Community in "Essay on Man"

When I first began to read Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Man," I thought that it would be a longer version of one of my favorite poems, Rudyard Kipling's "If." The opening lines (of the segment available in our book) sound like instruction, "Know then thyself, presume not God to scan." However, in Epistle III, Pope begins to examine a history of the world as he knows it. I particularly like how Pope seems to acknowledge the failure of man as both a superior species and a beast. Pope then acknowledges the skill that man obtained by watching those beasts whose instinctual actions could be mimicked by “the wiser” men.

Man was then able to create the civilization as Pope knew it. Pope presents God and Nature as two influences to make man as great as he is today. I find this presentation interesting, but I find the challenge he places before his fellow man to be more so. In one of the last stanzas, Pope writes:

For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate’er is best administered 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.

In this passage, Pope very obviously states that charity is the most important work for men. However, the line “His can’t be wrong whose life is in the right” sounds as though it would encourage a single individual to take solace in the fact that he is doing the right thing, regardless of the governing bodies around him. This line is almost immediately followed by, “But all mankind’s concern.” I believe that by using the word “mankind,” Pope intends to convey that charity is societal concern, not that of a single individual. If this is the case, then Pope is very different than Kipling, as Kipling’s poem focuses on those things that an individual should do, while Pope attempts encourage men to band together in order to act a certain way. I think that Pope’s interest in the larger community would be ambitious, as I believe that during this time in Europe there was a large emphasis on an individual’s own relationship with his or her god.