Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast,
(And, 'till he ends the being, makes it blest;
Which sees no more the stroke, or feels the pain,
Than favour'd Man by touch ethereal slain1.
The creature had his feast of life before;
Thou too must perish, when thy feast is o'er!
To each unthinking being Heav'n, a friend,
Gives not the useless knowledge of its end2:
To Man imparts it; but with such a view
As, while he dreads it, makes him hope it too:
The hour conceal'd, and so remote the fear,
Death still draws nearer, never seeming near.
Great standing miracle! that Heav'n assign'd
Its only thinking thing this turn of mind.
II. Whether with Reason, or with Instinct blest,
Know, all enjoy that pow'r which suits them best;
To bliss alike by that direction tend,
And find the means proportion'd to their end.
Say, where full Instinct is th' unerring guide,
What Pope or Council can they need beside?
Reason, however able, cool at best,
Cares not for service, or but serves when prest,
Stays 'till we call, and then not often near;
But honest Instinct comes a volunteer,
Sure never to o'er-shoot, but just to hit;
While still too wide or short is human Wit;
Sure by quick Nature happiness to gain,
Which heavier Reason labours at in vain,
This too serves always, Reason never long;
One must go right, the other may go wrong.
See then the acting and comparing pow'rs
One in their nature, which are two in ours;
And Reason raise o'er Instinct as you can,
In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis Man.
Who taught the nations of the field and wood
To shun their poison, and to choose their food?
Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,
Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand?
Who made the spider parallels design,
1 Than favour'd Man &c.] Several of the ancients, and many of the Orientals since, esteemed those who were struck by lightning as sacred persons, and the particular favourites of Heaven. P. The expression, 'by touch ethereal
slain,' is from Milton. Warton. [Samson Agon-
istes, 549.]
2 [This passage finely turns the common con-
trast between man and beast, which is drawn in
Charron, de la Sagesse, Liv. 1. chap. 8.]
Sure as Demoivre1, without rule or line?
Who did the stork, Columbus-like, explore
Heav'ns not his own, and worlds unknown before?
Who calls the council, states the certain day,
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?
III. God in the nature of each being founds
Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds:
But as he fram'd a Whole, the Whole to bless,
On mutual Wants built mutual Happiness:
So from the first, eternal ORDER ran,
And creature link'd to creature, man to man.
Whate'er of life all-quick'ning æther keeps,
Or breathes thro' air, or shoots beneath the deeps,
Or pours profuse on earth, one nature feeds
The vital flame, and swells the genial seeds.
Not Man alone, but all that roam the wood, f dice al
Or wing the sky, or roll along the flood,
Each loves itself, but not itself alone,
Each sex desires alike, 'till two are one.
Nor ends the pleasure with the fierce embrace;
They love themselves, a third time, in their race.
Thus beast and bird their common charge attend,
The mothers nurse it, and the sires defend;
The young dismiss'd to wander earth or air,
There stops the Instinct, and there ends the care;
The link dissolves, each seeks a fresh embrace,
Another love succeeds, another race.
A longer care Man's helpless kind demands;
That longer care contracts more lasting bands:
Reflection, Reason, still the ties improve,
At once extend the int'rest, and the love;
With choice we fix, with sympathy we burn;
Each Virtue in each Passion takes its turn;
And still new needs, new helps, new habits rise,
That graft benevolence on charities.
Still as one brood, and as another rose,
These nat'ral love maintain'd, habitual those:
The last, scarce ripen'd into perfect Man,
Saw helpless him from whom their life began:
Mem'ry and fore-cast just returns engage,
That pointed back to youth, this on to age;
While pleasure, gratitude, and hope, combin'd,
Still spread the int'rest, and preserv'd the kind.
IV. Nor think, in NATURE'S STATE they blindly trod;
The state of Nature was the reign of God:
Self-love and Social at her birth began,
Union the bond of all things, and of Man.
Pride then was not; nor Arts, that Pride to aid;
Man walk'd with beast, joint tenant of the shade2;
[Demoivre. This famous mathematician was born at Vitry in Champagne in 1667. The allusion in the text is to his fame in trigonometry.]
2 Man walk'd with beast, joint tenant of the shade;] The poet still takes his imagery from Platonic ideas, for the reason given above. Plato
The same his table, and the same his bed;
No murder cloth'd him, and no murder fed.
In the same temple, the resounding wood,
All vocal beings hymn'd their equal God:
The shrine with gore unstain'd, with gold undrest,
Unbrib'd, unbloody, stood the blameless priest :
Heav'n's attribute was Universal Care,
And Man's prerogative to rule, but spare.
Ah! how unlike the man of times to come!
Of half that live the butcher and the tomb1;
Who, foe to Nature, hears the gen'ral groan,
Murders their species, and betrays his own.
But just disease to luxury succeeds,
And ev'ry death its own avenger breeds;
The Fury-passions from that blood began,
And turn'd on Man a fiercer savage, Man.
See him from Nature rising slow to Art!
To copy Instinct then was Reason's part;
Thus then to Man the voice of Nature spake-
"Go, from the Creatures thy instructions take :
"Learn from the birds 2 what food the thickets yield;
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field;
"Thy arts of building from the bee receive;
"Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave;
"Learn of the little Nautilus to sail4,
Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale. "Here too all forms of social union find,
had said from old tradition, that, during the Golden age, and under the reign of Saturn, the primitive language then in use was common to man and beasts. Moral philosophers took this in the popular sense, and so invented those fables which give speech to the whole brute-creation. The naturalists understood the tradition to signify, that, in the first ages, Men used inarticulate sounds like beasts to express their wants and sensations; and that it was by slow degrees they came to the use of speech. This opinion was afterwards held by Lucretius, Diodorus Sic. and Gregory of Nyss. Warburton.
