Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer | Page 7

highest intelligences since his day have
been endeavoring to prove this satisfactorily without the aid of
theological revelation. All mankind, from sage to peasant, from the
most learned Brahmin on the banks of the Ganges to the untutored red
Indian beside the Mississippi, has the question, "is there an existence
after death," been approached with the most earnest hopes to solve as
one of the greatest mysteries. Shelley devoted a vast amount of energy
to the elucidation of this occult, yet overt, truth; and in one place
remarks:
"The desire to be forever as we are; the reluctance to a violent and
unexperienced change, which is common to all; the animate and
inanimate combinations of the universe, is, indeed, the secret
persuasion which has (among other reasons) given birth to a belief in a
future state."
Full well he knew, that independent of matter, there was a power,
which has been denominated by some, Spirit; by others, simply mind,
force, or intelligence; and by metaphysical philosophers, soul. If he
approached the subject logically, as in his essay, "On a Future State,"
the ignis fatuus seems to escape him and be lost; if poetically, with the

innate voice which speaks within us all, ever present.
After close reasoning in the essay I have referred to, he arrived at the
conclusion that even
"if it be proved that the world is ruled by a divine power, no inference
can necessarily be drawn from that circumstance in favor of a future
state."
and that
"if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it will be a state
of punishment or reward?"
Then in extension of the same argument he urges:
"Sleep suspends many of the faculties of the vital and intellectual
principle--drunkenness and disease will either temporarily or
permanently derange them. Madness, or idiotcy, may utterly extinguish
the most excellent and delicate of these powers. In old age the mind
gradually withers; and as it grew and strengthened with the body, so
does it with the body sink into decrepitude."
He also considered that:
"It is probable that what we call thought is not an actual being, but no
more than the relation between certain parts of that infinitely varied
mass, of which the rest of the universe is composed, and which ceases
to exist so soon as those parts change their position with regard to each
other. Thus color, and sound, and taste, and odor, exist only relatively."
Even granted that mind or thought be a part of, or in fact, the soul, then
he asks in what manner it could be made a proof of its imperishability,
as all that we see or know perishes and is changed.
Here then comes the query, "Have we existed before birth?" A difficult
possibility to conceive of individual intelligence and if unprovable
against the theory of existence after death.

He then winds up the whole by thinking that it is impossible that,
"we should continue to exist after death in some mode totally
inconceivable to us at present."
and that only those who desire to be persuaded are persuaded.
This is but a rough outline of some of the principal features of his
considerations on soul immortality from a logical basis, and which,
after all, only constitute an argument, to which, and the thoughts
presented therein, he did not necessarily bind himself. There can be
little doubt, independently of what I have quoted, that he did not
believe in a future state as popularly accepted. Trelawney asked him on
one occasion: "Do you believe in the immortality of the spirit?"
Shelley's answer was unmistakable, "Certainly not; how can I? We
know nothing; we have no evidence."[B]
[Footnote B: Those who desire to fully investigate Shelley's ideas on
the immortality of the soul, and the existence, or nature, of Deity, will
be amply repaid by reading W.M. Rossetti's admirable memoir of the
poet, appended to the last two-volume London edition of his works.]
When we take Shelley from a poetical standpoint, or with the divine
truism implanted by the Ain-soph clamoring within to his intelligence
for expression, how confident he appears of a hereafter, as in the
"Adonais," or in the following extract from an unpublished letter to his
father-in-law, William Godwin, the property of my friend C.W.
Frederickson, of New York, one of the most enthusiastic admirers of
Shelley, and who has been often known to pay more than the weight in
gold for Shelleyana:
"With how many garlands we can beautify the tomb. If we begin
betimes, we can learn to make the prospect of the grave the most
seductive of human visions. By little and little we hive therein all the
most pleasing of our dreams. Surely, if any spot in the world be sacred,
it is that in which grief