APPENDIX.

THE COMMENTARY AND NOTES OF

WILLIAM WARBURTON, D.D.

ON THE

ESSAY ON MAN.'

COMMENTARY ON EPISTLE I.

THE opening of this Poem, in fifteen lines, is taken up in giving an account of the subject; which, agreeably to the title, is an Essay on Man, or a philosophical inquiry into his nature and end, his passions and pursuits. The exordium relates to the whole work, of which the Essay on Man was only the first book. The sixth, seventh, and eighth lines allude to the subjects of this Essay, viz. the general order and design of Providence; the constitution of the human mind; the origin, use, and end of the passions and affections, both selfish and social; and the wrong pursuits of happiness in power, pleasure, &c. The tenth, eleventh, twelfth, &c. have relation to the subjects of the books intended to follow, viz. the characters and capacities of men, and the limits of science, which once transgressed, ignorance begins, and errors without end succeed. The thirteenth and fourteenth, to the knowledge of mankind, and the various manners of the age.

The poet tells us next, line 16, with what design he wrote, viz.

To vindicate the ways of God to man.

The men he writes against, he frequently informs us, are such as weigh their opinions against Providence, ver. 114, such as cry, if man's unhappy, God's

1 Erudition and acuteness are not the only requisites of a good commentator. That conformity of sentiment which enables him fully to enter into the intention of his author, and that fairness of disposition which places him above every wish of disguising or misrepresenting it, are qualifications not less essential. In these points it is no breach of candour to affirm, since the public voice has awarded the sentence, that Dr. Warburton has, in various of his critical labours, shown himself extremely defective, and perhaps in none more than in those he has expended upon this performance, his manifest purposes in which, have been to give it a systematic perfection that it does not possess, to conceal as much as possible the suspicious source whence the author derived his leading ideas, and to reduce the whole to the standard of moral orthodoxy. So much is the sense of the poet strained and warped by these processes of bis commentator, that it is scarcely possible in many places to enter into his real meaning, without laying aside the commentary, and letting the text speak for itself.-AIKIN.

VOL. II.-POETRY.

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unjust, ver. 118, or such as fall into the notion, that vice and virtue there is none at all, Epistle ii. ver. 212. This occasions the poet to divide his vindication of the ways of God into two parts; in the first of which he gives direct answers to those objections which libertine men, on a view of the disorders arising from the perversity of the human will, have intended against Providence; and in the second, he obviates all those objections, by a true delineation of human nature, or a general, but exact, map of man. The first Epistle is employed in the management of the first part of this dispute; and the three following, in the discussion of the second. So that this whole book consti tutes a complete Essay on Man, written for the best purpose, to vindicate the ways of God.

Ver. 17. Say first, of God above, or man below, &c.] The poet having declared his subject; his end of writing; and the quality of his adversaries, proceeds, from ver. 16 to 23, to instruct us, from whence he intends to draw his arguments; namely, from the visible things of God in this system, to demonstrate the invisible things of God, his eternal power and godhead. And why? Because we can reason only from what we know; and as we know no more of man than what we see of his station here, so we know no more of God than what we see of his dispensations in this station; being able to trace him no further than to the limits of our own system. This naturally leads the poet to exprobrate the miserable folly and impiety of pretending to pry into, and call in question, the profound dispensations of Providence which reproof contains, from ver. 22 to 43, a sublime description of the omniscience of God, and the miserable blindness and presumption of man.

Ver. 43. Of systems possible, &c.] So far the poet's modest and sober introduction in which he truly observes, that no wisdom less than omniscient Can tell why heav'n has made us as we are.

Yet though we be unable to discover the particular reasons for this mode of our existence, we may be assured in general that it is right. For now, entering upon his argument, he lays down this evident proposition as the foundation of his thesis, which he reasonably supposes will be allowed him, That, of all possible systems, infinite wisdom hath formed the best, ver. 43, 44. From whence he draws two consequences:

1. The first, from ver. 44 to 51, is, that as the best system cannot but be such a one as hath no unconnected void; such a one in which there is a perfect coherence and gradual subordination in all its parts; there must needs be, in some part or other of the scale of reasoning life, such a creature as man, which reduces the dispute to this absurd question, Whether God has placed him wrong?

