Through increased faith i' the thing reports belie?"[A]

[Footnote A: _The Ring and the Book--The Pope_, 1862-1868.]

"Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrive
by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion."

It was, thus, I conclude, a deep speculative error into which Browning
fell, when, in order to substantiate his optimistic faith, he
stigmatized human knowledge as merely apparent. Knowledge does not fail,
except in the sense in which morality also fails; it does not at any
time attain to the ultimate truth, any more than the moral life is in
any of its activities[B] a complete embodiment of the absolute good. It
is not given to man, who is essentially progressive, to reach the
ultimate term of development. For there is no ultimate term: life never
stands still. But, for the same reason, there is no ultimate failure.
The whole history of man is a history of growth. If, however, knowledge
did fail, then morality too must fail; and the appeal which the poet
makes from the intellect to the heart, would be an appeal to mere
emotion. Finally, even if we take a generous view of the poet's meaning,
and put out of consideration the theory he expresses when he is
deliberately philosophizing, there is still no appeal from the reason to
an alien and higher authority. The appeal to "the heart" is, at best,
only an appeal from the understanding to the reason, from a conscious
logic to the more concrete fact constituted by reason, which reflection
has failed to comprehend in its completeness; at its worst, it is an
appeal from truth to prejudice, from belief to dogma.

[Footnote B: See Chapter IX., p. 291.]