{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_16872/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_16872","id":"gutenberg_16872","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16872","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Biographies","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822 -- Philosophy","Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792-1822 -- Political and social views"],"text":"Produced by Digital & Multimedia Center, Michigan State\nUniversity Libraries, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Sankar\nViswanathan, and Distributed Proofreaders Europe at\nhttp://dp.rastko.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                         PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY\n\n                                 AS A\n\n                       PHILOSOPHER AND REFORMER.\n\n\n                                  BY\n\n                           CHARLES SOTHERAN.\n\n\n\n                    _INCLUDING AN ORIGINAL SONNET_\n\n                                  BY\n\n                        CHARLES W. FREDERICKSON\n\n\n\n                             TOGETHER WITH\n\n             A PORTRAIT OF SHELLEY AND A VIEW OF HIS TOMB.\n\n\n\n    \"Let us See the Truth, whatever that may be.\"--_Shelley_, 1822.\n\n\n\n                              _NEW YORK_.\n\n                CHARLES P. SOMERBY, 139 EIGHTH STREET.\n\n                                 1876.\n\n\n\n\nEntered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876,\n\nby Charles Sotheran,\n\nIn the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nTO\n\nCHARLES WILLIAM FREDERICKSON,\n\nOF NEW YORK.\n\n\nDEAR FRIEND:\n\nAs in ancient times, none were allowed participation in the Higher\nMysteries, without having proved their fitness for the reception of\nesoteric truth, so in these days only those seem to be permitted to\nbreathe the hidden essence in Shelley, who have realized the acute\nphases of spiritality. Among the few who have enjoyed these bi-fold\ngifts, none have had more fortuitous experience than yourself, to whom\nI now take the liberty of dedicating this volume.\n\nYours fraternally,\n\nCHARLES SOTHERAN.\n\n_December_, 1875.\n\n[Illustration: VIEW OF SHELLEY'S TOMB, IN THE\nPROTESTANT CEMETERY, AT ROME. FROM A SKETCH BY A.J. STRUTT.]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"To see the sun shining on its bright grass, and hear the whispering\nof the wind among the leaves of the trees, which have overgrown the\ntomb of Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth,\nand to mark the tombs, mostly of women and young children, who, buried\nthere, we might, if we were to die, desire a sleep they seem to\nsleep.\"--SHELLEY.\n\n\n\n\nTo the Memory\n\nOF\n\nPERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY,\n\nBY\n\nCHARLES W. FREDERICKSON.\n\n\n    Amid the ruins of majestic Rome,\n    That told the story of its countless years,\n    I stood, and wondered by the silent dust\n    Of the \"Eternal Child.\" Oh, Shelley!\n    To me it was not given to know thy face,\n    Save through the mirrored pages of thy works;\n    Those whisper'd words of wood and wave, are to mine ears,\n    Sweet as the music of ocean's roar, that breaks on sheltered shores.\n    Thy sterner words of Justice, Love and Truth,\n    Will to the struggling soul a beacon prove,\n    And barrier against the waves of tyranny and craft.\n    Then rest, \"_Cor Cordium_,\" and though thy life\n    Was brief in point of years, its memory will outlive\n    The column'd monuments around thy tomb.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nNEW YORK, _Nov_. 25, 1875.\n\nMY DEAR SOTHERAN:--\n\nThe copy of the lines on our Beloved-Poet, which you requested, are\nentirely at your service--make what use of them you please.\n\nYours, sincerely,\n\nC.W. FREDERICKSON.\n\n\n\n\nPERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, AS A PHILOSOPHER AND REFORMER.\n\nA PAPER READ BEFORE THE NEW YORK LIBERAL CLUB, ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 6TH,\n1875.\n\n    \"Let us see the Truth, whatever that may be.\"--SHELLEY, 1822.\n\n\n_Mr. Vice-President and Members of the Liberal Club_:\n\n\"The Blood of the Martyr is the Seed of the Church.\" Persecution ever\nfails in accomplishing its desired ends, and as a rule lays the\nfoundations broad and deep for the triumph of the objects of and\nprinciples inculcated by the persecuted.\n\nDriven from their homes by fanatical tyranny, not permitted to worship\nas they thought fit, a band of noble and earnest, yet on some points\nmistaken men, were, a little over two hundred and fifty years ago,\nlanded on this continent from the good ship \"Mayflower.\" The \"Pilgrim\nFathers\" were, in their native land, refused liberty of conscience and\nfreedom of discussion; their apparent loss was our gain, for if it had\nnot been for that despotism, and the corresponding re-action, which\nmade those stern old zealots give to others many of the inalienable\nrights of liberty denied to themselves, you and I could not to-night\nperhaps be allowed to meet face to face, without fear, to discuss\nmetaphysical and social questions in their broadest aspects, without\nthe civil or theological powers intervening to close our mouths.\n\n\"Fragile in health and frame; of the purest habits in morals; full of\ndevoted generosity and universal kindness; glowing with ardor to attain\nwisdom; resolved at every personal sacrifice to do right; burning with a\ndesire for affection and sympathy,\" a boy-under-graduate of Oxford,\ndescribed as of tall, delicate, and fragile figure, with large and\nlively eyes, with expressive, beautiful and feminine features, with head\ncovered with long, brown hair, of gracefulness and simplicity of manner,\nthe heir to a title and the representation of one of the most ancient\nEnglish families, which numbered Sir Philip Sidney on its roll of\nillustrious names, just sixty-four years ago, and in this nineteenth\ncentury, for no licentiousness, violence, or dishonor, but, for his\nrefusal to criminate himself or inculpate friends, was, without trial,\nexpelled by learned divines from his university for writing an\nargumentative thesis, which, if it had been the work of some Greek\nphilosopher, would have been hailed by his judges as a fine specimen of\nprofound analytical abstruseness--for that expulsion are we the debtors\nto theological charity and tolerance for \"Queen Mab.\"\n\nExcommunicated by a mercenary and abject priesthood, cast off by a\nsavage father, the admirer of that gloomy theology founded by the\nmurderer of Michael Servetus, and charged by his jealous brother\nwriters as one of the founders of a Satanic School, for neither\nimmorality of life nor breach of the parental relation, but for\nheterodoxy to an expiring system of dogmatism, and for acting on and\nasserting the right of man to think and judge for himself, a father\nwas to have two children torn from him, in the sacred name of law and\njustice, by the principal adviser of a dying madman, \"Defender of the\nFaith, by Law Established,\" and by us despised as the self-willed\ntyrant, who lost America and poured out human blood like water to\ngratify his lust of power. By that Lord Chancellor whose cold,\nimpassive statue has a place in Westminster Abbey, where Byron's was\nrefused admittance, and whose memory, when that stone has crumbled\ninto dust, will live as one who furnished an example for execrable\ntyranny over the parental tie, and that Lord Eldon whom an outraged\nfather curses in imperishable verse:\n\n    \"By thy most impious hell, and all its terrors;\n        By all the grief, the madness and the guilt\n     Of thine impostures, which must be _their_ errors,\n        That sand on which thy crumbling power is built;\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n     By all the hate which checks a father's love;\n        By all the scorn which kills a father's care;\n     By those most impious hands that dared remove\n        Nature's high bounds--by thee, and by despair.\n\n    \"Yes, the despair which bids a father groan,\n        And cry, 'my children are no longer mine.\n     The blood within those veins may be mine own,\n        But, tyrant, their polluted souls are thine.'\n\n    \"I curse thee, though I hate thee not. O slave!\n        If thou could'st quench the earth consuming hell\n     Of which thou art a demon, on thy grave\n        This curse should be a blessing. Fare thee well.\"\n\nSad as it is to contemplate any human being in his agony making use of\nsuch language to another; and however much we may sympathize with the\npoet, yet we cannot but have inwardly a feeling of rejoicing; for, if\nit had not been for this unheard of villainy, we should probably never\nhave had the other magnificent poetry and prose of Percy Bysshe\nShelley composed during his self-imposed ostracism, and which furnish\nsuch glorious thoughts for the philosopher, and keen trenchant weapons\nfor the reformer.\n\nHave any of my hearers ever stood, in the calm of a summer evening, in\nShelley's native land, listening to the lovely warble of the\nnightingale, making earth joyful with its unpremeditated strains, and\nthe woods re-echo with its melody? Or gazed upwards with anxious ken\ntowards the skylark careering in the \"blue ether,\" far above this\nsublunary sphere of gross, sensual earth, there straining after\nimmortality, and\n\n       \"Like a poet hidden,\n          In the light of thought,\n        Singing hymns unbidden,\n          Till the world is wrought\n    To sympathy with hopes and fears, it heeded not,\"\n\npouring out such bursts of song as to make one almost worship and\ncredit the fables, taught in childhood at our mothers' knees, of the\nangelic symphonies of heavenly choirs. Such was the poetry of Shelley;\nand as the music of the nightingale or the skylark is far exceeding in\nexcellence that of the other members of the feathered kingdom, so does\nShelley rank as a poet far above all other poets, making even the poet\nof nature, the great Wordsworth himself, confess that Shelley was\nindeed the master of harmonious verse in our modern literature. It is\nbroadly laid down in the Marvinian theory that all poets are insane. I\nwould much like to break a lance with the learned Professor of\nPsychology and Medical Jurisprudence; but as the overthrow of this\ndogma does not come within the scope of my essay, I would suggest to\nthose who may have been influenced by that paper to read Shelley's\n\"Defence of Poetry.\" I shall quote two extracts therefrom, each\npertinent to my subject. The first describes the function of the poet:\n\n     \"But poets, or those who imagine and express this\n     indestructible order, are not only the authors of language\n     and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary,\n     and painting; they are the institutors of laws, and the\n     founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of\n     life, and the teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity\n     with the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehension\n     of the agencies of the invisible world, which is called\n     religion.\"\n\nThe other is in extension of the same idea, and concludes the essay:\n\n     \"Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration;\n     the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts\n     upon the present; the words which express what they\n     understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel\n     not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but\n     moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the\n     world.\"\n\nI have no hesitation in saying that for treating Shelley as a\nphilosopher, I shall be attacked with great \"positivism\" by the\ndisciples[A] of manufacturers of bran-new Brummagen philosophies dug\nout of Aristotelian and other depths to which are added new thoughts,\nnot their own. The reason which David Masson offers in his \"Recent\nBritish Philosophy\" for placing Alfred Tennyson among the same class\nis equally applicable now:\n\n[Footnote A: If Diogenes or Socrates, leaving High Olympus and sweet\nconverse with the immortals, were to condescend to visit New York some\nFriday evening. I am sadly afraid they would be astounded at many of\ntheir would-be brothers in philosophy. On seeing the travestie of\nancient academies and groves where the schools used to congregate, the\ndialogues consisting of bald atheism under sheep's clothing to trap\nthe unwary, and termed \"The _Religion_ of Humanity,\" of abuse and\npersonality in lieu of argument, of buffoonery called wit, of airing\npet hobbies alien to the subject instead of disputating, of shouting\nvulgar claptrap instead of rhetoric, etc.--I sadly fear these stout\nold Greeks, having power for the nonce, would, throwing philosophy to\nthe dogs in a moment of paroxysmal indignation, despite physiognomies\ntrained to resemble their own, have these fellows casked up in tubs\nwithout lanterns, but with the appropriate \"snuffers,\" fit emblems of\ntheir faiths, and dropped far outside Sandy Hook. A proper finale to\nthe vapid utterance made by one of these gentry that all \"Reformers\nshould be annihilated,\" Imagine Plato or Epicurus offering such a\nsuggestion. O tempora! O mores!]\n\n\"To those who are too strongly possessed with our common habit of\nclassifying writers into kinds, as historians, poets, scientific and\nspeculative writers, and so on, it may seem strange to include Mr.\nTennyson in this list. But as I have advisedly referred to Wordsworth\nas one of the representatives and powers of British philosophy in the\nage immediately past, so I advisedly named Tennyson as succeeding him\nin the same character. Though it is not power of speculative reason\nalone that constitutes a poet, is it not felt that the worth of a poet\nessentially is measured by the depth and amount of his speculative\nreason? Even popularly, do we not speak of every great poet as the\nexponent of the spirit of his age? What else can this mean than that\nthe philosophy of his age, its spirit and heart in relation to all the\ngreat elemental problems, find expression in his verse? Hence I ought\nto include other poets in this list, and more particularly Mr.\nBrowning and Mrs. Browning, and the late Mr. Clough. But let the\nmention of Mr. Tennyson suggest such other names, and stand as a\nsufficient protest against our absurd habit of omitting such in a\nconnection like the present. As if, forsooth, when a writer passed\ninto verse, he were to be abandoned as utterly out of calculable\nrelationship to all on this side of the boundary, and no account were\nto be taken of his thoughts and doings, except in a kind of curious\nappendix at the end of the general register? What if philosophy, at a\ncertain extreme range, and of a certain kind, tends of necessity to\npass into poesy, and can hardly help being passionate and metrical? If\nso, might not the omission of poets, purely as being such, from a\nconspectus of the speculative writers of any time, lead to erroneous\nconclusions, by giving an undue prominence in the estimate of all such\nphilosophizing as could most easily, by its nature, refrain from\npassionate or poetic expression? Thus, would philosophy, or one kind\nof philosophy in comparison with another, have seemed to had been in\nsuch a diminished condition in Britain about the year 1830, if critics\nhad been in the habit of counting Wordsworth in the philosophic list\nas well as Coleridge, Mackintosh, Bentham, and James Mill? Was there\nnot more of what you might call Spinozaism in Wordsworth than even in\nColeridge, who spoke more of Spinoza? But that hardly needs all this\njustification, so far as Mr. Tennyson is concerned, of our reckoning\n_him_ in the present list. He that would exclude In \"Memoriam\" (1850)\nand \"Maud\" (1855) from the conspectus of the philosophical literature\nof our time, has yet to learn what philosophy is. Whatever else \"In\nMemoriam\" may be, it is a manual for many of the latest hints and\nquestions in British Metaphysics.\"\n\nThe soi-disant philosophers and classifiers of the sciences and arts\nwho will not permit such poets as Shelley and Tennyson to be put in\nthe category of philosophers, remind one very forcibly of the passage\nin Macbeth: \"The earth has bubbles, as the water has, and these are of\nthem!