Big Fat Pope - Essay on Man: 3

The Essay on Man - Epistle III
Alexander Pope

HERE then we rest; 'The universal cause
Acts to one end, but acts by various laws.'
In all the madness of superfluous health,
The trim of pride, the impudence of wealth,
Let this great truth be present night and day;
But most be present, if we preach or pray.

I
Look round our world; behold the chain of love
Combining all below and all above.
See plastic nature working to this end,
The single atoms each to other tend,
Attract, attracted to, the next in place
Form'd and impell'd its neighbour to embrace.
See matter next, with various life endu'd,
Press to one centre still, the gen'ral good.
See dying vegetables life sustain,
See life dissolving vegetate again:
All forms that perish other forms supply,
(By turns we catch the vital breath, and die)
Like bubbles on the sea of matter born,
They rise, they break, and to that sea return.
Nothing is foreign; parts relate to whole;
One all-extending, all-preserving soul
Connects each being, greatest with the least;
Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast;
All serv'd, all serving: nothing stands alone;
The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.

Has God, thou fool! work'd solely for thy good,
Thy joy, thy pastime, thy attire, thy food?
Who for thy table feeds the wanton fawn,
For him as kindly spread the flow'ry lawn:
Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings?
Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings.
Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat?
Loves of his own and raptures swell the note.
The bounding steed you pompously bestride,
Shares with his lord the pleasure and the pride.
Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain?
The birds of heav'n shall vindicate their grain.
Thine the full harvest of the golden year?
Part pays, and justly, the deserving steer:
The hog, that plows not, nor obeys thy call,
Lives on the labours of this lord of all.

Know, nature's children all divide her care;
The fur that warms a monarch, warm'd a bear.
While man exclaims, 'See all things for my use!'
'See man for mine!' replies a pamper'd goose:
And just as short of reason he must fall,
Who thinks all made for one, not one for all.

Grant that the pow'rful still the weak controul;
Be man the wit and tyrant of the whole:
Nature that tyrant checks; he only knows,
And helps, another creature's wants and woes.
Say, will the falcon, stooping from above,
Smit with her varying plumage, spare the dove?
Admires the jay the insect's gilded wings?
Or hears the hawk when Philomela sings?
Man cares for all: to birds he gives his woods,
To beasts his pastures, and to fish his floods;
For some his int'rest prompts him to provide,
For more his pleasure, yet for more his pride:
All feed on one vain patron, and enjoy
Th' extensive blessing of his luxury,
That very life his learned hunger craves,
He saves from famine, from the savage saves;
Nay, feasts the animal he dooms his feast,
And, till he ends the being, makes it blest:
Which sees no more the stroke, or feels the pain,
Than favour'd man by touch etherial slain.
The creature had his feast of life before;
Thou too must perish, when thy feast is o'er!

To each unthinking being, heav'n a friend,
Gives not the useless knowledge of its end:
To man imparts it; but with such a view
As, while he dreads it, makes him hope it too:
The hour conceal'd, and so remote the fear,
Death still draws nearer, never seeming near.
Great standing miracle! that heav'n assign'd
Its only thinking thing this turn of mind.

II
Whether with reason, or with instinct blest,
Know, all enjoy that pow'r which suits them best;
To bliss alike by that direction tend,
And find the means proportion'd to their end.
Say, where full instinct is th' unerring guide,
What Pope or Council can they need beside?
Reason, however able, cool at best,
Cares not for service, or but serves when prest,
Stays 'till we call, and then not often near;
But honest instinct comes a volunteer,
Sure never to o'er-shoot but just to hit;
While still too wide or short is human wit;
Sure by quick nature happiness to gain,
Which heavier reason labours at in vain.
This too serves always, reason never long;
One must go right, the other may go wrong.
See then the acting and comparing pow'rs
One in their nature, which are two in ours;
And reason raise o'er instinct as you can,
In this 'tis God directs, in that 'tis man.

