Other editions of book An Essay on Man. moral essays and satires

Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner thingsTo low ambition, and the pride of kings.Let us (since life can little more supplyThan just to look about us and to die)Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man;A mighty maze! but not without a plan;A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot;Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit.Together let us beat this ample field,Try what the open, what the covert yield;The latent tracts, the giddy heights, exploreOf all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;Eye Nature’s walks, shoot Folly as it flies,And catch the manners living as they rise;Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;But vindicate the ways of God to man.

Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner thingsTo low ambition, and the pride of kings.Let us (since life can little more supplyThan just to look about us and to die)Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man;A mighty maze! but not without a plan;A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot;Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit.Together let us beat this ample field,Try what the open, what the covert yield;The latent tracts, the giddy heights, exploreOf all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;Eye Nature’s walks, shoot Folly as it flies,And catch the manners living as they rise;Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;But vindicate the ways of God to man.

Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner thingsTo low ambition, and the pride of kings.Let us (since life can little more supplyThan just to look about us and to die)Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man;A mighty maze! but not without a plan;A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot;Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit.Together let us beat this ample field,Try what the open, what the covert yield;The latent tracts, the giddy heights, exploreOf all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;Eye Nature’s walks, shoot Folly as it flies,And catch the manners living as they rise;Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;But vindicate the ways of God to man.

Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner thingsTo low ambition, and the pride of kings.Let us (since life can little more supplyThan just to look about us and to die)Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man;A mighty maze! but not without a plan;A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot;Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit.Together let us beat this ample field,Try what the open, what the covert yield;The latent tracts, the giddy heights, exploreOf all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;Eye Nature’s walks, shoot Folly as it flies,And catch the manners living as they rise;Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;But vindicate the ways of God to man.

Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner thingsTo low ambition, and the pride of kings.Let us (since life can little more supplyThan just to look about us and to die)Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man;A mighty maze! but not without a plan;A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot;Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit.Together let us beat this ample field,Try what the open, what the covert yield;The latent tracts, the giddy heights, exploreOf all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;Eye Nature’s walks, shoot Folly as it flies,And catch the manners living as they rise;Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;But vindicate the ways of God to man.

Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner thingsTo low ambition, and the pride of kings.Let us (since life can little more supplyThan just to look about us and to die)Expatiate free o’er all this scene of man;A mighty maze! but not without a plan;A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot;Or garden tempting with forbidden fruit.Together let us beat this ample field,Try what the open, what the covert yield;The latent tracts, the giddy heights, exploreOf all who blindly creep, or sightless soar;Eye Nature’s walks, shoot Folly as it flies,And catch the manners living as they rise;Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;But vindicate the ways of God to man.

CLASSIC BOOKS ON PHILOSOPHY - An Essay on Man, Moral Essays and Satires - NEW EDITION, By Alexander Pope. An Essay on Man is a poem published by Alexander Pope in 1734. It is a rationalistic effort to use philosophy in order to "vindicate the ways of God to man" (l.16), a variation of John Milton's claim in the opening lines of Paradise Lost, that he will "justify the ways of God to men" (1.26). It is concerned with the natural order God has decreed for man. Because man cannot know God's purposes, he cannot complain about his position in the Great Chain of Being (ll.33-34) and must accept that "Whatever IS, is RIGHT" (l.292), a theme that was satirized by Voltaire in Candide (1759). More than any other work, it popularized optimistic philosophy throughout England and the rest of Europe. Pope's Essay on Man and Moral Epistles were designed to be the parts of a system of ethics which he wanted to express in poetry. Moral Epistles have been known under various other names including Ethic Epistles and Moral Essays. On its publication, An Essay on Man met with great admiration throughout Europe. Voltaire called it "the most beautiful, the most useful, the most sublime didactic poem ever written in any language".[citation needed] In 1756 Rousseau wrote to Voltaire admiring the poem and saying that it "softens my ills and brings me patience". Kant was fond of the poem and would recite long passages of the poem to his students. Later however, Voltaire renounced his admiration for Pope and Leibniz's optimism and even wrote a novel, Candide, as a satire on Pope and Leibniz's philosophy of ethics. Rousseau also critiqued the work. He questioned "Pope's uncritical assumption that there must be an unbroken chain of being all the way from inanimate matter up to God.

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An Essay on Man: Moral Essays and Satires by Alexander Pope, 1891. An Essay on Man is a poem published by Alexander Pope in 1733–1734. It is an effort to rationalize or rather "vindicate the ways of God to man", a variation of John Milton's claim in the opening lines of Paradise Lost, that he will "justify the ways of God to men". Pope’s life as a writer falls into three periods, answering fairly enough to the three reigns in which he worked. Under Queen Anne he was an original poet, but made little money by his verses; under George I. he was chiefly a translator, and made much money by satisfying the French-classical taste with versions of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey.” Under George I. he also edited Shakespeare, but with little profit to himself; for Shakespeare was but a Philistine in the eyes of the French-classical critics. But as the eighteenth century grew slowly to its work, signs of a deepening interest in the real issues of life distracted men’s attention from the culture of the snuff-box and the fan. As Pope’s genius ripened, the best part of the world in which he worked was pressing forward, as a mariner who will no longer hug the coast but crowds all sail to cross the storms of a wide unknown sea.