Given, indeed, but to keep for ever."[A]

[Footnote A: _Christmas-Eve_.]

Thus, while insisting on the absolute priority of God, and the original
receptivity of man; while recognizing that love, reason, and every inner
power and outer opportunity are lent to man, Browning does not forget
what these powers are. Man can only act as man; he must obey his nature,
as the stock or stone or plant obeys its nature. But to act as man is to
act freely, and man's nature is not that of a stock or stone. He is
rational, and cannot but be rational. Hence he can neither be ruled, as
dead matter is ruled, by natural law; nor live, like a bird, the life of
innocent impulse or instinct. He is placed, from the very first, on "the
table land whence life upsprings aspiring to be immortality." He is a
spirit,--responsible because he is free, and free because he is
rational.

"Man, therefore, stands on his own stock
Of love and power as a pin-point rock,
And, looks to God who ordained divorce
Of the rock from His boundless continent."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid._]

The divorce is real, although ordained, but it is possible only in so
far as man, by means of reason, constitutes his own ends of action.
Impulse cannot bring it about. It is reason that enables man to free
himself from the despotic authority of outer law, to relate himself to
an inner law, and by reconciling inner and outer to attain to goodness.
Thus reason is the source of all morality. And it also is the principle