Present to seize, or future to obtain
The whole employ of body and of brain.
[1186] MS.:
On stronger senses stronger passions strike.
[1187] MS.:
Hence passions rise, and more or less inflame,
Proportioned to each organ of the frame,
Nor here internal faculties control,
Nor soul on body acts, but that on soul.
Pope derived the notion from Mandeville, who says that the diversity of passions in different men "depend only upon the different frame,—the inward formation of either the solids or the fluids." According to Pope the strongest organ gives rise to some passion of corresponding strength, which finally absorbs all other passions.
[1188] The use of this doctrine, as applied to the knowledge of mankind, is one of the subjects of the second book.—Pope.
Pope refers to Moral Essays, Epist. 1. Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men.
[1189] The metaphor is taken from the casting of metal. The "mind's disease," says Pope, is in the original casting, and is not a defect which arises subsequently.
[1190] Dryden's Juvenal, Sat. x. 489: