And what according to Browning's theory as expressed elsewhere are we to expect of the god of this untaught, half-savage being, morally undeveloped, with artistic and poetic faculties already awakening? More or less will it necessarily be the outcome of his own experiences. A commentary on that familiar passage which S. John in _A Death in the Desert_ (ll. 412-419) puts into the mouth of the objector to the truth of the facts of Christianity, who would regard the conception of the Godhead as subjective rather than objective in character. First in the history of the race came the ascription to the Deity of hands, feet, and bodily parts; then followed the human passions of pride and anger. Finally, all yield to the higher attributes of "power, love, and will," these succeeding to and supplanting the earlier characteristics. In his imaginary answer the Evangelist is represented as attributing these changes of conception to the necessity of growth in human nature whereby man uses such aids to his development as may be attainable. The Truth itself remaining unaltered and unalterable, man obtains from time to time fuller glimpses thereof, the greater superseding, even apparently falsifying, the less. Caliban, uniting the two earlier conceptions of the Deity--as a being possessed of bodily parts and human passions--offers but the merest suggestion of any further and higher development. Yet there are such _indirect_, should we rather say _negative_, suggestions observable towards the close of the poem. To Setebos is assigned as a dwelling-place "the cold o' the moon," possibly because the speaker feels it satisfactory that the god whom he fears should be at what he deems a distance sufficiently remote from his own habitation; partly also because to him "the cold o' the moon" or, indeed, any cold, is suggestive of intensely disagreeable sensations, and to his unsatisfactory environment he ascribes the attempts of Setebos towards creation as designed to effect a change in his own condition. All things animate or inanimate inhabiting the island have been, according to Caliban, the work of Setebos. What still lies beyond the range of his creative power? Not the sun, as might have been anticipated, since to Caliban its agency is purely beneficial, and its influence apparently of limitless extent; not the sun, "clouds, winds, meteors," but the stars. These "came otherwise," how or by what means the soliloquist is unable to determine.