but to the perfection of the universe in general. So that, If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's design, Why then a Borgia or a Catiline? On which the Examiner thus descants," These lines "have no sense but on the system of Leibnitz, which "confounds morals with physics; and in which, all that "we call pleasures, grief, contentment, inquietude, wis 66 dom, virtue, truth, error, vices, crimes, abominations, "are the inevitable consequence of a fatal chain of things as ancient as the world. But this is it which "renders the system so horrible, that all honest men must shudder at it. It is, indeed, sufficient to humble "human nature, to reflect that this was invented by a man, and that other men have adopted it*." This is, indeed, very tragical; but we have shewn above, that it hath its sense on the Platonic, not the Leibnitzian system; and besides, that the context confines us to that sense. What hath misled the Examiner is his supposing the comparison to be between the effects of two things in this sublunary world; when not only the elegancy, but the justness of it consists in its being between the effects of a thing in the universe at large, and the familiar and known effects of one in this sublunary world. For the position inforced in these lines is this, that partial evil tends to the good of the whole: Respecting Man, whatever wrong we call, May, must be right, as relative to all. 1. 51. How does the Poet inforce it? Why, if you will believe the Examiner, by illustrating the effects of partial moral evil in a particular system, by that of partial natural evil in the same system, and so leaves his position in the lurch; but we must never believe the great Poet reasons like the Logician. The way to prove his point he knew was to illustrate the effect of partial moral evil in the universe, by partial natural evil in a particular system. Whether partial moral evil tend to the good of the universe, being a question, which by reason of our ignorance of many parts of that universe, we cannot decide, but Examen de l'Essai, &c. from from known effects; the rules of argument require that it be proved by analogy, i. e. setting it by, and comparing it with a thing certain; and it is a thing certain, that partial natural evil tends to the good of our particular system. This is his argument: And thus, we see, it stands clear of Mr. De Crousaz's objection, and of Leibnitz's fatalism. After having inforced this analogical position, the Poet then indeed, in order to strengthen and support it, employs the same instance of natural evil, to shew that, even here to Man, as well as to the whole, moral evil is productive of good, by the gracious disposition of Providence, who turns it deviously from its natural tendency. Mr. Pope then adds, From pride, from pride, our very reasoning springs; Account for moral, as for natʼral things: Why charge we Heaven in those, in these acquit? In both, to reason right, is to submit. 1. 153, & seq. Our Commentator asks-" Why, then, does Mr. Pope "pretend to reason upon the matter, and rear his head so high, and decide so dogmatically, upon the most important of all subjects*?" This is indeed pleasant. Suppose Mr. De Crousaz should undertake to shew the folly of pretending to penetrate into the mysteries of revealed religion, as here Mr. Pope has done of natural, must he not employ the succours of reason? And could he conclude his reasonings with greater truth and modesty, than in the words of Mr. Pope ?-To reason right, is to submit.-But he goes on, "If you will believe "him [Mr. Pope] the sovereign perfections of the "Eternal Being have inevitably determined him to create "this Universe, because the idea of it was the most perfect of all those which represented many possible "worlds. Notwithstanding, there is nothing perfect in' "this part, which is assigned for our habitation: it swarms with imperfections; it is God who is the cause of them, and it was not in his power to contrive matters "otherwise. The Poet had not the caution to recur to "Man's abuse of his own free-will, the true source of "all our miseries, and which are agreeable to that state "of disorder in which men live by their own fault*." I will venture to say, every part of this reflection is false and calumnious. The first part of it, that the Eternal Being, according to Mr Pope, was inevitably determined, and that he had not power to contrive matters otherwise; I have already shewn to be so. It is still a more unpardonable calumny to say that Mr. Pope has thrown the cause of moral evil upon God, and had not the caution to recur to Man's abuse of his own free-will: For Mr. De Crousaz could not but see that the Poet had, in so many words, thrown the cause entirely upon that abuse, where, speaking of natural and moral Evil, he says, What makes all physical and moral Ill! There deviates Nature, and here WANDERS WILL, When he had said this, and acquitted the Supreme Cause, he then informs us what is God's agency, after natural and moral evil had been thus produced by the deviation of nature, and depravity of will; namely, that he hath so contrived, in his infinite wisdom and goodness, that good shall arise from this evil. If rightly understood, Or partial ill is universal good, Or Chance admits, or Nature lets it fall, Short and but rare, till Man improv'd it all. 1. 