No More Learning

What is now published is only to be considered as a general Map of Man,
marking out no more than the greater parts, their extent, their limits,
and their connection, and 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 passage. To deduce
the rivers, to follow them in their course, and to observe their effects,
may be a task more agreeable. P.


ARGUMENT OF EPISTLE I.


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, v. 17, etc.
II. That Man is not to be deemed imperfect, but a being suited to his
place and rank in the Creation, agreeable to the general Order of Things,
and conformable to Ends and Relations to him unknown, v. 35, etc. III.
That it is partly upon his ignorance of future events, and partly upon
the hope of future state, that all his happiness in the present depends,
v. 77, etc. 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
dispensations, v. 109, etc. 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, v. 131, etc. 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 miserable, v. 173, etc. VII. That
throughout the whole visible world, an universal order and gradation in
the sensual and mental faculties is observed, which cause is a
subordination of creature to creature, and of all creatures to Man. The
gradations of sense, instinct, thought, reflection, reason; that Reason
alone countervails all the other faculties, v. 207.