Essay on Man | Page 6

Heaven unkind to man, and
man alone?
Shall he alone, whom rational we call,
Be pleased with
nothing, if not blessed 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 microscopic 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 agonize at every pore?

Or quick effluvia darting through the brain,
Die of a rose in
aromatic pain?
If Nature thundered in his opening ears,
And
stunned 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 allayed;
What thin partitions
sense from thought divide:
And middle natures, how they long to join,

Yet never passed 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 destroyed:
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 suns run lawless through the sky;
Let ruling angels from their
spheres be hurled,
Being on being wrecked, and world on world;

Heaven's whole foundations to their centre nod,
And nature tremble
to the throne of God.
All this dread order break -- for whom? for thee?

Vile worm! -- Oh, madness! pride! impiety!
IX. What if the foot, ordained 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.
X. 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 blest 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.
ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE II.

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. His
Middle Nature; his Powers and Frailties, v.1 to 19. The Limits of his
Capacity, v.19, etc.
II. The two Principles of Man, Self-love and Reason,