The divine love might wind inextricably about him,[133] the dance of plastic circumstance at the divine bidding impress its rhythms upon his life,[134] he retained his human identity inviolate, a "point of central rock" amid the welter of the waves.[135] His love might be a "spark from God's fire," but it was his own, to use as he would; he "stood on his own stock of love and power."[136] [Footnote 131: _Christmas-Eve._] [Footnote 132: _Ferishtah_.] [Footnote 133: _Easter-Day_.] [Footnote 134: _Rabbi ben Ezra_.] [Footnote 135: _Epilogue_.] [Footnote 136: _Christmas-Eve_.] IV.
In this sharp demarcation of man's being from God's, Browning never faltered.

On the contrary, the individualising animus which there found expression impelled him to raise more formidable barriers about man, and to turn the ring-fence which secured him from intrusion into a high wall which cut off his view.

In other words, the main current of Browning's thought sets strongly towards a sceptical criticism of human knowledge.
At the outset he stands on the high _a priori_ ground of Plato.

Truth in its fulness abides in the soul, an "imprisoned splendour," which intellect quickened by love can elicit, which moments of peculiar insight, deep joy, and sorrow, and the coming on of death, can release.
But the gross flesh hems it in, wall upon wall, "a baffling and perverting carnal mesh,"[137] the source of all error.

The process of discovery he commonly conceived as an advance through a succession of Protean disguises of truth, each "one grade above its last presentment,"[138] until, at the rare moment, by the excepted eye, the naked truth was grasped.