SOURCE: “The Place of Reason,” in Pope and the Context of Controversy: The Manipulation of Ideas in An Essay on Man, University of Chicago Press, 1970, pp. 74-125.

In the essay below, White discusses Pope's idea of reason as subservient to passion for humankind and places Pope's understanding of reason within the context of prevailing eighteenth-century philosophical thought.

In his insistence that moral and physical evil should be accounted for in the same way, Pope gives one specific demonstration of a point that he reiterates throughout the Essay on Man. Man is not a special creature, apart from the fabric of the creation, for whose benefit the entire system was constructed. He is merely a part of the whole and occupies a place and plays a role just as other creatures do. In his specific analysis of man Pope continues to emphasize this central theme. Of primary significance is...