Note 998 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
Bolingbroke, Fragments 43 and 63: "We labour hard, we complicate various means to bring about some one paltry purpose.—In the works of men the most complicated schemes produce very hardly and very uncertainly one single effect: in the works of God one single scheme produces a multitude of different effects, and answers an immense variety of purposes."—Wakefield.
How clearly and closely is this sentiment expressed by Pope, and yet how difficult to render into verse with precision and effect.—Bowles.
In the first line the phrase "one single," for "one single movement," is especially inelegant. Bowles might have selected many couplets from the Essay on Man more deserving of the commendation. The thought which Pope owed to Bolingbroke, Bolingbroke owed to Leibnitz, who says in his Théodicée, "Everything in nature is connected, and if a skilful artizan, engineer, architect, statesman, often makes the same contrivance serve for several purposes, we may affirm that God, whose wisdom and power are perfect, does so always." Hence Pope contends that what is defective in man considered separately, may be advantageous in relation to the hidden ends he is intended to serve.