The deepest ethical thinkers have seldom, in all things, been faithful interpreters of nature. Their errors, often momentous, had a different origin from those of Pope. Few persons trace back moralimpressions to the principles from which they flow. They act on the intuitive conceptions which precede philosophy, and which, not being pared and twisted to fit a theory, are as comprehensive as nature. The philosopher classifies the implanted propensities and convictions, describes them with precision, and brings them into stronger relief. But what he gains in distinctness he is apt to lose in breadth; he curtails while he elucidates. His ambition is to discover simplicity in complexity, unity in variety, and he dismembers nature that he may reduce the phenomena within the limits of a general law. Zeno and Epicurus are examples of the tendency. They agreed that man had properly only a single end to which his whole being should be directed. The epicureans said that this end, or chief good, was pleasure, which depends on personal feeling; the stoic said it was virtue, the submission to the universal rule of right, which is above personal preferences. An ordinary mortal who does not philosophise, and has no care to force nature into the mould of an hypothesis, never questions that he is constituted for the double end of happiness and virtue. The two often clash, and he is not perplexed by the impossibility of satisfying both. When one must yield he knows that virtue is paramount, and he usually believes that the present sacrifice of happiness to virtue will be succeeded by a kingdom in which they will be finally reconciled. The partial doctrine set up by the stoic kept virtue on her high, heroic throne; the doctrine of the epicurean degraded her into the slave of pleasure: the first school ennobled, the second debased human nature, but both mutilated it. Each system came into contact with facts which compelled its adherents to be inconsistent or absurd, and enlightened disciples preferred inconsistency to absurdity. This passion for general laws at the expense of truth is conspicuous throughout the whole history of philosophy. The profoundest investigators have been prone to select single aspects of many-sided nature, and make the part the law for the whole. The false generalisation impels the theorist to suppress and distort refractory phenomena, or he endeavours to hide under transparent evasions his deviations from his hypothesis, or he lapses into contradictions from which he turns away his eyes, not wishing to perceive them. The spurious unity, which is the infirmity of philosophers, was not the vice of Pope. He adopted, on the contrary, a chaos of principles which were mutually destructive. He accepted contributions from any school, because he understood none. He was so unversed in philosophy that in the account which he drew up of his "Design," he asserted that the science of human nature was reduced to "a few clear points," and that the "disputes" were all on the details. His "design" was to keep to the "few clear points" which alone, in his opinion, were of much importance to mankind. They were principally the origin of evil, the theory of morals, the origin of government and society. The "clear points"had produced whole libraries of controversy, the "disputes" had descended in full vigour to Pope's day, and they have continued undiminished on to ours. His own solutions of the problems were contradictory, and he was hopelessly at war with himself on the very topics for which he claimed universal peace. He did not depart in his "Design" from his habit of self-contradiction, and the moment he had stated that there were no disputes on the general principles, he took credit for "steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite." He at the same time arrogated for his "system of ethics" the special "merit" that it was "not inconsistent." He had just enough knowledge to seduce him into an unconscious exposure of his ignorance. His delusions are intelligible when we learn the nature of his philosophical training. "I write to you, and for you," says Bolingbroke, "and you would think yourself little obliged to me if I took the pains of explaining in prose what you would not think it necessary to explain in verse, and in the character of a poetical philosopher who may dwell in generalities."[930]Bolingbroke wrote to instruct Pope, and Pope only cared to learn the "generalities" he was to put into verse. He never acquired the elements of philosophy; he had merely been furnished with materials for a philosophical poem. The few ideas he gleaned at random from other sources served no better end than to increase the confusion. He said "he chose verse" because it was more concise and impressive than prose.[931]The alleged choice was necessity. His meagre knowledge would have been ludicrous in a formal treatise. The ceremonious robe of verse was essential to conceal the deformed and diminutive body.
De Quincey thought that the "formal exposure of Pope's hollow-heartedness" would be most profitably accomplished by laying open thoroughly the ethical argument of the Essay on Man. He declined the task as too long and polemical for an article in a journal, but he stated his views in general terms. He said that the poem "sinned chiefly by want of central principle, and by want therefore of all coherency amongst the separate thoughts." He objects that the sense will vary with the nature of the connecting links we supply, and he ascribes the opposite interpretations of Crousaz and Warburton to the ambiguity which leaves readers the choice of "a loyal or treasonable meaning."[932]He imputes the fault to the impossibility of completing the argument without spoiling the poetry, and to the superficial nature of Pope's studies, "if study we can call a style of reading so desultory as his." This vagrant habit of mind he attributes to "luxurious indolence." "The poet," he says, "fastidiously retreated from all that threatened labour. He fluttered among theflower-beds of literature or philosophy far more in the character of a libertine butterfly for casual enjoyment, than of a hard-working bee pursuing a premeditated purpose."[933]Indolence cannot justly be charged upon Pope. He plodded at his art with the steadiness of a man who follows a regular calling.[934]His ignorance of philosophy, his want of due preparation for his Essay, arose from defects of understanding, and not from a moral infirmity of will. He was self-educated, and had never penetrated in his youth by regular and sustained approaches to the heart of any difficult science. He skimmed literature to pick up sentiments which could be versified, and to learn attractive forms of composition. His mind took the set of his early habits, and he appears in manhood to have had no conception of philosophical thought, no glimmer of the combination of philosophical details into an integral design. His works abound in isolated ideas which are marked by sound sense, and side by side with them are many idle or extravagant notions, and glaring contradictions. The pieces were not struck off at a heat. They were built up slowly, composed patiently, and corrected repeatedly. He never spared pains, and the want of reflection his works discover was the fault of an intellect unconscious of its weaknesses. To him the disjointed bits of philosophy presented no gaps. He says in his "Design" that the system "was short yet not imperfect." He believed that the conciseness added to "the force as well as grace of his arguments," and that he had nowhere "sacrificed perspicuity to ornament, wandered from precision, or broken the chain of the reasoning." His love of fame would have prevented his sending forth knowingly a weak and fragmentary poem. His moral apathy did not therefore consist in the self-indulgent negligence which refuses to put itself to a strain. The moral offence was in another direction,—in the ambiguities which were intended to pass off the Essay for anti-christian with infidels, and for christian with believers, and which resulted in Pope's adoption of the first interpretation under Bolingbroke, and of the second under Warburton. The dereliction of principle was worse than De Quincey supposed. He has equally underrated the blots in the philosophy when he imagined that Pope erred only by omissions. The "chasms" in his ethics are trifling compared to the radical vice of his doctrines, and the repeated conflict of jarring systems. The "audacious dogmatism and insolent quibbles"[935]of Warburton would not have been needed in expanding an abbreviated argument. He had to distort the obvious meaning of Pope in order to produce a semblance of consistency, and he has still oftener left the language of the text withoutcomment because it was beyond the power of shameless misinterpretation to effect an ostensible harmony.