\"\n\nAs a poet and not as a poet, as an acknowledged legislator for the\nrace, as a philosopher, (a searcher after, or lover of wisdom) and as\na political and social reformer, it is my intention to treat Shelley\nthis evening, and having finished my prefatory remarks, will now\nregard him in those attributes which peculiarly should enshrine him in\nyour hearts and mine.\n\nThe philosophical theories of advanced thinkers are always tinged with\nthe reflex of that which called them forth, or impeded them in their\ndevelopment, consequently social bondage and the \"anarch custom\" being\nalways present to Shelley, the great idea ever uppermost to him was\nthat true happiness is only attainable in perfect freedom: the\natrocious system of fagging, now almost extinct in the English Public\nSchools and the tyrannical venality of ushers, deeply impressed\nthemselves on the mind of Shelley, and he tells us, in the beautiful\nlines to his wife, of the remembrance of his endeavors to overthrow\nthese abominations having failed, of flying from \"the harsh and\ngrating strife of tyrants and of foes\" and of the high and noble\nresolves which inspired him:\n\n       \"And then I clasp'd my hands, and look'd around;\n        But none were near to mock my streaming eyes,\n        Which pour'd their warm drops on the sunny ground.\n        So, without shame, I spake: 'I will be wise,\n        And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies\n        Such power; for I grow weary to behold\n        The selfish and the strong still tyrannize\n        Without reproach or check.' I then controll'd\n    My tears; my heart grew calm; and I was meek and bold.\n\n       \"And from that hour did I, with earnest thought,\n        Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore;\n        Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught,\n        I cared to learn; but from that secret store\n        Wrought linked armor for my soul, before\n        It might walk forth, to war among mankind.\n        Thus, power and hope were strengthen'd more and more\n        Within me, till there came upon my mind\n    A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined.\"\n\nThe fruits born of this seed are discernible in every line of his\nworks. While having all reverence for his college companions,\nAristotle, Aeschylus, and Demosthenes, his mind instinctively turns\ntowards the deemed heretical works of the later French philosophers,\nD'Holbach, Condillac, La Place, Rousseau, the encyclopaedists, and\nother members of that school. His intellect he furbishes with stores\nof logic and of chemistry, in which his greatest love was to\nexperimentalize; of botany and astronomy, in which he was more than a\nmere adept; from Hume, too, whose essay on \"Miracles,\" wrong as it is\nin the main on many important points, was one of the alphas of his\ncreed--and with deep draughts from his great instructor, Plato, of\nwhom he always spoke with the greatest adoration, as, for instance, in\nthe preface to the Symposium:\n\n     \"Plato is eminently the greatest among the Greek\n     philosophers; and from, or rather perhaps through him and\n     his master, Socrates, have proceeded those emanations of\n     moral and metaphysical knowledge, on which a long series and\n     an incalculable variety of popular superstitions have\n     sheltered their absurdities from the slow contempt of\n     mankind.\"\n\nIt is desirable to call attention to the great minds from whom the\nstudent of the early part of this century could only cull his\nknowledge--he had no Spencer and no Mill, at whose feet to sit--he had\nin science none of the conclusions of Darwin, of Huxley, of Tyndall,\nof Murchison, of Lyell, to refer to, and yet I think, that the careful\nreader will, like myself, find prefigured in Shelley's works much of\nthat of which the world is in full possession to-day, and which the\nmystical Occultists, Rosicrucians, and Cabalists have now, and have\never had, conjoined to a mysterious command over the active hidden\nmaterial and spiritual powers in the infinite domain of nature.\n\nThe idea of the _Supreme Power_ or _God_, as emanating from Shelley,\nis one of the most sublime to be found in the pages of metaphysical\nlearning at the command of ordinary mortals. By many it may be\nconsidered only a vague pantheism; yet, rightly regarded in a\nreconciliative spirit, it is of such an universal character as to\nharmonize with not only Deism, Theism and Polytheism, but even\nAtheistical Materialism. Listen to the following, which I select out\nof numerous examples, as a finger-post for others who seek the living\nsprings of undefiled truth, as in Shelley:\n\n     \"Whosoever is free from the contamination of luxury and\n     license may go forth to the fields and to the woods,\n     inhaling joyous renovation from the breath of Spring, and\n     catching from the odors and sounds of autumn some diviner\n     mood of sweetest sadness, which improves the softened heart.\n     Whosoever is no deceiver and destroyer of his fellow-men--no\n     liar, no flatterer, no murderer--may walk among his species,\n     deriving, from the communion with all which they contain of\n     beautiful or majestic, some intercourse with the Universal\n     God. Whosoever has maintained with his own heart the\n     strictest correspondence of confidence, who dares to examine\n     and to estimate every imagination which suggests itself to\n     his mind--whosoever is that which he designs to _become_,\n     and only aspires to that which the divinity of his own\n     nature shall consider and approve--he has already seen God.\"\n\nCan any one cavil with these beautiful expressions, this outpouring of\ngenius? If such there be, his heart and understanding must be sadly\nwarped, any appeal would be in vain, for him the Veil of Isis could\nnever be lifted. After a careful study of Shelley's works I can find\nnothing to warrant the execration formerly levelled at his head, not\neven in the \"Refutation of Deism,\" that remarkable argument in the\nSocratic style between Eusebes and Theosophus in which, as in all his\nprose works, is displayed keen discernment, logical acuteness, and\nclose analytical reasoning not surpassed by the greatest\nphilosophers--most certainly his notions of God were not in unison\nwith the current theological ideas, and it was this daring rebellion\nagainst the popular faith, the chief support of custom which caused\nall the trouble. If ever he attempted to show the non-existence of\nDeity, his negation was solely directed against the gross human\nnotions of a creative power, and _ergo_ a succession of finite\ncreative powers _ad infinitum_, or a Personal God who has only been\nacknowledged in the popular teachings as an autocratic tyrant, and as\nShelley puts it in his own language:\n\n     \"A venerable old man, seated on a throne of clouds, his\n     breast the theatre of various passions, analogous to those\n     of humanity, his will changeable and uncertain as that of an\n     earthly king.\"\n\nNot to be compared with the far different eternal and infinite.\n\n    \"Spirit of Nature! all sufficing power,\n    Necessity! thou mother of the world!\n    Unlike the God of human error, thou\n    Requirest no prayers or praises, the caprice\n    Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee\n    Than do the changeful passions of his breast\n    To thy unvarying harmony.\"\n\nAnd by this doctrine of necessity here apostrophised our philosopher\ninstructs us in a lengthy statement of great clearness:\n\n     \"We are taught that there is neither good nor evil in the\n     universe, otherwise than as the events to which we apply\n     these epithets have relation to our own peculiar mode of\n     being. Still less than with the hypothesis of a personal\n     God, will the doctrine of necessity accord with the belief\n     of a future state of punishment. God made man such as he is,\n     and then damned him for being so; for to say that God was\n     the author of all good, and man the author of all evil, is\n     to say that one man made a straight line and a crooked one,\n     and another man made the incongruity.\"\n\nFor you to better understand the exact position in which Shelley\nplaced himself, it is elsewhere thus admirably expressed:\n\n     \"The thoughts which the word 'God' suggest to the human mind\n     are susceptible of as many variations as human minds\n     themselves. The Stoic, the Platonist, and the Epicurean, the\n     Polytheist, the Dualist, and the Trinitarian, differ entirely\n     in their conceptions of its meaning. They agree only in\n     considering it the most awful and most venerable of names,\n     as a common term to express all of mystery, or majesty, or\n     power, which the invisible world contains. And not only has\n     every sect distinct conceptions of the application of this\n     name, but scarcely two individuals of the same sect, which\n     exercise in any degree the freedom of their judgment, or\n     yield themselves with any candor of feeling to the\n     influences of the visible world, find perfect coincidence of\n     opinion to exist between them.... God is neither the Jupiter\n     who sends rain upon the earth; nor the Venus through whom\n     all living things are produced; nor the Vulcan who presides\n     over the terrestrial element of fire; nor the Vesta that\n     preserves the light which is enshrined in the sun, the moon,\n     and the stars. He is neither the Proteus nor the Pan of the\n     material world. But the word 'God' unites all the attributes\n     which these denominations contain and is the (inter-point)\n     and over-ruling spirit of all the energy and wisdom included\n     within the circle of existing things.\"\n\nOf these attributes generally supposed to appertain to Deity, he\nwrites:\n\n     \"There is no attribute of God which is not either borrowed\n     from the passions and powers of the human mind, or which is\n     not a negation. Omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence,\n     infinity, immutability, incomprehensibility, and\n     immateriality, are all words which designate properties and\n     powers peculiar to organized beings, with the addition of\n     negations, by which the idea of limitation is excluded.\"\n\nThere is no other writer, I think, who seems to grasp so clearly as\nShelley the everlasting and immutable laws of Naturismus, or who\nbelieved so fully in the divine mission of man, and the religion of\nhumanity. Ever soaring into the ideal, philosophizing by the aid of\nhis emotional impulses, Shelley possessed, like all true Hermetists\nand Theosophists imbued with mysticism, a wonderful power of continued\nabstraction in the contemplation of the Supreme Power. His mentality,\ndescribed by one of his critics as essentially Greek, \"simple, not\ncomplex, imaginative rather than fanciful, abstract not concrete,\nintellectual not emotional,\" contributed its share to his belief in a\npantheistic philosophy, making him find Supreme Intelligence permeated\nthrough the whole of infinite and interminable Nature. Regarding the\nuniverse as an abstract whole, he endorsed the fundamental\nmetaphysics of Plato, and believed that \"passing phenomena are types\nof eternal archetypes, embodiments of eternal realities.\"\n\nEven if despite of my assertions to the contrary, there be those who\nstill insist on the atheism of Shelley, they had better restudy the\nelementary axioms and learn to think--to those who imagine that there\nis but little difference between atheism and pantheism to the\ndiscredit of either, I would remind them that Bacon in his \"Moral\nEssays,\" lays down as a principle that:--\n\n     \"Atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy, nature, piety,\n     laws, reputation and everything that can serve to conduct him\n     to virtue; but superstition destroys all these, and erects\n     itself into a tyranny over the understandings of men; hence\n     atheism never disturbs the government, but renders man more\n     clear-sighted, since he sees nothing beyond the boundaries of\n     the present life.\"\n\nIn making use of this quotation do not let it be presumed that I wish\nto endorse Materialism; my desire is to add the authority of a great\nmind like that of the Elizabethan philosopher, to the fact that\nsuperstition is so hateful that even blank, bald atheism is preferable\nthereto. I should state that Bacon in extension of the extract I have\nquoted, speaking of this soul-destroying incubus on humanity observes\nthat:--\"A little philosophy inclineth men's minds to atheism; but\ndepth in philosophy bringeth men's minds to religion.\"\n\nNo amount of mere reasoning, or argument _a priori_ or _a posteriori_,\ncan prove the existence of the Most High or destroy the same; in every\nbreast is implanted an innate belief in Deity, the inner consciousness\nof the race, by the \"Vox Dei\" speaking within, has throughout all time,\nthe past and the present revelled in this sublimity, and will continue\nto do so in the future, notwithstanding the insane and insensate efforts\nof pseudo scientists or iconoclastic materialists--the brain and the\nheart must act in harmony to consolidate a pure philosophy, for mere\nintellect alone is an untrustworthy guide. By logic Whately proved\napparently indisputably the non-existence of Napoleon Bonaparte, at the\ntime when there was no doubt in any reasonable mind that he was actually\nliving in the flesh, by the same means one can disprove one's own being,\nand so by this unsafe method have I frequently heard the God idea very\nlearnedly overthrown. On such occasions I have simply taken the words\nof the logicians for what all their idle wind is worth--ZERO.\n\nThe Immortality of the Soul has ever been a subject of primary\nimportance to all philosophers--the last dying efforts of Socrates,\nnoblest of Greece's sons, as Plato has shown us in the Phaedo, were\nexpended in a discussion on the _pros_ and _cons_ of an argument in\nfavor of a future life. Many of the highest intelligences since his\nday have been endeavoring to prove this satisfactorily without the aid\nof theological revelation. All mankind, from sage to peasant, from the\nmost learned Brahmin on the banks of the Ganges to the untutored red\nIndian beside the Mississippi, has the question, \"is there an\nexistence after death,\" been approached with the most earnest hopes to\nsolve as one of the greatest mysteries. Shelley devoted a vast amount\nof energy to the elucidation of this occult, yet overt, truth; and in\none place remarks:\n\n     \"The desire to be forever as we are; the reluctance to a\n     violent and unexperienced change, which is common to all;\n     the animate and inanimate combinations of the universe, is,\n     indeed, the secret persuasion which has (among other\n     reasons) given birth to a belief in a future state.\"\n\nFull well he knew, that independent of matter, there was a power,\nwhich has been denominated by some, Spirit; by others, simply mind,\nforce, or intelligence; and by metaphysical philosophers, soul. If he\napproached the subject logically, as in his essay, \"On a Future\nState,\" the _ignis fatuus_ seems to escape him and be lost; if\npoetically, with the innate voice which speaks within us all, ever\npresent.\n\nAfter close reasoning in the essay I have referred to, he arrived at\nthe conclusion that even\n\n     \"if it be proved that the world is ruled by a divine power,\n     no inference can necessarily be drawn from that circumstance\n     in favor of a future state.\"\n\nand that\n\n     \"if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it\n     will be a state of punishment or reward?\"\n\nThen in extension of the same argument he urges:\n\n     \"Sleep suspends many of the faculties of the vital and\n     intellectual principle--drunkenness and disease will either\n     temporarily or permanently derange them. Madness, or\n     idiotcy, may utterly extinguish the most excellent and\n     delicate of these powers. In old age the mind gradually\n     withers; and as it grew and strengthened with the body, so\n     does it with the body sink into decrepitude.