SOURCE: “The Place of Reason,” in Pope and the Context of Controversy: The Manipulation of Ideas in An Essay on Man, University of Chicago Press, 1970, pp. 74-125.

[In the essay below, White discusses Pope's idea of reason as subservient to passion for humankind and places Pope's understanding of reason within the context of prevailing eighteenth-century philosophical thought.]

In his insistence that moral and physical evil should be accounted for in the same way, Pope gives one specific demonstration of a point that he reiterates throughout the Essay on Man. Man is not a special creature, apart from the fabric of the creation, for whose benefit the entire system was constructed. He is merely a part of the whole and occupies a place and plays a role just as other creatures do. In his specific analysis of man Pope continues to emphasize this central theme. Of primary significance is his evaluation of man's reason.

It should be noted that Pope does not prove or attempt to prove that such a creature as man, with the exact characteristics possessed by man, would be abstractly necessary to any possible and excellent system. The necessity for man to exist in the present system stems from the requirement that the system be full if it is to cohere, and this is largely an a priori assertion. Given the mechanical necessity of man's existence, however, Pope shows two concerns: (1) What is, in fact, man's nature and (2) can that nature be justified by observation? The first of these concerns appears to come largely if not entirely from a controversy of long standing over whether man is predominantly a reasonable creature or primarily a self-loving, passionate creature.

Pope's most radical assertion in this area is that man is predominantly a creature of passion, not reason. In the contemporary context this assertion itself (calling up the spirits of Hobbes, Bernard Mandeville, and François La Rochefoucauld) might easily constitute an indictment of the creation, but Pope defends the creation by showing that passion or self-love must be the stronger motivating element in such a creature as man. Reason, by nature reflective and inactive, could not itself prompt matter into motion.

                    Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;
Reason's comparing balance rules the whole.
Man, but for that, no action could attend,
And, but for this, were active to no end;
Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot;
Or, meteor-like, flame lawless thro' the void,
Destroying others, by himself destroy'd.
                    Most strength the moving principle requires;
Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires.
Sedate and quiet the comparing lies,
Form'd but to check, delib'rate, and advise.
Self-love still stronger, as its objects nigh;
Reason's at distance, and in prospect lie:
That sees immediate good by present sense;
Reason, the future and the consequence.
Thicker than arguments, temptations throng,
At best more watchful this, but that more strong.
The action of the stronger to suspend
Reason still use, to Reason still attend …

(II, 59-78)

The question is not, then, whether man would not have filled his necessary link in the chain of being better if he had been predominantly reasonable. The chain demands what he is, and he is self-loving. A later chapter will deal with Pope's assurance that man's self-loving nature produces the proper moral effects, as well as the proper mechanical ones.

Although the assertion that reason is weaker than self-love is far more important than any of Pope's other individual conclusions about reason, it is supported by those individual conclusions; therefore, those conclusions are of interest to the reader because they form the foundation for the controversial assertion that reason is weaker than self-love. Pope's assertions about reason come from his intention to show that man is appropriate to his “state and place,” that he is a functioning part of a massive system. Here, as usual, there is no question of the abstract perfection of man's reason, but only the relative soundness of the combination of mental capacities that exists. To be sure, in the contemporary context Pope's demotion of reason to second in command might easily be taken as an attack on reason and the creature who possesses it in the degree described. It was often taken for granted that reason should be man's predominant characteristic, that man is the animal rationale. But Pope never attacks reason itself in the poem. In order to humble man's pride he stresses the limitations of human reason, and to vindicate God he shows that man's reason, however, limited, is what the system demands.

Early in the first epistle Pope begins an assessment of reason that is modest and conservative, for clearly he is engaged in a train of thought that is familiar to readers of the Essay on Criticism—man is in greater danger of overreaching than of falling short. Man's greatest need is for restraint and discipline, not inspiration or encouragement. In order to emphasize this train of thought Pope stresses the limitations of reason, especially as it attempts to deal with large and comprehensive problems.

          Say first, of God above, or Man below,
What can we reason, but from what we know?

(I, 17-18)

The simple assertion that we can reason only from what we know is a thoroughgoing commonplace, but even though no one would be much inclined to dispute the point, its meaning is clear only in a context where “what we know” is defined. Pope phrases the question so as to impose a limitation on man's capacities rather than recommend a method by which man can soar to new heights of brilliance, but the couplet quoted has suggested to some readers that in limiting man's reasoning to some process following only from what we know, Pope was recommending what the age called analogical reasoning.

Basic to analogical reasoning was the principle that the universe is a uniform fabric and that, as a consequence, one can know something about the whole, or about other parts, by examining whatever parts are available. One can, therefore, learn a great deal about the universe or about God, though one obviously cannot see them whole, by examining the immediate world and drawing analogies from it. This basic notion of analogy is exemplified by George Cheyne, physician and fellow of the Royal Society.

All the Integral Parts of Nature, have a beautiful Resemblance, Similitude, and Analogy to one another, and to their Almighty Original, whose Images, more or less expressive according to their several Orders and Gradations, in the Scale of Beings, they are; and they who are Masters in the noble Art of just Analogy, may from a tolerable Knowledge in any one of the Integral Parts of Nature, extend their Contemplations more securely to the whole or any other Integral Part less known.¹

Cheyne here states the principle (common to all varieties of analogical reasoning) that similarities can be assumed between what is seen and what is unseen, and, thereby, knowledge of the unseen can be satisfactorily projected. The general principle might be adapted in making descriptive statements about God, as it was by Thomas Burnett, Boyle lecturer in 1724.

… We must observe, that, as there is nothing future to God, but all things are eternally present to him; so those affections, that arise from the good, or evil, consider'd as future, such as hope, desire, or fear, cannot be ascrib'd to him, any otherwise, than in condescension to our Weakness; and they must be always understood, as spoken after the manner of Men:

But as for such of them, as relate to a present good, or evil, such as delight and joy, grief or anger; there is doubtless something in the Divine Nature, as I said, analogous to these operations in us, tho' altogether without our imperfections. …²

But an analogical process of this sort was controversial because it implied limitations unsatisfactory to two extreme points of view. It implied, on the one side, that since God and man are similar we can account for God's actions and motivations by human capacities. Burnett's final qualification is in harmony with this objection. The kind of anthropomorphizing Burnett works to avoid could lead to the hottest of issues: If we can know God in this way, what is the need of revelation? From the other extreme, the need to reason analogically could also form the basis of a more skeptical frame of mind. A writer might assert that human beings are so far from real truth that they can know only by analogy. Since God differs from men not only in degree but in kind as well, there is no way for man to know God as he is, any more, as William King puts it, than for a blind man to know the properties of light. The dangers of this point of view, especially to the rationalist divines and the deists, is that it puts God beyond the ken of man and erases all certainty from religion. The advantage of the approach is that it increases the need for revelation by its reliance on mysterious awareness.

A different sort of analogy gives at least a ray of light. Functional analogy allows one to have the cake of mystery but eat the frosting of certainty. It is based on a similarity of needs and functions rather than characteristics and operations. In order for man to make those things he manipulates do what he wants them to do, in order to produce those effects he wants to produce, he uses his understanding. God also manipulates things and makes them produce one set of effects rather than another. One might say, therefore, that God uses his understanding to achieve what he desires to achieve. But if man wished to comprehend God's understanding, he could not do so, for it is in both degree and kind beyond him. He could, however, see that God had an attribute which enabled him to produce those effects he preferred. That attribute would be analogous to man's reason or understanding because both fulfill the same function in a complex operating being. This would not mean, however, that God thinks as man thinks or that God's view of man's understanding and his own would have any similarity except that they serve the same relative purpose. There is, in this modification, not an analogy between what things are, but rather between what they do, what purpose they serve.

These two different ways of talking about analogy are the same in their assumption that an analogy exists between the known and the unknown. They differ primarily in the following. One assumes that through analogy truth has been described. The other assumes that through analogy the existence of an analogy has been established, but all that can be known is that the analogy is a true one. The actual qualities of the unknown half of the analogy cannot be apprehended. All that can be known is that analogies exist between parts because of the functions they fulfill.

This second attitude toward analogy is well exemplified by Peter Browne, bishop of Cork. In the first place, Browne admits the validity and necessity of analogical reasoning.

But since there can be no Perfection in the Creature, any otherwise than as it bears Some Resemblance or Similitude of him, who is the Fountain of it all; then all Intelligent Creatures especialy must be more or less perfect, as they bear a greater or less Semblance and Analogy with his infinite incomprehensible Perfections: And consequently all their Notions and Conceptions of the Divine Being must be more or less sublime, exalted, and exact; in Proportion to that Resemblance which their Own essential Perfections bear to his, who is the Standard of all Perfection.³

Browne advocates this position in a system based largely on the principle that “our five Senses … are … the only Source and Inlets of those Ideas, which are the intire Groundwork of all our Knowledge both Human and Divine,”⁴ and he attempts to discover what information is available to human capacities thus limited.

No, Divine Information gives us no New Faculties of Perception, but is adapted to those we Already have; nor doth it exhibit to the Immediate View of the Intellect Any, the Least glimmering Idea of things purely spiritual, intirely abstracted from all Sensation or any Dependence upon it: But it is altogether performed by the Intervention and Use of those Ideas which are Already in the Mind; first conveyed to the Imagination from the Impression of external Objects upon the Organs of Sensation; then variously Alter'd and diversify'd by the Intellect; and afterwards by its Operations of Judgment and Illation, wrought up into an endless Variety of Complex Notions and Conceptions; which takes in the whole Compass of our merely temporal and Secular Knowledge. Now, all this is transfer'd from Earth to Heaven, by way of Semblance and Analogy: So that the Ideas simple and compound; the Complex Notions and Conceptions; the Thoughts and Reasonings; the Sentiments and Apprehensions; the Imaginations, and Passions, and Affections of an Human Mind; together with the Language and Terms by which we express them, become Subservient to all the real Ends and Purposes of Revelation.⁵

The process of analogical reasoning in this way is not a bad tool so long as its limitations are realized and the conclusions reached through the process are recognized as unreal but operationally necessary.

Nothing is more evident, than that we have no Idea of God, as he is in himself; and it is for want of such an Idea, that we frame to ourselves the most excellent Conception of him we can, by putting together into one, the greatest Perfections we observe in the Creatures, and particularly in our own reasonable Nature, to stand for his Perfections. Not most grosly arguing and inferring, that God is (in Effect and Consequence) such an one as our selves, only infinitely enlarged and Improved in all our natural Powers and Faculties; but concluding, That our greatest Excellencies are the best, and aptest, and most correspondent Representations only of his incomprehensible Perfections; which infinitely transcend the most exalted of what are in any Created Beings, and are far above out of the reach of all human Imagination.⁶

Browne regards the result of analogical reasoning as valid. He distinguishes this type of reasoning from metaphorical, in which the objects have no actual similarity. Browne's point is that to know God in this way is to know him as he really is, not as he is in essence but as he is in terms of relationships that human beings can comprehend.