The judgments on the Essay on Man have been very various. "It appears to me," says Voltaire, "the most beautiful, the most useful, the most sublime didactic poem that has ever been written in any language." He said on another occasion that Pope "carried the torch into the abyss of being, and that the art of poetry, sometimes frivolous, and sometimes divine, was in him useful to the human race."[936]Voltaire had a twofold reason for his admiration. As a hater of christianity he hailed in the Essay the championship of natural religion against revealed, and as an author he delighted in the rhymed philosophy which was the staple of his own prosaic verse. Marmontel joined in the praise of the poet, but formed a juster estimate of the moralist. "Pope has shown," he said, "how high poetry could soar on the wings of philosophy. But he had adopted a system which presented terrible difficulties, and in reply to the complaints of man on the misery of his condition he usually offers images for proofs, and abuse for reasons."[937]The censure is just. Pope loves to silence objections by vilifying mankind, and calling his adversaries impious, proud, and fools. Dugald Stewart agreed with Voltaire. "The Essay on Man," he says, "is the noblest specimen of philosophical poetry which our language affords; and, with the exception of a very few passages, contains a valuable summary of all that human reason has been able hitherto to advance in justification of the moral government of God."[938]The "few faulty passages" were subsequently specified by Stewart, and such is the power of sound to withdraw the mind from the sense that this able metaphysician overlooked the fundamental errors of the poem, albeit they contradicted his own ethical views. Hazlitt differs as much from Stewart as Marmontel did from Voltaire. "The Essay on Man," he tells us, "is not Pope's best work. All that he says, 'the very words and to the self-same tune,' would prove just as well that whatever is is wrong, as that whatever is is right."[939]The remark is but a slight exaggeration of the truth. The logic of assertion, and often of vituperative assertion, in which Pope abounded, is available for every system, and his admission that God is the instigator of evil was a fit foundation for a pessimist philosophy. De Quincey's opinion is the most unfavourable of all. "If the question," he says, "were asked, What ought to have been the best among Pope's poems? most people would answer, the Essay on Man. If the question were asked, What is the worst? all people of judgment would say, the Essay on Man. Whilst yet in its rudiments thispoem claimed the first place by the promise of its subject; when finished, by the utter failure of its execution, it fell into the last."[940]"Execution" is used by De Quincey in its widest sense, and includes the philosophy of the Essay. This we have endeavoured to estimate, and have now to speak of the poetry.
"In my mind," says Lord Byron, writing of Pope, "the highest of all poetry is ethical poetry, as the highest of all earthly objects must be moral truth," and he adds that "ethical or didactic poetry requires more mind, more wisdom, more power" than all the "descriptions" of natural scenery that were ever penned, "and all the epics that ever were founded upon fields of battle."[941]To the assertion that ethical poets transcended all other poets in genius, Hazlitt answered, that the "mind, wisdom, and power" is displayed in the "philosophic invention," and as this "rests with the first author of a moral truth," or moral theory, a copyist is not great because he gives a metrical form to an ethical common-place. "The decalogue," he says, "as a practical prose composition, or as a body of moral laws and precepts, is of sufficient weight and authority, but we should not regard the putting of this into heroic verse as an effort of the highest poetry."[942]To the assertion that ethical poetry must take precedence of all other poetry, "because moral truth and moral conduct are of such vast and paramount concernment in human life," Hazlitt answered, that "it did not follow that they were the better for being put into rhyme." "This reasoning," he continues, "reminds us of the critic who said that the only poetry he knew of, good for anything, was the four lines beginning 'Thirty days hath September,' for that these were really of some use in finding out the number of days in the different months of the year. The rules of arithmetic are important in many respects, but we do not know that they are the fittest subjects of poetry."[943]The reply of Hazlitt is conclusive. Lord Byron had confounded the importance of facts with their fitness for poetry, the repetition of a truth with the genius which discovers it. He was "in a great passion," says De Quincey, "and wrote up Pope by way of writing down others," the others being Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge.[944]He had taken a false measure of his men. They were too strong in their own poetical convictions to be mortified by the absurdities of an intemperate rival.
The error of Byron was akin to the misconception of the office of didactic poems, which De Quincey exposed in his criticism on Pope's Essay on Man. "As a term of convenience," he says, "didactic may serve to discriminate one class of poetry, but didactic it cannotbe in philosophic rigour without ceasing to be poetry." If the object of Armstrong had been to teach Medicine, of Dyer to produce a manual for shepherds and cloth manufacturers, of Philips to write a treatise for gardeners and makers of cider, he maintains that it would have been idiotcy to begin by putting on the fetters of metre. He remarks that a worse restriction is the necessity of omitting a vast variety of details, and capital sections of the subject, and that in the constant need to forego either poetry or instruction the poet never hesitates to abandon the instruction. The true object, he conceives, of a didactic poem is to bring out the "circumstances of beautiful form, feeling, incident, or any other interest" which lurk in didactic topics. The sentiment which the tutor neglects the poet evolves, and he introduces utilitarian knowledge for the sole purpose of eliciting an element distinct from its bare, prosaic utility.[945]This is the rational theory. In Pope's generation, and for some years afterwards, a different idea was widely prevalent. "The end of the didactic poem," says Marmontel, "is to instruct. It were to be wished that the principles of the most important arts should all be reduced to verse. It is thus that at the birth of letters all useful truths were consigned to memory. To bring back the didactic poem to its primitive utility ought to be the object of emulation to the poets of an age of light."[946]The system which Marmontel recommended for an age of light was only fitted for an age of darkness. The utility of a didactic work depends on its lucidity, its precision, and its fullness. The use is defeated if the instruction is fragmentary, incoherent, circuitous, and cumbrous. When men emerge from ignorance, and when knowledge begins to grow systematic and exact, the employment of verse for expounding arts, sciences, philosophy, and history becomes puerile and impotent. The moment they are brought under the dominion of the enlightened understanding the freedom of prose is essential to unfold them with clearness, completeness, and accuracy. The suggestion of Marmontel for restoring didactic poetry to its primitive use was the way to reduce it to imbecility. The events of English history are of greater moment than the cutting off Miss Fermor's curl, and an English history in verse would be "higher poetry" according to Byron, more "useful poetry" according to Marmontel, than the Rape of the Lock. In reality it would not be high or useful, poetry or history, but simply a folly. The didactic poets who had a truer comprehension of the nature of poetry, and who endeavoured to render the rules of an art or science subservient to poetic effect, have seldom succeeded. The inherent, prosaic element preponderated, and the Arts of Poetry, Criticism, TranslatingVerse, etc. are for the most part dreary compositions which afford as little delight as instruction.