\"\n\nHe also considered that:\n\n     \"It is probable that what we call thought is not an actual\n     being, but no more than the relation between certain parts\n     of that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest of the\n     universe is composed, and which ceases to exist so soon as\n     those parts change their position with regard to each other.\n     Thus color, and sound, and taste, and odor, exist only\n     relatively.\"\n\nEven granted that mind or thought be a part of, or in fact, the soul,\nthen he asks in what manner it could be made a proof of its\nimperishability, as all that we see or know perishes and is changed.\n\nHere then comes the query, \"Have we existed before birth?\" A difficult\npossibility to conceive of individual intelligence and if unprovable\nagainst the theory of existence after death.\n\nHe then winds up the whole by thinking that it is impossible that,\n\n     \"we should continue to exist after death in some mode\n     totally inconceivable to us at present.\"\n\nand that only those who desire to be persuaded are persuaded.\n\nThis is but a rough outline of some of the principal features of his\nconsiderations on soul immortality from a logical basis, and which,\nafter all, only constitute an argument, to which, and the thoughts\npresented therein, he did not necessarily bind himself. There can be\nlittle doubt, independently of what I have quoted, that he did not\nbelieve in a future state as popularly accepted. Trelawney asked him on\none occasion: \"Do you believe in the immortality of the spirit?\"\nShelley's answer was unmistakable, \"Certainly not; how can I? We know\nnothing; we have no evidence.\"[B]\n\n[Footnote B: Those who desire to fully investigate Shelley's ideas on\nthe immortality of the soul, and the existence, or nature, of Deity,\nwill be amply repaid by reading W.M. Rossetti's admirable memoir of\nthe poet, appended to the last two-volume London edition of his\nworks.]\n\nWhen we take Shelley from a poetical standpoint, or with the divine\ntruism implanted by the Ain-soph clamoring within to his intelligence\nfor expression, how confident he appears of a hereafter, as in the\n\"Adonais,\" or in the following extract from an unpublished letter to\nhis father-in-law, William Godwin, the property of my friend C.W.\nFrederickson, of New York, one of the most enthusiastic admirers of\nShelley, and who has been often known to pay more than the weight in\ngold for Shelleyana:\n\n     \"With how many garlands we can beautify the tomb. If we\n     begin betimes, we can learn to make the prospect of the\n     grave the most seductive of human visions. By little and\n     little we hive therein all the most pleasing of our dreams.\n     Surely, if any spot in the world be sacred, it is that in\n     which grief ceases, and for which, if the voice within our\n     hearts mocks us not with an everlasting lie, we spring upon\n     the untiring wings of a pangless and seraphic life--those\n     whom we love around us--our nature, universal intelligence,\n     our atmosphere, eternal love.\"\n\nHow exquisite these remarks and his description of a disembodied\nspirit:\n\n                          \"it stood\n    All beautiful in naked purity,\n    The perfect semblance of its bodily frame,\n    Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace,\n         Each stain of earthliness\n    Had passed away, it re-assumed\n    Its native dignity, and stood\n         Immortal amid ruin.\"\n\nIt must appear impossible to any rational mind, that, with the full\nevidence before their eyes, materialists can attempt to claim Shelley\nas endorsing their doctrines, for even in the \"Queen Mab,\" which has\nbeen considered by those not understanding it as a most atheistical\npoem, he speaks of--\n\n                            \"the remembrance\n    With which the happy spirit contemplates\n    Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth.\"\n\nPositive dogmatists are tyrannically endeavoring to crush the belief in\na soul, that All which makes the-present life happy on earth, the hope\nof our heritage in a future state. To them the fact that the race from\nthe dawn of history, and through the ages has knelt down in abnegation\nbefore this inscrutable truth is nothing. This glorious belief evolved\nfrom the primaeval Cabala, taught in ancient Egypt, found\ncontemporaneously in India, enunciated by scholarly Rabbis, ever present\nbefore the Chaldaean and Assyrian Magi, and laid down as axioms in the\nphilosophical schools of Greece and Rome, not only to be discovered a\nfundamental in the Egyptian, the Hebraistic, the Brahminical, the\nBuddhistic, the Vedic, but also in all the sacred books of every nation,\nand handed down and perpetuated to these days as a sacred legacy from\nthe past, by both Mohammed and Christ. This, the great co-mystery of all\nthe ancient mysteries, shall remain ever present through all futurity\nlike \"the existing order of the Universe, or rather, of the _part of it\nknown to us_,\" to use the phraseology of John Stuart Mill. Nations may\nrise and fall, theologies may flourish and decay, but this glorious and\ndivine inheritance shall never pass away. Let pseudo-scientists avail\nthemselves of stale and exploded arguments, and urge that there is no\ninvisible world, and therefore no immortality for man, but honest\nscientists, like Professors Tait and Stewart, in the \"Unseen Universe,\"\nwill agree with the Illuminati: \"in the position assigned by Swedenborg,\nand by the Spiritualists, according to which they look upon the\ninvisible world not as something absolutely distinct from the visible\nuniverse, and absolutely unconnected with it, as is frequently thought\nto be the case, but rather as a universe that has some bond of union\nwith the present;\" and like Tyndall, will be obliged in abject humility\nto acknowledge, unlike the initiated occultist, that: \"When we endeavor\nto pass from the phenomena of physics to those of thought, we meet a\nproblem which transcends any conceivable expansion of the powers we now\npossess. We may think over the subject again and again--it eludes all\nintellectual presentation--we stand at length face to face with the\nincomprehensible.\"\n\nShelley was ever calling attention to the fact that either from\nignorance or the casuistical sophistries of mal-interested teachers\nwho have distorted the divine pristine truths for their own base ends,\nemanated superstition, the taint of all it looked upon; and with no\nunsparing hand he flagellated the professors of the numerous false\nfaiths, bastardized from their original purity, which have in their\ndecay, darkened the earth, and with all the force of his powerful pen,\nmightier than any sword, he ridiculed these gross theologies existant\namong men, as in the following:\n\n     \"Barbarous and uncivilized nations have uniformly adored,\n     under various names, a God of which themselves were the\n     model: revengeful, blood-thirsty, groveling and capricious.\n     The idol of a savage is a demon that delights in carnage.\n     The steam of slaughter, the dissonance of groans, the flames\n     of a desolated land, are the offerings which he deems\n     acceptable, and his innumerable votaries throughout the\n     world have made it a point of duty to worship him to his\n     taste. The Phoenicians, the Druids and the Mexicans have\n     immolated hundreds at the shrines of their divinity, and the\n     high and holy name of God has been in all ages the watchword\n     of the most unsparing massacres, the sanction of the most\n     atrocious perfidies.\"\n\nOf the treatment Judaism, the foster mother of Christianity, received\nat the poet's hands, I will now recite two examples. To Moses, the\nJehovah of the Hebrews is thus made to speak:\n\n   \"From an eternity of idleness\n    I, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made earth\n    From nothing; rested, and created man;\n    I placed him in a paradise, and there\n    Planted the tree of evil, so that he\n    Might eat and perish, and my soul procure\n    Wherewith to sate its malice, and to turn\n    Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth,\n    All misery to my fame. The race of men\n    Chosen to my honor, with impunity\n    May sate the lusts _I_ planted in their hearts.\n    Here I command thee hence to lead them on,\n    Until, with harden'd feet, their conquering troops\n    Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood.\n    And make my name be dreaded through the land,\n    Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woe\n    Shall be the doom of their eternal souls,\n    With every soul on this ungrateful earth,\n    Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong--even all\n    Shall perish to fulfill the blind revenge\n    (Which you to men call justice) of their God.\"\n\nIn another place Shelley is equally descriptive of the early stages of\nJewish history, and makes the following observations on the building\nof the Temple of Jerusalem, which rearing high its thousand golden\ndomes to heaven, exposed its glory to the face of day:\n\n   \"Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed\n    The building of that fane; and many a father,\n    Worn out with toil and slavery, implored\n    The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth,\n    And spare his children the detested task\n    Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning\n         The choicest days of life,\n         To soothe a dotard's vanity.\n    There an inhuman and uncultured race\n    Howl'd hideous praises to their demon--God;\n    They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb\n    The unborn child--old age and infancy\n    Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms\n    Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends,\n    And what was he who taught them that the God\n    Of nature and benevolence had given\n    A special sanction to the trade of blood?\n    His name and theirs are fading, and the tales\n    Of this barbarian nation, which imposture\n    Recites till terror credits, are pursuing\n         Itself into forgetfulness.\"\n\nWith the enlightenment of the present century in every department of\nknowledge, so has a corresponding degree of advancement been thrown on\nthe science of history, which Shelley only partially apprehended. An\nenormous amount of new information is now to be gleaned from the\nwritings of Ewald, Fergusson, Bunsen, Deutsch, Max Muller,\nBaring-Gould, Stanley, and other scholars of Orientation, which shows\nthat the Hebrews, like every other nation, passed through the various\nphases of Nomadism and Pastoralism, to that of offensive and defensive\nwar. The same as other races, they came through the usual steps in\nreligious progress--Fetishism, Astrolatry, Polytheism and Monotheism.\nDuring phases in their history they participated in the various forms\nof tree and serpent, Phallic, or fire-worship. They had, as the\nTalmud, Targums, and the Old Testament show, a knowledge of the\nEgyptian or Chaldaic account of the creation and fall, the latter\nstill to be seen on the walls of the temple of Osiris at Philae. They\nhad much knowledge of the Cabala, through their great prophet Moses,\nwho was \"learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,\" and, like\nPythagoras, had been initiated into their mysteries, and who both\nimparted the knowledge in part to their compatriots, on which they\nboth founded systems.\n\nA great traveler, and most learned modern writer on Occultism, who\nclaims, on good grounds, to have been received into the ancient branch\nof the Rosie Cross in the far East, Madame Helena P. de Blavatsky,\nimparts the following particulars: \"The first Cabala in which a mortal\nman ever dared to explain the greatest mysteries of the universe, and\nshow the keys to those masked doors in the ramparts of Nature, through\nwhich no mortal can ever pass without rousing dread sentries never\nseen upon this side her wall, was compiled by a certain Simeon Ben\nJochai, who lived at the time of the second temple's destruction. Only\nabout thirty years after the death of this renowned Cabalist, his MSS.\nand written explanations, which had till then remained in his\npossession as a most precious secret, were used by his son, Rabbi\nElizzar, and other learned men. Making a compilation of the whole,\nthey so produced the famous work called _Zohar_ (God's splendor). This\nbook proved an inexhaustible mine for all the subsequent Cabalists,\ntheir source of information and knowledge, and all more recent and\ngenuine Cabalas were all more or less carefully copied from the\nformer. Before that, all the mysterious doctrines had come down in an\nunbroken line of merely oral tradition as far back as man could trace\nhimself on earth. They were scrupulously and jealously guarded by the\nwise men of Chaldea, India, Persia and Egypt, and passed from one\ninitiate to another, in the same purity of form as when handed down to\nthe first man by the angels, students of God's great Theosophic\nseminary.\"\n\nMany Free Thinkers, in their anxiety to crush everything belonging to\nChristianity, often forget that, in throwing aside the Hebrew records as\nutterly worthless, they are getting rid of one of the most ancient\nliteratures in the world. They also do not remember the history of a\npeculiar nation, strangely preserved amid the fluctuations of time, the\npurity and excellence of the Book of Job, the Psalms, and others which I\ncould name. They cast unmerited contempt on these compilations, when, at\nthe same time, they will throw themselves, with almost Fetish reverence,\nand apparently rapt adoration, before the Institutes of Menu, the\nBhagvat-Geeta, the morals of Chaoung-Fou-Tszee, the Zend-Avesta, the\nRig-Veda, the Oracles of Zoroaster, the Book of the Dead, the Puranas,\nthe Shastras, and the like.\n\nWell may the Sons of Israel be proud of their ancient descent. They\nsuffered through Christian persecutions uncomplainingly--the torture,\nthe rack, the _auto-da-fe_--and yet they bowed their heads in\nsubmission to the will of Adonai. To-day they stand upright and\nunited, as in olden times. They have gained the victory over the false\ndisciples of the Nazarene, who, in days gone by, forgot their\nerudition, their medical knowledge, their commercial activity, and\ngeneral culture. Pre-eminent in wealth and learning, they are found on\nthe lecture-platform, in the fields of literature and science, in the\ncouncils of rulers, on the exchange, in the legislature--everywhere.\nWhen Greece and Rome were in their infancy, this extraordinary people\nwas in middle age; and when our Saxon forefathers were in the lowest\nstage of barbarism, they were in a state of high civilization; and\nto-day, although scattered, they show a compact front, firmly knit in\nthe bonds of brotherly love, a model for Christians. The great reform\nmovement now agitating Judaism, as well as every other species of\npolitical and metaphysical thought, will eventually aid to consolidate\nall the races into one race--Humanity.\n\nIn order to make Christians prejudge Shelley it has been the wont of\ntheologians, as usual in fighting their antagonists, to cry up a false\nissue, and to make their followers believe that he was rather more\nthan a mere hater of Jesus Christ, and of the teachings of that\nreligious and social reformer, in fact, that he was an infidel of\ninfidels. To have no misconceptions--for it has been stated that\nShelley changed his views on Christ, which after ten years' careful\nstudy of his writings, I utterly deny, it should be thoroughly\nunderstood that he regarded this pious Israelite in a duismal\naspect--as Christ the Man, and as Christ the God. I must not, while\nhere, forget that many advanced metaphysicians agree that they cannot\nsatisfactorily prove the historical existence of Christ, and that they\nhave to winnow through a vast amount of chaff to get at his presumed\nphilosophy, and the facts in his life, which like that of Buddha is\nwrapped up in traditional fable.