comparing the work of Pope and Swift
Order Description
Compare and Contrast An Essay of Man with part IV of Gulliver’s Travels. How do both works illustrate the writers’ belief in the capacity of man? Remember to include details and examples within your essay. Think about what a compare/contrast essay entails.This essay should consist of 1 ½ pages.
The Fourth Species:
Swift’s Counter-Enlightenment in Gulliver’s Travels
Who is man? Man is Locke. Man is also Hobbes. Is man a Houyhnhnm or a Yahoo? Was the Enlightenment really enlightened? Or is the Age of Reason just as foolish and arrogant as Captain Lemuel Gulliver, the comic narrator In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. As the reader follows Gulliver into “Several Remote Nations of the World,” Swift satirizes European arrogance, as he finds himself face to face with pygmies and their absurdity, and Giants who expose Gulliver’s own absurdities. He encounters a flying islands, and a mockery of the Royal Society, the Acadamey in Lagado. He encounters Horses with language and Yahoo’s without, only to return to England hateful of his people, and living in a barn. Yes, Captain Lemuel Gulliver, a man of the Enlightenment, a satiric tool Swift uses to tear apart Enlightenment arrogance in the first two books, then its lack of balance and denial of man’s dual nature in the fourth book, to essentially show the Enlightenment’s lack of enlightenment.
Swift’s humorous treatment of Gulliver sets the author apart from the narrator, allowing him to function as a satirical tool. Gulliver’s narrow-mindedness and simple naiveté in relating his experiences results in a comic narrator. While defending himself in the alleged scandal with the Lilliputian lady, he painstaking defends her honor, “solemnly declaring to be a most infamous Falsehood, without nay Grounds , father tan that her Grace was pleased to treat me with all innocent Marks of Freedom and Friendship”(45). By taking such a ridiculous accusation seriously, Gulliver looks foolish. He never mentions or even realizes that their obvious difference in size makes the allegation absurd, so both the allegation and Gulliver’s “solemn declaration” of honor is absurd, and therefore funny. In Brobdingnag, Gulliver’s continual defense of his wounded pride, “like a Person who was jealous lest his Courage should be called in Question”(100), provides amusement for both the on looking giants and the reader as his speech following the monkey episode, “produced nothing else besides a loud laughter”(100), exemplifying Gulliver’s comic role.
Each time Gulliver returns to the real world he has trouble readjusting to the differing perspective of England and is shocked to find that he lives among people his own size, and that he need not shout to be heard (123). This narrow-mindedness explains the comic humor on his return from the land of horses. When he returns home his previous tendencies that gave him trouble re-adapting to normalcy peak, causing him to remain stuck in the perspective of the Houyhnhnm island. He spurns his family saying, “The sight of them filled me only with Hatred, Disgust and Contempt; and the more, by reflecting on the near Alliance I had to them”(253). So he retreats to his stables, where he can enjoy the manure and continue to “converse with (the horses) at least four hours every Day”(254). Gulliver’s comic absurdity throughout the Travels clearly separates him as Swift’s satiric tool.
Swift uses Gulliver’s to satirize Enlightenment arrogance and misplaced pride by aligning size with perspective in Lilliput and Brobdingnag. From Gulliver’s point of view, the Lilliputians resemble insects, and ironically, these insects take on the roles of the highest ranked Europeans. Gulliver describes an idealized Lilliputian Emperor, “taller than…any of his Court; which alone is enough to strike an Awe into the Beholders. His Features are strong and masculine, with an Austrian Lip, and arched Nose, his Complexion olive, his Countenance erect…all his Motions graceful,…Deportment majestick”(13). As mentioned in the footnote, this description intends to ironically represent George I, as he was “gross and unattractive.” As the Lilliputians physically reflect European court, their perspective of self-importance appears trivial and ridiculous next to Gulliver’s larger size, and broader perspective which allows him to recognize the Lilliputian’s political absurdities. Factions divide the nation over high or low heeled shoes where, “The Animosities between these two Parties run so high, that they will neither eat nor drink, nor talk with each other”(30), mocking the English factions of the Whig and Tory parties. In foreign politics, Lilliput suffers war with their neighbor, Blefuscu, representing the unending English-French wars. Swift belittles the religious conflicts at the heart of the wars by comparing them to the question of which end of the egg is the proper end to cut, “That al true Believers shall break their Eggs at the convenient End”(31), mocking the importance of the disagreement between the Protestant and Catholic sects regarding Communion. Gulliver generously offers to aid his host in this war, and accordingly drags the entire enemy fleet across the ocean like bath tub toys (34), further enhancing the absurdity and criticism of European importance. In accordance to their small size, their political conflicts appear petty and insignificant from Gulliver’s higher perspective.
