The rest of section two continues to talk about the relationship between self-love and reason and closes with a strong argument. He then chose a different bookseller for An Essay on Manan essay on man sparknotes, and because his precise rhymes were so well known, even inserted one weak rhyming couplet to mislead his readers. Pope instead perceived of man as making discoveries through his experience based on reason. By doing this, one would justify the happenings an essay on man sparknotes life, and the workings of God, for there is a reason behind all things that is beyond human understanding. Read a brief overview of the work, or chapter by chapter summaries. Happiness does not consist in external goods; is kept even by providence, through Hope and Fear; and the good man will have an advantage. The reason we cannot, and should not seek to, break this bound or alter our place on the ladder, is correspondingly huge in its theological overtones.
John Locke
Alexander Pope is a British poet who was born in London, England in World Biography 1. Growing up during the Augustan Age, his poetry is heavily influenced by common literary qualities of that time, which include classical influence, the importance of human reason and the rules of nature. It is said that an essay on man sparknotes ideas were partially influenced by his friend, Henry St. They are as follows:. By doing this, one would an essay on man sparknotes the happenings of life, and the workings of God, an essay on man sparknotes, for there is a reason behind all things that is beyond human understanding. This is envisaged in line 13 when, keeping with the hunting motif, Pope advises his reader to study the behaviors of Nature as hunter would watch his preyand to rid of all follies, which we can assume includes all that is unnatural.
Furthermore, an essay on man sparknotes, in line 12, Pope hints towards vital middle ground on which we are above beats and below a higher power s. Thus, it is imperative that we can strive to gain knowledge while maintaining an acceptance of our mental limits. Pope writes the first section to put the reader into the perspective that he believes to yield the correct view of the universe. He an essay on man sparknotes the fact that we can only understand things based on what is around us, embodying the relationship with empiricism that characterizes the Augustan era.
He encourages the discovery of new things while remaining within the bounds one has been given. In the last line however, he questions whether God or man plays a bigger role in maintaining the an essay on man sparknotes once it is established. He emphasizes the rightness of our place in the chain of being, for just as we steer the lives of lesser creatures, God has the ability to pilot our fate. Furthermore, he asserts that because we can only analyze what is around us, we cannot be an essay on man sparknotes that there is not a greater being or sphere beyond our level of comprehension; it is most logical to perceive the universe as functioning through a hierarchal system.
Pope utilizes the beginning of section three to elaborate on the functions of the chain of being. In the fourth stanza, Pope warns against the negative effects of excessive pride. He places his primary examples in those who audaciously judge the work of God and declare one person to be too fortunate and another not fortunate enough. In the beginning of the fifth stanza, Pope personifies Pride and provides selfish answers to questions regarding the state of the universe. He depicts Pride as a hoarder of all gifts that Nature yields. The image of Nature as a benefactor and Man as her an essay on man sparknotes recipient is countered in the next set of lines: Pope instead entertains the possible faults of Nature in natural disasters such as earthquakes and storms.
Stanza six connects the different inhabitants of the earth to their rightful place and shows why things are the way they should be. After highlighting the happiness in which most creatures live, Pope facetiously questions if God is unkind to man alone. He asks this because man consistently yearns for the abilities specific to those outside of his sphere, and in that way can never be content in his existence. Pope counters the notorious greed of Man by illustrating the pointless emptiness that would accompany a world in which Man was omnipotent. The seventh stanza explores the vastness of the sensory and cognitive spectrums in relation to all earthly creatures.
Pope uses an example related to each of the five senses to conjure an image that emphasizes the intricacies with which all things are tailored. Pope then moves to the differences in mental abilities along the chain of being. These mental functions are broken down into instinct, reflection, memory, and reason. Pope believes reason to trump all, which of course is the an essay on man sparknotes function specific to Man. Reason thus allows man to synthesize the means to function in ways that are unnatural to himself. In section 8 Pope emphasizes the depths to which the universe extends in all aspects of life. This includes the literal depths of the ocean and the reversed extent of the sky, as well as the vastness that lies between God and Man and Man and the simpler creatures of the earth.
Pope stresses the maintenance of order so as to prevent the breaking down of the universe. In the ninth stanza, Pope once again puts the pride and greed of man into perspective. This image drives home the point that all things are specifically designed to ensure that the universe functions properly, an essay on man sparknotes. Pope ends this stanza with the Augustan belief that Nature permeates all things, and thus constitutes the body of the world, where God characterizes the soul. In the tenth stanza, Pope secures the end of Epistle 1 by advising the reader on how to secure as many blessings as possible, whether that be on an essay on man sparknotes or in the after life, an essay on man sparknotes. Pope exemplifies this acceptance of weakness in the last lines of Epistle 1 in which he considers the incomprehensible, whether seemingly miraculous or disastrous, to at least be correct, if nothing else.
