The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 2 (of 10) / Poetry - Volume 2

by Alexander Pope

COMMENTARY ON EPISTLE I.

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

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

To vindicate the ways of God to man.

The men he writes against, he frequently informs us, are such as weigh their opinions against Providence, ver. 114, such as cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjust, ver. 118, or such as fall into the notion, that vice and virtue there is none at all, Epistle ii. ver. 212. This occasions the poet to divide his vindication of the ways of God into two parts; in the first of which he gives direct answers to those objections which libertine men, on a view of the disorders arising from the perversity of the human will, have intended against Providence; and in the second, he obviates all those objections, by a true delineation of human nature, or a general, but exact, map of man. The first Epistle is employed in the management of the first part of this dispute; and the three following, in the discussion of the second. So that this whole book constitutes a complete Essay on Man, written for the best purpose, to vindicate the ways of God.

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

Ver. 43. Of systems possible, &c.] So far the poet's modest and sober introduction: in which he truly observes, that no wisdom less than omniscient

Can tell why heav'n has made us as we are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown.

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

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

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

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

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

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

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

He sees, why nature plants in man alone
Hope of known bliss, and faith in bliss unknown:
Nature, whose dictates to no other kind
Are giv'n in vain, but what they seek they find.

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

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

Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;

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

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

Alone made perfect here, immortal there:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ver. 141. But errs not nature from this gracious end,] The author comes next to the confirmation of his thesis, That partial moral evil is universal good; but introduceth it with an allowed instance in the natural world, to abate our wonder at the phenomenon of moral evil; which he forms into an argument on a concession of his adversaries. If we ask you, says he, from ver. 140 to 150, whether nature doth not err from the gracious purpose of its Creator, when plagues, earthquakes, and tempests unpeople whole regions at a time; you readily answer, No: for that God acts by general, and not by particular laws; and that the course of matter and motion must be necessarily subject to some irregularities, because nothing is created perfect. I then ask, why you should expect this perfection in man? If you own that the great end of God (notwithstanding all this deviation) be general happiness, then it is nature and not God that deviates; do you expect greater constancy in man?

Then nature deviates; and can man do less?

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

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

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

Of this frame, the bearings and the ties,
The strong connexions, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
Look'd through? or can a part contain the whole?

Own therefore, says he, that

From pride, from pride, our very reas'ning springs;
Account for moral, as for nat'ral things:
Why charge we heav'n in those, in these acquit?
In both, to reason right, is to submit.

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

That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discomposed the mind.

But then consider, that as our material system is supported by the strife of its elementary particles, so is our intellectual system, by the conflict of our passions, which are the elements of human action. In a word, as without the benefit of tempestuous winds, both air and ocean would stagnate, corrupt, and spread universal contagion throughout all the ranks of animals that inhabit, or are supported by, them; so, without the benefit of the passions, such virtue as was merely the effect of the absence of those passions, would be a lifeless calm, a stoical apathy.

Contracted all, retiring to the breast:
But health of mind is exercise, not rest.

Therefore, instead of regarding the conflicts of the elements, and the passions of the mind, as disorders, you ought to consider them as part of the general order of Providence: and that they are so, appears from their always preserving the same unvaried course, throughout all ages, from the creation to the present time:

The gen'ral order, since the whole began,
Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.

We see, therefore, it would be doing great injustice to our author to suspect that he intended by this to give any encouragement to vice. His system, as all his Ethic Epistles show, is this: That the passions, for the reasons given above, are necessary to the support of virtue: that, indeed, the passions in excess produce vice, which is, in its own nature, the greatest of all evils, and comes into the world from the abuse of man's free-will; but that God, in his infinite wisdom and goodness, deviously turns the natural bias of its malignity to the advancement of human happiness, and makes it productive of general good:

Th' eternal art educes good from all.

This, set against what we have observed of the poet's doctrine of a future state, will furnish us with an instance of his steering (as he well expresses it in his preface) "between doctrines seemingly opposite: if his Essay has any merit, he thinks it is in this." And doubtless it is uncommon merit to reject the visions and absurdities of every system, and take in only what is rational and real. The Characteristics and the Fable of the Bees are two seemingly inconsistent systems; the folly of the first is in giving a scheme of virtue without religion; and the knavery of the latter, in giving a scheme of religion without virtue. These our poet leaves to any that will take them up; but agrees, however, so far with the first, that "virtue would be worth having, though itself was its only reward;" and so far with the latter, that "God makes evil, against its nature, productive of good."

