Ask for what end the heavenly bodies shine ... Earth for whose use?

[Boojatta]

Pride answers, "Tis for mine:
For me kind Nature wakes her genial power,
Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower;
Annual for me, the grape, the rose renew
The juice nectarous, and the balmy dew;

But errs not Nature from this gracious end,
From burning suns when livid deaths descend,
When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep
Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep?

If the great end be human Happiness,
Then Nature deviates; and can Man do less?
As much that end a constant course requires
Of showers and sun-shine, as of Man's desires;
As much eternal springs and cloudless skies,
As Men for ever temperate, calm, and wise.

From pride, from pride, our very reasoning springs;
Account for moral as for natural things:
Why charge we Heaven in those, in these acquit?

Better for Us, perhaps, it might appear,
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind;
That never passion discomposed the mind:
But ALL subsists by elemental strife;
and Passions are the elements of Life.
The general ORDER, since the whole began,
Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man.

(A slightly revised excerpt from a work by Alexander Pope)

[MineralMan]

1. Stephen Crane wrote, on this topic:

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."