Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer | Page 5

which the world is in full possession to-day, and which the mystical
Occultists, Rosicrucians, and Cabalists have now, and have ever had,
conjoined to a mysterious command over the active hidden material
and spiritual powers in the infinite domain of nature.
The idea of the Supreme Power or God, as emanating from Shelley, is
one of the most sublime to be found in the pages of metaphysical
learning at the command of ordinary mortals. By many it may be
considered only a vague pantheism; yet, rightly regarded in a
reconciliative spirit, it is of such an universal character as to harmonize
with not only Deism, Theism and Polytheism, but even Atheistical
Materialism. Listen to the following, which I select out of numerous
examples, as a finger-post for others who seek the living springs of
undefiled truth, as in Shelley:
"Whosoever is free from the contamination of luxury and license may
go forth to the fields and to the woods, inhaling joyous renovation from
the breath of Spring, and catching from the odors and sounds of autumn
some diviner mood of sweetest sadness, which improves the softened
heart. Whosoever is no deceiver and destroyer of his fellow-men--no
liar, no flatterer, no murderer--may walk among his species, deriving,
from the communion with all which they contain of beautiful or
majestic, some intercourse with the Universal God. Whosoever has
maintained with his own heart the strictest correspondence of
confidence, who dares to examine and to estimate every imagination
which suggests itself to his mind--whosoever is that which he designs
to become, and only aspires to that which the divinity of his own nature
shall consider and approve--he has already seen God."
Can any one cavil with these beautiful expressions, this outpouring of
genius? If such there be, his heart and understanding must be sadly
warped, any appeal would be in vain, for him the Veil of Isis could
never be lifted. After a careful study of Shelley's works I can find
nothing to warrant the execration formerly levelled at his head, not
even in the "Refutation of Deism," that remarkable argument in the
Socratic style between Eusebes and Theosophus in which, as in all his

prose works, is displayed keen discernment, logical acuteness, and
close analytical reasoning not surpassed by the greatest
philosophers--most certainly his notions of God were not in unison
with the current theological ideas, and it was this daring rebellion
against the popular faith, the chief support of custom which caused all
the trouble. If ever he attempted to show the non-existence of Deity, his
negation was solely directed against the gross human notions of a
creative power, and ergo a succession of finite creative powers ad
infinitum, or a Personal God who has only been acknowledged in the
popular teachings as an autocratic tyrant, and as Shelley puts it in his
own language:
"A venerable old man, seated on a throne of clouds, his breast the
theatre of various passions, analogous to those of humanity, his will
changeable and uncertain as that of an earthly king."
Not to be compared with the far different eternal and infinite.
"Spirit of Nature! all sufficing power, Necessity! thou mother of the
world! Unlike the God of human error, thou Requirest no prayers or
praises, the caprice Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee Than
do the changeful passions of his breast To thy unvarying harmony."
And by this doctrine of necessity here apostrophised our philosopher
instructs us in a lengthy statement of great clearness:
"We are taught that there is neither good nor evil in the universe,
otherwise than as the events to which we apply these epithets have
relation to our own peculiar mode of being. Still less than with the
hypothesis of a personal God, will the doctrine of necessity accord with
the belief of a future state of punishment. God made man such as he is,
and then damned him for being so; for to say that God was the author
of all good, and man the author of all evil, is to say that one man made
a straight line and a crooked one, and another man made the
incongruity."
For you to better understand the exact position in which Shelley placed
himself, it is elsewhere thus admirably expressed:

"The thoughts which the word 'God' suggest to the human mind are
susceptible of as many variations as human minds themselves. The
Stoic, the Platonist, and the Epicurean, the Polytheist, the Dualist, and
the Trinitarian, differ entirely in their conceptions of its meaning. They
agree only in considering it the most awful and most venerable of
names, as a common term to express all of mystery, or majesty, or
power, which the invisible world contains. And not only has every sect
distinct conceptions of the application of this name,