ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE I.

OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN WITH RESPECT TO THE UNIVERSE.

Of Man in the abstract—I. That we can judge only with regard to our own system, being ignorant of the relation of systems and things (verse 17, etc.). II. That man is not to be deemed imperfect, but a being suited to his place and rank in the creation, agreeable to the general order of things, and conformable to ends and relations to him unknown (verse 35, etc.). III. That it is partly upon his ignorance of future events, and partly upon the hope of a future state, that all his happiness in the present depends (verse 77, etc.). IV. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more perfection, the cause of man's error and misery. The impiety of putting himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or unfitness, perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice, of His dispensations (verse 113, etc.). V. The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of the creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world which is not in the natural (verse 131, etc.). VI. The unreasonableness of his complaints against Providence, while on the one hand he demands the perfections of the angels, and on the other the bodily qualifications of the brutes, though to possess any of the sensitive faculties in a higher degree would render him miserable (verse 173, etc.). VII. That throughout the whole visible world an universal order and gradation in the sensual and mental faculties is observed, which causes a subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to man. The gradations of sense, instinct, thought, reflection, reason; that reason alone countervails all the other faculties (verse 207). VIII. How much further this order and subordination of living creatures may extend, above and below us; were any part of which broken, not that part only, but the whole connected creation, must be destroyed (verse 233). IX. The extravagance, madness, and pride of such a desire (verse 259). X. The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state (verse 281, etc., to the end).

AN ESSAY ON MAN.

EPISTLE I.

AWAKE, my St. John!1 leave all meaner things

To low ambition 2 and the pride of kings.
Let us, since life can little more supply,
Than just to look about us, and to die,3
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of Man;

5

A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot;
Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.

Together let us beat this ample field,8

Try what the open, what the covert yield;

6

5

ΙΟ

1 Henry St. John (pronounced Sinʼjen), Viscount Bolingbroke. In the reign of Anne he was secretary of state, but on the accession of George I. exiled himself to escape a worse fate. Being pardoned, he returned from France in 1723, and renewed his intimacy with Pope, Swift, and other friends. His philosophy, both of religion and of morals, is considered unsound, but his style is admirable.

2 "Low ambition," etc. The pursuit of it is far below the charms which belong to philosophic pursuits.

3 Lines 3, 4.

A periphrastic expression for the brevity of life.

4 Wander ad libitum.

5 Originally "A mighty maze of walks without a plan." Why was it changed?

6 Explain the metaphors.

7" Or garden," etc. What is the allusion? 8 Metaphors drawn from field sports were frequent with older poets and prose writers. Are they in good taste?

The latent tracts, the giddy heights explore,
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;1
Eye Nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of God to man.2

15

I. Say first, of God above, or man below,
What can we reason, but from what we know?
Of man, what see we but his station here,

From which to reason, or to which refer? 3

20

Through worlds unnumbered, though the God be known,+

May tell why Heaven has made us as we are.

But of this frame 5 the bearings and the ties,
The strong connections, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul

30

Looked through? or can a part contain the whole?

Is the great chain,6 that draws all to agree,

And drawn supports, upheld by God or thee? 7

34

II. Presumptuous man! the reason would'st thou find,

Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind?

1 Imitated by Gray. (See Ode on the Spring, line 33.) 2" But vindicate," etc.

Imitated from Milton. Cf. Paradise Lost, I.

line 26. "This is a better description of the subject of the Essay than that of the title" (MARK PATTISON).

3 Note the bad rime in this line, and also in others that follow.

4 Lines 21-32. These lines contain many expressions taken verbatim from

Bolingbroke.

5 The universe as an orderly system.

6 "The chain that's fixed to the throne of Jove" (WALLER).

7 Why ask so foolish a question?

1

First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,1
Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less?
Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made
Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade?
Or ask of yonder argent fields 2 above,
Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove? 3

40

Of systems possible, if 'tis confessed,
That Wisdom infinite 4 must form the best,
Where all must full, or not coherent be,5
And all that rises, rise in due degree;

45

Then in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain,

There must be, somewhere, such a rank as Man: 6
And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)

Is only this, if God has placed him wrong.
Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,7

50

May, must be right, as relative to all.

In human works, though labored on with pain,8

A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;

In God's, one single can its end produce;

55

Yet serves to second too some other use.

So man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,

1 Are " reason and "guess" compatible?

2 44 Argent fields," Miltonic. Cf. Paradise Lost, III. line 460.

3 Scan the line. "Sa-tel'li-tes" was so pronounced at the time.

many moons has Jupiter?

How

4 " Systems possible," "Wisdom infinite." Are such inversions com

mon with Pope?

5 See lines 243, 244.

6 "There must be," etc. descending from perfection to nonentity, and complete in every intermediate rank and degree, if not first introduced by Leibnitz, was popularized by him. It is the consequence of the principle which Leibnitz called lex continui " (PATTISON).

"The supposition of a scale of beings gradually

7 Lines 51, 52, are in accordance with the optimism of Leibnitz. See also lines 43, 44.

8" Verbatim from Bolingbroke" (WARTON).

Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;

'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

When the proud steed shall know why man restrains 1
His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains;
When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,

60

Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god: 2

Then shall man's pride and dullness comprehend
His actions', passions', being's, use and end;
Why doing, suffering, checked, impelled; and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.

65

Then say not man's imperfect, Heaven in fault;
Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought:3

His knowledge measured to his state and place;
His time a moment, and a point his space.

If to be perfect in a certain sphere,

70

What matter, soon or late, or here or there? 4
The blessed to-day is as completely so,

75

As who began a thousand years ago.5

III. Heaven from all creatures hides the book of Fate,

All but the page prescribed, their present state:

From brutes what men, from men what spirits know :
Or who could suffer being 6 here below?

80

1 Lines 61-68 are an example of brilliant illustration, but not of argument. "Here a difficulty in the scheme of human life is not met by other positions that man is placed in, which might reconcile us to the difficulty, but by two comparisons poetically striking, but logically unsatisfying" (BAIN).

2 The sacred bull kept at Memphis, called "Apis " by the Greeks. 3 "As he ought." Supply" to be." "Ought" for the sake of the rime, the / being silent in “ fault."

4 Lines 73, 74, are badly expressed and therefore obscure.

5 Lines 75, 76. Dryden, translating Lucretius' Against the Fear of Death, has:

6 Existence.

"The man as much to all intents is dead,
Who dies to-day, and will as long be so,
As he who died a thousand years ago."