AN ESSAY ON MAN.* IN FOUR EPISTLES TO H. ST. JOHN, LORD BOLINGBROKE. ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE I. OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN WITH RESPECT TO THE UNIVERSE. Of Man in the abstract-I. That we can judge only with regard to our own system, being ignorant of the relations of systems and things, v. 17, &c.-II. That man is not to be deemed imperfect, but a being suited to his place and rank in the creation, agreeable to the general order of things, and conformable to ends and relations to him unknown, v. 35, &c.-III. That it is partly on his ignorance of future events, and partly on the hope of a future state, that all his happiness in the present depends, v. 77, &c.-IV. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more perfection, the cause of man's error and misery. The impiety of putting himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or unfitness, perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice, of his dispensations, v. 109, &c.-V. The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of the creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world which is not in the natural, v. 131, &c.-VI. The unreasonableness of his complaints against Providence, while on the one hand he demands the perfections of the angels, and on the other the bodily qualifications of the brutes; though, to *In 1733 Pope published the First Epistle anonymously; the Second and Third followed in the same way; but to the Fourth (published 1734) he put his name and, as Johnson says,- claimed the honour of a moral poet." possess any of the sensitive faculties in a higher degree would render him miserable, v. 173, &c.-VII. That throughout the whole visible world, a universal order and gradation in the sensual and mental faculties is observed, which causes a subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to man. The gradations of sense, instinct, thought, reflection, reason: that reason alone countervails all the other faculties, v. 207.-VIII. How much farther this order and subordination of living @reatures may extend above and below us; were any part of which broken, not that part only, but the whole connected creation must be destroyed, v. 233.-IX. The extravagance, madness, and pride of such a desire, v. 250. -X. The consequence of all the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state, v. 281, &c. to the end. EPISTLE I. AWAKE, my St. John!* leave all meaner things shoot; 1 10 Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit. 1. Say, first, of God above or man below, 20 "Henry St. John, son of Sir Henry St. John, baronet, of Lydiard Tregose in Wiltshire, by Mary, second daughter and heiress of Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick." Through worlds unnumber'd though the God be known, "Tis ours to trace him only in our own. He, who through vast immensity can pierce, 30 Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind? Of systems possible, if 'tis confess'd 50 In human works, though labour'd on with pain, Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; 'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole. 60 When the proud steed shall know why man restrains His fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains; Then say not man's imperfect, Heaven in fault What matter, soon or late, or here or there? As who began a thousand years ago. 70 III. Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate; All but the page prescribed, their present state; From brutes what men, from men what spirits know; 80 Or who could suffer being here below? Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd; 90 Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar; Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore : What future bliss, he gives not thee to know, Put gives that hope to be thy blessing now. |