“Man stands out again, pale, resolute,
  Prepared to die,—­that is, alive at last. 
  As we broke up that old faith of the world,
  Have we, next age, to break up this the new—­
  Faith, in the thing, grown faith in the report—­
  Whence need to bravely disbelieve report
  Through increased faith i’ the thing reports belie?"[A]

[Footnote A:  The Ring and the Book—­The Pope, 1862-1868.]

“Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrive by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion.”

It was, thus, I conclude, a deep speculative error into which Browning fell, when, in order to substantiate his optimistic faith, he stigmatized human knowledge as merely apparent.  Knowledge does not fail, except in the sense in which morality also fails; it does not at any time attain to the ultimate truth, any more than the moral life is in any of its activities[B] a complete embodiment of the absolute good.  It is not given to man, who is essentially progressive, to reach the ultimate term of development.  For there is no ultimate term:  life never stands still.  But, for the same reason, there is no ultimate failure.  The whole history of man is a history of growth.  If, however, knowledge did fail, then morality too must fail; and the appeal which the poet makes from the intellect to the heart, would be an appeal to mere emotion.  Finally, even if we take a generous view of the poet’s meaning, and put out of consideration the theory he expresses when he is deliberately philosophizing, there is still no appeal from the reason to an alien and higher authority.  The appeal to “the heart” is, at best, only an appeal from the understanding to the reason, from a conscious logic to the more concrete fact constituted by reason, which reflection has failed to comprehend in its completeness; at its worst, it is an appeal from truth to prejudice, from belief to dogma.

[Footnote B:  See Chapter IX., p. 291.]

And in both cases alike, the appeal is futile; for, whether “the heart be wiser than the head,” or not, whether the faith which is assailed be richer or poorer, truer or more false, than the logic which is directed against it, an appeal to the heart cannot any longer restore the unity of the broken life.  Once reflection has set in, there is no way of turning away its destructive might, except by deeper reflection.  The implicit faith of the heart must become the explicit faith of reason.  “There is no final and satisfactory issue from such an endless internal debate and conflict, until the ‘heart’ has learnt to speak the language of the head—­i.e., until the permanent principles, which underlay and gave strength to faith, have been brought into the light of distinct consciousness."[A]

[Footnote A:  Caird’s Comte.]

I conclude, therefore, that the poet was right in saying that, in order to comprehend human character,