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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer + +Author: Charles Sotheran + +Commentator: Charles W. Frederickson + +Release Date: October 14, 2005 [EBook #16872] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY AS A *** + + + + +Produced by Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State +University Libraries, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Sankar +Viswanathan, and Distributed Proofreaders Europe at +http://dp.rastko.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_001" id="Page_001"></a>[Pg 001]</span></p> +<h1>PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY</h1> + +<h4> </h4> +<h4>AS A</h4> + +<h2><span class="smcap">philosopher and reformer</span>.</h2> +<p> </p> +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h2>CHARLES SOTHERAN.</h2> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h3><i>INCLUDING AN ORIGINAL SONNET</i></h3> + +<h4>BY</h4> +<h3>CHARLES W. FREDERICKSON</h3> +<p> </p> +<h4>TOGETHER WITH</h4> + +<h3>A PORTRAIT OF SHELLEY AND A VIEW OF HIS TOMB.</h3> +<p> </p> + + + +<hr /> + +<p class="center">"Let us See the Truth, whatever that may be."—<i>Shelley</i>, 1822.</p> +<hr /> +<p> </p> + + +<h3><i>NEW YORK:</i></h3> + +<h3>CHARLES P. SOMERBY, 139 EIGHTH STREET.</h3> + +<h3>1876.</h3> + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_002" id="Page_002"></a>[Pg 002]</span></p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876,<br /> +by Charles +Sotheran,<br /> + +In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.</p> + + + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_003" id="Page_003"></a>[Pg 003]</span> +</p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<h4>TO</h4> + +<h2>CHARLES WILLIAM FREDERICKSON,</h2> + +<h4>OF NEW YORK.</h4> + + +<p class="blockquot"><span class="smcap">Dear Friend:</span><br /><br /> + +As in ancient times, none were allowed participation in the Higher +Mysteries, without having proved their fitness for the reception of +esoteric truth, so in these days only those seem to be permitted to +breathe the hidden essence in Shelley, who have realized the acute +phases of spiritality. Among the few who have enjoyed these bi-fold +gifts, none have had more fortuitous experience than yourself, to whom +I now take the liberty of dedicating this volume.<br /><br /> + +<span class="sig1">Yours fraternally,</span><br /><br /> + +<span class="sig2 smcap">Charles Sotheran.</span><br /> + +<i>December</i>, 1875.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> + +<div class="center"><img src="images/image_01.jpg" alt="VIEW OF SHELLEY'S TOMB, IN THE PROTESTANT CEMETERY, AT ROME. FROM A SKETCH BY A.J. STRUTT" width="400" height="551" /><br /> + +<span class="caption">view of shelley's tomb, in the protestant cemetery, at rome. from a sketch by a.j. strutt</span> +</div> + + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_004" id="Page_004"></a>[Pg 004]</span></p> + + + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"To see the sun shining on its bright grass, and hear the whispering +of the wind among the leaves of the trees, which have overgrown the +tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, +and to mark the tombs, mostly of women and young children, who, buried +there, we might, if we were to die, desire a sleep they seem to +sleep."—<span class="smcap">Shelley</span>.</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_005" id="Page_005"></a>[Pg 005]</span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h3> </h3> +<h3> </h3> +<h3>To the Memory</h3> +<h4>OF</h4> + +<h2>PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,</h2> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h3>CHARLES W. FREDERICKSON.</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Amid the ruins of majestic Rome,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That told the story of its countless years,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I stood, and wondered by the silent dust<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the "Eternal Child." Oh, Shelley!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To me it was not given to know thy face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Save through the mirrored pages of thy works;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Those whisper'd words of wood and wave, are to mine ears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sweet as the music of ocean's roar, that breaks on sheltered shores.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy sterner words of Justice, Love and Truth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Will to the struggling soul a beacon prove,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And barrier against the waves of tyranny and craft.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then rest, "<i>Cor Cordium</i>," and though thy life<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was brief in point of years, its memory will outlive<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The column'd monuments around thy tomb.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<span class="sig1">New York, <i>Nov</i>. 25, 1875.</span><br /> + +<span class="smcap">My Dear Sotheran</span>:—<br /><br /> + +The copy of the lines on our Beloved-Poet, which you requested, are +entirely at your service—make what use of them you please.</div> + +<p><span class="sig1">Yours, sincerely,</span><br /><br /> + +<span class="sig2">C.W. FREDERICKSON.</span></p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_006" id="Page_006"></a>[Pg 006]</span></p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2> </h2> +<h2> </h2> +<h2> </h2> +<h2>PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, AS A PHILOSOPHER AND REFORMER.</h2> +<h3>A PAPER READ BEFORE THE NEW YORK LIBERAL CLUB, ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 6TH, +1875.</h3> +<p> </p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Let us see the Truth, whatever that may be."—SHELLEY, 1822.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p> </p> +<p><i>Mr. Vice-President and Members of the Liberal Club</i>:</p> +<p>"The Blood of the Martyr is the Seed of the Church." Persecution ever +fails in accomplishing its desired ends, and as a rule lays the +foundations broad and deep for the triumph of the objects of and +principles inculcated by the persecuted.</p> + +<p>Driven from their homes by fanatical tyranny, not permitted to worship +as they thought fit, a band of noble and earnest, yet on some points +mistaken men, were, a little over two hundred and fifty years ago, +landed on this continent from the good ship "Mayflower." The "Pilgrim +Fathers" were, in their native land, refused liberty of conscience and +freedom of discussion; their apparent loss was our gain, for if it had +not been for that despotism, and the corresponding re-action, which +made those stern old zealots give to others many of the inalienable +rights of liberty denied to themselves, you and I could not to-night +perhaps be allowed to meet face to face, without fear, to discuss +metaphysical and social questions in their broadest aspects, without +the civil or theological powers intervening to close our mouths.</p> + +<p>"Fragile in health and frame; of the purest habits in morals; full of +devoted generosity and universal kindness; glowing with ardor to +attain wisdom; resolved at every personal sacrifice to do right; +burning with a desire for affection and sympathy," a +boy-under-graduate of Oxford, described as of tall, delicate, and +fragile figure, with large and lively eyes, with expressive, beautiful +and feminine features, with head covered with long, brown hair, of +gracefulness and simplicity of manner, the heir to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_008" id="Page_008"></a>[Pg 008]</span>a title and the +representation of one of the most ancient English families, which +numbered Sir Philip Sidney on its roll of illustrious names, just +sixty-four years ago, and in this nineteenth century, for no +licentiousness, violence, or dishonor, but, for his refusal to +criminate himself or inculpate friends, was, without trial, expelled +by learned divines from his university for writing an argumentative +thesis, which, if it had been the work of some Greek philosopher, +would have been hailed by his judges as a fine specimen of profound +analytical abstruseness—for that expulsion are we the debtors to +theological charity and tolerance for "Queen Mab."</p> + +<p>Excommunicated by a mercenary and abject priesthood, cast off by a +savage father, the admirer of that gloomy theology founded by the +murderer of Michael Servetus, and charged by his jealous brother +writers as one of the founders of a Satanic School, for neither +immorality of life nor breach of the parental relation, but for +heterodoxy to an expiring system of dogmatism, and for acting on and +asserting the right of man to think and judge for himself, a father +was to have two children torn from him, in the sacred name of law and +justice, by the principal adviser of a dying madman, "Defender of the +Faith, by Law Established," and by us despised as the self-willed +tyrant, who lost America and poured out human blood like water to +gratify his lust of power. By that Lord Chancellor whose cold, +impassive statue has a place in Westminster Abbey, where Byron's was +refused admittance, and whose memory, when that stone has crumbled +into dust, will live as one who furnished an example for execrable +tyranny over the parental tie, and that Lord Eldon whom an outraged +father curses in imperishable verse:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"By thy most impious hell, and all its terrors;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">By all the grief, the madness and the guilt<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of thine impostures, which must be <i>their</i> errors,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That sand on which thy crumbling power is built;<br /></span> +</div> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">By all the hate which checks a father's love;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">By all the scorn which kills a father's care;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By those most impious hands that dared remove<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nature's high bounds—by thee, and by despair.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yes, the despair which bids a father groan,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And cry, 'my children are no longer mine.<br /></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_009" id="Page_009"></a>[Pg 009]</span> +<span class="i0">The blood within those veins may be mine own,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But, tyrant, their polluted souls are thine.'<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I curse thee, though I hate thee not. O slave!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">If thou could'st quench the earth consuming hell<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of which thou art a demon, on thy grave<br /></span> +<span class="i2">This curse should be a blessing. Fare thee well."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Sad as it is to contemplate any human being in his agony making use of +such language to another; and however much we may sympathize with the +poet, yet we cannot but have inwardly a feeling of rejoicing; for, if +it had not been for this unheard of villainy, we should probably never +have had the other magnificent poetry and prose of Percy Bysshe +Shelley composed during his self-imposed ostracism, and which furnish +such glorious thoughts for the philosopher, and keen trenchant weapons +for the reformer.</p> + +<p>Have any of my hearers ever stood, in the calm of a summer evening, in +Shelley's native land, listening to the lovely warble of the +nightingale, making earth joyful with its unpremeditated strains, and +the woods re-echo with its melody? Or gazed upwards with anxious ken +towards the skylark careering in the "blue ether," far above this +sublunary sphere of gross, sensual earth, there straining after +immortality, and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i3">"Like a poet hidden,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">In the light of thought,<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Singing hymns unbidden,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Till the world is wrought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To sympathy with hopes and fears, it heeded not,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>pouring out such bursts of song as to make one almost worship and +credit the fables, taught in childhood at our mothers' knees, of the +angelic symphonies of heavenly choirs. Such was the poetry of Shelley; +and as the music of the nightingale or the skylark is far exceeding in +excellence that of the other members of the feathered kingdom, so does +Shelley rank as a poet far above all other poets, making even the poet +of nature, the great Wordsworth himself, confess that Shelley was +indeed the master of harmonious verse in our modern literature. It is +broadly laid down in the Marvinian theory that all poets are insane. I +would much like to break a lance with the learned Professor of +Psychology and Medical Jurisprudence; but as the overthrow of this +dogma does not come within the scope of my essay, I would suggest to +those who may have been influenced by that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_010" id="Page_010"></a>[Pg 010]</span>paper to read Shelley's +"Defence of Poetry." I shall quote two extracts therefrom, each +pertinent to my subject. The first describes the function of the poet:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"But poets, or those who imagine and express this +indestructible order, are not only the authors of language +and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, +and painting; they are the institutors of laws, and the +founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of +life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity +with the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehension +of the agencies of the invisible world, which is called +religion."</p></div> + +<p>The other is in extension of the same idea, and concludes the essay:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; +the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts +upon the present; the words which express what they +understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel +not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but +moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the +world."</p></div> + +<p>I have no hesitation in saying that for treating Shelley as a +philosopher, I shall be attacked with great "positivism" by the +disciples<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> of manufacturers of bran-new Brummagen philosophies dug +out of Aristotelian and other depths to which are added new thoughts, +not their own. The reason which David Masson offers in his "Recent +British Philosophy" for placing Alfred Tennyson among the same class +is equally applicable now:</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> If Diogenes or Socrates, leaving High Olympus and sweet +converse with the immortals, were to condescend to visit New York some +Friday evening. I am sadly afraid they would be astounded at many of +their would-be brothers in philosophy. On seeing the travestie of +ancient academies and groves where the schools used to congregate, the +dialogues consisting of bald atheism under sheep's clothing to trap +the unwary, and termed "The <i>Religion</i> of Humanity," of abuse and +personality in lieu of argument, of buffoonery called wit, of airing +pet hobbies alien to the subject instead of disputating, of shouting +vulgar claptrap instead of rhetoric, etc.—I sadly fear these stout +old Greeks, having power for the nonce, would, throwing philosophy to +the dogs in a moment of paroxysmal indignation, despite physiognomies +trained to resemble their own, have these fellows casked up in tubs +without lanterns, but with the appropriate "snuffers," fit emblems of +their faiths, and dropped far outside Sandy Hook. A proper finale to +the vapid utterance made by one of these gentry that all "Reformers +should be annihilated," Imagine Plato or Epicurus offering such a +suggestion. O tempora! O mores!</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_011" id="Page_011"></a>[Pg 011]</span></p> + +<p>"To those who are too strongly possessed with our common habit of +classifying writers into kinds, as historians, poets, scientific and +speculative writers, and so on, it may seem strange to include Mr. +Tennyson in this list. But as I have advisedly referred to Wordsworth +as one of the representatives and powers of British philosophy in the +age immediately past, so I advisedly named Tennyson as succeeding him +in the same character. Though it is not power of speculative reason +alone that constitutes a poet, is it not felt that the worth of a poet +essentially is measured by the depth and amount of his speculative +reason? Even popularly, do we not speak of every great poet as the +exponent of the spirit of his age? What else can this mean than that +the philosophy of his age, its spirit and heart in relation to all the +great elemental problems, find expression in his verse? Hence I ought +to include other poets in this list, and more particularly Mr. +Browning and Mrs. Browning, and the late Mr. Clough. But let the +mention of Mr. Tennyson suggest such other names, and stand as a +sufficient protest against our absurd habit of omitting such in a +connection like the present. As if, forsooth, when a writer passed +into verse, he were to be abandoned as utterly out of calculable +relationship to all on this side of the boundary, and no account were +to be taken of his thoughts and doings, except in a kind of curious +appendix at the end of the general register? What if philosophy, at a +certain extreme range, and of a certain kind, tends of necessity to +pass into poesy, and can hardly help being passionate and metrical? If +so, might not the omission of poets, purely as being such, from a +conspectus of the speculative writers of any time, lead to erroneous +conclusions, by giving an undue prominence in the estimate of all such +philosophizing as could most easily, by its nature, refrain from +passionate or poetic expression? Thus, would philosophy, or one kind +of philosophy in comparison with another, have seemed to had been in +such a diminished condition in Britain about the year 1830, if critics +had been in the habit of counting Wordsworth in the philosophic list +as well as Coleridge, Mackintosh, Bentham, and James Mill? Was there +not more of what you might call Spinozaism in Wordsworth than even in +Coleridge, who spoke more of Spinoza? But that hardly needs all this +justification, so far as Mr. Tennyson is concerned, of our reckoning +<i>him</i> in the present list. He that would exclude In "Memoriam" (1850) +and "Maud" (1855) from the conspectus of the philosophical literature +of our time, has yet to learn what philosophy is. Whatever else "In +Memoriam" may be, it is a manual for many of the latest hints and +questions in British Metaphysics."</p> + +<p>The soi-disant philosophers and classifiers of the sciences and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_012" id="Page_012"></a>[Pg 012]</span>arts +who will not permit such poets as Shelley and Tennyson to be put in +the category of philosophers, remind one very forcibly of the passage +in Macbeth: "The earth has bubbles, as the water has, and these are of +them!"</p> + +<p>As a poet and not as a poet, as an acknowledged legislator for the +race, as a philosopher, (a searcher after, or lover of wisdom) and as +a political and social reformer, it is my intention to treat Shelley +this evening, and having finished my prefatory remarks, will now +regard him in those attributes which peculiarly should enshrine him in +your hearts and mine.</p> + +<p>The philosophical theories of advanced thinkers are always tinged with +the reflex of that which called them forth, or impeded them in their +development, consequently social bondage and the "anarch custom" being +always present to Shelley, the great idea ever uppermost to him was +that true happiness is only attainable in perfect freedom: the +atrocious system of fagging, now almost extinct in the English Public +Schools and the tyrannical venality of ushers, deeply impressed +themselves on the mind of Shelley, and he tells us, in the beautiful +lines to his wife, of the remembrance of his endeavors to overthrow +these abominations having failed, of flying from "the harsh and +grating strife of tyrants and of foes" and of the high and noble +resolves which inspired him:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"And then I clasp'd my hands, and look'd around;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But none were near to mock my streaming eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Which pour'd their warm drops on the sunny ground.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">So, without shame, I spake: 'I will be wise,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Such power; for I grow weary to behold<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The selfish and the strong still tyrannize<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Without reproach or check.' I then controll'd<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My tears; my heart grew calm; and I was meek and bold.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"And from that hour did I, with earnest thought,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I cared to learn; but from that secret store<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wrought linked armor for my soul, before<br /></span> +<span class="i2">It might walk forth, to war among mankind.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thus, power and hope were strengthen'd more and more<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Within me, till there came upon my mind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The fruits born of this seed are discernible in every line of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_013" id="Page_013"></a>[Pg 013]</span>his +works. While having all reverence for his college companions, +Aristotle, Æschylus, and Demosthenes, his mind instinctively turns +towards the deemed heretical works of the later French philosophers, +D'Holbach, Condillac, La Place, Rousseau, the encyclopædists, and +other members of that school. His intellect he furbishes with stores +of logic and of chemistry, in which his greatest love was to +experimentalize; of botany and astronomy, in which he was more than a +mere adept; from Hume, too, whose essay on "Miracles," wrong as it is +in the main on many important points, was one of the alphas of his +creed—and with deep draughts from his great instructor, Plato, of +whom he always spoke with the greatest adoration, as, for instance, in +the preface to the Symposium:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Plato is eminently the greatest among the Greek +philosophers; and from, or rather perhaps through him and +his master, Socrates, have proceeded those emanations of +moral and metaphysical knowledge, on which a long series and +an incalculable variety of popular superstitions have +sheltered their absurdities from the slow contempt of +mankind."</p></div> + +<p>It is desirable to call attention to the great minds from whom the +student of the early part of this century could only cull his +knowledge—he had no Spencer and no Mill, at whose feet to sit—he had +in science none of the conclusions of Darwin, of Huxley, of Tyndall, +of Murchison, of Lyell, to refer to, and yet I think, that the careful +reader will, like myself, find prefigured in Shelley's works much of +that of which the world is in full possession to-day, and which the +mystical Occultists, Rosicrucians, and Cabalists have now, and have +ever had, conjoined to a mysterious command over the active hidden +material and spiritual powers in the infinite domain of nature.</p> + +<p>The idea of the <i>Supreme Power</i> or <i>God</i>, as emanating from Shelley, +is one of the most sublime to be found in the pages of metaphysical +learning at the command of ordinary mortals. By many it may be +considered only a vague pantheism; yet, rightly regarded in a +reconciliative spirit, it is of such an universal character as to +harmonize with not only Deism, Theism and Polytheism, but even +Atheistical Materialism. Listen to the following, which I select out +of numerous examples, as a finger-post for others who seek the living +springs of undefiled truth, as in Shelley:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Whosoever is free from the contamination of luxury and +license may go forth to the fields and to the woods, +inhaling joyous renovation from the breath of Spring, and +catching <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_014" id="Page_014"></a>[Pg 014]</span>from the odors and sounds of autumn some diviner +mood of sweetest sadness, which improves the softened heart. +Whosoever is no deceiver and destroyer of his fellow-men—no +liar, no flatterer, no murderer—may walk among his species, +deriving, from the communion with all which they contain of +beautiful or majestic, some intercourse with the Universal +God. Whosoever has maintained with his own heart the +strictest correspondence of confidence, who dares to examine +and to estimate every imagination which suggests itself to +his mind—whosoever is that which he designs to <i>become</i>, +and only aspires to that which the divinity of his own +nature shall consider and approve—he has already seen God."</p></div> + +<p>Can any one cavil with these beautiful expressions, this outpouring of +genius? If such there be, his heart and understanding must be sadly +warped, any appeal would be in vain, for him the Veil of Isis could +never be lifted. After a careful study of Shelley's works I can find +nothing to warrant the execration formerly levelled at his head, not +even in the "Refutation of Deism," that remarkable argument in the +Socratic style between Eusebes and Theosophus in which, as in all his +prose works, is displayed keen discernment, logical acuteness, and +close analytical reasoning not surpassed by the greatest +philosophers—most certainly his notions of God were not in unison +with the current theological ideas, and it was this daring rebellion +against the popular faith, the chief support of custom which caused +all the trouble. If ever he attempted to show the non-existence of +Deity, his negation was solely directed against the gross human +notions of a creative power, and <i>ergo</i> a succession of finite +creative powers <i>ad infinitum</i>, or a Personal God who has only been +acknowledged in the popular teachings as an autocratic tyrant, and as +Shelley puts it in his own language:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A venerable old man, seated on a throne of clouds, his +breast the theatre of various passions, analogous to those +of humanity, his will changeable and uncertain as that of an +earthly king."</p></div> + +<p>Not to be compared with the far different eternal and infinite.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Spirit of Nature! all sufficing power,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Necessity! thou mother of the world!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unlike the God of human error, thou<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Requirest no prayers or praises, the caprice<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than do the changeful passions of his breast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To thy unvarying harmony."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And by this doctrine of necessity here apostrophised our philosopher +instructs us in a lengthy statement of great clearness:</p><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_015" id="Page_015"></a>[Pg 015]</span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"We are taught that there is neither good nor evil in the +universe, otherwise than as the events to which we apply +these epithets have relation to our own peculiar mode of +being. Still less than with the hypothesis of a personal +God, will the doctrine of necessity accord with the belief +of a future state of punishment. God made man such as he is, +and then damned him for being so; for to say that God was +the author of all good, and man the author of all evil, is +to say that one man made a straight line and a crooked one, +and another man made the incongruity."</p></div> + +<p>For you to better understand the exact position in which Shelley +placed himself, it is elsewhere thus admirably expressed:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The thoughts which the word 'God' suggest to the human mind +are susceptible of as many variations as human minds +themselves. The Stoic, the Platonist, and the Epicurean, the +Polytheist, the Dualist, and the Trinitarian, differ entirely +in their conceptions of its meaning. They agree only in +considering it the most awful and most venerable of names, +as a common term to express all of mystery, or majesty, or +power, which the invisible world contains. And not only has +every sect distinct conceptions of the application of this +name, but scarcely two individuals of the same sect, which +exercise in any degree the freedom of their judgment, or +yield themselves with any candor of feeling to the +influences of the visible world, find perfect coincidence of +opinion to exist between them.... God is neither the Jupiter +who sends rain upon the earth; nor the Venus through whom +all living things are produced; nor the Vulcan who presides +over the terrestrial element of fire; nor the Vesta that +preserves the light which is enshrined in the sun, the moon, +and the stars. He is neither the Proteus nor the Pan of the +material world. But the word 'God' unites all the attributes +which these denominations contain and is the (inter-point) +and over-ruling spirit of all the energy and wisdom included +within the circle of existing things."</p></div> + +<p>Of these attributes generally supposed to appertain to Deity, he +writes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"There is no attribute of God which is not either borrowed +from the passions and powers of the human mind, or which is +not a negation. Omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, +infinity, immutability, incomprehensibility, and +immateriality, are all words which designate properties and +powers peculiar to organized beings, with the addition of +negations, by which the idea of limitation is excluded."</p></div> + +<p>There is no other writer, I think, who seems to grasp so clearly as +Shelley the everlasting and immutable laws of Naturismus, or who +believed so fully in the divine mission of man, and the religion of +humanity. Ever soaring into the ideal, philosophizing by the aid of +his emotional impulses, Shelley possessed, like all true Hermetists +and Theosophists imbued with mysticism, a wonderful power of continued +abstraction in the contemplation of the Supreme Power. His mentality, +described by one of his critics as essentially Greek, "simple, not +complex, imaginative rather than fanciful, abstract not concrete, +intellectual not emotional," contributed its share to his belief in a +pantheistic philosophy, making him find Supreme Intelligence permeated +through the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_016" id="Page_016"></a>[Pg 016]</span>whole of infinite and interminable Nature. Regarding the +universe as an abstract whole, he endorsed the fundamental +metaphysics of Plato, and believed that "passing phenomena are types +of eternal archetypes, embodiments of eternal realities."</p> + +<p>Even if despite of my assertions to the contrary, there be those who +still insist on the atheism of Shelley, they had better restudy the +elementary axioms and learn to think—to those who imagine that there +is but little difference between atheism and pantheism to the +discredit of either, I would remind them that Bacon in his "Moral +Essays," lays down as a principle that:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy, nature, piety, +laws, reputation and everything that can serve to conduct him +to virtue; but superstition destroys all these, and erects +itself into a tyranny over the understandings of men; hence +atheism never disturbs the government, but renders man more +clear-sighted, since he sees nothing beyond the boundaries of +the present life."</p></div> + +<p>In making use of this quotation do not let it be presumed that I wish +to endorse Materialism; my desire is to add the authority of a great +mind like that of the Elizabethan philosopher, to the fact that +superstition is so hateful that even blank, bald atheism is preferable +thereto. I should state that Bacon in extension of the extract I have +quoted, speaking of this soul-destroying incubus on humanity observes +that:—"A little philosophy inclineth men's minds to atheism; but +depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds to religion."</p> + +<p>No amount of mere reasoning, or argument <i>a priori</i> or <i>a posteriori</i>, +can prove the existence of the Most High or destroy the same; in every +breast is implanted an innate belief in Deity, the inner consciousness +of the race, by the "Vox Dei" speaking within, has throughout all +time, the past and the present revelled in this sublimity, and will +continue to do so in the future, notwithstanding the insane and +insensate efforts of pseudo scientists or iconoclastic +materialists—the brain and the heart must act in harmony to +consolidate a pure philosophy, for mere intellect alone is an +untrustworthy guide. By logic Whately proved apparently indisputably +the non-existence of Napoleon Bonaparte, at the time when there was no +doubt in any reasonable mind that he was actually living in the flesh, +by the same means one can disprove one's own being, and so by this +unsafe method have I frequently heard the God idea very learn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_017" id="Page_017"></a>[Pg 017]</span>edly +overthrown. On such occasions I have simply taken the words of the +logicians for what all their idle wind is worth—<span class="smcap">ZERO</span>.