NOTES ON EPISTLE III.
Ver. 3. superfluous health,] Immoderate labour and immoderate study are equally the impairers of health. They whose station sets them above both, must needs have an abundance of it, which not being employed in the common service, but wasted in luxury and folly, the post properly calls a superfluity.
Ver. 4. impudence of wealth,] Because wealth pretends to be wisdom, wit, learning, honesty, and, in short, all the virtues in their turns.
Ver. 3-6.] M. du Resnel, not seeing into the admirable purpose of the caution contained in these four lines, hath quite dropped the most material circumstances contained in the last of them; and what is worse, for the sake of a foolish antithesis, hath destroyed the whole propriety of the thought in the two first; and so, between both, hath left his author neither sense nor system.
Dans le sein du bonheur, ou de l'adversité.
Now, of all men, those in adversity have least needs of this caution, as being least apt to forget, that God consults the good of the whole, and provides for it by procuring mutual happiness by means of mutual wants; it being seen that such who yet retain the smart of any fresh calamity, are most compassionate to others labouring under distresses, and most prompt and ready to relieve them.
Ver. 9. See plastic nature, &c.] M. du Resnel mistook this description of the preservation of the material universe, by the quality of attraction, for a description of its creation; and so translates it
Vois du sein du Chaos éclater la lumière,
Chaque atome ébranlé courir pour s'embrasser, &c.
This destroys the poet's fine analogical argument, by which he proves, from the circumstance of mutual attraction in matter, that man, while he seeks society, and thereby promotes the good of his species, co-operates with God's general dispensation; whereas the circumstance of a creation proves nothing but a Creator.
Ver. 12. Formed and impelled, &c.] Formed and impelled are not words of a loose, undistinguishable meaning thrown in to fill up the verse. This is not our author's way; they are full of sense, and of the most philosophical precision. For to make matter so cohere as to fit it for the uses intended by its Creator, a proper configuration of its insensible parts is as necessary as that quality so equally and universally conferred upon it, called attraction. To express the first part of this thought, our author says formed; and to express the latter, impelled.
Ver. 19, 20. Like bubbles, &c.] M. du Resnel translates these two lines thus:
Sort du néant, y rentre, et reparoit au jour.
He is here, indeed, consistently wrong: for having, as we said, mistaken the poet's account of the preservation of matter for the creation of it, he commits the very same mistake with regard to the vegetable and animal systems; and so talks now, though with the latest, of the production of things out of nothing. Indeed, by his speaking of their returning into nothing, he has subjected his author to M. de Crousaz's censure: "Mr. Pope descends to the most vulgar prejudices, when he tells us that each being returns to nothing: the vulgar think that what disappears is annihilated," &c. Comm. p. 221.
Ver. 22. One all-extending, all-preserving soul,] Which, in the language of Sir Isaac Newton, is "Deus omnipræsens est, non per virtutem solam, sed etiam per substantiam: nam virtus sine substantiâ subsistere non potest." Newt. Princ. Schol. gen. sub fin.
Ver. 23. greatest with the least;] As acting more strongly and immediately in beasts, whose instinct is plainly an external reason; which made an old school-man say, with great elegance, "Deus est anima brutorum:"
In this 'tis God directs.
Ver. 45. See all things for my use!] On the contrary, the wise man hath said, "The Lord hath made all things for himself." Prov. xvi. 4.
Ver. 50. Be man the wit and tyrant of the whole:] Alluding to the witty system of that philosopher,[1596] which made animals mere machines, insensible of pain or pleasure; and so encouraged men in the exercise of that tyranny over their fellow-creatures, consequent on such a principle.
Ver. 152. Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade;] The poet still takes his imagery from Platonic ideas, for the reason given above. Plato had said, from old tradition, that, during the golden age, and under the reign of Saturn, the primitive language then in use was common to man and beasts. Moral instructors took advantage of the popular sense of this tradition, to convey their precepts under those fables which gave speech to the whole brute creation. The naturalists understood the tradition in the contrary sense, to signify, that, in the first ages, men used inarticulate sounds, like beasts, to express their wants and sensations; and that it was by slow degrees they came to the use of speech. This opinion was afterwards held by Lucretius, Diodorus Sic., and Gregory of Nyss.