Ver. 51. Respecting man, &c.] It being shown that man, the subject of this inquiry, has a necessary place in such a system as this is confessed to be; and it being evident, that the abuse of free-will, from whence proceeds all moral evil, is the certain effect of such a creature's existence; the next question will be, how these evils can be accounted for, consistently with the idea we have of God's moral attributes? Therefore,

2. The second consequence he draws from his principle, That of all possible systems, infinite wisdom has formed the best, is, that whatever is wrong in our private system, is right as relative to the whole:

Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,
May, must be right, as relative to all.

That it may, he proves, from ver. 52 to 61, by showing in what consists the difference between the systematic works of God, and those of man; viz. that, in the latter, a thousand movements scarce gain one purpose; in the former, one movement gains many purposes. So that

Man, who here scems principal alone,

Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown.

And acting thus, the appearance of wrong in the partial system may be right in the universal; for

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

That it must, the whole body of this epistle is employed to illustrate and enforce. Thus partial evil is universal good, and thus Providence is fairly acquitted.

Ver. 61. When the proud steed, &c.] From all this the poet draws a general conclusion, from ver. 60 to 91, that, as what has been said is sufficient to vindicate the ways of Providence, man should rest submissive and content, and own everything to be disposed for the best; that to think of discovering the manner how God conducts this wonderful scheme to its completion, is as absurd as to imagine that the horse and ox shall ever be able to comprehend why they undergo such different treatment in the hand of man: nay, that such knowledge, if communicated, would be even pernicious, and make us neglect or desert our duty here. This he illustrates by the case of the lamb, which is happy in not knowing the fate that attends it from the butcher; and from thence takes occasion to observe, that God is the equal master of all his creatures, and provides for the proper happiness of each and every of them.

Ver. 91. Hope humbly then; &c.] But now an objector is supposed to put in, and say, "You tell us, indeed, that all things shall terminate in good; but we see ourselves surrounded with present evil; yet you forbid us all inquiry into the manner how we are to be extricated from it, and, in a word, leave us in a very disconsolate condition." Not so, replies the poet; you may reasonably, if you please, receive much comfort from the hope of a happy futurity; a hope implanted in the human breast by God himself for this very purpose, as an earnest of that bliss, which, always flying from us here, is reserved for the good man hereafter. The reason why the poet chooses to insist on this proof of a future state, in preference to others, is in order to give his system (which is founded in a sublime and improved Platonism) the greater grace of uniformity. For hope was Plato's peculiar argument for a future state; and the words here employed, The soul uneasy, &c. his peculiar expression. The poet in this place, therefore, says in express terms, that God gave us hope to supply that future bliss, which he at present keeps hid from us. In his second Epistle, ver. 274, he goes still further, and says, this hope quits us not even at death, when every thing mortal drops from us:

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

And in the fourth Epistle he shows how the same hope is a proof of a future state, from the consideration of God's giving his creatures no appetite in vain, or what he did not intend should be satisfied:

He sees, why nature plants in man alone

Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown:
Nature, whose dictates to no other kind

Are giv'n in vain, but what they seek they find.

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It is only for the good man, he tells us, that hope leads from goal to goal, &c. It would then be strange indeed, if it should prove an illusion.

Ver. 99. Lo! the poor Indian, &c.] The poet, as we said, having bid man comfort himself with expectation of future happiness; having shown him that this hope is an earnest of it, and put in one very necessary caution,

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;

provoked at those miscreants whom he afterwards, Ep. iii. ver. 263, describes as building hell on spite, and heaven on pride, he upbraids them, from ver. 98 to 112, with the example of the poor Indian, to whom also nature hath given this common hope of mankind: but though his untutored mind had betrayed him into many childish fancies concerning the nature of that future state, yet he is so far from excluding any part of his own species (a vice which could proceed only from the pride of false science), that he humanely, though simply, admits even his faithful dog to bear him company.

