Man

The first Epistle of Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Man" concerns life itself, with regard to the universe. According to the first lines of the poem, life is apparently meaningless. We are born, live and die. It is an eternal cycle with no change.

Yet there is the possibility of creating meaning. According to Pope, this can be done with the human faculty of reason:

Say first, of God above, or man below,

What can we reason, but from what we know?

Of man what see we, but his station here,

From which to reason, or to which refer?

Through worlds unnumber'd though the God be known,

Tis ours to trace him only in our own.

He, who through vast immensity can pierce,

See worlds on worlds compose one universe," (Epistle I; Line 17-24).

Yet man has reason to make meaning of life. Man's task is to use reason...
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