the answer to that brings back the moral : " That de-
pends on you: that is, the purpose of God in you
being taken for granted, it depends on you to allow or
to hinder this good purpose in you." I grant that the
poet might, completing the possible puttings, answer,
as some do, " The two questions are one ; if we live
on, it shall be well ; if it is not well, we shall not
live on." But the matter is not so put (the poet
understood the solemnity of human conduct too well
for that), and the question dealt with in these cantos
(lv. and LVi) is that of continued existence beyond
the grave, and the evidence of nature, simply, upon
the matter. We will follow the poet's line, remarldng
only in parting that the two questions are the life-
blood each of the other. Of virtue —

" "Would she have strength to endure for the life of the fly or
the ■worm ? "

And the question of the future life becomes a mere
speculation, were it not that for virtue we plead —

" Give her the glory of going on, and still to he."

The future life ; that, like the present life, is of
G-od's making. But the " final goal " ; that is of God's
good purpose and of man's choice. The two together
determine it.
Well, then, keeping to the poem ; the hope of the
future life for man —

" Derives it not from what we have
The likest God -nlthin the soul ?

" Are God and Nature then at strife,

That Nature lends such evil dreams ?
So careful of the type she seems.