The necessity to accommodate mysterious concepts to the limitations of human experience was also useful for scriptural interpretation. It freed an interpreter from the literal wording and allowed an appeal to the spirit of the text. Nothing could be clearer than the Bible's adaptation of its assertions to the minds and conceptual vocabularies of men. God is spoken of as having both limbs and organs not because God has such appendages but because the human ability to perceive is capable of no other terminology.⁷

Pope, however, is rather suspicious of reasoning by analogy.

He, who thro' vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,
What vary'd being peoples ev'ry star,
May tell why Heav'n has made us as we are.
But of this frame the bearings, and the ties,
The strong connections, nice dependencies,
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul
Look'd thro'? or can a part contain the whole?

(I, 23-32)

Perhaps he is not entirely consistent with his principle, but he explicitly limits our knowledge of God to the world and scoffs at system-making that goes beyond the evidence of immediate experience. To be told that man can reason only from what he knows, then, is not of much help to one attempting to discover man's limitations, unless he is also told what man knows and how he comes to know it.

The French Cartesian, Nicholas Malebranche, for example, expounds on the evils and dangers of the combination of the senses and liberty (the latter serving much the same offices Pope assigns to reason), but he argues that we can reason only from what we know.

Neither must we puzzle our Heads with enquiring whether there are in the Bodies about us some other Qualities, besides those of which we have clear Ideas; for we must only reason upon our Ideas; and if there be any thing of which we have no clear, distinct and particular Idea, we shall never know it, nor argue from it with any Certainty: Whereas, perhaps, by reasoning upon our Ideas, we may follow Nature, and perhaps discover that she is not so hidden as is commonly imagin'd.⁸

However, within Malebranche's whole system, what we know is ideas from which we cannot withhold assent without an inner reproof, and these ideas are communications from God, which the understanding receives passively: “The Understanding acts not at all, but only receives Light, or the Ideas of Things, through its necessary Union with Him who comprehends all beings in an intelligible manner. …”⁹

On the other hand, to Peter Browne, who also argues that we must reason from what we know, what we know is “outward appearances and sensible effects,” and he argues that we do not need to know more (adding his kind of analogical reasoning to this base).

… we are intirely in the dark as to the inward Structure and Composition of the minute Particles of all Bodies; and can with no degree of Certainty judge or determine any thing concerning them, but from their outward Appearances and sensible Effects. … And if we had Sagacity and Acuteness of Sense enough to penetrate into the very Intimate Essences of Things, and into the exact Configuration of the Minutest Parts of Matter, it would perhaps answer no other end but that of useless Speculation and Amusement.¹⁰

Browne consistently commits himself to the position that our only source of ideas is the senses (though reason has a capacity for rearranging and modifying the sensations).¹¹ Browne and Malebranche present two extremes, but reasoning from what we know still represents no very clear limitation, because from the wide variety of uses even within those extremes the content of what men are supposed to know was subject to a confusing variety of assumption or interpretation.¹²

Beyond this too general restriction to “what we know,” Pope's restrictions on reason stem largely from two sources, though the dividing line between them is not always readily apparent. Part of the time man is exhorted to restrain himself within clear limits because he cannot go beyond them anyway. Part of the time restraint is recommended because even if man were to go beyond self-imposed limits he would gain no palpable reward by doing so. Though at times the argument may sound as if man actually threatens the structure of the creation by his striving, no stretch of the imagination can suggest the actuality of such a threat. The issue must be man's peace of mind. Man is counseled to restrain himself within just boundaries for three reasons: (1) these boundaries are natural and he cannot go beyond them; (2) they would be of no practical value to him if he were able to surpass them; (3) his real happiness lies within them.

If Pope's limitation of man's reasoning material to “what we know” is, by itself, no very clear guide, the reader may want to discover more precisely what Pope thinks the boundaries of human knowledge to be.

                    Say first, of God above, or Man below,
What can we reason, but from what we know?
Of Man what see we, but his station here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?
Thro' worlds unnumber'd tho' the God be known,
'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.

(I, 17-22)

This quotation appears to limit what we know to what is available to our direct perception; of particular importance, we cannot know what is too big for us to see. Man cannot fathom God because a part cannot contain the whole of which it is a part. But to Pope and his contemporaries, in large number, this geometrical observation did not make knowledge of the world so hopeless of attainment as the attempt to make a geometrical part contain its whole would be for a geometrician. The writers who use the argument, and it was quite commonplace, do not usually find themselves at a loss for extensive knowledge of God. The argument characteristically leaves open an area for retreat to faith or submission. Many of Pope's contemporaries were able to argue with considerable assurance on a priori grounds and still seek shelter in comprehensive ignorance, should a conflicting piece of evidence arise. The combination of faith and reason made such difficulties inevitable when an exclusive reliance on either presumably would not have.¹³

What these limitations on reason, expressed in broad and general terms, seem to push toward is a limitation of human knowledge to sense experience. Locke had apparently carried the field with his assertion that the senses set up the boundaries of human knowledge, but the idea was common before the publication of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Pope's limitation of knowledge to what can be seen in our world has the effect of denying that ingenious human speculation can be the foundation of certainty. Human beings know little because the material for knowing much is not available to them, and only their pride makes them think they know more. Pope does limit knowledge to the senses. He scoffs at the Platonists for going beyond the senses.

Go, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere,
To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;
Or tread the mazy round his follow'rs trod,
And quitting sense call imitating God. …

(II, 23-26)

To be sure sense in this passage is ambiguous, but one of its meanings must be the senses. A few lines later, when Pope attacks those who regard the passions (or self-love) as conflicting, he asserts the interdependence of sense and reason.

          Let subtle schoolmen teach these friends to fight,
More studious to divide than to unite,
And Grace and Virtue, Sense and Reason split,
With all the rash dexterity of Wit:
Wits, just like fools, at war about a Name,
Have full as oft no meaning, or the same.

(II, 81-86)

With the senses as the boundaries of “what we know” the reader is somewhat closer to the crux of Pope's analysis of reason, but Pope gives further clarification of how we know what we know by describing certain guides which reason has available to it within the whole system. These guides are part of the system and mirror the design of its working. For reason does not act independently of experience. Pope tells reason to observe the operation of the world in order to be enlightened. Because of the difficulty of knowing the whole (and certainty about anything would demand such knowledge) Pope prescribes a self-imposed drawing-in of man's speculations to man himself and away from the world at large. Man's primary active concern is with himself, though his primary passive and submissive concern may be with God.

          The bliss of Man (could Pride that blessing find)
Is not to act or think beyond mankind. …

(I, 189-90)

Actually there are two ideas at work in this line of reasoning. First there is the observed weakness and limitation of man's knowledge, accompanied by the realization that imagination and complicated ratiocination can make man think that he has considerably extended the boundaries of what he knows. But part of what man is, is this capacity to deceive himself. The capacity is harmful only when prideful self-assessment leads man to conclude that what he imagines himself to be is what he actually is or even what he should be, were everything right with the world. If, however, what man possesses in the way of characteristics is enough, then one must conclude that “the proper study of mankind is man” because the only area of study that is either useful or realistically available to man is himself. Pope singles out scientific investigation as an area where mistaken ideas are pursued, and he sets up the same self-imposed discipline. The scientists should stay within the limits of the useful.

          Trace Science then, with Modesty thy guide;
First strip off all her equipage of Pride,
Deduct what is but Vanity, or Dress,
Or Learning's Luxury, or Idleness;
Or tricks to shew the stretch of human brain,
Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain:
Expunge the whole, or lop th' excrescent parts
Of all, our Vices have created Arts:
Then see how little the remaining sum,
Which serv'd the past, and must the times to come!

(II, 43-52)

There was wide agreement, in reaction to the supposedly extravagant expectations of scientists from Bacon on, that self-imposed limits were urgently necessary in scientific investigation.¹⁴

John Norris, the enthusiastic English supporter of Malebranche, warns that man should not waste his time on speculation. His view is based on the idea that man does not have time to waste on such matters, that he should apply his time to saving his soul.

And so Learning and Knowledge are excellent things, and such as would deserve my Study, and my Time, had I any to spare, and were more at leisure; but not certainly when I have so great an Interest as that of my Final State depending upon the good use of it. My Business now is not to be Learned, but to be Good.¹⁵

Malebranche's own emphasis is on the illusory quality of what man can learn through extended intellectual inquiry, though his basic point is that science should be traced modestly.

But these Great Genius's, who pierce into the most Mysterious Secrets of Nature, who lift themselves in Opinion as high as Heaven, and descend to the bottom of the Abyss, ought to remember what they are. These great Objects, it may be, do but dazle them. The Mind must needs depart out of it self, to compass so many things; and this it can't do without scattering its Force.

Men came not into the World to be Astronomers, or Chymists, to spend their whole Life at the end of a Telescope. … What are they the wiser or happier for all this? …

Astronomy Chymistry, and most of the other Sciences, may be look'd on as proper Divertisements for a Gentleman. But Men should never be enamour'd with their Gayety, nor prefer them before the Science of Humane Nature. … The Mind must pronounce of all things, according to its Internal Light, without harkening to the false and confus'd Verdict of its Senses and Imagination; and whilst it examines all Humane Sciences by the Pure Light of Truth, which enlightens it, we doubt not to affirm it will disesteem most of them, and set a greater Price on that which teaches us to know our selves, than on all the other put together.¹⁶

This quotation from Malebranche includes most of Pope's restrictions on the desirability of keeping scientific investigation within bounds, and his hint that these men “ought to remember what they are” begins to suggest Pope's emphasis. That is, Pope aims at pride rather than the falsity of what might be discovered or the necessity to use the available time for more important purposes. Both conclude, however, that the proper study of mankind is man.

Pope's main thought is that men strive beyond themselves. In striving beyond themselves, they assume that they are greater and more important than they are (“Men would be angels, angels would be Gods”), and it is on this false assumption of their own importance that they base their indictment of God: he has not given them capacities suitable to their misconception of themselves. When they argue with providence in this manner, men cause themselves bitterness and frustration; therefore, Pope warns man to submit to his natural limitations.

