Note 988 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)

"Why one reason," says Wakefield, "should be harder than the other I am unable to discern." The passage is taken, as Warton pointed out, from Voltaire's remarks on Pascal's Thoughts, but Voltaire put the questions on the same footing, and did not pretend that the second was harder to solve than the first. "You are astonished," he says "that God has made man so contracted, so ignorant, and so unhappy. Why are you not astonished that he has not made him more contracted, more ignorant, and more unhappy?" Neither question ought to have presented any difficulty to Pope, since it was "plain" to him that "the best possible system" required that "there should be somewhere such a rank as man." All who admit the attributes of the Deity must allow that every portion of the world, sentient or insensible, is the consummation of wisdom with reference to its place in the infinite and eternal scheme. "God," says Leibnitz, "does not even neglect inanimate things; they are unconscious, but God is conscious for them. He would reproach himself with the least real defect in the universe, although no one perceived it."