Furini is made to question-- "Evolutionists! At truth I glimpse from depths, you glance from heights, Our stations for discovery opposites, How should ensue agreement! I explain." He describes, then, how the search of the evolutionist for the absolute is outside of man. "'Tis the tip-top of things to which you strain." Arriving at the spasm which sets things going, they are stopped, and since having arrived at unconscious energy, they can go no further, they now drop down to a point where atoms somehow begin to think, feel, and know themselves to be, and the world's begun such as we recognize it. This is a true presentation of the attitude of physicists and chemists to-day, the latter especially holding that experiment proves that in the atoms themselves is an embryonic form of consciousness and will. From these is finally evolved at last self-conscious man. But after all this investigating on the part of the evolutionist what has been gained? Of power--that is, power to create nature or life, or even to understand it--man possesses no particle, and of knowledge, only just so much as to show that it ends in ignorance on every side. This is the result of the objective search for truth. But begin with man himself, and there is a fact upon which he can take a sure stand, his self-consciousness--a "togetherness," as Merz says, which cannot be explained mathematically by the adding up of atoms; and furthermore an inborn certainty that whatever is felt to be within had its rise or cause without: "thus blend the conscious I, and all things perceived in one Effect." Through this subjective perception of an all-powerful cause a reflex light is thrown back upon all that the investigations of the intellect have accomplished. The cause is no longer simply blind energy, but must itself be possessed of gifts as great and still greater than those with which the soul of man is endowed. The forces at work in nature thus become instinct with wonder and beauty, the good and evil of life reveal themselves as a means used by absolute Power and Love for the perfecting of the soul which made to know on and ever must know "All to be known at any halting stage Of [the] soul's progress, such as earth, where wage War, just for soul's instruction, pain with joy, Folly with wisdom, all that works annoy With all that quiets and contents." To sum up--our investigations into Browning's thought show him to be a type primarily of the mystic. Mysticism in its most pronounced forms regards the emotions of the human mind as supreme. The mystic, instead of allowing the intellectual faculty to lead the way, degrades it to an inferior position and makes it entirely subservient to the feelings. In some moods Browning seems almost to belong to this pronounced type; for example, when he says in "A Pillar at Sebzevar," "Say not that we know, rather that we love, therefore we know enough." [Illustration: DAVID STRAUSS]