“But let us once assume that our present state is one of probation, intended by God as such:  and every difficulty is solved.  Evil is no longer a mark of failure in the execution of the Divine Scheme:  it becomes essential to it; my experience indeed represents it as such.  I cannot conceive evil as abolished without abrogation of the laws of life.  For it is not only bound up with all the good of life; it is often its vehicle.  Gain is enhanced by recent loss.  Ignorance places us nearest to knowledge.  Beauty is most precious, truth most potent, where ugliness and falsehood prevail; and what but the loss of Love teaches us what its true value has been?”

“May I then accept the conclusion that this life will be supplemented by a better one?”

Mr. Browning initiates his final inquiry by declaring that he will accept only the testimony of fact.  He rejects surmise, he seeks no answer in the beauties or in the voices of nature; none in the minds of his fellow-men; none even in the depths of his sentient self with its “aspiration” and “reminiscence:”  its plausible assurances that God would be “unjust,” and man “wronged,” if a second life were not granted to us.

And here he seems for a moment to deny, what he has elsewhere stated, and everywhere implied, in the poem:  that his own spirit must be to him, despite its isolation and weakness, the one messenger of Divine truth.

But he is only saying the same thing in a different way.  He rejects the spontaneous utterance of his own spirit; but relies on its conclusions.  He rejects it as pleader; but constitutes it judge.  And this distinction is carried out in a dialogue, in which Fancy speaks for the spontaneous self; Reason for the judicial—­the one making its thrusts, and the other parrying them.  The question at issue has, however, slightly shifted its ground; and we find ourselves asking:  not, “is the Soul immortal?” but “what would be the consequence to life of its being proved so?”

FANCY.  “The soul exists after death.  I accept the surmise as certainty:  and would see it put to use during life.”

REASON.  “The ‘use’ of it will be that the wise man will die at once:  since death, in the absence of any supernatural law to the contrary, must be clear gain.  The soul must fare better when it has ceased to be thwarted by the body; and we have no reason to suppose that the obstructions which have their purpose in this life would be renewed in a future one.  Are we happy? death rescues our happiness from its otherwise certain decay.  Are we sad? death cures the sadness.  Is life simply for us a weary compromise between hope and fear, between failure and attainment? death is still the deliverer.  It must come some day.  Why not invoke it in a painless form when the first cloud appears upon our sky?”

FANCY.  “Then I concede this much:  the certainty of the future life shall be saddled with the injunction to live out the present, or accept a proportionate penalty.”