Each want of happiness by hope supply'd,
And each vacuity of sense by Pride:
These build as fast as knowledge can destroy;
In Folly's cup still laughs the bubble, joy;
One prospect lost, another still we gain;
And not a vanity is giv'n in vain;
Ev'n mean Self-love becomes, by force divine,
The scale to measure others' wants by thine.
See! and confess, one comfort still must rise,
'Tis this, Tho' Man's a fool, yet GOD IS WISE.
Of the Nature and State of Man with respect to Society.
1. The whole Universe one system of Society, v. 7, &c. Nothing made wholly for itself, nor yet wholly for another, v. 27. The happiness of Animals mutual, v. 49. II. Reason or Instinct operate alike to the good of each Individual, v. 79. Reason or Instinct operate also to Society, in all animals, v. 109. III. How far Society carried by Instinct, v. 115. How much farther by Reason, v. 128. ÍV. Of that which is called the State of Nature, v. 144. Reason instructed by Instinct in the invention of Arts, v. 166, and in the Forms of Society, v. 176. V. Origin of Political Societies, v. 196. Origin of Monarchy, v. 207. Patriarchal government, V. 212. VI. Origin of true Religion and Government, from the same principle, of Love, v. 231, &c. Origin of Superstition and Tyranny, from the same principle, of Fear, v. 237, &c. The Influence of Self-love operating to the social and public Good, v. 266. Restoration of true Religion and Government on their first principle, v. 285. Mixt Government, v. 288. Various Forms of each, and the true end of all, v. 300, &c.
ERE then we rest: "The Universal Cause1
Acts to one end, but acts by various laws."
In all the madness of superfluous health,
The trim of pride, the impudence of wealth,
Let this great truth be present night and day;
But most be present, if we preach or pray.
Look round our World; behold the chain of Love
Combining all below and all above.
See plastic Nature working to this end,
The single atoms each to other tend,
Attract, attracted to, the next in place
Form'd and impell'd its neighbour to embrace.
See Matter next, with various life endu'd,
Press to one centre still, the gen'ral Good.
See dying vegetables life sustain,
See life dissolving vegetate again:
1 In several Edit. 4to.—'Learn, Dulness, learn! "The Universal Cause," ' &c. Warburton,
All forms that perish other forms supply,
(By turns we catch the vital breath, and die,)
Like bubbles on the sea of Matter born,
They rise, they break, and to that sea return.
Nothing is foreign: Parts relate to whole;
One all-extending, all-preserving Soul1
Connects each being, greatest with the least 2;
Made Beast in aid of Man, and Man of Beast;
All serv'd, all serving: nothing stands alone;
The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.
Has God, thou fool! work'd solely for thy good,
Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?
Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,
For him as kindly spread the flow'ry lawn:
Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings?
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.
Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat?
Loves of his own and raptures swell the note.
The bounding steed you pompously bestride,
Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride.
Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain?
The birds of heav'n shall vindicate their grain.
Thine the full harvest of the golden year?
Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer:
The hog, that ploughs not nor obeys thy call,
Lives on the labours of this lord of all.
Know, Nature's children all divide her care;
The fur that warms a monarch, warm'd a bear.
While Man exclaims, "See all things for my use!"
"See man for mine!" replies a pamper'd goose3:
And just as short of reason he must fall,
Who thinks all made for one, not one for all.
Grant that the pow'rful still the weak controul;
Be Man the Wit and Tyrant of the whole*:
Nature that Tyrant checks; he only knows,
And helps, another creature's wants and woes.
Say, will the falcon, stooping from above,
Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove?
Admires the jay the insect's gilded wings?
Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings?
One all-extending, all-preserving Soul] Which, in the language of Sir Isaac Newton, is, Deus omnipræsens est, non per virtutem solam, sed etiam per substantiam: nam virtus sine substantia subsistere non potest. Newt. Princ. Schol. gen. sub fin. Warburton.
2 greatest with the least;] As acting more strongly and immediately in beasts, whose instinct is plainly an external reason; which made an old school-man say, with great elegance, Deus est anima brutorum. Warburton. [Bowles cites Vergil's
'Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet.'