111, & seq. And speaking in another place of God's Providence, he says, That counterworks each folly and caprice, Ep. ii. 1. 229. What is this but bringing good out of evil? And how distant is that from being the cause of evil? After this, a philosopher should never think of writing more till he had rectified what he had already wrote so much amiss. The next passage the Examiner attacks is the following: *Commentaire, p. 94, 95. Fetter Better for us, perhaps, it might appear, And passions are the elements of life. 1. 157, & seq. Here the Examiner upbraids Mr. Pope for degrading himself so far as to write to the gross prejudices of the people. "In the corporeal nature (says he) there is no piece of matter that is perfectly simple; all are com 66 posed of small particles, called elementary; from "their mixture, proceeds a fermentation, sometimes "weak and sometimes strong, which still farther attenuates these particles: and thus agitated and divided, "they serve for the nourishment and growth of organic "bodies; to this growth it is we give the name of life. "But what have the passions in common with these " particles? Do their mixture and fermentation serve "for the nourishment of that substance which thinks, and do they constitute the life of that substance*?” Thus Mr. De Crousaz, who, as, a little before, he could not see the nature of the comparison, so here, by a more deplorable blindness, could not see that there was any comparison at all. "You, says Mr. Pope, perhaps 86 may think it would be better, that neither air nor ocean was vexed with tempests, nor that the mind was ever "discomposed by passion; but consider, that as in the "one case our material system is supported by the "strife of its elementary particles, so in the intellectual, "the passions of the mind are, as it were, the elements "of human life, i. e. actions." All here is clear, solid, and well-reasoned, and hath been considered above. What must we say then to our Examiner's wild talk of the mixture and fermentation of elementary particles of matter for the nourishment of that substance that thinks, and of its constituting the life of that substance?、 I call it the Examiner's, for, you see, it is not Mr. Pope's; and Mr. Crousaz ought to be charged with it, because it may be questioned whether it was a simple blunder, hę urging it so invidiously as to insinuate that Mr. Pope VOL. XI. Examen de l'Essai. might might probably hold the materiality of the soul. However, if it was a mistake, it was a pleasant one, and arose from the ambiguity of the word life, which in English, as a vie in French, signifies both existence and human action, and is always to have its sense determined by the context. Mr. Pope says, speaking of the brute creation, Nature to these, without profusion, kind, The proper organs, proper powers assign'd. I. 171. Mr. Crousaz observes, that" in this verse, by the term "Nature, we must necessarily understand the Author of Nature; it is a figure much in use. SPINOZA has "employed all his metaphysics to confound these two "significations*." Therefore, I suppose, Mr. Pope must not employ the word at all, though it be to vindicate it from that abuse, by distinguishing its different significations. But this we are to consider as a touch of our logician's art. It is what they call argumentum ad invidiam. The Poet, Far as Creation's ample range extends, The scale of sensual, mental powers ascends: On this the Commentator, "That place of honour, "which the Poet has refused to Man in another part of "his Epistle, he gives him here, because it serves to "embellish and perfect the gradation. At every step "Mr. Pope forgets one of those principal and most "essential rules, whichi Mr. Des Cartes lays down in his "method; that is, exactly to review what one asserts, so "that no part be found to be gratis dictum, nor the "whole repugnant to itself." This we are to understand, as said, dalis. But I shall beg leave to observe, that our logician here gives his lessons very impertinently. For, that Mr. Pope, in cailing the race of Man imperial, hath bestowed no title on him in this place, which he had denied him elsewhere. He, with Commentaire, p. 99. + Ibid. p. 108. great |