</p> + +<p>The Immortality of the Soul has ever been a subject of primary +importance to all philosophers—the last dying efforts of Socrates, +noblest of Greece's sons, as Plato has shown us in the Phædo, were +expended in a discussion on the <i>pros</i> and <i>cons</i> of an argument in +favor of a future life. Many of the highest intelligences since his +day have been endeavoring to prove this satisfactorily without the aid +of theological revelation. All mankind, from sage to peasant, from the +most learned Brahmin on the banks of the Ganges to the untutored red +Indian beside the Mississippi, has the question, "is there an +existence after death," been approached with the most earnest hopes to +solve as one of the greatest mysteries. Shelley devoted a vast amount +of energy to the elucidation of this occult, yet overt, truth; and in +one place remarks:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The desire to be forever as we are; the reluctance to a +violent and unexperienced change, which is common to all; +the animate and inanimate combinations of the universe, is, +indeed, the secret persuasion which has (among other +reasons) given birth to a belief in a future state."</p></div> + +<p>Full well he knew, that independent of matter, there was a power, +which has been denominated by some, Spirit; by others, simply mind, +force, or intelligence; and by metaphysical philosophers, soul. If he +approached the subject logically, as in his essay, "On a Future +State," the <i>ignis fatuus</i> seems to escape him and be lost; if +poetically, with the innate voice which speaks within us all, ever +present.</p> + +<p>After close reasoning in the essay I have referred to, he arrived at +the conclusion that even</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"if it be proved that the world is ruled by a divine power, +no inference can necessarily be drawn from that circumstance +in favor of a future state."</p></div> + +<p>and that</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it +will be a state of punishment or reward?"</p></div> + +<p>Then in extension of the same argument he urges:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Sleep suspends many of the faculties of the vital and +intellectual principle—drunkenness and disease will either +temporarily or permanently derange them. Madness, or +idiotcy, may utterly extinguish the most excellent and +delicate of these powers. In old age the mind gradually +withers; and as it grew and strengthened with the body, so +does it with the body sink into decrepitude."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_018" id="Page_018"></a>[Pg 018]</span></p> + +<p>He also considered that:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"It is probable that what we call thought is not an actual +being, but no more than the relation between certain parts +of that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the +universe is composed, and which ceases to exist so soon as +those parts change their position with regard to each other. +Thus color, and sound, and taste, and odor, exist only +relatively."</p></div> + +<p>Even granted that mind or thought be a part of, or in fact, the soul, +then he asks in what manner it could be made a proof of its +imperishability, as all that we see or know perishes and is changed.</p> + +<p>Here then comes the query, "Have we existed before birth?" A difficult +possibility to conceive of individual intelligence and if unprovable +against the theory of existence after death.</p> + +<p>He then winds up the whole by thinking that it is impossible that,</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"we should continue to exist after death in some mode +totally inconceivable to us at present."</p></div> + +<p>and that only those who desire to be persuaded are persuaded.</p> + +<p>This is but a rough outline of some of the principal features of his +considerations on soul immortality from a logical basis, and which, +after all, only constitute an argument, to which, and the thoughts +presented therein, he did not necessarily bind himself. There can be +little doubt, independently of what I have quoted, that he did not +believe in a future state as popularly accepted. Trelawney asked him +on one occasion: "Do you believe in the immortality of the spirit?" +Shelley's answer was +unmistakable, "Certainly not; how can I? We know nothing; we have no +evidence."<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a></p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Those who desire to fully investigate Shelley's ideas on +the immortality of the soul, and the existence, or nature, of Deity, +will be amply repaid by reading W.M. Rossetti's admirable memoir of +the poet, appended to the last two-volume London edition of his +works.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_019" id="Page_019"></a>[Pg 019]</span></p> + +<p>When we take Shelley from a poetical standpoint, or with the divine +truism implanted by the Ain-soph clamoring within to his intelligence +for expression, how confident he appears of a hereafter, as in the +"Adonais," or in the following extract from an unpublished letter to +his father-in-law, William Godwin, the property of my friend C.W. +Frederickson, of New York, one of the most enthusiastic admirers of +Shelley, and who has been often known to pay more than the weight in +gold for Shelleyana:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"With how many garlands we can beautify the tomb. If we +begin betimes, we can learn to make the prospect of the +grave the most seductive of human visions. By little and +little we hive therein all the most pleasing of our dreams. +Surely, if any spot in the world be sacred, it is that in +which grief ceases, and for which, if the voice within our +hearts mocks us not with an everlasting lie, we spring upon +the untiring wings of a pangless and seraphic life—those +whom we love around us—our nature, universal intelligence, +our atmosphere, eternal love."</p></div> + +<p>How exquisite these remarks and his description of a disembodied +spirit:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"it stood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All beautiful in naked purity,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The perfect semblance of its bodily frame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Each stain of earthliness<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had passed away, it re-assumed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its native dignity, and stood<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Immortal amid ruin."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It must appear impossible to any rational mind, that, with the full +evidence before their eyes, materialists can attempt to claim Shelley +as endorsing their doctrines, for even in the "Queen Mab," which has +been considered by those not understanding it as a most atheistical +poem, he speaks of—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i9">"the remembrance<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With which the happy spirit contemplates<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Positive dogmatists are tyrannically endeavoring to crush the belief +in a soul, that All which makes the-present life happy on earth, the +hope of our heritage in a future state. To them the fact that the race +from the dawn of history, and through the ages has knelt down in +abnegation before this inscrutable truth is nothing. This glorious +belief evolved from the primæval Cabala, taught in ancient Egypt, +found contemporaneously in India, enunciated by scholarly Rabbis, ever +present before the Chaldæan and Assyrian Magi, and laid down as axioms +in the philosophical schools of Greece and Rome, not only to be +discovered a fundamental in the Egyptian, the Hebraistic, the +Brahminical, the Buddhistic, the Vedic, but also in all the sacred +books of every nation, and handed down and perpetuated to these days +as a sacred legacy from the past, by both Mohammed and Christ. This, +the great co-mystery of all the ancient mys<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_020" id="Page_020"></a>[Pg 020]</span>teries, shall remain ever +present through all futurity like "the existing order of the Universe, +or rather, of the <i>part of it known to us</i>," to use the phraseology of +John Stuart Mill. Nations may rise and fall, theologies may flourish +and decay, but this glorious and divine inheritance shall never pass +away. Let pseudo-scientists avail themselves of stale and exploded +arguments, and urge that there is no invisible world, and therefore no +immortality for man, but honest scientists, like Professors Tait and +Stewart, in the "Unseen Universe," will agree with the Illuminati: "in +the position assigned by Swedenborg, and by the Spiritualists, +according to which they look upon the invisible world not as something +absolutely distinct from the visible universe, and absolutely +unconnected with it, as is frequently thought to be the case, but +rather as a universe that has some bond of union with the present;" +and like Tyndall, will be obliged in abject humility to acknowledge, +unlike the initiated occultist, that: "When we endeavor to pass from +the phenomena of physics to those of thought, we meet a problem which +transcends any conceivable expansion of the powers we now possess. We +may think over the subject again and again—it eludes all intellectual +presentation—we stand at length face to face with the +incomprehensible."</p> + +<p>Shelley was ever calling attention to the fact that either from +ignorance or the casuistical sophistries of mal-interested teachers +who have distorted the divine pristine truths for their own base ends, +emanated superstition, the taint of all it looked upon; and with no +unsparing hand he flagellated the professors of the numerous false +faiths, bastardized from their original purity, which have in their +decay, darkened the earth, and with all the force of his powerful pen, +mightier than any sword, he ridiculed these gross theologies existant +among men, as in the following:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Barbarous and uncivilized nations have uniformly adored, +under various names, a God of which themselves were the +model: revengeful, blood-thirsty, groveling and capricious. +The idol of a savage is a demon that delights in carnage. +The steam of slaughter, the dissonance of groans, the flames +of a desolated land, are the offerings which he deems +acceptable, and his innumerable votaries throughout the +world have made it a point of duty to worship him to his +taste. The Phoenicians, the Druids and the Mexicans have +immolated hundreds at the shrines of their divinity, and the +high and holy name of God has been in all ages the watchword +of the most unsparing massacres, the sanction of the most +atrocious perfidies."</p></div> + +<p>Of the treatment Judaism, the foster mother of Christianity, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_021" id="Page_021"></a>[Pg 021]</span>received +at the poet's hands, I will now recite two examples. To Moses, the +Jehovah of the Hebrews is thus made to speak:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"From an eternity of idleness<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made earth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From nothing; rested, and created man;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I placed him in a paradise, and there<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Planted the tree of evil, so that he<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Might eat and perish, and my soul procure<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wherewith to sate its malice, and to turn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All misery to my fame. The race of men<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Chosen to my honor, with impunity<br /></span> +<span class="i0">May sate the lusts <i>I</i> planted in their hearts.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here I command thee hence to lead them on,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Until, with harden'd feet, their conquering troops<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And make my name be dreaded through the land,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall be the doom of their eternal souls,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With every soul on this ungrateful earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong—even all<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall perish to fulfill the blind revenge<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(Which you to men call justice) of their God."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In another place Shelley is equally descriptive of the early stages of +Jewish history, and makes the following observations on the building +of the Temple of Jerusalem, which rearing high its thousand golden +domes to heaven, exposed its glory to the face of day:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The building of that fane; and many a father,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Worn out with toil and slavery, implored<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And spare his children the detested task<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The choicest days of life,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To soothe a dotard's vanity.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There an inhuman and uncultured race<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Howl'd hideous praises to their demon—God;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The unborn child—old age and infancy<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And what was he who taught them that the God<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of nature and benevolence had given<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A special sanction to the trade of blood?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His name and theirs are fading, and the tales<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of this barbarian nation, which imposture<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Recites till terror credits, are pursuing<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Itself into forgetfulness."<br /></span> +</div></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_022" id="Page_022"></a>[Pg 022]</span></p> + +<p>With the enlightenment of the present century in every department of +knowledge, so has a corresponding degree of advancement been thrown on +the science of history, which Shelley only partially apprehended. An +enormous amount of new information is now to be gleaned from the +writings of Ewald, Fergusson, Bünsen, Deutsch, Max Müller, +Baring-Gould, Stanley, and other scholars of Orientation, which shows +that the Hebrews, like every other nation, passed through the various +phases of Nomadism and Pastoralism, to that of offensive and defensive +war. The same as other races, they came through the usual steps in +religious progress—Fetishism, Astrolatry, Polytheism and Monotheism. +During phases in their history they participated in the various forms +of tree and serpent, Phallic, or fire-worship. They had, as the +Talmud, Targums, and the Old Testament show, a knowledge of the +Egyptian or Chaldaic account of the creation and fall, the latter +still to be seen on the walls of the temple of Osiris at Philæ. They +had much knowledge of the Cabala, through their great prophet Moses, +who was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," and, like +Pythagoras, had been initiated into their mysteries, and who both +imparted the knowledge in part to their compatriots, on which they +both founded systems.</p> + +<p>A great traveler, and most learned modern writer on Occultism, who +claims, on good grounds, to have been received into the ancient branch +of the Rosie Cross in the far East, Madame Helena P. de Blavatsky, +imparts the following particulars: "The first Cabala in which a mortal +man ever dared to explain the greatest mysteries of the universe, and +show the keys to those masked doors in the ramparts of Nature, through +which no mortal can ever pass without rousing dread sentries never +seen upon this side her wall, was compiled by a certain Simeon Ben +Jochai, who lived at the time of the second temple's destruction. Only +about thirty years after the death of this renowned Cabalist, his MSS. +and written explanations, which had till then remained in his +possession as a most precious secret, were used by his son, Rabbi +Elizzar, and other learned men. Making a compilation of the whole, +they so produced the famous work called <i>Zohar</i> (God's splendor). This +book proved an inexhaustible mine for all the subsequent Cabalists, +their source of information and knowledge, and all more recent and +genuine Cabalas <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_023" id="Page_023"></a>[Pg 023]</span>were all more or less carefully copied from the +former. Before that, all the mysterious doctrines had come down in an +unbroken line of merely oral tradition as far back as man could trace +himself on earth. They were scrupulously and jealously guarded by the +wise men of Chaldea, India, Persia and Egypt, and passed from one +initiate to another, in the same purity of form as when handed down to +the first man by the angels, students of God's great Theosophic +seminary."</p> + +<p>Many Free Thinkers, in their anxiety to crush everything belonging to +Christianity, often forget that, in throwing aside the Hebrew records +as utterly worthless, they are getting rid of one of the most ancient +literatures in the world. They also do not remember the history of a +peculiar nation, strangely preserved amid the fluctuations of time, +the purity and excellence of the Book of Job, the Psalms, and others +which I could name. They cast unmerited contempt on these +compilations, when, at the same time, they will throw themselves, with +almost Fetish reverence, and apparently rapt adoration, before the +Institutes of Menu, the Bhagvat-Geeta, the morals of +Chaoung-Fou-Tszee, the Zend-Avesta, the Rig-Veda, the Oracles of +Zoroaster, the Book of the Dead, the Puranas, the Shastras, and the +like.</p> + +<p>Well may the Sons of Israel be proud of their ancient descent. They +suffered through Christian persecutions uncomplainingly—the torture, +the rack, the <i>auto-da-fe</i>—and yet they bowed their heads in +submission to the will of Adonai. To-day they stand upright and +united, as in olden times. They have gained the victory over the false +disciples of the Nazarene, who, in days gone by, forgot their +erudition, their medical knowledge, their commercial activity, and +general culture. Pre-eminent in wealth and learning, they are found on +the lecture-platform, in the fields of literature and science, in the +councils of rulers, on the exchange, in the legislature—everywhere. +When Greece and Rome were in their infancy, this extraordinary people +was in middle age; and when our Saxon forefathers were in the lowest +stage of barbarism, they were in a state of high civilization; and +to-day, although scattered, they show a compact front, firmly knit in +the bonds of brotherly love, a model for Christians. The great reform +movement now agitating Judaism, as well as every other species of +political and metaphysical thought, will eventually aid to consolidate +all the races into one race—Humanity.</p><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_024" id="Page_024"></a>[Pg 024]</span></p> + +<p>In order to make Christians prejudge Shelley it has been the wont of +theologians, as usual in fighting their antagonists, to cry up a false +issue, and to make their followers believe that he was rather more +than a mere hater of Jesus Christ, and of the teachings of that +religious and social reformer, in fact, that he was an infidel of +infidels. To have no misconceptions—for it has been stated that +Shelley changed his views on Christ, which after ten years' careful +study of his writings, I utterly deny, it should be thoroughly +understood that he regarded this pious Israelite in a duismal +aspect—as Christ the Man, and as Christ the God. I must not, while +here, forget that many advanced metaphysicians agree that they cannot +satisfactorily prove the historical existence of Christ, and that they +have to winnow through a vast amount of chaff to get at his presumed +philosophy, and the facts in his life, which like that of Buddha is +wrapped up in traditional fable.</p> + +<p>For the Man Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter's carnate son, +the mystical Essene and occultist, Shelley exceeded in love and +reverence many of the most earnest Christians, and in no theological +writings can there be discovered such beautiful sentiments concerning +the "The Regenerator of the World," and the "Meek Reformer," of whom +he speaks as contemplating that mysterious principle called God, the +fundamental of all good, and the source of all happiness, as every +true poet and philosopher must have done. It is impossible to turn to +any page of his works, where, in speaking of Christ, he fails in +this—he expatiates with as great fervor as Renan, Seeley, or +Strauss, on Christ's exposing with earnest eloquence, like all true +members of the brotherhood of Illuminati, to which he belonged, the +panic fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved mankind for +ages, and extols</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"His extraordinary genius, the wide and rapid effects of his +unexampled doctrines, his invincible gentleness and +benignity, (and) the devoted love borne to him by his +adherents."</p></div> + +<p>For the God Christ, as depicted by the Sacerdotal order, he had the +greatest contempt. It was impossible for a mind constituted like his +to tamely rest contented with the incredible story forced on mankind's +intelligence, that the Supreme Power could or would for any wise +purpose be transformed into a dove, and re-enact the mythical part of +Jupiter with a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_025" id="Page_025"></a>[Pg 025]</span>Christian Leda, the Jew carpenter's wife, Mary, under +the disguise of a bird. Such a story and the theory on which it rests +Shelley summarised as follows:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"According to this book, God created Satan, who, instigated +by the impulses of his nature, contended with the Omnipotent +for the throne of Heaven. After a contest for the empire, in +which God was victorious, Satan was thrust into a pit of +burning sulphur. On man's creation, God placed within his +reach a tree whose fruit he forbade him to taste, on pain of +death; permitting Satan, at the same time, to employ all his +artifice to persuade this innocent and wondering creature to +transgress the fatal prohibition.</p> + +<p>"The first man yielded to this temptation; and to satisfy +Divine Justice the whole of his posterity must have been +eternally burned in hell, if God had not sent his only Son +on earth, to save those few whose salvation had been +foreseen and determined before the creation of the world."</p></div> + +<p>The hero of this fabulous episode, beneath which a great truth lies +hidden, the Christian Ahrimanes or Typhon, the Devil, as painted by +Milton, he considered a moral being, far superior to the God depicted +by the same author, and who, under the form of the second person of +the Christian Trinity, Shelley tells us of coming humbly,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Veiling his horrible God-head in the shape<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of man, scorn'd by the world, his name unheard,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Save by the rabble of his native town,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Even as a parish demagogue. He led<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The crowd; he taught them justice, truth, and peace,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In semblance; but he lit within their souls<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The quenchless flame of zeal, and blest the sword<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He brought on earth to satiate with the blood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of truth and freedom his malignant soul."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Elsewhere, in extension of the same, he puts the accompanying words in +the mouth of God the Father, to illustrate the doctrine of Christian +Atonement:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I will beget a son, and he shall bear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sins of all the world; he shall arise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In an unnoticed corner of the earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And he shall die upon a cross, and purge<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The universal crime; so that the few<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On whom my grace descends, those who are marked<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As vessels to the honor of their God,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">May credit this strange sacrifice, and save<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their souls alive. Millions shall live and die,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But unredeem'd go to the gaping grave;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such as the nurses frighten babes withal;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These, in a gulf of anguish an I of flame,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall curse their reprobation endlessly,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_026" id="Page_026"></a>[Pg 026]</span> +<span class="i0">Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Even on their beds of torment, where they howl,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My honor and the justice of their doom.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of purity, with radiant genius bright,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or lit with human reason's earthly ray?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Many are call'd but few will I elect."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The popular faith of Europe and America, which experience demonstrates +to this age has, even as a means of reforming humanity, been a +complete failure, Shelley correctly believed, had the same human +foundation and origin as that of other revealed theologies—he sums up +the proofs on which Christianity rests, miracles, prophecies, and +martyrdoms, with great clearness; proves the absurdity of the doctrine +of miracles, as taught by Christian writers, shows the falseness of +the so-called prophecies, even granting the utmost warping of the real +meaning of the Old Testament texts for Christian purposes, which he +asserted were to be compared unfavorably with the oracles of Delphos, +and points out that the Mohammedan dying for his prophet, or the +Hindoo immolating himself under the wheels of Juggernaut could be +cited equally as a proof of the divine origin of their faiths, as the +reputed martyrdoms of Christians could of theirs.</p> + +<p>The development of Christianity, which was really founded by Paul, was +a subject to which Shelley devoted much attention—he tells us that</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The same means that have supported every other belief, have +supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, assassination, +and falsehood; deeds of unexampled and incomparable +atrocity, have made it what it is. The blood shed by the +votaries of the God of mercy and peace, since the +establishment of his religion, would probably suffice to +drown all other sectaries now on the habitable globe. We +derive from our ancestors a faith thus fostered and +supported; we quarrel, persecute, and hate, for its +maintenance. Even under a government which, while it +infringes the very right of thought and speech, boasts of +permitting the liberty of the press, a man is pilloried and +imprisoned because he is a deist, and no one raises his +voice in the indignation of outraged humanity."</p></div> + +<p>The numerical majority of Christians—the Greek and Roman +Catholic—are as much pagans as their ancestors, the ancient Greeks +and Romans were exoterically. And why? Simply because on the break-up +of the Roman empire—like Mohammedanism afterwards, which was the +natural reformation and revolution from Christian +image-worship—Christianity, in a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_027" id="Page_027"></a>[Pg 027]</span>natural succession, and by +fortuitous circumstances, took possession of the executive, and placed +on the seat of power a Christian Byzantine emperor in lieu of a pagan. +Basilicas, dedicated to Jupiter, Mercury, Adonis, Venus and the +deities of High Olympus, were re-dedicated to God the Father, God the +Son, God the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, and the other saints (or +gods) of the Christian Pantheon. Statues therein were rechristened, +and the sacrificial altars were simply transferred for the use of the +eucharistical sacrifice. The vestal virgins became nuns of the church; +the <i>Sacerdotes</i>, her priests; the mysteries of Isis, her Agapæ. Her +incense, her pictures, her image-worship, her holy water, her +processions, and her prodigies, too, all came from the same source. +Thus were the socialistic and communistic teachings, based on the +Philoic-Essenism of the Reformer of Nazareth, paganized, prostituted, +and entirely misrepresented. His life and labors were transformed from +the natural into what was considered by the vulgar the supernatural, +and all those who dared—like Hypatia, with thousands of other pious +and noble ancients—to deny his divinity, were sacrificed to this new +Moloch, set up by parricide Constantines, or adulterers of the +Theodosius caste. Thus through the ages, has the race suffered under +such murder, rapine, and lust, as never disgraced tolerant ancient +heathendom in the interests of paganism, even as recently happened in +Central America,<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> and would happen everywhere else, if priestcraft +had the power to act without restraint, so that, as Shelley says,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Earth groans beneath religion's iron age,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And priests dare babble of a God of Peace—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Murdering the while, uprooting every germ<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Making the earth a slaughter-house."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> I refer to the abominable outrages perpetrated a few +months ago at San Miguel, Panama, where popular preachers were forced +by the ecclesiastical powers to foment rebellion by violently +denouncing the State authorities, who had refused to allow a pastoral +of the Christian Bishop of San Salvador, hostile to the laws, to be +read in the churches. Having been put into a state of frenzy by one +Palacios, a canon of the cathedral, a fanatic mob revolted, liberated +prisoners, murdered generals in command, massacred numbers of the best +citizens, set fire to the city with kerosene, and destroyed over one +million dollars' worth of property. After this theological revolt had +been put down, passports, couched in the following terms, and sealed +with the seal of the bishopric, were found on the bodies of some of +these holy murderers; +</p> +<p> +<span style="margin-left:4em"> <span class="smcap">"Peter</span>.—Open to the bearer the gates of heaven, who has died for religion.</span><br /> +<span class="sig1">(Signed), <span class="smcap">George</span>, Bishop of San Salvador."</span><br /> +</p> +<p> +Similar attempts were made by the Christian hierarchy in Brazil +against the Masonic body; but, fortunately, the emperor, a liberal and +an enlightened savant, crushed the attempt under foot, and +unmistakably proved, to the satisfaction of humanity, that he was not +to be transformed into a nineteenth century Charles the Ninth or +Philip the Second, and act the cat's paw for Pio Nono, ex-carbonari +and recusant mason, to wreak his vengeance on the brethren whom he had +betrayed.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_028" id="Page_028"></a>[Pg 028]</span></p> + +<p>To those who will look down the ages, I would ask, is this picture +overdrawn? and further, to remember that in Shelley's own words:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Eleven millions of men, women and children have been killed +in battle, butchered in their sleep, burned to death at +public festivals of sacrifice, poisoned, tortured, +assassinated and pillaged in the spirit of the religion of +peace, and for the glory of the most merciful God."</p></div> + +<p>Is it amazing that he should have written such a "highly wrought and +admirably sustained" tragedy as the "Cenci," founded on facts, and +which has been deemed by competent critics the first since +Shakspeare—that he should have brought forward, with vivid +delineation, the crimes of the priesthood—and that he should have +made us remember the terrors of the bloody wars on heretics and +heathen, in words such as these:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Yes! I have seen God's worshippers unsheathe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sword of His revenge, when grace descended,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Confirming all unnatural impulses,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To sanctify their desolating deeds;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And frantic priests wave the ill-omen'd cross<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O'er the unhappy earth; then shone the sun<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On showers of gore from the upflashing steel<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of safe assassination, and all crime<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And blood-red rainbows canopied the land.