Write 150-250- word responses to each of the following1. How .docx

Write 150-250- word responses to each of the following:
1. How does Voltaire's Candide (Reading 25.4) "reply" to
Pope's Essay on Man (Reading 24.8)?
2. What does Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights
of Women (Reading 24.7) tell us about women in the Age of
Enlightenment? From a 21st-century perspective, what would
Wollstonecraft think of women's standing today?
3. Summarize the conditions and circumstances described in
Equiano's account (Reading 25.1). Which of the circumstances
and conditions described by Equiano strike you as most
removed from the ideals of the philosophes?
4. How do the paintings of Fragonard (Figure 26.1), Watteau
(Figure 26.5), and Boucher (Figure 26.6) reflect the "pursuit of
pleasure"?
5. What do the following statements reveal about the
nineteenth-century Romantic? "I fall upon the thorns of life! I
bleed!" (Shelley); "I want to live deep and suck out all the
marrow of life." (Thoreau); "Feeling is all." (Goethe); "I have
no love for reasonable painting." (Delacroix)
Format your responses consistent with APA guidelines.
Note:You must use your course text as a reference for this
assignment. This means that you should include quoted or
paraphrased text from your readings to support your response
to, and discussion of, the assignment questions. Course readings
should be acknowledged with an in-text citation.
If you need additional sources, use the University Library. If
you use the Internet to find sources, you should only access

credible and reliable Internet sites such as those affiliated with
a museum, magazine, newspaper, educational institution, or arts
organization, for example. You should not use sites like
Wikipedia, About.com, Ask.com, or blogs, for example.
24.8
114 CHAPTER 24 The Enlightenment: The Promise of Reason
and polish of the golden age Roman poets Virgil and
Horace. Largely self-taught (in his time Roman Catholics
were barred from attending English universities), Pope
defended the value of education in Greek and Latin; his
own love of the classics inspired him to produce new
translations
of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. “A little learning is a
dangerous thing,” warned Pope in pleading for a broader
and more thorough survey of the past.
Pope’s poetry is as controlled and refined as a Poussin
painting or a Bach fugue. His choice of the heroic couplet
for most of his numerous satires, as well as for his translations
of Homer, reflects his commitment to the fundamentals
of balance and order. The concentrated brilliance and
polish of each two-rhymed line bears out his claim that

“True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,/As those
move easiest who have learned to dance.”
Pope’s most famous poem was his Essay on Man. Like
Milton’s Paradise Lost, but on a smaller scale, the Essay tries
to assess humankind’s place in the universal scheme. But
whereas Milton explained evil in terms of human will,
Pope—a Catholic turned deist—envisioned evil as part of
God’s design for a universe he describes as “A mighty maze!
but not without a plan.” Like Leibniz (whom he admired),
Pope insisted that whatever occurs in nature has been
“programmed” by God as part of God’s benign and rational
order. Pope lacked the reforming zeal of the philosophes,
but he caught the optimism of the Enlightenment in a single
line: “Whatever is, is right.” In the Essay on Man, Pope
warns that we must not presume to understand the whole
of nature. Nor should we aspire to a higher place in the
great “chain of being.” Rather, he counsels, “Know then
thyself, presume not God to scan;/The proper study of

Mankind is Man.”
From Pope’s Essay on Man
(1733–1734)
Epistle I
IX What if the foot, ordain’d the dust to tread, 1
Or hand, to toil, aspir’d to be the head?
What if the head, the eye, or ear repin’d1
To serve mere engines to the ruling Mind?
Just as absurd for any part to claim
To be another, in his gen’ral frame:
Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains.
The great directing Mind of All ordains.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul; 10
That, chang’d thro’ all, and yet in all the same;
Great in the earth, as in th’ ethereal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,

