The beautiful poetry of Alexander Pope in “An Essay on Man,” has many deep meanings in it, but they are almost always hard to find if you only read through it once. Only by reading it several times and taking it apart, line by line, can you truly understand everything that pope is trying to get you to understand. Separated into ten stanzas, each one stating a clear part of his argument, and all relating to his main purpose of showing mankind that God is superior to all, and everything is for reason.
I have paraphrased the first stanza as follows:
First of all, we can only understand what we already know about God and man. For man, we see only his place on earth, and that isn’t much to reason with or refer to when compared to God’s knowledge. While God knows of infinite amounts of worlds, he is the only God that we know of. God, who can see everything, who can create a universe with many other worlds, who knows how our solar system works, who knows what other suns with planets there are, who knows what types of people live on those planets around every sun, He knows why we are made the way we are. But in this frame of mind, with all of the ways we are connected to God, or ties, strong connections, dependencies and gradations, have you really looked through your soul, or is only part of the truth enough for you?
Is the Great Chain of Being, which everybody agrees on and many people support, something that God planned, or was it created by man? This first stanza is showing mankind that, while we claim to know the way everything works, we really don’t know anything in comparison to God.
The first line in the second epistle, “On the Nature and State of Man With Respect to Himself, as an Individual,” is, “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is Man.” This line is saying that we have to know ourselves, we can’t just assume that God will tell us, and that the only way we can know about mankind is to first know about ourselves.
Free Essays – Nuts that are not Nuts in A Book of Showings
Analysis of Nuts Which Are Not Nuts in A Book of Showings
Note: Because of the specific nature of the text, I thought it might be useful to attach the whole of it on the cover page for perusal at leisure if you so desire. Below is the text from the Norton Anthology of English Literature (p. 295), and under that the assumptions I make in reading the text. The former is directly from the book, and as it is all on one page, I will refrain from noting that page every time I reference the text. If you wish examples, everything is below and will be treated as my point of reference in all situations. The latter are important so that I don’t have to cover them in the body of the essay, as they are generally logical assumptions gleaned from the reading which I don’t have the space to spend time explaining. They may be referenced for the proof, however.
And in this he showed a little thing, the quantity of an hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, as me seemed, and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereon with the eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for me thought it might suddenly have fallen to nought for littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth and ever shall, for God loveth it; and so hath all thing being by the love of God.
In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second that God loveth it, the third that God keepeth it. But what beheld I therein? Verily, the maker, the keeper, the lover. For till I am substantially united to him I may never have full rest ne very bliss; that is to say that I be so fastened to him that there be right nought that is made between my God and me.
This little thing that is made, me thought it might have fallen to nought for littleness. Of this needeth us to have knowledge, that us liketh nought all thing that is made, for to love and have God that is unmade. For this is the cause why we be not all in case of heart and of soul, for we seek here rest in this thing that is so little, where no rest is in, and we know not our God, that is almighty, all wise and all good, for he is very rest.