For men with minds of the type of Spencer's this negative assurance of the Infinite is sufficient, but human beings as a rule will not rest satisfied with such cold abstractions. Though Job said thousands of years ago, "Who by searching can find out God," mankind still continues to search. They long to know something of the nature of the divine as well as to be assured of its existence. In this very act of searching Browning declares the divine becomes most directly manifest. From the earliest times of which we have any record man has been aspiring toward God. Many times has he thought he had found him, but with enlarged perceptions he discovered later that what he had found was only God's image built up out of his own human experiences. This search of man for the divine is described with great power and originality in the Fancy called "The Sun," under the symbol of the man who seeks the prime Giver that he may give thanks where it is due for a palatable fig. This search for God, Browning calls love, meaning by that the moving, aspiring force of the whole universe in its multifarious manifestations, from the love that goes forth in thanks for benefits received, through the aspiration of the artist toward beauty, of the lover toward human sympathy, even of the scientist toward knowledge, to the lover of humanity like Ferishtah, who declares, "I know nothing save that love I can, boundlessly, endlessly." The poet argues from this that if mankind has with ever-increasing fervor aspired toward a God of Love, and has ever developed toward broader conceptions of human love, it is only reasonable to infer that in his nature God has some attribute which corresponds to human love, though it transcend our most exalted imagining of it. At the end of the century a book was written in America in which an argument similar to this was used to prove the existence of God. This book was "Through Nature to God," by John Fiske, whose earlier work, "Cosmic Philosophy," did much to familiarize the American reading public with the evolutionary philosophy of Spencer. Fiske claimed that his theory was entirely original, yet no one familiar with the thought of Browning could fail to see the similarity of their points of view. Fiske based his proof upon analogies drawn from the evolution of organic life in following out the law of the adjustment of inner to outer relations. For example, since the eye has through æons of time gradually adjusted itself into harmony with light, why should not man's search for God be the gradual adjustment of the soul into harmony with the infinite spirit? This adjustment, as Browning expresses it, is that of human love to divine love. [Illustration: HERBERT SPENCER]