Epistle I

II. Presumptuous man! the reason wouldst thou find,

Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind?

First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess,

Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no less;

Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made

Taller or stronger than the weeds they shade?

Or ask of yonder argent fields above,

Why Jove’s satellites are less than Jove?

Of systems possible, if ’tis confest

That wisdom infinite must form the best,

Where all must full or not coherent be,

And all that rises, rise in due degree;

Then in the scale of reasoning life, ’tis plain,

There must be, somewhere, such a rank as man:

And all the question (wrangle e’er so long)

Is only this, if God has placed him wrong?

Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,

May, must be right, as relative to all.

In human works, though laboured on with pain,

A thousand movements scarce one purpose gain;

In God’s one single can its end produce;

Yet serves to second too some other use.

So man, who here seems principal alone,

Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,

Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;

’Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

When the proud steed shall know why man restrains

His fiery course, or drives him o’er the plains:

When the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod,

Is now a victim, and now Egypt’s god:

Then shall man’s pride and dulness comprehend

His actions’, passions’, being’s, use and end;

Why doing, suffering, checked, impelled; and why

This hour a slave, the next a deity.

Then say not man’s imperfect, Heaven in fault;

Say rather man’s as perfect as he ought:

His knowledge measured to his state and place;

His time a moment, and a point his space.

If to be perfect in a certain sphere,

What matter, soon or late, or here or there?

The blest to-day is as completely so,

As who began a thousand years ago.