3 Taken from Peter Charron [the author of the book de la Sagesse, into which he admitted, with modifications, many thoughts from his friend Montaigne's famous Essais]. Warton. After v. 46, in the former Editions,
'What care to tend, to lodge, to cram, to treat
him!
All this he knew; but not that 'twas to eat him.
As far as Goose could judge, he reason'd right;
But as to Man, mistook the matter quite.'
4 [i.e. grant that man's intellect rules all creation.]
Man cares for all: to birds he gives his woods,
To beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods;
For some his Int'rest prompts him to provide,
For more his pleasure, yet for more his pride :
All feed on one vain Patron, and enjoy
Th' extensive blessing of his luxury.
That very life his learned hunger craves,
He saves from famine, from the savage saves;
Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast,
And, 'till he ends the being, makes it blest;
Which sees no more the stroke, or feels the pain,
Than favour'd Man by touch ethereal slain 1.
The creature had his feast of life before;
Thou too must perish, when thy feast is o'er!
To each unthinking being Heav'n, a friend,
Gives not the useless knowledge of its end2:
To Man imparts it; but with such a view
As, while he dreads it, makes him hope it too:
The hour conceal'd, and so remote the fear,
Death still draws nearer, never seeming near.
Great standing miracle! that Heav'n assign'd
Its only thinking thing this turn of mind.
II. Whether with Reason, or with Instinct blest,
Know, all enjoy that pow'r which suits them best;
To bliss alike by that direction tend,
And find the means proportion'd to, their end.
Say, where full Instinct is th' unerring guide,
What Pope or Council can they need beside?
Reason, however able, cool at best,
Cares not for service, or but serves when prest,
Stays 'till we call, and then not often near;
But honest Instinct comes a volunteer,
Sure never to o'er-shoot, but just to hit;
While still too wide or short is human Wit;
Sure by quick Nature happiness to gain,
Which heavier Reason labours at in vain,
This too serves always, Reason never long;
One must go right, the other may go wrong.
See then the acting and comparing pow'rs
One in their nature, which are two in ours;
And Reason raise o'er Instinct as you can,
In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis Man.
Who taught the nations of the field and wood
To shun their poison, and to choose their food?
Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,
Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand?
Who made the spider parallels design,
Than favour'd Man &c.] Several of the ancients, and many of the Orientals since, esteemed those who were struck by lightning as sacred persons, and the particular favourites of Heaven. P. The expression, 'by touch ethereal
slain,' is from Milton. Warton. [Samson Agonistes, 549.]
2 [This passage finely turns the common contrast between man and beast, which is drawn in Charron, de la Sagesse, Liv. i. chap. 8.]
Sure as Demoivre1, without rule or line?
Who did the stork, Columbus-like, explore
Heav'ns not his own, and worlds unknown before?
Who calls the council, states the certain day,
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?
III. God in the nature of each being founds
Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds:
But as he fram'd a Whole, the Whole to bless,
On mutual Wants built mutual Happiness:
So from the first, eternal ORDER ran,
And creature link'd to creature, man to man.
Whate'er of life all-quick'ning æther keeps,
Or breathes thro' air, or shoots beneath the deeps,
Or pours profuse on earth, one nature feeds
The vital flame, and swells the genial seeds.
Not Man alone, but all that roam the wood,
Or wing the sky, or roll along the flood,
Each loves itself, but not itself alone,
Each sex desires alike, 'till two are one.
Nor ends the pleasure with the fierce embrace;
They love themselves, a third time, in their race.
Thus beast and bird their common charge attend,
The mothers nurse it, and the sires defend;
The young dismiss'd to wander earth or air,
There stops the Instinct, and there ends the care;
The link dissolves, each seeks a fresh embrace,
Another love succeeds, another race.
