Alexander
Pope - An Essay on Man
Introduction
Alexander Pope had a plan of creating a very
long and a philosophical poem. His plan was to compose a verse of human life in
about four different books. The first one was to hold the views as seen in the Essay
on Man and the second book would have included epistles on human reason, arts,
sciences, talent and the use of learning, science, wit “together with a satire
against the misapplications of them”; in the third book he proposed to include
“Science of Politics; and in the fourth book, the poet wished to elaborate on
matters concerning “private ethics” or “practical morality.” It is an attempt
to put forth a system of ethics, to justify the ways of God to Man and a
warning that man is not the center of all things, though in his pride he
believes so. It is certainly not a religious poem but it has references to God
and His great domain. There is an acknowledgement that man is fallen and that
he has to work out his own salvation.
Know then thyself,
presume not God to scan
The proper study of
Mankind is Man.
Placed on this
isthmus of a middle state,
A Being darkly wise,
and rudely great:
With too much
knowledge for the Sceptic side,
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 and
body to prefer;
Born but to die, and
reas’ning but to err; (Epistle II, St. 1, 1-10)
….
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. (Epistle II, St. 1,16-18)
Pope
considers man, his nature and his state in the abstract. He desires to study
the condition and purpose of the creation of Man first for without it he would
not be able to point out the moral duty or “enforce any moral precept.” In an
attempt to understand human nature, he studies the “Anatomy of the Mind” and he
states: The science of human nature is, like all other sciences. He calls his
“An Essay on Man”, a “general Map of Man.”
Pope
did not have the knowledge for a philosophical poem because he did not have
speculative mind. It was widely known that Pope intellectually owed much to the
doctrines of Leibniz. He regarded the whole of space and time as an unbroken
chain of mutually related existences and occurrences.
The
ideas expressed in this work were first found in the Moralist by Anthony Ashley
Cowper, Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1731). Though the intellectual content of the
poem is quite thin, Pope has managed to exploit to the fullest the tenuous
philosophy using his mastery over poetic technique.
The
Essay should be treated not just as a dissertation but as a poem as well.
Brevity is the apology that Pope gives for using poetic methods. Even at the
outset Pope paints an apt imagery to strike the perfect note to just unity in
diversity:
A mighty maze! But
not without a plan;
A Wild, where weeds
and flow’rs promiscuous shoot,
Or
Garden, tempting with forbidden fruit.
Thus,
with a single image Pope drives home a wide range of meanings; he hints at the diversity
in creation, at once fascinating and frightening – all a result of a careful
planning by the Creator. He also hints at the English taste of the eighteenth
century, particularly the land owners who considered the garden as source of
intellectual pleasure. And with words like “promiscuous” and “forbidden fruit”
he hints at the moral disorder of the age. At one stroke the master craftsman
conveys several meanings. An Essay on Man has received contradictory critical
reviews. The truth is that Pope neither knew enough nor felt enough about its
subject. His style is concise and figurative, forcible and elegant.
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