11. An Essay on Man

Chapter 11 begins with a précis of Pope’s most ambitious poem, An Essay on Man. It then identifies the poem’s tension in, on the one side, the a priori assumption inherent in the ‘chain of being’ theory of the universe and human society; and, on the other, the empirical method by which its illustrations and applications of that theory operate. By means of detailed analyses of extracts from all four epistles, the chapter then argues that this tension is consistent with the central quality of Pope’s poetry: its flexible capacity to maintain two attitudes or points of view. Like aphorisms, such as ‘The proper study of mankind is man’, the poem’s precision of language both concisely defines an argument and leaves space for an examination of what such expressions necessarily exclude and the context within which they are placed. An Essay on Man, like Pope’s poetry as a whole, incites a reader’s active inquiry.