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Essay on Man

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Know Then Thyself
(from Epistle 2, An Essay on Man)
by Alexander Pope

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Know then thyself
Presume not God to scan
The proper study of mankind is man.
Plac'd 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;

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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 confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;
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!

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Alexander Pope

It has been asserted that the Essay an Man was in substance the work of [Lord Henry St. John] Bolingbroke; that his Lordship supplied the materials in prose, and that Pope turned them into verse. The subject has been carefully examined by Mr. Roscoe (Life of Pope, p. 394, et seq.), who, from a comparison of dates and contemporary documents has, I think, satisfactorily shewn [sic], 1. That the Essay on Man was begun, and a great part of it completed, several years before Lord Bolingbroke had commenced to write on the subject. 2. That Lord Bolingbroke continued to write his philosophical work long after Pope had published his Essay. 3. That his Lordship has himself explicitly stated, that the Poem of Pope was an original, and not imitated.  From The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope (Pope, Dyce), W. Pickering (1835)

 

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