Note 1301 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
MS.:
One in their act to think and to pursue, Sure to will right, and what they will to do.
Pope's meaning is, that there is no conflict in animals, as in man, between passion and reason, between desire and judgment, that there is not in the operations of animals, as in man's contrivances, a studied adaptation of means to ends, nor a balancing of method against method, and of end against end, but that animals are endowed with singleness of purpose, know instinctively what to do, and how to do it.