Note 1273 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)

Pope is speaking in the context of plants and animals, which are the "they" of ver. 20. He threw ver. 18 into a parenthesis, and said, "we catch," because the interjected remark relates to men. The power displayed in the transmission of life from parents to progeny is happily illustrated by Fénelon, in his Traité de l'Existence de Dieu: "What should we think of a watchmaker who could make watches which would produce other watches to infinity, insomuch that the two first watches would be sufficient to propagate and perpetuate the species over all the earth? What should we say of an architect who had the art to construct houses which generated fresh houses to replace our dwellings before they began to fall into ruin?"