"Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain"

Alexander Pope, ca 1727

Studio of Michael Dahl

National Portrait Gallery

(Image from Wikipedia)

One of my more regular readers, who calls himself "Kapok," recently contacted me by email to ask about Alexander Pope's line that the "proper study of mankind is man" (An Essay on Man, 1734) and wondered if this were a limitation on curiosity stemming, ultimately, from the writings of Augustine.

My initial response was tepid, for I imagined that Augustine would not focus so much upon man as upon the state of his own, individual soul in its fallen condition and its need for guidance from God.

Moreover, the couplet that opens Part 1 of Epistle 2 of Pope's Essay on Man stems more directly from the pre-Christian Greek world:

Know, then, thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.

The expression "know thyself" (Greek: γνωθι σεαυτόν or gnothi seauton) comes from the ancient Greeks and is popularly associated with Socrates, whose turn from cosmology to anthropology fits the advice well, but according to the second-century AD Greek writer Pausanias, in his Description of Greece (10.24.1), the expression was an inscription carved into the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, so any number of ancient writers would have known it well -- which may explain how the expression came to be attributed to such various figures as not only Socrates but also Heraclitus, Chilon of Sparta, Thales of Miletus, Pythagoras, and Solon of Athens, if Wikipedia's entry is to be believed.

Pope could thus have been drawing on any one of a number of thinkers, perhaps even being aware of them all.

But some less direct link to Augustine might be lurking in Pope's Christian heritage, for in his "Argument of Epistle 2," he summarizes Part 1 as teaching that "The business of Man [is] not to pry into God, but to study himself," the operative word here being "pry," with its implication of "busybodiness," "nosiness," or various other aspersions that Augustine and other Medieval Christian thinkers heaped upon "curiosity."

Indeed, the five couplets terminating Part 1 could have come from the incisive pen of St. Augustine:

Trace Science, then, with Modesty thy guide;
First strip off all her equipage of pride;
Deduct what is but vanity or dress,
Or learning's luxury, or idleness;
Or tricks to show the stretch of human brain,
Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain;
Expunge the whole, or lop th' excrescent parts
Of all our vices have created arts;
Then see how little the remaining sum,
Which served the past, and must the times to come!

Particularly the half-line "Mere curious pleasure," by which Pope dismisses so much of human knowledge, sounds remarkably Augustinian -- though it could have come from the Medieval tradition more generally.

For those interested, here's the entirety of Part 1 in Epistle 2:

Epistle 2.

I. Know, then, thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused, or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,
Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;
Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,
Correct old time, and regulate the sun;
Go, soar with Plato to th' empyreal sphere,
To the first good, first perfect, and first fair;
Or tread the mazy round his followers trod,
And quitting sense call imitating God;
As Eastern priests in giddy circles run,
And turn their heads to imitate the sun.
Go, teach Eternal Wisdom how to rule—
Then drop into thyself, and be a fool!
Superior beings, when of late they saw
A mortal man unfold all Nature's law,
Admired such wisdom in an earthly shape
And showed a Newton as we show an ape.
Could he, whose rules the rapid comet bind,
Describe or fix one movement of his mind?
Who saw its fires here rise, and there descend,
Explain his own beginning, or his end?
Alas, what wonder! man's superior part
Unchecked may rise, and climb from art to art;
But when his own great work is but begun,
What reason weaves, by passion is undone.
Trace Science, then, with Modesty thy guide;
First strip off all her equipage of pride;
Deduct what is but vanity or dress,
Or learning's luxury, or idleness;
Or tricks to show the stretch of human brain,
Mere curious pleasure, or ingenious pain;
Expunge the whole, or lop th' excrescent parts
Of all our vices have created arts;
Then see how little the remaining sum,
Which served the past, and must the times to come!

Apparently, I would do well in my 'curious' studies to look further into this work by Alexander Pope for its links to Augustine (hat tip to Kapok) as well as for the other things that it offers -- but for the moment, it's just another curious distraction from more pressing matters.