Epistle II is broken up into six smaller sections, an essay on man sparknotes, each of which has a specific focus. The first section explains that man must not look to God for answers to the great questions of life, for he will an essay on man sparknotes find the answers. Pope emphasizes the complexity of man in an effort to show that understanding of anything greater than that would simply be too much for any person to fully comprehend. We are the most intellectual creatures on Earth, and while we have control over most things, we are still set up to die in some way by the end.
We are a great gift of God to the Earth with enormous capabilities, yet in the end we really amount to nothing. The first section of Epistle II closes by saying that man is to go out and study what is around him. He is to study science to understand all that he can about his existence and the universe in which he lives, but to fully achieve this knowledge he must rid himself of all vices that may slow down this process. The second section of Epistle II tells of the two principles of human nature and how they are to perfectly balance each other out in order for man to achieve all that he is capable of achieving, an essay on man sparknotes. These two principles are self-love and reason. He explains that all good things can be attributed to the proper use of these two principles and that all bad things stem from their improper use.
Pope further discusses the two principles by claiming that self-love is what causes man to do what he desires, but reason is what allows him to know how to stay in line. The rest of section two continues to talk about the relationship between self-love and reason and closes with a strong argument. Humans all seek pleasure, but only with a good sense of reason can they restrain themselves from becoming greedy. Part III of Epistle II also pertains to the idea of self-love and reason working together. It starts out talking about passions and how they are inherently selfish, but if the means to which these passions are sought out are fair, then there has been a proper balance of self-love and reason.
There is a ratio of good to bad that man must reach to have a well balanced mind. While our goal as humans is to seek our pleasure and follow certain desires, an essay on man sparknotes, there is always one overall passion that lives deep within us that guides us throughout life. The main points to take away from Section III of this An essay on man sparknotes is that there are many aspects to the life of man, and these aspects, both positive and negative, need to coexist harmoniously to achieve that balance for which man should strive. The fourth section of Epistle II is very short. It starts off by asking what allows us to determine the difference between good and bad.
The next line answers this question by saying that it is the God within our minds that allows us to make such judgements. This section finishes up by discussing virtue and vice. The relationship between these two qualities are interesting, for they can exist on their own but most often mix, and there is a fine line between something being a virtue and becoming a vice. Section V is even shorter than section IV with just fourteen lines. It speaks only of the quality of vice. Vices are temptations that man must face on a consistent basis. Section VI, the final section of Epistle II, relates many of the ideas from Sections I-V back to ideas from Epistle I.
It works as a conclusion that ties in the main theme of Epistle II, which mainly speaks of the different components of man that balance each other out to form an infinitely complex creature, into the idea from Epistle I that man is created as part of a larger plan with all of his qualities given to him for a specific purpose. com Archaeology. manhattanrarebooks- literature. leave all meaner things To low ambition, and the pride of kings. Pope Background on Alexander Pope Alexander Pope is a British poet who was born in London, England in World Biography 1.
modern science essay
SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. Summary Read a brief overview of the work, or chapter by chapter summaries. Summary Context Introduction Book I: Attack on Innate Knowledge Book II chapter i-vii: Simple Ideas Book II, chapter viii: Primary and Secondary Qualities Book II, chapters ix-xi: Faculties of the Mind Book II, chapters xii-xxi: Complex Ideas of Modes Book II, chapter XXIII: Ideas of Substances Book II, chapters xxiv-xxvi: Ideas of Relation Book II, chapters xxix-xxxii: Other Ways to Classify Ideas Book III, chapter iii, sections General Terms Book III, Chapters iii-v: Sorts Book III, Chapters vii-xi: More on Language Book IV, Chapters i and ii: What Knowledge Is Book IV, Chapter iii-viii: Knowledge of the Nature of Things Book IV, Chapter ix-xi: Knowledge of the Existence of Things Book IV, Chapters xii-xxi: Judgment or Opinion.
Important Terms. Philosophical Themes, Arguments, Ideas. Quotes Find the quotes you need to support your essay, or refresh your memory of the book by reading these key quotes. Important Quotes. Further Study Continue your study of Essay Concerning Human Understanding with these useful links. Reason may even help in overcoming madness. While Instinct proves good for Society, Reason proves better, the origins of Monarchy, Religion, and Government, all from the Principle of Love, and Superstition and Tyrrany from Fear. Finally, he discusses the various forms of government and their true ends. As he describes monarchs, wits, and tyrants, he describes two types of discord. One is warlike and violent, the other benevolent and creating peace; neither is good on its own.
