Shelley, following Godwin and Condorcet, was a firm believer in the perfectibility of human nature. “By perfectible,” Godwin writes, “it is not meant that man is capable of being wrought to perfection. The idea of absolute perfection is scarcely within the grasp of human understanding.” “The wise man is satisfied with nothing. Finite things must be perpetually capable of increase and advancement; it would argue, therefore, extreme folly to rest in any given state of improvement and imagine we had attained our summit.”[111] In a letter to E. Hitchener, July 25, 1811, Shelley writes: “You say that equality is unattainable; so, will I observe is perfection; yet they both symbolize in their nature, they both demand that an unremitting tendency towards themselves should be made; and the nearer society approaches towards this point the happier it will be.”
The development of the race, they believe, has been along the following lines: Man emerged from the savage state under the attraction of pleasure and the repulsion of pain. Self-love, his only motive of action, made him at once social and industrious, led him to confound happiness with unregulated enjoyment, made him avaricious and violent, and caused the strong to oppress the weak and the weak to conspire against the strong. Slavery and corruption have consequently followed on the liberty and innocence of primitive times. But as man is perfectible this condition of things cannot last. The diffusion of knowledge together with the discoveries and inventions recently made, have already been productive of great progress. Humanity is now fairly started on a career of conquest; the emancipation of the mind is rapidly advancing. Soon morality itself will come to be rationally viewed; it will be universally acknowledged that there is only one law, that of nature; only one code, that of reason; only one throne, that of justice; and only one altar, that of concord.[112] Shelley had unbounded faith in human nature and believed that the downfall of tyranny must soon take place. He believed that the world would resolve itself into one large communistic family, where every man would be independent and free.
Godwin says that “there will be no war, no crime, no administration of justice, as it is called, and no government. Besides this there will be neither disease, anguish, melancholy or resentment.”[113] The sun of reason will of itself disperse all the mists of ignorance and the pestilential vapors of vice. It will bring out all the beauty and goodness of man. Love will be universal; everybody will seek the good of all. Earth, Shelley thinks, will soon become a garden of delight.
O Happy Earth, reality of Heaven
Of purest Spirits thou pure dwelling-place
Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime
Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come.[114]
CHAPTER IV.
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
We now come to that part of our subject which is the most difficult to handle—Shelley’s religion. There are so many seeming contradictions in his utterances on this subject that it would appear impossible at first sight to reconcile them and bring out of them a consistent form of belief. Before he went to Oxford he had attacked Christianity, still on his entrance to that university he made the required profession of belief in the doctrines of the Church of England as by law established. How are we going to reconcile this with his love for truth? One cannot get away from the difficulty by saying that this profession was a mere formality. Thousands of non-conformists throughout the land denied themselves the benefits of a university education because they scorned to play the hypocrite.
Shelley’s views were fairly orthodox up to the time of his going to Oxford. Zastrozzi, printed in 1810, contains a bitter attack on atheism: and in a letter to Stockdale Shelley disclaims any intention of advocating atheism in The Wandering Jew. He, no doubt, was unorthodox in his views regarding the nature of God; but his belief in the immortality of the soul and in the existence of a First Cause is clearly shown in a letter to Hogg dated January 3, 1811. He writes: “I may not be able to adduce proofs, but I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be advanced, that some vast intellect animates infinity. If we disbelieve this, the strongest argument in support of the existence of a future state instantly becomes annihilated.... Love, love, infinite in extent, eternal in duration, yet allowing your theory in that point, perfectible, should be the reward; but can we suppose that this reward will arise, spontaneously, as a necessary appendage to our nature, or that our nature itself could be without cause—a God? When do we see effects arise without causes?” From this point a rapid change takes place in his opinions. This is the work of the sceptic Hogg, who sported with him, now arguing for, now against Christianity, with the result that Shelley himself became sceptical. His disbelief is due also to the influence of the works of Godwin and the French materialists, Helvetius, Holbach, Condorcet and Rousseau.