Ver. 173. What would this man? &c.] Having thus justified Providence in its permission of partial moral evil, our author employs the remaining part of his Epistle in vindicating it from the imputation of certain supposed natural evils. For now he shows, from ver. 172 to 207, that though the complaint of his adversaries against Providence be on pretence of real moral evils; yet, at bottom, it all proceeds from their impatience under imaginary natural ones, the issue of a depraved appetite for visionary advantages, which if man had, they would be either useless or pernicious to him, as repugnant to his state, or unsuitable to his condition. Though God, says he, hath so bountifully bestowed on man faculties little less than angelic, yet he ungratefully grasps at higher; and then, extravagant in another extreme, with a passion as ridiculous as that is impious, envies, as what would be advantages to himself, even the peculiar accommodations of brutes. But here his own false principles expose the folly of his falser appetites. He supposes them all made for his use: now what use could he have of them, when he had robbed them of all their qualities? Qualities distributed with the highest wisdom, as they are divided at present; but which, if bestowed according to the froward humour of these childish complainers, would be everywhere found to be either wanting or superfluous. But even though endowed with these brutal qualities, man would not only be no gainer, but a considerable loser; as the poet shows in explaining the consequences which would follow from his having his sensations in that exquisite degree in which this or the other animal is observed to possess them.

Ver. 207. Far as creation's ample range extends,] He tells us next, from ver. 206 to 233, that the complying with such extravagant desires would not only be useless and pernicious to man, but would be breaking into the order, and deforming the beauty of God's creation, in which this animal is subject to that, and every one to man, who, by his reason, enjoys the sum of all their powers.

Ver. 233. See, through this air, &c.] And further, from ver. 232 to 267, that this breaking the order of things, which, as a link or chain, connects all beings, from the highest to the lowest, would unavoidably be attended with the destruction of the universe; for that the several parts of it must at least compose as entire and harmonious a whole as the parts of a human body, can be doubted of by no one. Yet we see what confusion it would make upon our frame, if the members were set upon invading each other's office:

What if the foot, &c.

Who will not acknowledge, therefore, that a connexion in the disposition of things, so harmonious as here described, is transcendently beautiful? But the fatalists suppose such an one. What then? Is the First Free Agent, the great Cause of all things, debarred a contrivance infinitely exquisite, because some men, to set up their idol, fate, absurdly represent it as presiding over such a system?

Ver. 267. All are but parts of one stupendous whole,] Our author having thus given a representation of God's work, as one entire whole, where all the parts have a necessary dependence on, and relation to each other, and where each particular part works and concurs to the perfection of the whole, as such a system transcends vulgar ideas, to reconcile it to common conceptions he shows, from ver. 266 to 281, that God is equally and intimately present to every sort of substance, to every particle of matter, and in every instant of being; which eases the labouring imagination, and makes us expect no less from such a presence, than such a dispensation.

Ver. 281. Cease then, nor order imperfection name:] And now the poet, as he had promised, having vindicated the ways of God to man, concludes, from ver. 280 to the end, that, from what had been said, it appears, that the very things we blame contribute to our happiness, either as unrelated particulars, or at least as parts of the universal system; that our state of ignorance was allotted to us out of compassion; that yet we have as much knowledge as is sufficient to show us, that we are, and always shall be, as blessed as we can bear; for that nature is neither a Stratonic chain of blind causes and effects,

(All nature is but art, unknown to thee,)

nor yet the fortuitous result of Epicurean atoms,

(All chance, direction, which thou canst not see):

as those two speeches of atheism supposed it; but the wonderful art and contrivance, unknown indeed to man, of an all-powerful, all-wise, all-good, and free Being. And therefore we may be assured, that the arguments brought above, to prove partial moral evil productive of universal good, are conclusive; from whence one certain truth results, in spite of all the pride and cavils of vain reason, That whatever is, is right.

That the reader may see in one view the exactness of the method, as well as force of the argument, I shall here draw up a short synopsis of this Epistle. The poet begins by telling us, his subject is an Essay on Man: that his end of writing is to vindicate Providence: that he intends to derive his arguments from the visible things of God seen in his system: lays down this proposition, that of all possible systems, infinite wisdom has formed the best: draws from thence two consequences; 1. That there must needs be somewhere such a creature as man; 2. That the moral evil, which he is the author of, is productive of the good of the whole. This is his general thesis; from whence he forms this conclusion, that man should rest submissive and content, and make the hopes of futurity his comfort; but not suffer this to be the occasion of pride, which is the cause of all his impious complaints. He proceeds to confirm his thesis. Previously endeavours to abate our wonder at the phenomenon of moral evil; shows, first, its use to the perfection of the universe, by analogy, from the use of physical evil in this particular system. Secondly, its use in this system, where it is turned, providentially, from its natural bias, to promote virtue. Then goes on to vindicate Providence from the imputation of certain supposed natural evils, as he had before justified it for the permission of real moral evil, in showing that, though the atheist's complaint against Providence be on pretence of real moral evil, yet the true cause is his impatience under imaginary natural evil; the issue of a depraved appetite for fantastical advantages, which, if obtained, would be useless or hurtful to man, and deforming of, and destructive to, the universe, as breaking into that order by which it is supported. He describes that order, harmony, and close connexion of the parts; and by showing the intimate presence of God to his whole creation, gives a reason for an universe so amazingly beautiful and perfect. From all this he deduces his general conclusion, That nature being neither a blind chain of causes and effects, nor yet the fortuitous result of wandering atoms, but the wonderful art and direction of an all-wise, all-good, and free Being, Whatever is, is right, with regard to the disposition of God, and its ultimate tendency; which, once granted, all complaints against Providence are at an end.

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