Ver. 156. All vocal beings, &c.] This may be well explained by a sublime passage of the Psalmist, who, calling to mind the age of innocence, and full of the great ideas of those
Chains of love
Combining all below and all above,
Which to one point, and to one centre bring,
Beast, man, or angel, servant, lord, or king;
breaks out into this rapturous and divine apostrophe, to call back the devious creation to its pristine rectitude; that very state our author describes above: "Praise the Lord, all his angels; praise ye him, all his hosts. Praise ye him, sun and moon; praise him, all ye stars of light," &c. Psalm cxlviii.
Ver. 158. Unbribed, unbloody, &c.] i.e. the state described from ver. 263 to 269 was not yet arrived. For then, when superstition was become so extreme as to bribe the gods with human sacrifices, tyranny became necessitated to woo the priest for a favourable answer.
Ver. 159. Heav'n's attribute, &c.] The poet supposeth the truth of the Scripture account, that man was created lord of this inferior world (Ep. i. ver. 230).
Subjected these to those, and all to thee.
What hath misled some to imagine that our author hath here fallen into a contradiction, was, I suppose, such passages as these, "Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine," &c.; and again, "Has God, thou fool! worked solely for thy good," &c. But, in truth, this is so far from contradicting what he had said of man's prerogative, that it greatly confirms it, and the Scripture account concerning it. And because the licentious manner in which this subject has been treated, has made some readers jealous and mistrustful of the author's sober meaning, I shall endeavour to explain it. Scripture says, that man was made lord of this sublunary world. But intoxicated with pride, the common effect of sovereignty, he erected himself, like little partial monarchs, into a tyrant. And as tyranny consists in supposing all made for the use of one, he took those freedoms with all, which are the consequence of such a principle. He soon began to consider the whole animal creation as his slaves rather than his subjects, as created for no use of their own, but for his use only, and therefore treated them with the utmost cruelty; and not content, to add insult to his cruelty, he endeavoured to philosophize himself into an opinion that these animals were mere machines, insensible of pain or pleasure. Thus man affected to be the wit as well as tyrant of the whole. So that it became one who adhered to the Scripture account of man's dominion to reprove this abuse of it, and to show that
Heav'n's attribute was universal care,
And man's prerogative to rule, but spare.
Ver. 171. Thus then to man, &c.]
M. du Resnel has translated the lines thus:
La nature indignée alors se fit entendre;
Va, malheureux mortel, va, lui dit-elle, apprendre;
One would wonder what should make the translator represent nature in such a passion with man, and calling him names, at a time when Mr. Pope supposed her in her best good-humour. But what led him into this mistake was another as gross. His author having described the state of innocence which ends at these lines,
Heav'n's attribute was universal care,
And man's prerogative to rule, but spare,
turns from those times, to a view of these latter ages, and breaks out into this tender and humane complaint,
Ah! how unlike the man of times to come,
Of half that live the butcher and the tomb, &c.
Unluckily, M. du Resnel took this man of times to come for the corrupter of that first age, and so imagined the poet had introduced nature only to set things right: he then supposed, of course, she was to be very angry; and not finding the author had represented her in any great emotion, he was willing to improve upon his original.
Ver. 174. Learn from the beasts, &c.] See Pliny's Nat. Hist. 1. viii. c. 27, where several instances are given of animals discovering the medicinal efficacy of herbs, by their own use of them; and pointing out to some operations in the art of healing, by their own practice.
Ver. 199. observant men obeyed;] The epithet is beautiful, as signifying both obedience to the voice of nature, and attention to the lessons of the animal creation. But M. l'Abbé, who has a strange fatality of contradicting his original, whenever he attempts to paraphrase, as he calls it, the sense, turns the lines in this manner:
Par ces mots la nature excita l'industrie,
Et de l'homme féroce enchaina la furie.