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Spirit! no year of my eventful being<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has pass'd unstain'd by crime and misery,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which flows from God's own faith. I've marked his slaves<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The insensate mob, and whilst one hand was red<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With murder, feign to stretch the other out<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For brotherhood and peace; and that they now<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are marked with all the narrowness and crime<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Protestant Christians may urge that all this is not Christianity; if +it be not—for it is the record of the Church—I would ask, what is? +and where shall we find the history of Christiani<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_029" id="Page_029"></a>[Pg 029]</span>ty for the fifteen +centuries before Luther's time? and where, to-day? Their predecessors +plucked the plumage from the dying bird of mythology, as they, +themselves, have robbed the liberal orchard of all its choicest fruits +and palmed them off as of their own growth. Protestants would not, I +dare say, now countenance the persecutions of the past, but yet, I +would tell them that their Protestantism has been a great mistake; and +that, at this moment, there is no unity among the opposers of +Catholicism, who are split into a thousand sects, wrangling for +superiority, like wolves over offal; and that their churches are +gradually converging toward Rationalism on the one hand, and Catholic +Sacerdotalism on the other; in regard to which last, the Historical +Roman Church—the only Christian body which presents a solid +phalanx—one must not be too iconoclastic, remembering that, in the +monastic houses and great ecclesiastical libraries we have had +conserved for us, although, perchance by accident, the records of all +the philosophy, all the jurisprudence, all the polity, all the +literature, and all the civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, that +remained from the Alexandrian library and pre-Christian times—the +mediæval clerics were the great conservators of knowledge, which we +inherit directly from Europe; and we should be, therefore, grateful to +them equally with Mohammedanism, from which we received, through the +Crusaders and the Moors, the basis of nearly all science and luxury, +from Asia. There were, undoubtedly, many bad popes, men as bad as the +incestuous, and, according to the recent dogma, the infallible +Alexander Borgia; priests who are not all vile, but many nobler than +their system, acknowledge this with regret, and among whom there are +some whom I can reverence, such as John Henry Newman, for instance, +whose life would favorably compare with that of Shelley, or any +liberal. There have been popes, also, whose lives have been as pure, +as disinterested, and as virtuous as that of any stoic or epicurean. +We owe much to Sixtus the Fifth, founder of the Vatican Library, and +would-be regenerator of order in his temporal dominions; to Leo the +Great, whose patronage of the arts has sent us down the wondrous +statuary, painting, and works of genius, which are the admiration of +the world; and to Hildebrand, who brought together, in one harmonious +whole, the struggling elements of European society. It is well <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_030" id="Page_030"></a>[Pg 030]</span>to +note, too, in order that I may not be misunderstood, that Catholicism +is better than savage Fetishism, and Rationalism in degree superior to +either; and, further, that Liberalism should only war with evil +principles, and not with men whom they are generally the exponents of +ignorantly, and to the best of their knowledge. Comtism<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a> +acknowledges the fact that Christianity was not simply a mere advance +on, but where we shall only find the civilization of Europe as it was +during mediæval times, and recognizes this most strongly, by placing +over fifty of these great geniuses and luminaries, popes, bishops, and +saints of the Catholic Church, in the Comtist Calendar, under the +sixth and seventh months dedicated to St. Paul or Catholicism, and +Charlemagne or Feudal Civilization respectively. We should thank the +followers of Comte for thus bringing to our notice what we might be +liable to occasionally forget in our bigotry and frequent +over-anxiety.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> Comtism, or Positivism is that casuistical system of +modern Atheism, founded by Auguste Comte, the Ignatius Loyola of +Materialism, and which that learned pantarchical madman strung +together in Esquirol's lunatic asylum. It is an insidious philosophy, +full of Jesuistry, and teaches a <i>soi-disant</i> Religion which is +Ir-religion, a pseudo-God, which has no conceivable existence, and an +impossible immortality of the soul, ignoring a future state. The +present crusade of Comtism in our midst, with false colors flying can +be justly compared to that of St. Francois Xavier in Hindostan.</p></div> + +<p>In popularizing terms wrongly, lies much mischief. If the misapplied +term Christianity, signify the current notion, zeal for truth, the +good of mankind, and active virtue or Christism, the reputed precepts +of Christ, then Shelley taught that ethical system, and the so-called +Christian world which persecuted him, the opposite.</p> + +<p>No one believed, better than Shelley, in the necessity of continuity, +and that all theological systems are a portion of the development of +Humanity.</p> + +<p>It should likewise be remembered, that even in the grossest +superstition, as in the highest belief, the underlying aspiration, +veiled perhaps, under some beautiful myth, is a straining after the +pure and the good, and, as Shelley puts it:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"All original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of +allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and +true."</p></div> + +<p>It should also be considered, that it is better not to interfere with +the faith of the ignorant, but let them remain in an exoteric +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_031" id="Page_031"></a>[Pg 031]</span>condition, until they are properly developed by sufficient education +and consequent intelligence. It is just as much the duty of advanced +thinkers not to tamper with the beliefs of men who are in an early +stage of progress, as it is not to put a flaming torch in the +possession of a lunatic, or a razor in the hands of a child.</p> + +<p>Shelley, in his philosophy, accepted all this, with the full +consciousness that in the end truth would prevail—he yearned for the +time when priest-led slaves would</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">"Cease to proclaim that man<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Inherits vice and misery, when force<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and for that epoch when "the Mohammedan, the Jew, the Christian, the +Deist, and the Atheist will live together in one community, equally +sharing the benefits which arise from its associations, and united in +the bonds of charity and brotherly love."</p> + +<p>With Shelley we can turn with delight to the gospels of the future, as +of the ancient past; and the ramifications of the Trinity of a truly +Rational Religion, Mature, Science, and Art, where we have, instead of +idle prayers, addressed to gross material idols, or the impossible +entities hitherto depicted in theological systems, a feeling of real +satisfaction in learning how to live rather than to die, and in +practicing virtue and benevolence for their own sakes, than for +improbable rewards in the unsatisfactory hereafter, enunciated from +the theological platform.</p> + +<p>Like a true religionist, Shelley tells us that aspirations to "Madre +Natura," like the following, should be poured out in silent, grateful +communion with Omnipresence, and not in temples made by hands:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">Spirit of Nature! here!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In this interminable wilderness<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of worlds, at whose immensity<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Even soaring fancy staggers,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Here is thy fitting temple.<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Yet not the slightest leaf<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That quivers to the passing breeze<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is less instinct with thee;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yet not the meanest worm<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That lurks in graves, and fattens on the dead<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Less shares thy eternal breath.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Spirit of Nature! thou!<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_032" id="Page_032"></a>[Pg 032]</span> +<span class="i0">Imperishable as this scene,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here is thy fitting temple.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>From such a soul-inspiring altar should praises like these be raised, +and with what sacred feeling would the pure worshipper revel "where +spirits live and dream—where all that is sweet in sound, or pure in +vision floats on the air, or passes dimly before the sight," for as +the late Professor J.G. Hoyt, in his essay on Shelley beautifully +points out—"To him everything was God, and God was everything. Every +place was peopled with forms of beauty and animated with living +intelligences. Hills and valleys, forests and fountains, were each +thronged with presiding deities—bright effluences from the Diving +that stirred within, and shone above the whole."</p> + +<p>In leaving the first portion of my paper, I will make the following +quotation from a remarkable article on Shelley in the pages of the +<i>National Magazine</i>, which all minds unshackled, and free from +prejudice, must acknowledge to be correct in the main, and which +admirably sums up his efforts in metaphysical philosophy. Our +attention is called to the fact that we discover in all Shelley's +writings "a freer and purer development of what is best and noblest in +ourselves. We are taught in it to love all living and lifeless things, +with which in the material and moral universe we are surrounded—we +are taught to love the wisdom and goodness and majesty of the +Almighty, for we are taught to love the universe, his symbol and +visible exponent. God has given two books for the study and +instruction of mankind; the book of revelation and the book of nature. +In one at least of these was Shelley deeply versed, and in this one he +has given admirable lessons to his fellow-men. Throughout his +writings, every thought and every feeling is subdued and chastened by +a spirit of unutterable and boundless love. The poet meets us on the +common ground of a disinterested humanity, and he teaches us to hold +an earnest faith in the worth and the intrinsic Godliness of the soul. +He tells us—he makes us feel that there is nothing higher than human +hope, nothing deeper than the human heart; he exhorts us to labor +devotedly in the great and good work of the advancement of human +virtue and happiness, and stimulates us</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"To love and hear—to hope till hope creates<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From its own wreck the thing it contemplates."<br /></span> +</div></div> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_033" id="Page_033"></a>[Pg 033]</span></p> +<p>It is observed by Shelley that</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau, +and their disciples in favor of oppressed and deluded +humanity, are entitled to the gratitude of mankind. Yet it +is easy to calculate the degree of moral and intellectual +improvement which the world would have exhibited, had they +never lived. A little more nonsense would have been talked +for a century or two; and perhaps a few more men, women and +children burnt as heretics. We might not at this moment have +been congratulating each other on the abolition of the +Inquisition in Spain."</p></div> + +<p>The vast impetus, which these extraordinary geniuses gave to freedom +in metaphysical strongholds, led to a corresponding degree of liberty +in the political and social relations.</p> + +<p>Shelley was not one who</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i9">"beheld the woe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In which mankind was bound, and deem'd that fate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which made them abject, would preserve them so."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but on the contrary was aware of the progressive character of the +race, and threw himself with all his heart and soul into the cause of +Republicanism, and never slackened in his efforts till death took him +from his work. His noblest endeavors were directed toward the cause of +suffering humanity, crushed under the weight of despotism; and his +tuneful lyre was ever struck in behalf of the Goddess of Freedom, to +whom, in that soul inspiring "Ode to Liberty," he offers chaplets of +the most glorious verse to rouse the nations from their apathy. He has +given us his reflections on the English Revolution, when Cromwell +crushed royalty under his feet in the person of the tyrant Charles +Stuart, and which, notwithstanding, rose again to befoul, in the +profligacy and debauchery of the second Carolian epoch; on the French +Revolution, when an intelligent people drove out a brood of vampires, +who had drained the blood of France too long, to be replaced by +atrocious demagogues, hateful priest-ridden Bourbons and a Napoleon +Bonaparte, the wholesale Jaffa poisoner, on whose death Shelley wrote +lines pregnant with republican feelings:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To think that a most ambitious slave,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where it had stood even now; thou didst prefer<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A frail and bloody pomp, which time has swept<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In fragments towards oblivion. Massacre,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For this I pray'd would on thy sleep have crept,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear and Lust,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And stifled thee, their minister. I know<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_034" id="Page_034"></a>[Pg 034]</span> +<span class="i0">Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That virtue owns a more eternal foe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than force or fraud; old custom, legal crime,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of time."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>With full knowledge of all this, he hopefully looked with loving eyes +toward this side of the Atlantic, to your magnificent constitution and +model Republic, built on the consolidated masonic bases of Liberty, +Equality, and Fraternity, as did also the mass of my compatriots, who, +suffering under a more intolerant despotism, and unable to help +themselves, had no hand or voice in the attempted tyranny, from which +your forefathers properly rebelled one hundred years ago.</p> + +<p>In "Hellas" we find Shelley advocating the cause of Greece, and it is +believed, that that poem assisted his friend Byron in the +determination to wield his sword in the cause of Grecian Liberty. "The +Revolt of Islam," his most mystical work, next to his early effort, +"St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian," is full of the most majestic and +sympathetic thoughts, and underlying its weirdness we have all those +elements "which essentially compose a poem in the cause of a liberal +and comprehensive morality, and with the view of kindling in the bosom +of his readers a virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty +and justice, that faith and hope in something good, which neither +violence, nor misrepresentation, nor prejudice, nor the continual +presence and pressure of evil, can ever totally extinguish among +mankind."</p> + +<p>Can we wonder that Shelley could be else than Republican when he +regarded what Thackeray afterward summed up with biting irony, the +record of the reigning house of Great Britain, the mad Guelph +<i>Defenders of the Christian Faith</i>(<i>?</i>), the results of whose labors +have been corroborated by Greville and recent writers?</p> + +<p>To what a line of monarchs, was Shelley called upon to give allegiance +and prostrate himself before, and can we be astonished that he thus +describes the state these abominable Hanoverians had "England in +1819:"</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Princes the dregs of their dull race who flow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But leech-like to their fainting country cling,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till they drop blind in blood without a blow,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A people starved and stabbed in unfilled field,—<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_035" id="Page_035"></a>[Pg 035]</span> +<span class="i2">An army which liberticide and prey<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Make as a two-edged sword to all who wield,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Religion Christless, Godless, a book sealed,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A Senate—time's worst statute unrepealed,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Are graves from which a glorious phantom may<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Burst to illumine our tempestuous day?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To aid Republicanism, he threw himself with fervor into the cause of +the unhappy Caroline of Brunswick; and on her account he wrote "God +Save the Queen," in imitation of the British national anthem, and the +satirical piece entitled "Swellfoot, the Tyrant." In the following +words he attacked the prime minister, Lord Castleragh, whose +reactionary counsels were transforming England into a state analogous +to that of Russia to-day:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"Then trample and dance, thou oppressor,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For thy victim is no redressor!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thou art sole lord and possessor<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of her corpses, and clods and abortions—they pave<br /></span> +<span class="i3">Thy path to a grave."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For the Lord Chancellor, Eldon, his hatred was intense; for, in +addition to the crime of robbing him of his children, this occupant of +the wool-sack, had made the seat of justice an appanage for his lust +of wealth and power. I have already quoted some verses on this +renowned lawyer, and will now present you with two others bearing on +the same subject:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Next came Fraud, and he had on,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like Lord Eldon, an ermine gown;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His big tears (for he wept well)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Turned to mill stones as they fell;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And <i>the little children</i>, who<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Round his feet played to and fro,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thinking every tear a gem,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Had their brains knocked out by them."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In <i>Queen Mab</i>, Shelley has presented us with an unmistakable +portraiture of the "First Gentleman in Europe;" and in the following +lines, which I have taken from this poem, I have chosen two extracts, +descriptive of the origin of political despotism, and the reason of +its continuance:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Toil and unvanquishable penury<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On those who build their palaces, and bring<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_036" id="Page_036"></a>[Pg 036]</span> +<span class="i0">Their daily bread? From vice, black, loathsome vice,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From rapine, madness, treachery and wrong;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From all that genders misery, and makes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Revenge and murder."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<hr /> + +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The subject, not the citizen; for kings<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And subjects, mutual foes, forever play<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A losing game into each other's hands,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of virtuous soul commands not nor obeys.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Power, like a desolating pestilence,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A mechanized automaton."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Shelley believed in reformation, not revolution; and in the "Revolt of +Islam" and his Irish pamphlets, we find him advocating a bloodless +revolution, except where force was used, and then force for force, if +compromise were hopeless. His idea was ever the foundation of +political systems founded on that of this country, or on the ancient +Greek Republic. He says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The study of modern history is the study of kings, +financiers, statesmen, and priests. The history of ancient +Greece is the study of legislators, philosophers, and poets; +it is the history of men compared with the history of +titles. What the Greeks were was a reality, not a promise. +And what we are and hope to be is derived, as it were, from +the influence of these glorious generations."</p></div> + +<p>Hoping almost against hope for the regeneration of his country, he +submitted to the people of England a proposal for putting to the vote +the great reform question, which was filling the public mind; but he +was conscious that in the then unprepared state of public knowledge +and feeling, universal suffrage was fraught with peril, and remarks +that although</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A pure republic may be shown, by inferences the most +obvious and irresistible, to be that system of social order +the fittest to produce the happiness and promote the genuine +eminence of man. Yet nothing can less consist with reason, +or afford smaller hopes of any beneficial issue, than the +plan which should abolish the regal and the aristocratical +branches of our constitution, before the public mind, +through many gradations of improvement, shall have arrived +at the maturity which shall disregard these symbols of its +childhood."</p></div> + +<p>An essay has come down to us (unhappily unfinished), in which he +argues in favor of "Government by Juries." It is but a fragment; and +yet it shows us that his mind was ever in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_037" id="Page_037"></a>[Pg 037]</span>search of the right +solution of the question of proper legislation for the masses. William +Pitt, with enemies on every side, publicly acknowledged the +extraordinary genius which impelled the American revolution, and +admired the constitution of this country, as well as the masterly +character of the "Declaration of Independence." In unstinted praise +does he speak of the learning and remarkable public spirit of the +signers. With equal praise, I am confident, everyone must eulogize the +"Declaration of Rights," compiled by Shelley, which he put before his +countrymen sixty-three years ago. Therein he has given the whole of +his conception of the correct theory of government, and it cannot fail +to be read by advanced minds with feelings of genuine pleasure.</p> + +<p>The race has suffered through its long martyrdom with the horrors of +war. One tyrant after another, to aid his accursed ambition or revenge +his spite upon a brother monarch, has cursed the unhappy earth and +humanity with the terrors of long-continued devastation and bloodshed. +With burning pen has Shelley depicted war in its most hideous aspects, +and by most beautiful comparisons has he shown us the sublimity of +peace. He points out, that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He repudiates the notion that man, if left free, would wantonly heap +ruin, vice, or shivery, or curse his species with the withering blight +of war; and he shows us how</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Even in its tender bud; their influence darts<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of desolate society. The child,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His baby sword even in a hero's mood.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This infant arm becomes the bloodiest scourge<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of devastated earth: whilst specious names,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bright reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In other places he seems to prophetically point out what this +generation appears to comprehend—the judiciousness of +arbitration—which in the future will be the true panacea for this +frightful affliction of humanity.</p><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_038" id="Page_038"></a>[Pg 038]</span></p> + +<p>To the current Irish questions Shelley devoted much of his time, and +took up his residence in Dublin, to aid the independence of Ireland, +which might, under proper treatment, have been made one of the +brightest spots in the British Dominions; but the inhabitants of +which, owing to centuries of English misrule and oppression, had, in +certain parts, fallen into a condition not much superior to that of +those of Central Africa. When we contemplate what Ireland was before +the Norman and Saxon had set their feet there, the most prejudiced +antagonist of the Celtic race cannot but be astonished at the picture +presented to us after their usurpation. When Saxondom was in a state +of barbarism, this branch of the Celts was civilized. Aldfred, king of +the Northumbrian Saxons, has given us the experiences of a Saxon in +Ireland over a thousand years ago. In a poem of his own composing, he +tells us that he found "noble, prosperous sages," "learning, wisdom, +welcome, and protection," "kings, queens, and royal bards, in every +species of poetry well skilled. Happiness, comfort, and pleasure," the +people "famed for justice, hospitality, lasting vigor, fame," and +"long blooming beauty, hereditary vigor"—and the monarch concludes +his really curious account by saying:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I found in the fair, surfaced Leinster,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From Dublin to Slewmargy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Long-living men, health, prosperity,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bravery, hardihood and traffic.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I found from Ara to Gle,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the rich country of Ossory,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sweet fruit, strict jurisdiction,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Men of truth, chess-playing.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I found in the great fortress of Meath,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Valor, hospitality, and truth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bravery, purity, and mirth—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The protection of all Ireland.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I found the aged of strict morals,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The historians recording truth—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each good, each benefit that I have sung,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In Ireland I have seen."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Such is the statement of King Aldfred, and the Venerable Bede informs +us that in Ireland, Saxons and other foreigners <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_039" id="Page_039"></a>[Pg 039]</span>were "hospitably +received, entertained and educated, furnished with books," etc., all +gratuitously.</p> + +<p>Up to the middle of the sixteenth century, I find, after careful study +in the Leabhar-Gabhala, the Annals of the Four Masters, of +Clonmacnoise, of Loch Cé, and other historical records, the same +continued apparent prosperity, but after the English took possession +of the larger portion of the country, only the records of anarchy, +despotism, and misery. Before the Reformation, or so long as the +English settlers remained within the pale, Ireland had been as happy +as Ultramontanism would allow, but from the accession of Elizabeth and +the consequent attempted enforcement of a new theology, against the +wishes of the people, a fearful succession of despotism is revealed. +To force Protestantism on the Irish, Catholicism was put down by the +most stringent laws—the torture chamber never empty, the scaffold +rarely free from executions, the seaports closed, and manufactures +forbidden to be exported; "black laws" of a most iniquitous character, +exceeding in ingenuity the devices of Tilly or Torquemada, placed on +the statute book. The punishment for being a recusant Catholic, or +Papist, was death, and it is a known fact that one Protestant +commander, Sir William Cole, of Fermanagh, made his soldiers massacre +in a short period "seven thousand of the vulgar sort," as Borlase +informs us. Elsewhere the English behaved in the same manner, and on +the authority of Bishop Moran it is asserted that the Puritans of the +North shot down Catholics as wild beasts, and made it their business +"to imbrue their swords in the hearts' blood of the male children." +Mr. and Mrs. S.C. Hall, in their valuable work on Ireland, state that +the possessors of the whole province of Ulster were driven out under +pain of mortal punishment from their homes and lands, without roof +over their heads, to be pent up in the most barren portion of +Connaught, where to pass a certain boundary line was instant death +without trial, and where it was commonly said, "There is not wood +enough to hang a man, water enough to drown him, nor earth enough to +bury him." One hundred thousand Catholics were sold as slaves to the +West Indian and North American planters by the public authority of the +Cromwellian government. Such was the way these Christians showed their +love for their fellow Christians, and can it be wondered that ever +since than there <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_040" id="Page_040"></a>[Pg 040]</span>has been one continual succession of uprisings in +that most unhappy country? As the sinew of Ireland's people in this +country were driven by necessity, fleeing from the terrors of +starvation and insufficient existence at home, so were the best of the +race in the two previous centuries necessitated to fly to the European +continent, where we find them enrolled, for instance, in the service +of the King of France, and having revenge on their oppressors on the +field of Fontenoy. Elsewhere in every country of Europe do we discover +them or their descendants in the front ranks, and at the helm of +affairs—in Spain, O'Donnell and Prim; in France, Mac Mahon and Lally +Tollendal; in Austria, O'Taafe and Maguire.</p> + +<p>When Shelley arrived in Dublin in 1812, he soon found himself joined +to the body of the Repeal party, which was endeavoring to obtain back +the parliament which had been stolen from them by British gold, less +than a quarter of a century before, and to have the Catholic +Emancipation Bill made law. He published two remarkable, political +pamphlets, in those days the only mode by which a statesman could +appeal to the people, in which it may be noticed how well he could +write in a popular style, to effectually serve a purpose. They also +prove his enthusiasm for the liberty of discussion, and how, although +he was always willing to treat on politics alone, he was preoccupied +with metaphysical questions which continually crop out.</p> + +<p>In the first, which he called <i>An Address to the Irish People</i>, and +wrote during the first week of his residence in Ireland, he commences +by eulogizing the Irish, explains to them that all religions are good +which make men good, and shows that, being neither Protestant nor +Catholic, he can offer the olive branch to each. He then points out +the weak spots in each other's conduct in the past, the necessity of +toleration, and the crime of persecution—how different this was to +what Christ taught!</p> + +<p>He endeavors to prove that arms should not be used—that the French +Revolution, although undertaken with the best intentions, ended badly +because force was employed. He recommends sobriety, regularity and +thought; for the Irish not to appeal to bloodshed, but to agitate +determinedly for Catholic emancipation and repeal, which should be +ensured through the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_041" id="Page_041"></a>[Pg 041]</span>use of moral persuasion. And concluding with an +appeal to Catholic and Protestant to bear with each other, using +mildness and benevolence, and to mutually organize a society which</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Shall serve as a bond to its members for the purpose of +virtue, happiness, liberty and wisdom by the means of +intellectual opposition to grievances,"</p></div> + +<p>he winds up by saying:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Adieu, my friends! May every sun that shines on your green +island see the annihilation of an abuse, and the birth of an +embryon of melioration! Your own hearts—may they become the +shrines of purity and freedom, and never may smoke to the +Mammon of Unrighteousness ascend from the polluted altar of +their devotion."