termined, and that he had not Power to contrive Matters otherwife, I have already fhewn to be fo. It is still a more unpardonable Calumny to fay that Mr. Pope has thrown the Caufe of moral Evil upon God, and had not the Caution to recur to Man's Abufe of his own Free-will: For Mr. De Croufaz could not but fee that the Poet had, in fo many Words, thrown the Caufe entirely upon that Abufe, where, fpeaking of natural and moral Evil, he fays, WHAT makes all Physical and Moral Ill! GOD SENDS NOT ILL. Ep. iv. 1. 109, & feq. When he had faid this, and acquitted the fupreme Cause, he then informs us what is God's Agency, after Natural and Moral Evil had been thus produced by the Deviation of Nature, and Depravity of Will; namely that he hath so contrived, in his infinite Wisdom and Goodnefs, that Good shall arife from this Evil. --If rightly understood, Or partial Ill is univerfal Good, Or Chance admits, or Nature lets it fall, Short and but rare, till Man improv'd it all. 1. 111, & feq. And speaking in another Place of God's Provi dence, he says, That D 4 That counterworks each Folly and Caprice, What is this but bringing Good out of Evil? And how diftant is that from being theCause of Evil? After this, a Philofopher fhould never think of writing more till he had rectified what he had already wrote fo much amiss. The next Paffage the Examiner attacks is the following: Better for us, perhaps, it might appear, 1. 157, & feq. Here the Examiner upbraids Mr. Pope for degrading himself so far as to write to the grofs Prejudices of the People. "In the corporeal Nature "(fays he) there is no Piece of Matter that is "perfectly fimple; all are composed of small "Particles, called elementary; from their Mix"ture, proceeds a Fermentation, fometimes weak, "and fometimes ftrong, which still farther atte"nuates these Particles; and thus agitated and di"vided, they ferve for the Nourishment and "Growth of organic Bodies; to this Growth it is "we give the Name of Life. But what have the "Paffions in common with these Particles? Do their "their Mixture and Fermentation ferve for the « Nourishment of that Subftance which thinks, "and do they constitute the Life of that Sub"ftance" Thus Mr. De Croufaz, who, as, a little before, he could not fee the Nature of the Comparison, fo here, by a more deplorable Blindness, could not fee that there was any Comparison at all." You, fays Mr. Pope, perhaps may think "it would be better, that neither Air nor Ocean cc was vexed with Tempefts, nor that the Mind was ever discomposed by Paffion; but confider, "that as in the one Cafe our material Syftem is fupported by the Strife of its elementary Parti"cles, fo in the Intellectual, the Paffions of the "Mind are, as it were, the Elements of human "Life, i. e. Actions." All here is clear, folid, and well-reafoned, and hath been confidered above. What must we say then to our Examiner's wild Talk of the Mixture and Fermentation of elementary Particles of Matter for the Nourishment of that Subftance that thinks, and of its conftituting the Life of that Subftance? I call it the Examiner's, for, you fee, it is not Mr. Pope's; and Mr. Croufax ought to be charged with it, because it may be questioned whether it was a fimple Blunder, he urging it fo invidiously as to infinuate that Mr. Pope might probably hold the Materiality of the Soul. However, if it was a Mistake, it was a pleasant one, and arose from the Ambiguity of the Word Life, which in 1 Examen de l'Effai. English English, as la vie in French, fignifies both Existence and human Action, and is always to have its Senfe determined by the Context. Mr. Pope fays, fpeaking of the Brute Creation, Mr. Croufaz obferves, that "In this Verse, by "the Term Nature, we must neceffarily under"stand the Author of Nature; it is a Figure much "in Ufe. SPINOZA has employ'd all his Metacr phyfics to confound these two Significations TM" Therefore, I suppose, Mr. Pope must not employ the Word at all, tho' it be to vindicate it from that Abufe, by diftinguishing its different Significations. But this we are to confider as a Touch of our Logician's Art. It is what they call Argumentum ad invidiam. The Poet, Far as Creation's ample Range extends, The Scale of fenfual, mental Powers ascends: Mark how it mounts to Man's imperial Race, From the green Myriads in the peopled Grafs. Ep.i. 1. 199, & feq. On this the Commentator, "That Place of Ho૮ nour, which the Poet has refused to Man in another Part of his Epiftle, he gives him here, "because it ferves to embellifh and perfect the Gradation. At every Step Mr. Pope forgets one "of those principal and most effential Rules, "which Mr. Des Cartes lays down in his Method; "that is, exactly to review what one afferts, so "that no Part be found to be gratis dictum, “ nor the Whole repugnant to itself "." This we are to understand, as faid, diaλexxws. But I fhall beg leave to observe that our Logician here gives his Leffons very impertinently. For, that Mr. Pope, in calling the Race of Man imperial, hath bestowed no Title on him in this Place, which he had denied him elfewhere. He, with great Piety and Prudence, fupposes what the Scripture tells us to be true, that Man was created Lord of this inferior World; he fuppofes it, I fay, in these Lines of this very Epiftle: Without this juft Gradation could they be 1. 221. & feq. He exprefly afferts it in the third Epistle : 1. 160. And this, in the very Place where he gives the Description of Man in Paradife. What misled our Critic fo far as to imagine Mr. Pope had here contradicted himself was, I suppose, Commentaire, p. 108. fuch |