The voyage to Brobdingnag then reverses this size relationship, putting Gulliver in the insect-like position. In this size reversal, the perspective reverses as well, so Gulliver now epitomizes the petty, narrow-mindedness of the Lilliputians. His pride and sense of grandeur appears ludicrous in the eyes of his hosts. His little display of courage and pride after the monkey kidnaps him and coddles him like a doll, only brings laughter from the audience(100). Likewise, Gulliver’s patriotic attempt to describe his country in the best possible light allows the King to expose the absurdity of English imperial violence with the same ease that Gulliver recognizes the idiocy and injustice among the Lilliputians. The King takes Gulliver’s proud historical account and summed them up to a “Heap of Conspiracies, Rebellions, Murders, Massacres…Hypocrisy, Cruelty, Rage, Maddness…and Ambition”(107). The King concludes, “the bulk of your Natives, (the English,) to be the most pernicious Race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth” (134). Where the Lilliputians looked senseless to a larger Gulliver, Swift suggests, that size is relative, so Gulliver and his English society is just as senseless to the Brobdingnags. Where Gulliver’s arrogance looks ludicrous, Enlightenment arrogance follows. In this manner Swift utilizes the sequential relationship of size to show the insignificance or the grossness of enlightenment arrogance.
The fourth book of Gulliver’s Travels satirizes Enlightenment’s one-sided view of man as a rational creature. The Houyhnhnms, or “perfection of nature”(203), embody an unobtainable ideal where logic and reason entirely govern the population while cruelty, selfishness, and absolute lack of intellect govern the Yahoos. Gulliver finds himself torn between the two races. He strives to mimic the culture of the Houyhnhnms, reeling from the Yahoo filth, but still recognizes the vaguely human shape of the Yahoo as his own. Gulliver’s attempt to reject the Yahoos and embrace the Houyhnhnms satirizes the Enlightenment’s focus on only man’s rational side, denying his dual nature.
The Houyhnhnm-Yahoo relationship may seem to represents the contrast between man’s ideal view of himself versus a hateful reality, as it does for Gulliver. However, this Enlightenment interpretation is not viable, first because the Houyhnhnms, Yahoos, and Gulliver are three distinctly different species, and therefore represent three distinctly different ideas, and second, because Swift is independent of his comic narrator. The Houyhnhnms’ “grand Maxim is, to cultivate Reason”(233). No idea has any conflicting opinion because “Reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our Knowledge we cannot do either”(233). Where reason dictates an “immediate Conviction,” that conviction stands correct, for reason cannot be in error, and where reason cannot dictate, the horses abandon the thought as an unknown. Similarly, reason applies to relationships as well. Love has no meaning here because of the favoritism it plays and its irrational nature. Only friendship and benevolence exists, “universal to the whole Race”(234). Here society eliminates all curiosity and intellectual stimulation. Intellectual thought has no significance because it has been previously completed(238), so society remains static and dull, where even death achieves minimal significance, as the horses merely, “retire to their first mother” (258). The Houyhnhnms strive, “to be as like a corpse as is possible while retaining physical life”(Orwell 477).
In Contrast, the Yahoos embody everything that the Houyhnhnms do not. They lack all rationality as the horses lack all emotion. Passions drive their action to portray them as selfish, vile creatures(Swift 226-30). Their “most loathsome and hateful understanding lies in their cunning, and their free will only results in their obstinacy and unteachableness” (Coleridge 440). Nevertheless, this filthy repulsive Yahoo does not exceed the static ugliness of the Houyhnhnm’s Enlightenment ideal. Naturally, Gulliver finds himself torn between the two simply because together they represent mankind, ideologically. Their physical differences from Gulliver show that alone, neither one can represent man. Man, already aware of his reasonable capabilities had to be somewhat tainted, to deface human pride, so Swift removes reason from the human form and places it in the fictitious horse. Likewise, Swift gives the Yahoo the human form in order to personalize man’s traditionally denied passions. Swift displays two halves of man detached from one another to highlight the qualities of each, and the necessity for both, utilizing the Houyhnhnm-Yahoo society to illustrate the duality of man’s nature. As a person allows his logical side to slip, and indulges his passions, he approaches resembling the Yahoo. As the horses governed and enslaved the Yahoos, reason must guard man’s spontaneous instincts.