</p></div> + +<p>In a postscript to this pamphlet, he urges</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A plan of amendment and regeneration in the moral and +political state of society, on a comprehensive and +systematic philanthropy which shall be sure though slow in +its projects; and as it is without the rapidity and danger +of revolution, so will it be devoid of the time-servingness +of temporizing reform;"</p></div> + +<p>and quotes Lafayette:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A name endeared by its peerless bearer to every lover of +the human race, 'For a nation to love liberty, it is +sufficient that she knows it to be free; it is sufficient +that she wills it.'"</p></div> + +<p>His other Dublin pamphlet, <i>A Proposal for an Association of +Philanthropists</i>, consists of remarks of the same character as the +former, but he gives a summary of the French Revolution, which he +endeavors to clear from the slurs which had been cast thereon. The +information has come down to us through one of Shelley's biographers, +that he spoke at several meetings in Dublin. At the one in which he +made his first appearance in public he aroused a large assembly to +enthusiasm by his fervid eloquence, and yet, notwithstanding all his +efforts, his toleration unfortunately became the great stumbling-block +in his attempts on behalf of Ireland, for we learn that at another +meeting of patriots:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"So much ill-will against the Protestants was shown, that +Shelley was provoked to remark that the Protestants were +fellow-Christians and fellow-subjects, and were therefore +entitled to equal rights and equal toleration with the +Papists. Of course, he was forthwith interrupted by savage +yells. A fierce uproar ensued, and the denouncer of bigotry +was compelled to be silent. At the same meeting, and +afterward, he was even threatened with personal violence, +and the police suggested to him the propriety of quitting +the country."</p></div> + +<p>By many it has been said that Shelley was unsuccessful in his +self-imposed task, but he was simply before his time, and no <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_042" id="Page_042"></a>[Pg 042]</span>wonder, +when we remember the condition of Ireland at the time of his visit.</p> + +<p>We know to-day that much of what he demanded has been conceded to +Ireland by liberal English governments. An alien Church has been +disestablished; public education, Catholic emancipation, and a good +deal more, has been given. In the late repeal movement, the young +Ireland party, the Fenian organization, and the present Home Rule +agitation, we find, as Shelley wished, Catholic and Protestant working +arm in arm, their colors being an admixture of orange and green—a +healthy sign.</p> + +<p>Those who dislike this noble people—for the name is legion of those +who are fond of shouting "No Irish need apply"—I would recommend to +think calmly over Irish history, to remember the frightful outrages +put upon this generous, warm-hearted, and impulsive race for +centuries, and read up Froude, Mitchell, Goldwin-Smith, McGee, Moran, +and other Irish historians.</p> + +<p>We know what the Irish are capable of, and that in Ireland, as here, +after a generation or two of education, the old theological belief +becomes by a gradual process less and less strong.</p> + +<p>On September 6th, 1819, a red letter day was added to the English +calendar, through the slaughter by cavalry of a number of unarmed men, +who were agitating, peaceably, for the rights of labor. This is known +to posterity as the "Peterloo Massacre," and happened in Manchester, +on the site of the present superb Free Trade Hall, erected by the Free +Traders to commemorate the ultimate triumph of their cause over the +capitalists, who, in the manufacturing districts, were, until a few +years back, always aided by the military in putting down strikes or +demands for increase of wages.</p> + +<p>At the time of this outrage Shelley was in Italy; in consequence of it +his attention was concentrated more than previously on the labor +question, and he immediately composed half a dozen in spiriting poems, +full of the fire of genius; in one of which he calls, with a voice of +thunder, to the</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">I.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Men of England! wherefore plough<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the lords who lay ye low?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wherefore weave, with toil and care,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The rich robes your tyrants wear?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_043" id="Page_043"></a>[Pg 043]</span></p> +<span class="i6">II.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Wherefore feed and clothe and save,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the cradle to the grave,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Those ungrateful drones who would<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">III.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Wherefore, bees of England, forge<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That these stingless drones may spoil<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The forced produce of your toil?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">IV.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or what is't ye buy so dear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With your pain, and with your fear?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">V.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The seed ye sow, another reaps;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wealth ye find another keeps;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The robes ye weave, another wears;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The arms ye forge, another bears.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">VI.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sow seed—but let no tyrant reap;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Find wealth—let no impostor heap;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Weave robes—let not the idle wear;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Forge arms—in your defence to bear.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">VII.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In halls ye deck, another dwells.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The steel ye tempered, glance on ye!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">VIII.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Trace your grave, and build your tomb,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And weave your winding sheet, till fair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">England be your sepulchre!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>By far the finest composition brought out by this occasion was the +"Masque of Anarchy," a magnificent poem of ninety-one verses. "Anarchy" +he describes as riding "on a white horse,"<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a> in alliance with +theology and statecraft, and whose admirers were "lawyers and +priests."</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> This doubtless alludes to the House of Hanover, the +principal charge on whose armorial bearings is a white horse.</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_044" id="Page_044"></a>[Pg 044]</span></p> + +<p>After a series of powerful delineations, he describes slavery and +freedom, justice, wisdom, peace and love, in exquisite terms. Then he +turns to their lamps—science, poetry, and thought, which make secure +"the lot of the dwellers in the cot."</p> + +<p>He advises—That, on some spot of English ground, should be convened a +great assembly of the fearless and the free, who shall come from the +bounds of the English coast, and from every hut, village, and town, +where, for other's misery and their own, they live, suffer, and moan. +Also,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"From the workhouse and the prison,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where, pale as corpses newly risen,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Women, children, young and old,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Groan for pain, and weep for cold;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"From the haunts of daily life,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where is waged the daily strife<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With common wants and common cares,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which sow the human heart with tares."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When face to face with their oppressors, no force should be used, but +instead</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">"strong and simple words,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Keen to wound as sharpened swords,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And wide as targes let them be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With their shade to cover ye."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The description of the Peterloo massacre which follows, is one of the +finest pieces of composition in the language, and the poem concludes +by calling the "Men of England, Heirs of Glory, Heroes of Unwritten +Story," to</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Rise like lions after slumber<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In unvanquishable NUMBER!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shake your chains to earth, like dew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which in sleep had fall'n on you;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'YE ARE MANY—THEY ARE FEW.'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In a pamphlet, written ostensibly on the death of the Princess +Charlotte, he calls attention to the fact that three men had been +executed in the interests of the "big-hearted and generous +capitalists," of whom we now-a-days hear so much from their interested +admirers, but whose wings are now fortunately clipped.</p> + +<p>Shelley considered that there was no real wealth but man's labor, and +that speculators pandering to selfishness, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_045" id="Page_045"></a>[Pg 045]</span>twin-sister of debased +theology, took a pride in the production of useless articles of luxury +and ostentation. Imbued with this spirit, a man of wealth imagines +himself a patriot when employing laborers on the erection of a +mansion, or a woman of fashion indulging in luxurious dress, fancies +she is aiding the laboring poor. He observes of such instances as +these:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Who does not see that this is a remedy which aggravates, +whilst it palliates the countless diseases of society? The +poor are set to labor—for what? Not the food for which they +famish; not the blankets for want of which their babes are +frozen by the cold of their miserable hovels; not those +comforts of civilization without which civilized man is far +more miserable than the meanest savage, oppressed as he is +by all its insidious evils, within the daily and taunting +prospect of its innumerable benefits assiduously exhibited +before him; no, for the pride of power, for the miserable +isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hundredth +part of society."</p></div> + +<p>Labor is required for physical, and leisure for moral improvement. +What is wanted, he considered, is a state to combine the advantages of +both and have the evils of neither. In fact, any unnecessary labor +which deprives the race of intellectual gain, and all times not +required for the manufacture of commodities which are necessary for +the subsistence of humanity, should be occupied only in mental or +physical culture.</p> + +<p>Shelley lays down as a principle that commerce is the venal +interchange of what human art or nature yields, and which should not +be purchased by wealth, but demanded by want. Labor and commerce, when +badly regulated, scatter withering curses and open</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The doors to premature and violent death,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To penury, famine, and full-fed disease."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Wealth was a living God, who rules in scorn, and whom peasants, +nobles, priests, and kings blindly reverence, and by whom everything +is sold—the light of heaven, earth's produce, the peace of outraged +conscience, the most despicable things, every object of life, and even +life itself.</p> + +<p>In a proper condition of society, which should be strictly +co-operative, there would necessarily be no pauperism, and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"No meditative signs of selfishness,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No jealous intercourse of wretched gain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No balancings of prudence, cold and long;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In just and equal measure all is weighed;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One scale contains the sum of human weal.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And one the good man's heart."<br /></span> +</div></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_046" id="Page_046"></a>[Pg 046]</span></p> + +<p>The fruits of Shelley's enunciations on the labor and capital +questions, and the school of political economists to which he +belonged, have made wondrous progress. The world is beginning to see +that labor has the unrestricted right of coalition, that there should +be only a standard day's work, according to the wants of society, with +prohibition of labor for at least one day in the week; that +legislation is required for the protection of the life and health of +the working man, and that mines, factories, and workshops should be +strictly controlled by sanitary officers selected by labor; that no +children's work should be permitted, or women's, which may be +considered unhealthy; that prison work should be regulated, and that +laborers' co-operative and benevolent societies should be administered +independently of the State.</p> + +<p>Liberals must learn from their enemies, must organize and let the +ramifications of unshackled thought spread through the lands, and +must, above all, conserve the control of education. Whereever there is +a church or chapel, let there be beside it a hall or club, in which +shall be inculcated the simple doctrines of a pure, integralised +religion.</p> + +<p>On the statute book of England there yet remains a law directed +against the freedom of the press and discussion; to even discuss the +question of the divinity of Christ was considered blasphemy, and the +person so offending was punished most severely by the criminal laws. +At the present time this wretched remnant of the dark ages is +practically a dead letter. The friends of Shelley suffered from this +most intolerant spirit. Keats, it is believed by many, was wounded +unto death for daring to speak on behalf of freedom, and we are given +glimpses in the <i>Adonais</i> of his feelings on the subject; Leigh Hunt +and his brother were imprisoned and fined for the same; the publisher +of the pirated edition of Shelley's <i>Queen Mab</i> was cast into Newgate; +Eaton, a London bookseller, had been sentenced by Lord Ellenborough to +a lengthened incarceration, for publishing Paine's <i>Age of Reason</i>, +and hundreds of others suffered similarly. The abominable circumstance +of Eaton's conviction caused great uproar; the Marquis of Wellesley, +in the House of Lords, stated it was "contrary to the mild spirit of +the Christian religion; for no sanction can be found under that +dispensation which will warrant a government to impose disabilities +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_047" id="Page_047"></a>[Pg 047]</span>and penalties upon any man on account of his religious opinions." +Shelley, who was then only nineteen years of age, and had himself +suffered from bigotry at Oxford, threw himself publicly into the +controversy with great vehemence, with "a composition of great +eloquence and logical exactness of reasoning, and the truths which it +contains on the subject of universal toleration are now generally +admitted." Lady Shelley, from whom I have just quoted, says that her +husband's father, "from his earliest boyhood to his latest years, +whatever varieties of opinion may have marked his intellectual course, +never for a moment swerved from the noble doctrine of unbounded +liberty of thought and speech. To him the rights of intellect were +sacred; and all kings, teachers, or priests who sought to circumscribe +the activity of discussion, and to check by force the full development +of the reasoning powers, he regarded as enemies to the independence of +man, who did their utmost to destroy the spiritual essence of our +being."</p> + +<p>To Shelley's able advocacy, and to his appeals against the stamping +out of political and social truths opposed to custom, particularly the +celebrated letter to Lord Ellenborough, it cannot be denied that the +toleration now enjoyed in Great Britain owes much.</p> + +<p>Shelley was one of those who most earnestly deprecated punishment by +death. In his early years, if a man stole a sheep, or shot a hare, +committed forgery or larceny, was a recusant catholic or a wizard, +there was, on his conviction, but one penalty meted out—death. To +Shelley's sensitive nature, this painted and tinged everything around +him with an aspect of blood. In one of his political pamphlets, +summoning all his energies, he depicts in fearful colors, the depraved +example of an execution—how it brutalized the race, and how it was +the duty of man not to commit murder on his fellow-man, in the name of +the laws. The abolition of the first of these, he stated that +reformers should propose on the eve of a great political change. He +considered that the punishment by death harbored revenge and +retaliation, which legislation should be the means of eradicating, and +he urged that</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Governments which derive their institutions from the +existence of circumstances of barbarism and violence, with +some rare exceptions, perhaps, are bloody in proportion as +they are despotic, and form the manners of their subjects to +a sympathy with their own spirit."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_048" id="Page_048"></a>[Pg 048]</span></p> + +<p>In England, as in many other countries, capital punishment is now only +employed on conviction of murder or high treason. In Spain and Italy +it was totally abolished, on the foundation of their young republics. +Thus have the labors of Shelley, and other reformers for the good of +humanity, aided to extinguish crime made law.</p> + +<p>Cruelty to animals was another reform agitated by Shelley. His love +for the animal kingdom and hatred of blood-shedding, was so great, +that he personally carried the passion to such an extent as to become +a vegetarian, and endeavored to induce others to be the same, in an +admirable argument of some length in the notes to "Queen Mab."</p> + +<p>The subject of the Rights of Women is approached and expatiated on, +perhaps learnedly, by individuals utterly incompetent to deal with the +question. Such persons, frequently armed with Sunday-school +platitudes, believing in the inferiority of women, consequent on the +supposed fall, and doubtless with heads paved with good intentions, as +a certain place is said to be, do more harm than good to the cause. +This is not wanted, and is worse than useless. To found a real +republic on a solid basis, it can be legislated for only by removing +the ancient landmarks by a gradual process, and coming face to face +with a new order of things, without bias or prejudice borrowed from +the past. Thus that noble woman, Mary Wolstonecraft, as well as John +Stuart Mill, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and numerous others, have treated +this all-important question, which cannot be shirked by the race. True +reformers ask: What was the condition of the sex in the past? Look +down the revolving cycles and note. In ancient Egypt, woman in the +upper classes was almost the equal of man, and although, like +Cleopatra, she could wield the sceptre, yet in the lower her condition +was wretched; in Asia, a mere slave and object of Zenana lust; in +savagedom, a beast of burthen. In Rome and Greece, Shelley shall tell +the story:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Among the ancient Greeks the male sex, one half of the +human race, received the highest cultivation and refinement; +whilst the other, so far as intellect is concerned, were +educated as slaves, and were raised but few degrees in all +that related to moral or intellectual excellence above the +condition of savages.... The Roman women held a higher +consideration in society, and were esteemed almost as the +equal partners with their husbands in the regulation of +domestic economy and the education of their children."</p></div> + +<p>Regard the incidents of a Jewish wooing, in which the woman <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_049" id="Page_049"></a>[Pg 049]</span>had no +voice, and of the marriage, the infernal punishments for adultery, and +the accounts of the seraglios of the Hebrew kings equalled only by +Turkish harems, and some of the passages in the inspired Book of +Numbers, for instance, in which the horrible truth is frequently too +evident, and only equalled by the fact that after lust had played out +its passion, unfortunate women, taken in captivity, could, by divine +command, be turned adrift to rot or starve. In Christian Feudalism we +find nothing much better. If I have read history correctly, and I may +be wrong—the upper-grade women in mediæval Europe, who were adored, +not with love, but with lascivious and sensual worship, by Christian +knights and troubadours, and who, like criminals to the halter, were +forced, rarely with their own consent, into the arms of men they +disliked or had never seen, or were placed in conventual houses +against their wills. Of the lower-grade women, I need only offer one +example—and that is sufficient to show their awful degradation; the +French and German feudal lord had the right of <i>cuissage</i>, or, in +plain English, the embraces of his serf-retainer's bride on the +marriage night.</p> + +<p>Shelley considered that in consequence of all this, men had forgotten +their duties to the other sex, and that even at the time at which he +lived woman was still in great social bondage, improperly educated, +tied down by restrictions, and refused participation in the higher +positions of labor. He called not in vain, against the inequality of +the sexes, and asserted that woman's position must and should be +altered by forgetting the tyranny of the past, and, be determined, for +the good of the future.</p> + +<p>We should be rejoiced that eloquent exponents of the abominations of +former ages, the evils of the present, and the proper position of the +future, are now hard at work. The "Women's Rights" party is up +teaching men their duties on every continent; in distant India, the +Brahmo Somaj is battling, not vainly, against the horrors of the +Zenana, and in conservative England, which has been stormed, and the +forlorn hope is now taking possession of the citadel; everywhere it is +the same. Yes, woman, thanks to Shelley and the reformers, is about to +be emancipated and free; free to earn her living, how, where, and when +she likes; the equal of man, who shall no longer play such fantastic +tricks as he did in the past, in proof of his dignity and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_050" id="Page_050"></a>[Pg 050]</span>superiority. The fourth of July is not long past and gone; I trust +that in the dim vista of the future, our descendants will keep a +national holiday, or a day to be set apart on which shall be +celebrated the "Declaration of the Independence of Women," and then, +perhaps, Shelley's description of woman in the "Episychidion" will be +more apparent:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Seraph of heaven! too gentle to be human,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Veiling beneath the radiant form of woman<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All that is unsupportable in thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of light, and love, and immortality."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I now approach a very delicate portion of my essay: the question of +the marriage relation. By many it is scouted with much virtuous +indignation, but I conceive that the liberal, who, like too many, dare +not discuss this matter in its broadest and widest aspects, should be +stigmatized as unworthy of the name. Christ is reported to have urged +the admirers of his ethical system to take up their cross and follow +him, leaving father, mother, wife, children, and all they may +have—thus Shelley acted, and it bears as equally pregnant lessons to +free thinkers as it did to those Syrian fishermen. Oh, that liberals +had as much "faith" in the truth, in the efficacy of their cause, as +the first Christians are said to have had in the teachings of that +Christ whom they regarded not as a Divinity, but as a son of God, as +we to-day are sons of God, of the most high! Oh, that we could carry +that "faith" into our beliefs, and the determination to be stopped at +no obstacle which may bar the progress of truth, which must conquer in +the end!</p> + +<p>The favorite theme in the writings of Shelley is "Eros," love of the +individual, of the race, of nature, and in this he follows Christ, in +whose system of Philosophy, Love is ever the pre-dominating idea which +permeates mankind with its beneficial effects, and will, when the +bastard tinsel with which the truths of the Nazarene are hidden, be +replaced by that pure gold which it is impossible to trace in the +enunciations of any previous philosopher. This subject is always +present to Shelley, and he thus appeals in one of his poems to the</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Great Spirit, deepest Love!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which rulest and dost move<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All things which live, and are."<br /></span> +</div></div> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_051" id="Page_051"></a>[Pg 051]</span></p> + +<p>In another place he inquires—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"What is love? Ask him who lives, what is life? Ask him who +adores, what is God?"</p></div> + +<p>And in the same essay he describes love as</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The bond and sanction which connects man with man, and with +everything which exists."</p></div> + +<p>Elsewhere he points out that the attainment of love</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"urges forth the power of man to arrest the faintest shadow +of that without the possession of which there is no rest nor +respite to the heart over which it rules, (and that) so soon +as this want or power is dead, man becomes the living +sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk +of what once he was."</p></div> + +<p>Of such was Shelley's philosophy of love, and I would ask if it be +conceivable that the abominable calumny prompted by theological virus, +that he kept a seraglio, as his friend Leigh Hunt informs us was +reported, had any real existence. Shelley was too pure for any such +idea as that of promiscuous sexual intercourse to be acted on by +himself; his life, which lies open before us, refutes the diabolical +invention. The fact was, that at the early age of nineteen he married +Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a retired tavern keeper, a woman +without soul and that congeniality of disposition which a man +overflowing with the pulses of genius should have chosen. After a +wretched existence without intellectual sympathy, and on the advice of +her father, who did not agree with his ideas on religion, they parted +by mutual consent, never to meet again. Shelley about this period met +his second wife, a woman of the highest powers of mind and charm of +body, Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin, the authoress of <i>Frankenstein</i> and +other works, daughter of William Godwin, the novelist, and author of +<i>Political Justice</i> and Mary Wolstonecraft, the gifted writer of <i>The +Rights of Women</i>. We are told by Lady Shelley that, "To her, as they +met one eventful day in St. Pancras churchyard, by her mother's grave, +Bysshe, in burning words, poured forth the tale of his wild past, how +he had suffered, how he had been misled, and how, if supported by her +love, he hoped, in future years, to enroll his name with the wise and +good, who had done battle for their fellow-men and been true through +all adverse storms to the cause of humanity. Unhesitatingly she placed +her hand in his, and linked her fortune with his own."</p> + +<p>After the death of his first wife, on the solicitation of God<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_052" id="Page_052"></a>[Pg 052]</span>win, who +was anxious for the landed interests of his grandchildren, a <i>legal</i> +union was performed. After looking on this episode, in the most +charitable manner, I am confident the sternest moralist cannot but +"acknowledge that the passionate love of a boy should not be held a +serious blemish, in a man whose subsequent life was exceptional in +virtue and beneficence."</p> + +<p>Believing, as I have explained, in the divinity of love, Shelley +regarded everything in the relation of the sexes with the most intense +horror, which was not consistent with "freedom;" and by which he most +certainly did not signify the license attributed by many. When he +looked around and saw the withering blast of forced marriages, +conjugal hatred and prostitution, can we be astonished at his +passionately exclaiming:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Even love is sold; the solace of all woe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is turned to deadliest agony, old age<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And youth's corrupted impulses prepare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A life of horror from the blighting bane<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of commerce, whilst the pestilence that springs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From unenjoying sensualism, has filled<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All human life with hydra-headed woes?"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In a most important essay bearing on this passage, which should be +widely studied, he observes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Love is inevitably consequent upon the perception of +loveliness. Love withers under constraint; its very essence +is liberty; it is compatible neither with obedience, +jealousy, nor fear; it is then most pure, perfect, and +unlimited, where its votaries live in confidence, equality, +and unreserve."</p></div> + +<p>He then urges:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they +love each other. Any law which should bind them to +cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their +affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most +unworthy of toleration; and there is nothing <i>immoral</i> in +this separation, for love is free. To promise forever to +love the same woman, is not less absurd than to promise to +believe the same creed."</p></div> + +<p>He states categorically that</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The present system of constraint does no more, in the +majority of instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies. +Persons of delicacy and virtue, unhappily united to those +whom they find it impossible to love, spend the loveliest +season of their lives in unproductive efforts to appear +otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of +their partners or the welfare of their mutual offspring; and +that the early education of their children takes its color +from the squabbles of the parents. They are nursed in a +systematic school of ill-humor, violence, and falsehood, and +the conviction that wedlock is indissoluble holds out the +strongest of all temptations to the perverse. They indulge +without restraint in acrimony and all the little tyrannies +of domestic life, when they know that their victim <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_053" id="Page_053"></a>[Pg 053]</span>is +without appeal. If this connection were put on a rational +basis, each would be assured that habitual ill-temper would +terminate in separation, and would check this vicious and +dangerous propensity."</p></div> + +<p>He conceived from the re-arrangement of the marriage relation by +greater facility of divorce than was to be had sixty years ago,<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"A fit and natural arrangement would result."</p></div> + +<div class="footnotes"><p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> It should be remembered that in Shelley's day divorce was +obtainable by the most wealthy only, at an enormous cost and by a +lengthy process, precluding the slightest opportunity for the middle +and poorer classes to avail themselves thereof.</p></div> + +<p>Shelley by no means asserts that the intercourse would be promiscuous, +but on the contrary believed that from the relation of parent to child +a union is generally of longer duration, placed on such a footing, and +marked above all others with generosity and self-devotion.</p> + +<p>We are on the eve of great religious changes, which must consequently +disturb all the social relations. Historical Christianity still holds +to her old text, of marriage being a sacrament, and therefore +indissoluble. The founder of Comtism developing this dogma, urges that +after the death of either husband or wife the duty of the survivor is +not to re-marry. Great Britain and many of the American States have +conceded greater freedom in divorce, so as to carry out in a large +measure the arguments of Shelley, while the theory of what is termed +the "sovereignty of the individual" is propounded by the leaders of +the free love party, as a cure for the present and former +difficulties.</p> + +<p>Whatever may be the outcome of the present widespread discussions I +know not, but I have belief in the supreme intelligence and in +humanity, and am certain that neither the home nor the race will +suffer, but that out of all this agitation will come more refined +sentiment and truer morality.</p> + +<p>I must now conclude. It has been said that there are two things in +which the professors of all theologies have agreed-"To persecute all +other sects, and plunder their own." Shelley, who subscribed to no +theology, was persecuted by them during his entire life, but he ever +forgave his persecutors, who he was confident acted through ignorance +of his real motives, and he tells us:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I have thought to appeal to something in common and +unburden my inmost soul to them. I have found my language +misunderstood, like one in a distant and savage land. The +more opportunities they have afforded me for experience, the +wider has appeared the interval between us, and to a greater +distance have the points of sympathy been withdrawn. With a +spirit ill-fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and +feeble through its tenderness, I have everywhere sought +sympathy, and have found only repulse and disappointment."</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_054" id="Page_054"></a>[Pg 054]</span>Do <i>we</i> misunderstand him? I think not, and William Howitt, a +representative of the people, shall answer for them: "For liberty of +every kind he was ready to die. For knowledge, and truth, and +kindness, he desired only to live. He was a rare instance of the union +of the finest moral nature and the finest genius. If he erred, the +world took ample revenge upon him for it, while he conferred in return +his amplest blessing on the world. It was long a species of heresy to +mention his name in society; that is passing fast away. It was next +said that he never could become popular, and therefore the mischief he +could do was limited. He <i>has</i> become popular, and the good he is +likely to do will be unlimited. The people read him, though we may +wonder at it, and they comprehend him."</p> + +<p>This estimate is not overrated, for, having confidence in his mission +to humanity, he was fortified by the belief of his existing as an +indestructible portion of interminable nature and the universal mind, +which in all high intelligences lives through the ages, not only in +the individual consciousness of the spirit, but in that immortality of +soul or mind, which lives in the race.</p> + +<p>He hated the superstitions of Christian Fetishism and tyranny over the +intellect, but loved Christ and the other philosophers with a genuine +affection; he loved humanity, and was ever fond of examining its +highest phases, as, for instance, through the doctrines of perfect +equality in the sexes—yet he recognised that sudden changes were +prejudicial before sufficient progress had been accomplished. "To +destroy, you must replace." Justice he considered the sole guide, +reason and duty the only law. His morality was not that of pharasaical +tartuffes, nor of prudish knickerbockers, who with wide phylacteries, +sit in the high places to be seen of men. He only combatted evil +principles and fought hard in favor of good.</p> + +<p>He has been quoted as being too transcendental; he may be to dullards +with imperfect reasoning faculties, or theologians, who only see +through fanatical and green-monsterish spectacles, but <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_055" id="Page_055"></a>[Pg 055]</span>to men who +have a <i>live</i> philosophy equally adapted to modern as well as ancient +thought, he is as clear as the noon-day sun. All that is required, to +comprehend Percy Bysshe Shelley, is integralism of that high order +which has ever believed in the ultimate perfectibility of human +nature, and looked "forward to a period when a new golden age would +return to earth, when all the different creeds and systems of the +world would be amalgamated into one, crime disappear, and man, freed +from shackles, civil and religious, bow before the throne 'of his own +awless soul,' or 'of the power unknown,'" whose veil it is the +ambition of theosophy to raise for humanity, and remain the +"inscrutable" no longer.</p> + +<p>I have completed my task, and with humility I make the statement, +knowing that before me are many who could have performed it as +completely as I have crudely. I look upon my essay, in which I have +treated my subject popularly, with intention, as a beacon, whence a +little light may be shed dimly, hoping that others, better qualified, +will bring you face to face with the full rays.</p> + +<p>I have shown you Shelley in his writings, his life and poetry, only +where they trench on his philosophical and reform ideas—I could have +related to you much about his inflexibly moral, generous, and +unselfishly benevolent character—his pure, gentle and loveable +existence—his utter abnegation of self, learnt from the hermetic +philosophy, and his despisal of transitory legislative honors—how he, +the heir to thousands of dollars annually, and a baronetage, threw +aside pecuniary considerations for love of the truth and +benevolence,<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a> and how, therefrom, he was often nearly dying of +hunger in the streets. I could have treated him simply as a poet, full +of experienced impetuosity, subtlety of expression, and precision of +verse, but I have aimed to exhibit one side of his immortality to you, +which lives in and by the race, for humanity.</p> + +<div class="footnotes"><p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> "In his heart there was nothing depraved or unsound; +those who had opportunities of knowing him best, tell us that his life +was spent in the contemplation of nature, in arduous study, or in acts +of kindness and affection. A man of learning, who shared the poverty +so often attached to it, enjoyed from him at one period a pension of a +hundred pounds sterling a year, and continued to enjoy it till fortune +rendered it superfluous. To another man of letters, in similar +circumstances, he presented fourteen hundred pounds; and many other +acts like these are on record to his immortal honor. Himself a frugal +and abstemious ascetic, by saving and economising, he was able to +assist the industrious poor—and they had frequent cause to bless his +name."—<i>National Magazine.</i></p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_056" id="Page_056"></a>[Pg 056]</span></p> + +<p>Cut short in the youth of manhood, who can tell what Percy Bysshe +Shelley might, not have become, living for us even perhaps at this +moment? What need we care, though, for does not the "Empire of the +dead increase of the living from age to age?" Shelley's terrestrial +body may have been cast up by the waves on the lonely Italian shore, +in sweet companionship with the souls of Keats and Sophocles. His +mundane elements, purified through the fire, may have returned to +their kindred elements, and been</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i5">"made one with Nature, where is heard<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His voice in all her music, from the moan<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He is a presence to be felt and known,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Spreading itself where'er that Power move,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which has withdrawn his being to its own;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Which wields the world with never-wearied love,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His cinereal ashes may lie beneath the cypresses, near the dust of the +"Adonais" of his muse, under Roman sod, and where he said:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"To see the sun shining on its bright grass, and hear the +whispering of the wind among the leaves of the trees, which +have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is +stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, +mostly of women and young children, who, buried there, we +might, if we were to die, desire a sleep they seem to +sleep."</p></div> + +<p>All this may have happened, but why need we repine, for as eternal as +the sea, as infinite as Nature, and as the phoenix, he revivifying +lives, transmigrated and transfused into humanity, for with certainty +we know that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"He lives, he wakes—'tis Death is dead, not he."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Immortal amid immortals, his spirit in communion with the Most High, +fully conscious in its individuality—immortal amid mortals, his place +need never be refilled, for he stands betwixt the old and the +new—immortal amid the sons of song, do poets still breathe his divine +afflatus—immortal amid philosophers and the regenerators of the race, +with Buddha, with Moses, with Socrates, with Mahomet, with +Christ—immortal amid the noble, the virtuous, the good, the +wise—immortal as when living here, for from spirit-spheres we hear +him bidding us repeat:</p><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_057" id="Page_057"></a>[Pg 057]</span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Nor let us weep that our delight is fled<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Far from these carrion-kites that scream below;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Back to the burning fountain whence it came,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A portion of the Eternal, which must glow<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Through time and change, unquenchably the same,"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<hr style='width: 45%;' /><br /> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Peace! peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep—<br /></span> +<span class="i1">He hath awaken'd from the dream of life—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Tis we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep<br /></span> +<span class="i1">With phantoms an unprofitable strife;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in mad trance, strike with our spirits' knife,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Invulnerable nothings!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<h3> </h3> +<h3>FINIS CORONAT OPUS.</h3> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher +and Reformer, by Charles Sotheran + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY AS A *** + +***** This file should be named 16872-h.htm or 16872-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/8/7/16872/ + +Produced by Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State +University Libraries, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Sankar +Viswanathan, and Distributed Proofreaders Europe at +http://dp.rastko.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer + +Author: Charles Sotheran + +Commentator: Charles W. Frederickson + +Release Date: October 14, 2005 [EBook #16872] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY AS A *** + + + + +Produced by Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State +University Libraries, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Sankar +Viswanathan, and Distributed Proofreaders Europe at +http://dp.rastko.net + + + + + + + + PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY + + AS A + + PHILOSOPHER AND REFORMER. + + + BY + + CHARLES SOTHERAN. + + + + _INCLUDING AN ORIGINAL SONNET_ + + BY + + CHARLES W. FREDERICKSON + + + + TOGETHER WITH + + A PORTRAIT OF SHELLEY AND A VIEW OF HIS TOMB. + + + + "Let us See the Truth, whatever that may be."--_Shelley_, 1822. + + + + _NEW YORK_. + + CHARLES P. SOMERBY, 139 EIGHTH STREET. + + 1876. + + + + +Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, + +by Charles Sotheran, + +In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. + + * * * * * + + + + +TO + +CHARLES WILLIAM FREDERICKSON, + +OF NEW YORK. + + +DEAR FRIEND: + +As in ancient times, none were allowed participation in the Higher +Mysteries, without having proved their fitness for the reception of +esoteric truth, so in these days only those seem to be permitted to +breathe the hidden essence in Shelley, who have realized the acute +phases of spiritality. Among the few who have enjoyed these bi-fold +gifts, none have had more fortuitous experience than yourself, to whom +I now take the liberty of dedicating this volume. + +Yours fraternally, + +CHARLES SOTHERAN. + +_December_, 1875. + +[Illustration: VIEW OF SHELLEY'S TOMB, IN THE +PROTESTANT CEMETERY, AT ROME. FROM A SKETCH BY A.J. STRUTT.] + + * * * * * + +"To see the sun shining on its bright grass, and hear the whispering +of the wind among the leaves of the trees, which have overgrown the +tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, +and to mark the tombs, mostly of women and young children, who, buried +there, we might, if we were to die, desire a sleep they seem to +sleep."--SHELLEY. + + + + +To the Memory + +OF + +PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, + +BY + +CHARLES W. FREDERICKSON. + + + Amid the ruins of majestic Rome, + That told the story of its countless years, + I stood, and wondered by the silent dust + Of the "Eternal Child." Oh, Shelley! + To me it was not given to know thy face, + Save through the mirrored pages of thy works; + Those whisper'd words of wood and wave, are to mine ears, + Sweet as the music of ocean's roar, that breaks on sheltered shores. + Thy sterner words of Justice, Love and Truth, + Will to the struggling soul a beacon prove, + And barrier against the waves of tyranny and craft. + Then rest, "_Cor Cordium_," and though thy life + Was brief in point of years, its memory will outlive + The column'd monuments around thy tomb. + + * * * * * + + +NEW YORK, _Nov_. 25, 1875. + +MY DEAR SOTHERAN:-- + +The copy of the lines on our Beloved-Poet, which you requested, are +entirely at your service--make what use of them you please. + +Yours, sincerely, + +C.W. FREDERICKSON. + + + + +PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, AS A PHILOSOPHER AND REFORMER. + +A PAPER READ BEFORE THE NEW YORK LIBERAL CLUB, ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 6TH, +1875. + + "Let us see the Truth, whatever that may be."--SHELLEY, 1822. + + +_Mr. Vice-President and Members of the Liberal Club_: + +"The Blood of the Martyr is the Seed of the Church." Persecution ever +fails in accomplishing its desired ends, and as a rule lays the +foundations broad and deep for the triumph of the objects of and +principles inculcated by the persecuted. + +Driven from their homes by fanatical tyranny, not permitted to worship +as they thought fit, a band of noble and earnest, yet on some points +mistaken men, were, a little over two hundred and fifty years ago, +landed on this continent from the good ship "Mayflower." The "Pilgrim +Fathers" were, in their native land, refused liberty of conscience and +freedom of discussion; their apparent loss was our gain, for if it had +not been for that despotism, and the corresponding re-action, which +made those stern old zealots give to others many of the inalienable +rights of liberty denied to themselves, you and I could not to-night +perhaps be allowed to meet face to face, without fear, to discuss +metaphysical and social questions in their broadest aspects, without +the civil or theological powers intervening to close our mouths. + +"Fragile in health and frame; of the purest habits in morals; full of +devoted generosity and universal kindness; glowing with ardor to attain +wisdom; resolved at every personal sacrifice to do right; burning with a +desire for affection and sympathy," a boy-under-graduate of Oxford, +described as of tall, delicate, and fragile figure, with large and +lively eyes, with expressive, beautiful and feminine features, with head +covered with long, brown hair, of gracefulness and simplicity of manner, +the heir to a title and the representation of one of the most ancient +English families, which numbered Sir Philip Sidney on its roll of +illustrious names, just sixty-four years ago, and in this nineteenth +century, for no licentiousness, violence, or dishonor, but, for his +refusal to criminate himself or inculpate friends, was, without trial, +expelled by learned divines from his university for writing an +argumentative thesis, which, if it had been the work of some Greek +philosopher, would have been hailed by his judges as a fine specimen of +profound analytical abstruseness--for that expulsion are we the debtors +to theological charity and tolerance for "Queen Mab." + +Excommunicated by a mercenary and abject priesthood, cast off by a +savage father, the admirer of that gloomy theology founded by the +murderer of Michael Servetus, and charged by his jealous brother +writers as one of the founders of a Satanic School, for neither +immorality of life nor breach of the parental relation, but for +heterodoxy to an expiring system of dogmatism, and for acting on and +asserting the right of man to think and judge for himself, a father +was to have two children torn from him, in the sacred name of law and +justice, by the principal adviser of a dying madman, "Defender of the +Faith, by Law Established," and by us despised as the self-willed +tyrant, who lost America and poured out human blood like water to +gratify his lust of power. By that Lord Chancellor whose cold, +impassive statue has a place in Westminster Abbey, where Byron's was +refused admittance, and whose memory, when that stone has crumbled +into dust, will live as one who furnished an example for execrable +tyranny over the parental tie, and that Lord Eldon whom an outraged +father curses in imperishable verse: + + "By thy most impious hell, and all its terrors; + By all the grief, the madness and the guilt + Of thine impostures, which must be _their_ errors, + That sand on which thy crumbling power is built; + + * * * * * + + By all the hate which checks a father's love; + By all the scorn which kills a father's care; + By those most impious hands that dared remove + Nature's high bounds--by thee, and by despair. + + "Yes, the despair which bids a father groan, + And cry, 'my children are no longer mine. + The blood within those veins may be mine own, + But, tyrant, their polluted souls are thine.' + + "I curse thee, though I hate thee not. O slave! + If thou could'st quench the earth consuming hell + Of which thou art a demon, on thy grave + This curse should be a blessing. Fare thee well." + +Sad as it is to contemplate any human being in his agony making use of +such language to another; and however much we may sympathize with the +poet, yet we cannot but have inwardly a feeling of rejoicing; for, if +it had not been for this unheard of villainy, we should probably never +have had the other magnificent poetry and prose of Percy Bysshe +Shelley composed during his self-imposed ostracism, and which furnish +such glorious thoughts for the philosopher, and keen trenchant weapons +for the reformer. + +Have any of my hearers ever stood, in the calm of a summer evening, in +Shelley's native land, listening to the lovely warble of the +nightingale, making earth joyful with its unpremeditated strains, and +the woods re-echo with its melody? Or gazed upwards with anxious ken +towards the skylark careering in the "blue ether," far above this +sublunary sphere of gross, sensual earth, there straining after +immortality, and + + "Like a poet hidden, + In the light of thought, + Singing hymns unbidden, + Till the world is wrought + To sympathy with hopes and fears, it heeded not," + +pouring out such bursts of song as to make one almost worship and +credit the fables, taught in childhood at our mothers' knees, of the +angelic symphonies of heavenly choirs. Such was the poetry of Shelley; +and as the music of the nightingale or the skylark is far exceeding in +excellence that of the other members of the feathered kingdom, so does +Shelley rank as a poet far above all other poets, making even the poet +of nature, the great Wordsworth himself, confess that Shelley was +indeed the master of harmonious verse in our modern literature. It is +broadly laid down in the Marvinian theory that all poets are insane. I +would much like to break a lance with the learned Professor of +Psychology and Medical Jurisprudence; but as the overthrow of this +dogma does not come within the scope of my essay, I would suggest to +those who may have been influenced by that paper to read Shelley's +"Defence of Poetry." I shall quote two extracts therefrom, each +pertinent to my subject. The first describes the function of the poet: + + "But poets, or those who imagine and express this + indestructible order, are not only the authors of language + and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, + and painting; they are the institutors of laws, and the + founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of + life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity + with the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehension + of the agencies of the invisible world, which is called + religion." + +The other is in extension of the same idea, and concludes the essay: + + "Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; + the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts + upon the present; the words which express what they + understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel + not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but + moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the + world." + +I have no hesitation in saying that for treating Shelley as a +philosopher, I shall be attacked with great "positivism" by the +disciples[A] of manufacturers of bran-new Brummagen philosophies dug +out of Aristotelian and other depths to which are added new thoughts, +not their own. The reason which David Masson offers in his "Recent +British Philosophy" for placing Alfred Tennyson among the same class +is equally applicable now: + +[Footnote A: If Diogenes or Socrates, leaving High Olympus and sweet +converse with the immortals, were to condescend to visit New York some +Friday evening. I am sadly afraid they would be astounded at many of +their would-be brothers in philosophy. On seeing the travestie of +ancient academies and groves where the schools used to congregate, the +dialogues consisting of bald atheism under sheep's clothing to trap +the unwary, and termed "The _Religion_ of Humanity," of abuse and +personality in lieu of argument, of buffoonery called wit, of airing +pet hobbies alien to the subject instead of disputating, of shouting +vulgar claptrap instead of rhetoric, etc.--I sadly fear these stout +old Greeks, having power for the nonce, would, throwing philosophy to +the dogs in a moment of paroxysmal indignation, despite physiognomies +trained to resemble their own, have these fellows casked up in tubs +without lanterns, but with the appropriate "snuffers," fit emblems of +their faiths, and dropped far outside Sandy Hook. A proper finale to +the vapid utterance made by one of these gentry that all "Reformers +should be annihilated," Imagine Plato or Epicurus offering such a +suggestion. O tempora! O mores!] + +"To those who are too strongly possessed with our common habit of +classifying writers into kinds, as historians, poets, scientific and +speculative writers, and so on, it may seem strange to include Mr. +Tennyson in this list. But as I have advisedly referred to Wordsworth +as one of the representatives and powers of British philosophy in the +age immediately past, so I advisedly named Tennyson as succeeding him +in the same character. Though it is not power of speculative reason +alone that constitutes a poet, is it not felt that the worth of a poet +essentially is measured by the depth and amount of his speculative +reason? Even popularly, do we not speak of every great poet as the +exponent of the spirit of his age? What else can this mean than that +the philosophy of his age, its spirit and heart in relation to all the +great elemental problems, find expression in his verse? Hence I ought +to include other poets in this list, and more particularly Mr. +Browning and Mrs. Browning, and the late Mr. Clough. But let the +mention of Mr. Tennyson suggest such other names, and stand as a +sufficient protest against our absurd habit of omitting such in a +connection like the present. As if, forsooth, when a writer passed +into verse, he were to be abandoned as utterly out of calculable +relationship to all on this side of the boundary, and no account were +to be taken of his thoughts and doings, except in a kind of curious +appendix at the end of the general register? What if philosophy, at a +certain extreme range, and of a certain kind, tends of necessity to +pass into poesy, and can hardly help being passionate and metrical? If +so, might not the omission of poets, purely as being such, from a +conspectus of the speculative writers of any time, lead to erroneous +conclusions, by giving an undue prominence in the estimate of all such +philosophizing as could most easily, by its nature, refrain from +passionate or poetic expression? Thus, would philosophy, or one kind +of philosophy in comparison with another, have seemed to had been in +such a diminished condition in Britain about the year 1830, if critics +had been in the habit of counting Wordsworth in the philosophic list +as well as Coleridge, Mackintosh, Bentham, and James Mill? Was there +not more of what you might call Spinozaism in Wordsworth than even in +Coleridge, who spoke more of Spinoza? But that hardly needs all this +justification, so far as Mr. Tennyson is concerned, of our reckoning +_him_ in the present list. He that would exclude In "Memoriam" (1850) +and "Maud" (1855) from the conspectus of the philosophical literature +of our time, has yet to learn what philosophy is. Whatever else "In +Memoriam" may be, it is a manual for many of the latest hints and +questions in British Metaphysics." + +The soi-disant philosophers and classifiers of the sciences and arts +who will not permit such poets as Shelley and Tennyson to be put in +the category of philosophers, remind one very forcibly of the passage +in Macbeth: "The earth has bubbles, as the water has, and these are of +them!" + +As a poet and not as a poet, as an acknowledged legislator for the +race, as a philosopher, (a searcher after, or lover of wisdom) and as +a political and social reformer, it is my intention to treat Shelley +this evening, and having finished my prefatory remarks, will now +regard him in those attributes which peculiarly should enshrine him in +your hearts and mine. + +The philosophical theories of advanced thinkers are always tinged with +the reflex of that which called them forth, or impeded them in their +development, consequently social bondage and the "anarch custom" being +always present to Shelley, the great idea ever uppermost to him was +that true happiness is only attainable in perfect freedom: the +atrocious system of fagging, now almost extinct in the English Public +Schools and the tyrannical venality of ushers, deeply impressed +themselves on the mind of Shelley, and he tells us, in the beautiful +lines to his wife, of the remembrance of his endeavors to overthrow +these abominations having failed, of flying from "the harsh and +grating strife of tyrants and of foes" and of the high and noble +resolves which inspired him: + + "And then I clasp'd my hands, and look'd around; + But none were near to mock my streaming eyes, + Which pour'd their warm drops on the sunny ground. + So, without shame, I spake: 'I will be wise, + And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies + Such power; for I grow weary to behold + The selfish and the strong still tyrannize + Without reproach or check.' I then controll'd + My tears; my heart grew calm; and I was meek and bold. + + "And from that hour did I, with earnest thought, + Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore; + Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught, + I cared to learn; but from that secret store + Wrought linked armor for my soul, before + It might walk forth, to war among mankind. + Thus, power and hope were strengthen'd more and more + Within me, till there came upon my mind + A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined." + +The fruits born of this seed are discernible in every line of his +works. While having all reverence for his college companions, +Aristotle, Aeschylus, and Demosthenes, his mind instinctively turns +towards the deemed heretical works of the later French philosophers, +D'Holbach, Condillac, La Place, Rousseau, the encyclopaedists, and +other members of that school. His intellect he furbishes with stores +of logic and of chemistry, in which his greatest love was to +experimentalize; of botany and astronomy, in which he was more than a +mere adept; from Hume, too, whose essay on "Miracles," wrong as it is +in the main on many important points, was one of the alphas of his +creed--and with deep draughts from his great instructor, Plato, of +whom he always spoke with the greatest adoration, as, for instance, in +the preface to the Symposium: + + "Plato is eminently the greatest among the Greek + philosophers; and from, or rather perhaps through him and + his master, Socrates, have proceeded those emanations of + moral and metaphysical knowledge, on which a long series and + an incalculable variety of popular superstitions have + sheltered their absurdities from the slow contempt of + mankind." + +It is desirable to call attention to the great minds from whom the +student of the early part of this century could only cull his +knowledge--he had no Spencer and no Mill, at whose feet to sit--he had +in science none of the conclusions of Darwin, of Huxley, of Tyndall, +of Murchison, of Lyell, to refer to, and yet I think, that the careful +reader will, like myself, find prefigured in Shelley's works much of +that of which the world is in full possession to-day, and which the +mystical Occultists, Rosicrucians, and Cabalists have now, and have +ever had, conjoined to a mysterious command over the active hidden +material and spiritual powers in the infinite domain of nature. + +The idea of the _Supreme Power_ or _God_, as emanating from Shelley, +is one of the most sublime to be found in the pages of metaphysical +learning at the command of ordinary mortals. By many it may be +considered only a vague pantheism; yet, rightly regarded in a +reconciliative spirit, it is of such an universal character as to +harmonize with not only Deism, Theism and Polytheism, but even +Atheistical Materialism. Listen to the following, which I select out +of numerous examples, as a finger-post for others who seek the living +springs of undefiled truth, as in Shelley: + + "Whosoever is free from the contamination of luxury and + license may go forth to the fields and to the woods, + inhaling joyous renovation from the breath of Spring, and + catching from the odors and sounds of autumn some diviner + mood of sweetest sadness, which improves the softened heart. + Whosoever is no deceiver and destroyer of his fellow-men--no + liar, no flatterer, no murderer--may walk among his species, + deriving, from the communion with all which they contain of + beautiful or majestic, some intercourse with the Universal + God. Whosoever has maintained with his own heart the + strictest correspondence of confidence, who dares to examine + and to estimate every imagination which suggests itself to + his mind--whosoever is that which he designs to _become_, + and only aspires to that which the divinity of his own + nature shall consider and approve--he has already seen God." + +Can any one cavil with these beautiful expressions, this outpouring of +genius? If such there be, his heart and understanding must be sadly +warped, any appeal would be in vain, for him the Veil of Isis could +never be lifted. After a careful study of Shelley's works I can find +nothing to warrant the execration formerly levelled at his head, not +even in the "Refutation of Deism," that remarkable argument in the +Socratic style between Eusebes and Theosophus in which, as in all his +prose works, is displayed keen discernment, logical acuteness, and +close analytical reasoning not surpassed by the greatest +philosophers--most certainly his notions of God were not in unison +with the current theological ideas, and it was this daring rebellion +against the popular faith, the chief support of custom which caused +all the trouble. If ever he attempted to show the non-existence of +Deity, his negation was solely directed against the gross human +notions of a creative power, and _ergo_ a succession of finite +creative powers _ad infinitum_, or a Personal God who has only been +acknowledged in the popular teachings as an autocratic tyrant, and as +Shelley puts it in his own language: + + "A venerable old man, seated on a throne of clouds, his + breast the theatre of various passions, analogous to those + of humanity, his will changeable and uncertain as that of an + earthly king." + +Not to be compared with the far different eternal and infinite. + + "Spirit of Nature! all sufficing power, + Necessity! thou mother of the world! + Unlike the God of human error, thou + Requirest no prayers or praises, the caprice + Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee + Than do the changeful passions of his breast + To thy unvarying harmony." + +And by this doctrine of necessity here apostrophised our philosopher +instructs us in a lengthy statement of great clearness: + + "We are taught that there is neither good nor evil in the + universe, otherwise than as the events to which we apply + these epithets have relation to our own peculiar mode of + being. Still less than with the hypothesis of a personal + God, will the doctrine