The most singular and individualized attitudes toward reason to be found in the Essay on Man are not directed toward the thinking and reasoning processes. Little if anything is said about how to reason, except for occasional assertions about logical propriety. Common sense and common forms apparently rule the process. Reason, as Pope usually uses the word, is virtually personified. When the word is thus used, it means something like the capacity to reason, or perhaps even consciousness of one's own existence and mental processes. (Twentieth-century students will notice that two hundred years have done little if anything for the precision of the word, since the latest dictionaries give a multiplicity of definitions quite similar to Pope's own.) In Pope's system, just as self-love is a unified motivation of which each individual passion is a single mode of expression, so reason is a vague sort of consciousness; and each act of reasoning is one of its modes. Apparently some of what reason accomplishes is not, strictly speaking, conscious, for Pope says that reason performs for man the functions that instinct performs for beasts, and is “all these powers in one.” It could be, of course, that Pope was ready to defend the position that all human activity is guided by specifically conscious observation, and when he counsels man to learn from the beasts, he gives examples of instinctual action in the beasts which man should observe and profit from (III, 170-83).

We probably cannot limit Pope's use of the word reason as unequivocally as we might like to, but we should be aware that he does mean by the term both a large function that includes most of consciousness and the processes of speculation by which problems are worked out. What is important to Pope's system is that reason (thought of in either of these ways) is not the predominant characteristic of man; it is not, as to many of his contemporaries it would have been, the man. “Two principles in human nature reign, / Self-love to urge, reason to restrain.” Although two principles reign in man, they do not reign equally, and Pope refers to reason as a “weak queen.” When he switches metaphors, reason is “the card” by which the ship of man is guided as it is propelled by the winds of passion. The card, however, is a compass, a tool that man uses in order to distinguish and attain goals, goals urged primarily by self-love. It is with the comprehensive, personified functioning of reason rather than with the methods of ratiocination that Pope is primarily concerned.

The most important restrictions that he places on reason are: (1) that it is weak—specifically, weaker than self-love and the passions; (2) that it is essentially passive. It is a comparing power. The whole idea that what reason does is to compare is based on the assumption that reason receives sense impressions which represent reality to it (though reason's reality need not be ultimate or metaphysical reality, but only what helps the self to know or to cope with the world in which it lives). Reason's responsibility is to take the conscious perceptions which it receives and inform the self of their qualities. In order to do this it can only use material of which it becomes aware from outside, rather than originate its own reality. In other words, reason, when thought of in these terms, is a faculty for manipulating material; yet even within this conception, there is still room for controversy concerning the source of the impressions reason receives.

Pope's contemporaries were apparently agreed that one of the main functions of reason was to compare the objects of perception. There was less agreement, however, on what reason used for making its comparisons. Two quite different views were represented by the works by Malebranche and Locke already cited. Malebranche says that we compare “particular goods with the idea we have of Sovereign Goods, or with other particular goods,” but to Locke the comparison of the more abstract “idea of Sovereign Goods” is omitted in favor of the comparison of one idea to another. The real difference here is that to Locke the material used in reasoning originates exclusively in sense experience, and to Malebranche the foundation of true knowledge is “seeing things in God,” or a direct experience of truth through God, to which sense experience is a detriment. Peter Browne, in this particular, is a Lockean.¹⁷

… It appears the Ideas of Sensation are the only subject matter which the Mind hath to work upon, provided by God and Nature for the exercise of all its Powers and Faculties; and since they are the foundation and rough materials of all our most Abstracted Knowledge; out of which each Man raises a superstructure according to the different Turn of those Organs which are more immediately subservient to the Operations of the pure Intellect … it will be convenient to say something concerning the several Properties of those Ideas.¹⁸

He then emphasizes his conviction that the reasoning process has no other materials with which to build, and also gives the view that reason is a manipulator rather than an originator.

… The Soul, before there is some Impression of outward Objects upon the Senses, is a Still unactive Principle, unable to exert itself in any degree; it cannot form one Thought nor have the least consciousness even of its own Being.¹⁹

On the other hand, Malebranche agrees generally that reason is passive, but he lays stress upon the necessity to resist the information which is given to man by the senses.

Truths are found out, and all Sciences learn'd merely by the Attention of the Mind … 'tis our Duty constantly to withstand the Opposition the Body makes against the Mind; and to accustom our selves by degrees to disbelieve the Reports our Senses make concerning all circumambient Bodies, which they always represent, as worthy of our Application and Esteem, because we must never make Sensible things the Object of our Thoughts, or the Subject of our Employment.²⁰

Malebranche's position is the result of a split between mind and body, and he regards the split as basic to any consideration of man. The senses are for the purpose of serving the body in its motive of self-preservation, but they are not for discovering truth.

For we have several ways demonstrated, that our Senses, Imagination, and Passions, are absolutely useless to the Discovery of Truth and Happiness; that on the contrary, they dazle and seduce us on all occasions; and in general, that all the Notices the Mind receives through the Body, or by Means of some Motions excited in the Body, are all false and confus'd, with reference to the Objects represented by them; though they are extremely useful to the Preservation of the Body, and the Goods that are related to it.²¹

Truth, on the other hand, is to be found in “pure ideas of the mind.”

But when a Man judges of things but by the pure Ideas of the Mind, carefully avoids the confus'd Noise of the Creatures, and retiring into himself, hears his Sovereign Teacher in the calm Silence of the Senses and Passions, he cannot possibly fall into Errour.²²

Peter Browne stands with Locke in denying any such capacity of the human mind or spirit to operate independent of the senses. Though his book was published in 1728, he at least considered the Malebranchian hypothesis to have some currency.

Thinking is by a general Mistake attributed to the Pure Spirit, exclusively of those material Organs without which it cannot exert one Thought; and in a necessary Conjunction with which, it performs all its Operations.²³

Browne and Malebranche agree on the passivity of reason, and they agree that one of reason's most important functions is to compare, but they give two distinct possibilities regarding what reason is passive toward as it experiences things and how reason is made aware of those bits of experience it can regard as truth or reality. Pope is apparently quite near Browne's choice.

It is not, however, with the conflict between reason and the senses that Pope's most important conclusions regarding reason are concerned. The more important issue has to do with reason's relationship to the passions, and Pope concludes that reason, in the process of serving the whole creature, is subservient to self-love. Here he is reacting to a massive tradition that regarded man as primarily reasonable and asserted as self-evident the proposition that reason must ever predominate in a creature so constructed. Pope turns the idea around and asserts self-love to be predominant and reason to be the tool which self-love uses in order to attain its ends. The strength of reason is a separable issue, and most of what is important in the age's disputes over reason's capacity to guide men properly can be found in various controversies over the sufficiency of natural religion for man's needs.

The pervading issue in that controversy was the relationship between faith and reason in the acceptance of religious doctrines. That, at any rate, was the primary concern during most of the seventeenth century. Pope was not (in the Essay on Man) concerned with the acceptance of religious doctrines, however; and while the controversy between the Anglican rationalists and their Catholic or Puritan adversaries will contribute characteristic ideas describing the limits of reason, an even more important group of works is to be found in the later discussion of this problem carried on between Anglican rationalists and that group of writers which the age often vaguely called deists.

When the Anglican rationalists were arguing with the Catholics and Puritans, all three groups agreed that the proper belief for humanity was something called Christianity, but all did not agree on the details of that belief or the bases upon which it was established. When the Anglican rationalists argued with the atheists they had only to convince them of the existence of God and the reasonableness of the Christian revelation. The deists accepted the existence of God and the desirability of a religion, but they questioned institutional Christianity's claim to be the necessary religion. They held natural religion (and therefore reason) to be a sufficient guide to action on earth. Here we can see the groundwork for a significant split in the direction of argument. Much of the time, in the controversy over natural religion, the issue is how men are to be motivated to lead virtuous lives. Is revelation necessary on this earth to make men moral, or can a moral mode of life be arrived at by the use of reason alone? There is, of course, another important question available, but it really plays no role in a system of natural religion that stays within its prescribed limitations. How are men to arrive at salvation?

Pope is satisfied with neither the skeptic's side nor the rationalist's pride; instead of isolating reason, he combines it with another principle called self-love. The division is not between soul and body, for reason and self-love are both parts of the mind. They are not conflicting or antagonistic elements since they are right for such a creature as man in the proportions Pope describes:

          Two Principles in human nature reign;
Self-love, to urge, and Reason, to restrain;
Nor this a good, nor that a bad we call,
Each works its end, to move or govern all:
And to their proper operation still,
Ascribe all Good; to their improper, Ill.

(II, 53-58)

In each case Pope elected to use an ambiguous term for his reigning principle. The ambiguity of reason as it refers to some general capacity as well as to the processes of reasoning has been noted. Self-love was, to Pope's contemporaries, even more ambiguous. Although the term could sometimes be taken to mean selfishness, it often meant little more than self-preservation, and when this was its meaning, the drive was agreed to be necessary to man's nature. Most important, by the second decade of the eighteenth century an earlier negative reaction to the concept of self-love had been overcome, and there was wide agreement that self-love was good or bad depending on its strength and the degree to which it was “enlightened.” Pope takes the word thus disarmed and rearms it by asserting it to be stronger than reason in man's constitution, but he disarms it yet again by making strong self-love and weaker reason the proper combination for man as he is, in the world he inhabits.

The immediate concern of the present discussion is the way in which reason operates in its combination with predominant self-love.

          Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;
Reason's comparing balance rules the whole.
Man, but for that, no action could attend,
And, but for this, were active to no end;
Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot;
Or, meteor-like, flame lawless thro' the void,
Destroying others, by himself destroy'd.
          Most strength the moving principle requires;
Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires.
Sedate and quiet the comparing lies,
Form'd but to check, delib'rate, and advise.
Self-love still stronger, as its objects nigh;
Reason's at distance, and in prospect lie:
That sees immediate good by present sense;
Reason, the future and the consequence.
Thicker than arguments, temptations throng,
At best more watchful this, but that more strong.
The action of the stronger to suspend
Reason still use, to Reason still attend:
Attention, habit and experience gains,
Each strengthens Reason, and Self-love restrains.

(II, 59-80)

Reason's most essential responsibility is to restrain, that is, to curb the impetuosity of self-love so that those objects and actions may be avoided which seem good at first glance but are not finally desirable. In other words, it compares one thing with others. Reason in this way keeps self-love on a track that will produce a desired final or total effect, whereas self-love, if left alone, would go off in all directions and never accomplish anything. In the lines “Reason's comparing balance rules the whole” and “Sedate and quiet the comparing lies,” Pope gives the double attitude in which one must see reason's activity of comparing. Reason, as it compares, is finally what regulates the movement of the whole creature; but it does its work in a passive rather than an active way.