Bolingbroke had right conceptions of the characteristics of didactic poetry, and he imparted his views to Pope. "Should the poet," he says, "make syllogisms in verse, or pursue a long process of reasoning in the didactic style, he would be sure to tire his reader on the whole, like Lucretius, though he reasoned better than the Roman, and put into some parts of his work the same poetical fire. He must contract, he may shadow, he has a right to omit whatever will not be cast in the poetic mould, and when he cannot instruct he may hope to please. In short, it seems to me, that the business of the philosopher is to dilate, to press, to prove, to convince, and that of the poet to hint, to touch his subject with short and spirited strokes, to warm the affections, and to speak to the heart."[947]Bolingbroke's theory of poetry was superior to his practical taste. He said that all Pope's writings were pre-eminent for "the happy association of great coolness of judgment with great heat of imagination." "Pope's Essay on Criticism," he says again, "was the work of his childhood almost; but is such a monument of good sense and poetry as no other, that I know, has raised in his riper years."[948]The man who could discover transcendent poetry in the Essay on Criticism, and great heat of imagination in all Pope's writings, could have had but a faint, diluted perception of the imaginative and poetic. His belief that the ethical philosophy of the Essay on Man could be brought under his law of didactic poetry was a fresh instance of his want of insight into the demands both of poetry and philosophy. A system of philosophy cannot be conveyed in elegant extracts. "Every part," says de Quincey, "depends upon every other part: in such a nexus of truths, to insulate is to annihilate. Severed from each other the parts lose their support, their coherence, their very meaning; you have no liberty to reject or choose." It was not enough for Pope to detail his system. He had to vindicate, and establish it. "In his theme," continues De Quincey, "everything is polemic; you move only through dispute, you prosper only by argument and never-ending controversy. There is not positively one capital proposition or doctrine about man, about his origin, his nature, his relations to God, or his prospects, but must be fought for with energy, watched at every turn with vigilance, and followed into endless mazes, not under the choice of the writer, but under the inexorable dictation of the argument. Here lay the impracticable dilemma for Pope's Essay on Man. To satisfy the demands of the subject was to defeat the objects of poetry. To evade the demands in the way that Pope has done, is to offer us a ruin for a palace."[949]
The poetry could not escape without injury. The philosophic pretensions Pope advanced at the outset compelled him to embark in prosaic arguments; the philosophy and the poetry were mutually destructive. Left to himself he would have kept to his "ethics in the Horatian way," to the sketches of character, and reflections upon human conduct, which constitute his Moral Essays. His "guide" dictated to him a more ambitious philosophy,—not the "divine philosophy which is musical as Apollo's lute,"[950]which touches tender feelings, and appeals to the intuitive moral emotions, but a hybrid philosophy too scholastic to move the heart, and too meagre and perplexed to satisfy the understanding.
The false scheme of embodying scientific philosophy in verse determined in advance the failure of the Essay on its poetic side. There might be passages of good poetry, but not a good poem. "The episodes in the Essay on Man," says Hazlitt, "the description of the poor Indian, and the lamb doomed to death, are all the unsophisticated reader ever remembers of that much talked of production."[951]The remark which Hazlitt employed to condemn the Essay, was used by Bowles in its favour. The ethics, in his eyes, were only the groundwork for poetical embroidery. "We hardly," he said, "think of the philosophy, whether it is good or bad," and he represented the reader hurried away by the finished and touching pictures of the Indian and the lamb, which are exceptions to the didactic tenor of the poem, and speak to the sympathies of mankind. Hazlitt's application of the criticism was correct, and the eulogy, or apology, put forward by Bowles, was really censure. The happy episodes are but a fragment of the four epistles. The rest is designed for philosophical reasoning, and if we hardly think of the philosophy, there is little left except sound. The philosophy is not dimmed by the blaze of poetry. There is no splendour of imagery, no brilliancy of idea to overshadow the argument, and the sole reason the philosophy fails to take hold of the mind is because it is vague and disconnected, because the whole, as De Quincey says, "is the realisation of anarchy."[952]The want of philosophic unity might have been largely compensated by the personal unity of strong conviction; the earnest faith and feelings of the man might have stood in the place of the scientific completeness of the subject. In nothing was Pope more deficient. For personal convictions he substituted any discordant notion which he fancied would look well in verse, and the Essay is no more bound together by the pervading spirit of individual sentiment than by logical connection. The languid inattention which the poem invites is seen in the statement of Bowles that thereis "a nice precision in every word." No one could attempt to get at Pope's meaning without being frequently tormented by the difficulty, and sometimes the impossibility, of interpreting his lax, indeterminate language. "Hardly thinking of the philosophy," Bowles did not observe that there was often a lamentable want of precision in Pope's conceptions, and when these are misty and confused, the expression of them cannot be rigorous and definite. Loose and ambiguous phraseology was not the only fault of style. The use of inversions, and of unlicensed, elliptical modes of speech, was a cardinal blemish in Pope's poetry. The failing reached its height in the Essay on Man. Many of the contortions are barbarous, and were enough of themselves to dispel the delusion that Pope was distinguished by correctness of composition. His grammatical faults, when not deliberate to force a rhyme, are comparatively venial. Such oversights are found in all authors, and proceed from inadvertence; they are little more than clerical errors. The deformities of vicious construction are of a different order. They arose from defect of literary power, from the incapacity to reconcile the requirements of verse with the rules of English. The maimed and distorted language obscures the sense, destroys or debases the poetry, and lessens the general impression of his genius. The Essay was altogether a mistake. A slip from a neighbour's tree was planted in an uncongenial soil, and the cultivation bestowed upon it produced little more than feeble rootlets, and sickly shoots.
M. Taine asserts that from the Restoration to the French Revolution, from Waller to Johnson, from Hobbes and Temple to Robertson and Hume, all our literature, both prose and verse, bears the impress of classic art. The mode, he says, culminated in the reign of Queen Anne, and Pope, he considers, was the extreme example of it. The characteristics which M. Taine ascribes to the classic era are, in the matter, common-place truths, and, in the manner, a style finished and artificial,—noble language, oratorical pomp, and studied correctness. Poetry ceased to be inventive; the very composition is uniform, and the obvious or borrowed thoughts are all cast in one mould. Verse is nothing more than cold, rational prose, a species of superior conversation measured off into lengths, and fringed with rhyme; the form predominates over the matter; the ostentatious exterior is the mask to impoverished, colourless ideas.[953]The habit of M. Taine is to generalise a partial truth into extravagance. Many of the most eminent authors who flourished between the English Restoration and the French Revolution wrote in a style far removed from that which M. Taine calls classical,—in an inelegant, uncondensed style as Locke, in a crude, clumsy style as Bishop Butler,in a vigorous, colloquial style as Bentley, in a homely, straightforward style as Swift, in an unpretentious, narrative style as De Foe, in a loose, familiar style as Burnet. The verse differs like the prose, though in a less degree, and is not "of a uniform make as if fabricated by a machine."[954]The witty and grotesque Hudibras of Butler, the tales, and many short poems of Prior, the humourous, satiric verses of Swift, the Songs and Fables of Gay, the Seasons of Thomson, the heroics of Pope, are all in dissimilar styles. Neither is the substance of the prose and verse, from the Restoration to the French Revolution, an invariable common-sense mediocrity. There is a great display of genius in political philosophy and political economy, in moral, metaphysical, and natural science, in manifold species of satire and fiction, and, omitting Milton, who was formed under earlier influences, in various kinds of poetry, short of the highest. M. Taine was partly conscious of the facts, as may be seen in his individual criticisms, which are a refutation of his general theory. There is this much truth in his view, that there was a growing tendency to cultivate style, and in some writers the art degenerated into the artificial. Among the numerous varieties of the defect one is a monotonous structure of verse and sentence, another the attempt to disguise the commonness of the thoughts by the elaboration of the workmanship. These are frequent faults in the poetry of Pope, and the mannerism remains when the execution is a failure. His style is admirable in parts, but he falls far below Dryden in the general elasticity of his composition, in the wealth of his language, and in the subtle intricacies of metrical harmony. His thoughts are often gems rendered lustrous by the skill of the cutter, but intermingling with them are counterfeit stones which impose by their glitter on the superficial observer, and when examined are found worthless.