Lives thro’ all life, extends thro’ all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart:
As full, as perfect, in vile Man that mourns,
As the rapt Seraph2 that adores and burns: 20
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.
X Cease then, nor Order Imperfection name:
Our proper bliss depends on what we blame.
Know thy own point: This kind, this due degree
Of blindness, weakness, Heav’n bestows on thee.
Submit—In this, or any other sphere,
Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear:
Safe in the hand of one disposing Pow’r,
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour. 30
All Nature is but Art,3 unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;

All Discord, Harmony not understood;
All partial Evil, universal Good:
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT.
Epistle II
I Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;4
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state,5
A Being darkly wise, and rudely great: 40
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 reas’ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such.
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus’d;

Still by himself abus’d, or disabus’d; 50
Created half to rise, and half to fall;6
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurl’d:7
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
25.4
Q What aspects of Swift’s proposal
contribute to its effectiveness as
a tool for political reform?
verse-satires led to his imprisonment in the Bastille (the
French state prison).
More than any of the philosophes, Voltaire extolled the
traditions of non-Western cultures: having read the works
of Confucius in Jesuit translations, he esteemed the
ancient teacher as a philosopher–sage. Voltaire was the
first modern intellectual to assess the role of Russia in
world society. In his Essay on Manners, a universal history
that examines the customs of nations around the world,

Voltaire gave thoughtful attention to the history of the
Russian state. His fascination with Russia as a curious
blend of Asian and European traditions became the basis
for a lifelong pursuit of things Russian, including a long
correspondence with Catherine the Great, who ruled as
empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796.
Like most of the philosophes, Voltaire condemned organized
religion and all forms of religious fanaticism. A
declared deist, he compared human beings to mice who,
living in the recesses of an immense ship, know nothing of
its captain or its destination. Any confidence Voltaire
might have had in beneficent Providence was dashed by
the terrible Lisbon earthquake and tidal wave of 1755,
which took the lives of more than 20,000 Portuguese. For
Voltaire, the realities of natural disaster and human cruelty
were not easily reconciled with the belief that a good
God had created the universe or that humans were by
nature rational—views basic to Enlightenment optimism.

Voltaire’s satirical masterpiece,
Candide (subtitled Optimism),
addresses the age-old question of
how evil can exist in a universe
created and governed by the
forces of good. A parody of
the adventure romances
CHAPTER 25 The Limits of Reason 125
christenings, I compute that Dublin would take off annually
about twenty thousand carcasses; and the rest of the kingdom
(where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper) the
remaining eighty thousand.
I can think of no one objection, that will possibly be raised
against this proposal, unless it should be urged that the number
of
people will be thereby much lessened in the
kingdom. This I freely own, and it was indeed one principal 220
design in offering it to the world. I desire the reader to observe,
that

I calculate my remedy for this one individual
kingdom of Ireland, and for no other that ever was, is, or I
think,
ever can be upon earth. Therefore let no man talk to me of other
expedients: Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: Of
using neither clothes, nor household furniture, except what is of
our own growth and manufacture: Of utterly rejecting the
materials
and instruments that promote foreign luxury: Of curing the
expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness,
and gaming14 in our women: Of introducing a vein of
parsimony, 230
prudence and temperance: Of learning to love our Country,
wherein
we differ even from Laplanders, and the inhabitants of
Topinamboo15: Of quitting our animosities and factions,
nor act any longer like Jews, who were murdering one another
at
the very moment their city was taken: Of being
a little cautious not to sell our country and conscience for
nothing:

Of teaching landlords to have at least one degree
of mercy toward their tenants. Lastly of putting a spirit of
honesty,
industry, and skill into our shopkeepers, who, if a
resolution could now be taken to buy only our native goods, 240
would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the
price,
the measure, and the goodness, nor could ever yet
be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though
often and earnestly invited to it.
Voltaire and Candide
Swift’s satires were an inspiration to that most scintillating
of French philosophes and leading intellectual
of French society, Francois Marie Arouet
(1694–1778), who used the pen name Voltaire
(Figure 25.4). Born into a rising Parisian middleclass
family and educated by Jesuits, Voltaire rose
to fame as poet, playwright, critic, and as the
central figure of the French salons. His visits to

