AN

ESSAY ON MAN.*

IN FOUR EPISTLES

TO H. ST. JOHN, LORD BOLINGBROKE.

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 relations of systems and things, v. 17, &c.-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, v. 35, &c.-III. That it is partly on his ignorance of future events, and partly on the hope of a future state, that all his happiness in the present depends, v. 77, &c.-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, v. 109, &c.-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, v. 131, &c.-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

*In 1733 Pope published the First Epistle anonymously; the Second and Third followed in the same way; but to the Fourth (published 1734) he put his name and, as Johnson says,- claimed the honour of a moral poet."

possess any of the sensitive faculties in a higher degree would render him miserable, v. 173, &c.-VII. That throughout the whole visible world, a 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, v. 207.-VIII. How much farther this order and subordination of living @reatures may extend above and below us; were any part of which broken, not that part only, but the whole connected creation must be destroyed, v. 233.-IX. The extravagance, madness, and pride of such a desire, v. 250. -X. The consequence of all the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state, v. 281, &c. to the end.

EPISTLE I.

AWAKE, my St. John!* leave all meaner things
To low ambition and the pride of kings:
Let us (since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;
A mighty maze, but not without a plan ;
A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous

shoot;

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Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
Together let us beat this ample field;
Try what the open, what the covert yield;
The latent tracts, the giddy heights explore
Of all who blindly creep or sightless soar;
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.

1. 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?

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"Henry St. John, son of Sir Henry St. John, baronet,

of Lydiard Tregose in Wiltshire, by Mary, second daughter and heiress of Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick."

Through worlds unnumber'd though the God be

known,

"Tis ours to trace him only in our own.

He, who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,
What varied beings people every star,
May tell why Heaven has made us as we are.
But of this frame, the bearings and the ties,
The strong connexions, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
Look'd through? or can a part contain the whole
Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,
And drawn supports, upheld by God or thee?
II. Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst
thou find,

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Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind?
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,
Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less?
Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made
Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade; 40
Or ask of yonder argent fields above,
Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove.

Of systems possible, if 'tis confess'd
That wisdom infinite must form the best,
Where all must full or not coherent be,
And all that rises, rise in due degree;
Then, in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis plain,
There must be somewhere such a rank as man ;
And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)
Is only this, if God has placed him wrong.
Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.

50

In human works, though labour'd on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;
In God's, one single can its end produce,
Yet serves to second too some other use.
So man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown;

Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; 'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

60

When the proud steed shall know why man

restrains

His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains;
When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod;
Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god:
Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend
His actions', passions', being's use and end;
Why doing, suffering; check'd, impell'd; and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.

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

What matter, soon or late, or here or there?
The bless'd to-day is as completely so,

As who began a thousand years ago.

70

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;

80

Or who could suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
O, blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heaven;
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall;

Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd;
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

90

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions

soar;

Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore : What future bliss, he gives not thee to know, Put gives that hope to be thy blessing now.