance, in the words of the Hebrew Psalmist:  “Thy testimonies have I taken as an heritage for ever; for they are the rejoicing of my heart.  I have inclined mine heart to perform Thy statutes alway, even unto the end.  I hate vain thoughts, but Thy law do I love.”  “Nevertheless I live,” said the Christian apostle, “yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.”  In these words there is expressed that highest form of the moral life, in which the individual is so identified in desire with his ideal, that he lives only to actualize it in his character.  The natural self is represented as dead, and the victory of the new principle is viewed as complete.  This full obedience to the ideal is the service of a necessity; but the necessity is within, and the service is, therefore, perfect freedom.  The authority of the law is absolute, but the law is self-imposed.  The whole man is convinced of its goodness.  He has acquired something even fuller than a mere intellectual demonstration of it; for his knowledge has ripened into wisdom, possessed his sympathies, and become a disposition of his heart.  And the fulness and certainty of his knowledge, so far from rendering morality impossible, is its very perfection.  To bring about such a knowledge of the good of goodness and the evil of evil, as will engender love of the former and hatred of the latter, is the aim of all moral education.  Thus, the history of human life, in so far as it is progressive, may be concentrated in the saying that it is the ascent from the power of a necessity which is natural, to the power of a necessity which is moral.  And this latter necessity can come only through fuller and more convincing knowledge of the law that rules the world, and is also the inner principle of man’s nature.

There remains now the third element in Browning’s view,—­namely, that the faith in the good, implied in morality and religion, can be firmly established, after knowledge has turned out deceptive, upon the individual’s consciousness of the power of love within himself.  In other words, I must now try to estimate the value of Browning’s appeal from the intellect to the heart.

Before doing so, however, it may be well to repeat once more that Browning’s condemnation of knowledge, in his philosophical poems, is not partial or hesitating.  On the contrary, he confines it definitely to the individual’s consciousness of his own inner states.

            “Myself I solely recognize. 
  They, too, may recognize themselves, not me,
  For aught I know or care."[A]