[Footnote A: Shelley's _Epipsychidion_.]

But, for a being such as Browning describes, who is shut up within the
blind walls of his own self, the self-transcending impulse of love would
be impossible. If man's inner consciousness is to be conceived as a dark
room shutting out the world, upon whose shadowy phenomena the candle of
introspection throws a dim and uncertain light, then he can have no
interest outside of himself; nor can he ever take that first step in
goodness, which carries him beyond his narrow individuality to seek and
find a larger self in others. Morality, even in its lowest form, implies
knowledge, and knowledge of something better than "those _apparent_
other mortals." With the first dawn of the moral life comes the
consciousness of an ideal, which is not actual; and such a break with
the natural is not possible except to him who has known a better and
desired it. The ethical endeavour of man is the attempt to convert ideas
into actuality; and all his activity as moral agent takes place within
the sphere that is illumined by the light of knowledge. If knowledge
breaks down, there is no law of action which he can obey. The moral law
that must be apprehended, and whose authority must be recognized by man,
either sinks out of being or becomes an illusive phantom, if man is
doomed to ignorance or false knowledge. To extinguish truth is to
extinguish goodness.

In like manner, religion, which the poet would fain defend for man by
means of agnosticism, becomes impossible, if knowledge be denied.
Religion is not blind emotion; nor can mere feeling, however ecstatic,
ascend to God. Animals feel, but they are not, and cannot be,
religious--unless they can know. The love of God implies knowledge. "I
know Him whom I have believed" is the language of religion. For what is
religion but a conscious identification of the self with One who is