Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer

by Charles Sotheran

"And from that hour did I, with earnest thought,
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore;
Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught,
I cared to learn; but from that secret store
Wrought linked armor for my soul, before
It might walk forth, to war among mankind.
Thus, power and hope were strengthen'd more and more
Within me, till there came upon my mind
A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined."

The fruits born of this seed are discernible in every line of his works. While having all reverence for his college companions, Aristotle, Æschylus, and Demosthenes, his mind instinctively turns towards the deemed heretical works of the later French philosophers, D'Holbach, Condillac, La Place, Rousseau, the encyclopædists, and other members of that school. His intellect he furbishes with stores of logic and of chemistry, in which his greatest love was to experimentalize; of botany and astronomy, in which he was more than a mere adept; from Hume, too, whose essay on "Miracles," wrong as it is in the main on many important points, was one of the alphas of his creed—and with deep draughts from his great instructor, Plato, of whom he always spoke with the greatest adoration, as, for instance, in the preface to the Symposium:

"Plato is eminently the greatest among the Greek philosophers; and from, or rather perhaps through him and his master, Socrates, have proceeded those emanations of moral and metaphysical knowledge, on which a long series and an incalculable variety of popular superstitions have sheltered their absurdities from the slow contempt of mankind."

It is desirable to call attention to the great minds from whom the student of the early part of this century could only cull his knowledge—he had no Spencer and no Mill, at whose feet to sit—he had in science none of the conclusions of Darwin, of Huxley, of Tyndall, of Murchison, of Lyell, to refer to, and yet I think, that the careful reader will, like myself, find prefigured in Shelley's works much of that of which the world is in full possession to-day, and which the mystical Occultists, Rosicrucians, and Cabalists have now, and have ever had, conjoined to a mysterious command over the active hidden material and spiritual powers in the infinite domain of nature.

The idea of the Supreme Power or God, as emanating from Shelley, is one of the most sublime to be found in the pages of metaphysical learning at the command of ordinary mortals. By many it may be considered only a vague pantheism; yet, rightly regarded in a reconciliative spirit, it is of such an universal character as to harmonize with not only Deism, Theism and Polytheism, but even Atheistical Materialism. Listen to the following, which I select out of numerous examples, as a finger-post for others who seek the living springs of undefiled truth, as in Shelley:

"Whosoever is free from the contamination of luxury and license may go forth to the fields and to the woods, inhaling joyous renovation from the breath of Spring, and catching from the odors and sounds of autumn some diviner mood of sweetest sadness, which improves the softened heart. Whosoever is no deceiver and destroyer of his fellow-men—no liar, no flatterer, no murderer—may walk among his species, deriving, from the communion with all which they contain of beautiful or majestic, some intercourse with the Universal God. Whosoever has maintained with his own heart the strictest correspondence of confidence, who dares to examine and to estimate every imagination which suggests itself to his mind—whosoever is that which he designs to become, and only aspires to that which the divinity of his own nature shall consider and approve—he has already seen God."

Can any one cavil with these beautiful expressions, this outpouring of genius? If such there be, his heart and understanding must be sadly warped, any appeal would be in vain, for him the Veil of Isis could never be lifted. After a careful study of Shelley's works I can find nothing to warrant the execration formerly levelled at his head, not even in the "Refutation of Deism," that remarkable argument in the Socratic style between Eusebes and Theosophus in which, as in all his prose works, is displayed keen discernment, logical acuteness, and close analytical reasoning not surpassed by the greatest philosophers—most certainly his notions of God were not in unison with the current theological ideas, and it was this daring rebellion against the popular faith, the chief support of custom which caused all the trouble. If ever he attempted to show the non-existence of Deity, his negation was solely directed against the gross human notions of a creative power, and ergo a succession of finite creative powers ad infinitum, or a Personal God who has only been acknowledged in the popular teachings as an autocratic tyrant, and as Shelley puts it in his own language:

"A venerable old man, seated on a throne of clouds, his breast the theatre of various passions, analogous to those of humanity, his will changeable and uncertain as that of an earthly king."

Not to be compared with the far different eternal and infinite.

"Spirit of Nature! all sufficing power,
Necessity! thou mother of the world!
Unlike the God of human error, thou
Requirest no prayers or praises, the caprice
Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee
Than do the changeful passions of his breast
To thy unvarying harmony."