Consequently, if man allows reason to temper his emotions to strictly, as in Gulliver’s case, he too becomes hateful to society, as Gulliver does when he returns to England, finding every man despicable, comically choosing to act like a horse instead. By segregating man’s dual nature, and using Gulliver to show the error in embracing only one, Swift illuminates the necessity for balance between both the rational and the irrational. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels exposes the final weakness of the Age of Reason: the era’s arrogance and pride shown by the perspective of size, and in their unbalance view of man’s intellect. The rational and scientific approach to the world gave Enlightenment culture a sterile and lifeless aura. In the Houyhnhnms utopia, Swift satirizes his own age’s ideals and egotistical views of progress towards an attainable perfection on earth, but that “enlightened perfection” could only be possible in an entirely different species. Where Enlightenment strives for balance and order in society and thought exemplified in literary techniques such as counterpoise, it ignores the need to find balance in man himself. Perhaps Swift suggests a fourth species instead. First the Houyhnhnm—with reason by language, second, the Yahoo—with self-interest and passions, third, Gulliver—the European trying to oppress one with the other, and fourth, Swift himself—using satire to unmask the lunacy of all three, and asking the reader to take man for who he is, a little Locke, a little Hobbes, and yes, a little Swift.
Works Cited
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. (1831). From Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Vol. 1. Frederikc G. Ruffner, Jr. Sr. Editor, L.C. Series. Laurie Lanzen Harris. Gale Research Company.
Orwell, George. (1946). From Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Vol. 1. Frederick G. Ruffner, Jr. Sr. Editor, L.C. Series. Laurie Lanzen Harris. Gale Research Company.
Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. New York: Norton & Company, 1970.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was bom in London to a wealthy Roman Catholic
merchant. Because of his Catholic faith, he could not attend a university, hold public
office, or even vote. Given his exclusion from political life, the patronage system was not
available to him and he was forced to make his living from his writings. The selection
below is taken from Pope’s most famous work, Essay on Man. Written in the form of four
epistles (letters) to the English deist Henry St. John, Lord of Bolingbroke, this work
represents the optimistic side of the Age of Reason. Pope emphasizes studying Man
rather than God, and finds that reason is what separates Man from the animals and that
apparent evil is actually part of some over-all good plan.
The Essay on Man is a philosophical poem, written, characteristically, in heroic couplets, and
pubhshed between 1732 and 1734. Pope intended it as the centerpiece of a proposed system of
ethics to be put forth in poetic form: it is in fact a fragment of a larger work which Pope planned
but did not live to complete. It is an attempt to justify, as Milton had attempted to vindicate, the
ways of God to Man, and a warning that man himself is not, as, in his pride, he seems to believe,
the center, of all things. Though not explicitly Christian, the Essay makes the implicit assumption
that man is fallen and unregenerate, and that he must seek his own salvation.
The “Essay” consists of four epistles, addressed to Lord Bolingbroke, and derived, to some
extent, from some of Bolingbroke’s own fragmentary philosophical writings, as well as from
ideas expressed by the deistic third Earl of Shaftsbury. Pope sets out to demonstrate that no
matter how imperfect, complex, inscmtable, and disturbingly full of evil the Universe may
appear to be, it does function in a rational fashion, according to natural laws; and is, in fact,
considered as a whole, a perfect work of God. It appears imperfect to us only because our
perceptions are limited by our feeble moral and intellectual capacity. His conclusion is that we
must leam to accept our position in the Great Chain of Being—a “middle state,” below that of the
angels but above that of the beasts—in which we can, at least potentially, lead happy and virtuous
lives.
Epistle I concerns itself with the nature of man and with his place in the universe; Epistle II, with
man as an individual; Epistle III, with man in relation to human society, to the political and
social hierarchies; and Epistle IV, with man’s pursuit of happiness in this world. An Essay on
Man was a controversial work in Pope’s day, praised by some and criticized by others, primarily
because it appeared to contemporary critics that its emphasis, in spite of its themes, was
primarily poetic and not, strictly speaking, philosophical in any really coherent sense: Dr.
