Note 1298 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)

In Pope's wide sense of the term, reason adapts means to ends, and distinguishes between truth and falsehood, right and wrong. The faculty operates in part spontaneously, and in part with effort. In an endless number of ordinary circumstances man cannot help observing, comparing, and inferring, and his reason is itself an instinct which "comes a volunteer." The distinction is, that man does not stop with the unconstrained exercise of his powers. He aspires to progress, and laboriously pushes forward, while animals turn round, generation after generation, in the same narrow circle. What Pope supposed was a mark of man's inferiority is just the ground of his superiority. His conquests begin with his difficulties and exertions.