Who taught the nations of the field and flood
To shun their poison, and to chuse their food?
Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand,
Build on the wave or arch beneath the sand?
Who made the spiller parallels design,
Sure as De Moivre, without rule or line?
Who bid the stork, Columbus-like, explore
Heav'ns not his own, and worlds unknown before?
Who calls the council, states the certain day,
Who forms the phalanx, and who points the way?

III
God, in the nature of each being, founds
Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds:
But as he fram'd a whole the whole to bless,
On mutual wants built mutual happiness:
So from the first, eternal order ran,
And creature link'd to creature, man to man.
Whate'er of life all-quick'ning aether keeps,
Or breathes thro' air, or shoots beneath the deeps,
Or pours profuse on earth, one nature feeds
The vital flame, and swells the genial seeds.
Not man alone, but all that roam the wood,
Or wing the sky, or roll along the flood,
Each loves itself, but not itself alone,
Each sex desires alike, 'till two are one.
Nor ends the pleasure with the fierce embrace;
They love themselves, a third time, in their race.
Thus beast and bird their common charge attend
The mothers nurse it, and the sires defend;
The young dismiss'd to wander earth or air,
There stops the instinct, and there ends the care;
The link dissolves, each seeks a fresh embrace,
Another love succeeds, another race.
A longer care man's helpless kind demands;
That longer care contracts more lasting bands:
Reflection, reason, still the ties improve,
At once extend the int'rest, and the love:
With choice we fix, with sympathy we burn;
Each virtue in each passion takes its turn;
And still new needs, new helps, new habits rise,
That graft benevolence on charities.
Still as one brood, and as another rose,
These nat'ral love maintain'd, habitual those:
The last, scarce ripen'd into perfect man,
Saw helpless him from whom their life began:
Mem'ry and fore-cast just returns engage,
That pointed back to youth, this on to age;
While pleasure, gratitude, and hope, combin'd,
Still spread the int'rest and preserv'd the kind.

IV
Nor think, in nature's state they blindly trod;
The state of nature was the reign of God:
Self-love and social at her birth began,
Union the bond of all things, and of man.
Pride then was not; nor arts, that pride to aid;
Man walk'd with beast, joint tenant of the shade,
The same his table, and the same his bed;
No murder cloath'd him, and no murder fed.
In the same temple, the resounding wood,
All vocal beings hymn'd their equal God:
The shrine with gore unstain'd, with gold undrest,
Unbrib'd, unbloody, stood the blameless priest:
Heav'n's attribute was universal care,
And man's prerogative, to rule, but spare.
Ah! how unlike the man of times to come!
Of half that live the butcher and the tomb;
Who, foe to nature, hears the gen'ral groan,
Murders their species, and betrays his own.
But just disease to luxury succeeds,
And ev'ry death its own avenger breeds;
The fury-passions from that blood began,
And turn'd on man, a fiercer savage, man.

See him from nature rising slow to art!
To copy instinct then was reason's part;
Thus then to man the voice of nature spake,
'Go, from the creatures thy instructions take:
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield;
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field;
Thy arts of building from the bee receive;
Learn of the mole to plow, the worm to weave;
Learn of the little nautilus to sail,
Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.
Here too all forms of social union find,
And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind:
Here subterranean works and cities see
There towns aerial on the waving tree.
Learn each small people's genius, policies,
The ant's republic, and the realm of bees:
How those in common all their wealth bestow,
And anarchy without confusion know;
And these for ever, tho' a monarch reign,
Their sep'rate cells and properties maintain.
Mark what unvary'd laws preserve each state,
Laws wise as nature, and as fix'd as fate.
In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw,
Entangle justice in her net of law,
And right, too rigid, harden into wrong;
Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong.
Yet go! and thus o'er all the creatures sway,
Thus let the wiser make the rest obey;
And for those arts mere instinct could afford,
Be crown'd as monarchs, or as gods ador'd.'

