In his System of Nature Helvetius makes an eloquent plea for atheism. He denies that any kind of spiritual substance exists. In the universe there is nothing but matter and motion. Man is the result of certain combinations of matter; his activities are matter in motion. God, the soul, and immortality are the inventions of impostors to lash men into obedience and submission. In Queen Mab Shelley represents God and religion as the cause of evil, and scoffs at the idea of creation.
From an eternity of idleness
I, God, awoke.[115]
A blasphemous caricature of our Savior and of the doctrine of redemption is also there exhibited. Later on he grew to love Christ, although he declaimed against Christianity as long as he lived. In Prometheus Unbound he treats our Savior more reverently than he did in Queen Mab. He is there in sympathy with the spirit of Christ, and denounces Christianity only in so far as it has abandoned “the faith he kindled.” This change, no doubt, is due to the influence of his residence in Italy and of his love for the New Testament. Regarding the character of Christ he writes: “They (the evangelists) have left sufficiently clear indications of the genuine character of Jesus Christ to rescue it forever from the imputations cast upon it by their ignorance and fanatacism. We discover that He is the enemy of oppression and falsehood”;[116] that He was just, truthful, and merciful; “that He was a man of meek and majestic demeanor; of natural and simple thought and habits; beloved by all, unmoved, solemn and serene.”
One of the greatest obstacles that prevented Shelley from understanding Christianity was his belief in Godwin’s doctrine that sin is but an error of judgment. His wife writes that “he believed mankind had only to will that there should be no evil and there would be none.” To one believing that mediation is superflous in the work of sanctification, Christianity is almost meaningless. Three months before his death Shelley expressed his views with regard to Christianity as follows: “I differ with Moore in thinking Christianity useful to the world; no man of sense can think it true.... I agree with him that the doctrines of the French and material philosophy are as false as they are pernicious; but still they are better than Christianity, inasmuch as anarchy is better than despotism; for this reason, that the former is for a season, and the latter is eternal.”[117]
The question whether Shelley was an atheist or not must not be decided on one or two extracts from his writings or even on any one work. True he argued against theism, but to call him an atheist on that account would be as logical as to say St. Thomas was an atheist because he advanced objections against the existence of God. One reason for the opinion that he was an atheist lies in the fact that he had a conception of the Deity which differed from the Puritanical one then in vogue. When he attempted to show the nonexistence of God his negation was directed against the notions of God which exhibited Him as a Being with human passions, as an autocratic tyrant. In his letter to Lord Ellenborough he writes: “To attribute moral qualities to the spirit of the universe ... is to degrade God into man.” He denied the existence of the God represented as “a venerable old man, seated on a throne of clouds, His breast the theater of various passions analogous to those of humanity, His will changeable and uncertain as that of an earthly king.”[118] Even in Queen Mab we find a vague picture of his conception of God:
Spirit of Nature! all sufficing power
Necessity! thou mother of the world!
Unlike the God of human error, thou
Requirest no prayers or praise, the caprice
Of man’s weak will belongs no more to thee
Than do the changeful passions of his breast
To thy unvarying harmony.[119]
But in the next canto does he not say explicitly, “There is no God”? In a note, though, he explains that “this negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit coeternal with the universe remains unshaken.” Elsewhere he writes: “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, but scarcely two individuals of the same sect, which exercise in any degree the freedom of their judgment, or yield themselves with any candor of feeling to the influences of the visible, find perfect coincidence of opinion to exist between them.... God is neither the Jupiter who sends rain upon the earth; nor the Venus through whom all living things are produced; nor the Vulcan who presides over the terrestrial element of fire; nor the Vesta that preserves the light which is enshrined in the sun, the moon, and the stars. He is neither the Proteus, nor the Pan of the material world. But the word ‘God’ unites all the attributes which these denominations contain and is the (inter-point) and over-ruling spirit of all the energy and wisdom included within the circle of existing things.”[120]
But did he not write The Necessity of Atheism for which he was expelled from Oxford? Even if he did, this does not prove that he was an atheist. We saw already that he loved to advance objections and propound difficulties to people who thought they knew everything that can be known about a subject. Many stoutly maintained that a valid a priori proof (usually called the ontological) can be advanced for the existence of God and it was against these that Shelley directed his artillery. “Why,” Trelawny asked him once, “do you call yourself an atheist?” “It is a word of abuse,” Shelley replied, “to stop discussion; a painted devil to frighten the foolish; a threat to intimidate the wise and good. I used it to express my abhorrence of superstition. I took up the word as a knight took up a gauntlet in defiance of injustice.”[121]
Leigh Hunt said that Shelley “did himself injustice with the public in using the popular name of the Supreme Being inconsiderately. He identified it solely with the most vulgar and tyrannical notions of a God made after the worst human fashion.” Southey told him also that he ought not to call himself an athiest, since in reality he believed that the universe is God.[122] “I love to doubt and to discuss,” Shelley writes, and it is for this reason that he adopted the arguments of Locke, Hume, and Holbach. He does not doubt the existence of God; he simply doubts that it is capable of proof. In January 12, 1811, it seemed to him that he had hit upon the long-sought-for-proof. In a letter to Hogg he writes: “Stay, I have an idea. I think I can prove the existence of a Deity—a First Cause. I will ask a materialist, how came this universe at first? He will answer by chance. What chance? I will answer in the words of Spinoza: ‘An infinite number of atoms had been floating from all eternity in space, till at last one of them fortuitously diverged from its track, which dragging with it another, formed the principle of gravitation and in consequence the universe.’ What cause produced this change, this chance. For where do we know that causes arise without their corresponding effects; at least we must here, on so abstract a subject, reason analogically. Was not this then a cause; was it not a first cause? Was not this first cause a Deity? Now nothing remains but to prove that this Deity has a care or rather that its only employment consists in regulating the present and future happiness of its creation.... Oh that this Deity were the soul of the universe, the spirit of universal, imperishable love! Indeed, I believe it is.” “The Deity must be judged by us from attributes analogical to our situation.” In a letter of June 11, 1811, he says God is “the existing power of existence.” It is another word for the essence of the universe. True he makes use of expressions which would seem to contradict the above, but it seems to me that these should always be interpreted in the light of his more explicit utterances as already explained.
There was a kind of discrepancy between his interior thought and his exterior attitude. Apostle of reason though he was, he felt the necessity of appealing to other sources to quench the thirst for higher things. His fidelity to the doctrine of Locke, that all knowledge originates in the senses, did not allow him to proclaim this necessity. “Negateur d’un Dieu personnel dont les attributs seraient des reflets des pauvres attributs humains, il desirait pourtant pouvoir les supporter et les croire, mais cette obscure tendance, il ne sut on n’osa la traduire publiquement.”[123] In his poetry where he lays bare his soul his belief in God is manifest. It is only when he argues that he would seem to be an atheist. This discrepancy looks like deceit, but it is not. It is honesty rather than duplicity. He advanced only those statements which he thought he could prove, which he could demonstrate by the aid of reason. “It does not,” he writes, “prove the nonexistence of a thing that it is not discoverable by reason; feeling here affords us sufficient proof.... Those who really feel the being of a God, have the best right to believe it.”[124] (True he goes on to say that he does not feel the being of God, and must be content with reason; but by this he may mean that he does not feel the existence of the God of the Christians.)