What though I nor see nor hear them? Others do, the proofs abound!
Such second-hand evidence is inadmissible.
My own experience—that is knowledge. (l. 264.)
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Knowledge stands on my experience: all outside its narrow hem,
Free surmise may sport and welcome! (ll. 272-273.)
Here, as with the uncompromising investigator of Easter Day, the fact that credence in a certain tenet is desirable, is advantageous, proves cause for rejection rather than acceptance. All evidence must be sifted with the utmost care. Thus the question is stated in line 144, the answer, or attempted answer to which, is to occupy the entire poem—
Does the soul survive the body?
The second part of the question is on a different platform—
Is there God’s self, no or yes?
The existence of God is accepted at the outset of the enquiry as a premise on which the subsequent argument may be based: as is also the existence of the soul: it is the condition of immortality alone which is to be proved. And the poet puts the question, determined to face the truth—whether it meets his “hopes or fears.” It would be difficult to find a more characteristic assertion of Browning’s usual attitude than that of lines 149-150.
Weakness never need be falseness: truth is truth in each degree
—Thunderpealed by God to Nature, whispered by my soul to me.
(iii) But the events of the preceding days have converted the abstract enquiry, “Does the soul survive the body?” into one of vital personal import.