V
Great nature spoke; observant man obey'd;
Cities were built, societies were made:
Here rose one little state; another near
Grew by like means, and join'd, thro' love or fear.
Did here the trees, with ruddier burdens bend,
And there the streams in purer rills descend?
What war could ravish, commerce could bestow,
And he return'd a friend, who came a foe.
Converse and love mankind might strongly draw,
When love was liberty, and nature law.
Thus states were form'd; the name of king unknown,
'Till common int'rest plac'd the sway in one.
'Twas virtue only (or in arts or arms,
Diffusing blessings, or averting harms)
The same which in a sire the sons obey'd,
A prince the father of a people made.

VI
'Till then, by nature crown'd, each patriarch sate,
King, priest and parent of his growing state;
On him, their second providence, they hung,
Their law his eye, their oracle his tongue.
He from the wond'ring furrow call'd the food,
Taught to command the fire, control the flood,
Draw forth the monsters of th' abyss profound,
Or fetch th' aerial eagle to the ground,
'Till drooping, sick'ning, dying they began
Whom they rever'd as God to mourn as man:
Then, looking up from sire to sire, explor'd
One great first father, and that first ador'd.
Or plain tradition that this All begun,
Convey'd unbroken faith from sire to son;
The worker from the work distinct was known,
And simple reason never sought but one:
Ere wit oblique had broke that steady light,
Man, like his maker, saw that all was right;
To virtue, in the paths of pleasure trod,
And own'd a father when he own'd a God.
Love all the faith, and all th' allegiance then;
For nature knew no right divine in men,
No ill could fear in God; and understood
A sov'reign being, but a sov'reign good.
True faith, true policy, united ran,
That was but love of God, and this of man.

Who first taught souls enslav'd, and realms undone,
Th' enormous faith of many made for one;
That proud exception to all nature's laws,
T' invert the world, and counter-work its cause?
Force first made conquest, and that conquest, law;
'Till superstition taught the tyrant awe,
Then shar'd the tyranny, then lent it aid,
And gods of conqu'rors, slaves of subjects made:
She, 'midst the lightning's blaze, and thunder's sound,
When rock'd the mountains, and when groan'd the ground,
She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray,
To pow'r unseen, and mightier far than they:
She, from the rending earth, and bursting skies,
Saw gods descend, and fiends infernal rise:
Here fix'd the dreadful, there the blest abodes;
Fear made her devils, and weak hope her gods;
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust;
Such as the souls of cowards might conceive,
And, form'd like tyrants, tyrants would believe.
Zeal then, not charity, became the guide;
And hell was built on spite, and heav'n on pride.
Then sacred seem'd th' ethereal vault no more;
Altars grew marble then, and reek'd with gore:
Then first the flamen tasted living food;
Next his grim idol smear'd with human blood;
With heav'n's own thunders shook the world below,
And play'd the god an engine on his foe.

So drives self-love, thro' just, and thro' unjust,
To one man's pow'r, ambition, lucre, lust.
The same self-love, in all, becomes the cause
Of what restrains him, government and laws.
For, what one likes, if others like as well,
What serves one will, when many wills rebel?
How shall he keep, what, sleeping or awake,
A weaker may surprise, a stronger take?
His safety must his liberty restrain:
All join to guard what each desires to gain.
Forc'd into virtue thus, by self-defence,
Ev'n kings learn'd justice and benevolence:
Self-love forsook the path it first pursu'd,
And found the private in the public good.

'Twas then the studious head or gen'rous mind,
Follow'r of God, or friend of human-kind,
Poet or patriot, rose but to restore
The faith and moral nature gave before;
Relum'd her ancient light, not kindled new,
If not God's image, yet his shadow drew:
Taught pow'r's due use to people and to kings,
Taught nor to slack, nor strain its tender strings,
The less, or greater, set so justly true,
That touching one must strike the other too;
'Till jarring int'rests of themselves create
Th' according music of a well-mix'd state.
Such is the world's great harmony, that springs
From order, union, full consent of things:
Where small and great, where weak and mighty, made
To serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade;
More pow'rful each as needful to the rest,
And in proportion as it blesses blest;
Draw to one point, and to one centre bring
Beast, man, or angel, servant, lord, or king.