"Chained up the fury of savage man"; and so contradicts the author's whole system of benevolence, and goes over to the atheist's, who supposes the state of nature to be a state of war. What seems to have misled him was these lines:
What war could ravish, commerce could bestow,
And he returned a friend who came a foe.
But M. du Resnel should have considered, that though the author holds a state of nature to be a state of peace, yet he never imagined it impossible that there should be quarrels in it. He had said,
So drives self-love through just and through unjust.
He pushes no system to an extravagance, but steers (as he says in his preface) through doctrines seemingly opposite, or, in other words, follows truth uniformly throughout.
Ver. 208. When love was liberty,] i.e. When men had no need to guard their native liberty from their governors by civil pactions, the love which each master of a family had for those under his care being their best security.
Ver. 211. 'Twas virtue only, &c.] Our author hath good authority for this account of the origin of kingship. Aristotle assures us, that it was virtue only, or in arts or arms: Καθισταται βασιλευς εκ των επιεικων καθ' ὑπεροχην αρετης, η πραξεων των απο της αρετης, η καθ' ὑπεροχην τοιουτου γενους.
Ver. 219. He from the wond'ring furrow, &c.] i.e. [ He subdued the intractability] of all the four elements, and made them subservient to the use of man.
Ver. 225. Then, looking up, &c.] The poet here maketh their more serious attention to religion to have arisen, not from their gratitude amidst abundance, but from their inability in distress, by showing that, in prosperity, they rested in second causes, the immediate authors of their blessings, whom they revered as God; but that, in adversity, they reasoned up to the First:
Then, looking up from sire to sire, &c.
This, I am afraid, is but too true a representation of humanity.
Ver. 225 to 240.] M. du Resnel, not apprehending that the poet was here returned to finish his description of the state of nature, has fallen into one of the grossest errors that ever was committed. He has mistaken this account of true religion for an account of the origin of idolatry, and thus he fatally embellishes his own blunder:
Jaloux d'en conserver les traits et la figure,
Leur zèle industrieux inventa la peinture.
Leurs neveux, attentifs à ces hommes fameux,
Qui par le droit du sang avoient régné sur eux,
Trouvent-ils dans leur suite un grand, un premier père,
Leur aveugle respect l'adore et le révère.
Here you have one of the finest pieces of reasoning turned at once into a heap of nonsense. The unlucky term of "Great first Father," was mistaken by our translator to signify a "great grandfather." But he should have considered, that Mr. Pope always represents God under the idea of a Father. He should have observed, that the poet is here describing those men who
To virtue, in the paths of pleasure trod,
And owned a father, where they own'd a God!
Ver. 231. Ere wit oblique, &c.] A beautiful allusion to the effects of the prismatic glass on the rays of light.
Ver. 242. Th' enormous faith, &c.] In this Aristotle placeth the difference between a king and a tyrant, that the first supposeth himself made for the people; the other, that the people are made for him: Βουλεται δ' ὁ βασιλευς ειναι φυλαξ, ὁπως ὁι μεν κεκτημενοι τας ουσιας μηθεν αδικον πασχωσιν, ὁ δε δημος μη hυβριζηται μηθεν· ἡ δε τυραννις προς ουδεν αποβλεπει κοινον, ει μη της ιδιας ωφελειας χαριν.
Pol. lib. V. cap. 10.
Ver. 245. Force first made conquest, &c.] All this is agreeable to fact, and shows our author's knowledge of human nature. For that impotency of mind, as the Latin writers call it, which gives birth to the enormous crimes necessary to support a tyranny, naturally subjects its owner to all the vain, as well as real, terrors of conscience. Hence the whole machinery of superstition. It is true, the poet observes, that afterwards, when the tyrant's fright was over, he had cunning enough, from the experience of the effect of superstition upon himself, to turn it, by the assistance of the priest (who for his reward went shares with him in the tyranny) against the justly dreaded resentment of his subjects. For a tyrant naturally and reasonably supposeth all his slaves to be his enemies. Having given the causes of superstition, he next describeth its objects:
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, &c.
