Two things are then clear:  (1) The attainment of our desires for perfection, the satisfaction of our passion for the infinite, is forbidden to us on earth by the limitations of life.  We are made imperfect; we are kept imperfect here; and we must do all our work within the limits this natural imperfection makes. (2) We must, nevertheless, not cease to strive towards the perfection unattainable on earth, but which shall be attained hereafter.  Our destiny, the God within us, demands that.  And we lose it, if we are content with our earthly life, even with its highest things, with knowledge, beauty, or with love.

Hence, the foundation of Browning’s theory is a kind of Original Sin in us, a natural defectiveness deliberately imposed on us by God, which prevents us attaining any absolute success on earth.  And this defectiveness of nature is met by the truth, which, while we aspire, we know—­that God will fulfil all noble desire in a life to come.

We must aspire then, but at the same time all aspiring is to be conterminous with steady work within our limits.  Aspiration to the perfect is not to make us idle, indifferent to the present, but to drive us on.  Its passion teaches us, as it urges into action all our powers, what we can and what we cannot do.  That is, it teaches us, through the action it engenders, what our limits are; and when we know them, the main duties of life rise clear.  The first of these is, to work patiently within our limits; and the second is the apparent contradiction of the first, never to be satisfied with our limits, or with the results we attain within them.  Then, having worked within them, but always looked beyond them, we, as life closes, learn the secret.  The failures of earth prove the victory beyond:  “For—­

                what is our failure here but a triumph’s evidence
      For the fulness of the days?  Have we withered or agonised? 
    Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence? 
      Why rushed the discords in but that harmony should be prized? 
    Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear. 
      Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and the woe: 
    But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear;
      The rest may reason, and welcome:  ’tis we musicians know.”

    Abt Vogler.

Finally, the root and flower of this patient but uncontented work is Love for man because of his being in God, because of his high and immortal destiny.  All that we do, whether failure or not, builds up the perfect humanity to come, and flows into the perfection of God in whom is the perfection of man.  This love, grounded on this faith, brings joy into life; and, in this joy of love, we enter into the eternal temple of the Life to come.  Love opens Heaven while Earth closes us round.  At last limitations cease to trouble us.  They are lost in the vision, they bring no more sorrow, doubt or baffling.  Therefore, in this confused chaotic time on earth—­