Metaphysical poets still young, introducing into it a string of Metaphysical conceits in the lines beginning “Most souls, ‘tis true, but peep out once an age” which in part echo a passage from Donne's “Second Anniversary”. By the time Pope wrote this, the vogue for the Metaphysical style was over and a new orthodoxy had taken its place, of which the rewriting of Donne's satires was one expression. Nevertheless, Johnson's dismissal of the ‘school’ was still in the future and at the start of the 18th century allusions to their work struck an answering chord in readers. During the course of the
Metaphysical naturalism universe provide no evidence for supernatural beings or deities. As Richard Carrier explains: ...no other worldview is directly and substantially supported by any scientific evidence, whereas all scientific evidence so far does support Metaphysical Naturalism, often directly, sometimes substantially. Though naturalism has not yet been proved, it is the best bet going. One might say that either it has always existed or it had a purely natural origin, being neither created nor designed. Since nature is all there is, and there was once no life, abiogenesis is implied: that life arose spontaneously from natural causes. Naturalists reason about "how", not