But errs not Nature from this gracious end, From burning suns when livid deaths descend, When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep? 'No' 'tis replied, 'the first Almighty Cause Acts not by partial, but by general laws; Th' exceptions few; some change, since all began: And what created perfect?'--Why then Man? If the great end be human happiness, Then Nature deviates; and can Man do less? 150 As much that end a constant course requires Of showers and sunshine, as of Man's desires; As much eternal springs and cloudless skies, As men for ever temperate, calm, and wise. If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's design, Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline? Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old Ocean, and who wings the storms, Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind, Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind? 150 From pride, from pride, our very reasoning springs; Account for moral, as for natural things: Why charge we Heaven in those, in these acquit? In both, to reason right, is to submit. Better for us, perhaps, it might appear, Were there all harmony, all virtue here; That never air or ocean felt the wind, That never passion discomposed the mind. But all subsists by elemental strife; And passions are the elements of life. 170 The general order, since the whole began, Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man. VI. What would this Man? Now upward will he soar, And, little less than angel, would be more; Now looking downwards, just as grieved appears To want the strength of bulls, the fur of bears. Made for his use all creatures if he call, Say, what their use, had he the powers of all? Nature to these, without profusion, kind, The proper organs, proper powers assign'd; 180 Each seeming want compensated, of course, Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force; All in exact proportion to the state; Nothing to add, and nothing to abate. Each beast, each insect, happy in its own: Is Heaven unkind to Man, and Man alone? Shall he alone, whom rational we call, Be pleased with nothing, if not bless'd with all? The bliss of Man (could pride that blessing find) Is not to act or think beyond mankind; 190 No powers of body or of soul to share, But what his nature and his state can bear. Why has not Man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, Man is not a fly. Say, what the use, were finer optics given, T'inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonise at every pore? Or, quick effluvia darting through the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic pain? 200 If nature thunder'd in his opening ears, And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres, How would he wish that Heaven had left him still The whispering zephyr, and the purling rill? Who finds not Providence all good and wise, Alike in what it gives, and what denies?