One of Pope's most important images in this regard has been mentioned. Reason regulates man as a map or a compass that the self makes use of, rather than as a pilot who regulates a ship and himself determines its direction. Nautical tools do not determine the destination of the vessel but only the direction in which the ship must sail in order to attain the destination. In addition to comparing, reason checks, deliberates, and advises. All of these activities stress the certain quality Pope gives to reason, the quality of dealing with the material of its experience rather than inventing or originating ideas.

The general observation that reason is weak, and specifically that it is weaker than self-love, leaves the reader with the necessity of finding Pope's solution to a paradox. His solution is to adjust the system so that reason, with the qualities and limitations he describes, will be sufficient. For Pope the sufficiency is accomplished by giving reason aid from within the system or, one might better say, by cautioning reason to act within its proper sphere. Reason does not produce reality; it uses it. It acts on and manipulates the evidence of its surroundings.

In order to put reason in its proper perspective, Pope compares it with instinct. Instinct provides beasts with the proper motivations to fulfill their needs, and reason does the same service for man.

How Instinct varies in the grov'ling swine,
Compar'd, half-reas'ning elephant, with thine:
'Twixt that, and Reason, what a nice barrier;
For ever sep'rate, yet for ever near!
Remembrance and Reflection how ally'd;
What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide. …

(I, 221-26)

Pope has in these lines suggested that memory is an essential characteristic of reason, and when memory is coupled with the comparing power, the two together constitute reason's distinctive mode of operation. Reason is able to compare the contents of the memory, and this gives it an advantage over the instinct of brute creation. The advantage is a relative one, for finally Pope asserts that reason and instinct are equal, that is, equal in the sense that each set of capacities does what it is intended to do for the needs of the creature (“Is not thy Reason all these pow'rs in one?” [I, 232]). Pope's most complete comparison of man's conscious capacities with those of beasts puts the emphasis on the advantages of instinct; but if one remembers that his purpose here, as elsewhere, is to humble pride, this emphasis is justified. Pope is reacting to the assurance voiced by prideful man that the universe and all the creatures in it are for man's benefit. The most important conclusion, however, is that reason and instinct are equally satisfactory to the creatures which possess them.

          Whether with Reason, or with Instinct blest,
Know, all enjoy that pow'r which suits them best;
To bliss alike by that direction tend,
And find the means proportion'd to their end.
Say, where full instinct is th'unerring guide,
What Pope or Council can they need beside?
Reason, however able, cool at best,
Cares not for service, or but serves when prest,
Stays 'till we call, and then not often near;
But honest Instinct comes a volunteer;
Sure never to o'er-shoot, but just to hit,
While still too wide or short is human Wit;
Sure by quick Nature happiness to gain,
Which heavier Reason labours 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 pow'rs
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.

(II, 79-98)

The ambiguity of the case Pope presents in these lines also stands in some need of resolution. The directness and constancy with which instinct operates are in sufficient contrast with the laboriousness and fallibility of reason to make Pope's assurance that reason is right for the species possessing it rather paradoxical. The first question that would be likely to arise is, would not reason be a liability since it leaves man open to error, as instinct would not do? That question Pope does not answer because (presumably) the a priori argument from a necessarily full creation makes the question redundant. There is a relevant question remaining, however, and that is, how does a posteriori observation support our confidence in the a priori assertion that reason is what it should be? The question can only be answered by placing reason in its own context of operation. Of major importance would be a demonstration of the way or ways in which reason is supported by its surroundings so that it is aided in its tasks by material derived from the observation of its environment. That is to say, reason is not isolated and exposed to a hostile atmosphere, which would indeed make it of questionable value to man, but instead it has only to use the information provided it by nature (that is, to follow nature) in order to arrive at its proper end. Of the guides offered to reason by nature, perhaps the most basic is the experience of pleasure and pain.

GUIDES TO REASON: PLEASURE AND PAIN

The whole creature (or reason and self-love specifically) is motivated by the desire to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. Reason, therefore, is not required to decide whether to follow pleasure or pain Its task is, rather, to determine what actions or objects will provide pleasure and which will, in the event, be painful; for self-love reacts to appearances and has no ability to predict the distant outcome of an action. There is no area in which reason would be led to resist pleasure or adopt a painful course. There is only the true determination of which actions will produce which results.

Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood,
Our greatest evil, or our greatest good.

(II, 91-92)

It is, again, not the simple assertion that men are motivated by pleasure and pain that could put Pope's system into one school of thought or another. One needs to know what variety of reactions Pope's contemporaries had to the theory that men are motivated in this way. In effect there is little difference between the assertion that men are motivated by pleasure and pain rather than abstract principles and the assertion that they are motivated entirely by self-love. (Contemporaries, indeed, frequently regarded the two assertions as equal.) Nevertheless, there is a clear spectrum of conclusions to be drawn from the assertion that men are motivated by pleasure and pain rather than abstract truth or categorical morality. At one extreme one might cite Benjamin Franklin's Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain, published in London in 1724. Franklin concludes that because men are motivated entirely by principles of pleasure and pain there is no such thing as virtuous action.

For since Freedom from Uneasiness is the End of all our Actions, how is it possible for us to do any Thing disinterested?—How can any Action be meritorious of Praise or Dispraise, Reward or Punishment, when the natural Principle of Self-Love is the only and the irresistible Motive to it?²⁴

John Clarke of Hull uses the conviction that men are motivated entirely by pleasure and pain, which is to say self-love, to assert that morality is founded upon the rewards and punishments of a future state, since being truly moral inevitably involves painful and self-abnegating choices in this world. Without the expectation of a future state, human beings, motivated by pleasure and pain, could not possibly be induced to act contrary to present advantage.²⁵

More commonly, the acknowledgement of the decisive sway of pleasure and pain was used to advance less extreme positions; however, these two somewhat radical assertions by Franklin and Clarke serve most clearly to demonstrate the nature of Pope's adaptation. Pope is closer to Clarke's position than he is to Franklin's, but the differences between Pope and Clarke are significant. Probably the only point which need be considered at length is Clarke's use of the urgent motivation toward pleasure and away from pain to support the necessity of a system of rewards and punishments to secure morality. Pope uses the idea in a benevolent system in which Clarke's need for something to mediate between self-love and social love when the two are in conflict does not apply because they never ultimately conflict. Clarke supports his argument by the necessity to protect from above the good of the whole creation, but Pope envisages a whole in which a system of compensations is at work that relieves God of the necessity to intervene in order to protect his creation.

The whole creation, as Pope describes it, is one in which self-love cannot be destructive, at least to the whole. Here one should remember that such motivations as self-love and pleasure and pain might be taken as supportive to a system rather than basic to it. Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shafesbury, is an important example of an author who presents another kind of system. He admits that rewards and punishments or the satisfaction of self-love may indeed by their additional support help a man to keep in the paths of virtue, but if such considerations are one's sole motivation, or the primary one, then there is no virtue in the case. To Pope, pleasure and pain are primary because there is in the system no conflict between them and virtue if the whole scheme can be seen. Shaftesbury, too, agrees that self-love and social love are in fact the same, but to him the fact is supportive to his insistence that the motivation to an action must come from social love if the action is to be called virtuous. At this point Pope and Shaftesbury part company, for Pope is explicit that “vice or virtue, self directs it still.” On this subject Pope and John Clarke of Hull differ only at the point of Clarke's assurance that the next world is necessary to right the wrongs of this one, for the explicit purpose of much of Pope's point of view is to deny that very notion and to assert that this world needs no vindication through the medium of another.

To some extent the conclusion reached in a system acknowledging the dominant sway of pleasure and pain in human motivation depends on the definition of virtue. The assumption in the passage from Franklin quoted above is that nothing motivated by self-love can be called virtue (an assumption Franklin shares with Shaftesbury and Mandeville), and, since everything is motivated by self-love, virtue does not exist (a conclusion he shares with Mandeville). John Clarke agrees that everything is motivated by self-love, but he denies that the motivation destroys virtue. Virtue is doing what God commands, whether it is done to avoid a threat or not. Pope, taking the notion even further, leaves out the compliance with the will of God as a separate consideration. In Pope's system the creature will certainly obey the will of God (that is, the general will of God), but the creature may not know that it is doing so. Self-love, to Pope, is the will of God, but the motivation is not followed because the creature is conscious that God's will moves him; the motivation is followed for its own sake. Action thus motivated is not necessarily opposed to virtue, for nothing that is the will of God is of itself opposed to virtue. A misuse of a condition created by God might be vicious. Man, then, by his misuses, is the cause of vice, but God, by his superbly balanced system, is the cause of virtue.

GUIDES TO REASON: CONSCIENCE

Even with the assurance that reason may turn the bias of man's inclinations “to good from ill,” and with the suggestion that pleasure and pain (if rightly understood) will be a guide to good, Pope is sensible of the difficulty of telling good from evil in a world where they are closely intertwined. After working himself into the paradoxical conclusion that vice and virtue are so closely interwoven they can hardly be distinguished (II, 175-202), and adding the warning that reason is capable of rationalization in favor of the more immediately attractive of two forces, Pope finally has to ask and answer the difficult question:

          This light and darkness in our chaos join'd,
What shall divide? The God within the mind.

(II, 203-4)

A few lines later he refers the same responsibility of telling the difference between black and white to “your own heart,” and he is apparently referring to the same faculty in both cases. The reader needs to know what human attribute Pope intends by the words “the God within the mind” and “your own heart.” The “God within the mind” has been identified as reason (see [Maynard Mack, ed., An Essay on Man, by Alexander Pope], p. xxxviii), but it would probably be safer to give the phrase a less rational signification; Pope has certainly suggested that reason cannot be depended upon to divide the light and darkness. He has done this by stressing reason's weakness and by presenting the enigma in the first place, since it is surely reason that sees and is confused by the nearness of the two.

There is always a danger in giving this sort of metaphor a one-word solution, but Pope has given a fair clue to the meaning of “the God within the mind” by later using the words “ask your own heart.” In the latter case he appears to be thinking about some form of conscience and, if this is the case, one can assume that “the God within the mind” is the same thing. In support of this interpretation, “the God within the mind” is so identified in the notes to the 1743 edition of the poem. It is possible that the note represents William Warburton's rather than Pope's interpretation and is therefore unreliable, but they did work on the edition together, and it seems unlikely that Pope would have passed on an incorrect interpretation when he had only to delete it. The poem itself, however, is the final authority, and the reliance on conscience, or something like it is more consistent with Pope's evaluation of reason as a “weak queen.”

Pope is reflecting much of the thinking of his time when he assumes that there is some kind of natural capacity for telling good from bad.²⁶ In order to determine the spectrum of thought on the subject of conscience, one may recall John Locke's objection to innate conscience that has already been cited. Locke was seconded by, among others, William Wollaston, gentleman-philosopher and author of the popular Religion of Nature Delineated.

