Ver. 261. Whate'er the passion, &c.] III. The poet having thus shown the use of the passions in society and in domestic life, comes, in the last place, from ver. 260 to the end, to show their use to the individual, even in their illusions; the imaginary happiness they present, helping to make the real miseries of life less insupportable: and this is his third general division:
Opinion gilds with varying rays
Those painted clouds that beautify our days, &c.
One prospect lost, another still we gain;
And not a vanity is giv'n in vain.
Which must needs vastly raise our idea of God's goodness; who hath not only provided more than a counterbalance of real happiness to human miseries, but hath even, in his infinite compassion, bestowed on those who were so foolish as not to have made this provision, an imaginary happiness, that they may not be quite overborne with the load of human miseries. This is the poet's great and noble thought, as strong and solid as it is new and ingenious. It teaches, that these illusions are the faults and follies of men, which they wilfully fall into, and thereby deprive themselves of much happiness, and expose themselves to equal misery; but that still, God, according to his universal way of working, graciously turns these faults and follies so far to the advantage of his miserable creatures, as to become, for a time, the solace and support of their distresses:
Though man's a fool, yet God is wise.
COMMENTARY ON EPISTLE III.
We are now come to the third Epistle of the Essay on Man. It having been shown, in explaining the origin, use, and end of the passions, in the second Epistle, that man hath social as well as selfish passions, that doctrine naturally introduceth the third, which treats of man as a social animal, and connects it with the second, which considered him as an individual. And as the conclusion from the subject of the first Epistle made the introduction to the second, so here again, the conclusion of the second
Ev'n mean self-love becomes, by force divine,
The scale to measure others' wants by thine,
maketh the introduction to the third: