Home was infinitely less dangerous as a dexterous swindler than he was as a bad or foolish man in possession of unknown or ill-comprehended powers.

It is surely curious to think that a man must object to exposing his wife to a few conjuring tricks, but could not be afraid of exposing her to the loose and nameless energies of the universe.
Browning's theoretic attitude in the matter was, therefore, in all probability quite open and unbiassed.

His was a peculiarly hospitable intellect.

If any one had told him of the spiritualist theory, or theories a hundred times more insane, as things held by some sect of Gnostics in Alexandria, or of heretical Talmudists at Antwerp, he would have delighted in those theories, and would very likely have adopted them.

But Greek Gnostics and Antwerp Jews do not dance round a man's wife and wave their hands in her face and send her into swoons and trances about which nobody knows anything rational or scientific.
It was simply the stirring in Browning of certain primal masculine feelings far beyond the reach of argument--things that lie so deep that if they are hurt, though there may be no blame and no anger, there is always pain.