Johnson, never one to mince words, and possessed, in any case, of views upon the subject which
differed materially from those which Pope had set forth, noted dryly (in what is surely one of the
most back-handed literary compliments of all time) that “Never were penury of knowledge and
vulgarity of sentiment so happily disguised.” It is a subtler work, however, than perhaps Johnson
realized: G. Wilson Knight has made the perceptive comment that the poem is not a “static
scheme” but a “living organism,” (like Twickenham) and that it must be understood as such.
Considered as a whole, the Essay on Man is an affirmative poem of faith: life seems chaotic and
pattemless to man when he is in the midst of it, but is in fact a coherent portion of a divinely
ordered plan. In Pope’s world God exists, and he is benificent: his universe is an ordered place.
The limited intellect of man can perceive only a tiny portion of this order, and can experience
only partial truths, and hence must rely on hope, which leads to faith. Man must be cognizant of
his rather insignificant position in the grand scheme of things: those things which he covets most
– riches, power, fame – prove to be worthless in the greater context of which he is only dimly
aware. In his place, it is man’s duty to strive to be good, even if he is doomed, because of his
inherent frailty, to fail in his attempt. Do you find Pope’s argument convincing?
ALEXANDER POPE, Essay on Man
The First Epistle
Awake, my ST. JOHN!^’^ leave all meaner things
To low ambition, and the pride of Kings.
Let us (since Life can httle more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Expatiate^ free o’er all this scene of Man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan;
A Wild, where weeds and flow’rs promiscuous shoot.
Or Garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
Together let us beat this ample field.
Try what the open, what the covert yield; 10
The latent fracts^, the giddy heights explore
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;
Eye Nature’s walks, shoot Folly as it flies.
And catch the Manners living as they rise;
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate^ the ways of God to Man. 16
1. Say first, of God above, or Man below.
What can we reason, but from what we know?
Of Man what see we, but his station here.
From which to reason, or to which refer? 20
Thro’ worlds unnumber’d tho’ the God be known,
‘Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
He, who thro’ vast immensity can pierce.
See worlds on worlds compose one universe.
Observe how system into system runs, 25
What other planets circle other suns.
What vary’d being peoples ev’ry star.
May tell why Heav’n has made us as we are.
But of this frame the bearings, and the ties.
The strong connections, nice dependencies, 30
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
Look’d thro’? or can a part contain the whole?
Is the great chain, that draws all to agree.
And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee?
II. Presumptuous Man! the reason wouldst thou find, 35
Why form’d so weak, so little, and so blind!
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess.
Why form’d no weaker, blinder, and no less!
Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made
Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade? 40
Or ask of yonder argent fields*^^ above.
Why JOVE’S Satellites are less than JOVE?^
Of Systems possible, if ’tis confest 44
That Wisdom infinite must form the best.
Where all must full or not coherent be,
And all that rises, rise in due degree;
Then, in the scale of reas’ning life, ’tis plain
There must be, somewhere, such rank as Man;
And all the question (wrangle e’er so long) 50
Is only this, if God has plac’d him wrong?
Respecting Man, whatever wrong we call.
Nay, must be right, as relative to all.
In human works, tho’ labour’d on with pain,
A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain; 55
In God’s, one single can its end produce;
Yet serves to second too some other use.
So Man, who here seems principal alone.
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown.
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; 60
‘Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
When the proud steed shall know why Man restrains
His fiery course, or drives him o’er the plains;
When the dull Ox, why now he breaks the clod.
Is now a victim, and now Egypt’s God: ^ 65
Then shall Man’s pride and dullness comprehend
His actions’, passions’, being’s, use and end;
Why doing, suffring, check’d, impell’d; and why
This hour a slave, the next a deity.
Then say not Man’s imperfect, Heav’n in fault; 70
Say rather, Man’s as perfect as he ought;
His knowledge measur’d to his state and place.
His time a moment, and a point his space.
If to be perfect in a certain sphere.
What matter, soon or late, or here or there? 75
The blest today is as completely so.
As who began a thousand years ago.
III. Heav’n from all creatures hides the book of Fate, 78
All but the page prescrib’d, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know: 80
Or who could suffer Being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day.
Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas’d to the last, he crops the flow’ry food,
And licks the hand just rais’d to shed his blood. 85
Oh blindness to the friture! kindly giv’n.
That each may fill the circle mark’d by Heav’n;
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall.
Atoms or systems into ruin hurl’d, 90
And now a bubble burst, and now a world.
Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar; 92
Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore!
What friture bliss, he gives not thee to know.
But gives that Hope to be thy blessing now. 95
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confm’d from home.
