| |
| I. KNOW then thyself, presume not God to scan, | |
| The proper study of mankind is man. | |
| Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state, | |
| A being darkly wise, and rudely great: | |
| With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, | 5 |
| With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride, | |
| He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest; | |
| In doubt to deem himself a God, or beast; | |
| In doubt his mind or body to prefer; | |
| Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err; | 10 |
| Alike in ignorance, his reason such, | |
| Whether he thinks too little or too much: | |
| Chaos of thought and passion, all confus’d; | |
| Still by himself abus’d or disabus’d; | |
| Created half to rise, and half to fall; | 15 |
| Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; | |
| Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl’d: | |
| The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! | |
| Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides, | |
| Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides; | 20 |
| Instruct the planets in what orbs to run, | |
| Correct old time, and regulate the sun: | |
| Go, soar with Plato to th’ empyreal sphere, | |
| To the first good, first perfect, and first fair; | |
| Or tread the mazy round his follow’rs trod | 25 |
| And quitting sense call imitating God; | |
| As eastern priests in giddy circles run, | |
| Go, teach eternal wisdom how to rule— | |
| Then drop into thyself, and be a fool! | |
| Superior beings, when of late they saw | 30 |
| A mortal man unfold all nature’s law, | |
| Admir’d such wisdom in an earthly shape, | |
| And shew’d a Newton as we shew an ape. | |
| Could he, whose rules the rapid comet bind, | |
| Describe or fix one movement of his mind? | 35 |
| Who saw its fires here rise, and there descend, | |
| Explain his own beginning, or his end? | |
| Alas what wonder! man’s superior part | |
| Uncheck’d may rise, and climb from art to art; | |
| But when his own great work is but begun, | 40 |
| What reason weaves, by passion is undone. | |
| Trace science then, with modesty thy guide; | |
| First strip off all her equipage of pride; | |
| Deduct what is but vanity, or dress, | |
| Or learning’s luxury, or idleness; | 45 |
| Or tricks to shew the stretch of human brain, | |
| Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain; | |
| Expunge the whole, or lop th’ excrescent parts | |
| Of all our vices have created arts; | |
| Then see how little the remaining sum, | 50 |
| Which serv’d the past, and must the times to come! | |
| II. Two principles in human nature reign; | |
| Self-love, to urge, and reason, to restrain; | |
| Nor this a good, nor that a bad we call, | |
| Each works its end, to move or govern all: | 55 |
| And to their proper operation still | |
| Ascribe all good, to their improper, ill. | |
| Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul; | |
| Reason’s comparing balance rules the whole. | |
| Man, but for that, no action could attend, | 60 |
| And, but for this, were active to no end: | |
| Fix’d like a plant on his peculiar spot, | |
| To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot: | |
| Or, meteor-like, flame lawless thro’ the void, | |
| Destroying others, by himself destroy’d. | 65 |
| Most strength the moving principle requires; | |
| Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires. | |
| Sedate and quiet the comparing lies, | |
| Form’d but to check, delib’rate, and advise. | |
| Self-love, still stronger, as its object’s nigh; | 70 |
| Reason’s at distance, and in prospect lie: | |
| That sees immediate good by present sense; | |
| Reason, the future and the consequence. | |
| Thicker than arguments, temptations throng, | |
| At best more watchful this, but that more strong. | 75 |
| The action of the stronger to suspend | |
| Reason still use, to reason still attend. | |
| Attention habit and experience gains; | |
| Each strengthens reason, and self-love restrains. | |
| Let subtle schoolmen teach these friends to fight, | 80 |
| More studious to divide than to unite; | |
| And grace and virtue, sense and reason split, | |
| With all the rash dexterity of wit. | |
| Wits, just like fools, at war about a name, | |
| Have full as oft no meaning, or the same. | 85 |
| Self-love and reason to one end aspire, | |
| Pain their aversion, pleasure their desire; | |
| But greedy that, its object would devour, | |
| This taste the honey, and not wound the flow’r: | |
| Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood, | 90 |
| Our greatest evil, or our greatest good. | |
| III. Modes of self-love the passions we may call: | |
| ’Tis real good, or seeming, moves them all: | |
| But since not ev’ry good we can divide, | |
| And reason bids us for our own provide: | 95 |
| Passions, tho’ selfish, it their means be fair, | |
| List under Reason, and deserve her care; | |