They, who contenting themselves with superficial and transient views, deduce the difference between good and evil from the common sense of mankind, and certain principles that are born with us, put the matter upon a very infirm foot. For it is much to be suspected there are no such innate maxims as they pretend, but that the impressions of education are mistaken for them. …²⁷

Malebranche gives credit to the natural presence of such a guidance in “our own breast,” but he also admits its lack of effect because of a corrupted nature. The actual presence of some such inner guidance is attested by “the father of English deism,” Edward Herbert, Baron Herbert (“Herbert of Cherbury”).

But the mark by which we distinguish good from evil is wholly the gift of nature; for it is not from the external world that we learn what we ought to follow, what we ought to avoid. Such knowledge is within ourselves; and this, in spite of what the authors say, is our own, and free, so that it cannot be subject to any limitation. Let us not continue to talk of a clean sheet, following the ancient school; for we can refer to the testimony of the inner feelings in due conformity, and it is therefore unnecessary to pay attention to these futile controversies.²⁸

Pope never makes perfectly clear what he conceives this inner voice to be or how he conceives it to work, but the range of orthodoxy encompassed by the idea is wide (see note 26), from Herbert and Shaftesbury at the one end to Malebranche and Butler at the other. In Pope's poem there is, however, a crucial distinction: the difference between knowing what is good and being urged to do it. Pope's motivation toward good by principles of self-love (in adaptation of the tradition of Mandeville, Hobbes, and La Rochefoucauld) and the system where such motivation serves the best principles are things quite different from any of the systems ranging from Herbert and Shaftesbury to Butler. Man's ability to recognize good and evil intuitively, or in any other way, is irrelevant unless there is some guarantee that he will do what he perceives to be good. (See below. …)

GUIDES TO REASON: NATURE

The additional guide available to reason is nature. It can be considered as a separate guide and, of course, is also a broader term including the other guides within the system. Pope's use of the term nature has long been recognized as ambiguous; however, it seems realistic to notice that much of the time he uses the word as a rather simple personification of an abstraction. The abstraction is in many cases all of the characteristics and faculties born in the creature, including individual drives and differences as well as those common to the species. For example, the reader is told that each individual has a different set of senses, some stronger than others, and his interest or compulsion is directed by the one strongest sense.

Hence diff'rent Passions more or less inflame,
As strong or weak, the organs of the frame. …

(II, 129-30)

A man receives these senses which dictate his ruling passion at birth, and the reader is told that “Nature [is] its mother.” Seldom, if ever, does Pope mean by nature the physical material of the world. Nature is active and purposive. It appears to be an impulse within matter that is responsible for growth and direction, perhaps somewhat akin to the so-called vegetative soul commonly acknowledged by his contemporaries.²⁹

Here, as elsewhere, emphasis should be placed on Pope's assertion that reason's primary function is to restrain the creature so that it will not destroy itself unawares. Therefore, the aids to reason in Pope's system are primarily boundaries or limitations to guide the restraining processes. Certainly Pope's use of nature as a guide to reason (“Suffice that Reason keep to Nature's road,” and “Nature's road must ever be preferred”) does not escape the equivocal use of the term common during the period, or, indeed, for centuries before.³⁰ It is also worthwhile to notice that he personifies a force rather than an object.

When Pope gives to reason the responsibility to restrain the creature, he means that reason must discover the creature's natural limits and demonstrate the urgency of operating within them.

The bliss of Man (could Pride that blessing find)
Is not to act or think beyond mankind. …

(I, 189-90)

Pope's insistence that man must not try to be more—or less—than a man, the assurance that he must stay within his nature, requires that, within his system, some clear indication is available to man, and to his reason, of what his nature is; for the warning itself implies that man can think or act beyond mankind, even though he may not succeed in making himself happy by doing so. One evident way in which reason can determine the nature and limits of man is to observe what is pleasurable and painful to him.

Suffice that Reason keep to Nature's road,
Subject, compound them, follow her and God.
Love, Hope, and Joy, fair pleasure's smiling train,
Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of pain;
These mix'd with art, and to due bounds confin'd,
Make and maintain the balance of the mind:
The lights and shades, whose well accorded strife
Gives all the strength and colour of our life.

(II, 115-22)

Nature is responsible for all of man's most powerful and compelling motives, and for this reason alone it would be necessary to heed her advice. Nature gives each man his ruling passion, and nature gives “the virtue nearest to our vice ally'd” (II, 196). Nature gives the feeling of sympathy which moves man to help the creatures around him, and it also gives the individual differences which keep the whole creation functioning (“All Nature's diff'rence keeps all Nature's peace” (IV, 56). Finally nature gives man the hope and faith which make his position bearable, and, since nature gives nothing in vain, the hope will prove justified.

He sees, why Nature plants in Man alone
Hope of known bliss, and Faith in bliss unknown:
(Nature, whose dictates to no other kind
Are giv'n in vain, but what they seek they find). …

(IV, 345-48)

The general idea that reason can examine nature to discover how man should act, or that truth can be discovered in nature, was capable of a considerable range of use.³¹ The most important distinction has been discussed with Pope's reference to conscience as “the God within the mind.” For purposes of interpretation, nature and “the God within the mind” need not be considered as separate counsels; though Pope does not specifically relate them, this inner light is certain to be a part of nature since it represents a natural attribute of the individual. Pope would again, then, be referring to the presence in man of certain attitudes which come, at least loosely, under the heading of innate capacities.³² Nevertheless, there is some degree to which Pope is recommending nature not as human nature but as an operating and normative force outside of man.

Writers contemporary with Pope recommended nature as a source of guidance from at least two important bases. To one group, nature put into man affections for what is good or benevolent. Both Shaftesbury and Butler rely in different ways and to different degrees on this natural capacity. At an extreme, this position would counsel man to do what is natural to him, although finding out what is natural might be no easy task after the damages of education and the corruptions of society. Pope, of course, refers even the natural sympathy with fellow creatures to man's “learned hunger” so that he never abandons the guidance of self-love to rely on a benevolence abstracted from personal gratification.

To other writers a recommendation of nature as a source of guidance was based on the assurance that real and eternal differences of things (the basis of all moral action) existed in nature. Reason need only consult the truths of the universe to discover what is to be done. What is to be done is what is true. This position undoubtedly involves some substantial ability to reason abstractly in order to arrive at the truths lying in nature's storehouse; but more than anything else, it depends on the conviction that the truth, if known, will attract man and motivate him.

Since Pope relies on a difference between good and bad as plain as black and white, and since man reacts with hate to the mien of vice upon first seeing, Wollaston's Religion of Nature Delineated will again provide a useful comparison. Wollaston says that man must act in accord with the truth that is to be found in the nature of things.

Therefore nothing can interfere with any proposition that is true, but it must likewise interfere with nature (the nature of the relation, and the natures of the things themselves too), and consequently be unnatural, or wrong in nature. So very much are those gentlemen mistaken, who by following nature mean only complying with their bodily inclinations, tho in opposition to truth, or at least without any regard to it. Truth is but a conformity to nature: and to follow nature cannot be to combat truth.³³

Wollaston admits the difficulty of finding real truth, but essential to his system is the assurance that it can be done.

It must be confest there is a difficulty as to the means, by which we are to consult our own preservation and happiness; to know what those are, and what they are with respect to us. … Our ignorance of the true natures of things, of their operations and effects in such an irregular distempered world … deprive us of certainty in these matters.³⁴

He warns of the danger in following nature in a sense other than he uses it, but recommends it if it means “treating things as being what they in nature are, or according to truth.”

They who place all in following nature, if they mean by that phrase acting according to the natures of things (that is, treating things as being what they in nature are, or according to truth) say what is right. But this does not seem to be their meaning. And if it is only that a man must follow his own nature, since his nature is not purely rational, but there is a part of him, which he has in common with brutes, they appoint him a guide which I fear will mislead him, this being commonly more likely to prevail, than the rational part.³⁵

Wollaston's split of the rational from the brute part of man shows the point at which he most strongly differs from Pope.

Finally, Wollaston's position (though it is submitted to a good deal of qualification) is that reason is superior to sense. “In a word, no man doth, or can pretend to believe his senses, when he has a reason against it: which is an irrefragable proof, that reason is above sense and controlls it.”³⁶ It is, therefore, reason which must rule man's actions when he is properly guided. This means that, while Wollaston does recommend following nature in a sense, he does so because truth exists in the nature of things.

It is plain, that reason is of a commanding nature: it injoins this, condemns that, only allows some other things, and will be paramount … if it is at all. Now a being, who has such a determining and governing power so placed in his nature, as to be essential to him, is a being certainly framed to be governed by that power. It seems to be as much designed by nature, or rather the Author of nature, that rational animals should use their reason, and steer by it; as it is by the shipwright, that the pilot should direct the vessel by the use of the rudder he has fitted to it. The rudder would not be there, if it was not to be used: nor would reason be implanted in any nature only to be not cultivated and neglected. And it is certain, it cannot be used, but it must command: such is its nature.³⁷

Wollaston's insistence that reason must act in accord with some kind of abstract truth, and that reason will be able to control the individual, is far beyond Pope's less sanguine expectations.

The Christian rationalist Nathanael Culverwell represents a variation on this general notion that is somewhat closer to Pope's position but still depends on a rational guidance too strong to be put into Pope's context. Culverwell carries on his discussion in terms of the law of nature (it performs, as the “candle of the lord” within men, most of the functions Pope or Wollaston expect from reason and nature in combination). Reason, in Culverwell's thought, apprises the soul of nature's law.

So that Reason is the Pen by which Nature writes this Law of her own composing; This Law 'tis publisht by Authority from heaven, and Reason is the Printer: This eye of the soul 'tis to spy out all dangers and all advantages, all conveniences and disconveniences in reference to such a being, and to warne the soul in the Name of its Creator, to fly from such irregularities as have an intrinsecal and implacable malice in them, and are prejudicial and destructive to its Nature, but to comply with, and embrace all such acts and objects as have a native comeliness and amiablenesse, and are for the heightning and ennobling of its being.³⁸

Insofar as Culverwell concentrates on those acts which are destructive to the nature of the creature, he is close to Pope, but he is more likely to emphasize the idea that such a creature as man is bound by a law to which he can refer as an authority.

