30 pages • 1 hour read
Alexander PopeAn Essay on Man
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1734A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Epistle 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Summary Epistle 3: “On the Nature and State of Man with Respect to Society”
Section 1 (Lines 1-78) explores the chain of being, how this chain represents the social organization of humans and Nature. Nature has sculpted a chain, a “chain of love” (Line 7), to connect all things, from the smallest atoms to plants, animals, and humans. Each part of the chain works harmoniously to create a unified universe, and each being has its own desires. The linnet does not sing for humans to enjoy his song, but because of “loves of his own” (Line 34). Humans are the “vain patron” (Line 61) on which animals depend, and it is part of the natural order that humans eat animals. However, humans will die “when their feast is o’er” (Line 70). Because humans have passions and reason, they can feel dread about their mortality, but also hope. The speaker calls this “a miracle” (Line 77).
Section 2 (Lines 79-108) clarifies instinct in contrast with reason. Each living thing has instinct and reason “proportioned to their end” (Line 82). Animals don’t need reason because they have instinct in full, while humans have both reason and instinct. Reason is God’s way of directing people, while instinct enables people to physically survive. The speaker asks how people figured out what was safe to eat, how they knew to seek shelter from “the tides or tempests” (Line 101), how the spider weaves perfectly straight lines, or how the stork flies. Instinct is the answer.
Section 3 (Lines 109-146) explores how self-love relates to love for others, or what the speaker calls social love. The speaker says that instinct drives people to feel love for each other, which drives procreation. This leads to children and the propagation of the species. Instinct drives children to seek “a fresh embrace” (Line 129) and create their own families. Humans feel charity toward one another because they are bound through social love extending beyond the immediate family. People are helpless as infants for a long time, but this period of care strengthens the bonds between families and “contracts more lasting bands” (Line 132).
Section 4 (Lines 147-198) concerns the history of humans and how societies developed. Humans lived in “the state of nature” (Line 148) before building civilization. When they lived this way, people were very different. The speaker exclaims: “Ah! How unlike man of times to come!” (Line 161). Now, humans live less harmoniously with nature, murdering animals wantonly and one another. As humans developed, they learned to mimic Nature. They learned how to select food, how to construct homes, and how to weave from the birds, the bees, and the worms. They also learned how to organize themselves by witnessing the social organization of ants and bees.
Section 5 (Lines 199-214) discusses how states and nations formed. War destroyed communities, but commerce built up nations and united different people. People unified due to their “common interest” (Line 210). Their virtues taught them to obey the king, who was like a “sire,” (213) or father.
Section 6 (Lines 215-318) explores how monarchy began. The speaker argues that “Nature crowned” (Line 215) the rulers because they followed Nature’s laws. Monarchy began when a ruler died and named his son the next king. Slavery and conquest began, which “invert[ed] the world” (Line 244)—slavery is against Nature’s laws. Tyrants conquered and enslaved people, but these tyrants were also superstitious and feared God’s punishment. Rulers used religion to make themselves into “gods” and their subjects into “slaves” (Line 248). People began to worship gods who acted like tyrants, and strength became the foundation for society.
However, “government and laws” (Line 272) restrain rulers who have become too selfish and cruel. When the form of rule becomes too unjust, a “poet or patriot” (Line 285) revives the “ancient light” (Line 287), restoring reason by inspiring natural feelings of social and self-love. Reason restrains power: Just as the balance of reason and passion defines individual happiness, the harmony of the state or nation depends on it.
Analysis: Epistle 3
Epistle 3 explores how society came to exist. The speaker introduces the concept of social love and says that social love and self-love work together to fulfill human destiny and maintain social harmony. Self-love and social love spring from the same source: God. Regard for self and others must be balanced. The poem has a tone of awe when discussing God’s reason and Nature’s sense of order. This is achieved through elevated diction, metaphor, personification, repetition, and parallelism.
The speaker explores the themes of life and death, with death as an essential facet of the chain of being. The speaker captures the cycle of death and life in the metaphor: “See dying vegetables life sustain/See life dissolving vegetate again” (Lines 15-16). The poem uses imagery—foam on the surface of the ocean—to capture the need for death to sustain life on Earth: “[T]o that sea return[s]” (Lines 19-20). Mortality is not to be feared or hated; is a part of the natural cycle that all living things are a part of. Nature’s bounty propagates life regardless of the death of one being.
All living things, including humans, die eventually and return to the Earth. The speaker uses irony to point out that a king is worshipped like a deity during his life, but is “mourned as man” (Line 224). The alliteration in the phrase “mourned as man” emphasizes the speaker’s argument: Even kings are subject to the laws of Nature. Nature’s laws supersede the laws of humans.
Using metaphor, the speaker establishes that reason separates humans from animals. However, animals are valuable even though they lack reason. The speaker compares the stork that explores the world by flight to “Columbus” (Line 105), and the spider, with its precise weaving of webs, to “Demoivre,” (Line 104), a French mathematician who made innovations in trigonometry. Though animals only have instincts, they can achieve impressive feats that enable their survival.
The speaker uses metaphor to describe the way that creatures organize themselves into beehives or anthills: Beehives are organized like monarchies, whereas anthills are republics. The speaker argues that humans similarly construct forms of “social union” (Line 179). They say that humans should submit to God’s reason. To convey this, they use the metaphor of humanity as a phalanx, which is a battle formation of soldiers that the Greeks used, and God as the commander expresses.
The speaker says that humans should use reason to understand themselves and the world around them rather than inflating their pride. In each being God has made there is “its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds” (Line 110). The alliteration of the “b” sound and repetition of “proper” emphasizes the connection between contentment and limitation. For the speaker, happiness depends on the boundaries of reason.
The speaker also uses a parallel structure to describe the relationship between social love and self-love. They state that what one receives from others is equal to what one has given: “[T]he strength he gains is from the embrace he gives” (Line 312). Social love is born from self-love but giving to others does not deplete one’s self-love; giving replenishes the human spirit. In describing how the first humans propagated, they emphasize the role that love played, both of self and others.
The speaker argues that social love and self-love were essential ingredients to the evolution of more complex societies. When states, nations, and empires arose, social love still played a role, though humanity changed irreversibly from its prior state—“new needs, new helps, new habits” (Line 137) were created when people left the state of nature and formed communities. The repetition of the word “new” captures the intensity of the change that people’s lives underwent when they began to live in larger, commercial nations. Using parallelism, the speaker personifies Nature as a powerful force enacting God’s will: “Great Nature spoke, observant men obeyed/Cities were built, societies were made.” (Epistle 3, Lines 199-200).
The speaker says that the form of a government does not matter as much as the way that the government is run. They use metaphor, comparing a healthy nation to harmonious music: Rulers learn how to use power just as an instrument’s strings are “taught nor to slack, nor strain its tender strings” (Line 290). In an extended metaphor, the speaker states: “The according music of a well-mixed state/Such is the world’s great harmony” (Lines 294-295). The goal of human society, just as for individuals, is harmonious order.
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