[Thomson's diatribe in the Seasons, against the barbarous practice of eating animal food, will be remembered; as well as the circumstance that he draws the line at fish.]
2 Learn from the birds, &c.] Taken, but
finely improved, from Bacon's Advancement of Learning [Bk. 11.]. Warton.
3 Learn from the beasts, &c.] See Pliny's Nat. Hist. L. VIII. c. 27, where several instances are given of Animals discovering the medicinal efficacy of herbs, by their own use of them; and pointing out to some operations in the art of healing, by their own practice. Warburton.
Learn of the little Nautilus] Oppian. Halieut. Lib. 1. describes this fish in the following manner: "They swim on the surface of the sea, on the back of their shells, which exactly resemble the hulk of a ship: they raise two feet like masts, and extend a membrane between, which serves as a sail; the other two feet they employ as oars at the side. They are usually seen in the Mediterranean." P.
"Laws wise as Nature, and as fix'd as Fate.
"In vain thy Reason finer webs shall draw,
Entangle Justice in her net of Law,
"And right, too rigid, harden into wrong;
"Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong.
"Yet go! and thus o'er all the creatures sway,
"Thus let the wiser make the rest obey;
'And, for those Arts mere Instinct could afford, "Be crown'd as Monarchs, or as Gods ador'd." V. Great Nature spoke; observant Men obey'd; Cities were built, Societies were made:
Here rose one little state; another near ·
Grew by like means, and join'd, thro' love or fear.
Did here the trees with ruddier burdens bend,
And there the streams in purer rills descend?
What War could ravish, Commerce could bestow,
And he return'd a friend, who came a foe.
Converse and Love mankind might strongly draw,
When Love was Liberty, and Nature Law.
Thus States were form'd; the name of King unknown,
'Till common int'rest plac'd the sway in one.
'Twas VIRTUE ONLY1 (or in arts or arms,
Diffusing blessings, or averting harms)
The same which in a Sire the Sons obey'd,
A Prince the Father of a People made.
VI. 'Till then, by Nature crown'd, each Patriarch sate, 215
King, priest, and parent of his growing state;
On him, their second Providence, they hung,
Their law his eye, their oracle his tongue.
He from the wond'ring furrow call'd the food,
Taught to command the fire, control the flood,
Draw forth the monsters of th' abyss profound,
Or fetch th' aerial eagle to the ground.
'Till drooping, sick'ning, dying they began
Whom they rever'd as God to mourn as Man:
Then, looking up from sire to sire, explor'd
One great first father, and that first ador'd.
Or plain tradition that this All begun,
Convey'd unbroken faith from sire to son;
The worker from the work distinct was known,
And simple Reason never sought but one:
Ere Wit oblique had broke that steady light2,
Man, like his Maker, saw that all was right;
To Virtue, in the paths of Pleasure, trod,
And own'd a Father when he own'd a God.
LOVE all the faith, and all th' allegiance then;
'Twas Virtue only, &c.] Our author hath
good authority for his account of the origin of
kingship. Aristotle assures us of this truth, that
it was Virtue only, or in arts or arms. [Polit.
V. 10. 3.] Warburton.
Ere Wit oblique &c.] A beautiful allusion to the effects of the prismatic glass on the rays
of light. Warburton. [For however men may
amuse themselves, and admire, or almost adore
the mind, it is certain that, like an irregular glass,
it alters the rays of things by its figure and
different intersections.' Bacon, Inst. Magn.
There is a similar passage in the Advancement
of Learning, Bk. II.]
For Nature knew no right divine in Men,
No ill could fear in God; and understood
A sov'reign being but a sov'reign good.
True faith, true policy, united ran,
This was but love of God, and this of Man.
Who first taught souls enslav'd, and realms undone,
Th' enormous faith1 of many made for one;
That proud exception to all Nature's laws,
T'invert the world, and counter-work its Cause?
Force first made Conquest, and that conquest, Law;
'Till Superstition taught the tyrant awe,
Then shar'd the Tyranny, then lent it aid,
And Gods of Conqu'rors, Slaves of Subjects made:
She 'midst the lightning's blaze, and thunder's sound,
When rock'd the mountains, and when groan'd the ground,
She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray,
To Pow'r unseen, and mightier far than they:
She, from the rending earth and bursting skies,
Saw Gods descend, and fiends infernal rise:
Here fix'd the dreadful, there the blest abodes;
Fear made her Devils, and weak Hope her Gods;
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were Rage, Revenge, or Lust;
Such as the souls of cowards might conceive,
And, form'd like tyrants, tyrants would believe.
Zeal then, not charity, became the guide;
And hell was built on spite, and heav'n on pride,
Then sacred seem'd th' ethereal vault no more;
Altars grew marble then, and reek'd with gore:
Then first the Flamen tasted living food2;
Next his grim idol smear'd with human blood 3;
With Heav'n's own thunders shook the world below,
And play'd the God an engine on his foe.
So drives Self-love, thro' just and thro' unjust,
To one Man's pow'r, ambition, lucre, lust:
The same Self-love, in all, becomes the cause
Of what restrains him, Government and Laws.
For, what one likes if others like as well,
What serves one will, when many wills rebel?
How shall he keep, what, sleeping or awake,
A weaker may surprise, a stronger take?
Th' enormous faith &c.] In this Aristotle placeth the difference between a King and a Tyrant, that the first supposeth himself made for the People; the other, that the People are made for him. Pol. Lib. v. cap. 10. Warburton. [i.e. the unnatural doctrine that many are made for one-'the mania of the Cæsars,' as it has been finely called.]
2 [living, i.e. animal. By employing the term flamen, Pope does not appear to refer specially to the priests and sacrifices of the Roman cultus, though among the latter it is certain that human
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