England instilled in him high regard for constitutional
government, the principles of toleration,
and the concepts of equality found in
the writings of John Locke—all of which he
championed in his writings. In his numerous
pamphlets and letters, he attacked bigotry
as man-made evil and injustice as institutional
evil. On two separate occasions, his controversial
14 Gambling (the most popular pastime of the upper class).
15 A district in Brazil supposedly inhabited by savages.
Figure 25.4 JEAN-ANTOINE HOUDON,
Voltaire in Old Age, 1781. Marble, height 20 in.
READING 25.4
READING 24.7
CHAPTER 24 The Enlightenment: The Promise of Reason 111
Wollstonecraft emphasized the importance of reason
in the cultivation of virtue, observing that, “it is a farce to
call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the

exercise of its own reason.” She criticized women for
embracing their roles in “the great art of pleasing [men].”
The minds of women, she insisted, were enfeebled by “false
refinement,” sweet docility,” and “slavish dependence.”
Despite her high degree of critical acumen, however,
Wollstonecraft seems to have been deeply conflicted by
her own personal efforts to reconcile her sexual passions,
her need for independence, and her free-spirited will. Her
affair with an American speculator and timber merchant
produced an illegitimate child and at least two attempts at
suicide; and her marriage to the novelist William Godwin
(subsequent to her becoming pregnant by him) proved no
less turbulent. She died at the age of thirty-eight, following
the birth of their daughter, the future Mary Shelley (see
chapter 28). In contrast with her short and troubled life,
Wollstonecraft’s treatise has enjoyed sustained and significant
influence; it stands at the threshold of the modern
movement for female equality.

From Wollstonecraft’s
A Vindication of the Rights
of Woman (1792)
After considering the historic page, and viewing the living 1
world with anxious solicitude, the most melancholy emotions of
sorrowful indignation have depressed my spirits, and I have
sighed
when obliged to confess, that either nature has made a great
difference between man and man, or that the civilization which
has
hitherto taken place in the world has been very partial. I have
turned over various books written on the subject of education,
and
patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management
of
schools; but what has been the
result?—a profound conviction that the neglected education of
10
my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore;
READING 25.1
CHAPTER 25 The Limits of Reason 119

the grown people were nigh. One day, when all our people were
gone out to their works as usual and only I and my dear sister
were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our
walls, and in a moment seized us both, and without giving us
time to cry out or make resistance they stopped our mouths and
ran
off with us into the nearest wood. Here they tied our hands
and continued to carry us as far as they could till night came
on, when we reached a small house where the robbers
halted for refreshment and spent the night. We were then 50
unbound but were unable to take any food, and being quite
overpowered by fatigue and grief, our only relief was some
sleep, which allayed our misfortune for a short time. The next
morning we left the house and continued travelling all the day.
For a long time we had kept to the woods, but at last we came
into a road which I believed I knew. I had now some hopes of
being
delivered, for we had advanced but a little way before I
discovered
some people at a distance, on which I began to cry out for their

assistance: but my cries had no other effect than to make them
tie me faster and stop my mouth, and then they put me into a 60
large sack. They also stopped my sister’s mouth and tied her
hands, and in this manner we proceeded till we were out of
the sight of these people. . . . It was in vain that we
besought them not to part us; she was torn from me and
immediately carried away, while I was left in a state of
distraction not to be described. I cried and grieved continually,
and for several days I did not eat anything but what they forced
into my mouth. At length, after many days’ travelling, during
which I had often changed masters, I got into the hands of a
chieftain in a very pleasant country. . . . 70
[Equiano describes his tenure with African masters; he is sold a
number of times (during a period of six to seven months) before
he is taken to the sea coast.]
The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the
coast was the sea, and a slave ship which was then riding at
anchor and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with

astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I was
carried on board. I was immediately handled and tossed up to
see if I were sound by some of the crew, and I was now
persuaded
that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits and that they were
going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from
ours,
their long hair and the language they spoke
(which was very different from any I had ever heard) united to
80
confirm me in this belief. Indeed such were the horrors of my
views
and fears at the moment that, if ten thousand worlds had been
my
own, I would have freely parted with them all to have
exchanged
my condition with that of the meanest slave in my
own country. When I looked round the ship too and saw a large
furnace or copper boiling and a multitude of black people of
every description chained together, every one of their
countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer

doubted of my fate; and quite overpowered with horror and
anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted. When I 90
recovered a little I found some black people about me, who I
believed were some of those who had brought me on board and
had been receiving their pay; they talked to me in order to cheer
me, but all in vain. I asked them if we were not to be eaten by
those
white men with horrible looks, red faces, and loose hair.
(1745–1797), who was born in the West African kingdom
of Benin and kidnapped and enslaved at the age of eleven.
Both as a slave and after his release from slavery in 1766,
Equiano traveled widely; during his stay in England (as one
of only 30,000 black men and women in mid-eighteenthcentury
England), he mastered the English language and
became an outspoken abolitionist (Figure 25.3). The following
excerpt from Equiano’s autobiographic narrative
recounts with dramatic simplicity the traumatic experience
of an eleven-year-old child who was cruelly sold into

bondage.
From Equiano’s Travels (1789)
That part of Africa known by the name of Guinea to which the 1
trade for slaves is carried on extends along the coast above
3,400 miles, from the Senegal to Angola, and includes a variety
of kingdoms. Of these the most considerable is the kingdom of
Benin, both as to extent and wealth, the richness and cultivation
of the soil, the power of its king, and the number and warlike
disposition of the inhabitants. . . . This kingdom is divided into
many provinces or districts, in one of the most remote and
fertile of which, called Eboe, I was born in the year 1745,
situated in a charming fruitful vale, named Essaka. The 10
distance of this province from the capital of Benin and the sea
coast must be very considerable, for I had never heard of white
men or Europeans, nor of the sea, and our subjection to the king
of Benin was little more than nominal; for every transaction of
the
government, as far as my slender observation extended, was
conducted by the chiefs or elders of the place. . . .

My father, besides many slaves, had a numerous family of
which seven lived to grow up, including myself and a sister who
was the only daughter. As I was the youngest of the sons I
became, of course, the greatest favourite with my mother and 20
was always with her; and she used to take particular pains to
form my mind. I was trained up from my earliest years in the
art of war, my daily exercise was shooting and throwing
javelins,
and my mother adorned me with emblems1 after the manner
of our greatest warriors. In this way I grew up till I was turned
the age of 11, when an end was put to my happiness in the
following manner. Generally when the grown people in the
neighbourhood were gone far in the fields to labour, the
children assembled together in some of the neighbours’
premises to play, and commonly some of us used to get up a 30
tree to look out for any assailant or kidnapper that might come
upon us, for they sometimes took those opportunities of our
parents’ absence to attack and carry off as many as they could

seize. One day, as I was watching at the top of a tree in our
yard, I saw one of those people come into the yard of our next
neighbour but one to kidnap, there being many stout young
people in it. Immediately on this I gave the alarm of the rogue
and he was surrounded by the stoutest of them, who entangled
him with cords so that he could not escape till some of the
grown people came and secured him. But alas! ere long it was
40
my fate to be thus attacked and to be carried off when none of
1 Body decorations, such as scarification.
120 CHAPTER 25 The Limits of Reason
They told me I was not, and one of the crew brought me a small
portion of spirituous liquor in a wine glass, but being afraid of
him
I would not take it out of his hand. One of the blacks therefore
took
it from him and gave it to me, and I took a little down my
palate,
which instead of reviving me, as they thought it would, threw
100
me into the greatest consternation at the strange feeling it

