REASON. "In that case the wise man will live. But whether the part he chooses in it be that of actor or of looker-on, he will endure his life with indifference. Relying on the promises of the future, he will take success 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.