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fit Passion every Age supply,

Hope travels through,nor quits us when we die.

Essay on man lp II

EPISTLE III.

ERE then we reft: "The Universal Cause

HER

વ Acts to one end, but acts by various laws.” In all the madness of fuperfluous health,

The trim of pride, the impudence of wealth,

Let this great truth be present night and day;5 But moft be prefent, if we preach or pray.

Look round our World; behold the chain of Love Combining all below and all above.

See plastic Nature working to this end,
The fingle atoms each to other tend,
Attract, attracted to, the next in place
Form'd and impell'd its neighbour to embrace.

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WE are now come to the third epiftle of the Effay on Man. It having been fhewn, in explaining the origin, use, and end of the Paffions, in the fecond epistle, that Man hath focial as well as felfifh paffions, that doctrine natutally introduceth the third, which treats of Man as a socIAL animal; and connects it with the second, which confidered him as an INDIVIDUAL.

VER. 12. Form'd and impell'd, etc.] To make Matter fo cohere as to fit it for the uses intended by its Creator, a proper configuration of its infentible parts, is as necessary as that

VARIATIONS.

VER. I. In feveral Edit. in 4to.

Learn, Dulness, learn! "The Universal Cause, stc.. VOL. III.

E

See Matter next, with various life endu'd,

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Prefs to one centre ftill, the genʼral Good.
See dying vegetables life fuftain,
See life diffolving vegetate again :
All forms that perish other forms fupply,
(By turns we catch the vital breath, and die)
Like bubbles on the fea of Matter born,
They rife, they break, and to that sea return.
Nothing is foreign; Parts relate to whole;
One all-extending, all-preferving Soul
Connects each being, greatest with the least ;
Made Beast in aid of Man, and Man of Beast;
All ferv'd, all ferving: nothing ftands alone;
The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.
Has God, thou fool, work'd folely for thy good,
Thy joy, thy paftime, thy attire, thy food?
Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,
For him as kindly fpread the flow'ry lawn:

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quality fo equally and univerfally conferred upon it, called Attraction. To express the first part of this thought, our. Author fays form'd; and to exprefs the latter, impell'd.

VER. 22. One all-extending, all-preferving Soul] Which, in the language of Sir Ifaac Newton, is, "Deus omnipræfens "eft, non per virtutem folam, fed etiam per substantiam : " nam virtus fine substantia subsistere non poteft." Newt. Princ. fchol. gen. fub finem.

VER. 23. Greatest with the leaft ;] as acting more strongly and immediately in beafts, whose instinct is plainly an external reafon; which made an old fchool-man fay, with great elegance, "Deus eft anima brutorum: "

In this 'tis God directs

Is it for thee the lark ascends and fings?
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.
Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat?
Loves of his own and raptures fwell the note.
The bounding fteed you pompously bestride,
Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride.
Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain?
The birds of heav'n fhall vindicate their grain.
Thine the full harveft of the golden year ?
Part pays, and juftly, the deferving steer:
The hog, that plows not, nor obeys thy call,
Lives on the labours of this lord of all.

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Know, Nature's children fhall divide her care; The fur that warms a monarch, warm'd a bear. While Man exclaims, "See all things for my ufe!" "See man for mine!" replies a pamper'd goofe : And just as short of reafon He must fall,

Who thinks all made for one, not one for all.

Grant that the pow'rful still the weak controul;

Be Man the Wit and Tyrant of the whole :

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VER. 45. See all things for my ufe!] On the contrary, the wife man hath faid, The Lord bath made all things for himself, Prov, xvi. 4.

VARIATIONS.

After ver. 46. in the former Editions.

What care to tend, to lodge, to cram, to treat him!
All this he knew; but not that 'twas to eat him.
As far as Goose could judge, he reason'd right;

But as to Man, mistook the matter quite,

Nature that Tyrant checks; he only knows,
And helps, another creature's wants and woes.
Say, will the falcon, stooping from above,
Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove!
Admires the jay the infect's gilded wings?
Or hears the hawk when Philomela fings?
Man cares for all: to birds he gives his woods,
To beafts his pastures and to fish his floods;
For fome his int'reft prompts him to provide,
For more his pleasure, yet for more his pride:
All feed on one vain Patron, and enjoy
Th' extenfive bleffing of his luxury,
That very life his learned hunger craves,

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He faves from famine, from the favage faves;
Nay, feafts the animal he dooms his feast,

And, till he ends the being, makes it bleft:

Which fees no more the ftroke, or feels the pain,
Than favour'd Man by touch etherial flain.

The creature had his feaft of life before ;

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Thou too muft perifh, when thy feast is o'er! 70
To each unthinking being, Heav'n a friend,
Gives not the useless knowledge of its end:
To Man imparts it; but with fuch a view
As, while he dreads it, makes him hope it too:

VER. 68. Than favour'd Man, etc.] Several of the ancients, and many of the Orientals fince, efteemed those who were ftruck by lightning as facred perfons, and the particular favourites of Heaven.

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