The hypothesis is puerile, that force, conquest, and rapine originated in a meat diet. Equally puerile is the theory that the arts of government, navigation, agriculture, and manufactures were copied from animals.[877] Man is specially distinguished by his inventive capacity. Through this gift the arts and sciences are continuously progressive, and there is no plausibility in the supposition that his characteristic power was originally in abeyance. The gratuitous fancy that the arts of human civilisation were acquired from the brutes, could not be supported by less appropriate examples. Mankind are said by Pope to have been pre-eminently social, and he would have us believe that neither sociality nor convenience could teach them to construct their dwellings in proximity, till "reason late" suggested to them the reflection, that some birds, such as rooks, built their nests in clusters.[878] He acknowledges that a community of families perceived it would be for their interest to have a single ruler; but the principle that the subjects under a monarchy should retain their right to their houses and property, was discovered by observing that every bee in a hive had its separate cell, and separate honey,[879] which was a fiction of some unobservant naturalist, who credited bees with our usages. From the silk-worm we learn to "weave," and from, the mole to "plough," notwithstanding that the silk-worm only spins silk, and never weaves it, and that the subterranean scratchings of the mole have no resemblance to our contrivance, the plough. The remaining instances cited by Pope are just as absurd. He strung together fragments of ancient fables, which, in a modern copy, are neither poetry nor philosophy.
When families spread, patriarchal government is said by Pope to have been invariably merged in monarchical. He makes no mention of another elementary system which prevailed among the ancient Germans, and which was too natural to have been unfrequent. The tribe was composed of contiguous families, or clans, each of which had its separate territory. The head of every clan was ruler within his own domain, and the affairs which concerned the entire tribe were managed by a general assembly of the heads of clans. Under this arrangement the representative of the clan preserved his patriarchal power, and had an equal voice with his brother chiefs in regulating the common interests of the tribe. Pope completed his single genealogical principle of government by a rapid summary of the transitions through which monarchy passed. Conquest led to tyranny. An ambitious priesthood first threatened the despot with spiritual terrors, then went shares with him, and the double yoke of secular and ecclesiastical tyranny was fastened on the necks of mankind. The oppressed subjects at last rebelled against their rulers, kings were "forced into virtue by self-defence," and the world returned to the dominant principle of the state of nature, that "self-love and social are the same." These meagre doctrines were derived from Bolingbroke, whose political philosophy was hardly more profound than his moral and metaphysical; but Pope shows, here and there, that he had read Locke's treatise on Civil Government, and the passages from Hooker which Locke quoted, and with such masters to guide him the flimsiness of his views is without excuse.
The investigations of Pope conducted him to the final conclusion that "the true end of all government" is unity among mankind, and he prescribes the methods by which harmony is to be preserved both in politics and religion. The panacea which was to cure political divisions is contained in the couplet,
For forms of government let fools contest,
Whate'er is best administered is best.[880]
Good government, that is, depends on good administration; the form of government is immaterial, and those who battle for one form in preference to another, are fools. The accusation of folly was thrown back upon the poet, who grew ashamed of his maxim, and in 1740 he gave an interpretation to his verses which they cannot be made to bear. "The author of these lines," he said, "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." The concord which was to have been produced by indifference to forms of government, vanishes with the admission that the form is important. The qualifying remark, that forms are insufficient when their spirit is violated, was a truism denied by no one. A corrupt legislature, a corrupt executive, and corrupt tribunals, would neutralise the benefit of any constitution with which they could subsist.
Pope retracted his maxim under the pretence of explaining it. His new version showed that he did not yet understand the value of forms of government, or he would not have said that when the administration is corrupt the best form of government is the most detrimental to the public. A slight reflection on the History of England, and the nature of man, must have convinced him that a chief virtue of good forms of government is the security they afford for the prevention, limitation, and cure of corruption,—for the subordination of private selfishness to the common weal. His own epistle would have informed him that when governors have absolute dominion they "drive through just and unjust" to gratify their "ambition, lust, and lucre;" and when the power is with the governed, they will not suffer their rights to be extensively invaded, but will oblige kings and ministers to "learn justice."[881] There was a stage of feudalism when the territorial, legislative, and judicial functions were centered in the lord of the fief. He taxed and punished his serfs and vassals at pleasure. His covetousness, his cruelty, his passionate caprices, all developed by uncontrolled habit and the spirit of the age, could only be resisted by rebellion, and rebellions he quenched in blood. The sufferings of his people were atrocious. Pope lived under a vastly superior constitution, which he believed was corruptly administered, and the detriment to the public should have been greater, on his principle, than the despotism of feudal times. The fact was signally the other way. The mediæval enormities were no longer possible; person and property were safe, and loyal citizens lived in peace and security. Laws were not always just, religious and civil liberty was incomplete, purity in ministers and legislators was often defective. But there was a limit to corruption, or ministers and legislators would have been indignantly discarded. They were compelled in the main to consult the supposed interests of the country, that they might preserve the power to gratify their private aims. Many of the evils which existed kept their ground through remaining imperfections in the constitution. The popular element was too restricted, and the abuses were diminished when the form of government was improved.
