The poem _Pauline_ shows that young Browning passed through skepticism, atheism, pessimism, cynicism, and that particularly dark state when the mind reacts on itself; when enthusiasms, high hopes, and true faith seem childish; when wit and mockery take the place of zeal, this diabolical substitution seeming for the moment to be an intellectual advance. But although he suffered from all these diseases of the soul, he quickly became convalescent and _Paracelsus_ proves that his cure was complete.
Browning's optimism is not based on any discount of the sufferings of life, nor any attempt to overlook such gross realities as sin and pain. No pessimist has realised these facts more keenly than he. The Pope, who is the poet's mouthpiece, calls the world a dread machinery of sin and sorrow. The world is full of sin and sorrow, but it is machinery--and machinery is meant to make something; in this instance the product is human character, which can not be made without obstacles, struggles, and torment. In _Reverie_, Browning goes even farther than this in his description of terrestrial existence.
Head praises, but heart refrains From loving's acknowledgment Whole losses outweigh half-gains: Earth's good is with evil blent: Good struggles but evil reigns.
Such an appraisal of life can hardly be called a blind and jaunty optimism.
Browning declares repeatedly that the world shows clearly two attributes of God: immense force and immense intelligence. We can not worship God, however, merely because He is strong and wise; He must be better than we are to win our respect and homage. The third necessary attribute, Love, is not at all clear in the spectacle furnished by science and history. Where then shall we seek it? His answer is, in the revelation of God's love through Jesus Christ.
What lacks then of perfection fit for God But just the instance which this tale supplies Of love without a limit?
Browning's philosophy therefore is purely Christian. The love of God revealed in the Incarnation and in our own ethical natures--our imperfect souls containing here and now the possibilities of infinite development--makes Browning believe that this is God's world and we are God's children. He conceives of our life as an eternal one, our existence here being merely probation. No one has ever believed more rationally and more steadfastly in the future life than our poet; and his optimism is based solidly on this faith. The man who believes in the future life, he seems to say, may enjoy whole-heartedly and enthusiastically the positive pleasures of this world, and may endure with a firm mind its evils and its terrible sufferings. Take Christianity out of Browning, and his whole philosophy, with its cheerful outlook, falls to the ground. Of all true English poets, he is the most definitely Christian, the most sure of his ground. He wrote out his own evangelical creed in _Christmas-Eve_ and _Easter Day_; but even if we did not have these definite assurances, poems like _A Death in the Desert_ and _Gold Hair_ would be sufficient.