The
Berlin Academy of Sciences offered a prize for a similar essay, and
Lessing published a short tract called _Pope ein Metaphysiker_! If any
one cares to see a demonstration that Pope did not understand the system
of Leibnitz, and that the bubble blown by a great philosopher has more
apparent cohesion than that of a half-read poet, he may find a
sufficient statement of the case in Lessing. But Lessing sensibly
protests from the start against the intrusion of such a work into
serious discussion; and that is the only ground which is worth taking in
the matter.
The most remarkable result of the Essay on Man, it may be
parenthetically noticed, was its effect upon Voltaire. In 1751 Voltaire
wrote a poem on Natural Law, which is a comparatively feeble application
of Pope's principles. It is addressed to Frederick instead of
Bolingbroke, and contains a warm eulogy of Pope's philosophy. But a few
years later the earthquake at Lisbon suggested certain doubts to
Voltaire as to the completeness of the optimist theory; and, in some of
the most impressive verses of the century, he issued an energetic
protest against the platitudes applied by Pope and his followers to
deaden our sense of the miseries under which the race suffers. Verbally,
indeed, Voltaire still makes his bow to the optimist theory, and the two
poems appeared together in 1756; but his noble outcry against the empty
and complacent deductions which it covers, led to his famous controversy
with Rousseau.
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