Note 1412 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
These lines follow in the MS.:
Heav'n plants no vain desire in human kind, But what it prompts to seek, directs to find, From whom, so strongly pointing at the end, To hide the means it never could intend. Now since, whatever happiness we call, Subsists not in the good of one, but all, And whosoever would be blessed must bless, Virtue alone can form that happiness.
A sentence in Hooker's Eccl. Pol., Book i. Chap. viii. Sect. 7, will explain Pope's idea in the last four lines: "If I cannot but wish to receive all good at every man's hand, how should I look to have any part of my desire satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire in other men?"