\n\nFor the Man Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter's carnate son,\nthe mystical Essene and occultist, Shelley exceeded in love and\nreverence many of the most earnest Christians, and in no theological\nwritings can there be discovered such beautiful sentiments concerning\nthe \"The Regenerator of the World,\" and the \"Meek Reformer,\" of whom\nhe speaks as contemplating that mysterious principle called God, the\nfundamental of all good, and the source of all happiness, as every\ntrue poet and philosopher must have done. It is impossible to turn to\nany page of his works, where, in speaking of Christ, he fails in\nthis--he expatiates with as great fervor as Renan, Seeley, or\nStrauss, on Christ's exposing with earnest eloquence, like all true\nmembers of the brotherhood of Illuminati, to which he belonged, the\npanic fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved mankind for\nages, and extols\n\n     \"His extraordinary genius, the wide and rapid effects of his\n     unexampled doctrines, his invincible gentleness and\n     benignity, (and) the devoted love borne to him by his\n     adherents.\"\n\nFor the God Christ, as depicted by the Sacerdotal order, he had the\ngreatest contempt. It was impossible for a mind constituted like his\nto tamely rest contented with the incredible story forced on mankind's\nintelligence, that the Supreme Power could or would for any wise\npurpose be transformed into a dove, and re-enact the mythical part of\nJupiter with a Christian Leda, the Jew carpenter's wife, Mary, under\nthe disguise of a bird. Such a story and the theory on which it rests\nShelley summarised as follows:\n\n     \"According to this book, God created Satan, who, instigated\n     by the impulses of his nature, contended with the Omnipotent\n     for the throne of Heaven. After a contest for the empire, in\n     which God was victorious, Satan was thrust into a pit of\n     burning sulphur. On man's creation, God placed within his\n     reach a tree whose fruit he forbade him to taste, on pain of\n     death; permitting Satan, at the same time, to employ all his\n     artifice to persuade this innocent and wondering creature to\n     transgress the fatal prohibition.\n\n     \"The first man yielded to this temptation; and to satisfy\n     Divine Justice the whole of his posterity must have been\n     eternally burned in hell, if God had not sent his only Son\n     on earth, to save those few whose salvation had been\n     foreseen and determined before the creation of the world.\"\n\nThe hero of this fabulous episode, beneath which a great truth lies\nhidden, the Christian Ahrimanes or Typhon, the Devil, as painted by\nMilton, he considered a moral being, far superior to the God depicted\nby the same author, and who, under the form of the second person of\nthe Christian Trinity, Shelley tells us of coming humbly,\n\n    \"Veiling his horrible God-head in the shape\n    Of man, scorn'd by the world, his name unheard,\n    Save by the rabble of his native town,\n    Even as a parish demagogue. He led\n    The crowd; he taught them justice, truth, and peace,\n    In semblance; but he lit within their souls\n    The quenchless flame of zeal, and blest the sword\n    He brought on earth to satiate with the blood\n    Of truth and freedom his malignant soul.\"\n\nElsewhere, in extension of the same, he puts the accompanying words in\nthe mouth of God the Father, to illustrate the doctrine of Christian\nAtonement:\n\n    \"I will beget a son, and he shall bear\n    The sins of all the world; he shall arise\n    In an unnoticed corner of the earth,\n    And he shall die upon a cross, and purge\n    The universal crime; so that the few\n    On whom my grace descends, those who are marked\n    As vessels to the honor of their God,\n    May credit this strange sacrifice, and save\n    Their souls alive. Millions shall live and die,\n    Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name,\n    But unredeem'd go to the gaping grave;\n    Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale,\n    Such as the nurses frighten babes withal;\n    These, in a gulf of anguish an I of flame,\n    Shall curse their reprobation endlessly,\n    Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow,\n    Even on their beds of torment, where they howl,\n    My honor and the justice of their doom.\n    What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts\n    Of purity, with radiant genius bright,\n    Or lit with human reason's earthly ray?\n    Many are call'd but few will I elect.\"\n\nThe popular faith of Europe and America, which experience demonstrates\nto this age has, even as a means of reforming humanity, been a\ncomplete failure, Shelley correctly believed, had the same human\nfoundation and origin as that of other revealed theologies--he sums up\nthe proofs on which Christianity rests, miracles, prophecies, and\nmartyrdoms, with great clearness; proves the absurdity of the doctrine\nof miracles, as taught by Christian writers, shows the falseness of\nthe so-called prophecies, even granting the utmost warping of the real\nmeaning of the Old Testament texts for Christian purposes, which he\nasserted were to be compared unfavorably with the oracles of Delphos,\nand points out that the Mohammedan dying for his prophet, or the\nHindoo immolating himself under the wheels of Juggernaut could be\ncited equally as a proof of the divine origin of their faiths, as the\nreputed martyrdoms of Christians could of theirs.\n\nThe development of Christianity, which was really founded by Paul, was\na subject to which Shelley devoted much attention--he tells us that\n\n     \"The same means that have supported every other belief, have\n     supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, assassination,\n     and falsehood; deeds of unexampled and incomparable\n     atrocity, have made it what it is. The blood shed by the\n     votaries of the God of mercy and peace, since the\n     establishment of his religion, would probably suffice to\n     drown all other sectaries now on the habitable globe. We\n     derive from our ancestors a faith thus fostered and\n     supported; we quarrel, persecute, and hate, for its\n     maintenance. Even under a government which, while it\n     infringes the very right of thought and speech, boasts of\n     permitting the liberty of the press, a man is pilloried and\n     imprisoned because he is a deist, and no one raises his\n     voice in the indignation of outraged humanity.\"\n\nThe numerical majority of Christians--the Greek and Roman Catholic--are\nas much pagans as their ancestors, the ancient Greeks and Romans were\nexoterically. And why? Simply because on the break-up of the Roman\nempire--like Mohammedanism afterwards, which was the natural reformation\nand revolution from Christian image-worship--Christianity, in a natural\nsuccession, and by fortuitous circumstances, took possession of the\nexecutive, and placed on the seat of power a Christian Byzantine emperor\nin lieu of a pagan. Basilicas, dedicated to Jupiter, Mercury, Adonis,\nVenus and the deities of High Olympus, were re-dedicated to God the\nFather, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, and the other\nsaints (or gods) of the Christian Pantheon. Statues therein were\nrechristened, and the sacrificial altars were simply transferred for the\nuse of the eucharistical sacrifice. The vestal virgins became nuns of\nthe church; the _Sacerdotes_, her priests; the mysteries of Isis, her\nAgapae. Her incense, her pictures, her image-worship, her holy water,\nher processions, and her prodigies, too, all came from the same source.\nThus were the socialistic and communistic teachings, based on the\nPhiloic-Essenism of the Reformer of Nazareth, paganized, prostituted,\nand entirely misrepresented. His life and labors were transformed from\nthe natural into what was considered by the vulgar the supernatural, and\nall those who dared--like Hypatia, with thousands of other pious and\nnoble ancients--to deny his divinity, were sacrificed to this new\nMoloch, set up by parricide Constantines, or adulterers of the\nTheodosius caste. Thus through the ages, has the race suffered under\nsuch murder, rapine, and lust, as never disgraced tolerant ancient\nheathendom in the interests of paganism, even as recently happened in\nCentral America,[C] and would happen everywhere else, if priestcraft had\nthe power to act without restraint, so that, as Shelley says,\n\n    \"Earth groans beneath religion's iron age,\n     And priests dare babble of a God of Peace--\n     Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,\n     Murdering the while, uprooting every germ\n     Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,\n     Making the earth a slaughter-house.\"\n\n[Footnote C: I refer to the abominable outrages perpetrated a few\nmonths ago at San Miguel, Panama, where popular preachers were forced\nby the ecclesiastical powers to foment rebellion by violently\ndenouncing the State authorities, who had refused to allow a pastoral\nof the Christian Bishop of San Salvador, hostile to the laws, to be\nread in the churches. Having been put into a state of frenzy by one\nPalacios, a canon of the cathedral, a fanatic mob revolted, liberated\nprisoners, murdered generals in command, massacred numbers of the best\ncitizens, set fire to the city with kerosene, and destroyed over one\nmillion dollars' worth of property. After this theological revolt had\nbeen put down, passports, couched in the following terms, and sealed\nwith the seal of the bishopric, were found on the bodies of some of\nthese holy murderers;\n\n\"PETER.--Open to the bearer the gates of heaven, who has died for religion.\n\n            (Signed), GEORGE, Bishop of San Salvador.\"\n\nSimilar attempts were made by the Christian hierarchy in Brazil\nagainst the Masonic body; but, fortunately, the emperor, a liberal and\nan enlightened savant, crushed the attempt under foot, and\nunmistakably proved, to the satisfaction of humanity, that he was not\nto be transformed into a nineteenth century Charles the Ninth or\nPhilip the Second, and act the cat's paw for Pio Nono, ex-carbonari\nand recusant mason, to wreak his vengeance on the brethren whom he had\nbetrayed.]\n\nTo those who will look down the ages, I would ask, is this picture\noverdrawn? and further, to remember that in Shelley's own words:\n\n     \"Eleven millions of men, women and children have been killed\n     in battle, butchered in their sleep, burned to death at\n     public festivals of sacrifice, poisoned, tortured,\n     assassinated and pillaged in the spirit of the religion of\n     peace, and for the glory of the most merciful God.\"\n\nIs it amazing that he should have written such a \"highly wrought and\nadmirably sustained\" tragedy as the \"Cenci,\" founded on facts, and\nwhich has been deemed by competent critics the first since\nShakspeare--that he should have brought forward, with vivid\ndelineation, the crimes of the priesthood--and that he should have\nmade us remember the terrors of the bloody wars on heretics and\nheathen, in words such as these:\n\n    \"Yes! I have seen God's worshippers unsheathe\n     The sword of His revenge, when grace descended,\n     Confirming all unnatural impulses,\n     To sanctify their desolating deeds;\n     And frantic priests wave the ill-omen'd cross\n     O'er the unhappy earth; then shone the sun\n     On showers of gore from the upflashing steel\n     Of safe assassination, and all crime\n     Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord.\n     And blood-red rainbows canopied the land.\n     Spirit! no year of my eventful being\n     Has pass'd unstain'd by crime and misery,\n     Which flows from God's own faith. I've marked his slaves\n     With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile\n     The insensate mob, and whilst one hand was red\n     With murder, feign to stretch the other out\n     For brotherhood and peace; and that they now\n     Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds\n     Are marked with all the narrowness and crime\n     That freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise?\"\n\nProtestant Christians may urge that all this is not Christianity; if\nit be not--for it is the record of the Church--I would ask, what is?\nand where shall we find the history of Christianity for the fifteen\ncenturies before Luther's time? and where, to-day? Their predecessors\nplucked the plumage from the dying bird of mythology, as they,\nthemselves, have robbed the liberal orchard of all its choicest fruits\nand palmed them off as of their own growth. Protestants would not, I\ndare say, now countenance the persecutions of the past, but yet, I\nwould tell them that their Protestantism has been a great mistake; and\nthat, at this moment, there is no unity among the opposers of\nCatholicism, who are split into a thousand sects, wrangling for\nsuperiority, like wolves over offal; and that their churches are\ngradually converging toward Rationalism on the one hand, and Catholic\nSacerdotalism on the other; in regard to which last, the Historical\nRoman Church--the only Christian body which presents a solid\nphalanx--one must not be too iconoclastic, remembering that, in the\nmonastic houses and great ecclesiastical libraries we have had\nconserved for us, although, perchance by accident, the records of all\nthe philosophy, all the jurisprudence, all the polity, all the\nliterature, and all the civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, that\nremained from the Alexandrian library and pre-Christian times--the\nmediaeval clerics were the great conservators of knowledge, which we\ninherit directly from Europe; and we should be, therefore, grateful to\nthem equally with Mohammedanism, from which we received, through the\nCrusaders and the Moors, the basis of nearly all science and luxury,\nfrom Asia. There were, undoubtedly, many bad popes, men as bad as the\nincestuous, and, according to the recent dogma, the infallible\nAlexander Borgia; priests who are not all vile, but many nobler than\ntheir system, acknowledge this with regret, and among whom there are\nsome whom I can reverence, such as John Henry Newman, for instance,\nwhose life would favorably compare with that of Shelley, or any\nliberal. There have been popes, also, whose lives have been as pure,\nas disinterested, and as virtuous as that of any stoic or epicurean.\nWe owe much to Sixtus the Fifth, founder of the Vatican Library, and\nwould-be regenerator of order in his temporal dominions; to Leo the\nGreat, whose patronage of the arts has sent us down the wondrous\nstatuary, painting, and works of genius, which are the admiration of\nthe world; and to Hildebrand, who brought together, in one harmonious\nwhole, the struggling elements of European society. It is well to\nnote, too, in order that I may not be misunderstood, that Catholicism\nis better than savage Fetishism, and Rationalism in degree superior to\neither; and, further, that Liberalism should only war with evil\nprinciples, and not with men whom they are generally the exponents of\nignorantly, and to the best of their knowledge. Comtism[D]\nacknowledges the fact that Christianity was not simply a mere advance\non, but where we shall only find the civilization of Europe as it was\nduring mediaeval times, and recognizes this most strongly, by placing\nover fifty of these great geniuses and luminaries, popes, bishops, and\nsaints of the Catholic Church, in the Comtist Calendar, under the\nsixth and seventh months dedicated to St. Paul or Catholicism, and\nCharlemagne or Feudal Civilization respectively. We should thank the\nfollowers of Comte for thus bringing to our notice what we might be\nliable to occasionally forget in our bigotry and frequent\nover-anxiety.\n\n[Footnote D: Comtism, or Positivism is that casuistical system of\nmodern Atheism, founded by Auguste Comte, the Ignatius Loyola of\nMaterialism, and which that learned pantarchical madman strung\ntogether in Esquirol's lunatic asylum. It is an insidious philosophy,\nfull of Jesuistry, and teaches a _soi-disant_ Religion which is\nIr-religion, a pseudo-God, which has no conceivable existence, and an\nimpossible immortality of the soul, ignoring a future state. The\npresent crusade of Comtism in our midst, with false colors flying can\nbe justly compared to that of St. Francois Xavier in Hindostan.]