The world presents itself to him, as the Germans say, _Im Werden_. It is a world of potencies, working itself out. Existence is not the mere fact of being, but the vital process of becoming. The glory of man lies in his power to realize this process in his mind and to fling himself into it with all his will. If he tries to satisfy himself with things as they are, like the world-wedded soul in _Easter Eve_, he fails. If he tries to crowd the infinite into the finite, like Paracelsus, he fails. He must make his dissatisfaction his strength. He must accept the limitations of his life, not in the sense of submitting to them, but as Jacob wrestled with the angel, in order to win, through conflict, a new power, a larger blessing. His ardent desires and longings and aspirations, yes, even his defeats and disappointments and failures, are the stuff out of which his immortal destiny is weaving itself. The one thing that life requires of him is to act with ardour, to go forward resolutely, to “burn his way through the world”; and the great lesson which it teaches him is this: “But thou shalt painfully attain to joy While hope and love and fear shall keep thee man.” Browning was very much needed in the Nineteenth Century as the antidote, or perhaps it would be more just to say, as the complement to Carlyle. For Carlyle’s prophecy, with all its moral earnestness, its virility, its indomitable courage, had in it a ground-tone of despair. It was the battle-cry of a forlorn hope. Man must hate shams intensely, must seek reality passionately, must do his duty desperately; but he can never tell why. The reason of things is inscrutable: the eternal Power that rules things is unknowable. Carlyle, said Mazzini, “has a constant disposition to crush the human by comparing him with God.” But Browning has an unconquerable disposition to elevate the human by joining him to God. The power that animates and governs the world is Divine; man cannot escape from it nor overcome it. But the love that stirs in man’s heart is also Divine; and if man will follow it, it shall lead him to that height where he shall see that Power is Love. “I have faith such end shall be: From the first Power was—I knew. Life has made clear to me That, strive but for closer view, Love were as plain to see. When see? When there dawns a day If not on the homely earth, Then yonder, worlds away, Where the strange and new have birth And Power comes full in play.”[17] Browning’s optimism is fundamental. Originally a matter of temperament, perhaps, as it is expressed in _At the Mermaid_,— “I find earth not gray, but rosy, Heaven not grim but fair of hue. Do I stoop? I pluck a posy, Do I stand and stare? All’s blue——”