of necessity accord with the belief + of a future state of punishment. God made man such as he is, + and then damned him for being so; for to say that God was + the author of all good, and man the author of all evil, is + to say that one man made a straight line and a crooked one, + and another man made the incongruity." + +For you to better understand the exact position in which Shelley +placed himself, it is elsewhere thus admirably expressed: + + "The thoughts which the word 'God' suggest to the human mind + are susceptible of as many variations as human minds + themselves. The Stoic, the Platonist, and the Epicurean, the + Polytheist, the Dualist, and the Trinitarian, differ entirely + in their conceptions of its meaning. They agree only in + considering it the most awful and most venerable of names, + as a common term to express all of mystery, or majesty, or + power, which the invisible world contains. And not only has + every sect distinct conceptions of the application of this + name, but scarcely two individuals of the same sect, which + exercise in any degree the freedom of their judgment, or + yield themselves with any candor of feeling to the + influences of the visible world, find perfect coincidence of + opinion to exist between them.... God is neither the Jupiter + who sends rain upon the earth; nor the Venus through whom + all living things are produced; nor the Vulcan who presides + over the terrestrial element of fire; nor the Vesta that + preserves the light which is enshrined in the sun, the moon, + and the stars. He is neither the Proteus nor the Pan of the + material world. But the word 'God' unites all the attributes + which these denominations contain and is the (inter-point) + and over-ruling spirit of all the energy and wisdom included + within the circle of existing things." + +Of these attributes generally supposed to appertain to Deity, he +writes: + + "There is no attribute of God which is not either borrowed + from the passions and powers of the human mind, or which is + not a negation. Omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, + infinity, immutability, incomprehensibility, and + immateriality, are all words which designate properties and + powers peculiar to organized beings, with the addition of + negations, by which the idea of limitation is excluded." + +There is no other writer, I think, who seems to grasp so clearly as +Shelley the everlasting and immutable laws of Naturismus, or who +believed so fully in the divine mission of man, and the religion of +humanity. Ever soaring into the ideal, philosophizing by the aid of +his emotional impulses, Shelley possessed, like all true Hermetists +and Theosophists imbued with mysticism, a wonderful power of continued +abstraction in the contemplation of the Supreme Power. His mentality, +described by one of his critics as essentially Greek, "simple, not +complex, imaginative rather than fanciful, abstract not concrete, +intellectual not emotional," contributed its share to his belief in a +pantheistic philosophy, making him find Supreme Intelligence permeated +through the whole of infinite and interminable Nature. Regarding the +universe as an abstract whole, he endorsed the fundamental +metaphysics of Plato, and believed that "passing phenomena are types +of eternal archetypes, embodiments of eternal realities." + +Even if despite of my assertions to the contrary, there be those who +still insist on the atheism of Shelley, they had better restudy the +elementary axioms and learn to think--to those who imagine that there +is but little difference between atheism and pantheism to the +discredit of either, I would remind them that Bacon in his "Moral +Essays," lays down as a principle that:-- + + "Atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy, nature, piety, + laws, reputation and everything that can serve to conduct him + to virtue; but superstition destroys all these, and erects + itself into a tyranny over the understandings of men; hence + atheism never disturbs the government, but renders man more + clear-sighted, since he sees nothing beyond the boundaries of + the present life." + +In making use of this quotation do not let it be presumed that I wish +to endorse Materialism; my desire is to add the authority of a great +mind like that of the Elizabethan philosopher, to the fact that +superstition is so hateful that even blank, bald atheism is preferable +thereto. I should state that Bacon in extension of the extract I have +quoted, speaking of this soul-destroying incubus on humanity observes +that:--"A little philosophy inclineth men's minds to atheism; but +depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds to religion." + +No amount of mere reasoning, or argument _a priori_ or _a posteriori_, +can prove the existence of the Most High or destroy the same; in every +breast is implanted an innate belief in Deity, the inner consciousness +of the race, by the "Vox Dei" speaking within, has throughout all time, +the past and the present revelled in this sublimity, and will continue +to do so in the future, notwithstanding the insane and insensate efforts +of pseudo scientists or iconoclastic materialists--the brain and the +heart must act in harmony to consolidate a pure philosophy, for mere +intellect alone is an untrustworthy guide. By logic Whately proved +apparently indisputably the non-existence of Napoleon Bonaparte, at the +time when there was no doubt in any reasonable mind that he was actually +living in the flesh, by the same means one can disprove one's own being, +and so by this unsafe method have I frequently heard the God idea very +learnedly overthrown. On such occasions I have simply taken the words +of the logicians for what all their idle wind is worth--ZERO. + +The Immortality of the Soul has ever been a subject of primary +importance to all philosophers--the last dying efforts of Socrates, +noblest of Greece's sons, as Plato has shown us in the Phaedo, were +expended in a discussion on the _pros_ and _cons_ of an argument in +favor of a future life. Many of the highest intelligences since his +day have been endeavoring to prove this satisfactorily without the aid +of theological revelation. All mankind, from sage to peasant, from the +most learned Brahmin on the banks of the Ganges to the untutored red +Indian beside the Mississippi, has the question, "is there an +existence after death," been approached with the most earnest hopes to +solve as one of the greatest mysteries. Shelley devoted a vast amount +of energy to the elucidation of this occult, yet overt, truth; and in +one place remarks: + + "The desire to be forever as we are; the reluctance to a + violent and unexperienced change, which is common to all; + the animate and inanimate combinations of the universe, is, + indeed, the secret persuasion which has (among other + reasons) given birth to a belief in a future state." + +Full well he knew, that independent of matter, there was a power, +which has been denominated by some, Spirit; by others, simply mind, +force, or intelligence; and by metaphysical philosophers, soul. If he +approached the subject logically, as in his essay, "On a Future +State," the _ignis fatuus_ seems to escape him and be lost; if +poetically, with the innate voice which speaks within us all, ever +present. + +After close reasoning in the essay I have referred to, he arrived at +the conclusion that even + + "if it be proved that the world is ruled by a divine power, + no inference can necessarily be drawn from that circumstance + in favor of a future state." + +and that + + "if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it + will be a state of punishment or reward?" + +Then in extension of the same argument he urges: + + "Sleep suspends many of the faculties of the vital and + intellectual principle--drunkenness and disease will either + temporarily or permanently derange them. Madness, or + idiotcy, may utterly extinguish the most excellent and + delicate of these powers. In old age the mind gradually + withers; and as it grew and strengthened with the body, so + does it with the body sink into decrepitude." + +He also considered that: + + "It is probable that what we call thought is not an actual + being, but no more than the relation between certain parts + of that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the + universe is composed, and which ceases to exist so soon as + those parts change their position with regard to each other. + Thus color, and sound, and taste, and odor, exist only + relatively." + +Even granted that mind or thought be a part of, or in fact, the soul, +then he asks in what manner it could be made a proof of its +imperishability, as all that we see or know perishes and is changed. + +Here then comes the query, "Have we existed before birth?" A difficult +possibility to conceive of individual intelligence and if unprovable +against the theory of existence after death. + +He then winds up the whole by thinking that it is impossible that, + + "we should continue to exist after death in some mode + totally inconceivable to us at present." + +and that only those who desire to be persuaded are persuaded. + +This is but a rough outline of some of the principal features of his +considerations on soul immortality from a logical basis, and which, +after all, only constitute an argument, to which, and the thoughts +presented therein, he did not necessarily bind himself. There can be +little doubt, independently of what I have quoted, that he did not +believe in a future state as popularly accepted. Trelawney asked him on +one occasion: "Do you believe in the immortality of the spirit?" +Shelley's answer was unmistakable, "Certainly not; how can I? We know +nothing; we have no evidence."[B] + +[Footnote B: Those who desire to fully investigate Shelley's ideas on +the immortality of the soul, and the existence, or nature, of Deity, +will be amply repaid by reading W.M. Rossetti's admirable memoir of +the poet, appended to the last two-volume London edition of his +works.] + +When we take Shelley from a poetical standpoint, or with the divine +truism implanted by the Ain-soph clamoring within to his intelligence +for expression, how confident he appears of a hereafter, as in the +"Adonais," or in the following extract from an unpublished letter to +his father-in-law, William Godwin, the property of my friend C.W. +Frederickson, of New York, one of the most enthusiastic admirers of +Shelley, and who has been often known to pay more than the weight in +gold for Shelleyana: + + "With how many garlands we can beautify the tomb. If we + begin betimes, we can learn to make the prospect of the + grave the most seductive of human visions. By little and + little we hive therein all the most pleasing of our dreams. + Surely, if any spot in the world be sacred, it is that in + which grief ceases, and for which, if the voice within our + hearts mocks us not with an everlasting lie, we spring upon + the untiring wings of a pangless and seraphic life--those + whom we love around us--our nature, universal intelligence, + our atmosphere, eternal love." + +How exquisite these remarks and his description of a disembodied +spirit: + + "it stood + All beautiful in naked purity, + The perfect semblance of its bodily frame, + Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace, + Each stain of earthliness + Had passed away, it re-assumed + Its native dignity, and stood + Immortal amid ruin." + +It must appear impossible to any rational mind, that, with the full +evidence before their eyes, materialists can attempt to claim Shelley +as endorsing their doctrines, for even in the "Queen Mab," which has +been considered by those not understanding it as a most atheistical +poem, he speaks of-- + + "the remembrance + With which the happy spirit contemplates + Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth." + +Positive dogmatists are tyrannically endeavoring to crush the belief in +a soul, that All which makes the-present life happy on earth, the hope +of our heritage in a future state. To them the fact that the race from +the dawn of history, and through the ages has knelt down in abnegation +before this inscrutable truth is nothing. This glorious belief evolved +from the primaeval Cabala, taught in ancient Egypt, found +contemporaneously in India, enunciated by scholarly Rabbis, ever present +before the Chaldaean and Assyrian Magi, and laid down as axioms in the +philosophical schools of Greece and Rome, not only to be discovered a +fundamental in the Egyptian, the Hebraistic, the Brahminical, the +Buddhistic, the Vedic, but also in all the sacred books of every nation, +and handed down and perpetuated to these days as a sacred legacy from +the past, by both Mohammed and Christ. This, the great co-mystery of all +the ancient mysteries, shall remain ever present through all futurity +like "the existing order of the Universe, or rather, of the _part of it +known to us_," to use the phraseology of John Stuart Mill. Nations may +rise and fall, theologies may flourish and decay, but this glorious and +divine inheritance shall never pass away. Let pseudo-scientists avail +themselves of stale and exploded arguments, and urge that there is no +invisible world, and therefore no immortality for man, but honest +scientists, like Professors Tait and Stewart, in the "Unseen Universe," +will agree with the Illuminati: "in the position assigned by Swedenborg, +and by the Spiritualists, according to which they look upon the +invisible world not as something absolutely distinct from the visible +universe, and absolutely unconnected with it, as is frequently thought +to be the case, but rather as a universe that has some bond of union +with the present;" and like Tyndall, will be obliged in abject humility +to acknowledge, unlike the initiated occultist, that: "When we endeavor +to pass from the phenomena of physics to those of thought, we meet a +problem which transcends any conceivable expansion of the powers we now +possess. We may think over the subject again and again--it eludes all +intellectual presentation--we stand at length face to face with the +incomprehensible." + +Shelley was ever calling attention to the fact that either from +ignorance or the casuistical sophistries of mal-interested teachers +who have distorted the divine pristine truths for their own base ends, +emanated superstition, the taint of all it looked upon; and with no +unsparing hand he flagellated the professors of the numerous false +faiths, bastardized from their original purity, which have in their +decay, darkened the earth, and with all the force of his powerful pen, +mightier than any sword, he ridiculed these gross theologies existant +among men, as in the following: + + "Barbarous and uncivilized nations have uniformly adored, + under various names, a God of which themselves were the + model: revengeful, blood-thirsty, groveling and capricious. + The idol of a savage is a demon that delights in carnage. + The steam of slaughter, the dissonance of groans, the flames + of a desolated land, are the offerings which he deems + acceptable, and his innumerable votaries throughout the + world have made it a point of duty to worship him to his + taste. The Phoenicians, the Druids and the Mexicans have + immolated hundreds at the shrines of their divinity, and the + high and holy name of God has been in all ages the watchword + of the most unsparing massacres, the sanction of the most + atrocious perfidies." + +Of the treatment Judaism, the foster mother of Christianity, received +at the poet's hands, I will now recite two examples. To Moses, the +Jehovah of the Hebrews is thus made to speak: + + "From an eternity of idleness + I, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made earth + From nothing; rested, and created man; + I placed him in a paradise, and there + Planted the tree of evil, so that he + Might eat and perish, and my soul procure + Wherewith to sate its malice, and to turn + Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth, + All misery to my fame. The race of men + Chosen to my honor, with impunity + May sate the lusts _I_ planted in their hearts. + Here I command thee hence to lead them on, + Until, with harden'd feet, their conquering troops + Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood. + And make my name be dreaded through the land, + Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woe + Shall be the doom of their eternal souls, + With every soul on this ungrateful earth, + Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong--even all + Shall perish to fulfill the blind revenge + (Which you to men call justice) of their God." + +In another place Shelley is equally descriptive of the early stages of +Jewish history, and makes the following observations on the building +of the Temple of Jerusalem, which rearing high its thousand golden +domes to heaven, exposed its glory to the face of day: + + "Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed + The building of that fane; and many a father, + Worn out with toil and slavery, implored + The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth, + And spare his children the detested task + Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning + The choicest days of life, + To soothe a dotard's vanity. + There an inhuman and uncultured race + Howl'd hideous praises to their demon--God; + They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb + The unborn child--old age and infancy + Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms + Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends, + And what was he who taught them that the God + Of nature and benevolence had given + A special sanction to the trade of blood? + His name and theirs are fading, and the tales + Of this barbarian nation, which imposture + Recites till terror credits, are pursuing + Itself into forgetfulness." + +With the enlightenment of the present century in every department of +knowledge, so has a corresponding degree of advancement been thrown on +the science of history, which Shelley only partially apprehended. An +enormous amount of new information is now to be gleaned from the +writings of Ewald, Fergusson, Bunsen, Deutsch, Max Muller, +Baring-Gould, Stanley, and other scholars of Orientation, which shows +that the Hebrews, like every other nation, passed through the various +phases of Nomadism and Pastoralism, to that of offensive and defensive +war. The same as other races, they came through the usual steps in +religious progress--Fetishism, Astrolatry, Polytheism and Monotheism. +During phases in their history they participated in the various forms +of tree and serpent, Phallic, or fire-worship. They had, as the +Talmud, Targums, and the Old Testament show, a knowledge of the +Egyptian or Chaldaic account of the creation and fall, the latter +still to be seen on the walls of the temple of Osiris at Philae. They +had much knowledge of the Cabala, through their great prophet Moses, +who was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," and, like +Pythagoras, had been initiated into their mysteries, and who both +imparted the knowledge in part to their compatriots, on which they +both founded systems. + +A great traveler, and most learned modern writer on Occultism, who +claims, on good grounds, to have been received into the ancient branch +of the Rosie Cross in the far East, Madame Helena P. de Blavatsky, +imparts the following particulars: "The first Cabala in which a mortal +man ever dared to explain the greatest mysteries of the universe, and +show the keys to those masked doors in the ramparts of Nature, through +which no mortal can ever pass without rousing dread sentries never +seen upon this side her wall, was compiled by a certain Simeon Ben +Jochai, who lived at the time of the second temple's destruction. Only +about thirty years after the death of this renowned Cabalist, his MSS. +and written explanations, which had till then remained in his +possession as a most precious secret, were used by his son, Rabbi +Elizzar, and other learned men. Making a compilation of the whole, +they so produced the famous work called _Zohar_ (God's splendor). This +book proved an inexhaustible mine for all the subsequent Cabalists, +their source of information and knowledge, and all more recent and +genuine Cabalas were all more or less carefully copied from the +former. Before that, all the mysterious doctrines had come down in an +unbroken line of merely oral tradition as far back as man could trace +himself on earth. They were scrupulously and jealously guarded by the +wise men of Chaldea, India, Persia and Egypt, and passed from one +initiate to another, in the same purity of form as when handed down to +the first man by the angels, students of God's great Theosophic +seminary." + +Many Free Thinkers, in their anxiety to crush everything belonging to +Christianity, often forget that, in throwing aside the Hebrew records as +utterly worthless, they are getting rid of one of the most ancient +literatures in the world. They also do not remember the history of a +peculiar nation, strangely preserved amid the fluctuations of time, the +purity and excellence of the Book of Job, the Psalms, and others which I +could name. They cast unmerited contempt on these compilations, when, at +the same time, they will throw themselves, with almost Fetish reverence, +and apparently rapt adoration, before the Institutes of Menu, the +Bhagvat-Geeta, the morals of Chaoung-Fou-Tszee, the Zend-Avesta, the +Rig-Veda, the Oracles of Zoroaster, the Book of the Dead, the Puranas, +the Shastras, and the like. + +Well may the Sons of Israel be proud of their ancient descent. They +suffered through Christian persecutions uncomplainingly--the torture, +the rack, the _auto-da-fe_--and yet they bowed their heads in +submission to the will of Adonai. To-day they stand upright and +united, as in olden times. They have gained the victory over the false +disciples of the Nazarene, who, in days gone by, forgot their +erudition, their medical knowledge, their commercial activity, and +general culture. Pre-eminent in wealth and learning, they are found on +the lecture-platform, in the fields of literature and science, in the +councils of rulers, on the exchange, in the legislature--everywhere. +When Greece and Rome were in their infancy, this extraordinary people +was in middle age; and when our Saxon forefathers were in the lowest +stage of barbarism, they were in a state of high civilization; and +to-day, although scattered, they show a compact front, firmly knit in +the bonds of brotherly love, a model for Christians. The great reform +movement now agitating Judaism, as well as every other species of +political and metaphysical thought, will eventually aid to consolidate +all the races into one race--Humanity. + +In order to make Christians prejudge Shelley it has been the wont of +theologians, as usual in fighting their antagonists, to cry up a false +issue, and to make their followers believe that he was rather more +than a mere hater of Jesus Christ, and of the teachings of that +religious and social reformer, in fact, that he was an infidel of +infidels. To have no misconceptions--for it has been stated that +Shelley changed his views on Christ, which after ten years' careful +study of his writings, I utterly deny, it should be thoroughly +understood that he regarded this pious Israelite in a duismal +aspect--as Christ the Man, and as Christ the God. I must not, while +here, forget that many advanced metaphysicians agree that they cannot +satisfactorily prove the historical existence of Christ, and that they +have to winnow through a vast amount of chaff to get at his presumed +philosophy, and the facts in his life, which like that of Buddha is +wrapped up in traditional fable. + +For the Man Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter's carnate son, +the mystical Essene and occultist, Shelley exceeded in love and +reverence many of the most earnest Christians, and in no theological +writings can there be discovered such beautiful sentiments concerning +the "The Regenerator of the World," and the "Meek Reformer," of whom +he speaks as contemplating that mysterious principle called God, the +fundamental of all good, and the source of all happiness, as every +true poet and philosopher must have done. It is impossible to turn to +any page of his works, where, in speaking of Christ, he fails in +this--he expatiates with as great fervor as Renan, Seeley, or +Strauss, on Christ's exposing with earnest eloquence, like all true +members of the brotherhood of Illuminati, to which he belonged, the +panic fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved mankind for +ages, and extols + + "His extraordinary genius, the wide and rapid effects of his + unexampled doctrines, his invincible gentleness and + benignity, (and) the devoted love borne to him by his + adherents." + +For the God Christ, as depicted by the Sacerdotal order, he had the +greatest contempt. It was impossible for a mind constituted like his +to tamely rest contented with the incredible story forced on mankind's +intelligence, that the Supreme Power could or would for any wise +purpose be transformed into a dove, and re-enact the mythical part of +Jupiter with a Christian Leda, the Jew carpenter's wife, Mary, under +the disguise of a bird. Such a story and the theory on which it rests +Shelley summarised as follows: + + "According to this book, God created Satan, who, instigated + by the impulses of his nature, contended with the Omnipotent + for the throne of Heaven. After a contest for the empire, in + which God was victorious, Satan was thrust into a pit of + burning sulphur. On man's creation, God placed within his + reach a tree whose fruit he forbade him to taste, on pain of + death; permitting Satan, at the same time, to employ all his + artifice to persuade this innocent and wondering creature to + transgress the fatal prohibition. + + "The first man yielded to this temptation; and to satisfy + Divine Justice the whole of his posterity must have been + eternally burned in hell, if God had not sent his only Son + on earth, to save those few whose salvation had been + foreseen and determined before the creation of the world." + +The hero of this fabulous episode, beneath which a great truth lies +hidden, the Christian Ahrimanes or Typhon, the Devil, as painted by +Milton, he considered a moral being, far superior to the God depicted +by the same author, and who, under the form of the second person of +the Christian Trinity, Shelley tells us of coming humbly, + + "Veiling his horrible God-head in the shape + Of man, scorn'd by the world, his name unheard, + Save by the rabble of his native town, + Even as a parish demagogue. He led + The crowd; he taught them justice, truth, and peace, + In semblance; but he lit within their souls + The quenchless flame of zeal, and blest the sword + He brought on earth to satiate with the blood + Of truth and freedom his malignant soul." + +Elsewhere, in extension of the same, he puts the accompanying words in +the mouth of God the Father, to illustrate the doctrine of Christian +Atonement: + + "I will beget a son, and he shall bear + The sins of all the world; he shall arise + In an unnoticed corner of the earth, + And he shall die upon a cross, and purge + The universal crime; so that the few + On whom my grace descends, those who are marked + As vessels to the honor of their God, + May credit this strange sacrifice, and save + Their souls alive. Millions shall live and die, + Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name, + But unredeem'd go to the gaping grave; + Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale, + Such as the nurses frighten babes withal; + These, in a gulf of anguish an I of flame, + Shall curse their reprobation endlessly, + Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow, + Even on their beds of torment, where they howl, + My honor and the justice of their doom. + What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts + Of purity, with radiant genius bright, + Or lit with human reason's earthly ray? + Many are call'd but few will I elect." + +The popular faith of Europe and America, which experience demonstrates +to this age has, even as a means of reforming humanity, been a +complete failure, Shelley correctly believed, had the same human +foundation and origin as that of other revealed theologies--he sums up +the proofs on which Christianity rests, miracles, prophecies, and +martyrdoms, with great clearness; proves the absurdity of the doctrine +of miracles, as taught by Christian writers, shows the falseness of +the so-called prophecies, even granting the utmost warping of the real +meaning of the Old Testament texts for Christian purposes, which he +asserted were to be compared unfavorably with the oracles of Delphos, +and points out that the Mohammedan dying for his prophet, or the +Hindoo immolating himself under the wheels of Juggernaut could be +cited equally as a proof of the divine origin of their faiths, as the +reputed martyrdoms of Christians could of theirs. + +The development of Christianity, which was really founded by Paul, was +a subject to which Shelley devoted much attention--he tells us that + + "The same means that have supported every other belief, have + supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, assassination, + and falsehood; deeds of unexampled and incomparable + atrocity, have made it what it is. The blood shed by the + votaries of the God of mercy and peace, since the + establishment of his religion, would probably suffice to + drown all other sectaries now on the habitable globe. We + derive from our ancestors a faith thus fostered and + supported; we quarrel, persecute, and hate, for its + maintenance. Even under a government which, while it + infringes the very right of thought and speech, boasts of + permitting the liberty of the press, a man is pilloried and + imprisoned because he is a deist, and no one raises his + voice in the indignation of outraged humanity." + +The numerical majority of Christians--the Greek and Roman Catholic--are +as much pagans as their ancestors, the ancient Greeks and Romans were +exoterically. And why? Simply because on the break-up of the Roman +empire--like Mohammedanism afterwards, which was the natural reformation +and revolution from Christian image-worship--Christianity, in a natural +succession, and by fortuitous circumstances, took possession of the +executive, and placed on the seat of power a Christian Byzantine emperor +in lieu of a pagan. Basilicas, dedicated to Jupiter, Mercury, Adonis, +Venus and the deities of High Olympus, were re-dedicated to God the +Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, and the other +saints (or gods) of the Christian Pantheon. Statues therein were +rechristened, and the sacrificial altars were simply transferred for the +use of the eucharistical sacrifice. The vestal virgins became nuns of +the church; the _Sacerdotes_, her priests; the mysteries of Isis, her +Agapae. Her incense, her pictures, her image-worship, her holy water, +her processions, and her prodigies, too, all came from the same source. +Thus were the socialistic and communistic teachings, based on the +Philoic-Essenism of the Reformer of Nazareth, paganized, prostituted, +and entirely misrepresented. His life and labors were transformed from +the natural into what was considered by the vulgar the supernatural, and +all those who dared--like Hypatia, with thousands of other pious and +noble ancients--to deny his divinity, were sacrificed to this new +Moloch, set up by parricide Constantines, or adulterers of the +Theodosius caste. Thus through the ages, has the race suffered under +such murder, rapine, and lust, as never disgraced tolerant ancient +heathendom in the interests of paganism, even as recently happened in +Central America,[C] and would happen everywhere else, if priestcraft had +the power to act without restraint, so that, as Shelley says, + + "Earth groans beneath religion's iron age, + And priests dare babble of a God of Peace-- + Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood, + Murdering the while, uprooting every germ + Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, + Making the earth a slaughter-house." + +[Footnote C: I refer to the abominable outrages perpetrated a few +months ago at San Miguel, Panama, where popular preachers were forced +by the ecclesiastical powers to foment rebellion by violently +denouncing the State authorities, who had refused to allow a pastoral +of the Christian Bishop of San Salvador, hostile to the laws, to be +read in the churches. Having been put into a state of frenzy by one +Palacios, a canon of the cathedral, a fanatic mob revolted, liberated +prisoners, murdered generals in command, massacred numbers of the best +citizens, set fire to the city with kerosene, and destroyed over one +million dollars' worth of property. After this theological revolt had +been put down, passports, couched in the following terms, and sealed +with the seal of the bishopric, were found on the bodies of some of +these holy murderers; + +"PETER.