An Essay on Man

Summary

An Essay on Man is a philosophical poem in heroic couplets that Alexander Pope published anonymously in four parts, called epistles, in 1733 and 1734, addressed to his friend Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke. Pope meant it as the opening of a larger work on human nature and society that he never finished. His stated aim echoes Milton: where Paradise Lost set out to justify the ways of God to men, the Essay proposes to vindicate the ways of God to man, not from Scripture but from reason and the observed order of nature. The first epistle considers man in relation to the universe. We see only a small part of a vast system, Pope argues, so we have no standing to accuse God of error; every creature has its place in a great chain of being stretching from God to the smallest insect, and to wish to rise out of our place would break the whole chain. Pride, the desire to be more than man, is the root of our complaints. The epistle ends with its most famous and most disputed claims: that all discord is harmony not understood, that partial evil serves universal good, and that whatever is, is right. The second epistle turns to man as an individual. Know then thyself, it begins; the proper study of mankind is man, a creature placed on an isthmus of a middle state, created half to rise and half to fall, the glory, jest and riddle of the world. Pope describes the balance of self-love and reason and the ruling passion that shapes each character, which reason can guide but not uproot. The third epistle treats man in society, showing how self-love and social love grow together from the family to the state, and tracing the origins of religion and government. The fourth asks what happiness is and answers that it lies in virtue, which all can reach, rather than in wealth, fame or rank; an honest man is the noblest work of God. Pope was a Roman Catholic, yet the poem names neither Christ nor the Church, and soon after publication the Swiss theologian Jean-Pierre de Crousaz attacked it as fatalistic and close to deism. William Warburton, later Bishop of Gloucester, defended its orthodoxy, while Voltaire's poem on the Lisbon earthquake challenged its maxim that whatever is, is right. Students should read it as a powerful statement of natural theology and of the limits of human reason, and test it against Scripture's fuller account of sin and redemption.

Top Lessons

• The limits of reason

  Pope argues that because we see only part of the universe we cannot judge the whole. This humility of mind is a classical and Christian theme.

• The middle state

  Man is placed between beast and angel, too knowing to be a sceptic, too weak to be a Stoic. Pope borrows the picture from Pascal and the long Christian tradition.

• Whatever is, is right

  The most disputed line of the poem claims that partial evil serves universal good. Christian readers must ask whether this does justice to sin and the Fall.

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