Note 1158 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)

MS.: "nature." "Grace" here signifies the Divine assistance vouchsafed to the natural powers of man in his efforts after goodness. Pope's original reading,—"grace and nature"—was a censure of the attempts to define the respective influences exerted by the nature of man, and the grace or intervention of God. The substitute of "virtue" for "nature," obscures the meaning, but the poet apparently had still in his mind the long controversies on the share which appertained to "grace" in the production of "virtue." He may have thought that it was needless to try and settle the precise part which belonged to grace, since nature and grace are both gifts of the same Almighty Being.