The speaker notes that left to his instincts, man might allow his greed to lead to destruction and savagery, and that he can learn control by observing nature. Such statements draw from classical sources, in which efficient creatures were posed as examples for human society to imitate. The speaker states that men never possessed any divine right and supplies various examples of the effect of fear on others. Pope returns to what at first seems to be a paradox, writing,. However, as Pope critics later explained, what he writes contains no true contradiction. The sharing of self-interest makes for proper government. Happiness does not consist in external goods; is kept even by providence, through Hope and Fear; and the good man will have an advantage.
We should not judge who is good, and external goods are often inconsistent with or destructive of virtue. Discussion with others regarding the location of bliss will evoke varied responses. He then makes clear that those who are virtuous and just may die too soon, but their deaths are not caused by their virtue. Humility, Justice, Truth, and Public Spirit deserve to wear a Crown, and they will, but one must wait to receive the rewards of possessing such traits. Pope assembles an honor code for all to follow, as he attempts to convince individuals not to feel jealousy toward others who seem to have more possessions, as these do not lead to bliss. Pope has managed, through various examples, to lead from his opening request for a definition of happiness to the conclusion that virtue equates to that state, and, because virtue is available to all, everyone can enjoy happiness.
As any worthy lesson does, this one bears repeating, and Pope closes with that emphasis:. That REASON, PASSION, answer one great aim; That true SELF-LOVE and SOCIAL are the same; That VIRTUE only makes our BLISS below; And all our Knowledge is, OURSELVES TO KNOW. The main gravamen of the Essay is thus an assault on pride, on the aspiration of mankind to get above its station, scan the mysteries of heaven, promote itself to the central place in the universe. But there is something disturbing about this assumption of authority. Similarly, Pope counsels concentration on the human scale in what is, nonetheless, his cosmological testament. Milton aspires to be the poet of God, and so indeed does Pope; if the latter is seeking to stifle adventurous mental journeys, he can only do so by giving them a certain amount of weight and interest.
Pope seeks a way out of this paradox by contrasting visions: human vision is limited to its own state, but can reason and infer other states from that position. EM, I: 21—8. Again the proposition is that our limited vision cannot see only the limitations of our place in the chain, and not its active dynamism:. EM, I: 57— Our cosmological position is also limited temporally by our blindness to the future, and Pope reminds us of our superiority of knowledge over other creatures on earth, to indicate our own inferiority to creatures we cannot but again, do imagine I: 81—6. We might imagine, for example, a Heaven. EM, I: 87— Pope discovers this intellectual pride to operate at more or less every level of human experience, including the bodily senses.
Why has not Man a microscopic eye For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. Pope is resisting the imaginative world opened up by improved microscopic technology, just as his cosmic vision ambivalently absorbs the epochal discoveries in physics made by Newton; his moral point is that Man has the right amount of perception for his state and position in the system, no more and no less. The reason we cannot, and should not seek to, break this bound or alter our place on the ladder, is correspondingly huge in its theological overtones. Since the system which Pope has imagined is cosmological, if anything steps out of line the entire cosmos is ruined:.
Pope works up this dominating, pacifying rhetoric partly out of a sense of his own poetic audacity and its closeness to the aspirations of reason and pride. The second Epistle sets about redeploying those energies of enquiry into the microcosmos of the human mind. Using his favourite device of the telling oxymoron, Man becomes a miniature cosmology which has internalised that war which Milton turns into narrative: he is both Adam and Satan, top and bottom of the scale. Could he, whose rules the rapid Comet bind, Describe or fix one movement of his Mind Who saw its fires here rise, and there descend, Explain his own beginning, or his end EM, II: 35—8. Self-love is a kind of id, appetitive, desiring, urging, instigating action; reason is an ego which judges, guides, advises, makes purposeful theenergies of self-love.
Without these complementary forces human nature would be either ineffectual or destructive this is the true cosmic drama :. EM, II: 61—6. Across the structure of the epistle, Heaven has replaced science as the artist of the mind, with society as the place in which psychomachic forces operate to a benign ratio. EM, III: 9— Sociality is the basic pattern of all nature; life-cycles provide a chronological sequencing of the same principle, one which should remind us of our own place in the scheme, a mutual dependency of created things III: 21—6. The psychology which in Epistle II contrasted self-love and reason inside the human mind now contrasts animal instinct with human reason, providing a different set of conflicts and analogies. Animals show the arts of society before mankind has them III: —8.
Pope is in somewhat dangerous water here, and deliberately maintains absolute balance between two types of political system: a communitarian republic the Ants , and a property-owning monarchy the Bees. By secularising and naturalising the mythic origins of government, Pope adapts patriarchalism for civil society. Thus hierarchical monarchy, and the belief system which underpins it, emerge along patriarchal lines. But Pope draws on both sides to celebrate a modern system which reconciles competing energies:.
No comments:
Post a Comment