Press to one centre of commutual good.
As the inorganic, or lifeless matter, of which he had previously spoken, gravitates to a centre, so the "matter" which is "endued with life" also "presses" to a "centre"—"the general good." The comparison of the general good to the centre of gravity is inaccurate. The centre of gravity is a point; the general good is diffused good.
[1272] Shaftesbury's Moralists, Part i. Sect. 3: "The vegetables by their death sustain the animals, and animal bodies dissolved enrich the earth, and raise again the vegetable world."—Warton.
[1273] Pope is speaking in the context of plants and animals, which are the "they" of ver. 20. He threw ver. 18 into a parenthesis, and said, "we catch," because the interjected remark relates to men. The power displayed in the transmission of life from parents to progeny is happily illustrated by Fénelon, in his Traité de l'Existence de Dieu: "What should we think of a watchmaker who could make watches which would produce other watches to infinity, insomuch that the two first watches would be sufficient to propagate and perpetuate the species over all the earth? What should we say of an architect who had the art to construct houses which generated fresh houses to replace our dwellings before they began to fall into ruin?"
[1274] "Connects," that is, "the greatest with the least." Pope, in his free use of elliptical expressions, having omitted "the," Warburton interprets the phrase according to the strict language, and supposes the meaning to be that the greatness of the Deity is manifested most in the creatures which are least.
[1275] Another couplet follows in the MS.:
More pow'rful each as needful to the rest,
Each in proportion as he blesses blessed.
[1276] The passage is indebted to Fenton, in his Epistle to Southerne:
Who winged the winds, and gave the streams to flow,
And raised the rocks, and spread the lawns below.—Wakefield.
MS.: