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To bliss alike by that direction tend,

And find the means proportioned to their end.
Say, where full instinct is the unerring guide,
What Pope or Council can they need beside?

Reason, however able, cool at best,

Cares not for service, or but serves when pressed,
Stays till we call, and then not often near;

But honest instinct comes a volunteer,
Sure never to o'ershoot, but just to hit;
While still too wide or short is human wit;
Sure by quick nature happiness to gain,
Which heavier reason labors at in vain.
This too serves always, reason never long;
One must go right, the other may go wrong.
See then the acting and comparing powers
One in their nature, which are two in ours;
And reason raise o'er instinct as you can,
In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis Man.

Who taught the nations of the field and flood
To shun their poison, and to choose their food?
Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,
Build on the wave,1 or arch beneath the sand?
Who made the spider parallels design,

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90

95

100

Sure as Demoivre,2 without rule or line?

Who bid the stork, Columbus-like, explore

105

Heavens not his own, and worlds unknown before?

in the eighteen lines following. The felicity of expression largely countervails the tediousness of detail. Line 94 is as noticeable for its diction as for its

terseness.

1 The ancients thought that the halcyon, or kingfisher, built its nest on the waves.

2 An eminent mathematician (1667-1754), a French Huguenot. Driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he took up his residence in London. became an intimate friend of Newton, and a Fellow Newton had the highest admiration for Demoivre's

He

of the Royal Society. ability and learning.

Who calls the council,1 states the certain day,
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?
III. God, in the nature of each being, founds
Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds:
But as He framed a whole, the whole to bless,
On mutual wants built mutual happiness:
So from the first, eternal Order ran,

And creature linked to creature, man to man.
Whate'er of life all-quickening ether 2 keeps,3

Or breathes through air, or shoots beneath the deeps,
Or pours profuse on earth, one nature feeds
The vital flame, and swells the genial seeds.

IIO

115

Not man alone, but all that roam the wood,
Or wing the sky, or roll along the flood,
Each loves itself, but not itself alone,
Each sex desires alike, till two are one.

120

Thus beast and bird their common charge attend,

The mothers nurse it, and the sires defend;

The young dismissed to wander earth or air,

125

There stops the instinct, and there ends the care:

The link dissolves, each seeks a fresh embrace,

Another love succeeds, another race.

A longer care man's helpless kind demands;

That longer care contracts more lasting bands:
Reflection, reason, still the ties improve,

130'

At once extend the interest, and the love:
With choice we fix, with sympathy we burn;
Each virtue in each passion takes its turn;4

1 The congregating of the storks before their departure for southern climes is a strange phenomenon.

2 In astronomical physics, ether is supposed to pervade space. Ancient philosophers regarded it as the principle of life. Cf. Vergil's Æneid, VI. line 728.

3 Note lines 115-118 and 119–122. A sentence containing four verses is unusually long for Pope. In these two the thoughts are not clearly expressed. 4 Cf. Epistle II. line 183.

And still new needs, new helps, new habits rise,
That graft benevolence on charities.1

Still as one brood, and as another rose,
These natural love maintained, habitual those:
The last, scarce ripened into perfect man,
Saw helpless him from whom their life began:
Memory and forecast just returns engage,
That pointed back to youth, this on to age;
While pleasure, gratitude, and hope combined,
Still spread the interest and preserved the kind.

135

140

IV. Nor think in Nature's state they blindly trod;
The state of Nature was the reign of God:
Self-love and social at her birth began,

145

Union the bond of all things, and of man.2

Pride then was not; nor arts, that pride to aid;

Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade;3

150

The same his table, and the same his bed;

No murder clothed him, and no murder fed.

In the same temple, the resounding wood,
All vocal beings hymned their equal God:

The shrine with gore unstained, with gold undressed, 155
Unbribed, unbloody, stood the blameless priest:

Heaven's attribute was universal care,

And man's prerogative, to rule, but spare.

1 Affections.

2 The social instinct was the "cohesive attraction" of the moral world. 3 "Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade.' The poet still takes his imagery from Platonic ideas. Plato had said, from old tradition, that during the Golden Age and under the reign of Saturn the primitive language in use was common to men and beasts. Moral philosophers took this in the popular sense, and so invented those fables which give speech to the whole brute creation. The naturalists understood the tradition to signify that in the first ages men used inarticulate sounds like beasts to express their wants and sensations, and that it was by slow degrees they came to the use of speech. This opinion was afterwards held by Lucretius, Diodorus Siculus, and Gregory of Nyssa" (WARBUrton).

Ah! how unlike the man of times to come! 1
Of half that live the butcher and the tomb;
Who, foe to Nature, hears the general groan,
Murders their species, and betrays his own.
But just disease to luxury succeeds,
And every death its own avenger breeds;
The fury passions 2 from that blood began,
And turned on man a fiercer savage, man.
See him from Nature rising slow to Art!
To copy instinct then was reason's part;
Thus then to man the voice of Nature spake :

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165

"Go, from the creatures thy instructions take:
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield;
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field;
Thy arts of building from the bee receive;
Learn of the mole to plow, the worm to weave;
Learn of the little nautilus to sail,3

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175

Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.
Here too all forms of social union find,

And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind:
Here subterranean works and cities see;

There towns aërial on the waving tree.

180

Learn each small people's genius, policies,

The ants' republic, and the realm of bees;

How those in common all their wealth bestow,
And anarchy without confusion know;

And these forever, though a monarch reign,
Their separate cells and properties maintain.

185

1 It may suit Pope's poetic purpose to inveigh, in lines 159-166, against the use of animal food; but it is well known that he entertained no such views as here expressed. We may suppose it is indicative of his inherent insincerity. 2 " Fury passions." Cf. Gray's Ode on Eton College, line 61; also his Progress of Poesy, line 16.

3 The idea that the nautilus lifts its feet and spreads a membrane to act as a sail is no longer entertained. It sometimes uses its feet, however, as oars.

Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state,
Laws wise as Nature, and as fixed as Fate.

In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw,

Entangle justice in her net of law,

190

And right, too rigid, harden into wrong;

Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong.

Yet go! and thus o'er all the creatures sway,

Thus let the wiser make the rest obey:

And for those arts mere instinct could afford,

195

Be crowned as Monarchs, or as Gods adored."

V. Great Nature spoke; observant man obeyed; Cities were built, societies were made:

Here rose one little state; another near

Grew by like means, and joined through love or fear.
Did here the trees with ruddier burdens bend,
And there the streams in purer rills descend?
What war could ravish, commerce could bestow,
And he returned a friend, who came a foe.
Converse and love mankind might strongly draw,
When love was liberty, and Nature law.

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205

Thus states were formed; the name of King unknown,
Till common interest placed the sway in one,

'Twas Virtue only (or in arts or arms,

Diffusing blessings, or averting harms),

210

The same which in a sire the sons obeyed,

A prince the father of a people made.

215

VI. Till then, by Nature crowned, each patriarch sate, King, priest, and parent of his growing state; On him, their second Providence, they hung, Their law his eye, their oracle his tongue. He from the wondering 1 furrow called the food, Taught to command the fire, control the flood, Draw forth the monsters of the abyss profound,2 Or fetch the aërial eagle to the ground.

1 Wonder-working.

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220

24 Abyss profound," a Miltonic expression.

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