produced, having never tasted any such liquor before. Soon
after
this the blacks who brought me on board went off, and left me
abandoned to despair.
I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my
native country or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the
shore, which I now considered as friendly; and I even wished
for
my former slavery in preference to my present situation, which
was filled with horrors of every kind, still heightened by my
ignorance of what I was to undergo. I was not long suffered to
110
indulge my grief; I was soon put down under the decks, and
there
Figure 26.1 JEAN-HONORÉ FRAGONARD, The Swing, 1768–
1769. Oil on canvas,
32 _ 251⁄2 in. Cupid, depicted as a watchful garden sculpture
(on the left), reacts to
the amorous flirtations below by coyly putting his finger to his
lips. Fragonard’s deft
brushstrokes render the surrounding foliage in delicate tones of

gold, green, and blue.
“In the presence of this miracle of [ancient Greek] art, I forget
the whole
universe and my soul acquires a loftiness appropriate to its
dignity.”
Johann Joachim Winckelmann
The dynamics of class and culture had a shaping influence on
the
arts of the eighteenth century. The Church and the royal courts
remained the principal sources of artistic patronage, but a rising
middle class presented opportunities for new audiences and
contemporary
subjects. While the arts of the era broadly reflect the
intellectual ideals of the Enlightenment, they more closely
mirror
the tastes and values of different segments of society. No single
style dominated the entire century, but three distinctive modes
of
expression emerged.
European aristocrats, who dominated artistic patronage
between 1715 and 1750, found pleasure in an elegant and
refined

style known as the Rococo. Enlightenment reformers and
members
of the rising middle class favored genre paintings that
described everyday life and the values of ordinary people.
Genre
painting became the visual equivalent of the popular novels,
journalistic
essays, and stage plays of the period. Toward the end of
the century, the newly excavated ruins of ancient Greece and
Rome inspired an archeological appreciation of antiquity and
the
rise of the Neoclassical style. Neoclassicism conveyed the
rationalism
and political idealism of reformers and revolution
Figure 26.5 ANTOINE WATTEAU, Departure from the Island
of Cythera, 1717. Oil on canvas, 4 ft. 3 in. _ 6 ft. 4 in.
Apprenticed to a stage designer in his early career, Watteau
drew the subject of this painting from a popular play,
Les Trois Cousins, written by Florent Dancourt, and performed
in Paris in 1709. In the play, the central character
invites her friends to visit the island birthplace of Venus, where
a single man or woman might find a wife or husband.

Boucher
If Watteau’s world was wistful and poetic, that of
his contemporary François Boucher (1703–1770)
was sensual and indulgent. Boucher, a specialist in
designing mythological scenes, became head of
the Gobelins tapestry factory in 1755 and director
of the Royal Academy ten years later. He was
First Painter to King Louis XV (1715–1774) and
a good friend of the king’s favorite mistress,
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, the Marquise de
Pompadour (1721–1764). A woman of remarkable
beauty and intellect—she owned two telescopes,
a microscope, and a lathe that she
installed in her apartments in order to carve
cameos—Madame de Pompadour influenced
state policy and dominated fashion and the arts at
Versailles for almost twenty years.
With the idyllic Venus Consoling Love,

Boucher flattered his patron by portraying her as
the goddess of love (Figure 26.6). Surrounded
by attentive doves and cupids, the nubile Venus
relaxes on a bed of sumptuous rose and blue satin
robes nestled in a bower of leafy trees and
windswept grasses. Boucher delighted in sensuous
contrasts of flesh, fabric, feathers, and flowers.
His girlish women, with their unnaturally
tiny feet, rosebud-pink nipples, and wistful
glances, were coy symbols of erotic pleasure.
Figure 26.6 FRANÇOIS BOUCHER, Venus Consoling Love,
1751. Oil on canvas,
3 ft. 61⁄8 in. _ 333⁄8 in. Boucher is said to have established the
erotic female nude
as a Rococo genre

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