would have, on Browning's hypothesis, to conceive of a being in whom
perfect knowledge was combined with an undeveloped will. A being so
constituted would be an agglomerate of utterly disparate elements, the
interaction of which in a single character it would be impossible to
make intelligible.

But, setting aside this point, there is a curious flaw in Browning's
argument, which indicates that he had not distinguished between two
forms of optimism which are essentially different from each
other,--namely, the pantheistic and the Christian.

To know that evil is only apparent, that pain is only pleasure's mask,
that all forms of wickedness and misery are only illusions of an
incomplete intelligence, would, he argues, arrest all moral action and
stultify love. For love--which necessarily implies need in its
object--is the principle of all right action. In this he argues justly,
for the moral life is essentially a conflict and progress; and, in a
world in which "white ruled unchecked along the line," there would be
neither the need of conflict nor the possibility of progress. And, on
the other hand, if the good were merely a phantom, and evil the reality,
the same destruction of moral activity would follow. "White may not
triumph," in this absolute manner, nor may we "clean abolish, once and
evermore, white's faintest trace." There must be "the constant shade
cast on life's shine."

All this is true; but the admission of it in no way militates against
the conception of absolutely valid knowledge; nor is it any proof that
we need live in the twilight of perpetual doubt, in order to be moral.
For the knowledge, of which Browning speaks, would be knowledge of a
state of things in which morality would be really impossible; that is,