\n\nIn popularizing terms wrongly, lies much mischief. If the misapplied\nterm Christianity, signify the current notion, zeal for truth, the\ngood of mankind, and active virtue or Christism, the reputed precepts\nof Christ, then Shelley taught that ethical system, and the so-called\nChristian world which persecuted him, the opposite.\n\nNo one believed, better than Shelley, in the necessity of continuity,\nand that all theological systems are a portion of the development of\nHumanity.\n\nIt should likewise be remembered, that even in the grossest\nsuperstition, as in the highest belief, the underlying aspiration,\nveiled perhaps, under some beautiful myth, is a straining after the\npure and the good, and, as Shelley puts it:\n\n     \"All original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of\n     allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and\n     true.\"\n\nIt should also be considered, that it is better not to interfere with\nthe faith of the ignorant, but let them remain in an exoteric\ncondition, until they are properly developed by sufficient education\nand consequent intelligence. It is just as much the duty of advanced\nthinkers not to tamper with the beliefs of men who are in an early\nstage of progress, as it is not to put a flaming torch in the\npossession of a lunatic, or a razor in the hands of a child.\n\nShelley, in his philosophy, accepted all this, with the full\nconsciousness that in the end truth would prevail--he yearned for the\ntime when priest-led slaves would\n\n                     \"Cease to proclaim that man\n    Inherits vice and misery, when force\n    And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe,\n    Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good,\"\n\nand for that epoch when \"the Mohammedan, the Jew, the Christian, the\nDeist, and the Atheist will live together in one community, equally\nsharing the benefits which arise from its associations, and united in\nthe bonds of charity and brotherly love.\"\n\nWith Shelley we can turn with delight to the gospels of the future, as\nof the ancient past; and the ramifications of the Trinity of a truly\nRational Religion, Mature, Science, and Art, where we have, instead of\nidle prayers, addressed to gross material idols, or the impossible\nentities hitherto depicted in theological systems, a feeling of real\nsatisfaction in learning how to live rather than to die, and in\npracticing virtue and benevolence for their own sakes, than for\nimprobable rewards in the unsatisfactory hereafter, enunciated from\nthe theological platform.\n\nLike a true religionist, Shelley tells us that aspirations to \"Madre\nNatura,\" like the following, should be poured out in silent, grateful\ncommunion with Omnipresence, and not in temples made by hands:\n\n        Spirit of Nature! here!\n    In this interminable wilderness\n    Of worlds, at whose immensity\n        Even soaring fancy staggers,\n        Here is thy fitting temple.\n            Yet not the slightest leaf\n    That quivers to the passing breeze\n        Is less instinct with thee;\n        Yet not the meanest worm\n    That lurks in graves, and fattens on the dead\n        Less shares thy eternal breath.\n        Spirit of Nature! thou!\n    Imperishable as this scene,\n    Here is thy fitting temple.\n\nFrom such a soul-inspiring altar should praises like these be raised,\nand with what sacred feeling would the pure worshipper revel \"where\nspirits live and dream--where all that is sweet in sound, or pure in\nvision floats on the air, or passes dimly before the sight,\" for as\nthe late Professor J.G. Hoyt, in his essay on Shelley beautifully\npoints out--\"To him everything was God, and God was everything. Every\nplace was peopled with forms of beauty and animated with living\nintelligences. Hills and valleys, forests and fountains, were each\nthronged with presiding deities--bright effluences from the Diving\nthat stirred within, and shone above the whole.\"\n\nIn leaving the first portion of my paper, I will make the following\nquotation from a remarkable article on Shelley in the pages of the\n_National Magazine_, which all minds unshackled, and free from\nprejudice, must acknowledge to be correct in the main, and which\nadmirably sums up his efforts in metaphysical philosophy. Our\nattention is called to the fact that we discover in all Shelley's\nwritings \"a freer and purer development of what is best and noblest in\nourselves. We are taught in it to love all living and lifeless things,\nwith which in the material and moral universe we are surrounded--we\nare taught to love the wisdom and goodness and majesty of the\nAlmighty, for we are taught to love the universe, his symbol and\nvisible exponent. God has given two books for the study and\ninstruction of mankind; the book of revelation and the book of nature.\nIn one at least of these was Shelley deeply versed, and in this one he\nhas given admirable lessons to his fellow-men. Throughout his\nwritings, every thought and every feeling is subdued and chastened by\na spirit of unutterable and boundless love. The poet meets us on the\ncommon ground of a disinterested humanity, and he teaches us to hold\nan earnest faith in the worth and the intrinsic Godliness of the soul.\nHe tells us--he makes us feel that there is nothing higher than human\nhope, nothing deeper than the human heart; he exhorts us to labor\ndevotedly in the great and good work of the advancement of human\nvirtue and happiness, and stimulates us\n\n    \"To love and hear--to hope till hope creates\n    From its own wreck the thing it contemplates.\"\n\nIt is observed by Shelley that\n\n     \"The exertions of Locke, Hume, Gibbon, Voltaire, Rousseau,\n     and their disciples in favor of oppressed and deluded\n     humanity, are entitled to the gratitude of mankind. Yet it\n     is easy to calculate the degree of moral and intellectual\n     improvement which the world would have exhibited, had they\n     never lived. A little more nonsense would have been talked\n     for a century or two; and perhaps a few more men, women and\n     children burnt as heretics. We might not at this moment have\n     been congratulating each other on the abolition of the\n     Inquisition in Spain.\"\n\nThe vast impetus, which these extraordinary geniuses gave to freedom\nin metaphysical strongholds, led to a corresponding degree of liberty\nin the political and social relations.\n\nShelley was not one who\n\n                          \"beheld the woe\n    In which mankind was bound, and deem'd that fate\n    Which made them abject, would preserve them so.\"\n\nbut on the contrary was aware of the progressive character of the\nrace, and threw himself with all his heart and soul into the cause of\nRepublicanism, and never slackened in his efforts till death took him\nfrom his work. His noblest endeavors were directed toward the cause of\nsuffering humanity, crushed under the weight of despotism; and his\ntuneful lyre was ever struck in behalf of the Goddess of Freedom, to\nwhom, in that soul inspiring \"Ode to Liberty,\" he offers chaplets of\nthe most glorious verse to rouse the nations from their apathy. He has\ngiven us his reflections on the English Revolution, when Cromwell\ncrushed royalty under his feet in the person of the tyrant Charles\nStuart, and which, notwithstanding, rose again to befoul, in the\nprofligacy and debauchery of the second Carolian epoch; on the French\nRevolution, when an intelligent people drove out a brood of vampires,\nwho had drained the blood of France too long, to be replaced by\natrocious demagogues, hateful priest-ridden Bourbons and a Napoleon\nBonaparte, the wholesale Jaffa poisoner, on whose death Shelley wrote\nlines pregnant with republican feelings:\n\n    \"I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan\n    To think that a most ambitious slave,\n    Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave\n    Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne\n    Where it had stood even now; thou didst prefer\n    A frail and bloody pomp, which time has swept\n    In fragments towards oblivion. Massacre,\n    For this I pray'd would on thy sleep have crept,\n    Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear and Lust,\n    And stifled thee, their minister. I know\n    Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,\n    That virtue owns a more eternal foe\n    Than force or fraud; old custom, legal crime,\n    And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of time.\"\n\nWith full knowledge of all this, he hopefully looked with loving eyes\ntoward this side of the Atlantic, to your magnificent constitution and\nmodel Republic, built on the consolidated masonic bases of Liberty,\nEquality, and Fraternity, as did also the mass of my compatriots, who,\nsuffering under a more intolerant despotism, and unable to help\nthemselves, had no hand or voice in the attempted tyranny, from which\nyour forefathers properly rebelled one hundred years ago.\n\nIn \"Hellas\" we find Shelley advocating the cause of Greece, and it is\nbelieved, that that poem assisted his friend Byron in the\ndetermination to wield his sword in the cause of Grecian Liberty. \"The\nRevolt of Islam,\" his most mystical work, next to his early effort,\n\"St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian,\" is full of the most majestic and\nsympathetic thoughts, and underlying its weirdness we have all those\nelements \"which essentially compose a poem in the cause of a liberal\nand comprehensive morality, and with the view of kindling in the bosom\nof his readers a virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty\nand justice, that faith and hope in something good, which neither\nviolence, nor misrepresentation, nor prejudice, nor the continual\npresence and pressure of evil, can ever totally extinguish among\nmankind.\"\n\nCan we wonder that Shelley could be else than Republican when he\nregarded what Thackeray afterward summed up with biting irony, the\nrecord of the reigning house of Great Britain, the mad Guelph\n_Defenders of the Christian Faith_(_?_), the results of whose labors\nhave been corroborated by Greville and recent writers?\n\nTo what a line of monarchs, was Shelley called upon to give allegiance\nand prostrate himself before, and can we be astonished that he thus\ndescribes the state these abominable Hanoverians had \"England in\n1819:\"\n\n    \"An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king,--\n       Princes the dregs of their dull race who flow\n    Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring,--\n       Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,\n    But leech-like to their fainting country cling,\n       Till they drop blind in blood without a blow,--\n    A people starved and stabbed in unfilled field,--\n       An army which liberticide and prey\n    Make as a two-edged sword to all who wield,--\n       Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay--\n    Religion Christless, Godless, a book sealed,--\n    A Senate--time's worst statute unrepealed,--\n       Are graves from which a glorious phantom may\n    Burst to illumine our tempestuous day?\"\n\nTo aid Republicanism, he threw himself with fervor into the cause of\nthe unhappy Caroline of Brunswick; and on her account he wrote \"God\nSave the Queen,\" in imitation of the British national anthem, and the\nsatirical piece entitled \"Swellfoot, the Tyrant.\" In the following\nwords he attacked the prime minister, Lord Castleragh, whose\nreactionary counsels were transforming England into a state analogous\nto that of Russia to-day:\n\n       \"Then trample and dance, thou oppressor,\n        For thy victim is no redressor!\n        Thou art sole lord and possessor\n    Of her corpses, and clods and abortions--they pave\n        Thy path to a grave.\"\n\nFor the Lord Chancellor, Eldon, his hatred was intense; for, in\naddition to the crime of robbing him of his children, this occupant of\nthe wool-sack, had made the seat of justice an appanage for his lust\nof wealth and power. I have already quoted some verses on this\nrenowned lawyer, and will now present you with two others bearing on\nthe same subject:\n\n   \"Next came Fraud, and he had on,\n    Like Lord Eldon, an ermine gown;\n    His big tears (for he wept well)\n    Turned to mill stones as they fell;\n\n   \"And _the little children_, who\n    Round his feet played to and fro,\n    Thinking every tear a gem,\n    Had their brains knocked out by them.\"\n\nIn _Queen Mab_, Shelley has presented us with an unmistakable\nportraiture of the \"First Gentleman in Europe;\" and in the following\nlines, which I have taken from this poem, I have chosen two extracts,\ndescriptive of the origin of political despotism, and the reason of\nits continuance:\n\n   \"Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose?\n    Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap\n    Toil and unvanquishable penury\n    On those who build their palaces, and bring\n    Their daily bread? From vice, black, loathsome vice,\n    From rapine, madness, treachery and wrong;\n    From all that genders misery, and makes\n    Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,\n    Revenge and murder.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n   \"Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;\n    The subject, not the citizen; for kings\n    And subjects, mutual foes, forever play\n    A losing game into each other's hands,\n    Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man\n    Of virtuous soul commands not nor obeys.\n    Power, like a desolating pestilence,\n    Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,\n    Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,\n    Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame\n    A mechanized automaton.\"\n\nShelley believed in reformation, not revolution; and in the \"Revolt of\nIslam\" and his Irish pamphlets, we find him advocating a bloodless\nrevolution, except where force was used, and then force for force, if\ncompromise were hopeless. His idea was ever the foundation of\npolitical systems founded on that of this country, or on the ancient\nGreek Republic. He says:\n\n     \"The study of modern history is the study of kings,\n     financiers, statesmen, and priests. The history of ancient\n     Greece is the study of legislators, philosophers, and poets;\n     it is the history of men compared with the history of\n     titles. What the Greeks were was a reality, not a promise.\n     And what we are and hope to be is derived, as it were, from\n     the influence of these glorious generations.\"\n\nHoping almost against hope for the regeneration of his country, he\nsubmitted to the people of England a proposal for putting to the vote\nthe great reform question, which was filling the public mind; but he\nwas conscious that in the then unprepared state of public knowledge\nand feeling, universal suffrage was fraught with peril, and remarks\nthat although\n\n     \"A pure republic may be shown, by inferences the most\n     obvious and irresistible, to be that system of social order\n     the fittest to produce the happiness and promote the genuine\n     eminence of man. Yet nothing can less consist with reason,\n     or afford smaller hopes of any beneficial issue, than the\n     plan which should abolish the regal and the aristocratical\n     branches of our constitution, before the public mind,\n     through many gradations of improvement, shall have arrived\n     at the maturity which shall disregard these symbols of its\n     childhood.\"\n\nAn essay has come down to us (unhappily unfinished), in which he\nargues in favor of \"Government by Juries.\" It is but a fragment; and\nyet it shows us that his mind was ever in search of the right\nsolution of the question of proper legislation for the masses. William\nPitt, with enemies on every side, publicly acknowledged the\nextraordinary genius which impelled the American revolution, and\nadmired the constitution of this country, as well as the masterly\ncharacter of the \"Declaration of Independence.\" In unstinted praise\ndoes he speak of the learning and remarkable public spirit of the\nsigners. With equal praise, I am confident, everyone must eulogize the\n\"Declaration of Rights,\" compiled by Shelley, which he put before his\ncountrymen sixty-three years ago. Therein he has given the whole of\nhis conception of the correct theory of government, and it cannot fail\nto be read by advanced minds with feelings of genuine pleasure.