Blest with content and honesty. THE MORAL. Then leave complaints: fools only strive To make a great an honest hive. 410 T' enjoy the world's conveniences, Be fam'd in war, yet live in ease, Without great vices, is a vain Eutopia seated in the brain. Fraud, luxury, and pride must live, 415 While we the benefits receive: Hunger's a dreadful plague, no doubt, Yet who digests or thrives without? Do we not owe the growth of wine To the dry shabby crooked vine? 420 Which, while its shoots neglected stood, Chok'd other plants, and ran to wood; But blest us with its noble fruit, As soon as it was ty'd and cut: So vice is beneficial found, 425 When it's by justice lopp'd and bound; Nay, where the people would be great, } As necessary to the state, } As hunger is to make 'em eat. } Bare virtue can't make nations live 430 In splendor; they, that would revive A golden age, must be as free, For acorns as for honesty. 433 THE INTRODUCTION. One of the greatest reasons why so few people understand themselves, is, that most writers are always teaching men what they should be, and hardly ever trouble their heads with telling them what they really are. As for my part, without any compliment to the courteous reader, or myself, I believe man (besides skin, flesh, bones, &c. that are obvious to the eye) to be a compound of various passions; that all of them, as they are provoked and come uppermost, govern him by turns, whether he will or no. To show that these qualifications, which we all pretend to be ashamed of, are the great support of a flourishing society, has been the subject of the foregoing poem. But there being some passages in it seemingly paradoxical, I have in the preface promised some explanatory remarks on it; which, to render more useful, I have thought fit to inquire, how man, no better qualified, might yet by his own imperfections be taught to distinguish between virtue and vice: and here I must desire the reader once for all to take notice, that when I say men, I mean neither Jews nor Christians; but mere man, in the state of nature and ignorance of the true Deity. AN INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF MORAL VIRTUE.