The disputes are all upon these last, and, I will venture to say, they have less sharpened the wits than the hearts of men against each other, and have diminished the practice, more than advanced the theory, of morality. If I could flatter myself that this essay has any merit, it is in steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite, in passing over terms utterly unintelligible, and in forming a _temperate_ yet not _inconsistent_, and a _short_ yet not _imperfect_ system of ethics.

This I might have done in prose; but I chose verse, and even rhyme, for two reasons. The one will appear obvious; that principles, maxims, or precepts so written, both strike the reader more strongly at first, and are more easily retained by him afterwards: the other may seem odd, but is true; I found I could express them more shortly this way than in prose itself; and nothing is more certain, than that much of the force as well as grace of arguments or instructions, depends on their conciseness. I was unable to treat this part of my subject more in detail, without becoming dry and tedious; or more poetically, without sacrificing perspicuity to ornament, without wandering from the precision, or breaking the chain of reasoning: If any man can unite all these without diminution of any of them, I freely confess he will compass a thing above my capacity.

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 connexion, 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, ver. 17, &c. 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, ver. 35, &c. 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, ver. 77, &c. 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, ver. 109, &c. 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, ver. 131, &c. 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, ver. 173, &c. 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, ver. 207. VIII. 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, ver. 233. IX. The extravagance, madness, and pride of such a desire, ver. 259. X. The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to Providence, both as to our present and future state, ver. 281, &c. 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 flowers promiscuous shoot; Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.

Together let us beat this ample field, Try what the open, what the covert yield; 10 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.[86]

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, From which to reason, or to which refer? 20 Through worlds unnumber'd, 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 every star, May tell why Heaven has made us as we are.

But of this frame the bearings, and the ties, The strong connexions, nice dependencies, 30 Gradations just, has thy pervading soul Look'd 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 form'd so weak, so little, and so blind?

First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess, Why form'd no weaker, blinder, and no less?

Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade? 40 Or ask of yonder argent fields above, Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove?

Of systems possible, if 'tis confess'd 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 reasoning life, 'tis plain, There must be, somewhere, such a rank as Man: And all the question (wrangle e'er so long) Is only this, if God has placed him wrong? 50

Respecting Man, whatever wrong we call, May, must be right, as relative to all.

In human works, though labour'd 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; 'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole. 60

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:[87]

Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend His actions', passions', being's use and end; Why doing, suffering, check'd, impell'd; and why This hour a slave, the next a deity.

Then say not Man's imperfect, Heaven in fault; Say rather, Man's as perfect as he ought: 70 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 to-day is as completely so, As who began a thousand years ago.

III. Heaven 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: Or who could suffer being here below? 80 The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?

Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.

Oh blindness to the future! kindly given, That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heaven: Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, And now a bubble burst, and now a world. 90

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 blest: The soul, uneasy and confined from home, Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor'd mind Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind; 100 His soul, proud science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk, or milky-way; Yet simple nature to his hope has given, Behind the cloud-topp'd hill, an humbler heaven; Some safer world in depth of woods embraced, Some happier island in the watery waste, Where slaves once more their native land behold, No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.

To be, contents his natural desire, He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire; 110 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 Heaven's high care, Alone made perfect here, immortal there: 120 Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, Re-judge his justice, be the God of God.

In pride, in reasoning pride, our error lies; All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies.

Pride still is aiming at the blest 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 Of ORDER, sins against the Eternal Cause. 130

V. 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 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; My footstool earth, my canopy the skies.' 140

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; Th' 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? 150 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 Heaven'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, Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind? 150 From pride, from pride, our very reasoning springs; Account for moral, as for natural things: Why charge we Heaven 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; And passions are the elements of life. 170 The general 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 powers of all?

Nature to these, without profusion, kind, The proper organs, proper powers assign'd; 180 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 Heaven unkind to Man, and Man alone?

Shall he alone, whom rational we call, Be pleased with nothing, if not bless'd with all?

The bliss of Man (could pride that blessing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind; 190 No powers 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 given, T'inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven?

Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonise at every pore?

Or, quick effluvia darting through the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic pain? 200 If nature thunder'd in his opening ears, And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres, How would he wish that Heaven had left him still The whispering 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 powers ascends: Mark how it mounts, to Man's imperial race, From the green myriads in the peopled grass: 210 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 From poisonous herbs extracts the healing dew! 220 How instinct varies in the grovelling swine, Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine!

'Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier: For ever separate, yet for ever near!

Remembrance and reflection how allied; What thin partitions[88] 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 Subjected, these to those, or all to thee? 230 The powers of all subdued by thee alone, Is not thy reason all these powers 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, No glass can reach; from Infinite to Thee, 240 From Thee to Nothing.--On superior powers Were we to press, inferior might on ours: Or in the full creation leave a void, Where, one step broken, the great scale's destroy'd: 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 That system only, but the whole must fall. 250 Let earth, unbalanced, from her orbit fly, Planets and suns run lawless through the sky; Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurl'd, Being on being wreck'd, and world on world; Heaven's whole foundations to their centre nod, And Nature trembles to the throne of God.

All this dread order break--for whom? for thee?