\n\nThe race has suffered through its long martyrdom with the horrors of\nwar. One tyrant after another, to aid his accursed ambition or revenge\nhis spite upon a brother monarch, has cursed the unhappy earth and\nhumanity with the terrors of long-continued devastation and bloodshed.\nWith burning pen has Shelley depicted war in its most hideous aspects,\nand by most beautiful comparisons has he shown us the sublimity of\npeace. He points out, that\n\n   \"War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,\n    The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.\"\n\nHe repudiates the notion that man, if left free, would wantonly heap\nruin, vice, or shivery, or curse his species with the withering blight\nof war; and he shows us how\n\n   \"Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower,\n    Even in its tender bud; their influence darts\n    Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins\n    Of desolate society. The child,\n    Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name,\n    Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts\n    His baby sword even in a hero's mood.\n    This infant arm becomes the bloodiest scourge\n    Of devastated earth: whilst specious names,\n    Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour,\n    Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims\n    Bright reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword\n    Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood.\"\n\nIn other places he seems to prophetically point out what this generation\nappears to comprehend--the judiciousness of arbitration--which in the\nfuture will be the true panacea for this frightful affliction of\nhumanity.\n\nTo the current Irish questions Shelley devoted much of his time, and\ntook up his residence in Dublin, to aid the independence of Ireland,\nwhich might, under proper treatment, have been made one of the\nbrightest spots in the British Dominions; but the inhabitants of\nwhich, owing to centuries of English misrule and oppression, had, in\ncertain parts, fallen into a condition not much superior to that of\nthose of Central Africa. When we contemplate what Ireland was before\nthe Norman and Saxon had set their feet there, the most prejudiced\nantagonist of the Celtic race cannot but be astonished at the picture\npresented to us after their usurpation. When Saxondom was in a state\nof barbarism, this branch of the Celts was civilized. Aldfred, king of\nthe Northumbrian Saxons, has given us the experiences of a Saxon in\nIreland over a thousand years ago. In a poem of his own composing, he\ntells us that he found \"noble, prosperous sages,\" \"learning, wisdom,\nwelcome, and protection,\" \"kings, queens, and royal bards, in every\nspecies of poetry well skilled. Happiness, comfort, and pleasure,\" the\npeople \"famed for justice, hospitality, lasting vigor, fame,\" and\n\"long blooming beauty, hereditary vigor\"--and the monarch concludes\nhis really curious account by saying:\n\n   \"I found in the fair, surfaced Leinster,\n    From Dublin to Slewmargy,\n    Long-living men, health, prosperity,\n    Bravery, hardihood and traffic.\n\n    I found from Ara to Gle,\n    In the rich country of Ossory,\n    Sweet fruit, strict jurisdiction,\n    Men of truth, chess-playing.\n\n    I found in the great fortress of Meath,\n    Valor, hospitality, and truth,\n    Bravery, purity, and mirth--\n    The protection of all Ireland.\n\n    I found the aged of strict morals,\n    The historians recording truth--\n    Each good, each benefit that I have sung,\n    In Ireland I have seen.\"\n\nSuch is the statement of King Aldfred, and the Venerable Bede informs\nus that in Ireland, Saxons and other foreigners were \"hospitably\nreceived, entertained and educated, furnished with books,\" etc., all\ngratuitously.\n\nUp to the middle of the sixteenth century, I find, after careful study\nin the Leabhar-Gabhala, the Annals of the Four Masters, of\nClonmacnoise, of Loch Ce, and other historical records, the same\ncontinued apparent prosperity, but after the English took possession\nof the larger portion of the country, only the records of anarchy,\ndespotism, and misery. Before the Reformation, or so long as the\nEnglish settlers remained within the pale, Ireland had been as happy\nas Ultramontanism would allow, but from the accession of Elizabeth and\nthe consequent attempted enforcement of a new theology, against the\nwishes of the people, a fearful succession of despotism is revealed.\nTo force Protestantism on the Irish, Catholicism was put down by the\nmost stringent laws--the torture chamber never empty, the scaffold\nrarely free from executions, the seaports closed, and manufactures\nforbidden to be exported; \"black laws\" of a most iniquitous character,\nexceeding in ingenuity the devices of Tilly or Torquemada, placed on\nthe statute book. The punishment for being a recusant Catholic, or\nPapist, was death, and it is a known fact that one Protestant\ncommander, Sir William Cole, of Fermanagh, made his soldiers massacre\nin a short period \"seven thousand of the vulgar sort,\" as Borlase\ninforms us. Elsewhere the English behaved in the same manner, and on\nthe authority of Bishop Moran it is asserted that the Puritans of the\nNorth shot down Catholics as wild beasts, and made it their business\n\"to imbrue their swords in the hearts' blood of the male children.\"\nMr. and Mrs. S.C. Hall, in their valuable work on Ireland, state that\nthe possessors of the whole province of Ulster were driven out under\npain of mortal punishment from their homes and lands, without roof\nover their heads, to be pent up in the most barren portion of\nConnaught, where to pass a certain boundary line was instant death\nwithout trial, and where it was commonly said, \"There is not wood\nenough to hang a man, water enough to drown him, nor earth enough to\nbury him.\" One hundred thousand Catholics were sold as slaves to the\nWest Indian and North American planters by the public authority of the\nCromwellian government. Such was the way these Christians showed their\nlove for their fellow Christians, and can it be wondered that ever\nsince than there has been one continual succession of uprisings in\nthat most unhappy country? As the sinew of Ireland's people in this\ncountry were driven by necessity, fleeing from the terrors of\nstarvation and insufficient existence at home, so were the best of the\nrace in the two previous centuries necessitated to fly to the European\ncontinent, where we find them enrolled, for instance, in the service\nof the King of France, and having revenge on their oppressors on the\nfield of Fontenoy. Elsewhere in every country of Europe do we discover\nthem or their descendants in the front ranks, and at the helm of\naffairs--in Spain, O'Donnell and Prim; in France, Mac Mahon and Lally\nTollendal; in Austria, O'Taafe and Maguire.\n\nWhen Shelley arrived in Dublin in 1812, he soon found himself joined\nto the body of the Repeal party, which was endeavoring to obtain back\nthe parliament which had been stolen from them by British gold, less\nthan a quarter of a century before, and to have the Catholic\nEmancipation Bill made law. He published two remarkable, political\npamphlets, in those days the only mode by which a statesman could\nappeal to the people, in which it may be noticed how well he could\nwrite in a popular style, to effectually serve a purpose. They also\nprove his enthusiasm for the liberty of discussion, and how, although\nhe was always willing to treat on politics alone, he was preoccupied\nwith metaphysical questions which continually crop out.\n\nIn the first, which he called _An Address to the Irish People_, and\nwrote during the first week of his residence in Ireland, he commences\nby eulogizing the Irish, explains to them that all religions are good\nwhich make men good, and shows that, being neither Protestant nor\nCatholic, he can offer the olive branch to each. He then points out\nthe weak spots in each other's conduct in the past, the necessity of\ntoleration, and the crime of persecution--how different this was to\nwhat Christ taught!\n\nHe endeavors to prove that arms should not be used--that the French\nRevolution, although undertaken with the best intentions, ended badly\nbecause force was employed. He recommends sobriety, regularity and\nthought; for the Irish not to appeal to bloodshed, but to agitate\ndeterminedly for Catholic emancipation and repeal, which should be\nensured through the use of moral persuasion. And concluding with an\nappeal to Catholic and Protestant to bear with each other, using\nmildness and benevolence, and to mutually organize a society which\n\n     \"Shall serve as a bond to its members for the purpose of\n     virtue, happiness, liberty and wisdom by the means of\n     intellectual opposition to grievances,\"\n\nhe winds up by saying:\n\n     \"Adieu, my friends! May every sun that shines on your green\n     island see the annihilation of an abuse, and the birth of an\n     embryon of melioration! Your own hearts--may they become the\n     shrines of purity and freedom, and never may smoke to the\n     Mammon of Unrighteousness ascend from the polluted altar of\n     their devotion.\"\n\nIn a postscript to this pamphlet, he urges\n\n     \"A plan of amendment and regeneration in the moral and\n     political state of society, on a comprehensive and\n     systematic philanthropy which shall be sure though slow in\n     its projects; and as it is without the rapidity and danger\n     of revolution, so will it be devoid of the time-servingness\n     of temporizing reform;\"\n\nand quotes Lafayette:\n\n     \"A name endeared by its peerless bearer to every lover of\n     the human race, 'For a nation to love liberty, it is\n     sufficient that she knows it to be free; it is sufficient\n     that she wills it.'\"\n\nHis other Dublin pamphlet, _A Proposal for an Association of\nPhilanthropists_, consists of remarks of the same character as the\nformer, but he gives a summary of the French Revolution, which he\nendeavors to clear from the slurs which had been cast thereon. The\ninformation has come down to us through one of Shelley's biographers,\nthat he spoke at several meetings in Dublin. At the one in which he\nmade his first appearance in public he aroused a large assembly to\nenthusiasm by his fervid eloquence, and yet, notwithstanding all his\nefforts, his toleration unfortunately became the great stumbling-block\nin his attempts on behalf of Ireland, for we learn that at another\nmeeting of patriots:\n\n     \"So much ill-will against the Protestants was shown, that\n     Shelley was provoked to remark that the Protestants were\n     fellow-Christians and fellow-subjects, and were therefore\n     entitled to equal rights and equal toleration with the\n     Papists. Of course, he was forthwith interrupted by savage\n     yells. A fierce uproar ensued, and the denouncer of bigotry\n     was compelled to be silent. At the same meeting, and\n     afterward, he was even threatened with personal violence,\n     and the police suggested to him the propriety of quitting\n     the country.\"\n\nBy many it has been said that Shelley was unsuccessful in his\nself-imposed task, but he was simply before his time, and no wonder,\nwhen we remember the condition of Ireland at the time of his visit.\n\nWe know to-day that much of what he demanded has been conceded to\nIreland by liberal English governments. An alien Church has been\ndisestablished; public education, Catholic emancipation, and a good\ndeal more, has been given. In the late repeal movement, the young\nIreland party, the Fenian organization, and the present Home Rule\nagitation, we find, as Shelley wished, Catholic and Protestant working\narm in arm, their colors being an admixture of orange and green--a\nhealthy sign.\n\nThose who dislike this noble people--for the name is legion of those\nwho are fond of shouting \"No Irish need apply\"--I would recommend to\nthink calmly over Irish history, to remember the frightful outrages\nput upon this generous, warm-hearted, and impulsive race for\ncenturies, and read up Froude, Mitchell, Goldwin-Smith, McGee, Moran,\nand other Irish historians.\n\nWe know what the Irish are capable of, and that in Ireland, as here,\nafter a generation or two of education, the old theological belief\nbecomes by a gradual process less and less strong.\n\nOn September 6th, 1819, a red letter day was added to the English\ncalendar, through the slaughter by cavalry of a number of unarmed men,\nwho were agitating, peaceably, for the rights of labor. This is known\nto posterity as the \"Peterloo Massacre,\" and happened in Manchester,\non the site of the present superb Free Trade Hall, erected by the Free\nTraders to commemorate the ultimate triumph of their cause over the\ncapitalists, who, in the manufacturing districts, were, until a few\nyears back, always aided by the military in putting down strikes or\ndemands for increase of wages.\n\nAt the time of this outrage Shelley was in Italy; in consequence of it\nhis attention was concentrated more than previously on the labor\nquestion, and he immediately composed half a dozen in spiriting poems,\nfull of the fire of genius; in one of which he calls, with a voice of\nthunder, to the\n\n                      I.\n\n   \"Men of England! wherefore plough\n    For the lords who lay ye low?\n    Wherefore weave, with toil and care,\n    The rich robes your tyrants wear?\n\n                      II.\n\n    Wherefore feed and clothe and save,\n    From the cradle to the grave,\n    Those ungrateful drones who would\n    Drain your sweat--nay, drink your blood?\n\n                     III.\n\n    Wherefore, bees of England, forge\n    Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,\n    That these stingless drones may spoil\n    The forced produce of your toil?\n\n                      IV.\n\n    Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,\n    Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?\n    Or what is't ye buy so dear\n    With your pain, and with your fear?\n\n                       V.\n\n    The seed ye sow, another reaps;\n    The wealth ye find another keeps;\n    The robes ye weave, another wears;\n    The arms ye forge, another bears.\n\n                      VI.\n\n    Sow seed--but let no tyrant reap;\n    Find wealth--let no impostor heap;\n    Weave robes--let not the idle wear;\n    Forge arms--in your defence to bear.\n\n                     VII.\n\n    Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;\n    In halls ye deck, another dwells.\n    Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see\n    The steel ye tempered, glance on ye!\n\n                    VIII.\n\n    With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,\n    Trace your grave, and build your tomb,\n    And weave your winding sheet, till fair\n    England be your sepulchre!\"\n\nBy far the finest composition brought out by this occasion was the\n\"Masque of Anarchy,\" a magnificent poem of ninety-one verses. \"Anarchy\"\nhe describes as riding \"on a white horse,\"[E] in alliance with\ntheology and statecraft, and whose admirers were \"lawyers and\npriests.\"\n\n[Footnote E: This doubtless alludes to the House of Hanover, the\nprincipal charge on whose armorial bearings is a white horse.]\n\nAfter a series of powerful delineations, he describes slavery and\nfreedom, justice, wisdom, peace and love, in exquisite terms. Then he\nturns to their lamps--science, poetry, and thought, which make secure\n\"the lot of the dwellers in the cot.\"\n\nHe advises--That, on some spot of English ground, should be convened a\ngreat assembly of the fearless and the free, who shall come from the\nbounds of the English coast, and from every hut, village, and town,\nwhere, for other's misery and their own, they live, suffer, and moan.\nAlso,\n\n    \"From the workhouse and the prison,\n     Where, pale as corpses newly risen,\n     Women, children, young and old,\n     Groan for pain, and weep for cold;\n\n    \"From the haunts of daily life,\n     Where is waged the daily strife\n     With common wants and common cares,\n     Which sow the human heart with tares.\"\n\nWhen face to face with their oppressors, no force should be used, but\ninstead\n\n           \"strong and simple words,\n    Keen to wound as sharpened swords,\n    And wide as targes let them be,\n    With their shade to cover ye.\"\n\nThe description of the Peterloo massacre which follows, is one of the\nfinest pieces of composition in the language, and the poem concludes\nby calling the \"Men of England, Heirs of Glory, Heroes of Unwritten\nStory,\" to\n\n    \"Rise like lions after slumber\n     In unvanquishable NUMBER!\n     Shake your chains to earth, like dew\n     Which in sleep had fall'n on you;\n     'YE ARE MANY--THEY ARE FEW.'\"\n\nIn a pamphlet, written ostensibly on the death of the Princess\nCharlotte, he calls attention to the fact that three men had been\nexecuted in the interests of the \"big-hearted and generous\ncapitalists,\" of whom we now-a-days hear so much from their interested\nadmirers, but whose wings are now fortunately clipped.\n\nShelley considered that there was no real wealth but man's labor, and\nthat speculators pandering to selfishness, the twin-sister of debased\ntheology, took a pride in the production of useless articles of luxury\nand ostentation. Imbued with this spirit, a man of wealth imagines\nhimself a patriot when employing laborers on the erection of a\nmansion, or a woman of fashion indulging in luxurious dress, fancies\nshe is aiding the laboring poor. He observes of such instances as\nthese:\n\n     \"Who does not see that this is a remedy which aggravates,\n     whilst it palliates the countless diseases of society? The\n     poor are set to labor--for what? Not the food for which they\n     famish; not the blankets for want of which their babes are\n     frozen by the cold of their miserable hovels; not those\n     comforts of civilization without which civilized man is far\n     more miserable than the meanest savage, oppressed as he is\n     by all its insidious evils, within the daily and taunting\n     prospect of its innumerable benefits assiduously exhibited\n     before him; no, for the pride of power, for the miserable\n     isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hundredth\n     part of society.\"\n\nLabor is required for physical, and leisure for moral improvement.\nWhat is wanted, he considered, is a state to combine the advantages of\nboth and have the evils of neither. In fact, any unnecessary labor\nwhich deprives the race of intellectual gain, and all times not\nrequired for the manufacture of commodities which are necessary for\nthe subsistence of humanity, should be occupied only in mental or\nphysical culture.\n\nShelley lays down as a principle that commerce is the venal\ninterchange of what human art or nature yields, and which should not\nbe purchased by wealth, but demanded by want. Labor and commerce, when\nbadly regulated, scatter withering curses and open\n\n    \"The doors to premature and violent death,\n     To penury, famine, and full-fed disease.\"\n\nWealth was a living God, who rules in scorn, and whom peasants,\nnobles, priests, and kings blindly reverence, and by whom everything\nis sold--the light of heaven, earth's produce, the peace of outraged\nconscience, the most despicable things, every object of life, and even\nlife itself.\n\nIn a proper condition of society, which should be strictly\nco-operative, there would necessarily be no pauperism, and\n\n    \"No meditative signs of selfishness,\n     No jealous intercourse of wretched gain,\n     No balancings of prudence, cold and long;\n     In just and equal measure all is weighed;\n     One scale contains the sum of human weal.\n     And one the good man's heart.\"\n\nThe fruits of Shelley's enunciations on the labor and capital\nquestions, and the school of political economists to which he\nbelonged, have made wondrous progress. The world is beginning to see\nthat labor has the unrestricted right of coalition, that there should\nbe only a standard day's work, according to the wants of society, with\nprohibition of labor for at least one day in the week; that\nlegislation is required for the protection of the life and health of\nthe working man, and that mines, factories, and workshops should be\nstrictly controlled by sanitary officers selected by labor; that no\nchildren's work should be permitted, or women's, which may be\nconsidered unhealthy; that prison work should be regulated, and that\nlaborers' co-operative and benevolent societies should be administered\nindependently of the State.\n\nLiberals must learn from their enemies, must organize and let the\nramifications of unshackled thought spread through the lands, and\nmust, above all, conserve the control of education. Whereever there is\na church or chapel, let there be beside it a hall or club, in which\nshall be inculcated the simple doctrines of a pure, integralised\nreligion.\n\nOn the statute book of England there yet remains a law directed\nagainst the freedom of the press and discussion; to even discuss the\nquestion of the divinity of Christ was considered blasphemy, and the\nperson so offending was punished most severely by the criminal laws.\nAt the present time this wretched remnant of the dark ages is\npractically a dead letter. The friends of Shelley suffered from this\nmost intolerant spirit. Keats, it is believed by many, was wounded\nunto death for daring to speak on behalf of freedom, and we are given\nglimpses in the _Adonais_ of his feelings on the subject; Leigh Hunt\nand his brother were imprisoned and fined for the same; the publisher\nof the pirated edition of Shelley's _Queen Mab_ was cast into Newgate;\nEaton, a London bookseller, had been sentenced by Lord Ellenborough to\na lengthened incarceration, for publishing Paine's _Age of Reason_,\nand hundreds of others suffered similarly. The abominable circumstance\nof Eaton's conviction caused great uproar; the Marquis of Wellesley,\nin the House of Lords, stated it was \"contrary to the mild spirit of\nthe Christian religion; for no sanction can be found under that\ndispensation which will warrant a government to impose disabilities\nand penalties upon any man on account of his religious opinions.\"\nShelley, who was then only nineteen years of age, and had himself\nsuffered from bigotry at Oxford, threw himself publicly into the\ncontroversy with great vehemence, with \"a composition of great\neloquence and logical exactness of reasoning, and the truths which it\ncontains on the subject of universal toleration are now generally\nadmitted.\" Lady Shelley, from whom I have just quoted, says that her\nhusband's father, \"from his earliest boyhood to his latest years,\nwhatever varieties of opinion may have marked his intellectual course,\nnever for a moment swerved from the noble doctrine of unbounded\nliberty of thought and speech. To him the rights of intellect were\nsacred; and all kings, teachers, or priests who sought to circumscribe\nthe activity of discussion, and to check by force the full development\nof the reasoning powers, he regarded as enemies to the independence of\nman, who did their utmost to destroy the spiritual essence of our\nbeing.\"\n\nTo Shelley's able advocacy, and to his appeals against the stamping\nout of political and social truths opposed to custom, particularly the\ncelebrated letter to Lord Ellenborough, it cannot be denied that the\ntoleration now enjoyed in Great Britain owes much.\n\nShelley was one of those who most earnestly deprecated punishment by\ndeath. In his early years, if a man stole a sheep, or shot a hare,\ncommitted forgery or larceny, was a recusant catholic or a wizard,\nthere was, on his conviction, but one penalty meted out--death. To\nShelley's sensitive nature, this painted and tinged everything around\nhim with an aspect of blood. In one of his political pamphlets,\nsummoning all his energies, he depicts in fearful colors, the depraved\nexample of an execution--how it brutalized the race, and how it was\nthe duty of man not to commit murder on his fellow-man, in the name of\nthe laws. The abolition of the first of these, he stated that\nreformers should propose on the eve of a great political change. He\nconsidered that the punishment by death harbored revenge and\nretaliation, which legislation should be the means of eradicating, and\nhe urged that\n\n     \"Governments which derive their institutions from the\n     existence of circumstances of barbarism and violence, with\n     some rare exceptions, perhaps, are bloody in proportion as\n     they are despotic, and form the manners of their subjects to\n     a sympathy with their own spirit.\"\n\nIn England, as in many other countries, capital punishment is now only\nemployed on conviction of murder or high treason. In Spain and Italy\nit was totally abolished, on the foundation of their young republics.\nThus have the labors of Shelley, and other reformers for the good of\nhumanity, aided to extinguish crime made law.\n\nCruelty to animals was another reform agitated by Shelley. His love\nfor the animal kingdom and hatred of blood-shedding, was so great,\nthat he personally carried the passion to such an extent as to become\na vegetarian, and endeavored to induce others to be the same, in an\nadmirable argument of some length in the notes to \"Queen Mab.\"\n\nThe subject of the Rights of Women is approached and expatiated on,\nperhaps learnedly, by individuals utterly incompetent to deal with the\nquestion. Such persons, frequently armed with Sunday-school\nplatitudes, believing in the inferiority of women, consequent on the\nsupposed fall, and doubtless with heads paved with good intentions, as\na certain place is said to be, do more harm than good to the cause.\nThis is not wanted, and is worse than useless. To found a real\nrepublic on a solid basis, it can be legislated for only by removing\nthe ancient landmarks by a gradual process, and coming face to face\nwith a new order of things, without bias or prejudice borrowed from\nthe past. Thus that noble woman, Mary Wolstonecraft, as well as John\nStuart Mill, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and numerous others, have treated\nthis all-important question, which cannot be shirked by the race. True\nreformers ask: What was the condition of the sex in the past? Look\ndown the revolving cycles and note. In ancient Egypt, woman in the\nupper classes was almost the equal of man, and although, like\nCleopatra, she could wield the sceptre, yet in the lower her condition\nwas wretched; in Asia, a mere slave and object of Zenana lust; in\nsavagedom, a beast of burthen. In Rome and Greece, Shelley shall tell\nthe story:\n\n     \"Among the ancient Greeks the male sex, one half of the\n     human race, received the highest cultivation and refinement;\n     whilst the other, so far as intellect is concerned, were\n     educated as slaves, and were raised but few degrees in all\n     that related to moral or intellectual excellence above the\n     condition of savages.... The Roman women held a higher\n     consideration in society, and were esteemed almost as the\n     equal partners with their husbands in the regulation of\n     domestic economy and the education of their children.\"\n\nRegard the incidents of a Jewish wooing, in which the woman had no\nvoice, and of the marriage, the infernal punishments for adultery, and\nthe accounts of the seraglios of the Hebrew kings equalled only by\nTurkish harems, and some of the passages in the inspired Book of\nNumbers, for instance, in which the horrible truth is frequently too\nevident, and only equalled by the fact that after lust had played out\nits passion, unfortunate women, taken in captivity, could, by divine\ncommand, be turned adrift to rot or starve. In Christian Feudalism we\nfind nothing much better. If I have read history correctly, and I may\nbe wrong--the upper-grade women in mediaeval Europe, who were adored,\nnot with love, but with lascivious and sensual worship, by Christian\nknights and troubadours, and who, like criminals to the halter, were\nforced, rarely with their own consent, into the arms of men they\ndisliked or had never seen, or were placed in conventual houses\nagainst their wills. Of the lower-grade women, I need only offer one\nexample--and that is sufficient to show their awful degradation; the\nFrench and German feudal lord had the right of _cuissage_, or, in\nplain English, the embraces of his serf-retainer's bride on the\nmarriage night.\n\nShelley considered that in consequence of all this, men had forgotten\ntheir duties to the other sex, and that even at the time at which he\nlived woman was still in great social bondage, improperly educated,\ntied down by restrictions, and refused participation in the higher\npositions of labor. He called not in vain, against the inequality of\nthe sexes, and asserted that woman's position must and should be\naltered by forgetting the tyranny of the past, and, be determined, for\nthe good of the future.\n\nWe should be rejoiced that eloquent exponents of the abominations of\nformer ages, the evils of the present, and the proper position of the\nfuture, are now hard at work. The \"Women's Rights\" party is up\nteaching men their duties on every continent; in distant India, the\nBrahmo Somaj is battling, not vainly, against the horrors of the\nZenana, and in conservative England, which has been stormed, and the\nforlorn hope is now taking possession of the citadel; everywhere it is\nthe same. Yes, woman, thanks to Shelley and the reformers, is about to\nbe emancipated and free; free to earn her living, how, where, and when\nshe likes; the equal of man, who shall no longer play such fantastic\ntricks as he did in the past, in proof of his dignity and\nsuperiority. The fourth of July is not long past and gone; I trust\nthat in the dim vista of the future, our descendants will keep a\nnational holiday, or a day to be set apart on which shall be\ncelebrated the \"Declaration of the Independence of Women,\" and then,\nperhaps, Shelley's description of woman in the \"Episychidion\" will be\nmore apparent:\n\n    \"Seraph of heaven! too gentle to be human,\n     Veiling beneath the radiant form of woman\n     All that is unsupportable in thee,\n     Of light, and love, and immortality.\"\n\nI now approach a very delicate portion of my essay: the question of\nthe marriage relation. By many it is scouted with much virtuous\nindignation, but I conceive that the liberal, who, like too many, dare\nnot discuss this matter in its broadest and widest aspects, should be\nstigmatized as unworthy of the name. Christ is reported to have urged\nthe admirers of his ethical system to take up their cross and follow\nhim, leaving father, mother, wife, children, and all they may\nhave--thus Shelley acted, and it bears as equally pregnant lessons to\nfree thinkers as it did to those Syrian fishermen. Oh, that liberals\nhad as much \"faith\" in the truth, in the efficacy of their cause, as\nthe first Christians are said to have had in the teachings of that\nChrist whom they regarded not as a Divinity, but as a son of God, as\nwe to-day are sons of God, of the most high! Oh, that we could carry\nthat \"faith\" into our beliefs, and the determination to be stopped at\nno obstacle which may bar the progress of truth, which must conquer in\nthe end!\n\nThe favorite theme in the writings of Shelley is \"Eros,\" love of the\nindividual, of the race, of nature, and in this he follows Christ, in\nwhose system of Philosophy, Love is ever the pre-dominating idea which\npermeates mankind with its beneficial effects, and will, when the\nbastard tinsel with which the truths of the Nazarene are hidden, be\nreplaced by that pure gold which it is impossible to trace in the\nenunciations of any previous philosopher. This subject is always\npresent to Shelley, and he thus appeals in one of his poems to the\n\n    \"Great Spirit, deepest Love!\n     Which rulest and dost move\n     All things which live, and are.\"\n\nIn another place he inquires--\n\n     \"What is love? Ask him who lives, what is life? Ask him who\n     adores, what is God?\"\n\nAnd in the same essay he describes love as\n\n     \"The bond and sanction which connects man with man, and with\n     everything which exists.