EPİSTLE IV.

ARGUMENT.

Of the Nature and State of Man with respect to Happiness. False notions of happiness, philosophical and popular....It is the end of all men, and attainable by all....God intends happiness to be equal; and to be so, it must be social; since all particular happiness depends on general, and since he governs by general, not particular, laws.... As it is necessary for order, and the peace and welfare of society, that external goods should be unequal, happiness is not made to consist in these.... But, notwithstanding that inequality, the balance of happiness among mankind is kept even by Providence, by the two passions of hope and fear ....What the happiness of individuals is, as far as is consistent with the constitution of this world; and that the good man has here the advantage.... The error of imputing to virtue what are only the calamities of nature or of fortune.... The folly of expecting that God should alter his general laws in favour of particulars.... That we are not judges who are good; but that, whoever they are, they must be happiest....That external goods are not the proper rewards, but often inconsistent with, or destructive of, virtue.... That even these can make no man happy without virtue: instanced in riches, honours, nobility, greatness, fame, and superior talents; with pictures of human infelicity in men possessed of them all.... That virtue only constitutes a happiness whose object is universal, and whose prospect eternal.... That the perfeetion of virtue and happiness consists in a conformity to the order of Providence here, and a resignation to it here and hereafter.

HAPPINESS! our being's end and aim!

Good, Pleasure, Ease, Content, whate'er thy name; That something still which prompts th'eternal sigh,

For which we bear to live, or dare to die;

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Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies,
O'erlook'd, seen double, by the fool, and wise.
Plant of celestial seed! if dropt below,
Say, in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow?
Fair op'ning to some court's propitious shine,
Or deep with di'monds in the flaming mine?
Twin'd with the wreaths Parnassian laurels yield,
Or reap'd in iron harvests of the field?
Where grows? where grows it not? If vain our toil,
We ought to blame the culture, not the soil:
Fix'd to no spot is happiness sincere,
'Tis no where to be found, or ev'ry where:
'Tis never to be bought, but always free,
And fled from monarchs, St. John, dwells with thee.
Ask of the learn'd the way? the learn'd are blind;
This bids to serve, and that to shun mankind;

Some place the bliss in action, some in ease,

Those call it pleasure, and contentment these;

Some sunk to beasts, find pleasure end in pain;

Some swell'd to Gods, confess ev'n virtue vain;

Or indolent, to each extreme they fall,

To trust in ev'ry thing, or doubt of all.
Who thus define it, say they more or less
Than this, that happiness is happiness?
Take Nature's path, and mad Opinion's leave;
All states can reach it, and all heads conceive;
Obvious her goods, in no extreme they dwell;
There needs but thinking right, and meaning well;
And mourn our various portions as we please,
Equal is common sense, and common ease.
Remember, man, "the universal cause
"Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws;"

And makes what happiness we justly call

Subsist, not in the good of one, but all.

There's not a blessing individuals find,

But some way leans and hearkens to the kind, No bandit fierce, no tyrant mad with pride,

No cavern'd hermit rests self-satisfy'd:

Who most to shun or hate mankind pretend,
Seek an admirer, or would fix a friend:

Abstract what others feel, what others think,
All pleasures sicken, and all glories sink:
Each has his share; and who would more obtain,
Shall find, the pleasure pays not half the pain.
Order is heav'n's first law; and this confest,
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest,
More rich, more wise; but who infers from hence
That such are happier, shocks all common sense,

Heav'n to mankind impartial we confess,

If all are equal in their happiness :

But mutual wants this happiness increase ;
All nature's diff'rence keeps all nature's peace,
Condition, circumstance is not the thing;
Bliss is the same in subject or in king---
In who obtain defence, or who defend,
In him who is, or him who finds a friend :
Heav'n breathes thro' ev'ry member of the whole
One common blessing, as one common soul.
But fortune's gifts if each alike possest,
And each were equal, must not all contest?
If then to all men happiness was meant,
God in externals could not place content.
Fortune her gifts may variously dispose,
And these be happy call'd, unhappy those;