Note 991 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)

Pope says that we cannot tell why Jupiter's satellites are less than Jupiter. Any mathematician could have shown him that if Jupiter was less than his satellites they would not revolve round him.—Voltaire.

Warburton, to evade Voltaire's criticism, put a strained and paraphrastic interpretation upon Pope's lines. Their natural meaning is, that man is too ignorant to comprehend why he is not less instead of greater,—nay, that he cannot even tell why oaks are taller than weeds, why Jupiter's satellites are less than Jupiter, and all his investigations into the earth and the heavens will not supply him with the answer.