But, granted this possibility of a future, then
Just that hope, however scant,
Makes the actual life worth leading.
With hope the poet would rest satisfied, since certainty is neither possible, nor, in view of the educative purpose which he claims for life, desirable. Upon this recognition of “life, time,—with all their chances,” as “just probation-space,” rests one of the main dogmas of Browning’s teaching—suggested or expressed in countless passages throughout his works; embodied in most concise form perhaps in the concluding stanzas of Abt Vogler. This life being the prelude to another, failure becomes “but a triumph’s evidence for the fulness of the days,” when for the evil of the present shall be “so much good more”: when, indeed, all those unfulfilled hopes which had “promised joy” to the author of La Saisiaz, shall find soul-satisfying fulfilment. And all we have willed or dreamed of good shall exist. So long as Eternity may be held to “affirm the conception of an hour,” all the seeming inconsistencies of life may admit of solution.
In this passage of La Saisiaz recurs also that suggestion so characteristic of Browning—introduced dramatically in Easter Day, to be met with again later in the expositions nominally ascribed to Ferishtah—the theory of the adaptation of the entire universe, as known to man, to the needs and development of the individual soul. As in Easter Day is depicted by the Vision the work of
Absolute omnipotence,
Able its judgments to dispense
To the whole race, as every one
Were its sole object; (E. D., ll. 662-665.)
so again in A Camel-driver is emphasized the individual character of the final Judgment:
Thou and God exist—
So think!—for certain: think the mass—mankind—
Disparts, disperses, leaves thyself alone!
Ask thy lone soul what laws are plain to thee,—
Thee and no other,—stand or fall by them!
That is the part for thee: regard all else
For what it may be—Time’s illusion.
Similarly here the entire scheme of life is to be regarded from the individual standpoint; all outside the “narrow hem” of personal experience can be but the result of surmise. Therefore
Solve the problem: “From thine apprehended scheme of things, deduce
Praise or blame of its contriver, shown a niggard or profuse
In each good or evil issue! nor miscalculate alike
Counting one the other in the final balance, which to strike,
Soul was born and life allotted: ay, the show of things unfurled
For thy summing-up and judgment,—thine, no other mortal’s world!” (ll. 287-292.)
With the acceptance, however, of the doctrine, “His own world for every mortal,” recurs again the disturbing reflection inevitable to the contemplation of that world whether in its personal relation, or as a training-ground for “some other mortal.” Were the extreme transitoriness and the preponderance of pain indispensable factors in the scheme of instruction?