Since Man may claim a right to understand
What passes understanding."[A]

[Footnote A: _Bernard de Mandeville_.]

God's ways are past finding out. Nay, God Himself is unknown. At times,
indeed, the power to love within man seems to the poet to be a clue to
the nature of the Power without, and God is all but revealed in this
surpassing emotion of the human heart. But, when philosophizing, he
withdraws even this amount of knowledge. He is

"Assured that, whatsoe'er the quality
Of love's cause, save that love was caused thereby,
This--nigh upon revealment as it seemed
A minute since--defies thy longing looks,
Withdrawn into the unknowable once more."[B]

[Footnote B: _A Pillar at Sebzevar_.]

Thus--to sum up Browning's view of knowledge--we are ignorant of the
world; we do not know even whether it is good, or evil, or only their
semblance, that is presented to us in human life; and we know nothing of
God, except that He is the cause of love in man. What greater depth of
agnosticism is possible?

When the doctrine is put in this bald form, the moral and religious
consciousness of man, on behalf of which the theory was invented,
revolts against it.

Nevertheless, the distinction made by Browning between the intellectual