| Those, that imparted, court a nobler aim, | |
| Exalt their kind, and take some virtue’s name. | |
| In lazy apathy let stoics boast | 100 |
| Their virtue fix’d; ’tis fix’d as in a frost; | |
| Contracted all, retiring to the breast; | |
| But strength of mind is exercise, not rest: | |
| The rising tempest puts in act the soul, | |
| Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole. | 105 |
| On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail, | |
| Reason the card, but passion is the gale; | |
| Nor God alone in the still calm we find, | |
| He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind. | |
| Passions, like elements, tho’ born to fight, | 110 |
| Yet, mix’d and soften’d, in his work unite: | |
| These ’tis enough to temper and employ; | |
| But what composes man, can man destroy? | |
| Suffice that reason keep to nature’s road, | |
| Subject, compound them, follow her and God. | 115 |
| Love, hope, and joy, fair pleasure’s smiling train, | |
| Hate, fear, and grief, the family of pain, | |
| These mixt with art, and to due bounds confin’d, | |
| Make and maintain the balance of the mind: | |
| The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife | 120 |
| Gives all the strength and colour of our life. | |
| Pleasures are ever in our hands or eyes; | |
| And, when in act they cease, in prospect rise: | |
| Present to grasp, and future still to find, | |
| The whole employ of body and of mind. | 125 |
| All spread their charms, but charm not all alike; | |
| On diff’rent senses diff’rent objects strike; | |
| Hence diff’rent passions more or less inflame, | |
| As strong or weak, the organs of the frame; | |
| And hence one master passion in the breast, | 130 |
| Like Aaron’s serpent, swallows up the rest. | |
| As man, perhaps, the moment of his breath, | |
| Receives the lurking principle of death; | |
| The young disease, that must subdue at length, | |
| Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength: | 135 |
| So, cast and mingled with his very frame, | |
| The mind’s disease, its ruling passion came; | |
| Each vital humour which should feed the whole, | |
| Soon flows to this, in body and in soul: | |
| Whatever warms the heart, or fills the head, | 140 |
| As the mind opens, and its functions spread, | |
| Imagination plies her dang’rous art, | |
| And pours it all upon the peccant part. | |
| Nature its mother, habit is its nurse; | |
| Wit, spirit, faculties, but make it worse; | 145 |
| Reason itself but gives it edge and pow’r, | |
| As heav’n’s blest beam turns vinegar more sour. | |
| We, wretched subjects tho’ to lawful sway, | |
| In this weak queen some fav’rite still obey: | |
| Ah! if she lend not arms, as well as rules, | 150 |
| What can she more than tell us we are fools? | |
| Teach us to mourn our nature, not to mend, | |
| A sharp accuser, but a helpless friend! | |
| Or from a judge turn pleader, to persuade | |
| The choice we make, or justify it made; | 155 |
| Proud of an easy conquest all along, | |
| She but removes weak passions for the strong: | |
| So, when small humours gather to a gout, | |
| The doctor fancies he has driv’n them out. | |
| Yes, nature’s road must ever be preferr’d; | 160 |
| Reason is here no guide, but still a guard; | |
| ’Tis hers to rectify, not overthrow, | |
| And treat this passion more as friend than foe; | |
| A mightier pow’r the strong direction sends, | |
| And sev’ral men impels to sev’ral ends: | 165 |
| Like varying winds by other passions tost, | |
| This drives them constant to a certain coast. | |
| Let pow’r or knowledge, gold or glory, please, | |
| Or (oft more strong than all) the love of ease; | |
| Thro’ life ’tis followed, ev’n at life’s expense; | 170 |
| The merchant’s toil, the sage’s indolence, | |
| All, all alike, find reason on their side. | |
| Th’ eternal art educing good from ill, | |
| Grafts on this passion our best principle: | |
| ’Tis thus the mercury of man is fix’d, | 175 |
| Strong grows the virtue with his nature mix’d; | |
| The dross cements what else were too refin’d, | |
| And in one int’rest body acts with mind. | |
| As fruits, ungrateful to the planter’s care, | |
| On savage stocks inserted, learn to bear; | 180 |
| The surest virtues thus from passions shoot, | |
| Wild nature’s vigor working at the root. | |
| What crops of wit and honesty appear | |
| From spleen, from obstinacy, hate or fear! | |
| See anger, zeal and fortitude supply; | 185 |
| Ev’n av’rice, prudence; sloth, philosophy; | |
| Lust, thro’ some certain strainers well refin’d, | |
| Is gentle love, and charms all womankind; | |
| Envy, to which th’ ignoble mind’s a slave, | |
| Is emulation in the learn’d or brave; | 190 |
| Nor virtue, male or female, can we name, | |
| But what will grow on pride, or grow on shame. | |
| Thus nature gives us (let it check our pride) | |
| The virtue nearest to our vice ally’d: | |
| Reason the byas turns to good from ill, | 195 |
