Essay on Man is a philosophical poem, written, characteristically, in heroic couplets. Pope intended it as the centerpiece of a proposed system of ethics to be put forth in poetic form. It is an attempt to justify, as Milton had attempted to vindicate, the ways of God to Man, and a warning that man himself is t, as, in his pride, he seems to believe, the center of all things. Though t explicitly Christian, the Essay makes the implicit assumption that man is fallen and unregenerate, and that he must seek his own salvation.