For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administer'd is best:
For modes of faith, let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right:
In faith and hope the world will disagree,
But all mankind's concern is charity:
All must be false that thwart this one great end;
And all of God, that bless mankind, or mend.

Man, like the gen'rous vine, supported lives;
The strength he gains is from th' embrace he gives.
On their own axis as the planets run,
Yet make at once their circle round the sun;
So two consistent motions act the soul;
And one regards itself, and one the whole.
Thus God and nature link'd the gen'ral frame,
And bade self-love and social be the same.

Etiquette, politesse, morality, trawthe and last night's School Quiz.

Last night, the School Quiz. A Fundraising event with the emphasis on FUN. Or in other words a complex minefield of morality and politesse that would cause Sir Gawain to blanche.

Firstly, you are in a team with other people - complete strangers, although doubtless very pleasant, whose relationship with the school you will only tease out slowly through the rest of the evening. Only two join your table at first but you fear there may be a large extended family waiting in the wings. You and yours have already chosen your team name (a challenge in its own right, as you have to deal with different ages and the resulting multiple aesthetics), and in which round you will play the joker. Then you have to try and share these decisions with your new, strange, team members in such a way that they won't think you are dictating to them (which you are) and yet don't want to change any of it.

And then there are the answers. When you are nearly sure that you know the answer but one of the others, who you don't know particularly well is of a different view, how may you reasonably negotiate? Also, when the answers are read out, exactly when is it acceptable to shout Yes! Yes! Yes! and punch the air? (I only indulged in that once last night) ** Remember, this is meant to be FUN but THE TEACHERS MUST NOT WIN. That is the only, the overriding imperative. But as Gawain discovered, winning takes several forms - and I think we were reminded of that last night.

So, to cut to the chase, let me set the scene: We had completed four of the five rounds, we had all handed in our answer sheets (none of this swapping sheets malarkey - too open to abuse), and the marks were coming up on the data projector. A simple Excel spreadsheet. And...

We were in the lead!!

Not alone, and the scores were pretty tight, but...

We were in the lead!!

But the IT teachers on a nearby table were mumbling and niggling. At least I think they were, it was hard to tell; quite a lot of generalised grunting had been coming from that direction anyway - it being their favoured approximation to human language. Anyway, they weren't happy, and kept pointing at the screen. So I had a look too.

There was an error in the spreadsheet. The numbers didn't add up.

A real ethical quandary. Not the obvious thing (do you argue back and try to assert that the arithmetic is correct, they've just been drinking too much). No. It's the 'Do you offer to try and fix it so the IT teachers don't get their hands on it' question. The 'Would they make it worse, or set it up so they would automatically win' question.

How much do you trust your children's teachers?

I couldn't risk it. I got up and vounteered to fix the damn spreadsheet. Sigh.

(The error was obvious, and I simplified the sums, and thankfully they switched the data projector off while I fiddled with the laptop, so my hamfistedness witht he mouse wasn't shown to all and sundry).

Once fixed, all the scores had adjusted themselves, and we were now in joint second place (with the IT teachers). Another team (with yet more teachers on it) had taken a small lead. (Boo!)

Then I had to explain myself to the rest of my table. Why were we no longer winning?

Anyway, we had a break (auction/fundraising - more moral challenges: is the table of drunk ex-students and sixth formers at the back really to be trusted when they bid large sums for more booze?) and then into the final picture round. We did OK (missed Winchester Cathedral, got the Collisseum). Headscratching by the organisers, and then the results flashed up on the projector.

A completely different team had won. No teachers on the team (hooray!), but the scores made no sense. If the projection was correct, they had been winning last round also (and the round before that too). But that wasn't what the spreadhseet had said last time we saw it.

Of course, there was a remote possibility that I had messed up the spreadsheet. But in my arrogance I assumed that wasn't it. Or maybe the organisers had quietly realised that they'd mis-entered the results earlier. But no - surely they would have said so. It was suddenly crystal clear what happened:

There was a fiddle going on. Someone was fixing the School Quiz.