Pope's receipt for putting an end to political rancour was that the public should accept his assurance that only fools troubled their heads about forms of government. His remedy for religious discord was that the world should receive his dictum that only bad men could attach importance to religious beliefs:
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.[882]
Since no one, he says, can have a wrong faith whose life is in the right, all who fight for modes of faith must be graceless zealots. Two conclusions are involved in his principle,—the first, that religious belief and worship are not any necessary part of a life in the right; the second, that the mode of faith has not the faintest influence upon moral practice. Without stopping to consider the first point, we have only to glance at the history of christianity for a decisive refutation of the second. Thousands upon thousands of "graceless zealots" contended, at the cost of their lives, for a mode of faith which changed the face of the world. Pope must have argued that the effect would have been equal, nay, superior, if christian ethics had been divorced from christian theology. Apostles and martyrs, then martyrs no more, should have said to pagans, "Accept our moral precepts, and it matters not whether you believe that there is one god, or many gods, or no god. It does not signify whether you believe that the divine nature, and divine mission of Jesus Christ, was a truth or a pretence, his resurrection a fact or a fable. It does not even signify whether you believe that there is any resurrection at all, whether you are convinced that there is an everlasting reward for the righteous, or are persuaded that wicked and righteous will both be annihilated. These are only 'modes of faith' which do not affect morality, and we should be 'graceless zealots' to insist upon them." Pope produces an additional reason in support of his principle. "The world," he says, "will disagree in their religious hopes and faith, but charity is the concern of everybody. Everything which thwarts this charity must be false, and all things must be of God which bless or mend mankind."[883] Consequently, Pope's idea of charity was never to struggle for a doctrine which would provoke disagreement; and whoever roused opposition by warring against ignorance and error, proclaimed himself a false teacher by his very zeal to disseminate the truth. The christian who exposed polytheism could not be a minister of God, nor could any doctrine "bless and mend" heathens which did not leave their idolatrous superstitions undisturbed. The principle cannot be limited to religion. The world disagree in their conceptions of a "life in the right;" the charity which is "all mankind's concern," would be violated by questioning the lax ideas which abound; and the moralists who "fight" for a pure system of ethics, must be classed, in turn, with "graceless zealots." The triumph of Pope's system would be the destruction of morality, religion, and charity; for religion and morality must be dead already when it is acknowledged that zeal for their purity and propagation is a sin, and the check of religion and morality being withdrawn, the charity which remained would be that of the savage and felon.
Pope set at nought his own maxims. In the name of charity he demanded that men should not contend for their faith, and he declined to exercise the charity he enjoined. Everyone with him was a "graceless zealot" who ventured to dissent from his private decree. This decree, which was to bind the rest of the world, was not to bind Bolingbroke and himself. They were both privileged to "fight for modes of faith." Bolingbroke, a scurrilous deist, whose writings are stuffed with frenzied invectives against the religious "faith and hope" of the vast majority of the English people, and who was the true type, in the worst sense, of a "graceless zealot," is lauded by Pope to the skies for his philosophic wisdom. Pope, on his own part, maintained in the Essay a controversial discussion on the origin of evil, and other mysterious topics, which most of the "zealots" he upbraided were content to leave undetermined. He laid down the law with dictatorial self-sufficiency, treated the difficulties of humbler inquirers with scorn, and denounced, in taunting, contumelious language, the impugners of the government of God. He offered no reason for excepting the deistical "mode of faith" from his law, unless we suppose him to have tacitly relied on his assertion that those who shared his deism were "slaves to no sect, took no private road, but looked through Nature up to Nature's God."[884] The plea avails nothing. All who are honest in their opinions believe that they hold the truth, and that they are not bigoted slaves to private delusions. Few men could urge the claim with less plausibility than Pope. His tenets discredited his pretensions. If he looked up to Nature's God, he, nevertheless, stigmatised those who presumed to study the God they adored. He believed that God infused wicked passions into men, that his physical laws were deteriorated by change, and overruled by chance.[885] He held that the same wicked passions which God poured into the human mind were originally generated by animal food; his theory of morals was licentious and contradictory; his opinions in general incoherent and irreconcileable. He had little cause to boast that he "took no private road" when there probably did not live a second person who would have subscribed to his creed.