The prologue of this series of poems prefigures the thought in a striking dialogue between Apollo and the Fates wherein the Fates symbolize the natural forces of life, behind which is Zeus or divine power; Apollo's light symbolizes the glamour which hope and aspiration throw over the events of human existence, without actually giving any assurance of its worth, and the wine of Bacchus symbolizes feeling, by means of which a perception of the absolute is gained. Man's reason, guided by the divine, accepts this revelation through feeling not as actual knowledge of the absolute which transcends all intellectual attempts to grasp it, but as a promise sufficiently assuring to take him through the ills and uncertainties of life with faith in the ultimate triumph of beauty and good. The epilogue, a dialogue between John Fust and his friends, brings home the thought once more in another form, emphasizing the fact that there can be no new realm of actual, palpable knowledge opened up to man beyond that which his intellect is able to perceive. Once having gained this knowledge of the failure of intellectual knowledge to solve what Whitman calls the "strangling problems" of life, man's part is to follow onward through ignorance. "Dare and deserve! As still to its asymptote speedeth the curve, So approximates Man--Thee, who reachable not, Hast formed him to yearningly Follow thy whole Sole and single omniscience!" It will be seen from this review of the salient points enlarged upon by Browning in these last groups of poems that he has deliberately set himself to harmonize the intellectual and the intuitional aspects of human consciousness. He has sought to join the hands of mind and spirit. The artistic exuberance of Paracelsus is supplemented by spiritual fervor. To the young Browning, the beauty of immortal, joyous life pursuing its heights forever was as a radiant vision, to the Browning who had grappled with the strangling problems of the century this beauty was not so distinctly seen, but its reality was felt with all the depth of an intensely spiritual nature--a nature moreover so absolutely fearless, that it could unflinchingly confront every giant of doubt, or of disillusionment which science in its pristine egotism had conjured up, saying "Keep to thine own province, where thou art indeed powerful; to the threshold of the eternal we may come through thy ministrations, but the consciousness of divine things cometh through the still small voice of the heart."