TO THE READER.[955]
As the epistolary way of writing hath prevailed much of late, we have ventured to publish this piece composed some time since, and whose[956]author chose this manner, notwithstanding his subject was high and of dignity, because of its being mixed with argument, which of its nature approacheth to prose. This, which we first give the reader, treats of the nature and state of man with respect to the universal system. The rest will treat of him with respect to his own system, as an individual, and as a member of society, under one or other of which heads all ethics are included.
As he imitates no man, so he would be thought to vie with no man in these epistles, particularly with the noted author of two lately published;[957]but this he may most surely say, that the matter of them is such as is of importance to all in general, and of offence to none in particular.[958]
THE DESIGN.[959]
Having proposed to write some pieces on human life and manners, such as, to use my Lord Bacon's expression, come home to men's business and bosoms, I thought it more satisfactory to begin with considering man in the abstract, his nature and his state; since to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end and purpose of its being.
The science of human nature is, like all other sciences, reduced to a few clear points. There are not many certain truths in this world. It is therefore in the anatomy of the mind as in that of the body, more good will accrue to mankind by attending to the large, open, and perceptible parts, than by studying too much such finer nerves and vessels, the conformations and uses of which will for ever escape our observation. The disputes are all upon these last, and, I will venture to say, they have less sharpened the wits than the hearts of men against each other, and have diminished the practice, more than advanced the theory of morality. If I could flatter myself that this Essay has any merit, it is in steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite, in passing over terms utterly unintelligible, and in forming[960]a temperate, yet not inconsistent, and a short, yet not imperfect, system of ethics.
This I might have done in prose; but I chose verse, and even rhyme, for two reasons. The one will appear obvious; that principles, maxims, or precepts so written, both strike the reader more strongly at first, and are more easily retained by him afterwards. The other may seem odd, but is true. I found I could express them more shortly this way than in prose itself; and nothing is more certain, than that much of the force as well as grace of arguments or instructions depends on their conciseness. I was unable to treat this part of my subject more in detail, without becoming dry and tedious; or more poetically, without sacrificing perspicuity to ornament, without wandering from the precision, or breaking the chain of reasoning. If any man can unite all these, without diminution of any of them, I freely confess he will compass a thing above my capacity.
What is now published, is only to be considered as a general map of man, marking out no more than the greater parts, their extent, their limits, and their connexion, but leaving the particular to be more fully delineated in the charts which are to follow. Consequently, these Epistles, in their progress (if I have health and leisure to make any progress) will be less dry, and more susceptible of poetical ornament. I am here only opening the fountains, and clearing the passage. To deduce the rivers, to follow them in their course, and to observe their effects, may be a task more agreeable.
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, ver. 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, ver. 35, &c. 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, ver. 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, ver. 113, &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, ver. 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 possess any of the sensitive faculties in a higher degree, would render him miserable, ver. 173, &c. 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, ver. 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, ver. 233. IX. The extravagance, madness, and pride of such a desire, ver. 259. X. The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state, ver. 281, &c., to the end.
AN
ESSAY ON MAN.
IN FOUR EPISTLES.
EPISTLE I.
Awake, my St. John![961]leave all meaner thingsTo low ambition, and the pride of kings.[962]Let us, since life can[963]little more supplyThan just to look about us and to die,[964]Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;[965]5A mighty maze![966]but not without a plan;[967]A wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot;[968]Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit.[969]Together let us beat this ample field,Try what the open, what the covert yield;[970]10The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore,[971]Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;[972]Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,[973]And catch the manners living as they rise;[974]Laugh where we must, be candid[975]where we can;15But vindicate the ways of God to man.[976]Man can reason only from things known, and judge only with regard to his own system.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?[977]20Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known,[978]'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.He, who through vast immensity can pierce,See worlds on worlds compose one universe,[979]Observe how system into system runs,25What other planets circle[980]other suns,What varied being peoples ev'ry star,[981]May tell why heav'n has made us as we are.[982]But of this frame, the bearings and the ties,The strong connections, nice dependencies,30Gradations[983]just, has thy pervading soulLooked through,[984]or can a part contain the whole?[985]Is the great chain that draws all to agree,[986]And drawn supports,[987]upheld by God or thee?Man is not therefore a judge of his own perfection or imperfection, but is certainly such a being as is suited to his place and rank in creation.II. Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find,35Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind?First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less?[988]Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are madeTaller or stronger than the weeds they shade!40Or ask of yonder argent fields[989]aboveWhy Jove's satellites[990]are less than Jove![991]Of systems possible, if 'tis confessedThat wisdom infinite[992]must form the best,[993]Where all must full or not coherent be,[994]45And all that rises rise in due degree,Then, in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain,There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man:[995]And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)Is only this, if God has placed him wrong.[996]50Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,May, must be right, as relative to all.[997]In human works, though laboured on with pain,A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;In God's, one single can its end produce;55Yet serves to second too some other use.[998]So man, who here seems principal alone,Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;[999]'Tis but a part we see,[1000]and not a whole.[1001]60When the proud steed shall know why man restrainsHis fiery course, or[1002]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;[1003]Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend65His actions', passions', being's, use and end;Why doing, suff'ring, checked, impelled; and whyThis hour a slave, the next a deity.[1004]Then say not man's imperfect, heav'n in fault;Say rather man's as perfect as he ought:[1005]70His knowledge measured to his state and place,[1006]His time a moment, and a point his space.[1007]If to be perfect in a certain sphere,What matter, soon or late, or here or there?[1008]The bless'd to-day is as completely so,75As who began a thousand years ago.[1009]His happiness depends on his ignorance to a certain degree.III. Heav'n 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 here below?[1010]80The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?Pleased to the last he crops the flow'ry food,And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.[1011]O blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,85That each may fill the circle marked by heav'n:Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,[1012]Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,[1013]And now a bubble burst, and now a world.90And on his hope of a relation to a future state.Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;Wait the great teacher death, and God adore.What future bliss he gives not thee to know,But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.[1014]Hope springs eternal in the human breast;95Man never is, but always to be blessed.[1015]The soul, uneasy, and confined from[1016]home,Rests and expatiates in a life to come.Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mindSees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;[1017]100His soul proud science never taught to strayFar as the solar walk[1018]or milky way;[1019]Yet simple nature to his hope has giv'n,Behind the cloud-topped hill,[1020]an humbler heav'n;Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,105Some happier island in the wat'ry waste,[1021]Where slaves once more their native land behold,No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.[1022]To be, contents his natural desire;He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;110But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,His faithful dog shall bear him company.[1023]The pride of aiming at more knowledge and perfection, and the impiety of pretending to judge of the dispensations of Providence, the causes of man's error and misery.IV. Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense,[1024]Weigh thy opinion against Providence;[1025]Call imperfection what thou fanci'st such,115Say, Here he gives too little, there too much![1026]Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,[1027]Yet cry, If man's unhappy, God's unjust;[1028]If man alone ingross not heav'n's high care,Alone made perfect here, immortal there:[1029]120Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,[1030]Re-judge his justice, be the god of God.[1031]In pride, in reas'ning pride,[1032]our error lies;All quit their sphere and rush into the skies!Pride still is aiming at the bless'd abodes,125Men would be angels, angels would be gods.[1033]Aspiring to be gods if angels fell,Aspiring to be angels men rebel:[1034]And who but wishes to invert the lawsOf order, sins against th' Eternal Cause.130The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world which is not in the natural.V. Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine,Earth for whose use, Pride answers,[1035]"'Tis for mine!For me kind nature wakes her genial pow'r,Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flow'r;[1036]Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew135The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;For me the mine a thousand treasures brings;For me health gushes from a thousand springs;Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;My footstool earth, my canopy the skies!"[1037]140But errs not nature from this gracious end,From burning suns when livid deaths descend,When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep[1038]Towns to one grave, whole nations[1039]to the deep?[1040]"No," 'tis replied, "the first Almighty Cause145Acts not by partial but by gen'ral laws:[1041]Th' exceptions few; some change since all began;[1042]And what created perfect?"—Why then man?If the great end be human happiness,Then nature deviates;[1043]and can man do less?[1044]150As much that end a constant course requiresOf show'rs and sunshine, as of man's desires:As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,As men for ever temp'rate, calm, and wise.[1045]If plagues or earthquakes break not heaven's design,155Why then a Borgia or a Catiline?[1046]Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms,Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms;Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar's mind,[1047]Or turns young Ammon[1048]loose to scourge mankind?[1049]160From pride, from pride our very reas'ning springs;Account for moral, as for nat'ral things:[1050]Why charge we heav'n in those, in these acquit?In both to reason right is to submit.Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,165Were there all harmony, all virtue here;That never air or ocean felt the wind;That never passion discomposed the mind.But all subsists by elemental strife;And passions are the elements of life.[1051]170The gen'ral order,[1052]since the whole began,Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.[1053]The unreasonableness of the complaints against Providence, and that to possess more faculties would make us miserable.VI. What would this Man? now upward will he soar,And little less than angel, would be more![1054]Now looking downwards, just as grieved appears175To want the strength[1055]of bulls, the fur of bears.[1056]Made for his use, all creatures if he call,[1057]Say what their use, had he the pow'rs of all:Nature to these without profusion kind,[1058]The proper organs, proper pow'rs assigned;180Each seeming want compensated of course,Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force:[1059]All in exact proportion to the state;[1060]Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.[1061]Each beast, each insect, happy in its own:[1062]185Is Heav'n unkind to man, and man alone?Shall he alone, whom rational we call,Be pleased with nothing, if not blessed with all?[1063]The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)Is not to act or think beyond mankind;190No pow'rs of body or of soul to share,But what his nature and his state can bear.[1064]Why has not man a microscopic eye?For this plain reason, man is not a fly.Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n,195T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n?[1065]Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore?Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,Die of a rose in aromatic pain?[1066]200If nature thundered in his op'ning ears,And stunned him with the music of the spheres,[1067]How would he wish that heav'n had left him stillThe whisp'ring zephyr, and the purling rill?Who finds not Providence all good and wise,205Alike in what it gives, and what denies?There is an universal order and gradation through the whole visible world, of the sensible and mental faculties, which causes the subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to man, whose reason alone countervails all the other faculties.VII. Far as creation's ample range extends,The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends:Mark how it mounts to man's imperial race,[1068]From the green myriads in the peopled grass;210What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:Of smell, the headlong lioness between,[1069]And hound sagacious on the tainted green:Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,[1070]215To that which warbles through the vernal wood!The spider's touch how exquisitely fine![1071]Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:[1072]In the nice bee, what sense so subtly trueFrom pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?[1073]220How instinct varies in the grov'ling swine,Compared, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine![1074]'Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier!For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near!Remembrance and reflection how allied;225What thin partitions sense from thought divide;[1075]And middle natures, how they long to join,Yet never pass th' insuperable line![1076]Without this just gradation could they beSubjected, these to those, or all to thee?230The pow'rs of all subdued by thee alone,Is not thy reason all these pow'rs in one?How much further this gradation and subordination may extend, were any part of which broken the whole connected creation must be destroyed.VIII. See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth,All matter quick, and bursting into birth.Above, how high progressive life may go!235Around, how wide! how deep extend below![1077]Vast chain of being! which from God began,Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,[1078]Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,No glass can reach; from infinite to thee,240From thee to nothing.[1079]On superior pow'rsWere we to press, inferior might on ours:[1080]Or in the full creation leave a void,[1081]Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed:[1082]From nature's chain whatever link you strike,245Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.[1083]And if each system in gradation roll[1084]Alike essential to th' amazing whole,[1085]The least confusion but in one, not allThat system only, but the whole must fall.250Let earth unbalanced from her orbit fly,[1086]Planets and suns run lawless through the sky;[1087]Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled,Being on being wrecked, and world on world;Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod,255And nature tremble[1088]to the throne of God![1089]All this dread order break—for whom? for thee?Vile-worm!—O madness! pride! impiety![1090]The extravagance, impiety, and pride of such a desire.IX. What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread,Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head?260What if the head, the eye, or ear repinedTo serve mere engines to the ruling mind?[1091]Just as absurd for any part to claimTo be another, in this gen'ral frame:[1092]Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains265The great directing Mind of all ordains.[1093]All are but parts of one stupendous whole,Whose body nature is, and God the soul;[1094]That, changed through all, and yet in all the same,Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame,270Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,[1095]Lives thro' all life, extends through all extent,Spreads undivided, operates unspent;[1096]Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,[1097]275As full, as perfect in a hair as heart;[1098]As full, as perfect in vile man that mourns,As the rapt seraph that adores and burns:[1099]To him no high, no low, no great, no small;He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.[1100]280The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state.X. Cease then, nor order imperfection name:Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.[1101]Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree[1102]Of blindness, weakness, heav'n bestows on thee.Submit: in this, or any other sphere,285Secure to be as blessed as thou canst bear;[1103]Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r,[1104]Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.All nature is but art[1105]unknown to thee,[1106]All chance, direction which thou canst not see;[1107]290All discord, harmony not understood;[1108]All partial evil, universal good;And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,[1109]One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
