that it is not pure emotion, or mere feeling, whose authority is set
above that of reason, but rather the emotion which is the result of
knowledge. The appeal of the religious man from the doubts and
difficulties, which reason levels against "the faith," is really an
appeal to the character that lies behind the emotion. The conviction of
the heart, that refuses to yield to the arguments of the understanding,
is not _mere_ feeling; but, rather, the complex experience of the past
life, that manifests itself in feeling. When an individual, clinging to
his moral or religious faith, says, "I have felt it," he opposes to the
doubt, not his feeling as such, but his personality in all the wealth of
its experience. The appeal to the heart is the appeal to the unproved,
but not, therefore, unauthorized, testimony of the best men at their
best moments, when their vision of truth is clearest. No one pretends
that "the loud and empty voice of untrained passion and prejudice" has
any authority in matters of moral and religious faith; though, in such
cases, "feeling" may lack neither depth nor intensity. If the "feelings"
of the good man were dissociated from his character, and stripped bare
of all the significance they obtain therefrom, their worthlessness would
become apparent. The profound error of condemning knowledge in order to
honour feeling, is hidden only by the fact that the feeling is already
informed and inspired with knowledge. Religious agnosticism, like all
other forms of the theory of nescience, derives its plausibility from
the adventitious help it purloins from the knowledge which it condemns.

That it is to such feeling that Browning really appeals against
knowledge becomes abundantly evident, when we bear in mind that he
always calls it "love." For love in man is never ignorant. It knows its
object, and is a conscious identification of the self with it. And to
Browning, the object of love, when love is at its best--of that love by
means of which he refutes intellectual pessimism--is mankind. The revolt