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutor’d mind 100
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud Science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk, or milky way;
Yet simple Nature to his hope has giv’n.
Behind the cloud-topt hill, an humbler heav’n; 105
Some safer world in depth of woods embrac’d.
Some happier island in the watry waste.
Where slaves once more their native land behold.
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold!
To Be, contents his natural desire, 110
He asks no Angel’s wing, no Seraph’s*^ fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky.
His faithfiil dog shall bear him company.
rV. Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense 114
Weigh thy Opinion against Providence;
Call Imperfection what thou fancy’st such.
Say, here he gives too little, there too much;
Desfroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,^
Yet cry, If Man’s unhappy, God’s unjust;
If Man alone ingross not Heav’n’s high care, 120
Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
Snatch from his hand the b a l anc e^ and the rod.
Re-judge his justice, be the GOD of GOD!
In Pride, in reas’ning Pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies. 125
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes,
Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods.
Aspiring to be Gods, if Angels fell.
Aspiring to be Angels, Men rebel;
And who but wishes to invert the laws 130
Of ORDER, sins against th’ Eternal Cause.
V. Ask for what end the heav’nly bodies shine.
Earth for whose use? Pride answers, “Tis for mine:
For me kind Nature wakes her genial pow’r.
Suckles each herb, and spreads out ev’ry flow’r; 135
Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew
The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew;
For me, the mine a thousand treasures brings;
For me, health gushes from a thousand springs;
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; 140
My foot-stool earth, my canopy the skies.”
But errs not Nature from this gracious end.
From burning suns when livid deaths descend.
When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep? 145
“No (’tis reply’d) the first Almighty Cause
Acts not by partial, but by gen’ral laws;
Th’ exceptions few; some change since all began.
And what created perfect?” – Why then Man?
If the great end be human Happiness, 150
Then Nature deviates; and can Man do less?
As much that end a constant course requires
Of show’rs and sun-shine, as of Man’s desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies.
As Men for ever temp’rate, calm, and wise. 155
If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav’n’s design.
Why then a B o r g i a , ^ or a Catiline?^
Who knows but he, whose hand the light’ning forms.
Who heaves old Ocean, and who wings the storms.
Pours fierce Ambition in a Caesar’s*^ mind, 160
Or turns young Ammon^^-* loose to scourge mankind?
From pride, from pride, our very reas’ning springs;
Account for moral as for nat’ral things:
Why charge we Heav’n in those, in these acquit?
In both, to reason right is to submit. 165
Better for Us, perhaps, it might appear.
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discompos’d the mind:
But ALL subsists by elemental strife; 170
and Passions are the elements of Life.
The gen’ral ORDER, since the whole began.
Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man.
VI. What would this Man? Now upward will he soar,
And little less than Angel,*-^ would be more; 175
Now looking downwards, just as griev’d appears
To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears.
Made for his use all creatures if he call.
Say what their use, had he the pow’rs of all?
Nature to these, without profusion kind, 180
The proper organs, proper pow’rs assign’d;
Each seeming want compensated of course.
Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force;
All in exact proportion to the state;
Nothing to add, and nothing to abate. 185
Each beast, each insect, happy in its own;
Is Heav’n unkind to Man, and Man alone?
Shall he alone, whom rational we call.
Be pleas’d with nothing, if not bless’d with all?
The bliss of Man (could Pride that blessing find) 190
Is not to act or think beyond mankind;
No pow’rs of body or of soul to share.
But what his nature and his state can bear.
Why has not Man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. 195
Say what the use, were finer optics giv’n,
T’ inspect a mite,*-^ not comprehend the heav’n?
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o’er.
To smart and agonize at ev’ry pore?
Or quick effluvia^ darting thro’ the brain, 200
Die of a rose in aromatic pain?
If nature thunder’d in his op’ning ears.
And stunn’d him with the music of the spheres.
How would he wish that Heav’n had left him sfiU
The whisp’ring Zephyr , ^ and the purling rill?^^ 205
Who finds not Providence all good and wise.
Alike in what it gives, and what denies?
VII. Far as Creation’s ample range extends.
The scale of sensual, mental pow’rs ascends:
Mark how it mounts, to Man’s imperial race, 210
From the green myriads in the people grass:
What modes of sight betwixt each wide extreme,
The mole’s dim curtain, and the lynx’s beam:
Of smell, the headlong lioness between.