The ancient pagan gods are here very exactly described. This fact evinceth the truth of that original, which the poet gives to superstition; for if these phantasms were first raised in the imagination of tyrants, they must needs have the qualities here assigned to them. For force being the tyrant's virtue, and luxury his happiness, the attributes of his god would of course be revenge and lust; in a word, the antitype of himself. But there was another, and more substantial cause, of the resemblance between a tyrant and a pagan god; and that was the making gods of conquerors, as the poet says, and so canonizing a tyrant's vices with his person. That these gods should suit a people humbled to the stroke of a master will be no wonder, if we recollect a generous saying of the ancients,—"that day which sees a man a slave takes away half his virtue."
Ver. 262. and heav'n on pride.] This might be very well said of those times when no one was content to go to heaven without being received there on the footing of a god, with a ceremony of an Αποθεωσις.
Ver. 283. 'Twas then, the studious head, &c.] The poet seemeth here to mean the polite and nourishing age of Greece; and those benefactors to mankind, which he had principally in view, were Socrates and Aristotle; who, of all the pagan world, spoke best of God, and wrote best of government.
Ver. 295. Such is the world's great harmony, &c.] A harmony very different from the pre-established harmony of the celebrated Leibnitz, which introduceth a fatality destructive of all religion and morality. Yet hath the learned M. de Crousaz ventured to accuse our poet of espousing that dangerous whimsy. The pre-established harmony was built upon, and is an outrageous extension of a conception of Plato, who, combating the atheistical objections about the origin of evil, employs this argument in defence of Providence: "That amongst an infinite number of possible worlds in God's idea, this which he hath created and brought into being, and which admits of a mixture of evil, is the best. But if the best, then evil consequently is partial, comparatively small, and tendeth to the greater perfection of the whole." This principle is espoused and supported by Mr. Pope with all the power of reason and poetry. But neither was Plato a fatalist, nor is there any fatalism in the argument. As to the truth of the notion, that is another question; and how far it cleareth up the very difficult controversy about the origin of evil, is still another. That it is a full solution of the difficulty, I cannot think, for reasons too long to be given in this place. Perhaps we shall never have a full solution here, and it may be no great matter though we have not, as we are demonstrably certain of the moral attributes of the Deity. Yet this will never hinder writers from exposing themselves on this subject. A late author[1597] thinks he can account for the origin of evil, and therefore he will write: he thinks too, that the clearing up this difficulty is necessary to secure the foundation of religion, and therefore he will print. But he is doubly mistaken: he must know little of philosophy to fancy that he has found the solution; and still less of religion, to imagine that the want of his solution can affect our belief in God. Such writers
Amuse th' unlearn'd, and make the learned smile.
However, Mr. Pope may be justified in receiving and enforcing this Platonic notion, as it hath been adopted by the most celebrated and orthodox divines both of the ancient and modern church. This doctrine was taken up by Leibnitz; but it was to ingraft upon it a most pernicious fatalism. Plato said, God chose the best: Leibnitz said, he could not but choose the best, as he could not act without, what this philosopher called, a sufficient reason. Plato supposed freedom in God to choose one of two things equally good: Leibnitz held the supposition to be absurd: but, however, admitting the case, he still held that God could not choose one of two things equally good. Thus it appears, the first went on the system of freedom; and that the latter, notwithstanding the most artful disguises of his principles, in his Theodicée, was a thorough fatalist: for we cannot well suppose he would give that freedom to man which he had taken away from God. The truth of the matter seems to be this: he saw, on the one hand, the monstrous absurdity of supposing, with Spinoza, that blind fate was the author of a coherent universe; but yet, on the other, he could not conceive with Plato, how God could foresee and conduct, according to an archetypal idea, a world, of all possible worlds the best, inhabited by free agents. This difficulty, therefore, which made the socinians take prescience from God, disposed Leibnitz to take free-will from man: and thus he fashioned his fantastical hypothesis; he supposed that when God made the body, he impressed on his new-created machine a certain series or suite of motions; and that when he made the fellow soul, he impressed a correspondent series of ideas; whose operations, throughout the whole duration of the