Universe, and doubts no more. We see only a little part in which are many
details that have purposes beyond our ken. The argument of Leibnitz's
Theodicee was widely used; and although Pope said that he had never read
the Theodicee, his "Essay on Man" has a like argument. When any book has a
wide influence upon opinion, its general ideas pass into the minds of many
people who have never read it. Many now talk about evolution and natural
selection, who have never read a line of Darwin.

In the reign of George the Second, questionings did spread that went to the
roots of all religious faith, and many earnest minds were busying
themselves with problems of the state of Man, and of the evidence of God in
the life of man, and in the course of Nature. Out of this came, nearly at
the same time, two works wholly different in method and in tone -- so
different, that at first sight it may seem absurd to speak of them
together. They were Pope's "Essay on Man," and Butler's "Analogy of
Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature."

Butler's "Analogy" was published in 1736; of the "Essay on Man," the first
two Epistles appeared in 1732, the Third Epistle in 1733, the Fourth in
1734, and the closing Universal Hymn in 1738. It may seem even more absurd
to name Pope's "Essay on Man" in the same breath with Milton's "Paradise
Lost;" but to the best of his knowledge and power, in his smaller way,
according to his nature and the questions of his time, Pope was, like
Milton, endeavouring "to justify the ways of God to Man." He even borrowed
Milton's line for his own poem, only weakening the verb, and said that he
sought to "vindicate the ways of God to Man." In Milton's day the
questioning all centred in the doctrine of the "Fall of Man," and questions
of God's Justice were associated with debate on fate, fore-knowledge, and
free will. In Pope's day the question was not theological, but went to the
root of all faith in existence of a God, by declaring that the state of Man