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.

75

II. Whether with Reason or with Instinct blest, Know, all enjoy that pow'r which suits them best; 80 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'ershoot, 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.

85

90

95

VARIATIONS.

After Ver. 84 in the MS.

While Man, with op'ning views of various ways
Confounded, by the aid of Knowledge strays.
Too weak to choose, yet choosing still in haste,
One moment gives the pleasure and distaste.

NOTES.

Ver. 97. And Reason raise o'er Instinct] Charron, of whom

Who taught the nations of the field and wood To shun their poison, and to choose their food? 100

NOTES.

Pope and Bolingbroke were so fond, has treated this subject with so much freedom of thought, and endeavoured to raise Instinct so much above Reason, that Stanhope, his translator, deemed it necessary to obviate the tendency of his tenets, by a long Appendix to the 34th chapter of the first book. It appears a little strange, that so orthodox a divine as Stanhope should translate two books that are supposed to favour libertinism and scepticism-the Wisdom of Charron and the Maxims of Rochefoucault. Bayle has stated the difficulties, that arise in accounting for the actions of brutes, with his usual acuteness and force of argument.

Hume has gone farther than any other writer on the subject; "Though animals," he says, "learn many parts of their knowledge from observation and experience, there are also many parts of it which they derive from the original hand of Nature, which much exceed the share of capacity they possess on ordinary occasions, and in which they improve little or nothing by the longest practice and experience. These we denominate Instincts, and are so apt to admire as something very extraordinary and inexplicable by all the disquisitions of human understanding. But our wonder will perhaps cease or diminish, when we consider that the experimental reasoning itself, which we possess in common with beasts, and on which the whole conduct of life depends, is nothing but a species of Instinct, or mechanical power, that acts in us unknown to ourselves; and, in its chief operations, is not directed by any such relations or comparisons of ideas as are the proper objects of our intellectual faculties. Though the Instinct be different, yet still it is an Instinct which teaches a man to avoid the fire; as much as that which teaches a bird with such exactness the art of incubation, and the whole economy and order of its nursery." Of the Reason of Animals, Essay, p. 432.

Father Bougeant's little treatise on the Language of Beasts is an amusing work; in which he has placed the notion of Des Cartes, that they are mere machines, in a strong light, as well as the difficulties that arise from the opinion of their having immortal souls. Bougeant was severely censured by his brother jesuits for this little work. He had better have kept to politics.

Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,
Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand;
Who made the spider parallels design,
Sure as De-moivre, without rule or line?
Who bid 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:

NOTES.

105

110

He wrote the History of the Treaty of Westphalia. Posterity will look on this as a curious work: the state of Europe being now so totally changed, this history will read like a romance.

Ver. 99. Who taught] This passage is highly finished; such objects are more suited to the nature of poetry than abstract ideas. Every verb and epithet has here a descriptive force. We find more imagery from these lines to the end of the epistle, than in any other parts of this Essay. The origin of the connexions in social life, the account of the state of nature, the rise and effects of superstition and tyranny, and the restoration of true religion and just government; all these ought to be mentioned as passages that deserve high applause, nay, as some of the most exalted pieces of English poetry.

Ver. 109. God, in the nature of each being, &c.] The Author now cometh to the main subject of his epistle, the proof of Man's SOCIABILITY, from the two general societies composed by him; the natural, subject to paternal authority; and the civil, subject to that of a magistrate. This he hath the address to introduce, from what had preceded, in so easy and natural a manner, as sheweth him to have the art of giving all the grace to the dryness and severity of Method, as well as wit to the strength and depth of Reason. The philosophic nature of his work requiring he should shew by what means those Societies were introduced, this affords him an opportunity of sliding gracefully and easily from the preliminaries into the main subject; and so of giving his work that perfection of method, which we find only in the compositions of great writers. For having just before, though

But as he fram'd the Whole, the Whole to bless,
On mutual Wants built mutual happiness:

So from the first, eternal ORDER ran,

115

120

And creature link'd to creature, man to man.
Whate'er of life all quick'ning ether 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,
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. "y
Thus beast and bird their common charge attend, 125
The mothers nurse it, and the fires defend;

NOTES.

to a different purpose, described the power of bestial Instinct to attain the happiness of the Individual, he goeth on, in speaking of Instinct as it is serviceable both to that, and to the Kind (from Ver. 108 to 147), to illustrate the original of Society. He sheweth, that though, as he had before observed, God had founded the proper bliss of each creature in the nature of its own existence; yet these not being independent individuals, but parts of a Whole, God, to bless that Whole, built mutual happiness on mutual wants: now, for the supply of mutual wants, creatures must necessarily come together: which is the first ground of Society amongst Men. He then proceeds to that called natural, subject to paternal authority, and arising from the union of the two sexes; describes the imperfect image of it in brutes; then explains it at large in all its causes and effects. And lastly shews, that, as in fact, like mere animal Society, it is founded and preserved by mutual wants, the supplial of which causeth mutual happiness; so is it likewise in right, as a rational Society, by equity, gratitude, and the observance of the relation of things. in general. W.

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;

130

135

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 : 140
The last, scarce ripen'd into perfect Man,
Saw helpless him from whom their life began :
Mem'ry and forecast just returns engage,
That pointed back to youth, this on to age;
While pleasure, gratitude, and hope, combin'd, 145
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 shade;

150

NOTES.

Ver. 152. Man walk'd with beast,] Lucretius, agreeably to his more uncomfortable system, has presented us with a different and more horrid picture of this state of Nature. The calamitous condition of Man is exhibited by images of much energy and