union, were so exactly timed, that whenever an idea was excited, a correspondent motion was ever ready to satisfy the volition. Thus, for instance, when the mind had the will to raise the arm to the head, the body was so pre-contrived, as to raise, at that very moment, the part required. This he called the pre-established harmony; and with this he promised to do wonders. "Yet after all," says an excellent philosopher and best interpreter of Newton, "he owned to his friends, that this extraordinary notion was only a lusus ingenii (un jeu d'esprit) to try his parts, and laugh at the credulity of philosophers; who are as fond of a new paradox, as enthusiasts of a new light. If at other times he was so pleased with his own notions in his Theodicée, as to defend them seriously against the learned Dr. Clarke, that shows only that he angled for two different sorts of reputation, from the same performance; and unluckily he lost both. The subject was too serious to pass for a romance; and the principles too absurd to be admitted for truth." Mr. Baxter's Appendix to the Inquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul, p. 162. As this was the case, none would have thought it amiss in M. Voltaire to oppose one romance to another, had he rested there. But his tale of Candide, which professes to ridicule the optimism of Leibnitz, was apparently composed in favour of an irreligious naturalism, which he makes the solution of all the difficulties in the story.
Ver. 303. For forms of government, &c.] Such as Harrington, Wildman, Neville,[1598] &c. about the several forms of a legitimate policy. These fine lines have been strangely misunderstood. The author, against his own express words, against the plain sense of his system, hath been conceived to mean, that all governments and all religions were, as to their forms and objects, indifferent. But as this wrong judgment proceeded from ignorance of the reason of the reproof, as explained above,[1599] that explanation is alone sufficient to rectify the mistake. However, not to leave him under the least suspicion in a matter of so much importance, I shall justify the sense here given to this passage, more at large:
I. And first, as to society: Let us consider the words themselves; and then compare this mistaken sense with the context. The poet, we may observe, is here speaking, not of civil society at large, but of a just legitimate policy:
Th' according music of a well-mixed state.
Now mixed states are of various kinds; in some of which the democratic, in others the aristocratic, and in others the monarchic form prevails. Now, as each of these mixed forms is equally legitimate, as being founded on the principles of natural liberty, that man is guilty of the highest folly, who chooseth rather to employ himself in a speculative contest for the superior excellence of one of these forms to the rest, than in promoting the good administration of that settled form to which he is subject. And yet most of our warm disputes about government have been of this kind. Again, if by forms of government must needs be meant legitimate government, because that is the subject under debate, then by modes of faith, which is the correspondent idea, must needs be meant the modes or explanations of the true faith, because the author is here too on the subject of true religion:
Relumed her ancient light, not kindled new.
Besides, the very expression (than which nothing can be more precise) confineth us to understand by modes of faith, those human explanations of christian mysteries, in contending about which zeal and ignorance have so perpetually violated charity. Secondly, If we consider the context; to suppose him to mean, that all forms of government are indifferent, is making him directly contradict the preceding paragraph, where he extols the patriot for discriminating the true from the false modes of government. He, says the poet,
Taught pow'r's due use to people and to kings,
Taught not to slack, nor strain its tender strings;
The less, or greater, set so justly true,
That touching one must strike the other too;
Till jarring interests of themselves create
Th' according music of a well mixed state.
Here he recommendeth the true form of government, which is the mixed. In another place he as strongly condemneth the false, or the absolute jure divino form:
For nature knew no right divine in men.
But the reader will not be displeased to see the poet's own apology, as I find it written in the year 1740, in his own hand, in the margin of a pamphlet, where he found these two celebrated lines very much misapplied: "The author of these lines was far from meaning that no one form of government is, in itself, better than another, (as, that mixed or limited monarchy, for example, is not preferable to absolute), but that no form of government, however excellent or preferable, in itself, can be sufficient to make a people happy, unless it be administered with integrity. On the contrary, the best sort of government, when the form of it is preserved, and the administration corrupt, is most dangerous."