A longer care Man's helpless kind demands;
That longer care contracts more lasting bands:
Reflection, Reason, still the ties improve,
At once extend the int'rest, and the love;
With choice we fix, with sympathy we burn;
Each Virtue in each Passion takes its turn;
And still new needs, new helps, new habits rise,
That graft benevolence on charities.
Still as one brood, and as another rose,
These nat'ral love maintain'd, habitual those:
The last, scarce ripen'd into perfect Man,
Saw helpless him from whom their life began:
Mem'ry and fore-cast just returns engage,
That pointed back to youth, this on to age;
While pleasure, gratitude, and hope, combin'd,
Still spread the int'rest, and preserv'd the kind.
IV. Nor think, in NATURE'S STATE they blindly trod;
The state of Nature was the reign of God:
Self-love and Social at her birth began,
Union the bond of all things, and of Man.
Pride then was not; nor Arts, that Pride to aid;
Man walk'd with beast, joint tenant of the shade2;
[Demoivre. This famous mathematician was born at Vitry in Champagne in 1667. The allusion in the text is to his fame in trigonometry.]
2 Man walk'd with beast, joint tenant of the shade;] The poet still takes his imagery from Platonic ideas, for the reason given above. Plato
The same his table, and the same his bed;
No murder cloth'd him, and no murder fed.
In the same temple, the resounding wood,
All vocal beings hymn'd their equal God:
The shrine with gore unstain'd, with gold undrest,
Unbrib'd, unbloody, stood the blameless priest:
Heav'n's attribute was Universal Care,
And Man's prerogative to rule, but spare.
Ah! how unlike the man of times to come!
Of half that live the butcher and the tomb1;
Who, foe to Nature, hears the gen'ral groan,
Murders their species, and betrays his own.
But just disease to luxury succeeds,
And ev'ry death its own avenger breeds;
The Fury-passions from that blood began,
And turn'd on Man a fiercer savage, Man.
See him from Nature rising slow to Art!
To copy Instinct then was Reason's part;
Thus then to Man the voice of Nature spake-
"Go, from the Creatures thy instructions take :
"Learn from the birds 2 what food the thickets yield;
"Learn from the beasts the physic of the field3;
"Thy arts of building from the bee receive;
"Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave;
"Learn of the little Nautilus to sail,
Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale. "Here too all forms of social union find,
"And hence let Reason, late, instruct Mankind:
"Here subterranean works and cities see;
"There towns aerial on the waving tree.
"Learn each small People's genius, policies,
"The Ant's republic, and the realm of Bees;
"How those in common all their wealth bestow,
"And Anarchy without confusion know;
"And these for ever, tho' a Monarch reign,
"Their sep'rate cells and properties maintain.
"Mark what unvary'd laws preserve each state,
had said from old tradition, that, during the
Golden age, and under the reign of Saturn, the
primitive language then in use was common to
man and beasts. Moral philosophers took this
in the popular sense, and so invented those fables
which give speech to the whole brute-creation.
The naturalists understood the tradition to sig-
nify, that, in the first ages, Men used inarticu-
late sounds like beasts to express their wants
and sensations; and that it was by slow degrees
they came to the use of speech. This opinion
was afterwards held by Lucretius, Diodorus Sic.
and Gregory of Nyss. Warburton.
[Thomson's diatribe in the Seasons, against the barbarous practice of eating animal food, will be remembered; as well as the circumstance that he draws the line at fish.]
Learn from the birds, &c.] Taken, but
finely improved, from Bacon's Advancement of Learning [Bk. 11.]. Warton.
3 Learn from the beasts, &c.] See Pliny's Nat. Hist. L. VIII. c. 27, where several instances are given of Animals discovering the medicinal efficacy of herbs, by their own use of them; and pointing out to some operations in the art of healing, by their own practice. Warburton.
Learn of the little Nautilus] Oppian. Halieut. Lib. 1. describes this fish in the following manner: "They swim on the surface of the sea, on the back of their shells, which exactly resemble the hulk of a ship: they raise two feet like masts, and extend a membrane between, which serves as a sail; the other two feet they employ as oars at the side. They are usually seen in the Mediterranean." P.
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