Happiness in the Fourth Epistle of Alexander Popes An Essay on Man

Alexander Popes philosophical poem An Essay on adult male, publish in 1732-134, may even more precisely be classified, to use a German phrase, as Weltanschauungliche Dichtung (world muckleish poetry). That it is appropriate to understand An Essay on Man as world view in verse, as a work which depicts humanitys parityship to and understanding of a perplexing and amazing world, is indicated in the statement of the poems excogitation in which the author avows that his goal was to examine Man in the abstract, his Nature and his State. Indeed, Pope sought to fulfill his agenda by describing in each of the works quatern epistles the nature and state of man with respect (1) to the universe, (2) to man himself as an individual, (3) to society, and fin anyy, (4) in relation to happiness. Popes poetic and powerful examination of these themes in which attitudes generated by deism, eighteenth-century sociality, and Roman universality come together (Mack lxxiv-lxxv) establish this compo sition as one of the truly great literary statements of a particular world view perspective in the history of the West.Popes concern with human teleology in An Essay on Man also distinguish it as a distinctive piece of world view literature. According to The Design of the poem, Pope asserted that in order to understand man or both creature, it was necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end and purpose of its being. For Pope, drawing on a venerable ideal from antiquity onwards, the end and purpose of humanity was happiness.1 As he exclaims at the very beginning of the fourth epistle, The heritage of the supremacy of happiness is impressive. For example, Aristotle believed that happiness was mans stron... ...he gladness of all beings in the chain of being) Sees, that no Being any bliss can know, But touches some above, and some below.EM 4. 343-50 (regarding bliss in God)For him alone, hope leads from goal to goal And opens still, and opens on his soul Till protracted on to Faith, and unconfined, It pours the bliss that fills up all the mind. He sees, why Nature plants in Man aloneHope of known bliss, and Faith in bliss unknown (Nature, whose dictates to no other kind Are given in vain, but what they seek they find) Wise is her present she connects in this His superior Virtue with his greatest Bliss.EM 4. 359-60 (regarding love and happiness) Happier as kinder, in whateer degree, And height of Bliss but height of Charity.EM 4. 397-98 (regarding bliss and virtue) That Virtue only makes our bliss belowAnd all our Knowledge is, ourselves to know.