Can we love but on condition, that the thing we love must die?
Needs then groan a world in anguish just to teach us sympathy? (ll. 311-312.)
Certainly personal experience has resulted in the conclusion:
Howsoever came my fate,
Sorrow did and joy did nowise,—life well weighed,—preponderate! (ll. 333-334.)
In the discussion which follows (ll. 335-348) the fact of the existence of these evils is employed to enforce the admission of the necessity of a future life. It is in fact the earlier argument (ll. 235, et seq.) repeated and elaborated. How are the existing conditions of life to be reconciled with the belief in the over-ruling Providence of a God whose name is synonymous with goodness, wisdom, and power? Here each attribute is dealt with categorically—Was it proof of the divine Goodness that within the limits of the poet’s personal experience
The good within [his] range
Or had evil in admixture or grew evil’s self by change? (ll. 337-338.)
Again could it be deemed a token of the divine Wisdom that
Becoming wise meant making slow and sure advance
From a knowledge proved in error to acknowledged ignorance? (ll. 339-340.)
Finally, seeing that Power must within itself include the force known as Will, could that indeed rank as omnipotence, which was incapable of securing for man even the enjoyment of life possessed by the worm which, on the hypothesis of the non-existence of a future world, becomes “man’s fellow-creature,” man too being thus but the creature of an hour? Since with the loss of his immortal destiny passes also the reason (according to Browning’s reiterated theory) of his imperfection as compared with the more complete physical perfection of the lower world of animal life. If, then, such a consummation is the sole outcome of the Creator’s work the conclusion is inevitable, that the Goodness, Wisdom, and Power ascribed to Him must be limited in range and capacity. Thus again the premise originally accepted as a basis of argument has to be rejected—a God possessing merely human attributes is no God. But once more also, though in stronger terms, the conclusion of ll. 242-243:
Only grant a second life, I acquiesce
In this present life as failure, count misfortune’s worst assaults
Triumph, not defeat, assured that loss so much the more exalts
Gain about to be. (ll. 358-361.)
Thus all experience fairly considered goes to prove the necessity for a future life; and with the hope of such a future is closely interwoven the need also for reunion with those who have already tested the grounds of their belief: