According to the Pope, the Essay is "a comprehensive map of Man, noting forth little more than the principal sections, their extent, boundaries, and interrelation." The stated conflict between man and nature demonstrates man's intellectual incapacity. His physical condition is shown as miserable because he is a creature who needs help from others before he can reach happiness. Nowadays, the term "essay" is used to describe a short written work on any subject. But it originated in a literary form first used by the Italian humanists - whose ideas were very influential in England after 1473 when King Edward IV appointed Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1451-1509) as his ambassador to London. The humanists were scholars who wanted to revive classical learning after the plague had destroyed much of Europe's population. They argued that true knowledge came only from the ancient Greeks and Romans and that the only way to learn about their culture was from careful reading of the original sources - in this case, the Greek writers Aristotle and Cicero. In English literature, an essay is usually a brief work of prose presenting one or more arguments in support of a particular position or view. However modern essays are not limited to such a strict definition; some consider a piece of academic writing to be an essay if it makes a new argument or adds to our understanding of the topic discussed.