II. Again, to suppose the poet to mean, that all religions are indifferent, is an equally wrong, as well as uncharitable suspicion. Mr. Pope, though his subject, in this Essay on Man, confineth him to natural religion, his purpose being to vindicate God's natural dispensations to mankind against the atheist, yet he giveth frequent intimations of a more sublime dispensation, and even of the necessity of it, particularly in his second Epistle, ver. 149, &c., where he confesseth the weakness and insufficiency of human reason. And likewise in his fourth Epistle, where, speaking of the good man, the favourite of heaven, he saith,
For him alone, hope leads from goal to goal,
And opens still, and opens on his soul:
Till, lengthened on to faith, and unconfined,
It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind.
But natural religion never lengthened hope on to faith; nor did any religion, but the christian, ever conceive that faith could fill the mind with happiness. Lastly, In this very Epistle, and in this very place, speaking of the great restorers of the religion of nature, he intimates that they could only draw God's shadow, not his image:
Relumed her ancient light, not kindled new,
If not God's image, yet his shadow drew:
as reverencing that truth, which telleth us, this discovery was reserved for the "glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God." 2 Cor. iv. 4.
Ver. 305. For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;] These latter ages have seen so many scandalous contentions for modes of faith, to the violation of Christian charity, and dishonour of sacred Scripture, that it is not at all strange they should become the object of so benevolent and wise an author's resentment. But that which he here seemed to have more particularly in his eye, was the long and mischievous squabble between Waterland and Jackson,[1600] on a point confessedly above reason, and amongst those adorable mysteries, which it is the honour of our religion to find unfathomable. In this, by the weight of answers and replies, redoubled upon one another without mercy, they made so profound a progress, that the one proved, nothing hindered in nature, but that the Son might have been the Father; and the other, that nothing hindered in grace, but that the Son may be a mere creature. But if, instead of throwing so many Greek Fathers at one another's heads, they had but chanced to reflect on the sense of one Greek word, απειρια, that it signifies both infinity and ignorance, this single equivocation might have saved them ten thousand, which they expended in carrying on the controversy. However, those mists that magnified the scene enlarged the character of the combatants, and nobody expecting common sense on a subject where we have no ideas, the defects of dulness disappeared, and its advantages (for, advantages it has) were all provided for. The worst is, such kind of writers seldom know when to have done. For writing themselves up into the same delusion with their readers, they are apt to venture out into the more open paths of literature, where their reputation, made out of that stuff which Lucian calls σκοτος ὁλοχροος, presently falls from them, and their nakedness appears. And thus it fared with our two worthies. The world, which must have always something to amuse it, was now, and it was time, grown weary of its playthings; and catched at a new object, that promised them more agreeable entertainment. Tindal, a kind of bastard Socrates, had brought our speculations from heaven to earth, and, under the pretence of advancing the antiquity of christianity, laboured to undermine its original. This was a controversy that required another management. Clear sense, severe reasoning, a thorough knowledge of prophane and sacred antiquity, and an intimate acquaintance with human nature, were the qualities proper for such as engaged in this subject. A very unpromising adventure for these metaphysical nurslings, bred up under the shade of chimeras. Yet they would needs venture out.[1601] What they got by it was only to be once well laughed at, and then, forgotten.
But one odd circumstance deserves to be remembered; though they wrote not, we may be sure, in concert, yet each attacked his adversary at the same time; fastened upon him in the same place; and mumbled him with just the same toothless rage. But the ill success of this escape soon brought them to themselves. The one made a fruitless effort to revive the old game, in a discourse on The Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity; and the other has been ever since rambling in Space and Time.[1602] This short history, as insignificant as the subjects of it are, may not be altogether unuseful to posterity. Divines may learn by these examples to avoid the mischiefs done to religion and literature, through the affectation of being wise above what is written, and knowing beyond what can be understood.
Ver. 318. And bade self-love and social be the same.] True self-love is an appetite for that proper good, for the enjoyment of which we were made as we are. Now that good is commensurate with all other good, and a part and portion of universal good: it is, therefore, the same with social, which hath these properties.