AN ESSAY ON MAN. EPISTLE I. Of the Nature and State of Man with respect to the Universe. ARGUMENT. Of man in the abstract.-1. That we can judge only with regard to our own system, being ignorant of the relations of systems and things.-2. 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. 3. 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.-4. 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.5. 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.-6. 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.7. 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.-8. How much further 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.-9. The extravagance, madness, and pride, of such a desire.-10. The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state. AWAKE, my St. John! leave all meaner things To low ambition and the pride of kings. Let us (since life can little more supply Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man; A wild where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot; Try what the open, what the covert yield: 1. Say first, of God above or man below What varied being peoples every star, May tell why Heav'n has made us as we are: Why form'd so weak, so little, and so blind! Of systems possible, if 'tis confest In human works, though labor'd on with pain, When the proud steed shall know why man restrains Why doing, suffering, check'd, impell'd; and why This hour a slave, the next a deity. Then say not man's imperfect, Heav'n in fault; Say rather man's as perfect as he ought; His knowledge measur'd to his state and place, What matter soon or late, or here or there? As who began a thousand years ago. 3. Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of fate, All but the page prescrib'd, their present state: From brutes what men, from men what spirits know; Or who could suffer being here below? The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n; And now a bubble burst, and now a world. Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire; If man alone engross not Heav'n's high care, In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies; And who but wishes to invert the laws 46 5. Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine, Earth for whose use?-Pride answers, ""Tis for mine: For me kind Nature wakes her genial power, "Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower; "Annual for me the grape, the rose, renew "The juice nectareous and the balny 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; "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 general laws; "The' exceptions few ; some change since all began ; "And what created perfect?"-Why then man? If the great end be human happiness, Then Nature deviates; and can man do less? As much that end a constant course requires Of showers and sunshine, as of man's desires; As much eternal springs and cloudless skies, As men for ever temperate, calm, and wise. If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav'n's design, Why then a Borgia or a Catiline? |