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:
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
And, little less than angels, 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;
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;
No powers of body or of soul to share,
But what his nature and his state can bear
Why has not man a miscroscopic eye?
For this plain reason,—Man is not a fly.
Say, what the use, were finer optics given,
To 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?
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: 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? 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 sense from thought divide!
And middle natures, how they long to join,
Yet never pass the insuperable line!
Without this just gradation, could they be
Subjected, these to those, or all to thee?
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,
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 the amazing whole;
The least confusion but in one, not all
That system only, but the whole must fall.
Let earth unbalanced from her orbit fly,
Planets and stars 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 foundation to their centre nod,
And Nature trembles to the throne of God.
All this dread Order break-for whom? for thee?
Vile worm!-0, madness! pride! impiety!
What if the foot, ordain'd the dust to tread, Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head? What if the head, the eye, or ear repined To serve mere engines to the ruling mind? Just as absurd for any part to claim To be another in this general frame: Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains, The great directing Mind of All ordains.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;
That, changed through all, and yet in all the same;
Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part;
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns:
To Him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, He bounds, connects, and equals all.
Cease then, nor Order imperfection name: Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. Know thy own point: this kind, this due degree Of blindness, weakness, Heaven bestows on thee.
Submit; in this, or any other sphere,
Secure to be as bless'd as thou canst bear:
Safe in the hand of one disposing Power,
Or in the natal or the mortal hour.
All Nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear;-WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.
OF THE NATURE AND STATE OF MAN, WITH RESPECT TO HIMSELF AS AN INDIVIDUAL.
I. The business of man not to pry into God, but to study himself. -II. The two principles of man, self-love and reason, both necessary.-III. The passions and their use.-IV. Virtue and vice joined in our mixed nature.-V. Vice odious, and how we deceive ourselves in it.-VI. The ends of Providence and general good answered in our passions and imperfections.
NOW 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,
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