and object, which he names the Soul and God, are to him beyond the necessity of farther proof, because beyond the reach of it.  He might therefore challenge for his conclusions something more than an optional belief.  He guards himself, nevertheless, against imposing the verdict of his own experience on any other man:  and both the question and the answer into which the poem resolves itself begin for his own spirit and end so.

Mr. Browning knows himself a single point in the creative series of effect and cause:  at the same moment one and the other:  all behind and before him a blank.  Or, more helpless still, he is the rush, floated by a current, of which the whence and whither are independent of it, and which may land it to strike root again, or cast it ashore a wreck.  He asks himself, as he is whirled on his “brief, blind voyage” down the stream of life, which of these fates it has in store for him.  Knowing this, that God and the soul exist—­no less than this, and no more—­he asks himself whether he is justified in believing that, because his present existence is beyond a doubt, its renewal is beyond doubt also:  that the current, which has brought him thus far, will land him, not in destruction, but in another life.

“Everything,” he declares, “in my experience—­and I speak only of my own—­testifies to the incompleteness of life, nay, even to its preponderating unhappiness.  The strong body is found allied to a stunted soul.  The soaring soul is chained by bodily weakness to the ground.  Help turns to hindrance, or discloses itself too late in what we have taken for such.  Every sweet brings its bitter, every light its shade; love is cut short by death:”—­

     “I must say—­or choke in silence—­’Howsoever came my fate,
     Sorrow did and joy did nowise,—­life well-weighed,—­preponderate.’ 
     By necessity ordained thus?  I shall bear as best I can;
     By a cause all-good, all-wise, all-potent?  No, as I am man! 
     Such were God:  and was it goodness that the good within my range
     Or had evil in admixture or grew evil’s self by change? 
     Wisdom—­that becoming wise meant making slow and sure advance
     From a knowledge proved in error to acknowledged ignorance? 
     Power? ’tis just the main assumption reason most revolts at! power
     Unavailing for bestowment on its creature of an hour,
     Man, of so much proper action rightly aimed and reaching aim,
     So much passion,—­no defect there, no excess, but still the same,—­
     As what constitutes existence, pure perfection bright as brief
     For yon worm, man’s fellow-creature, on yon happier world—­its leaf! 
     No, as I am man, I mourn the poverty I must impute: 
     Goodness, wisdom, power, all bounded, each a human attribute!”
          
                                             (vol. xiv. p. 183.)

“If we regard this life as final, we must relinquish our conception of the power of God:  for His work is then open to human judgment, in the light of which it yields only imperfect results.”