Ask the rush if it suspects Whence and how the stream which floats it had a rise, and where and how Falls or flows on still! What answer makes the rush except that now Certainly it floats and is, and, no less certain than itself, _Is_ the everyway external stream that now through shoal and shelf Floats it onward, leaves it--may be--wrecked at last, or lands on shore There to root again and grow and flourish stable evermore. --May be! mere surmise not knowledge: much conjecture styled belief, What the rush conceives the stream means through the voyage blind and brief. (ll. 226-234.) Thus all man's conjecture as to his future existence is but conjecture: surmise based upon probabilities deduced from the present conditions of life and accumulated experience. (v) And is then this fact of the present existence of the soul cause sufficient to demand belief in its immortality? The affirmative answer, "Because God seems good and wise," proves inadequate when the eyes of the enquirer are turned to a world in which evil is manifestly existent, and not only existent, but frequently predominant. The possibility of reconciling such conditions with the design of a beneficent omnipotence is only attained through the acceptance of belief in a future life which shall disentangle the complexities of the present; which shall render perfect that which is imperfect; complete that which is incomplete. Without such a prospect of the ultimate solution of its problems life would be unintelligible, therefore impossible as the work of an intelligent being: hence the existence of God is denied by implication, and the premise originally accepted (l. 222) is rejected. This question is treated more fully later in the poem (ll. 335-348). 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.