Ver. 113. Go, wiser thou! &c.] He proceeds with these accusers of Providence, from ver. 112 to 122, and shows them, that complaints against the established order of things begin in the highest absurdity, from misapplied reason and power; and end in the highest impiety, in an attempt to degrade the God of heaven, and to assume his place :

Alone made perfect here, immortal there:

That is, be made God, who only is perfect, and hath immortality: to which sense the lines immediately following confine us:

Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his justice, be the God of God.

Ver. 123. In pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies; &c.] From these men, the poet now turns to his friend; and, from ver. 122 to 130, remarks, that the ground of all this extravagance is pride; which, more or less, infects the whole reasoning tribe; shows the ill effects of it, in the case of the fallen angels; and observes, that even wishing to invert the laws of order, is a lower species of their crime. He then brings an instance of one of the effects of pride, which is the folly of thinking everything made solely for the use of man, without the least regard to any other of the creatures of God.

Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine, &c.

The ridicule of imagining the greater portions of the material system to be solely for the use of man, true philosophy has sufficiently exposed: and common sense, as the poet observes, instructs us to conclude, that our fellowcreatures, placed by Providence as the joint inhabitants of this globe, are designed to be joint sharers with us of its blessings:

Has God, thou fool! worked solely for thy good,
Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?
Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,
For him as kindly spreads the flow'ry lawn.

Ver. 141. But errs not nature from this gracious end,] The author comes next to the confirmation of his thesis, That partial moral evil is universal good; but introduceth it with an allowed instance in the natural world, to abate our wonder at the phenomenon of moral evil; which he forms into an argument on a concession of his adversaries. If we ask you, says he, from ver. 140 to 150, whether nature doth not err from the gracious purpose of its

Creator, when plagues, earthquakes, and tempests unpeople whole regions at a time; you readily answer, No: for that God acts by general, and not by particular laws; and that the course of matter and motion must be necessarily subject to some irregularities, because nothing is created perfect. I then ask, why you should expect this perfection in man? If you own that the great end of God (notwithstanding all this deviation) be general happiness, then it is nature and not God that deviates; do you expect greater constancy in man?

Then nature deviates; and can man do less?

That is, if nature, or the inanimate system (on which God hath imposed his laws, which it obeys, as a machine obeys the hand of the workman), may in course of time deviate from its first direction, as the best philosophy shows it may; where is the wonder that man, who was created a free agent, and hath it in his power every moment to transgress the eternal rule of right, should sometimes go out of order?

Ver. 151. As much that end, &c.] Having thus shown how moral evil came into the world, namely, by man's abuse of his own free-will, our poet comes to the point, the confirmation of his thesis, by showing how moral evil promotes good; and employs the same concessions of his adversaries, concerning natural evil, to illustrate it.

1. He shows it tends to the good of the whole, or universe, from ver. 151 to 164, and this by analogy. You own, says he, that storms and tempests, clouds, rain, heat, and variety of seasons, are necessary (notwithstanding the accidental evil they bring with them) to the health and plenty of this globe; why then should you suppose there is not the same use, with regard to the universe, in a Borgia or a Catiline? But you say you can see the one, and not the other. You say right: one terminates in this system, the other refers to the whole: which whole can be comprehended by none but the great Author himself. For, says the poet in another place,

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?

Own therefore, says he, that

From pride, from pride, our very reas'ning springs;
Account for moral, as for nat'ral things:

Why charge we heav'n in those, in these acquit ?
In both, to reason right, is to submit.

Ver. 165. Better for us, &c.] But, secondly, to strengthen the foregoing analogical argument, and to make the wisdom and goodness of God still more apparent, he observes, from ver. 165 to 172, that moral evil is not only productive of good to the whole, but is even productive of good in our own system. It might, says he, perhaps appear better to us, that there were nothing in this world but peace and virtue;

That never air or ocean felt the wind;

That never passion discomposed the mind.

But then consider, that as our material system is supported by the strife of its elementary particles, so is our intellectual system, by the conflict of our passions, which are the elements of human action. In a word, as without the benefit of tempestuous winds, both air and ocean would stagnate, corrupt, and