Alexander Pope - An Essay on Man - Introduction

 

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.