should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made.
It is in the independence and originality of such striving that the soul
discovers and frees its innate potentialities.
An inevitable corollary of this idea of progress is the emphasis put
upon aspiration as a habit of the mind. The pursuit of an ideal, a
divine discontent with present accomplishment, are enjoined upon man.
The gleams of heaven on earth are not meant to be permanent or
satisfying, but only to sting man into hunger for full light. When a
human being has achieved to the full extent of his perceptions or
aspirations, he has, thinks Browning, met with the greatest possible
disaster, that of arrested development. Man's powers should ever climb
new heights. For his soul's health he should always see "a flying point
of bliss remote, a happiness in store afar, a sphere of distant glory."
"A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
According to this ideal, man's conception of good is ever changing and
ever widening and hence never in this life to be fully attained; yet the
condition of growth is that he have an unmeasured thirst for good and
that he pursue it with unquenchable ardor.
The importance of love as one of the most effective agencies in
spiritual growth is stated and restated in Browning's poetry and by
exceedingly diverse characters. The Queen in _In a Balcony_ turns away
from her lonely splendor to exclaim,
There is no good of life but love--but love!
What else looks good is some shade flung from love;
Love gilds it, gives it worth.