I got a little upitty. My family, (not wanting a scene), calmed me down. Sssshhh!
The results carried on coming in. There was a team of teachers in second place.

OK then, let the result stand. Otherwise the blasted teachers will win. (What would the Green Knight say to that, I wonder? The correct answer - maybe - or at least the one most full of politesse, but certainly for a reason lacking in inner trawthe.)

And we were joint third. With another team, most of whom had left, and with...
The IT Teachers.

We could have just shared the third prize there and then. A big box of chocolates. But everyone's blood was up. A tie-break was called for. The chief organiser-person stood at the lectern and asked the question - first to answer this got the third prize. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife:

"What do the letters CPU stand for?"

Now, I may be biased, but I KNOW that I had said "Central Proc-" before any of the teachers started to say anything at all. I KNOW that the judges both pointed to me when we answered. And I KNOW that I said the whole answer, and correctly. And I am of course completely unbiased. But the IT teachers started chanting:

CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT
CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT
CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT
CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT

... and the judges wavered. One pointed at them...

So after some loud and heated debate, there was another tie break question made up on the spot, which no-one could answer (although the IT teachers, flushed with success, tried chanting "Central Processing Unit" again, just in case). And so we all gave up, shared the chocolates, and called it a day. The fun fundraising was over.

And I still bear the scars.

We'll beat them next year.

(** For knowing - or kind of working out - the year of Shakespeare's birth)

Astrotruckers

I've just finished reading Astrotruckers - a collection of short stories by Mikael Niemi.

The stories all involve some kind of philosophical or pseudo-scientific exploration against a general, entertainingly inconsistent, background of the future exploration of space. In tone they are wry and detached, and the language is often quite carefully spare and distancing. I enjoyed them a lot. As I was reading them, they reminded me of nothing so much as Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics, and Invisible Cities - so as you can see I was beginning to think quite highly of this new book.

And then I started to wonder.

How similar are they really? Astrotruckers is "translated from the original Finnish by Laurie Thompson" and I can only read Calvino in translation also. Isn't it possible that what I read as a rather distanced style - which they do seem to have in common - is just an effect of the translation? Although there are similarities in content and approach, the strongest connection does come from the use of language, and it may not be there in the original.
This is an area I feel singularly unfitted to write about - however this is a blog, and writing about things for which one is singularly unfitted is what blogs are all about, so here we go.
I don't have fantastic language skills. The closest I can get to reading a foreign-language work comfortably in both the original and in contemporary English is medieval English - say as hard as the Gawain-poet. Chaucer is straightforward. So if for the moment we treat Fourteenth-century English as a foreign language (debatable), how do the translations of the works I know well stack up?
Mostly, I have to say, poorly. It is rare to find a translation with the same degree of bite and engagement as the originals. Mostly they seem bland, a little unreadable. You wonder why there was that much fuss about the original. So - from a casual, limited and unsystematic observation - the act of translation can result in the idiosyncrasies of the original becoming a little blurred. For a piece of fiction that I don't know, which is at least in part philosophical in content, might this come across as a sardonic detachment? Possibly.
But perhaps I'm comparing my experience of poetry in translation with translations of narrative - unfair, perhaps if poetry is about an explicit heightening of language. Arguably that has some truth, however Chaucer in particular is a poet with a strong focus on narrative. There was then no real alternative form for original story-telling; novels and short stories are a later invention in English. So I would submit that the comparison may still hold.
So. Inconclusive, perhaps. I should also note that a review at totally Sci-Fi is much less struck than I am with Astrotruckers, seeing it as essentially derivative of Hitchhiker and Space Truckers, amongst others- although a posting at "Oxford College distance learning" is more enthusiastic. Finally, therefore, a last question: because of the perceived and possibly false stylistic similarity to Calvino, am I seeing the collection as more impressive than I might otherwise?
(Astrotruckers, first published in Finnish in 2004, English translation, 2007)