The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings: Poems and Other Writings (Penguin Classics)

by Alexander Pope

  What is now published, is only to be considered as a general map of MAN, marking out no more than the greater parts, their extent, their limits, and their connection, but leaving the particular to be more fully delineated in the charts which are to follow. Consequently, these Epistles in their progress (if I have health and leisure to make any progress) will be less dry, and more susceptible of poetical ornament. I am here only opening the fountains, and clearing the passage. To deduce the rivers, to follow them in their course, and to observe their effects, may be a task more agreeable.

  Epistle I

  ARGUMENT

  Of the Nature and State of Man with respect to the UNIVERSE

  Of Man in the abstract. – I. That we can judge only with regard to our own system, being ignorant of the relations of systems and things, v. 17, etc. II. That Man is not to be deemed imperfect, but a being suited to his place and rank in the creation, agreeable to the general order of things, and conformable to ends and relations to him unknown, v. 35, etc. III. That it is partly upon his ignorance of future events, and partly upon the hope of a future state, that all his happiness in the present depends, v. 77, etc. IV. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more perfection, the cause of Man’s error and misery. The impiety of putting himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or unfitness, perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice of his dispensations, v. 113, etc. V. The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of the creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world, which is not in the natural, v. 131, etc. VI. The unreasonableness of his complaints against Providence, while on the one hand he demands the perfections of the angels, and on the other the bodily qualifications of the brutes; though to possess any of the sensitive faculties in a higher degree, would render him miserable, v. 173, etc. VII. That throughout the whole visible world, an universal order and gradation in the sensual and mental faculties is observed, which causes a subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to Man. The gradations of sense, instinct, thought, reflection, reason; that reason alone countervails all the other faculties, v. 207. VIII. How much farther this order and subordination of living creatures may extend, above and below us; were any part of which broken, not that part only, but the whole connected creation must be destroyed, v. 233. IX. The extravagance, madness, and pride of such a desire, v. 259. X. The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state, v. 281, etc. to the end.

  Awake, my ST JOHN! leave all meaner things

  To low ambition, and the pride of kings.

  Let us (since life can little 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,

  10 Try what the open, what the covert yield;

  The latent tracts, 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.

  I. 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,

  20 From which to reason, or to which refer?

  Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known,

  ’Tis ours to trace him only in our own.

  He, who through vast immensity can pierce,

  See worlds on worlds compose one universe,

  Observe how system into system runs,

  What other planets circle other suns,

  What varied 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,

  30 The strong connections, nice dependencies,

  Gradations just, has thy pervading soul

  Looked through, 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,

  Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind!

  First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess

  Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less?

  Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made

  40 Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade!

  Or ask of yonder argent fields above

  Why Jove’s satellites are less than Jove!

  Of systems possible, if ’tis confessed

  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 a rank as Man;

  And all the question (wrangle e’er so long)

  50 Is only this, if God has placed him wrong?

  Respecting Man, whatever wrong we call,

  May, must be right, as relative to all.

  In human works, though laboured on with pain,

  A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;

  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;

  Then shall Man’s pride and dullness comprehend

  His actions’, passions’, being’s, use and end;

  Why doing, suff’ring, checked, impelled; 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 measured 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?

  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,

  All but the page prescribed, 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 today,

  Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?

  Pleased to the last, he crops the flow’ry food,

  And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.

  O blindness to the future! kindly giv’n,

  That each may fill the circle marked by Heav’n;

  Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

  A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

  Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,

  90 And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

  Hope humbly then; with trembling pinions soar;

  Wait the great teacher Death; and God adore!

  What future bliss, he gives not thee to know,

  But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.

  Hope springs eternal in the human breast:

  Man never is, but always to be blessed.

  The soul, uneasy and confined from home,

  Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

  Lo! the poor
Indian, whose untutored 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 topped hill, an humbler heav’n;

  Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,

  Some happier island in the wat’ry 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 faithful dog shall bear him company.

  IV.Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense

  Weigh thy opinion against Providence;

  Call imperfection what thou fanciest such:

  Say, here He gives too little, there too much;

  Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,

  Yet cry, if Man’s unhappy, God’s unjust;

  If Man alone engross not Heav’n’s high care,

  120 Alone made perfect here, immortal there,

  Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,

  Rejudge 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.

  Pride still is aiming at the bless’d 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 flower;

  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 footstool 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?

  ‘No, (’tis replied) 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 sunshine, as of Man’s desires;

  As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,

  As men for ever temp’rate, calm, and wise.

  If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav’n’s design,

  Why then a Borgia or a Catiline!

  Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning 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.

  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 discomposed 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;

  Now looking downwards, just as grieved 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 assigned;

  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.

  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 pleased with nothing if not blessed 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.

  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 through the brain,

  200 Die of a rose in aromatic pain?

  If nature thundered in his op’ning ears,

  And stunned him with the music of the spheres,

  How would he wish that Heav’n had left him still

  The whisp’ring zephyr and the purling rill?

  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 peopled 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!

  Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood

  To that which warbles through 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 dew;

  How instinct varies in the grov’ling swine,

  Compared, half-reas’ning elephant, with thine!

  ’Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier!

  For ever sep’rate, yet for ever near!

  Remembrance and reflection how allied!

  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 subdued by thee alone,

  Is not thy reason all these pow’rs in one?

  VIII. See, through this air, this ocean, and this earth,

  All matter quick, and bursting into birth.

  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 full creation leave a void,

  Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destroyed:

  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 confusion but in one, not all

  250 That system only, but the whole must fall.

  Let earth unbalanced from her orbit fly,

  Planets and stars run lawless through the sky,

  Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled,

  Being on being wrecked, and world on world,

  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!

  IX. What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread,

  260 Or hand to toil, aspired to be the head?

  What if the head, the eye, or ear repined

  To serve mere engines to the ruling mind?

  Just as absurd, for any part to claim

  To be another in this gen’ral frame;

  Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains

  The great directing Mind of All ordains.

  All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

  Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;

  That changed through all, and yet in all the same,

  270 Great in the earth, as in th’ ethereal frame,

  Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,

  Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;

  Lives through all life, extends through all extent,

  Spreads undivided, operates unspent;

  Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,

  As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;

  As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns

  As the rapt seraph that adores and burns:

  To him no high, no low, no great, no small;

  280 He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all!

  X. Cease then, nor order imperfection name;

  Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.

  Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree