678 'Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
gress. Don Juan, having learnt that good conies out of evil, 
reaches the conclusion that 
we must not fret 
Nor fume, on altitudes of self-sufficiency, 
But bid a frank farewell to what—we think should be, 
And, with as good a grace, welcome what is—we find. 
(.Fifine 1881-4.) 
In other words he resigns all ideal standards and becomes an 
opportunist and materialist—to Browning’s mind the greatest 
of failures. Though Evil is to God a transient means, not an 
end, to man his own conception of right and wrong is a' final 
and absolute standard. A deliberate preference of perceived 
evil to perceived good is in Browning’s opinion (An Essay on 
Shelley) the sin against the Holy Ghost which shall not be for¬ 
given. In opposition to the opportunism of Don Juan, Brown¬ 
ing clearly indicates his acceptance of the view of popular 
theology that 
We come and go, outside there’s Somebody that stays; 
A circumstance which ought to make us mind our ways, 
Because,—whatever end we answer by this life,— 
Next time, best chance must be for who, with toil and strife, 
Manages now to live most like what he was meant 
Become: since who succeeds so far, ’t is evident, 
Stands foremost on the file; who fails, has less to hope 
Prom new promotion. 1 
(Fifine 2082-2089.) 
Francis Eurini suspects that all he sees is illusion, and that 
evil is only “good disguised,” but he holds firmly that 
Though wrong were right, 
Could we but know—still wrong must needs seem wrong 
To do right’s service, prove men weak or strong, 
Choosers of evil or of good. 
Man is, in Browning’s opinion, free to choose. A passage in 
Andrea del Sarto expresses (only dramatically, I think) a mood 
sympathetic with determinism; but the balance of evidence is on 
the other side. The crucial passages are Christmas Eve 288-328; 
Prince Hohenstiel-Schivangau 120-130; Ferishtalis Fancies , 
Plot-Culture. But the doctrine of free-will is implied by 
i Cf. A Soul’s Tragedy, Act I, 449-480. Ferishtah’s Fancies, T A Carnet- 
Driver. 
