The poet sees that in each higher stage we benefit by the garnered experience of the past; and so man grows and expands and becomes capable of feeling for and with everything that lives. At the same time the higher is not degraded by having worked in and through the lower, for he distinguishes between the continuous persistent life, and the temporary coverings it makes use of on its upward way; From first to last of lodging, I was I, And not at all the place that harboured me. Humanity then, in Browning's view, is not a collection of individuals, separate and often antagonistic, but one whole. When I say "you" 'tis the common soul, The collective I mean: the race of Man That receives life in parts to live in a whole And grow here according to God's clear plan. _Old Pictures in Florence._ This sense of unity is shown in many ways: for instance, in Browning's protest against the one-sidedness of nineteenth-century scientific thought, the sharp distinction or gulf set up between science and religion. This sharp cleavage, to the mystic, is impossible. He knows, however irreconcilable the two may appear, that they are but different aspects of the same thing. This is one of the ways in which Browning anticipates the most advanced thought of the present day. In _Paracelsus_ he emphasises the fact that the exertion of power in the intelligence, or the acquisition of knowledge, is useless without the inspiration of love, just as love is waste without power. Paracelsus sums up the matter when he says to Aprile-- I too have sought to KNOW as thou to LOVE Excluding love as thou refusedst knowledge.... We must never part ... Till thou the lover, know; and I, the knower, Love--until both are saved. Arising logically out of this belief in unity, there follows, as with all mystics, the belief in the potential divinity of man, which permeates all Browning's thought, and is continually insisted on in such poems as _Rabbi ben Ezra, A Death in the Desert_, and _The Ring and the Book_. He takes for granted the fundamental position of the mystic, that the object of life is to know God; and according to the poet, in knowing love we learn to know God. Hence it follows that love is the meaning of life, and that he who finds it not loses what he lived for And eternally must lose it. _Christina._ For life with all it yields of joy and woe And hope and fear ... Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love. _A Death in the Desert._ This is Browning's central teaching, the key-note of his work and philosophy. The importance of love in life is to Browning supreme, because he holds it to be the meeting-point between God and man. Love is the sublimest conception possible to man; and a life inspired by it is the highest conceivable form of goodness.