The Law of Nature is that Law which is intrinsecal and essential to a rational creature; and such a Law is as necessary as such a creature; for such a creature as a creature has a superiour, to whose Providence and disposing it must be subject; and then as an intellectual creature 'tis capable of a moral government, so that 'tis very suitable and connatural to it to be regulated by a Law; to be guided and commanded by one that is infinitely more wise and intelligent then it self is; and that mindes its welfare more than it self can.³⁹

Culverwell's theory is similar to Butler's in positing a quality in things which makes the soul respond to them in a positive or negative way. For Pope, men respond positively or negatively to actions or things because of the way these things affect self-love rather than from an affection for the abstract goodness or badness in the things themselves. Culverwell, too, posits the notion that men naturally love some actions and hate others. He introduces the good of the individual as the source, but finally his emphasis is on the will of God in an essentially intellectual system of the universe (to borrow Cudworth's orotund phrasing).

There is some good so proportionable and nutrimental to the being of man, and some evil so venemous and destructive to his nature, as that the God of Nature does sufficiently antidote and fortifie him against the one and does maintain and sweeten his essence with the other. There is so much harmony in some actions, as that the soul must needs dance at them; and there is such an harsh discord and jarring in others, as that the soul cannot endure them.

Therefore the learned Grotius does thus describe the Law of Nature. … The Law of Nature is a streaming out of Light from the Candle of the Lord, powerfully discovering such a deformity in some evil, as that an intellectual eye must needs abhor it; and such a commanding beauty in some good, as that a rational being must needs be enamoured with it; and so plainly showing that God stamp't and seal'd the one with his command, and branded the other with his disliking.⁴⁰

Culverwell uses the obvious qualities of things as the basis upon which reason fills in the whole law of nature.

Now these first and radical principles are wound up in some such short bottoms as these. Bonum est appetendum, malum est fugiendum; Beatitudo est quaerenda. … And reason thus … by warming and brooding up these first and oval principles of her own laying, it being it self quicken'd with an heavenly vigour, does thus hatch the Law of Nature.⁴¹

Finally, then, the power of reason to do this dialectical job is essential.

This matter of the relationship between things and our attractions to them is of such importance to Pope's whole system as to warrant an extended examination of an urgent controversy that was taking place while Pope was working, at least on the final stages of the Essay. This controversy will show one way in which the issues were stored. It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of the doctrinal conflict between the school of thought that held the reason of things to be the cause and basis of morality and that which insisted upon the will of God as the foundation stone.

“The reason of things” is a curious and rather awkward phraseology, but it is so frequently encountered in the period that it becomes virtually a single term. “The reason of things” refers to relationships between and among the creatures and objects of creation that supply the reasons why some acts are good, or moral, and others are bad, or immoral. The least equivocal example would be the fact that pain is the result of certain actions, and pain is undesirable by the very nature of the sensible creatures of the world. Those actions that cause pain, therefore, are clearly bad, or immoral, not because God has made a commandment to that effect (though such a commandment might be a supplementary or enforcing measure), but because of the essential character of the creatures and the consequences of their actions. The goodness or badness of an act is, then, based on the reason of things. The age itself seldom cut through the details to the central issue, and the arguments frequently give metaphysical reasons for the positions the authors defend even though the authors may be largely motivated by such political considerations as the authority of the established church.

Closely parallel to the theological or philosophical argument concerning the foundation of morality, runs the political issue turning on the same hinge; the issue is whether men owe allegiance to authority or to their own reasonable awareness of the realities of the world. Hobbes attempted to decide this question by assessing man and demonstrating that organizations that were the product of man would have characteristics in harmony with the creature that made them. Although no writer was likely in this period to confess a similarity to Hobbes, a focus of attention on the qualities of man, and an emphasis on the selfishness of the creature, was found to be helpful when one wanted to show that man needed some strong authority to keep him in submission. It is for this reason that no matter how the two sides may qualify their positions and begin to sound like the opposition, the whig-latitudinarian-deist position basically insists on man's reasonableness, and the tory-establishment position regards him as a creature of passion. For in the hands of the skilful arguers, the fulcrum of the argument is not what man knows but what dictates his action. On both sides there are qualifications and softenings, but to the writers who understand the argument, the one side insists on the triumph of reason and the other on the decisive sway of self-interest.

A particularly good embodiment of this conflict is the controversy between Daniel Waterland and Arthur Ashley Sykes around Samuel Clarke's posthumous Exposition of the Church-Catechism which had been seen through the press by his brother in 1729.⁴² The controversy began in 1730 with Waterland's Remarks Upon Dr. Clarke's Exposition of the Church-Catechism. Waterland's pamphlet evidently attracted some attention since the British Museum Catalogue lists a third edition still dated 1730. Most of Waterland's discussion deals with a drift toward Socinianism in Dr. Clarke's comments; however, toward the end he objects to Clarke's assertion that the sacraments have value not in themselves as positive duties, but rather in their instrumental value as a means toward virtue. He argues, “Moral Virtues are rather to be consider'd as a Means to an End, because they are previous Qualifications for the Sacraments, and have no proper Efficacy towards procuring Salvation till they are improv'd and render'd acceptable by these Christian Performances. By Moral Virtues only, we shall never ordinarily come at Christ, nor at Heaven, nor to the Presence of God. …”⁴³ Real religion, says Waterland, is a matter of submission rather than reasoning. Men should obey God's commands because they have been made rather than because men regard them as reasonable.

The Truth of the Case, as I conceive, lies here: The Love of God is the first and great Commandment: And Obedience to his positive Institutions is an Exercise of that Love; and it is sometimes the noblest and best Exercise of it, shewing the greater Affection, and prompter Resignation to the divine Will. He is a proud and sawcy Servant that will never obey his Master but where he sees the Reason of the Command.⁴⁴

The case that Waterland makes is quite modest. He distinguishes between moral duties (those that are obligatory because of the consequences they bring upon the creatures involved in the actions they recommend or discourage) and positive duties (actions that are obligatory because they were commanded by God to be done). He merely wants to assert that a general or total preference of moral duties to positive duties should not be stated and that sometimes positive duties may be of greater importance, more moral, or, perhaps, more holy. Positive duties are vital to Christianity because of the necessity of baptism and the eucharist to salvation. Of course, the distinction between the two types of duty has a close relationship to that between justification by faith and justification by works. One encounters one side positing a man who lives a life of wild sin and debauchery but who believes in the divinity of Christ and the other side giving the example of the hypocrite who does charitable works but has no love of God in his heart. These are the rhetorical flourishes which no one who defends either side will admit to be illustrative of the working of his position.

There is, however, an issue of genuine importance involved. The issue is whether the moral man does what he does because he sees good reasons for doing it or because he submits to a superior authority. Is the purpose of religion to inspire and enable men to lead moral lives, that is, treat one another well, or is there another element that involves genuine but symbolic submission to a higher authority for its own sake? If, Waterland insists, men think they merit salvation by their virtue, their pride will betray them.⁴⁵

Arthur Ashley Sykes was a friend to Dr. Clarke's and an avid controversialist, and he entered the lists against Waterland with An Answer to the Remarks upon Dr. Clarke's Exposition of the Church-Catechism, which also went into a second edition in 1730. In his defense of the Exposition he was defending his own honor as well as that of the school of thought to which he belonged. Waterland's attack was, or could be interpreted to be, an attack on their Christianity. In his final summary Waterland had said, “It is plain enough that Arianism is but the Dupe to Deism, as Deism again is to Atheism, or Popery. …”⁴⁶ To some extent, then, the argument will again be sidetracked from what is correct to what is Christian.

With the supposed Arianism of Sykes' (or Clarke's) argument the present chapter is not concerned; the controversy quickly narrows down to a more crucial issue. To answer Waterland's claim that positive and moral duties should not be compared in favor of the moral, and even the modest assertion that positive duties may sometimes be of superior value, Sykes asserts, “As there are positive Institutions appointed by our Saviour, these are so far from being ‘perfective of Virtue,’ that they are nothing but certain Means to that End. …”⁴⁷ This he quickly follows by his key point: “That nothing can have a more proper and immediate Efficacy, to make us acceptable to God, than Moral Virtue. For what is it can make a reasonable Creature acceptable to God, but the imitation of God; the acting reasonably, and suitably to those Powers which we have?”⁴⁸ One can hardly suppose that he did not know Waterland's answer—preferable to imitation is obedience.⁴⁹

Sykes narrows the issue down more clearly in his final paragraph.

To tell us, that “Natural Religion as it is called, will soon be what every Man pleases, and will shew itself in little else but natural depravity,” were it not for the Scripture, is plainly saying, that Morality is not in itself capable of Evidence; that 'tis not founded upon the Reasons of Things, and that the Religion of Nature is not capable of being proved obligatory upon reasonable Creatures. The Man that can say this, seems not to know what Natural Religion, or its Obligations are founded on; and whilst he is ignorant of them, He may talk of Revelation as a Rule, but will scarce ever be able to apply it to the Explication of any Command or Prohibition contain'd therein.⁵⁰

Waterland replied in The Nature, Obligation, and Efficacy, of the Christian Sacraments, Considered. … This pamphlet also went into a second edition in 1730. Although most of the discussion is taken up with the relative importance of positive and moral obligations, the question of major importance is the binding source of any obligation—not the fact that a man is obliged, but the force that makes him submit to his obligation. Waterland's key assertion might have been taken directly from Hobbes: “Where no Law is, there is no Transgression.”⁵¹ He argues that those (Dr. Clarke and others) who fancy an “obliging and binding Force in the Nature and Reasons of Things, considered as previous, or antecedent to all Laws, natural or revealed” make a very weak case, for one must resolve “all Obligation into some divine Law, natural or revealed.”⁵² Here he refers the reader to John Clarke of Hull's The Foundation of Morality in Theory and Practice, so we see that he is attempting to narrow the discussion to what is really going to be the crux of the argument, that is, what determines men to action.

The motivation to action, he insists, is a thing quite separate from perception of qualities in objects that do not affect the perceiver directly. Here, however, he is at an earlier stage of the argument. He is saying that the evaluative distinction made by his adversaries between moral and positive duties is not valid because all duties are in fact positive since they all depend upon God's command. All that human beings need to know is that commands have been given. They do not need to know why.

For the Will of God in these Cases is our immediate Rule to go by, and is the Ground and Measure of all Obligation. Unerring Wisdom has Reasons by which it constantly steers; and we cannot doubt but where God lays the greatest Stress, there are the greatest Reasons. But it will be enough for any Creature, in such Cases, to know that divine Wisdom insists upon it, and strictly requires it: For that alone is sufficient, without knowing more, to create the strictest and strongest Obligation.⁵³

Here the issue should be clear. There is no point in using the reason of things as the basis of morality because the question that must be answered is, when man has seen the reason of things, what will compel him to do what is reasonable? Waterland bears down on Sykes' quotation given above to summarize the force of his whole argument.

