Ayn Rand's This World Is Not Conclusion

In “This World is not Conclusion “, it is very evident that ED believed in some kind of continuance of consciousness after death .The title speaks volumes regarding her beliefs about the immortality of the human soul. ‘Conclusion’ in that sense means end or termination. So far as life is concerned, it means the cessation of mental functioning or the permanent halting of thought processes .If we suppose that the speaker of the poem is a stand-in for the poet herself, then she clearly is a dualist of sorts. Dualism is the belief that humans have two parts to them. One is the physical body, which is mortal, material and destroyable.

The other is the soul, mind, or spirit, which is immortal and undestroyable.

According to that philosophical view,

So this life that we have, says the speaker of the poem, is not all that there is to human existence. There is a transcendental realm that is waiting for those who die. And yet, as positive as the speaker is about the reality of this realm or form of existence, they are unable to describe it and do not believe that anybody else can.

It “baffles” (5) or eludes comprehension and pinning down although it

“beckons” (5) or calls out to be believed in. In the 19th century and before, natural science, or the study of nature, including human beings, was called

Natural Philosophy. Hence, Dickinson’s choice of the word “philosophy” in the second line of the second stanza to signify science .Basically, the main point of that stanza is to assert that science cannot help us know what is beyond the physical universe because it is only useful when the material universe is

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concerned. Its subject matter is what lies inside the universe not what is beyond the veil of kenning.

The third stanza can be seen as a condensation of a dark and depressing chapter in the history of Christianity. Before Christianity became legal in

So the writer is saying that “Men”, or believers in a heavenly kingdom, were despised and suffered a horrendous death for their beliefs. In the fourth stanza, the poet is excoriating “shown-faith”, or blind, unquestioning, uncritical faith. Faith in the doctrines of the Church without the assistance of reason. Faith that stifles reason. Faith in the words of preachers and clergymen, mere mortals. The polar opposite of reasoned-faith, which is arrived at through the use of reason which sets the human race apart from animals. The person who has this kind of faith is concerned mainly about other people’s opinion of them. Hence, they “blush” (14) if anybody discovers their “slips”(13)

, or weak and wavering conviction in what they believe in and “Pluck(s) at a twig of evidence—” to support their collapsing faith .The use of the term “twig” in the third line is very telling since twigs are weak .So the poet is saying that even when people with blind faith try to support their faith with evidence, they fail miserably.

Emily Dickinson ends the poem with a rather spectacular and unexpected declaration. She asserts that even mainstream Christianity, signified in the