While in his later poems the poet speaks of love as an impulse—­either blind or bound to erring knowledge—­and of the heart as made to love, in his earlier ones he seems to treat man as free to work out his own purposes, and act out his own ideals.  Browning here finds himself able to maintain the dependence of man upon God without destroying morality.  He regards man’s impulses not as blind instincts, but as falling within his rational nature, and constituting the forms of its activity.  He recognizes the distinction between a mere impulse, in the sense of a tendency to act, which is directed by a foreign power, and an impulse informed, that is, directed by reason.  According to this view, it is reason which at once gives man the independence of foreign authority, which is implied in morality, and constitutes that affinity between man and God, which is implied by religion.  No doubt, the impulse to know, like the impulse to love, was put into man:  his whole nature is a gift, and he is therefore, in this sense, completely dependent upon God—­“God’s all, man’s nought.”  But, on the other hand, it is a rational nature which has been put into him, and not an irrational impulse.  Or, rather, the impulse that constitutes his life as man, is the self-evolving activity of reason.

“Who speaks of man, then, must not sever
Man’s very elements from man."[A]

[Footnote A:  Christmas-Eve.]

However the rational nature of man has come to be, whether by emanation or creation, it necessarily brings freedom with it, and all its risks and possibilities.  It is of the very essence of reason that it should find its law within itself.

         “God’s all, man’s nought: 
  But also, God, whose pleasure brought
  Man into being, stands away
  As it were a hand-breadth off, to give
  Room for the newly-made to live,
  And look at Him from a place apart,
  And use his gifts of brain and heart,
  Given, indeed, but to keep for ever."[A]

[Footnote A:  Christmas-Eve.]

Thus, while insisting on the absolute priority of God, and the original receptivity of man; while recognizing that love, reason, and every inner power and outer opportunity are lent to man, Browning does not forget what these powers are.  Man can only act as man; he must obey his nature, as the stock or stone or plant obeys its nature.  But to act as man is to act freely, and man’s nature is not that of a stock or stone.  He is rational, and cannot but be rational.  Hence he can neither be ruled, as dead matter is ruled, by natural law; nor live, like a bird, the life of innocent impulse or instinct.  He is placed, from the very first, on “the table land whence life upsprings aspiring to be immortality.”  He is a spirit,—­responsible because he is free, and free because he is rational.

  “Man, therefore, stands on his own stock
  Of love and power as a pin-point rock,
  And, looks to God who ordained divorce
  Of the rock from His boundless continent."[B]