And hound sagacious^ on the tainted^ green: 215
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood,*^
To that which warbles thro’ the vernal*–^’ wood:
The spider’s touch, how exquisitely fine!
Feels at each thread, and lives along the line:
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true 220
From pois’nous herbs extracts the healing d ew: ^
How Instinct varies in the grov’ling swine,
Compar’d, half-reas’ning elephant, with thine:
‘Twixt that, and Reason, what a nice barrier;
For ever sep’rate, yet for ever near! 225
Remembrance and Reflection how ally’d;
What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide:
And Middle natures,*^ how they long to join,
Yet never pass th’ insuperable line!
Without this just gradation, could they be 230
Subjected these to those, or all to thee?
The pow’rs of all subdu’d by thee alone.
Is not thy Reason all these pow’rs in one?
VIII. See, thro’ this air, this ocean, and this earth.
All matter quick, and bursting into birth. 235
Above, how high progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of being, which from God began.
Natures ethereal,*^ human, angel, man
Beast, bird, fish, insect! what no eye can see, 240
No glass can reach! from Infinite to thee.
From thee to Nothing! — On superior pow’rs
Were we to press, inferior might on ours:
Or in the frill creation leave a void.
Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destoy’d: 245
From Nature’s chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
And if each system in gradation roll.
Alike essential to th’ amazing whole;
The least confiision but in one, not all 250
That system only, but the whole must fall.
Let Earth unbalanc’d from her orbit fly.
Planets and Suns run lawless thro’ the sky.
Let ruling Angels from their spheres be hurl’d.
Being on being wreck’d, and world on world, 255
Heav’n’s whole foundations to their centre nod.
And Nature tremble to the throne of God:
All this dread ORDER break – for whom? for thee?
Vile worm! ~ oh. Madness, Pride, Impiety!
DC. What if the foot, ordain’d the dust to tread, 260
Or hand to toil, aspir’d to be the head?
What if the head, the eye, or ear repin’d*^
To serve mere engines to the ruling Mind?
Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains
The great directing MIND of ALL ordains. 265
All are but parts of one stupendous whole.
Whose body. Nature is, and God the soul;
That, chang’d thro’ all, and yet in all the same,
Great in the earth, as in th’ ethereal frame,
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 270
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the frees.
Lives thro’ all life, extends thro’ all extent.
Spreads undivided, operates unspent.
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal parts.
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart; 275
As full, as perfect, in vile Man that mourns.
As the rapt Seraph that adores and bums;
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.
X. Cease then, nor ORDER Imperfection name: 280
Our proper bhss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heav’n bestows on thee.
Submit – In this, or any other sphere,
Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear: 285
Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow’r,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour.
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;
All Discord, Harmony, not understood; 290
All partial Evil, universal Good:
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite.
One tmth is clear, “Whatever IS, is RIGHT.”
Argument of the Second Epistle:
Of the Nature and State o/”Man, with respect to Himself, as an Individual. The business of Man
not to pry into God, but to study himself.
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; 1
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state,*^
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, 5
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride.
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest.
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer.
Bom but to die, and reas’ning but to err; 10
Alike in ignorance, his reason such.
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confiis’d;
Still by himself abus’d, or disabus’d;
Created half to rise, and half to fall; 15
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of Tmth, in endless Error hurl’d:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! 18
ENDNOTES:
‘[His friend, Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke] ^[to wander]
^[hidden areas] ‘^[explain or defend]
^[silvery fields, i.e., the heavens] ^[the planet Jupiter]
^[ancient Egyptians sometimes worshipped oxen]
^[the highest level of angels] ^[pleasure]
‘ [the balance used to weigh justice]
[Caesar Borgia (1476-1507) who used any cmelty to achieve his ends]
‘^[Lucious Sergius Catilina (108-62 B.C.) who was a traitor to Rome]
‘^[Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.) who was thought to be overly ambitious Roman]
‘^[Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.)]
‘^[Psalm 8:5—”Thou hast made him [man] a little lower than the angels….”]
‘^[small insect] ‘^[vapors which were believed to pass odors to the brain]
‘^[the West Wind] ‘^stream] ^^[able to pick up a scent]
^'[having the odor of an animal] ^^[ocean] ^^[green]
^’*[honey was thought to have medicinal properties]
^^[ Animals shghtly below humans on the chain of being]
^”^[heavenly] ^'[complained]
^^[i.e., on the chain of being between angels and animals]