Once admit these two things--namely, that his nature, though not of the highest, is such as God gave him, and his lack of responsibility in regard to any moral ideal, so that he accomplishes the purpose of this nature--and a loophole is given for any inconsistencies he may choose to indulge in in bringing about that strengthening of an old ideal in which he believes. The old ideal is, of course, the monarchical principle of government, administered, however, in such a manner that it will be for the good of society in all its complex manifestations of to-day. His notion of society's good consists in a balancing of all its forces, secured by the smoothing down of any extreme tendencies, each having its orbit marked but no more, so that none shall impede the other's path. "In this wide world--though each and all alike, Save for [him] fain would spread itself through space And leave its fellow not an inch of way." Browning makes him indulge in a curiously sophisticated view of the relativity of good and evil in the course of his argument, to the effect that since there is a further good conceivable beyond the utmost earth can realize, therefore to change the agency--the evil whereby good is brought about, try to make good do good as evil does--would be just as foolish as if a chemist wanting white and knowing that black ingredients were needed to make the dye insisted these should be white, too. A bad world is that which he experiences and approves. A good world he does not want in which there would be no pity, courage, hope, fear, sorrow, joy--devotedness, in short--which he believes form the ultimate allowed to man; therefore it has been his policy not to do away with the evil in the society he is saving. To mitigate, not to cure, has been his aim. Browning would, himself, answer the sophistry, here, by showing that evil though permitted by divine power was only a means of good through man's working against whatever he conceives to be evil with the whole strength of his being. To deliberately follow the policy of conserving evil would be in the end to annihilate the good. Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau could not see so far as this.