The work that more than any other popularized the optimistic philosophy, not only in england but throughout europe, was alexander pope's essay on man 1733 34 , a rationalistic effort to justify the ways of god to man philosophically. As has been stated in the introduction, voltaire had become well acquainted with the english poet during his stay of more than two years in england, and the two had corresponded with each other with a fair degree of regularity when voltaire returned to the continent. He hailed the essay of criticism as superior to horace, and he described the rape of the lock as better than lutrin. when the essay on man was published, voltaire sent a copy to the norman abbot du resnol and may possibly have helped the abbot prepare the first french translation, which was so well received. The very title of his discours en vers sur l'homme 1738 indicates the extent voltaire was influenced by pope. It has been pointed out that at times, he does little more than echo the same thoughts expressed by the english poet. Even as late as 1756, the year in which he published his poem on the destruction of lisbon, he lauded the author of essay on man. in the edition of lettres philosophiques published in that year, he wrote: the essay on man appears to me to be the most beautiful didactic poem, the most useful, the most sublime that has ever been composed in any language.

Perhaps this is no more than another illustration of how voltaire could vacillate in his attitude as he struggled with the problems posed by the optimistic philosophy in its relation to actual experience. He picked up pope's recurring phrase whatever is, is right and made mockery of it: tout est bien in a world filled with misery! pope denied that he was indebted to leibnitz for the ideas that inform his poem, and his word may be accepted. Those ideas were first set forth in england by anthony ashley cowper, earl of shaftesbury 1671 1731. They pervade all his works but especially the moralist. indeed, several lines in the essay on man, particularly in the first epistle, are simply statements from the moralist done in verse. Although the question is unsettled and probably will remain so, it is generally believed that pope was indoctrinated by having read the letters that were prepared for him by bolingbroke and that provided an exegesis of shaftesbury's philosophy. The main tenet of this system of natural theology was that one god, all wise and all merciful, governed the world providentially for the best.

Most important for shaftesbury was the principle of harmony and balance, which he based not on reason but on the general ground of good taste. Believing that god's most characteristic attribute was benevolence, shaftesbury provided an emphatic endorsement of providentialism. Following are the major ideas in essay on man: 1 a god of infinite wisdom exists 2 he created a world that is the best of all possible ones 3 the plenum, or all embracing whole of the universe, is real and hierarchical 4 authentic good is that of the whole, not of isolated parts 5 self love and social love both motivate humans' conduct 6 virtue is attainable 7 one truth is clear, whatever is, is right. According to this principle, vices, themselves to be deplored, may lead to virtues. For example, motivated by envy, a person may develop courage and wish to emulate the accomplishments of another and the avaricious person may attain the virtue of prudence. One can easily understand why, from the beginning, many felt that pope had depended on leibnitz. Of the nature and state of man, with respect to the universe of man in the abstract.

That we can judge only with regard to our own system, being ignorant of the relations of systems and things. 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. 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.

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. The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world which is not in the natural. 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. That throughout the whole visible world a 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. 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.

The consequence of all, the absolute submission due to providence, both as to our present and future state. 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 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.

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? thro' worlds unnumber'd tho' the god be known, 'tis ours to trace him only in our own. In human works, tho' labour'd on with pain, a thousand movements scarce one purpose gain in god's, one single can its end produce, yet serve 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. 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 then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend his actions', passions', being's, use and end why doing, suff'ring, 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 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. Heav'n 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? the lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to day, had he thy reason would he skip and play? pleas'd to the last he crops the flowery food, and licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood. O blindness to the future! kindly giv'n, that each may fill the circle mark'd by heav'n 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.

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. Lo, the poor indian! whose untutor'd mind sees god in clouds, or hears him in the wind his soul proud science never taught to stray far as the solar walk or milky way yet simple nature to his hope has giv'n, behind the cloud topt hill, an humbler heav'n, some safer world in depth of woods embraced, some happier island in the wat'ry 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 but thinks, admitted to that equal sky, his faithful dog shall bear him company. 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 heav'n's high care, alone made perfect here, immortal there: snatch from his hand the balance and the rod, rejudge his justice, be the god of god. In pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies all quit their sphere, and rush into the skies! pride still is aiming at the bless'd 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, sings against th'eternal cause. Ask for what end the heav'nly bodies shine, earth for whose use, pride answers, ``'tis for mine: for me kind nature wakes her genial power, suckles each herb, and spreds out ev'ry 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. If plagues or earthquakes break not heav'n's design, why then a borgia or a cataline? who knows but he, whose hand the lightning forms, who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms pours fierce ambition in a c sar's mind, or turns young ammon loose to scourge mankind? from pride, from pride, our very reas'ning springs account for moral as for natural things: why charge we heav'n 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. The bliss of man could pride that blessing find is not to act or think beyond mankind no powers of body or of soul to share, but what his nature and his state can bear.

Mark how it mounts to man's imperial race from the green myriads in the peopled grass: 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 thro' the vernal wood. He, who thro 39 vast immensity can pierce, essay on man by alexander pope 1688 1744. Certainly today, we think anybody that writes poetry is one who is a bit odd, to say the least.

Pope An Essay on Man Text

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