ERRATA.

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THE

DESIGN.

H AVING proposed man Life and Manners, such as (to use my lord Bacon's expression) come home to Men's Business and Bofoms, I thought it more fatisfactory to begin with confidering Man in the abstract, his Nature and his State; fince, to prove any moral duty, to enforce any moral precept, or to examine the perfection or imperfection of any creature whatsoever, it is necessary first to know what condition and relation it is placed in, and what is the proper end and purpose of its being.

to write some pieces on Hu

The science of Human Nature is, like all other sciences, reduced to a few clear points: There are not many certain truths in this world. It is therefore in the Anatomy of the mind as in that of the Body; more good will accrue to mankind by attending to the large, open, and perceptible parts, than by studying too much fuch finer nerves and vessels, the conformations and uses of which will for ever escape our observation. The disputes are all upon these last, and, I will venture to say, they have less sharpened the wits than the hearts of men against each other, and have diminished the practice, more than advanced the theory, of Morality. If I could flatter myself that this Essay has any merit, it is in steering betwixt the extremes of doctrines seemingly oppofite, in passing over terms utterly unintelligible, and in forming a temperate yet not inconsistent, and a short yet not imperfect system of Ethics.

This I might have done in prose; but I chose verse, and even rhyme, for two reasons. The one will appear obvious; that principles, maxims, or precepts so written, both strike the reader more strongly at first, and are more easily retained by him afterwards: The other may feem odd, but is true, I found I could express them more shortly this way than in prose itself; and nothing is more certain, than that much of the force as well as grace of arguments or instructions, depends on their conciseness. I was unable to treat this part of my subject more in detail, without becoming dry and tedious; or more poetically, without facrificing perfpicuity to ornament, without wandring from the precision, or breaking the chain of reasoning: If any man can unite all these without diminution of any of them, I freely confess he will compass a thing above my capacity.

What is now published, is only to be confidered as a general Map of MAN, marking out no more than the greater parts, their extent, their limits, and their connection, but leaving the particular to be more fully delineated in the charts which are to follow. Consequently, these Epistles in their progress (if I have health and leisure to make any progress) will be less dry, and more susceptible of poetical ornament. I am here only opening the fountains, and clearing the paflage. To deduce the rivers, to follow them in their course, and to observe their effects, may be a task more agreeable.

Strand mo silt we alidus

TO we has hadt

H. St John, Lord Bolingbroke.

Of the Nature and State of Man with respect to the

UNIVERSE

OF Man in the abstract.-I. That we can judge only with regard to our own system, being ignorant of the relations of systems and things, 17, &c. II. That Man is not to be deemed imperfect, but a Being fuited to his place and rank in the creation, agreeable to the general Order of things, and conformable to Ends and Relations to him unknown, * 35, &c. III. That it is partly upon his ignorance of future

A

&c.

events, and partly upon the hope of a future ftate, that all bis happiness in the present depends, 77, IV. The pride of aiming at more knowledge, and pretending to more Perfection, the cause of Man's error and misery. The impiety of putting himself in the place of God, and judging of the fitness or unfitness, perfection or imperfection, justice or injustice, of his difpenfations, 109, &c. V. The absurdity of conceiting himself the final cause of the creation, or expecting that perfection in the moral world, which is not in the natural, 131, &c. VI. The unreasonableness of his complaints against Providence, while on the one hand he demands the Perfections of the Angels, and on the other the bodily qualifications of the Brutes; though, to possess any of the sensitive faculties in a higher degree, would render him miferable, & 173, &c. VII. That throughout the whole visible world, an univerfal order and gradation in the fenfual and mental faculties is observed, which causes a fubordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to Man. The gradations of sense, inftinct, thought, reflection, reason; that Reason alone countervails all the other faculties, * 207. VIII. How much farther this order and fubordination of living creatures may extend, above and below us; were any part of which broken, not that part only, but the whole connected creation must be destroyed, 233. IX. The extravagance, madness, and pride, of fuch a defire, $ 250. X. The confequence of all, the absolute submiffion due to Providence, both as to our present and future state, 281, &c. to the end.