… however Morality might subsist in Theory (which I allowed before) it can never subsist in Practice, but upon a Scripture-foot. And the Reason which I before gave, and now repeat, is a very plain one, viz. that Scripture once removed, there will be no certain Sanctions to bind Morality upon the Conscience, no clear Account of Heaven or Hell, or a future Judgment to inforce it. …⁵⁴

At this point Waterland's whole position is clear. Man is a creature who acts only from self-love (John Clarke's theory, of which Waterland approves); therefore, morality is made obligatory to man because he is commanded to act well and is threatened with punishment if he does not obey. His self-love, then, makes him choose heaven rather than hell and pursue what is necessary to secure his choice. The basis of morality is not reason, though morality may be reasonable.

With the issue thus narrowed, Sykes prepared A Defence of the Answer to the Remarks upon Dr. Clarke's Exposition of the Church-Catechism. His position is that morality is based on the relationship of things to one another, and since that relationship is immutable, so that even God cannot make things to be what they are not, there is no arbitrary will in the case.⁵⁵ The laws come from the reason of things rather than vice versa. If Waterland were correct in his placing morality in the will of God, moral good could have been made to consist of injustice and ingratitude. But since God must do what is best, we may see that God is obliged to do it; therefore, the basis of morality is that obligation rather than an act of will.

Sykes deals in little detail with the essence of Waterland's position, and his whole case is summed up in one sentence: “The religion of nature is capable of being shewn to be obligatory upon reasonable creatures.”⁵⁶ It is not Sykes' intention to deny the value of Christianity, nor was that the intention of Samuel Clarke. They say that Christianity is useful to such a poor sinful creature as man, but to Waterland and many of his school this was tantamount to saying that Christianity is not necessary but only suplementary—an assertion, they believed, that led inevitably to deism. The willingness of men like Samuel Clarke and Sykes to divest Christianity of much of its mystery in order to make the positive gain of what seemed to them nearly mathematical certainty can be easily understood, but the reasons for Waterland's alarm must be equally evident.

Waterland answered Sykes yet again in A Supplement to the Treatise, entituled, The Nature, Obligation, and Efficacy of the Christian Sacraments Considered. This time he manages to get his charge down far less equivocally: Man will not be obliged by reasonableness, because he is motivated solely by self-love. He again refers the reader to the treatise of John Clarke of Hull. To some extent the argument about obligation is semantic, but that need not betray the reader into thinking that it lacks substance. In order to make God's freedom of will secure, those on Waterland's side of the argument (the argument is familiar from Leibniz) are not prepared to think of a necessary consequence as an obligation. One can only be obliged by a superior power who enforces the obligation. What one does because it is his nature to do it does not come under the same head. God cannot be obliged to observe the fitness of things but will do so anyway. Man, on the other hand, must be obliged because he operates not from reason but another principle.

All that these general Fitnesses mean, is, that they are good for Mankind, and that the Observance of them promotes the common Happiness: And yet it is very certain that every Man may, must, and cannot but pursue his own Happiness, and flee Misery as such. It is fitting, and reasonable, and just, that a Man should love and serve himself, equally at least with others: And it is unfitting, unreasonable, and unjust (were it practicable) for a Man to love his Neighbour better than himself. There is no Wisdom, or Virtue, in being wise for others only, and not for one's self also, first or last: Neither can any Man be obliged to it. Well then, let us imagine Fitnesses to be the Rule to go by, and no Deity at the Head of them, to bind and inforce them: It may be fit for a Man to observe them as far as is consistent, or co-incident with his Temporal Happiness: And that will be no Virtue, nor Duty, but Self-Interest only, and Love of the World. But if he proceeds farther to sacrifice his own temporal Happiness to the Public, that indeed will be Virtue and Duty on the Supposition that God requires it, but without it, it is Folly and Madness. There is neither Prudence, nor good Sense, and consequently no Virtue, in preferring the Happiness of others absolutely to our own; that is to say, without Prospect of a future Equivalent.⁵⁷

Since God guarantees that we will not finally be losers by sacrificing our own immediate good to the good of the whole, sacrificing our present good is sound. Otherwise, nothing could induce man to accept such a principle. God can act according to the rules of abstract logic because he is not in danger of being hurt by it. Man is in quite a different position.

It is fit for God alone, it is his pecu[liar] Prerogative and Perfection, to adhere constantly to the Rules of Truth and Goodness, without Obligation, without Law. He is out of the Reach of Pain and Misery; and his Happiness can never interfere with the common Felicity. But Creatures may run Risques (all Creatures, more or less) and want both to be bound by Law, and to be secured by the same, as often as their temporal Happiness may interfere with the publick Interest. In such Cases, the Rules of Virtue would be no Rules to Them, because not reasonable in their Circumstances, till God by annexing Happiness and Misery to the Observance and Non-observance of them, turns the Scale, and makes them eligible, fit to be practis'd in all Circumstances whatever. Thus Virtue is rendered obligatory to all Creatures, and indeed is made Virtue to them … when it would be otherwise Folly and Distraction.⁵⁸

Waterland makes it clear that the goodness or wisdom of the moral law is not in dispute, but the obligation to obey it is. Men do not obey because the law is good but because they submit to authority and its system of threat and reward, the real foundation of morality.

With the Supplement, Waterland's contribution to the controversy was at an end, but Sykes would not let the problems rest. The True Foundations of Natural and Reveal'd Religion Asserted is a restatement of his principles, but clearly the controversy is at a permanent standstill. The key, though not the acknowledged, assertion of the whole controversy is amenable to assertion but apparently not proof. That assertion, to repeat, is on the one side that man is a reasonable creature and on the other that he is not; but when the reader asks what is at stake in the argument, the answer is not “the actions of men.” In fact, because there is substantial if not total agreement on the content of the moral laws, what the argument constitutes is a defense and attack (at least by logical extension) on the established church.

The argument itself is the proverbial pebble dropped into a pond. It is not yet known precisely what relationship this argument has to major distinctions between the Whig and Tory political philosophies and the justification of the Revolution of 1688 (as well as that of 1645). The present author is at work on the problem, and I have already suggested that I am quite certain there was some perceivable tendency for political theorists to form into groups similar to those represented by Waterland and Sykes, one grounding the need for authority on human depravity and the other urging human reason in defense of freedom from arbitrary rule or implicit faith. We have learned in the past twenty years or so not to make large generalizations about what either Whigs or Tories believed, and I do not mean to suggest that a man's position on whether human beings are predominantly passionate or reasonable could be taken as a valid criterion for party membership. I do believe, however, that further investigation will show that Tory rhetoric frequently found the views of Waterland more useful (transmuted into political rather than religious coinage), and that the Whig writers relied more heavily on Sykes' evaluation of man.

That this should be so can hardly be surprising; the directions are rather obvious. One sometimes falls into the eighteenth-century fear of the ideas of La Rochefoucauld, Hobbes, and Mandeville, the men who seemed the radicals and systemwreckers; but one should not be confused by their method or the curious obliqueness of their attack. It was they who provided the strongest as well as the liveliest material for defending the political and clerical status quo. It was they who believed that the world runs the way it does because men are what they are, so that a notion that man's world may change by force of will was, for them, inadequate. Sykes condemned Waterland's moral foundation as the “morality of a Highwayman, or Pickpocket, to be just only for fear of the Gallows.”⁵⁹ If Waterland had been a less moderate arguer, he would have answered that men are highwaymen and pickpockets, and it is the gallows alone that keeps society safe; it is not the good laws that subdue men to law and order, but the punishments attached to them.

There is so much in Waterland's whole structure of thought that is at the very heart of Pope's assessment of man's reason that one must restrain his enthusiasm over similarities to notice the most telling and decisive difference. Since Pope is constructing a system of natural religion and therefore explicitly excluding all revelation, he does not have available to him the key conclusion of Waterland's whole system, the necessity of rewards and punishments to restrain a creature who is predominantly self-loving. Instead, Pope puts that restraint within the system by making self-love and social love the same, so that present fulfillment, not future rewards, is the motivation of predominant self-love. This middle road stems from Pope's willingness to sacrifice the traditional, rigorous definition of virtue and to give God the credit for all the beauty and harmony and benevolence to be found in the system.

Notes

1. George Cheyne, Philosophical Principles of Religion, 2d ed. (London, 1715), p. 5.

2. BLS, 3:420.

3. Peter Browne, The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Understanding (London, 1728), p. 456.

4. Ibid., p. 55.

5. Ibid., pp. 473-74.

6. Ibid., pp. 85-86.

7. Burnett, quoted above (p. 78), uses this approach.

8. Nicholas Malebranche, Treatise Concerning the Search after Truth, trans. T. Taylor, 2d ed. (London, 1700), 2:73.

9. Ibid., p. 106.

10. Browne, pp. 209-10.

11. See above, pp. 80-81.

12. For example, the following: “We ought only to Reason upon such things, whereof we have clear and distinct Ideas; and by a necessary consequence, we must still begin with the most simple and easie Subjects, and insist long upon them, before we undertake the Enquiry into such as are more composed and difficult” (Malebranche, Search After Truth, 2:50). Referring to Malebranche: “That we ought not to Reason but only of those things whereof we have clear Ideas. …” (John Norris, Reflections upon the Conduct of Human Life, 2d ed. [London, 1691], p. 83). “It is plain we know not the Essences of Things by Intuition; but can only reason about them, from what we know of their different Properties or Attributes” (Samuel Clarke, “A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation,” BLS, II:61). “That we have no Idea of Matter, abstracted from all its Attributes and sensible Qualities, i.e. from all the Ideas we have of it, is very sure, nor is it easy to conceive how we should; but then I say that 'tis impossible to argue and reason about it, impossible to draw any Consequences from it, farther than our Ideas go” (Thomas Morgan, Enthusiasm in Distress: or, An Examination of the Reflections upon Reason [London, 1722], pp. 24-25). “For no doubt our Simple Ideas and their Compounds must be supposed Known, before we attempt any Farther Knowledge by Inference. …” (Browne, p. 426). “Now, I conceive, it is much safer and more reasonable to argue from known Fact to What is really fit and right for God to do, than to endeavour the Overthrow of What is certain Fact, by uncertain Presumptions what the Divine Attributes require” (John Conybeare, A Defense of Reveal'd Religion [London, 1732], p. 107). (While this quotation from Conybeare is rather far from Pope's text it is extremely apt. A frequent answer to those who attempted to judge what God ought to do was, as in this quotation, that the best guide for what God ought to do is what he has done.) “By the help of truths already known more may be discovered” (William Wollaston, The Religion of Nature Delineated, 7th ed. [London, 1750], p. 73).