\"\n\nElsewhere he points out that the attainment of love\n\n     \"urges forth the power of man to arrest the faintest shadow\n     of that without the possession of which there is no rest nor\n     respite to the heart over which it rules, (and that) so soon\n     as this want or power is dead, man becomes the living\n     sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk\n     of what once he was.\"\n\nOf such was Shelley's philosophy of love, and I would ask if it be\nconceivable that the abominable calumny prompted by theological virus,\nthat he kept a seraglio, as his friend Leigh Hunt informs us was\nreported, had any real existence. Shelley was too pure for any such\nidea as that of promiscuous sexual intercourse to be acted on by\nhimself; his life, which lies open before us, refutes the diabolical\ninvention. The fact was, that at the early age of nineteen he married\nHarriet Westbrook, the daughter of a retired tavern keeper, a woman\nwithout soul and that congeniality of disposition which a man\noverflowing with the pulses of genius should have chosen. After a\nwretched existence without intellectual sympathy, and on the advice of\nher father, who did not agree with his ideas on religion, they parted\nby mutual consent, never to meet again. Shelley about this period met\nhis second wife, a woman of the highest powers of mind and charm of\nbody, Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin, the authoress of _Frankenstein_ and\nother works, daughter of William Godwin, the novelist, and author of\n_Political Justice_ and Mary Wolstonecraft, the gifted writer of _The\nRights of Women_. We are told by Lady Shelley that, \"To her, as they\nmet one eventful day in St. Pancras churchyard, by her mother's grave,\nBysshe, in burning words, poured forth the tale of his wild past, how\nhe had suffered, how he had been misled, and how, if supported by her\nlove, he hoped, in future years, to enroll his name with the wise and\ngood, who had done battle for their fellow-men and been true through\nall adverse storms to the cause of humanity. Unhesitatingly she placed\nher hand in his, and linked her fortune with his own.\"\n\nAfter the death of his first wife, on the solicitation of Godwin, who\nwas anxious for the landed interests of his grandchildren, a _legal_\nunion was performed. After looking on this episode, in the most\ncharitable manner, I am confident the sternest moralist cannot but\n\"acknowledge that the passionate love of a boy should not be held a\nserious blemish, in a man whose subsequent life was exceptional in\nvirtue and beneficence.\"\n\nBelieving, as I have explained, in the divinity of love, Shelley\nregarded everything in the relation of the sexes with the most intense\nhorror, which was not consistent with \"freedom;\" and by which he most\ncertainly did not signify the license attributed by many. When he\nlooked around and saw the withering blast of forced marriages,\nconjugal hatred and prostitution, can we be astonished at his\npassionately exclaiming:\n\n    \"Even love is sold; the solace of all woe\n     Is turned to deadliest agony, old age\n     Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms,\n     And youth's corrupted impulses prepare\n     A life of horror from the blighting bane\n     Of commerce, whilst the pestilence that springs\n     From unenjoying sensualism, has filled\n     All human life with hydra-headed woes?\"\n\nIn a most important essay bearing on this passage, which should be\nwidely studied, he observes:\n\n     \"Love is inevitably consequent upon the perception of\n     loveliness. Love withers under constraint; its very essence\n     is liberty; it is compatible neither with obedience,\n     jealousy, nor fear; it is then most pure, perfect, and\n     unlimited, where its votaries live in confidence, equality,\n     and unreserve.\"\n\nHe then urges:\n\n     \"A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they\n     love each other. Any law which should bind them to\n     cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their\n     affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most\n     unworthy of toleration; and there is nothing _immoral_ in\n     this separation, for love is free. To promise forever to\n     love the same woman, is not less absurd than to promise to\n     believe the same creed.\"\n\nHe states categorically that\n\n     \"The present system of constraint does no more, in the\n     majority of instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies.\n     Persons of delicacy and virtue, unhappily united to those\n     whom they find it impossible to love, spend the loveliest\n     season of their lives in unproductive efforts to appear\n     otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of\n     their partners or the welfare of their mutual offspring; and\n     that the early education of their children takes its color\n     from the squabbles of the parents. They are nursed in a\n     systematic school of ill-humor, violence, and falsehood, and\n     the conviction that wedlock is indissoluble holds out the\n     strongest of all temptations to the perverse. They indulge\n     without restraint in acrimony and all the little tyrannies\n     of domestic life, when they know that their victim is\n     without appeal. If this connection were put on a rational\n     basis, each would be assured that habitual ill-temper would\n     terminate in separation, and would check this vicious and\n     dangerous propensity.\"\n\nHe conceived from the re-arrangement of the marriage relation by\ngreater facility of divorce than was to be had sixty years ago,[F]\n\n     \"A fit and natural arrangement would result.\"\n\n[Footnote F: It should be remembered that in Shelley's day divorce was\nobtainable by the most wealthy only, at an enormous cost and by a\nlengthy process, precluding the slightest opportunity for the middle\nand poorer classes to avail themselves thereof.]\n\nShelley by no means asserts that the intercourse would be promiscuous,\nbut on the contrary believed that from the relation of parent to child\na union is generally of longer duration, placed on such a footing, and\nmarked above all others with generosity and self-devotion.\n\nWe are on the eve of great religious changes, which must consequently\ndisturb all the social relations. Historical Christianity still holds\nto her old text, of marriage being a sacrament, and therefore\nindissoluble. The founder of Comtism developing this dogma, urges that\nafter the death of either husband or wife the duty of the survivor is\nnot to re-marry. Great Britain and many of the American States have\nconceded greater freedom in divorce, so as to carry out in a large\nmeasure the arguments of Shelley, while the theory of what is termed\nthe \"sovereignty of the individual\" is propounded by the leaders of\nthe free love party, as a cure for the present and former\ndifficulties.\n\nWhatever may be the outcome of the present widespread discussions I\nknow not, but I have belief in the supreme intelligence and in\nhumanity, and am certain that neither the home nor the race will\nsuffer, but that out of all this agitation will come more refined\nsentiment and truer morality.\n\nI must now conclude. It has been said that there are two things in\nwhich the professors of all theologies have agreed-\"To persecute all\nother sects, and plunder their own.\" Shelley, who subscribed to no\ntheology, was persecuted by them during his entire life, but he ever\nforgave his persecutors, who he was confident acted through ignorance\nof his real motives, and he tells us:\n\n     \"I have thought to appeal to something in common and\n     unburden my inmost soul to them. I have found my language\n     misunderstood, like one in a distant and savage land. The\n     more opportunities they have afforded me for experience, the\n     wider has appeared the interval between us, and to a greater\n     distance have the points of sympathy been withdrawn. With a\n     spirit ill-fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and\n     feeble through its tenderness, I have everywhere sought\n     sympathy, and have found only repulse and disappointment.\"\n\nDo _we_ misunderstand him? I think not, and William Howitt, a\nrepresentative of the people, shall answer for them: \"For liberty of\nevery kind he was ready to die. For knowledge, and truth, and\nkindness, he desired only to live. He was a rare instance of the union\nof the finest moral nature and the finest genius. If he erred, the\nworld took ample revenge upon him for it, while he conferred in return\nhis amplest blessing on the world. It was long a species of heresy to\nmention his name in society; that is passing fast away. It was next\nsaid that he never could become popular, and therefore the mischief he\ncould do was limited. He _has_ become popular, and the good he is\nlikely to do will be unlimited. The people read him, though we may\nwonder at it, and they comprehend him.\"\n\nThis estimate is not overrated, for, having confidence in his mission\nto humanity, he was fortified by the belief of his existing as an\nindestructible portion of interminable nature and the universal mind,\nwhich in all high intelligences lives through the ages, not only in\nthe individual consciousness of the spirit, but in that immortality of\nsoul or mind, which lives in the race.\n\nHe hated the superstitions of Christian Fetishism and tyranny over the\nintellect, but loved Christ and the other philosophers with a genuine\naffection; he loved humanity, and was ever fond of examining its\nhighest phases, as, for instance, through the doctrines of perfect\nequality in the sexes--yet he recognised that sudden changes were\nprejudicial before sufficient progress had been accomplished. \"To\ndestroy, you must replace.\" Justice he considered the sole guide,\nreason and duty the only law. His morality was not that of pharasaical\ntartuffes, nor of prudish knickerbockers, who with wide phylacteries,\nsit in the high places to be seen of men. He only combatted evil\nprinciples and fought hard in favor of good.\n\nHe has been quoted as being too transcendental; he may be to dullards\nwith imperfect reasoning faculties, or theologians, who only see\nthrough fanatical and green-monsterish spectacles, but to men who\nhave a _live_ philosophy equally adapted to modern as well as ancient\nthought, he is as clear as the noon-day sun. All that is required, to\ncomprehend Percy Bysshe Shelley, is integralism of that high order\nwhich has ever believed in the ultimate perfectibility of human\nnature, and looked \"forward to a period when a new golden age would\nreturn to earth, when all the different creeds and systems of the\nworld would be amalgamated into one, crime disappear, and man, freed\nfrom shackles, civil and religious, bow before the throne 'of his own\nawless soul,' or 'of the power unknown,'\" whose veil it is the\nambition of theosophy to raise for humanity, and remain the\n\"inscrutable\" no longer.\n\nI have completed my task, and with humility I make the statement,\nknowing that before me are many who could have performed it as\ncompletely as I have crudely. I look upon my essay, in which I have\ntreated my subject popularly, with intention, as a beacon, whence a\nlittle light may be shed dimly, hoping that others, better qualified,\nwill bring you face to face with the full rays.\n\nI have shown you Shelley in his writings, his life and poetry, only\nwhere they trench on his philosophical and reform ideas--I could have\nrelated to you much about his inflexibly moral, generous, and\nunselfishly benevolent character--his pure, gentle and loveable\nexistence--his utter abnegation of self, learnt from the hermetic\nphilosophy, and his despisal of transitory legislative honors--how he,\nthe heir to thousands of dollars annually, and a baronetage, threw\naside pecuniary considerations for love of the truth and\nbenevolence,[G] and how, therefrom, he was often nearly dying of\nhunger in the streets. I could have treated him simply as a poet, full\nof experienced impetuosity, subtlety of expression, and precision of\nverse, but I have aimed to exhibit one side of his immortality to you,\nwhich lives in and by the race, for humanity.\n\n[Footnote G: \"In his heart there was nothing depraved or unsound;\nthose who had opportunities of knowing him best, tell us that his life\nwas spent in the contemplation of nature, in arduous study, or in acts\nof kindness and affection. A man of learning, who shared the poverty\nso often attached to it, enjoyed from him at one period a pension of a\nhundred pounds sterling a year, and continued to enjoy it till fortune\nrendered it superfluous. To another man of letters, in similar\ncircumstances, he presented fourteen hundred pounds; and many other\nacts like these are on record to his immortal honor. Himself a frugal\nand abstemious ascetic, by saving and economising, he was able to\nassist the industrious poor--and they had frequent cause to bless his\nname.\"--_National Magazine._]\n\nCut short in the youth of manhood, who can tell what Percy Bysshe\nShelley might, not have become, living for us even perhaps at this\nmoment? What need we care, though, for does not the \"Empire of the\ndead increase of the living from age to age?\" Shelley's terrestrial\nbody may have been cast up by the waves on the lonely Italian shore,\nin sweet companionship with the souls of Keats and Sophocles. His\nmundane elements, purified through the fire, may have returned to\ntheir kindred elements, and been\n\n               \"made one with Nature, where is heard\n      His voice in all her music, from the moan\n    Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird;\n      He is a presence to be felt and known,\n    In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,\n      Spreading itself where'er that Power move,\n    Which has withdrawn his being to its own;\n      Which wields the world with never-wearied love,\n      Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.\"\n\nHis cinereal ashes may lie beneath the cypresses, near the dust of the\n\"Adonais\" of his muse, under Roman sod, and where he said:\n\n     \"To see the sun shining on its bright grass, and hear the\n     whispering of the wind among the leaves of the trees, which\n     have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is\n     stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs,\n     mostly of women and young children, who, buried there, we\n     might, if we were to die, desire a sleep they seem to\n     sleep.\"\n\nAll this may have happened, but why need we repine, for as eternal as\nthe sea, as infinite as Nature, and as the phoenix, he revivifying\nlives, transmigrated and transfused into humanity, for with certainty\nwe know that\n\n    \"He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he.\"\n\nImmortal amid immortals, his spirit in communion with the Most High,\nfully conscious in its individuality--immortal amid mortals, his place\nneed never be refilled, for he stands betwixt the old and the\nnew--immortal amid the sons of song, do poets still breathe his divine\nafflatus--immortal amid philosophers and the regenerators of the race,\nwith Buddha, with Moses, with Socrates, with Mahomet, with\nChrist--immortal amid the noble, the virtuous, the good, the\nwise--immortal as when living here, for from spirit-spheres we hear\nhim bidding us repeat:\n\n   \"Nor let us weep that our delight is fled\n     Far from these carrion-kites that scream below;\n    He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;\n     Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.\n    Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow\n     Back to the burning fountain whence it came,\n    A portion of the Eternal, which must glow\n     Through time and change, unquenchably the same,\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n   \"Peace! peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep--\n     He hath awaken'd from the dream of life--\n   'Tis we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep\n     With phantoms an unprofitable strife;\n    And in mad trance, strike with our spirits' knife,\n     Invulnerable nothings!\"\n\n\nFINIS CORONAT OPUS.","title":"Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":20472}