The same self-love in all becomes the cause 'Twas then the studious head, or generous mind, Follower of God, or friend of human kind, Poet or patriot, rose but to restore The faith and moral, Nature gave before; To serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade; And, in proportion as it blesses, blest; For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight; All must be false that thwart this one great end; And all of God that bless mankind or mend. Man, like the generous vine, supported lives; The strength he gains is from th' embrace he gives. On their own axis as the planets run, Yet make at once their circle round the sun; And one regards itself, and one the whole. Thus God and nature link'd the general frame, And bade self-love and social be the same. AN ESSAY ON MAN. EPISTLE IV. OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN, WITH RESPECT TO HAPPINESS. ARGUMENT. 1. False notions of happiness, philosophical and popular, answered. 2. It is the end of all men, and attainable by all. God intends happiness to be equal; and, to be so, it must be social, since all particular happiness depends on general, and since he governs by general, not particular laws. As it is necessary for order, and the peace and welfare of society, that external goods should be unequal, happiness is not made to consist in these. But, notwithstanding that inequality, the balance of happiness among mankind is kept even by Providence, by the two passions of hope and fear. 3. What the happiness of individuals is, as far as is consistent with the constitution of this world; and that the good man has here the advantage. The error of imputing to virtue what are only the calamities of nature, or of fortune. 4. The folly of expecting that God should alter his general laws in favour of particulars. 5. That we are not judges who are good; but that whoever they are, they must be happiest. 6. That external goods are not the proper rewards, but often inconsistent with, or destructive of virtue. That even these can make no man happy without virtue:-instanced in Riches; Honours; Nobility; Greatness; Fame; Superior talents, with pic tures of human infelicity in men possessed of them all. 7. That virtue only constitutes a happiness, whose object is universal, and whose prospect eternal. That the perfection of virtue and happiness consists in a conformity to the order of Providence here, and a resignation to it here and hereafter. O HAPPINESS! our being's end and aim! Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate'er thy name: And fled from monarchs, St. John! dwells with thee. Ask of the learn'd the way? the learn❜d are blind; This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind; Some place the bliss in action, some in ease, Those call it pleasure, and contentment these; Some sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain; Some swell'd to gods, confess e'en virtue vain! Or indolent, to each extreme they fall, Who thus define it, say they more or less Take nature's path and mad opinion's leave; But some way leans and hearkens to the kind; If all are equal in their happiness: |