the existence of a God requires the balancing support of a devil. We
therefore can sympathise with the description of a heaven, the poor
Indian looked for:--

"Some safer world in depths of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste;
Where slaves once more their native land behold,
Nor fiends torment, nor _Christians thirst for gold.
To be_--contents his natural desires,
He asks no angels' wings, no seraphs' fires,
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog should bear him company."

Pope durst not emphatically deny the future-life theory, so he attacked
it by elaborating a physical instead of a spiritual heaven. So heterodox
a notion of the Indian's future sports, is not to be found in theology,
especially as he pictures the Indian's sports with his dog. Here was
a double blow aimed at Christianity by evolving a "positive" idea
of future pleasures, and the promulgation of sentiments
anti-Christian.--Again he attacks them for unwarrantable speculation in
theology, when he says--

"In pride, in reasoning pride our error lies."

This is a corollary to the first proposition, "What can we reason but
from what we know?" The only predicate we can draw from this is, the
undoubted fact we have no right to profess to hold opinions of that,
upon which we cannot have any positive proof. The last line of the
first book has been generally thought open to attack. It relates to
necessity--"Whatever is, is right"--and is not to be viewed in relation
to society as at present constituted, but to the physical universe.

The second book deals with man in relation to himself as an individual;
the third as a member of society, and the last in respect to happiness.
Throughout the whole Essay the distinctions arising from nature and
instinct are defined and defended with vigor and acuteness. Both are
proved to be equally great in degree, in spite of the hints constantly
thrown out in reference to "God-like Reason _versus_ Blind Instinct." We
confess our inability to discern the vaunted superiority of the powers
of reason over those of its blinder sister. We see in the one matchless
wisdom--profound decision--unfailing resource--a happy contentment as
unfeigned as it is natural. On the other hand, we see temerity allied
with cowardice--a man seeking wisdom on a watery plank, when every
footmark may serve him for a funeral effigy; political duplicity arising
from hi