-- 514-539. John anticipates another objection that will be made to his Gospel, namely, that so many things therein are not cleared up, that the whole truth is not told in the proper words, the sceptic claiming that everything should have been so proved “That the probation bear no hinge nor loop To hang a doubt on”; that all after-doubt, impossible in the face of truth--truth absolute, uniform, might have been stopped. 523. Had stopped: would have stopped. 530. the heathen bard’s: Aeschylus’. 531. famous play: ‘Prometheus Bound’. 532. ephemerals’: mortals’. 537. Titan’s: Prometheus’. -- “I answer, Have ye not to argue out {540} The very primal thesis, plainest law, --Man is not God but hath God’s end to serve, A master to obey, a course to take, Somewhat to cast off, somewhat to become? Grant this, then man must pass from old to new, {545} From vain to real, from mistake to fact, From what once seemed good, to what now proves best. How could man have progression otherwise? Before the point was mooted ‘What is God?’ No savage man inquired ‘What is myself?’ {550} Much less replied, ‘First, last, and best of things.’ Man takes that title now if he believes Might can exist with neither will nor love, In God’s case--what he names now Nature’s Law-- While in himself he recognizes love {555} No less than might and will: and rightly takes. Since if man prove the sole existent thing Where these combine, whatever their degree, However weak the might or will or love, So they be found there, put in evidence,-- {560} He is as surely higher in the scale Than any might with neither love nor will, As life, apparent in the poorest midge (When the faint dust-speck flits, ye guess its wing), Is marvellous beyond dead Atlas’ self-- {565} Given to the nobler midge for resting-place! Thus, man proves best and highest--God, in fine, And thus the victory leads but to defeat, The gain to loss, best rise to the worst fall, His life becomes impossible, which is death. {570} -- 540-633. All that John says in these verses, in reply to the anticipated objections urged in vv. 514-539, are found, substantially, in several passages in Browning’s poetry. See remarks on pp. 36-38 beginning, “The human soul is regarded in Browning’s poetry”, etc. {Chapter II, Section 1 in this etext.} An infallible guide, which would render unnecessary any struggles on man’s part, after light and truth, would torpify his powers. And see vv. 582-633 of the present poem. 552. Man takes that title now: that is, of ‘First, last, and best of things”, if, etc. See sections 17 and 18 of ‘Saul’, and stanza 10 of ‘Rabbi Ben Ezra’. And see the grand dying speech of Paracelsus, which concludes Browning’s poem.