“I count life just a stuff To try the soul’s strength on, educe the man.” The glory of the imperfect lies in the power of progress, “man’s distinctive mark.” And progress comes by conflict; conflict with falsehood and ignorance,— “Living here means nescience simply; ’tis next life that helps to learn—” and conflict with evil,— “Why comes temptation but for man to meet, And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestalled in triumph?” The poet is always calling us to be glad we are engaged in such a noble strife. “Rejoice we are allied To that which doth provide And not partake, effect and not receive! A spark disturbs our clod; Nearer we hold of God Who gives, than of his tribes that take, I must believe. Then welcome each rebuff That turns earth’s smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!” Now this is fine doctrine, lofty, strenuous, stimulating. It appeals to the will, which is man’s central power. It proclaims the truth that virtue must be active in its essence though it may also be passive in its education, positive in its spirit and negative only by contrast. But it is in the working out of this doctrine into an ethical system that Browning enters upon dangerous ground, and arrives at results which seem to obscure the clearness, and to threaten the stability of the moral order, by which alone, if the world’s greatest teachers have been right, the ultimate good of humanity can be attained. Here, it seems to me, his teaching, especially in its latter utterances, is often confused, turbulent, misleading. His light is mixed with darkness. He seems almost to say that it matters little which way we go, provided only we go. He overlooks the deep truth that there is an activity of the soul in self-restraint as well as in self-assertion. It takes as much courage to dare not to do evil as it does to dare to do good. The hero is sometimes the man who stands still. Virtue is noblest when it is joined to virility. But virility alone is not virtue nor does it always lead to moral victory. Sometimes it leads straight towards moral paralysis, death, extinction. Browning fails to see this, because his method is dramatic and because he dramatizes through himself. He puts himself into this or the other character, and works himself out through it, preserving still in himself, though all unconsciously, the soul of something good. Thus he does not touch that peculiar deadening of spiritual power which is one result of the unrestrained following of impulse and passion. It is this defect in his vision of life that leads to the dubious and interrogatory moral of such a poem as _The Statue and the Bust_.