Awake, my St. John![961]leave all meaner thingsTo low ambition, and the pride of kings.[962]Let us, since life can[963]little more supplyThan just to look about us and to die,[964]Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;[965]5A mighty maze![966]but not without a plan;[967]A wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot;[968]Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit.[969]Together let us beat this ample field,Try what the open, what the covert yield;[970]10The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore,[971]Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;[972]Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,[973]And catch the manners living as they rise;[974]Laugh where we must, be candid[975]where we can;15But vindicate the ways of God to man.[976]Man can reason only from things known, and judge only with regard to his own system.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?[977]20Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known,[978]'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.He, who through vast immensity can pierce,See worlds on worlds compose one universe,[979]Observe how system into system runs,25What other planets circle[980]other suns,What varied being peoples ev'ry star,[981]May tell why heav'n has made us as we are.[982]But of this frame, the bearings and the ties,The strong connections, nice dependencies,30Gradations[983]just, has thy pervading soulLooked through,[984]or can a part contain the whole?[985]Is the great chain that draws all to agree,[986]And drawn supports,[987]upheld by God or thee?Man is not therefore a judge of his own perfection or imperfection, but is certainly such a being as is suited to his place and rank in creation.II. Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find,35Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind?First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less?[988]Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are madeTaller or stronger than the weeds they shade!40Or ask of yonder argent fields[989]aboveWhy Jove's satellites[990]are less than Jove![991]Of systems possible, if 'tis confessedThat wisdom infinite[992]must form the best,[993]Where all must full or not coherent be,[994]45And all that rises rise in due degree,Then, in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain,There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man:[995]And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)Is only this, if God has placed him wrong.[996]50Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,May, must be right, as relative to all.[997]In human works, though laboured on with pain,A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;In God's, one single can its end produce;55Yet serves to second too some other use.[998]So man, who here seems principal alone,Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;[999]'Tis but a part we see,[1000]and not a whole.[1001]60When the proud steed shall know why man restrainsHis fiery course, or[1002]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;[1003]Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend65His actions', passions', being's, use and end;Why doing, suff'ring, checked, impelled; and whyThis hour a slave, the next a deity.[1004]Then say not man's imperfect, heav'n in fault;Say rather man's as perfect as he ought:[1005]70His knowledge measured to his state and place,[1006]His time a moment, and a point his space.[1007]If to be perfect in a certain sphere,What matter, soon or late, or here or there?[1008]The bless'd to-day is as completely so,75As who began a thousand years ago.[1009]His happiness depends on his ignorance to a certain degree.III. Heav'n 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 here below?[1010]80The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?Pleased to the last he crops the flow'ry food,And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.[1011]O blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,85That each may fill the circle marked by heav'n:Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,[1012]Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,[1013]And now a bubble burst, and now a world.90And on his hope of a relation to a future state.Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;Wait the great teacher death, and God adore.What future bliss he gives not thee to know,But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.[1014]Hope springs eternal in the human breast;95Man never is, but always to be blessed.[1015]The soul, uneasy, and confined from[1016]home,Rests and expatiates in a life to come.Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mindSees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;[1017]100His soul proud science never taught to strayFar as the solar walk[1018]or milky way;[1019]Yet simple nature to his hope has giv'n,Behind the cloud-topped hill,[1020]an humbler heav'n;Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,105Some happier island in the wat'ry waste,[1021]Where slaves once more their native land behold,No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.[1022]To be, contents his natural desire;He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;110But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,His faithful dog shall bear him company.[1023]The pride of aiming at more knowledge and perfection, and the impiety of pretending to judge of the dispensations of Providence, the causes of man's error and misery.IV. Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense,[1024]Weigh thy opinion against Providence;[1025]Call imperfection what thou fanci'st such,115Say, Here he gives too little, there too much![1026]Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,[1027]Yet cry, If man's unhappy, God's unjust;[1028]If man alone ingross not heav'n's high care,Alone made perfect here, immortal there:[1029]120Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,[1030]Re-judge his justice, be the god of God.[1031]In pride, in reas'ning pride,[1032]our error lies;All quit their sphere and rush into the skies!Pride still is aiming at the bless'd abodes,125Men would be angels, angels would be gods.[1033]Aspiring to be gods if angels fell,Aspiring to be angels men rebel:[1034]And who but wishes to invert the lawsOf order, sins against th' Eternal Cause.130The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world which is not in the natural.V. Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine,Earth for whose use, Pride answers,[1035]"'Tis for mine!For me kind nature wakes her genial pow'r,Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flow'r;[1036]Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew135The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;For me the mine a thousand treasures brings;For me health gushes from a thousand springs;Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;My footstool earth, my canopy the skies!"[1037]140But errs not nature from this gracious end,From burning suns when livid deaths descend,When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep[1038]Towns to one grave, whole nations[1039]to the deep?[1040]"No," 'tis replied, "the first Almighty Cause145Acts not by partial but by gen'ral laws:[1041]Th' exceptions few; some change since all began;[1042]And what created perfect?"—Why then man?If the great end be human happiness,Then nature deviates;[1043]and can man do less?[1044]150As much that end a constant course requiresOf show'rs and sunshine, as of man's desires:As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,As men for ever temp'rate, calm, and wise.[1045]If plagues or earthquakes break not heaven's design,155Why then a Borgia or a Catiline?[1046]Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms,Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms;Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar's mind,[1047]Or turns young Ammon[1048]loose to scourge mankind?[1049]160From pride, from pride our very reas'ning springs;Account for moral, as for nat'ral things:[1050]Why charge we heav'n in those, in these acquit?In both to reason right is to submit.Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,165Were there all harmony, all virtue here;That never air or ocean felt the wind;That never passion discomposed the mind.But all subsists by elemental strife;And passions are the elements of life.[1051]170The gen'ral order,[1052]since the whole began,Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.[1053]The unreasonableness of the complaints against Providence, and that to possess more faculties would make us miserable.VI. What would this Man? now upward will he soar,And little less than angel, would be more![1054]Now looking downwards, just as grieved appears175To want the strength[1055]of bulls, the fur of bears.[1056]Made for his use, all creatures if he call,[1057]Say what their use, had he the pow'rs of all:Nature to these without profusion kind,[1058]The proper organs, proper pow'rs assigned;180Each seeming want compensated of course,Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force:[1059]All in exact proportion to the state;[1060]Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.[1061]Each beast, each insect, happy in its own:[1062]185Is Heav'n unkind to man, and man alone?Shall he alone, whom rational we call,Be pleased with nothing, if not blessed with all?[1063]The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)Is not to act or think beyond mankind;190No pow'rs of body or of soul to share,But what his nature and his state can bear.[1064]Why has not man a microscopic eye?For this plain reason, man is not a fly.Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n,195T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n?[1065]Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore?Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,Die of a rose in aromatic pain?[1066]200If nature thundered in his op'ning ears,And stunned him with the music of the spheres,[1067]How would he wish that heav'n had left him stillThe whisp'ring zephyr, and the purling rill?Who finds not Providence all good and wise,205Alike in what it gives, and what denies?There is an universal order and gradation through the whole visible world, of the sensible and mental faculties, which causes the subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to man, whose reason alone countervails all the other faculties.VII. Far as creation's ample range extends,The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends:Mark how it mounts to man's imperial race,[1068]From the green myriads in the peopled grass;210What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:Of smell, the headlong lioness between,[1069]And hound sagacious on the tainted green:Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,[1070]215To that which warbles through the vernal wood!The spider's touch how exquisitely fine![1071]Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:[1072]In the nice bee, what sense so subtly trueFrom pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?