ALEXANDER POPE’S ESSAY ON MAN

 

          ALEXANDER POPE’S ESSAY ON MAN

To write on man is a hard nut to crack. There is no action which man does not perform in this world. He has been both praised and condemned by poets.

The Urdu-Persian poet Dr. Sir Mohammad Iqbal (1877-1938) believed that man is God’s assistant in the creation, refinement and perfection of  universe.

There are many other poets who have expressed their views about the status and qualities of man.

The English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) was a great satirist. His Essay on Man was written in 1734. Though there are lots of significant ideas which he has expressed in this poem, his attempt at philosophical level has not been sufficiently appreciated.

In his A PRIMER OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (1925) Arthur Compton Rickett says that Pope’s work is rich in aphorisms and there is no poet, Shakespeare excepted, whose sayings have so freely enriched the English language. He has the virtue of a singular power to transform an ordinary idea, a commonplace morality, into a neat and pungent phrase.

Given below is an extract from Pope’s Essay on Man:

“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,

The proper study of mankind is Man,

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,

A being darkly wise and rudely great:

With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,

With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,

He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast;

In doubt his mind or body to prefer;

Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err;

Alike in ignorance, his reason such,

Whether he thinks too little or too much;

Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;

Still by himself abused or disabused;

Created half to rise, and half to fall;

Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl’d:

The glory, jest and riddle of the world!

                        Finally, these three quotes fom An Essay on Man. (1). An honest man’s the noblest work of God. (2). Whatever is, is right. (3). Order is heaven’s first law.

                                                                        ********

G.R.Kanwal

3^rd December 2024