Note 1147 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)

This paragraph first appeared in the edition of 1743. In the preceding paragraph, we are told that, in physical science, man "may rise unchecked from art to art." Unless, therefore, Pope reckoned physical science among the worthless departments of knowledge, there was, by his own statement, one vast and important scientific region which was destined to unlimited extension, and of which it was not correct to say that a "little sum" must serve the future, as it had served the past.