[1073]220How instinct varies in the grov'ling swine,Compared, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine![1074]'Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier!For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near!Remembrance and reflection how allied;225What thin partitions sense from thought divide;[1075]And middle natures, how they long to join,Yet never pass th' insuperable line![1076]Without this just gradation could they beSubjected, these to those, or all to thee?230The pow'rs of all subdued by thee alone,Is not thy reason all these pow'rs in one?How much further this gradation and subordination may extend, were any part of which broken the whole connected creation must be destroyed.VIII. See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth,All matter quick, and bursting into birth.Above, how high progressive life may go!235Around, how wide! how deep extend below![1077]Vast chain of being! which from God began,Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,[1078]Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,No glass can reach; from infinite to thee,240From thee to nothing.[1079]On superior pow'rsWere we to press, inferior might on ours:[1080]Or in the full creation leave a void,[1081]Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed:[1082]From nature's chain whatever link you strike,245Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.[1083]And if each system in gradation roll[1084]Alike essential to th' amazing whole,[1085]The least confusion but in one, not allThat system only, but the whole must fall.250Let earth unbalanced from her orbit fly,[1086]Planets and suns run lawless through the sky;[1087]Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled,Being on being wrecked, and world on world;Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod,255And nature tremble[1088]to the throne of God![1089]All this dread order break—for whom? for thee?Vile-worm!—O madness! pride! impiety![1090]The extravagance, impiety, and pride of such a desire.IX. What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread,Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head?260What if the head, the eye, or ear repinedTo serve mere engines to the ruling mind?[1091]Just as absurd for any part to claimTo be another, in this gen'ral frame:[1092]Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains265The great directing Mind of all ordains.[1093]All are but parts of one stupendous whole,Whose body nature is, and God the soul;[1094]That, changed through all, and yet in all the same,Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame,270Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,[1095]Lives thro' all life, extends through all extent,Spreads undivided, operates unspent;[1096]Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,[1097]275As full, as perfect in a hair as heart;[1098]As full, as perfect in vile man that mourns,As the rapt seraph that adores and burns:[1099]To him no high, no low, no great, no small;He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.[1100]280The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state.X. Cease then, nor order imperfection name:Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.[1101]Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree[1102]Of blindness, weakness, heav'n bestows on thee.Submit: in this, or any other sphere,285Secure to be as blessed as thou canst bear;[1103]Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r,[1104]Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.All nature is but art[1105]unknown to thee,[1106]All chance, direction which thou canst not see;[1107]290All discord, harmony not understood;[1108]All partial evil, universal good;And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,[1109]One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
Awake, my St. John![961]leave all meaner thingsTo low ambition, and the pride of kings.[962]Let us, since life can[963]little more supplyThan just to look about us and to die,[964]Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;[965]5A mighty maze![966]but not without a plan;[967]A wild, where weeds and flow'rs promiscuous shoot;[968]Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit.[969]Together let us beat this ample field,Try what the open, what the covert yield;[970]10The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore,[971]Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;[972]Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies,[973]And catch the manners living as they rise;[974]Laugh where we must, be candid[975]where we can;15But vindicate the ways of God to man.[976]Man can reason only from things known, and judge only with regard to his own system.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?[977]20Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known,[978]'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.He, who through vast immensity can pierce,See worlds on worlds compose one universe,[979]Observe how system into system runs,25What other planets circle[980]other suns,What varied being peoples ev'ry star,[981]May tell why heav'n has made us as we are.[982]But of this frame, the bearings and the ties,The strong connections, nice dependencies,30Gradations[983]just, has thy pervading soulLooked through,[984]or can a part contain the whole?[985]Is the great chain that draws all to agree,[986]And drawn supports,[987]upheld by God or thee?Man is not therefore a judge of his own perfection or imperfection, but is certainly such a being as is suited to his place and rank in creation.II. Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find,35Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind?First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less?[988]Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are madeTaller or stronger than the weeds they shade!40Or ask of yonder argent fields[989]aboveWhy Jove's satellites[990]are less than Jove![991]Of systems possible, if 'tis confessedThat wisdom infinite[992]must form the best,[993]Where all must full or not coherent be,[994]45And all that rises rise in due degree,Then, in the scale of reas'ning life, 'tis plain,There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man:[995]And all the question (wrangle e'er so long)Is only this, if God has placed him wrong.[996]50Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,May, must be right, as relative to all.[997]In human works, though laboured on with pain,A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;In God's, one single can its end produce;55Yet serves to second too some other use.[998]So man, who here seems principal alone,Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;[999]'Tis but a part we see,[1000]and not a whole.[1001]60When the proud steed shall know why man restrainsHis fiery course, or[1002]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;[1003]Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend65His actions', passions', being's, use and end;Why doing, suff'ring, checked, impelled; and whyThis hour a slave, the next a deity.[1004]Then say not man's imperfect, heav'n in fault;Say rather man's as perfect as he ought:[1005]70His knowledge measured to his state and place,[1006]His time a moment, and a point his space.[1007]If to be perfect in a certain sphere,What matter, soon or late, or here or there?[1008]The bless'd to-day is as completely so,75As who began a thousand years ago.[1009]His happiness depends on his ignorance to a certain degree.III. Heav'n 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 here below?[1010]80The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?Pleased to the last he crops the flow'ry food,And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.[1011]O blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,85That each may fill the circle marked by heav'n:Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,[1012]Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,[1013]And now a bubble burst, and now a world.90And on his hope of a relation to a future state.Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;Wait the great teacher death, and God adore.What future bliss he gives not thee to know,But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.[1014]Hope springs eternal in the human breast;95Man never is, but always to be blessed.[1015]The soul, uneasy, and confined from[1016]home,Rests and expatiates in a life to come.Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mindSees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;[1017]100His soul proud science never taught to strayFar as the solar walk[1018]or milky way;[1019]Yet simple nature to his hope has giv'n,Behind the cloud-topped hill,[1020]an humbler heav'n;Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,105Some happier island in the wat'ry waste,[1021]Where slaves once more their native land behold,No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.[1022]To be, contents his natural desire;He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;110But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,His faithful dog shall bear him company.[1023]The pride of aiming at more knowledge and perfection, and the impiety of pretending to judge of the dispensations of Providence, the causes of man's error and misery.IV. Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense,[1024]Weigh thy opinion against Providence;[1025]Call imperfection what thou fanci'st such,115Say, Here he gives too little, there too much![1026]Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,[1027]Yet cry, If man's unhappy, God's unjust;[1028]If man alone ingross not heav'n's high care,Alone made perfect here, immortal there:[1029]120Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,[1030]Re-judge his justice, be the god of God.