ccess or failure as it comes, and accept ignorance as a matter of
course."

FANCY. "I concede more still. Man shall not only be compelled to live:
he shall know the value of life. He shall know that every moment he
spends in it is gain or loss for the life to come--that every act he
performs involves reward or punishment in it."

REASON. "Then you abolish good and evil in their relation to man; for
you abolish freedom of choice. No man is good because he obeys a law so
obvious and so stringent as to leave him no choice; and such would be
the moral law, if punishment were _demonstrated_ as following upon the
breach of it; reward on its fulfilment. Man is free, in his present
state, to choose between good and evil--free therefore to be good;
because he may believe, but has no demonstrated _certainty_, that his
future welfare depends on it."

It is thus made clear that only in man's present state of limited
knowledge is a life of probation conceivable; while only on the
hypothesis that this life is one of probation, can that of a future
existence be maintained. Mr. Browning ends where he began, with a
_hope_, which is practically a _belief_, because to his mind the only
thinkable approach to it.

A vivid description of the scenes amidst which the tragedy took place
accompanies this discussion.

"CLEON" is a protest against the inadequacy of the earthly life; and the
writer is supposed to be one of those Greek poets or thinkers to whom
St. Paul alludes, in a line quoted from Aratus in the Acts, and which
stands at the head of the poem. Cleon believes in Zeus under the
attributes of the one God; but he sees nothing in his belief to warrant
the hope of immortality; and his love of life is so intense and so
untiring that this fact is very grievous to him.

He is stating his case to an imaginary king--Protus--his patron and
friend; whose convictions are much the same as his own, but who thinks
him in some degree removed from the common lot: since his achievements
in philosophy and in art must procure him not only a more perfect
existence, but in one sense a more lasting one. Cleon protests against
this idea.

"He has," he admits, "done all which the King imputes to him. If he has
not been a Homer, a Pheidias, or a Terpander, his creative sympathies
have united all three; and in thus passing from the simple to the
complex, he has obeyed the law of progress, though at the risk perhaps
of appearing a smaller man."

"B