Note 1068 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
First edition:
Through gen'ral life, behold the scale arise Of sensual and of mental faculties! Vast range of sense from man's imperial race To the green myriads, etc.
A very little observation would have satisfied Pope that "green" is not the prevailing hue of the "myriads in the peopled grass." Wakefield says that the expression "man's imperial race," in ver. 209, is from Dryden's Virg. Geo. iii. 377, and that the general argument is from Bolingbroke's Fragments: "There is a gradation of sense and intelligence here from animal beings imperceptible to us for their minuteness, without the help of microscopes, and even with them, up to man." This is what Leibnitz called "the law of continuity." "Nature," he said, "never proceeds by leaps."