Has any seen
The mighty chain of beings, lessening down
From infinite perfection, to the brink
Of dreary nothing.—Warton.
Kennet's Pascal, p. 166: "He will find himself hanging, in the material scale, between the two vast abysses of infinite and nothing."
[1080] All that can be said of a scale of beings is to be found in the third chapter of King's Origin of Evil, and in a note ending with these emphatic words: "Whatever system God had chosen, there could have been but a determinate multitude of the most perfect creatures, and when that was completed there would have been a station for creatures less perfect, and it would still have been an instance of goodness to give them a being as well as others."—Warton.
[1081] Suffer men, says Pope, to encroach upon superior powers, and either inferior powers must rise to the rank we have vacated, or by not moving forward into the gap, they will leave a void in creation.
[1082] MS.:
in nature what it hates, a void;
Or leave a gap in the creation void;
The scale is broken if a step destroyed.
[1083] Dryden, Love Triumphant, Act iv. Sc. 1:
Great nature, break thy chain, that links together
The fabric of this globe, and make a chaos.
[1084] MS.:
Yet more ev'n systems in gradation roll.