Note 1561 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
MS.:
Let us, my S[t. John], this plain truth confess, Good nature makes, and keeps our happiness; And faith and morals end as they began, All in the love of God, and love of man.
In his second epistle Pope maintains that we are born with the germ of an unalterable ruling passion which grows with our growth, and swallows up every other passion. Among these ruling passions he specifies spleen, hate, fear, anger, etc., which are dispensed by fate, absorb the entire man, and of necessity exclude love. Here, on the contrary, we are told, ver. 327-340, that "the sole bliss heaven could on all bestow," is the virtue which "ends in love of God and love of man."