| And Nero reigns a Titus, if he will, | |
| The fiery soul abhorr’d in Catiline, | |
| In Decius charms, in Curtius is divine: | |
| The same ambition can destroy or save, | |
| And makes a patriot as it makes a knave. | 200 |
| This light and darkness in our chaos join’d, | |
| What shall divide? The God within the mind. | |
| Extremes in nature equal ends produce, | |
| In man they join to some mysterious use; | |
| Tho’ each by turns the other’s bound invade, | 205 |
| As, in some well-wrought picture, light and shade, | |
| And oft so mix, the diff’rence is too nice | |
| Where ends the virtue or begins the vice. | |
| Fools! who from hence into the notion fall, | |
| That vice or virtue there is none at all. | 210 |
| If white and black blend, soften, and unite | |
| A thousand ways, is there no black or white? | |
| Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain; | |
| ’Tis to mistake them, costs the time and pain. | |
| Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, | 215 |
| As, to be hated, needs but to be seen; | |
| Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, | |
| We first endure, then pity, then embrace. | |
| But where th’ extreme of vice, was ne’er agreed: | |
| Ask where’s the north? at York, ’tis on the Tweed; | 220 |
| In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there, | |
| At Greenland, Zembla, or the first degree, | |
| But thinks his neighbour farther gone than he: | |
| Ev’n those who dwell beneath its very zone, | |
| Or never feel the rage, or never own; | 225 |
| What happier natures shrink at with affright, | |
| The hard inhabitant contends is right. | |
| Virtuous and vicious ev’ry man must be, | |
| Few in th’ extreme, but all in the degree; | |
| The rogue and fool by fits is fair and wise; | 230 |
| And ev’n the best, by fits, what they despise. | |
| ’Tis but by parts we follow good or ill; | |
| For, vice or virtue, self directs it still; | |
| Each individual seeks a sev’ral goal; | |
| But heav’n’s great view is one, and that the whole, | 235 |
| That counter-works each folly and caprice; | |
| That disappoints th’ effect of ev’ry vice; | |
| That, happy frailties to all ranks apply’d, | |
| Shame to the virgin, to the matron pride, | |
| Fear to the statesman, rashness to the chief, | 240 |
| To kings presumption, and to crowds belief: | |
| That, virtue’s ends from vanity can raise, | |
| Which seeks no int’rest, no reward but praise; | |
| And build on wants, and on defects of mind, | |
| The joy, the peace, the glory of mankind. | 245 |
| Heav’n forming each on other to depend, | |
| A master, or a servant, or a friend, | |
| Bids each on other for assistance call, | |
| ’Till one man’s weakness grows the strength of all. | |
| Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally | 250 |
| The common int’rest, or endear the tie. | |
| To these we owe true friendship, love sincere, | |
| Each home-felt joy that life inherits here; | |
| Yet from the same we learn, in its decline, | |
| Those joys, those loves, those int’rests to resign; | 255 |
| Taught half by reason, half by mere decay, | |
| To welcome death, and calmly pass away. | |
| Whate’er the passion—knowledge, fame, or pelf, | |
| Not one will change his neighbour with himself. | |
| The learn’d is happy nature to explore, | 260 |
| The fool is happy that he knows no more; | |
| The rich is happy in the plenty giv’n, | |
| The poor contents him with the care of heav’n. | |
| See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing, | |
| The sot a hero, lunatic a king; | 265 |
| The starving chemist in his golden views | |
| Supremely blest, the poet in his muse. | |
| See some strange comfort ev’ry state attend, | |
| And pride bestow’d on all, a common friend; | |
| See some fit passion ev’ry age supply, | 270 |
| Hope travels thro’, nor quits us when we die. | |
| Behold the child, by nature’s kindly law, | |
| Pleas’d with a rattle, tickled with a straw: | |
| Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, | |
| A little louder, but as empty quite: | 275 |
| Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, | |
| And beads and pray’r-books are the toys of age: | |
| Pleas’d with this bauble still, as that before; | |
| ’Till tir’d he sleeps, and life’s poor play is o’er. | |
| Meanwhile opinion gilds with varying rays | 280 |
| Those painted clouds that beautify our days; | |
| Each want of happiness by hope supply’d, | |
| And each vacuity of sense by pride: | |
| These build as fast as knowledge can destroy; | |
| In folly’s cup still laughs the bubble, joy; | 285 |
| One prospect lost, another still we gain; | |
| And not a vanity is giv’n in vain; | |
| Ev’n mean self-love becomes, by force divine, | |
| The scale to measure others’ wants by thine. | |
| See! and confess one comfort still must rise; | 290 |
| ’Tis this, Tho’ man’s a fool, yet God is wise. | |
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