[1031]In pride, in reas'ning pride,[1032]our error lies;All quit their sphere and rush into the skies!Pride still is aiming at the bless'd abodes,125Men would be angels, angels would be gods.[1033]Aspiring to be gods if angels fell,Aspiring to be angels men rebel:[1034]And who but wishes to invert the lawsOf order, sins against th' Eternal Cause.130The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world which is not in the natural.V. Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine,Earth for whose use, Pride answers,[1035]"'Tis for mine!For me kind nature wakes her genial pow'r,Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flow'r;[1036]Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew135The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;For me the mine a thousand treasures brings;For me health gushes from a thousand springs;Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise;My footstool earth, my canopy the skies!"[1037]140But errs not nature from this gracious end,From burning suns when livid deaths descend,When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep[1038]Towns to one grave, whole nations[1039]to the deep?[1040]"No," 'tis replied, "the first Almighty Cause145Acts not by partial but by gen'ral laws:[1041]Th' exceptions few; some change since all began;[1042]And what created perfect?"—Why then man?If the great end be human happiness,Then nature deviates;[1043]and can man do less?[1044]150As much that end a constant course requiresOf show'rs and sunshine, as of man's desires:As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,As men for ever temp'rate, calm, and wise.[1045]If plagues or earthquakes break not heaven's design,155Why then a Borgia or a Catiline?[1046]Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms,Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms;Pours fierce ambition in a Cæsar's mind,[1047]Or turns young Ammon[1048]loose to scourge mankind?[1049]160From pride, from pride our very reas'ning springs;Account for moral, as for nat'ral things:[1050]Why charge we heav'n in those, in these acquit?In both to reason right is to submit.Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,165Were there all harmony, all virtue here;That never air or ocean felt the wind;That never passion discomposed the mind.But all subsists by elemental strife;And passions are the elements of life.[1051]170The gen'ral order,[1052]since the whole began,Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.[1053]The unreasonableness of the complaints against Providence, and that to possess more faculties would make us miserable.VI. What would this Man? now upward will he soar,And little less than angel, would be more![1054]Now looking downwards, just as grieved appears175To want the strength[1055]of bulls, the fur of bears.[1056]Made for his use, all creatures if he call,[1057]Say what their use, had he the pow'rs of all:Nature to these without profusion kind,[1058]The proper organs, proper pow'rs assigned;180Each seeming want compensated of course,Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force:[1059]All in exact proportion to the state;[1060]Nothing to add, and nothing to abate.[1061]Each beast, each insect, happy in its own:[1062]185Is Heav'n unkind to man, and man alone?Shall he alone, whom rational we call,Be pleased with nothing, if not blessed with all?[1063]The bliss of man (could pride that blessing find)Is not to act or think beyond mankind;190No pow'rs of body or of soul to share,But what his nature and his state can bear.[1064]Why has not man a microscopic eye?For this plain reason, man is not a fly.Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n,195T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n?[1065]Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er,To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore?Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,Die of a rose in aromatic pain?[1066]200If nature thundered in his op'ning ears,And stunned him with the music of the spheres,[1067]How would he wish that heav'n had left him stillThe whisp'ring zephyr, and the purling rill?Who finds not Providence all good and wise,205Alike in what it gives, and what denies?There is an universal order and gradation through the whole visible world, of the sensible and mental faculties, which causes the subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to man, whose reason alone countervails all the other faculties.VII. Far as creation's ample range extends,The scale of sensual, mental pow'rs ascends:Mark how it mounts to man's imperial race,[1068]From the green myriads in the peopled grass;210What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam:Of smell, the headlong lioness between,[1069]And hound sagacious on the tainted green:Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,[1070]215To that which warbles through the vernal wood!The spider's touch how exquisitely fine![1071]Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:[1072]In the nice bee, what sense so subtly trueFrom pois'nous herbs extracts the healing dew?[1073]220How instinct varies in the grov'ling swine,Compared, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine![1074]'Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier!For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near!Remembrance and reflection how allied;225What thin partitions sense from thought divide;[1075]And middle natures, how they long to join,Yet never pass th' insuperable line![1076]Without this just gradation could they beSubjected, these to those, or all to thee?230The pow'rs of all subdued by thee alone,Is not thy reason all these pow'rs in one?How much further this gradation and subordination may extend, were any part of which broken the whole connected creation must be destroyed.VIII. See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth,All matter quick, and bursting into birth.Above, how high progressive life may go!235Around, how wide! how deep extend below![1077]Vast chain of being! which from God began,Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,[1078]Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,No glass can reach; from infinite to thee,240From thee to nothing.[1079]On superior pow'rsWere we to press, inferior might on ours:[1080]Or in the full creation leave a void,[1081]Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroyed:[1082]From nature's chain whatever link you strike,245Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.[1083]And if each system in gradation roll[1084]Alike essential to th' amazing whole,[1085]The least confusion but in one, not allThat system only, but the whole must fall.250Let earth unbalanced from her orbit fly,[1086]Planets and suns run lawless through the sky;[1087]Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled,Being on being wrecked, and world on world;Heav'n's whole foundations to their centre nod,255And nature tremble[1088]to the throne of God![1089]All this dread order break—for whom? for thee?Vile-worm!—O madness! pride! impiety![1090]The extravagance, impiety, and pride of such a desire.IX. What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread,Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head?260What if the head, the eye, or ear repinedTo serve mere engines to the ruling mind?[1091]Just as absurd for any part to claimTo be another, in this gen'ral frame:[1092]Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains265The great directing Mind of all ordains.[1093]All are but parts of one stupendous whole,Whose body nature is, and God the soul;[1094]That, changed through all, and yet in all the same,Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame,270Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,[1095]Lives thro' all life, extends through all extent,Spreads undivided, operates unspent;[1096]Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,[1097]275As full, as perfect in a hair as heart;[1098]As full, as perfect in vile man that mourns,As the rapt seraph that adores and burns:[1099]To him no high, no low, no great, no small;He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.[1100]280The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state.X. Cease then, nor order imperfection name:Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.[1101]Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree[1102]Of blindness, weakness, heav'n bestows on thee.Submit: in this, or any other sphere,285Secure to be as blessed as thou canst bear;[1103]Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow'r,[1104]Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.All nature is but art[1105]unknown to thee,[1106]All chance, direction which thou canst not see;[1107]290All discord, harmony not understood;[1108]All partial evil, universal good;And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,[1109]One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
Man can reason only from things known, and judge only with regard to his own system.
Man is not therefore a judge of his own perfection or imperfection, but is certainly such a being as is suited to his place and rank in creation.
His happiness depends on his ignorance to a certain degree.
And on his hope of a relation to a future state.
The pride of aiming at more knowledge and perfection, and the impiety of pretending to judge of the dispensations of Providence, the causes of man's error and misery.
The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world which is not in the natural.
The unreasonableness of the complaints against Providence, and that to possess more faculties would make us miserable.
There is an universal order and gradation through the whole visible world, of the sensible and mental faculties, which causes the subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to man, whose reason alone countervails all the other faculties.
How much further this gradation and subordination may extend, were any part of which broken the whole connected creation must be destroyed.
The extravagance, impiety, and pride of such a desire.
The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state.