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.