13. In addition to Mack's quotations from Dryden and Pascal, see the following: “… Human Reason in its largest Capacity and Extent … is after all but a Finite thing … since 'tis impossible that what has Bounds should be able totally and adequately to Comprehend what has None, or that Finite should be the Measure of Infinite” (John Norris, An Account of Reason and Faith: In Relation to the Mysteries of Christianity [London, 1697], p. 177). “… It is impossible the lesser should contain and comprehend the greater …” (John Harris, “Eight Sermons,” BLS, 1:371). “To doubt whether his Nature, and manner of Existence may be in reality thus incomprehensible to us, is to doubt whether the less may not contain the greater …” (Law in King, p. 47n). “As our minds are finite, they cannot without a contradiction comprehend what is infinite. And if they were inlarged to ever so great a capacity, yet so long as they retain their general nature, and continue to be of the same kind, they would by that be only rendered able to apprehend more and more finite ideas; out of which, howsoever increased or exalted, no positive idea of the perfection of God can ever be formed. For a Perfect being must be infinite, and perfectly One: and in such a nature there can be nothing finite, nor any composition of finites” (Wollaston, p. 168).

    For a summary of Pope's entire position, though a less close parallel in words, the following quotation from Samuel Clarke is interesting: “For as, in a great Machine, contrived by the Skill of a consummate Artificer, fitted up and adjusted with all conceivable Accuracy for some very difficult and deep-projected Design, and polished and fine-wrought in every part of it with Admirable Nicety and Dexterity; any Man, who saw and examined one or two Wheels thereof, could not fail to observe in those single Parts of it, the admirable Art and exact Skill of the Workman; and yet the Excellency of the End or Use for which the Whole was contrived, he would not at all be able, even tho' he was himself a skilful Artificer, to discover and comprehend, without seeing the Whole fitted up and put together: So tho' in every part of the natural World, considered even single and unconnected, the Wisdom of the great Creator sufficiently appears; yet his Wisdom, and Justice, and Goodness in the Disposition and Government of the moral World, which necessarily depends on the Connexion and Issue of the whole Scheme, cannot perhaps be distinctly and fully comprehended by any Finite and Created Beings, much less by frail, and weak, and short-lived Mortals, before the Period and Accomplishment of certain great Revolutions” (“Discourse,” BLS, 2:116).

14. In addition to the notes in Mack, p. 61, see the following: “To soare after Inscrutable Secrets; to unlocke and breake open the closet of Nature, and to measure by our shallow apprehensions the deep and impenetrable Counsels of Heaven, which we should with a holy, fearful, and astonished Ignorance onely adore, is too bold and arrogant sacriledge, and hath much of that Pride in it, by which the Angels fell” (Edward Reynolds, A Treatise of the Passions and Faculties of the Soul [London, 1640], p. 499). “And yet is there any thing more Absurd and Impertinent in this, than in the present Supposition, to have a Man, who has so great a Concern upon his Hands as the Preparing for Eternity, all busie and taken up with Quandrants, and Telescopes, Furnaces, Syphons, and Air-Pumps?” (Norris, Reflections, pp. 142-43). “Learning does but serve to fill us full of Artificial Errors” (Sir Thomas Pope Blount, Essays on Several Subjects [London, 1697], p. 50).

15. Norris, Reflections, p. 141.

16. Malebranche, Search after Truth, 1:sig. A3r.

17. Browne (whose book is directed most emphatically against John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious) does not finally limit knowledge to ideas. To ideas, as has been noticed, he adds analogy. He defines ideas as the product of sense experience to be distinguished from notions and experiences resulting from the working of the mind on ideas.

18. Browne, pp. 87-88.

19. Ibid., p. 88.

20. Malebranche, Search after Truth, 1:sig. A2v.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid., 1:sig. A2r.

23. Browne, p. 147.

24. Benjamin Franklin, A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain (New York, 1930), p. 17.

25. See below, chapter 7, p. 178.

26. For some of the range of writers who cited a natural ability to tell good from bad, see the following: Malebranche, Search after Truth, 1:137; Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3d Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. John M. Robertson, 2 vols. (London, 1900), 2:44; Butler, p. 45. For opposition to the idea in harmony with Locke, see Browne, pp. 227-28.

27. Wollaston, pp. 35-36.

28. Herbert, p. 193.

29. See the following quotations:

    Nature to these, without profusion kind,
    The proper organs, proper pow'rs assign'd …

    (I, 179-80)

    Thus Nature gives us (let it check our pride)
    The virtue nearest to our vice ally'd …

    (II, 195-96)

    See plastic Nature working to this end …

    (III, 9)

    Thus God and Nature link'd the gen'ral frame,
    And bade Self-love and Social be the same.

    (III, 317-18)

    Know, all the good that individuals find,
    Or God and Nature meant to mere Mankind …

    (IV, 77-78)

    There deviates Nature, and here wanders Will.

    (IV, 112)

    Or Change admits, or Nature lets it fall …

    (IV, 115)

    He sees, why Nature plants in Man alone
    Hope of known bliss, and Faith in bliss
              unknown …

    (IV, 345-46)

    I have italicized the verbs to show how Pope associates nature with intention and action. The introduction to the Essay on Criticism in the Twickenham edition is illuminating here, for I believe that much of what Pope says about nature in the two poems shows that the concept remained fairly stable in his mind (the quotation is referring to lines 68-73 of the Essay on Criticism): “The scarcely veiled analogy here is one between Nature and God: the attributions and formulae used are those traditionally reserved for the First Cause. Nature is one, eternal, immutable, and the source and end of all things. There is of course no suggestion of pantheism here. Instead, this is Pope's statement of the old idea that as God gives being to beings, so He makes causes to be causes, and thus grants to them the ability to participate in His power. That Nature which from one point of view may seem to have merely received the laws and order of its being, may from another be seen, by its participation in causality, as conferring these qualities. Pope is here concerned with a Nature which has a mysterious analogy to its Source in all its functioning” (Alexander Pope, Pastoral Poetry and “An Essay on Criticism,” eds. E. Audra and Aubrey Williams [London and New Haven, 1961], p. 221). This quotation emphasizes what I think needs emphasis, that Pope is dealing with an acknowledged mystery. He is not bungling or missing the implication of his own ideas. The significant further step that he takes in the Essay on Man is to be found in the lines “All are parts of one stupendous whole, / Whose body Nature is and God the soul.” Here he shows (no less mysteriously) that he has come to think of nature as manifesting itself in this plastic (that is formative) manner, analogous to the way in which the body works independently of the soul yet is guided as a totality by it.

30. The notion that the term was frequently a personification is supported by A. O. Lovejoy and George Boas, “Genesis of the Conception of ‘Nature’ as Norm,” Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity (Baltimore, 1935), p. 13; Wollaston, p. 155; Richard Boulton, The Theological Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, Esq., Epitomiz'd (London, 1715), 2:91.

31. See the following secondary sources: Basil Willey, The Eighteenth Century Background (London, 1940), p. 2; Lovejoy and Boas, p. 103; Margaret Mary Fitzgerald, First Follow Nature: Primitivism in English Poetry (New York, 1947), p. vii; Paul Hazard, European Thought in the Eighteenth Century, trans. J. Lewis (New Haven, 1945), p. 113.

32. Pope may be referring to some such voice in the following lines: “Nature that Tyrant checks; he only knows, / And helps, another creature's wants and woes” (III, 51-52).

33. Wollaston, p. 17.

34. Ibid., p. 23.

35. Ibid., pp. 34-35.

36. Ibid., p. 95.

37. Ibid., p. 88.

38. Nathanael Culverwell, An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature (London, 1654), pp. 59-60.

39. Ibid., p. 30.

40. Ibid., pp. 36-37.

41. Ibid., p. 47.

42. The controversy was quite extensive. See the following: Daniel Waterland, Remarks upon Dr. Clarke's Exposition of the Church-Catechism (London, 1730) (this went into a third edition the same year). Arthur Ashley Sykes, An Answer to the Remarks upon Dr. Clarke's Exposition of the Church-Catechism (London, 1730) (went into a second edition the same year). Daniel Waterland, The Nature, Obligation, and Efficacy, of the Christian Sacraments, Considered … (London, 1730) (went into a second edition the same year). Arthur Ashley Sykes, A Defence of the Answer to the Remarks upon Dr. Clarke's Exposition of the Church-Catechism (London, 1730). Daniel Waterland, A Supplement to the Treatise, entituled, The Nature, Obligation, and Efficacy of the Christian Sacraments Considered (London, 1730). Arthur Ashley Sykes, The True Foundations of Natural and Reveal'd Religion Asserted … (London, 1730).

    Others entered into the fray: Thomas Chubb, The Comparative Excellence and Obligation of Moral and Positive Duties, Fully Stated and Considered … (London, 1730). Thomas Chubb, A Discourse Concerning Reason, With Regard to Religion and Divine Revelation. … To Which are added, Some Reflections upon the Comparative Excellency and Usefullness of Moral and Positive Duties, Occasioned by the Controversy that has Arisen … Upon the Publication of Dr. Clarke's Exposition … (London, 1731). T. Emlyn, A Letter to the Revd Dr. Waterland, Occasion'd by Remarks on Dr. Clarke's Exposition … (London, 1730). N. Nichols, An Impartial Review of the Controversy Concerning the Comparative Excellence &c. of Moral and Positive Duties (London, 1731). Phillips Glover, A Discourse Concerning Virtue and Religion, occasioned by some late writings (London, 1731). Edward Underhill, Celsus Triumphatus: Or, Moses Vindicated … (London, 1732). A beautifully effective, forceful statement on Waterland's side of the question is Thomas Johnson, An Essay on Moral Obligation (London, 1731).

43. Waterland, Remarks, p. 85.

44. Ibid., pp. 86-87.

45. Ibid., p. 88.

46. Ibid., p. 94.

47. Sykes, Answer to the Remarks, p. 74.

48. Ibid., p. 75.

49. Waterland, Nature, Obligation, p. 42.

50. Sykes, Answer to the Remarks, pp. 82-83.

51. Waterland, Nature, Obligation, p. 16.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid., pp. 17-18.

54. Ibid., pp. 82-83.

55. This does not mean that God could not have made things differently but that, given things as they are, the relationships among them are a product of existence. Sykes' school liked to use mathematics to illustrate the point. Not even God could make 2 + 2 equal 5; 2 + 2 equals 4 is a fact of existence. The argument is, of course, exactly the same as the one used to prove that God must form the best possible world.

56. Sykes, Defence of the Answer, p. 93.

57. Waterland, Supplement, pp. 8-9.

58. Ibid., pp. 11-12.

59. Sykes, True Foundation, p. 26.