--Open to the bearer the gates of heaven, who has died for religion. + + (Signed), GEORGE, Bishop of San Salvador." + +Similar attempts were made by the Christian hierarchy in Brazil +against the Masonic body; but, fortunately, the emperor, a liberal and +an enlightened savant, crushed the attempt under foot, and +unmistakably proved, to the satisfaction of humanity, that he was not +to be transformed into a nineteenth century Charles the Ninth or +Philip the Second, and act the cat's paw for Pio Nono, ex-carbonari +and recusant mason, to wreak his vengeance on the brethren whom he had +betrayed.] + +To those who will look down the ages, I would ask, is this picture +overdrawn? and further, to remember that in Shelley's own words: + + "Eleven millions of men, women and children have been killed + in battle, butchered in their sleep, burned to death at + public festivals of sacrifice, poisoned, tortured, + assassinated and pillaged in the spirit of the religion of + peace, and for the glory of the most merciful God." + +Is it amazing that he should have written such a "highly wrought and +admirably sustained" tragedy as the "Cenci," founded on facts, and +which has been deemed by competent critics the first since +Shakspeare--that he should have brought forward, with vivid +delineation, the crimes of the priesthood--and that he should have +made us remember the terrors of the bloody wars on heretics and +heathen, in words such as these: + + "Yes! I have seen God's worshippers unsheathe + The sword of His revenge, when grace descended, + Confirming all unnatural impulses, + To sanctify their desolating deeds; + And frantic priests wave the ill-omen'd cross + O'er the unhappy earth; then shone the sun + On showers of gore from the upflashing steel + Of safe assassination, and all crime + Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord. + And blood-red rainbows canopied the land. + Spirit! no year of my eventful being + Has pass'd unstain'd by crime and misery, + Which flows from God's own faith. I've marked his slaves + With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile + The insensate mob, and whilst one hand was red + With murder, feign to stretch the other out + For brotherhood and peace; and that they now + Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds + Are marked with all the narrowness and crime + That freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise?" + +Protestant Christians may urge that all this is not Christianity; if +it be not--for it is the record of the Church--I would ask, what is? +and where shall we find the history of Christianity for the fifteen +centuries before Luther's time? and where, to-day? Their predecessors +plucked the plumage from the dying bird of mythology, as they, +themselves, have robbed the liberal orchard of all its choicest fruits +and palmed them off as of their own growth. Protestants would not, I +dare say, now countenance the persecutions of the past, but yet, I +would tell them that their Protestantism has been a great mistake; and +that, at this moment, there is no unity among the opposers of +Catholicism, who are split into a thousand sects, wrangling for +superiority, like wolves over offal; and that their churches are +gradually converging toward Rationalism on the one hand, and Catholic +Sacerdotalism on the other; in regard to which last, the Historical +Roman Church--the only Christian body which presents a solid +phalanx--one must not be too iconoclastic, remembering that, in the +monastic houses and great ecclesiastical libraries we have had +conserved for us, although, perchance by accident, the records of all +the philosophy, all the jurisprudence, all the polity, all the +literature, and all the civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, that +remained from the Alexandrian library and pre-Christian times--the +mediaeval clerics were the great conservators of knowledge, which we +inherit directly from Europe; and we should be, therefore, grateful to +them equally with Mohammedanism, from which we received, through the +Crusaders and the Moors, the basis of nearly all science and luxury, +from Asia. There were, undoubtedly, many bad popes, men as bad as the +incestuous, and, according to the recent dogma, the infallible +Alexander Borgia; priests who are not all vile, but many nobler than +their system, acknowledge this with regret, and among whom there are +some whom I can reverence, such as John Henry Newman, for instance, +whose life would favorably compare with that of Shelley, or any +liberal. There have been popes, also, whose lives have been as pure, +as disinterested, and as virtuous as that of any stoic or epicurean. +We owe much to Sixtus the Fifth, founder of the Vatican Library, and +would-be regenerator of order in his temporal dominions; to Leo the +Great, whose patronage of the arts has sent us down the wondrous +statuary, painting, and works of genius, which are the admiration of +the world; and to Hildebrand, who brought together, in one harmonious +whole, the struggling elements of European society. It is well to +note, too, in order that I may not be misunderstood, that Catholicism +is better than savage Fetishism, and Rationalism in degree superior to +either; and, further, that Liberalism should only war with evil +principles, and not with men whom they are generally the exponents of +ignorantly, and to the best of their knowledge. Comtism[D] +acknowledges the fact that Christianity was not simply a mere advance +on, but where we shall only find the civilization of Europe as it was +during mediaeval times, and recognizes this most strongly, by placing +over fifty of these great geniuses and luminaries, popes, bishops, and +saints of the Catholic Church, in the Comtist Calendar, under the +sixth and seventh months dedicated to St. Paul or Catholicism, and +Charlemagne or Feudal Civilization respectively. We should thank the +followers of Comte for thus bringing to our notice what we might be +liable to occasionally forget in our bigotry and frequent +over-anxiety. + +[Footnote D: Comtism, or Positivism is that casuistical system of +modern Atheism, founded by Auguste Comte, the Ignatius Loyola of +Materialism, and which that learned pantarchical madman strung +together in Esquirol's lunatic asylum. It is an insidious philosophy, +full of Jesuistry, and teaches a _soi-disant_ Religion which is +Ir-religion, a pseudo-God, which has no conceivable existence, and an +impossible immortality of the soul, ignoring a future state. The +present crusade of Comtism in our midst, with false colors flying can +be justly compared to that of St. Francois Xavier in Hindostan.] + +In popularizing terms wrongly, lies much mischief. If the misapplied +term Christianity, signify the current notion, zeal for truth, the +good of mankind, and active virtue or Christism, the reputed precepts +of Christ, then Shelley taught that ethical system, and the so-called +Christian world which persecuted him, the opposite. + +No one believed, better than Shelley, in the necessity of continuity, +and that all theological systems are a portion of the development of +Humanity. + +It should likewise be remembered, that even in the grossest +superstition, as in the highest belief, the underlying aspiration, +veiled perhaps, under some beautiful myth, is a straining after the +pure and the good, and, as Shelley puts it: + + "All original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of + allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and + true." + +It should also be considered, that it is better not to interfere with +the faith of the ignorant, but let them remain in an exoteric +condition, until they are properly developed by sufficient education +and consequent intelligence. It is just as much the duty of advanced +thinkers not to tamper with the beliefs of men who are in an early +stage of progress, as it is not to put a flaming torch in the +possession of a lunatic, or a razor in the hands of a child. + +Shelley, in his philosophy, accepted all this, with the full +consciousness that in the end truth would prevail--he yearned for the +time when priest-led slaves would + + "Cease to proclaim that man + Inherits vice and misery, when force + And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe, + Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good," + +and for that epoch when "the Mohammedan, the Jew, the Christian, the +Deist, and the Atheist will live together in one community, equally +sharing the benefits which arise from its associations, and united in +the bonds of charity and brotherly love." + +With Shelley we can turn with delight to the gospels of the future, as +of the ancient past; and the ramifications of the Trinity of a truly +Rational Religion, Mature, Science, and Art, where we have, instead of +idle prayers, addressed to gross material idols, or the impossible +entities hitherto depicted in theological systems, a feeling of real +satisfaction in learning how to live rather than to die, and in +practicing virtue and benevolence for their own sakes, than for +improbable rewards in the unsatisfactory hereafter, enunciated from +the theological platform. + +Like a true religionist, Shelley tells us that aspirations to "Madre +Natura," like the following, should be poured out in silent, grateful +communion with Omnipresence, and not in temples made by hands: + + Spirit of Nature! here! + In this interminable wilderness + Of worlds, at whose immensity + Even soaring fancy staggers, + Here is thy fitting temple. + Yet not the slightest leaf + That quivers to the passing breeze + Is less instinct with thee; + Yet not the meanest worm + That lurks in graves, and fattens on the dead + Less shares thy eternal breath. + Spirit of Nature! thou! + Imperishable as this scene, + Here is thy fitting temple. + +From such a soul-inspiring altar should praises like these be raised, +and with what sacred feeling would the pure worshipper revel "where +spirits live and dream--where all that is sweet in sound, or pure in +vision floats on the air, or passes dimly before the sight," for as +the late Professor J.G. Hoyt, in his essay on Shelley beautifully +points out--"To him everything was God, and God was everything. Every +place was peopled with forms of beauty and animated with living +intelligences. Hills and valleys, forests and fountains, were each +thronged with presiding deities--bright effluences from the Diving +that stirred within, and shone above the whole." + +In leaving the first portion of my paper, I will make the following +quotation from a remarkable article on Shelley in the pages of the +_National Magazine_, which all minds unshackled, and free from +prejudice, must acknowledge to be correct in the main, and which +admirably sums up his efforts in metaphysical philosophy. Our +attention is called to the fact that we discover in all Shelley's +writings "a freer and purer development of what is best and noblest in +ourselves. We are taught in it to love all living and lifeless things, +with which in the material and moral universe we are surrounded--we +are taught to love the wisdom and goodness and majesty of the +Almighty, for we are taught to love the universe, his symbol and +visible exponent. God has given two books for the study and +instruction of mankind; the book of revelation and the book of nature. +In one at least of these was Shelley deeply versed, and in this one he +has given admirable lessons to his fellow-men. Throughout his +writings, every thought and every feeling is subdued and chastened by +a spirit of unutterable and boundless love. The poet meets us on the +common ground of a disinterested humanity, and he teaches us to hold +an earnest faith in the worth and the intrinsic Godliness of the soul. +He tells us--he makes us feel that there is nothing higher than human +hope, nothing deeper than the human heart; he exhorts us to labor +devotedly in the great and good work of the advancement of human +virtue and happiness, and stimulates us + + "To love and hear--to hope till hope creates + From its own wreck the thing it contemplates." + +It is observed by Shelley that + + "The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau, + and their disciples in favor of oppressed and deluded + humanity, are entitled to the gratitude of mankind. Yet it + is easy to calculate the degree of moral and intellectual + improvement which the world would have exhibited, had they + never lived. A little more nonsense would have been talked + for a century or two; and perhaps a few more men, women and + children burnt as heretics. We might not at this moment have + been congratulating each other on the abolition of the + Inquisition in Spain." + +The vast impetus, which these extraordinary geniuses gave to freedom +in metaphysical strongholds, led to a corresponding degree of liberty +in the political and social relations. + +Shelley was not one who + + "beheld the woe + In which mankind was bound, and deem'd that fate + Which made them abject, would preserve them so." + +but on the contrary was aware of the progressive character of the +race, and threw himself with all his heart and soul into the cause of +Republicanism, and never slackened in his efforts till death took him +from his work. His noblest endeavors were directed toward the cause of +suffering humanity, crushed under the weight of despotism; and his +tuneful lyre was ever struck in behalf of the Goddess of Freedom, to +whom, in that soul inspiring "Ode to Liberty," he offers chaplets of +the most glorious verse to rouse the nations from their apathy. He has +given us his reflections on the English Revolution, when Cromwell +crushed royalty under his feet in the person of the tyrant Charles +Stuart, and which, notwithstanding, rose again to befoul, in the +profligacy and debauchery of the second Carolian epoch; on the French +Revolution, when an intelligent people drove out a brood of vampires, +who had drained the blood of France too long, to be replaced by +atrocious demagogues, hateful priest-ridden Bourbons and a Napoleon +Bonaparte, the wholesale Jaffa poisoner, on whose death Shelley wrote +lines pregnant with republican feelings: + + "I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan + To think that a most ambitious slave, + Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave + Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne + Where it had stood even now; thou didst prefer + A frail and bloody pomp, which time has swept + In fragments towards oblivion. Massacre, + For this I pray'd would on thy sleep have crept, + Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear and Lust, + And stifled thee, their minister. I know + Too late, since thou and France are in the dust, + That virtue owns a more eternal foe + Than force or fraud; old custom, legal crime, + And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of time." + +With full knowledge of all this, he hopefully looked with loving eyes +toward this side of the Atlantic, to your magnificent constitution and +model Republic, built on the consolidated masonic bases of Liberty, +Equality, and Fraternity, as did also the mass of my compatriots, who, +suffering under a more intolerant despotism, and unable to help +themselves, had no hand or voice in the attempted tyranny, from which +your forefathers properly rebelled one hundred years ago. + +In "Hellas" we find Shelley advocating the cause of Greece, and it is +believed, that that poem assisted his friend Byron in the +determination to wield his sword in the cause of Grecian Liberty. "The +Revolt of Islam," his most mystical work, next to his early effort, +"St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian," is full of the most majestic and +sympathetic thoughts, and underlying its weirdness we have all those +elements "which essentially compose a poem in the cause of a liberal +and comprehensive morality, and with the view of kindling in the bosom +of his readers a virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty +and justice, that faith and hope in something good, which neither +violence, nor misrepresentation, nor prejudice, nor the continual +presence and pressure of evil, can ever totally extinguish among +mankind." + +Can we wonder that Shelley could be else than Republican when he +regarded what Thackeray afterward summed up with biting irony, the +record of the reigning house of Great Britain, the mad Guelph +_Defenders of the Christian Faith_(_?_), the results of whose labors +have been corroborated by Greville and recent writers? + +To what a line of monarchs, was Shelley called upon to give allegiance +and prostrate himself before, and can we be astonished that he thus +describes the state these abominable Hanoverians had "England in +1819:" + + "An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king,-- + Princes the dregs of their dull race who flow + Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,-- + Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, + But leech-like to their fainting country cling, + Till they drop blind in blood without a blow,-- + A people starved and stabbed in unfilled field,-- + An army which liberticide and prey + Make as a two-edged sword to all who wield,-- + Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay-- + Religion Christless, Godless, a book sealed,-- + A Senate--time's worst statute unrepealed,-- + Are graves from which a glorious phantom may + Burst to illumine our tempestuous day?" + +To aid Republicanism, he threw himself with fervor into the cause of +the unhappy Caroline of Brunswick; and on her account he wrote "God +Save the Queen," in imitation of the British national anthem, and the +satirical piece entitled "Swellfoot, the Tyrant." In the following +words he attacked the prime minister, Lord Castleragh, whose +reactionary counsels were transforming England into a state analogous +to that of Russia to-day: + + "Then trample and dance, thou oppressor, + For thy victim is no redressor! + Thou art sole lord and possessor + Of her corpses, and clods and abortions--they pave + Thy path to a grave." + +For the Lord Chancellor, Eldon, his hatred was intense; for, in +addition to the crime of robbing him of his children, this occupant of +the wool-sack, had made the seat of justice an appanage for his lust +of wealth and power. I have already quoted some verses on this +renowned lawyer, and will now present you with two others bearing on +the same subject: + + "Next came Fraud, and he had on, + Like Lord Eldon, an ermine gown; + His big tears (for he wept well) + Turned to mill stones as they fell; + + "And _the little children_, who + Round his feet played to and fro, + Thinking every tear a gem, + Had their brains knocked out by them." + +In _Queen Mab_, Shelley has presented us with an unmistakable +portraiture of the "First Gentleman in Europe;" and in the following +lines, which I have taken from this poem, I have chosen two extracts, +descriptive of the origin of political despotism, and the reason of +its continuance: + + "Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose? + Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap + Toil and unvanquishable penury + On those who build their palaces, and bring + Their daily bread? From vice, black, loathsome vice, + From rapine, madness, treachery and wrong; + From all that genders misery, and makes + Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust, + Revenge and murder." + + * * * * * + + "Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; + The subject, not the citizen; for kings + And subjects, mutual foes, forever play + A losing game into each other's hands, + Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man + Of virtuous soul commands not nor obeys. + Power, like a desolating pestilence, + Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, + Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, + Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame + A mechanized automaton." + +Shelley believed in reformation, not revolution; and in the "Revolt of +Islam" and his Irish pamphlets, we find him advocating a bloodless +revolution, except where force was used, and then force for force, if +compromise were hopeless. His idea was ever the foundation of +political systems founded on that of this country, or on the ancient +Greek Republic. He says: + + "The study of modern history is the study of kings, + financiers, statesmen, and priests. The history of ancient + Greece is the study of legislators, philosophers, and poets; + it is the history of men compared with the history of + titles. What the Greeks were was a reality, not a promise. + And what we are and hope to be is derived, as it were, from + the influence of these glorious generations." + +Hoping almost against hope for the regeneration of his country, he +submitted to the people of England a proposal for putting to the vote +the great reform question, which was filling the public mind; but he +was conscious that in the then unprepared state of public knowledge +and feeling, universal suffrage was fraught with peril, and remarks +that although + + "A pure republic may be shown, by inferences the most + obvious and irresistible, to be that system of social order + the fittest to produce the happiness and promote the genuine + eminence of man. Yet nothing can less consist with reason, + or afford smaller hopes of any beneficial issue, than the + plan which should abolish the regal and the aristocratical + branches of our constitution, before the public mind, + through many gradations of improvement, shall have arrived + at the maturity which shall disregard these symbols of its + childhood." + +An essay has come down to us (unhappily unfinished), in which he +argues in favor of "Government by Juries." It is but a fragment; and +yet it shows us that his mind was ever in search of the right +solution of the question of proper legislation for the masses. William +Pitt, with enemies on every side, publicly acknowledged the +extraordinary genius which impelled the American revolution, and +admired the constitution of this country, as well as the masterly +character of the "Declaration of Independence." In unstinted praise +does he speak of the learning and remarkable public spirit of the +signers. With equal praise, I am confident, everyone must eulogize the +"Declaration of Rights," compiled by Shelley, which he put before his +countrymen sixty-three years ago. Therein he has given the whole of +his conception of the correct theory of government, and it cannot fail +to be read by advanced minds with feelings of genuine pleasure. + +The race has suffered through its long martyrdom with the horrors of +war. One tyrant after another, to aid his accursed ambition or revenge +his spite upon a brother monarch, has cursed the unhappy earth and +humanity with the terrors of long-continued devastation and bloodshed. +With burning pen has Shelley depicted war in its most hideous aspects, +and by most beautiful comparisons has he shown us the sublimity of +peace. He points out, that + + "War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, + The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade." + +He repudiates the notion that man, if left free, would wantonly heap +ruin, vice, or shivery, or curse his species with the withering blight +of war; and he shows us how + + "Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower, + Even in its tender bud; their influence darts + Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins + Of desolate society. The child, + Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name, + Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts + His baby sword even in a hero's mood. + This infant arm becomes the bloodiest scourge + Of devastated earth: whilst specious names, + Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour, + Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims + Bright reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword + Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood." + +In other places he seems to prophetically point out what this generation +appears to comprehend--the judiciousness of arbitration--which in the +future will be the true panacea for this frightful affliction of +humanity. + +To the current Irish questions Shelley devoted much of his time, and +took up his residence in Dublin, to aid the independence of Ireland, +which might, under proper treatment, have been made one of the +brightest spots in the British Dominions; but the inhabitants of +which, owing to centuries of English misrule and oppression, had, in +certain parts, fallen into a condition not much superior to that of +those of Central Africa. When we contemplate what Ireland was before +the Norman and Saxon had set their feet there, the most prejudiced +antagonist of the Celtic race cannot but be astonished at the picture +presented to us after their usurpation. When Saxondom was in a state +of barbarism, this branch of the Celts was civilized. Aldfred, king of +the Northumbrian Saxons, has given us the experiences of a Saxon in +Ireland over a thousand years ago. In a poem of his own composing, he +tells us that he found "noble, prosperous sages," "learning, wisdom, +welcome, and protection," "kings, queens, and royal bards, in every +species of poetry well skilled. Happiness, comfort, and pleasure," the +people "famed for justice, hospitality, lasting vigor, fame," and +"long blooming beauty, hereditary vigor"--and the monarch concludes +his really curious account by saying: + + "I found in the fair, surfaced Leinster, + From Dublin to Slewmargy, + Long-living men, health, prosperity, + Bravery, hardihood and traffic. + + I found from Ara to Gle, + In the rich country of Ossory, + Sweet fruit, strict jurisdiction, + Men of truth, chess-playing. + + I found in the great fortress of Meath, + Valor, hospitality, and truth, + Bravery, purity, and mirth-- + The protection of all Ireland. + + I found the aged of strict morals, + The historians recording truth-- + Each good, each benefit that I have sung, + In Ireland I have seen." + +Such is the statement of King Aldfred, and the Venerable Bede informs +us that in Ireland, Saxons and other foreigners were "hospitably +received, entertained and educated, furnished with books," etc., all +gratuitously. + +Up to the middle of the sixteenth century, I find, after careful study +in the Leabhar-Gabhala, the Annals of the Four Masters, of +Clonmacnoise, of Loch Ce, and other historical records, the same +continued apparent prosperity, but after the English took possession +of the larger portion of the country, only the records of anarchy, +despotism, and misery. Before the Reformation, or so long as the +English settlers remained within the pale, Ireland had been as happy +as Ultramontanism would allow, but from the accession of Elizabeth and +the consequent attempted enforcement of a new theology, against the +wishes of the people, a fearful succession of despotism is revealed. +To force Protestantism on the Irish, Catholicism was put down by the +most stringent laws--the torture chamber never empty, the scaffold +rarely free from executions, the seaports closed, and manufactures +forbidden to be exported; "black laws" of a most iniquitous character, +exceeding in ingenuity the devices of Tilly or Torquemada, placed on +the statute book. The punishment for being a recusant Catholic, or +Papist, was death, and it is a known fact that one Protestant +commander, Sir William Cole, of Fermanagh, made his soldiers massacre +in a short period "seven thousand of the vulgar sort," as Borlase +informs us. Elsewhere the English behaved in the same manner, and on +the authority of Bishop Moran it is asserted that the Puritans of the +North shot down Catholics as wild beasts, and made it their business +"to imbrue their swords in the hearts' blood of the male children." +Mr. and Mrs. S.C. Hall, in their valuable work on Ireland, state that +the possessors of the whole province of Ulster were driven out under +pain of mortal punishment from their homes and lands, without roof +over their heads, to be pent up in the most barren portion of +Connaught, where to pass a certain boundary line was instant death +without trial, and where it was commonly said, "There is not wood +enough to hang a man, water enough to drown him, nor earth enough to +bury him." One hundred thousand Catholics were sold as slaves to the +West Indian and North American planters by the public authority of the +Cromwellian government. Such was the way these Christians showed their +love for their fellow Christians, and can it be wondered that ever +since than there has been one continual succession of uprisings in +that most unhappy country? As the sinew of Ireland's people in this +country were driven by necessity, fleeing from the terrors of +starvation and insufficient existence at home, so were the best of the +race in the two previous centuries necessitated to fly to the European +continent, where we find them enrolled, for instance, in the service +of the King of France, and having revenge on their oppressors on the +field of Fontenoy. Elsewhere in every country of Europe do we discover +them or their descendants in the front ranks, and at the helm of +affairs--in Spain, O'Donnell and Prim; in France, Mac Mahon and Lally +Tollendal; in Austria, O'Taafe and Maguire. + +When Shelley arrived in Dublin in 1812, he soon found himself joined +to the body of the Repeal party, which was endeavoring to obtain back +the parliament which had been stolen from them by British gold, less +than a quarter of a century before, and to have the Catholic +Emancipation Bill made law. He published two remarkable, political +pamphlets, in those days the only mode by which a statesman could +appeal to the people, in which it may be noticed how well he could +write in a popular style, to effectually serve a purpose. They also +prove his enthusiasm for the liberty of discussion, and how, although +he was always willing to treat on politics alone, he was preoccupied +with metaphysical questions which continually crop out. + +In the first, which he called _An Address to the Irish People_, and +wrote during the first week of his residence in Ireland, he commences +by eulogizing the Irish, explains to them that all religions are good +which make men good, and shows that, being neither Protestant nor +Catholic, he can offer the olive branch to each. He then points out +the weak spots in each other's conduct in the past, the necessity of +toleration, and the crime of persecution--how different this was to +what Christ taught! + +He endeavors to prove that arms should not be used--that the French +Revolution, although undertaken with the best intentions, ended badly +because force was employed. He recommends sobriety, regularity and +thought; for the Irish not to appeal to bloodshed, but to agitate +determinedly for Catholic emancipation and repeal, which should be +ensured through the use of moral persuasion. And concluding with an +appeal to Catholic and Protestant to bear with each other, using +mildness and benevolence, and to mutually organize a society which + + "Shall serve as a bond to its members for the purpose of + virtue, happiness, liberty and wisdom by the means of + intellectual opposition to grievances," + +he winds up by saying: + + "Adieu, my friends! May every sun that shines on your green + island see the annihilation of an abuse, and the birth of an + embryon of melioration! Your own hearts--may they become the + shrines of purity and freedom, and never may smoke to the + Mammon of Unrighteousness ascend from the polluted altar of + their devotion." + +In a postscript to this pamphlet, he urges + + "A plan of amendment and regeneration in the moral and + political state of society, on a comprehensive and + systematic philanthropy which shall be sure though slow in + its projects; and as it is without the rapidity and danger + of revolution, so will it be devoid of the time-servingness + of temporizing reform;" + +and quotes Lafayette: + + "A name endeared by its peerless bearer to every lover of + the human race, 'For a nation to love liberty, it is + sufficient that she knows it to be free; it is sufficient + that she wills it.'" + +His other Dublin pamphlet, _A Proposal for an Association of +Philanthropists_, consists of remarks of the same character as the +former, but he gives a summary of the French Revolution, which he +endeavors to clear from the slurs which had been cast thereon. The +information has come down to us through one of Shelley's biographers, +that he spoke at several meetings in Dublin. At the one in which he +made his first appearance in public he aroused a large assembly to +enthusiasm by his fervid eloquence, and yet, notwithstanding all his +efforts, his toleration unfortunately became the great stumbling-block +in his attempts on behalf of Ireland, for we learn that at another +meeting of patriots: + + "So much ill-will against the Protestants was shown, that + Shelley was provoked to remark that the Protestants were + fellow-Christians and fellow-subjects, and were therefore + entitled to equal rights and equal toleration with the + Papists. Of course, he was forthwith interrupted by savage + yells. A fierce uproar ensued, and the denouncer of bigotry + was compelled to be silent. At the same meeting, and + afterward, he was even threatened with personal violence, + and the police suggested to him the propriety of quitting + the country." + +By many it has been said that Shelley was unsuccessful in his +self-imposed task, but he was simply before his time, and no wonder, +when we remember the condition of Ireland at the time of his visit. + +We know to-day that much of what he demanded has been conceded to +Ireland by liberal English governments. An alien Church has been +disestablished; public education, Catholic emancipation, and a good +deal more, has been given. In the late repeal movement, the young +Ireland party, the Fenian organization, and the present Home Rule +agitation, we find, as Shelley wished, Catholic and Protestant working +arm in arm, their colors being an admixture of orange and green--a +healthy sign. + +Those who dislike this noble people--for the name is legion of those +who are fond of shouting "No Irish need apply"--I would recommend to +think calmly over Irish history, to remember the frightful outrages +put upon this generous, warm-hearted, and impulsive race for +centuries, and read up Froude, Mitchell, Goldwin-Smith, McGee, Moran, +and other Irish historians. + +We know what the Irish are capable of, and that in Ireland, as here, +after a generation or two of education, the old theological belief +becomes by a gradual process less and less strong. + +On September 6th, 1819, a red letter day was added to the English +calendar, through the slaughter by cavalry of a number of unarmed men, +who were agitating, peaceably, for the rights of labor. This is known +to posterity as the "Peterloo Massacre," and happened in Manchester, +on the site of the present superb Free Trade Hall, erected by the Free +Traders to commemorate the ultimate triumph of their cause over the +capitalists, who, in the manufacturing districts, were, until a few +years back, always aided by the military in putting down strikes or +demands for increase of wages. + +At the time of this outrage Shelley was in Italy; in consequence of it +his attention was concentrated more than previously on the labor +question, and he immediately composed half a dozen in spiriting poems, +full of the fire of genius; in one of which he calls, with a voice of +thunder, to the + + I. + + "Men of England! wherefore plough + For the lords who lay ye low? + Wherefore weave, with toil and care, + The rich robes your tyrants wear? + + II. + + Wherefore feed and clothe and save, + From the cradle to the grave, + Those ungrateful drones who would + Drain your sweat--nay, drink your blood? + + III. + + Wherefore, bees of England, forge + Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, + That these stingless drones may spoil + The forced produce of your toil? + + IV. + + Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, + Shelter, food, love's gentle balm? + Or what is't ye buy so dear + With your pain, and with your fear? + + V. + + The seed ye sow, another reaps; + The wealth ye find another keeps; + The robes ye weave, another wears; + The arms ye forge, another bears. + + VI. + + Sow seed--but let no tyrant reap; + Find wealth--let no impostor heap; + Weave robes--let not the idle wear; + Forge arms--in your defence to bear. + + VII. + + Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells; + In halls ye deck, another dwells. + Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see + The steel ye tempered, glance on ye! + + VIII. + + With plough and spade, and hoe and loom, + Trace your grave, and build your tomb, + And weave your winding sheet, till fair + England be your sepulchre!" + +By far the finest composition brought out by this occasion was the +"Masque of Anarchy," a magnificent poem of ninety-one verses. "Anarchy" +he describes as riding "on a white horse,"[E] in alliance with +theology and statecraft, and whose admirers were "lawyers and +priests." + +[Footnote E: This doubtless alludes to the House of Hanover, the +principal charge on whose armorial bearings is a white horse.] + +After a series of powerful delineations, he describes slavery and +freedom, justice, wisdom, peace and love, in exquisite terms. Then he +turns to their lamps--science, poetry, and thought, which make secure +"the lot of the dwellers in the cot." + +He advises--That, on some spot of English ground, should be convened a +great assembly of the fearless and the free, who shall come from the +bounds of the English coast, and from every hut, village, and town, +where, for other's misery and their own, they live, suffer, and moan. +Also, + + "From the workhouse and the prison, + Where, pale as corpses newly risen, + Women, children, young and old, + Groan for pain, and weep for cold; + + "From the haunts of daily life, + Where is waged the daily strife + With common wants and common cares, + Which sow the human heart with tares." + +When face to face with their oppressors, no force should be used, but +instead + + "strong and simple words, + Keen to wound as sharpened swords, + And wide as targes let them be, + With their shade to cover ye." + +The description of the Peterloo massacre which follows, is one of the +finest pieces of composition in the language, and the poem concludes +by calling the "Men of England, Heirs of Glory, Heroes of Unwritten +Story," to + + "Rise like lions after slumber + In unvanquishable NUMBER! + Shake your chains to earth, like dew + Which in sleep had fall'n on you; + 'YE ARE MANY--THEY ARE FEW.'" + +In a pamphlet, written ostensibly on the death of the Princess +Charlotte, he calls attention to the fact that three men had been +executed in the interests of the "big-hearted and generous +capitalists," of whom we now-a-days hear so much from their interested +admirers, but whose wings are now fortunately clipped. + +Shelley considered that there was no real wealth but man's labor, and +that speculators pandering to selfishness, the twin-sister of debased +theology, took a pride in the production of useless articles of luxury +and ostentation. Imbued with this spirit, a man of wealth imagines +himself a patriot when employing laborers on the erection of a +mansion, or a woman of fashion indulging in luxurious dress, fancies +she is aiding the laboring poor. He observes of such instances as +these: + + "Who does not see that this is a remedy which aggravates, + whilst it palliates the countless diseases of society? The + poor are set to labor--for what? Not the food for which they + famish; not the blankets for want of which their babes are + frozen by the cold of their miserable hovels; not those + comforts of civilization without which civilized man is far + more miserable than the meanest savage, oppressed as he is + by all its insidious evils, within the daily and taunting + prospect of its innumerable benefits assiduously exhibited + before him; no, for the pride of power, for the miserable + isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hundredth + part of society." + +Labor is required for physical, and leisure for moral improvement. +What is wanted, he considered, is a state to combine the advantages of +both and have the evils of neither. In fact, any unnecessary labor +which deprives the race of intellectual gain, and all times not +required for the manufacture of commodities which are necessary for +the subsistence of humanity, should be occupied only in mental or +physical culture. + +Shelley lays down as a principle that commerce is the venal +interchange of what human art or nature yields, and which should not +be purchased by wealth, but demanded by want. Labor and commerce, when +badly regulated, scatter withering curses and open + + "The doors to premature and violent death, + To penury, famine, and full-fed disease." + +Wealth was a living God, who rules in scorn, and whom peasants, +nobles, priests, and kings blindly reverence, and by whom everything +is sold--the light of heaven, earth's produce, the peace of outraged +conscience, the most despicable things, every object of life, and even +life itself. + +In a proper condition of society, which should be strictly +co-operative, there would necessarily be no pauperism, and + + "No meditative signs of selfishness, + No jealous intercourse of wretched gain, + No balancings of prudence, cold and long; + In just and equal measure all is weighed; + One scale contains the sum of human weal. + And one the good man's heart." + +The fruits of Shelley's enunciations on the labor and capital +questions, and the school of political economists to which he +belonged, have made wondrous progress. The world is beginning to see +that labor has the unrestricted right of coalition, that there should +be only a standard day's work, according to the wants of society, with +prohibition of labor for at least one day in the week; that +legislation is required for the protection of the life and health of +the working man, and that mines, factories, and workshops should be +strictly controlled by sanitary officers selected by labor; that no +children's work should be permitted, or women's, which may be +considered unhealthy; that prison work should be regulated, and that +laborers' co-operative and benevolent societies should be administered +independently of the State. + +Liberals must learn from their enemies, must organize and let the +ramifications of unshackled thought spread through the lands, and +must, above all, conserve the control of education. Whereever there is +a church or chapel, let there be beside it a hall or club, in which +shall be inculcated the simple doctrines of a pure, integralised +religion. + +On the statute book of England there yet remains a law directed +against the freedom of the press and discussion; to even discuss the +question of the divinity of Christ was considered blasphemy, and the +person so offending was punished most severely by the criminal laws. +At the present time this wretched remnant of the dark ages is +practically a dead letter. The friends of Shelley suffered from this +most intolerant spirit. Keats, it is believed by many, was wounded +unto death for daring to speak on behalf of freedom, and we are given +glimpses in the _Adonais_ of his feelings on the subject; Leigh Hunt +and his brother were imprisoned and fined for the same; the publisher +of the pirated edition of Shelley's _Queen Mab_ was cast into Newgate; +Eaton, a London bookseller, had been sentenced by Lord Ellenborough to +a lengthened incarceration, for publishing Paine's _Age of Reason_, +and hundreds of others suffered similarly. The abominable circumstance +of Eaton's conviction caused great uproar; the Marquis of Wellesley, +in the House of Lords, stated it was "contrary to the mild spirit of +the Christian religion; for no sanction can be found under that +dispensation which will warrant a government to impose disabilities +and penalties upon any man on account of his religious opinions." +Shelley, who was then only nineteen years of age, and had himself +suffered from bigotry at Oxford, threw himself publicly into the +controversy with great vehemence, with "a composition of great +eloquence and logical exactness of reasoning, and the truths which it +contains on the subject of universal toleration are now generally +admitted." Lady Shelley, from whom I have just quoted, says that her +husband's father, "from his earliest boyhood to his latest years, +whatever varieties of opinion may have marked his intellectual course, +never for a moment swerved from the noble doctrine of unbounded +liberty of thought and speech. To him the rights of intellect were +sacred; and all kings, teachers, or priests who sought to circumscribe +the activity of discussion, and to check by force the full development +of the reasoning powers, he regarded as enemies to the independence of +man, who did their utmost to destroy the spiritual essence of our +being." + +To Shelley's able advocacy, and to his appeals against the stamping +out of political and social truths opposed to custom, particularly the +celebrated letter to Lord Ellenborough, it cannot be denied that the +toleration now enjoyed in Great Britain owes much. + +Shelley was one of those who most earnestly deprecated punishment by +death. In his early years, if a man stole a sheep, or shot a hare, +committed forgery or larceny, was a recusant catholic or a wizard, +there was, on his conviction, but one penalty meted out--death. To +Shelley's sensitive nature, this painted and tinged everything around +him with an aspect of blood. In one of his political pamphlets, +summoning all his energies, he depicts in fearful colors, the depraved +example of an execution--how it brutalized the race, and how it was +the duty of man not to commit murder on his fellow-man, in the name of +the laws. The abolition of the first of these, he stated that +reformers should propose on the eve of a great political change. He +considered that the punishment by death harbored revenge and +retaliation, which legislation should be the means of eradicating, and +he urged that + + "Governments which derive their institutions from the + existence of circumstances of barbarism and violence, with + some rare exceptions, perhaps, are bloody in proportion as + they are despotic, and form the manners of their subjects to + a sympathy with their own spirit." + +In England, as in many other countries, capital punishment is now only +employed on conviction of murder or high treason. In Spain and Italy +it was totally abolished, on the foundation of their young republics. +Thus have the labors of Shelley, and other reformers for the good of +humanity, aided to extinguish crime made law. + +Cruelty to animals was another reform agitated by Shelley. His love +for the animal kingdom and hatred of blood-shedding, was so great, +that he personally carried the passion to such an extent as to become +a vegetarian, and endeavored to induce others to be the same, in an +admirable argument of some length in the notes to "Queen Mab." + +The subject of the Rights of Women is approached and expatiated on, +perhaps learnedly, by individuals utterly incompetent to deal with the +question. Such persons, frequently armed with Sunday-school +platitudes, believing in the inferiority of women, consequent on the +supposed fall, and doubtless with heads paved with good intentions, as +a certain place is said to be, do more harm than good to the cause. +This is not wanted, and is worse than useless. To found a real +republic on a solid basis, it can be legislated for only by removing +the ancient landmarks by a gradual process, and coming face to face +with a new order of things, without bias or prejudice borrowed from +the past. Thus that noble woman, Mary Wolstonecraft, as well as John +Stuart Mill, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and numerous others, have treated +this all-important question, which cannot be shirked by the race. True +reformers ask: What was the condition of the sex in the past? Look +down the revolving cycles and note. In ancient Egypt, woman in the +upper classes was almost the equal of man, and although, like +Cleopatra, she could wield the sceptre, yet in the lower her condition +was wretched; in Asia, a mere slave and object of Zenana lust; in +savagedom, a beast of burthen. In Rome and Greece, Shelley shall tell +the story: + + "Among the ancient Greeks the male sex, one half of the + human race, received the highest cultivation and refinement; + whilst the other, so far as intellect is concerned, were + educated as slaves, and were raised but few degrees in all + that related to moral or intellectual excellence above the + condition of savages.... The Roman women held a higher + consideration in society, and were esteemed almost as the + equal partners with their husbands in the regulation of + domestic economy and the education of their children." + +Regard the incidents of a Jewish wooing, in which the woman had no +voice, and of the marriage, the infernal punishments for adultery, and +the accounts of the seraglios of the Hebrew kings equalled only by +Turkish harems, and some of the passages in the inspired Book of +Numbers, for instance, in which the horrible truth is frequently too +evident, and only equalled by the fact that after lust had played out +its passion, unfortunate women, taken in captivity, could, by divine +command, be turned adrift to rot or starve. In Christian Feudalism we +find nothing much better. If I have read history correctly, and I may +be wrong--the upper-grade women in mediaeval Europe, who were adored, +not with love, but with lascivious and sensual worship, by Christian +knights and troubadours, and who, like criminals to the halter, were +forced, rarely with their own consent, into the arms of men they +disliked or had never seen, or were placed in conventual houses +against their wills. Of the lower-grade women, I need only offer one +example--and that is sufficient to show their awful degradation; the +French and German feudal lord had the right of _cuissage_, or, in +plain English, the embraces of his serf-retainer's bride on the +marriage night. + +Shelley considered that in consequence of all this, men had forgotten +their duties to the other sex, and that even at the time at which he +lived woman was still in great social bondage, improperly educated, +tied down by restrictions, and refused participation in the higher +positions of labor. He called not in vain, against the inequality of +the sexes, and asserted that woman's position must and should be +altered by forgetting the tyranny of the past, and, be determined, for +the good of the future. + +We should be rejoiced that eloquent exponents of the abominations of +former ages, the evils of the present, and the proper position of the +future, are now hard at work. The "Women's Rights" party is up +teaching men their duties on every continent; in distant India, the +Brahmo Somaj is battling, not vainly, against the horrors of the +Zenana, and in conservative England, which has been stormed, and the +forlorn hope is now taking possession of the citadel; everywhere it is +the same. Yes, woman, thanks to Shelley and the reformers, is about to +be emancipated and free; free to earn her living, how, where, and when +she likes; the equal of man, who shall no longer play such fantastic +tricks as he did in the past, in proof of his dignity and +superiority. The fourth of July is not long past and gone; I trust +that in the dim vista of the future, our descendants will keep a +national holiday, or a day to be set apart on which shall be +celebrated the "Declaration of the Independence of Women," and then, +perhaps, Shelley's description of woman in the "Episychidion" will be +more apparent: + + "Seraph of heaven! too gentle to be human, + Veiling beneath the radiant form of woman + All that is unsupportable in thee, + Of light, and love, and immortality." + +I now approach a very delicate portion of my essay: the question of +the marriage relation. By many it is scouted with much virtuous +indignation, but I conceive that the liberal, who, like too many, dare +not discuss this matter in its broadest and widest aspects, should be +stigmatized as unworthy of the name. Christ is reported to have urged +the admirers of his ethical system to take up their cross and follow +him, leaving father, mother, wife, children, and all they may +have--thus Shelley acted, and it bears as equally pregnant lessons to +free thinkers as it did to those Syrian fishermen. Oh, that liberals +had as much "faith" in the truth, in the efficacy of their cause, as +the first Christians are said to have had in the teachings of that +Christ whom they regarded not as a Divinity, but as a son of God, as +we to-day are sons of God, of the most high! Oh, that we could carry +that "faith" into our beliefs, and the determination to be stopped at +no obstacle which may bar the progress of truth, which must conquer in +the end! + +The favorite theme in the writings of Shelley is "Eros," love of the +individual, of the race, of nature, and in this he follows Christ, in +whose system of Philosophy, Love is ever the pre-dominating idea which +permeates mankind with its beneficial effects, and will, when the +bastard tinsel with which the truths of the Nazarene are hidden, be +replaced by that pure gold which it is impossible to trace in the +enunciations of any previous philosopher. This subject is always +present to Shelley, and he thus appeals in one of his poems to the + + "Great Spirit, deepest Love! + Which rulest and dost move + All things which live, and are." + +In another place he inquires-- + + "What is love? Ask him who lives, what is life? Ask him who + adores, what is God?" + +And in the same essay he describes love as + + "The bond and sanction which connects man with man, and with + everything which exists." + +Elsewhere he points out that the attainment of love + + "urges forth the power of man to arrest the faintest shadow + of that without the possession of which there is no rest nor + respite to the heart over which it rules, (and that) so soon + as this want or power is dead, man becomes the living + sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk + of what once he was." + +Of such was Shelley's philosophy of love, and I would ask if it be +conceivable that the abominable calumny prompted by theological virus, +that he kept a seraglio, as his friend Leigh Hunt informs us was +reported, had any real existence. Shelley was too pure for any such +idea as that of promiscuous sexual intercourse to be acted on by +himself; his life, which lies open before us, refutes the diabolical +invention. The fact was, that at the early age of nineteen he married +Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a retired tavern keeper, a woman +without soul and that congeniality of disposition which a man +overflowing with the pulses of genius should have chosen. After a +wretched existence without intellectual sympathy, and on the advice of +her father, who did not agree with his ideas on religion, they parted +by mutual consent, never to meet again. Shelley about this period met +his second wife, a woman of the highest powers of mind and charm of +body, Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin, the authoress of _Frankenstein_ and +other works, daughter of William Godwin, the novelist, and author of +_Political Justice_ and Mary Wolstonecraft, the gifted writer of _The +Rights of Women_. We are told by Lady Shelley that, "To her, as they +met one eventful day in St. Pancras churchyard, by her mother's grave, +Bysshe, in burning words, poured forth the tale of his wild past, how +he had suffered, how he had been misled, and how, if supported by her +love, he hoped, in future years, to enroll his name with the wise and +good, who had done battle for their fellow-men and been true through +all adverse storms to the cause of humanity. Unhesitatingly she placed +her hand in his, and linked her fortune with his own." + +After the death of his first wife, on the solicitation of Godwin, who +was anxious for the landed interests of his grandchildren, a _legal_ +union was performed. After looking on this episode, in the most +charitable manner, I am confident the sternest moralist cannot but +"acknowledge that the passionate love of a boy should not be held a +serious blemish, in a man whose subsequent life was exceptional in +virtue and beneficence." + +Believing, as I have explained, in the divinity of love, Shelley +regarded everything in the relation of the sexes with the most intense +horror, which was not consistent with "freedom;" and by which he most +certainly did not signify the license attributed by many. When he +looked around and saw the withering blast of forced marriages, +conjugal hatred and prostitution, can we be astonished at his +passionately exclaiming: + + "Even love is sold; the solace of all woe + Is turned to deadliest agony, old age + Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms, + And youth's corrupted impulses prepare + A life of horror from the blighting bane + Of commerce, whilst the pestilence that springs + From unenjoying sensualism, has filled + All human life with hydra-headed woes?" + +In a most important essay bearing on this passage, which should be +widely studied, he observes: + + "Love is inevitably consequent upon the perception of + loveliness. Love withers under constraint; its very essence + is liberty; it is compatible neither with obedience, + jealousy, nor fear; it is then most pure, perfect, and + unlimited, where its votaries live in confidence, equality, + and unreserve." + +He then urges: + + "A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they + love each other. Any law which should bind them to + cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their + affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most + unworthy of toleration; and there is nothing _immoral_ in + this separation, for love is free. To promise forever to + love the same woman, is not less absurd than to promise to + believe the same creed." + +He states categorically that + + "The present system of constraint does no more, in the + majority of instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies. + Persons of delicacy and virtue, unhappily united to those + whom they find it impossible to love, spend the loveliest + season of their lives in unproductive efforts to appear + otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of + their partners or the welfare of their mutual offspring; and + that the early education of their children takes its color + from the squabbles of the parents. They are nursed in a + systematic school of ill-humor, violence, and falsehood, and + the conviction that wedlock is indissoluble holds out the + strongest of all temptations to the perverse. They indulge + without restraint in acrimony and all the little tyrannies + of domestic life, when they know that their victim is + without appeal. If this connection were put on a rational + basis, each would be assured that habitual ill-temper would + terminate in separation, and would check this vicious and + dangerous propensity." + +He conceived from the re-arrangement of the marriage relation by +greater facility of divorce than was to be had sixty years ago,[F] + + "A fit and natural arrangement would result." + +[Footnote F: It should be remembered that in Shelley's day divorce was +obtainable by the most wealthy only, at an enormous cost and by a +lengthy process, precluding the slightest opportunity for the middle +and poorer classes to avail themselves thereof.] + +Shelley by no means asserts that the intercourse would be promiscuous, +but on the contrary believed that from the relation of parent to child +a union is generally of longer duration, placed on such a footing, and +marked above all others with generosity and self-devotion. + +We are on the eve of great religious changes, which must consequently +disturb all the social relations. Historical Christianity still holds +to her old text, of marriage being a sacrament, and therefore +indissoluble. The founder of Comtism developing this dogma, urges that +after the death of either husband or wife the duty of the survivor is +not to re-marry. Great Britain and many of the American States have +conceded greater freedom in divorce, so as to carry out in a large +measure the arguments of Shelley, while the theory of what is termed +the "sovereignty of the individual" is propounded by the leaders of +the free love party, as a cure for the present and former +difficulties. + +Whatever may be the outcome of the present widespread discussions I +know not, but I have belief in the supreme intelligence and in +humanity, and am certain that neither the home nor the race will +suffer, but that out of all this agitation will come more refined +sentiment and truer morality. + +I must now conclude. It has been said that there are two things in +which the professors of all theologies have agreed-"To persecute all +other sects, and plunder their own." Shelley, who subscribed to no +theology, was persecuted by them during his entire life, but he ever +forgave his persecutors, who he was confident acted through ignorance +of his real motives, and he tells us: + + "I have thought to appeal to something in common and + unburden my inmost soul to them. I have found my language + misunderstood, like one in a distant and savage land. The + more opportunities they have afforded me for experience, the + wider has appeared the interval between us, and to a greater + distance have the points of sympathy been withdrawn. With a + spirit ill-fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and + feeble through its tenderness, I have everywhere sought + sympathy, and have found only repulse and disappointment." + +Do _we_ misunderstand him? I think not, and William Howitt, a +representative of the people, shall answer for them: "For liberty of +every kind he was ready to die. For knowledge, and truth, and +kindness, he desired only to live. He was a rare instance of the union +of the finest moral nature and the finest genius. If he erred, the +world took ample revenge upon him for it, while he conferred in return +his amplest blessing on the world. It was long a species of heresy to +mention his name in society; that is passing fast away. It was next +said that he never could become popular, and therefore the mischief he +could do was limited. He _has_ become popular, and the good he is +likely to do will be unlimited. The people read him, though we may +wonder at it, and they comprehend him." + +This estimate is not overrated, for, having confidence in his mission +to humanity, he was fortified by the belief of his existing as an +indestructible portion of interminable nature and the universal mind, +which in all high intelligences lives through the ages, not only in +the individual consciousness of the spirit, but in that immortality of +soul or mind, which lives in the race. + +He hated the superstitions of Christian Fetishism and tyranny over the +intellect, but loved Christ and the other philosophers with a genuine +affection; he loved humanity, and was ever fond of examining its +highest phases, as, for instance, through the doctrines of perfect +equality in the sexes--yet he recognised that sudden changes were +prejudicial before sufficient progress had been accomplished. "To +destroy, you must replace." Justice he considered the sole guide, +reason and duty the only law. His morality was not that of pharasaical +tartuffes, nor of prudish knickerbockers, who with wide phylacteries, +sit in the high places to be seen of men. He only combatted evil +principles and fought hard in favor of good. + +He has been quoted as being too transcendental; he may be to dullards +with imperfect reasoning faculties, or theologians, who only see +through fanatical and green-monsterish spectacles, but to men who +have a _live_ philosophy equally adapted to modern as well as ancient +thought, he is as clear as the noon-day sun. All that is required, to +comprehend Percy Bysshe Shelley, is integralism of that high order +which has ever believed in the ultimate perfectibility of human +nature, and looked "forward to a period when a new golden age would +return to earth, when all the different creeds and systems of the +world would be amalgamated into one, crime disappear, and man, freed +from shackles, civil and religious, bow before the throne 'of his own +awless soul,' or 'of the power unknown,'" whose veil it is the +ambition of theosophy to raise for humanity, and remain the +"inscrutable" no longer. + +I have completed my task, and with humility I make the statement, +knowing that before me are many who could have performed it as +completely as I have crudely. I look upon my essay, in which I have +treated my subject popularly, with intention, as a beacon, whence a +little light may be shed dimly, hoping that others, better qualified, +will bring you face to face with the full rays. + +I have shown you Shelley in his writings, his life and poetry, only +where they trench on his philosophical and reform ideas--I could have +related to you much about his inflexibly moral, generous, and +unselfishly benevolent character--his pure, gentle and loveable +existence--his utter abnegation of self, learnt from the hermetic +philosophy, and his despisal of transitory legislative honors--how he, +the heir to thousands of dollars annually, and a baronetage, threw +aside pecuniary considerations for love of the truth and +benevolence,[G] and how, therefrom, he was often nearly dying of +hunger in the streets. I could have treated him simply as a poet, full +of experienced impetuosity, subtlety of expression, and precision of +verse, but I have aimed to exhibit one side of his immortality to you, +which lives in and by the race, for humanity. + +[Footnote G: "In his heart there was nothing depraved or unsound; +those who had opportunities of knowing him best, tell us that his life +was spent in the contemplation of nature, in arduous study, or in acts +of kindness and affection. A man of learning, who shared the poverty +so often attached to it, enjoyed from him at one period a pension of a +hundred pounds sterling a year, and continued to enjoy it till fortune +rendered it superfluous. To another man of letters, in similar +circumstances, he presented fourteen hundred pounds; and many other +acts like these are on record to his immortal honor. Himself a frugal +and abstemious ascetic, by saving and economising, he was able to +assist the industrious poor--and they had frequent cause to bless his +name."--_National Magazine._] + +Cut short in the youth of manhood, who can tell what Percy Bysshe +Shelley might, not have become, living for us even perhaps at this +moment? What need we care, though, for does not the "Empire of the +dead increase of the living from age to age?" Shelley's terrestrial +body may have been cast up by the waves on the lonely Italian shore, +in sweet companionship with the souls of Keats and Sophocles. His +mundane elements, purified through the fire, may have returned to +their kindred elements, and been + + "made one with Nature, where is heard + His voice in all her music, from the moan + Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird; + He is a presence to be felt and known, + In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, + Spreading itself where'er that Power move, + Which has withdrawn his being to its own; + Which wields the world with never-wearied love, + Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above." + +His cinereal ashes may lie beneath the cypresses, near the dust of the +"Adonais" of his muse, under Roman sod, and where he said: + + "To see the sun shining on its bright grass, and hear the + whispering of the wind among the leaves of the trees, which + have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is + stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, + mostly of women and young children, who, buried there, we + might, if we were to die, desire a sleep they seem to + sleep." + +All this may have happened, but why need we repine, for as eternal as +the sea, as infinite as Nature, and as the phoenix, he revivifying +lives, transmigrated and transfused into humanity, for with certainty +we know that + + "He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he." + +Immortal amid immortals, his spirit in communion with the Most High, +fully conscious in its individuality--immortal amid mortals, his place +need never be refilled, for he stands betwixt the old and the +new--immortal amid the sons of song, do poets still breathe his divine +afflatus--immortal amid philosophers and the regenerators of the race, +with Buddha, with Moses, with Socrates, with Mahomet, with +Christ--immortal amid the noble, the virtuous, the good, the +wise--immortal as when living here, for from spirit-spheres we hear +him bidding us repeat: + + "Nor let us weep that our delight is fled + Far from these carrion-kites that scream below; + He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; + Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now. + Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow + Back to the burning fountain whence it came, + A portion of the Eternal, which must glow + Through time and change, unquenchably the same," + + * * * * * + + "Peace! peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep-- + He hath awaken'd from the dream of life-- + 'Tis we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep + With phantoms an unprofitable strife; + And in mad trance, strike with our spirits' knife, + Invulnerable nothings!" + + +FINIS CORONAT OPUS. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher +and Reformer, by Charles Sotheran + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY AS A *** + +***** This file should be named 16872.txt or 16872.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/8/7/16872/ + +Produced by Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State +University Libraries, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Sankar +Viswanathan, and Distributed Proofreaders Europe at +http://dp.rastko.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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