After all, this position with regard to the proof of God’s existence is not so very different from that of Newman. “Logic,” says Newman, “does not really prove.” It enables us to join issues with others ... it verifies negatively.[125] Newman, contrary to Locke, would inject an element of volition into logic. “He does not, indeed, deny the possibility of demonstration; he often asserts it; but he holds that the demonstration will not in fact convince.”[126] We have really to desert a logical ground and to take our stand upon instinct.
According to Shelley anything that could not be demonstrated should not be given to others as gospel truth.[127] Now, feelings cannot be demonstrated, and hence it is that one may feel one thing and at the same time see that the senses and even unaided reason show that the contrary is true. “Feelings do not look so well as reasonings on black and white.” Later on he said that materialism “allows its disciples to talk and dispenses them from thinking.”[128] The opposition which Shelley experienced forced him to argue.
When Shelley wrote The Necessity of Atheism he was at most only an agnostic. This word was first used by Huxley in 1859 and if it had been in use in 1811 it may be that Shelley’s pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism would have had for its title “The Necessity of Agnosticism.” No doubt agnostics are often atheists, but they are not necessarily so. “A man may be an agnostic simply or an agnostic who is also an atheist. He may be a scientific materialist and no more, or he may combine atheism with his materialism; consequently while it would be unjust to class agnostics, materialists or pantheists as necessarily also atheists, it cannot be denied that atheism is clearly perceived to be implied in certain phases of all these systems. There are so many shades and gradations of thought by which one form of a philosophy merges into another, so much that is opinionative and personal woven into the various individual expositions of systems, that, to be impartially fair, each individual must be classed by himself as atheist or theist. Indeed more upon his own assertion or direct teaching than by reason of any supposed implication in the system he advocates must this classification be made. The agnostic may be a theist if he admits the existence of a being behind and beyond nature even while he asserts that such a being is both unprovable and unknowable.”[129]
With regard to the sources of Shelley’s views on religion there is considerable difference of opinion. S. Bernthsen maintains that nothing contributed so much to the development of his genius and of his world-view as Spinoza’s philosophy.[130] Professor Dowden, on the other hand, holds that although Shelley worked at a translation of Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico Politicus several times, still “we find no evidence that he received in youth any adequate or profound impression, as Goethe did, from the purest and loveliest spirit among philosophical seekers after God. Of far greater influence with Shelley than Spinoza or Kant were those arrogant thinkers who prepared the soil of France for the ploughshare of revolution.”[131] And Helen Richter in two articles in English Studies, vol. 30, shows that some of the quotations from Shelley used by Miss Bernthsen may be traced to other sources besides Spinoza.
Shelley’s notions on belief can be traced to Locke and not to Spinoza. In the first book of the Essay concerning the human understanding, Locke attempts to prove that there are no innate ideas. To the objection that the universal acceptance of certain principles is proof of their innateness, he replies that no principles are universally accepted. You cannot point to one principle of morality, he says, that is accepted by all peoples. Standards of morality differ in different nations and at different times. How then are our ideas acquired? The second book of the Essay is devoted to showing that they originate in experience. Experience, Locke teaches, is two-fold: Sensation, or the perception of external phenomena; and Refection, or the perception of the internal phenomena, that is, of the activity of the understanding itself. These two are the sources of all our ideas. In the Essay, II, 1-2, we read: “All ideas come from sensation and reflection.... Whence has it (mind) all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer in one word, from experience; on that all our knowledge is founded and from that it ultimately derives itself.” In Book IV, 2, Locke says: “Rational knowledge is the perception of the connection and agreement or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas.... Probability is the appearance of agreement upon fallible proofs.... The entertainment the mind gives this sort of proposition is called belief, assent, or opinion.”
In his notes to Queen Mab, Shelley writes: “When a proposition is offered to the mind, it perceives the agreement or disagreement of the ideas of which it is composed. A perception of their agreement is termed belief.... Belief then is a passion the strength of which, like every other passion, is in precise proportion to the degrees of excitement. The degrees of excitement are three. The senses are the sources of all knowledge to the mind; consequently their evidence claims the strongest assent. The decision of the mind founded upon our experience, derived from these sources, claims the next degree. The experience of others which addresses itself to the former one, occupies the lowest degree.” This reminds one of Locke’s division of knowledge into three parts—intuitive, demonstrative, and sensitive.
In the same note to Queen Mab, Shelley says: “The mind is active in the investigation in order to perfect the state of perception of the relation which the component ideas of the proposition bear to each, which is passive.” And in Locke, II, 22, we read: “The mind in respect of its simple ideas is wholly passive and receives them all from the experience and operations of things.... The origin of mixed modes is, however, quite different. The mind often exercises an active power in making these several combinations called notions.”
According to Spinoza, judgment, perception, and volition are one and the same thing. “At singularis volitio et idea unum et idem sunt.”[132] Shelley, on the other hand, says that many falsely imagine “that belief is an act of volition in consequence of which it may be regulated by the mind.”[133] Here we find reflected the philosophical ideas of Sir William Drummond, in whose Academical Questions, Shelley writes, “the most clear and vigorous statement of the intellectual system is to be found.”[134]
According to Drummond, reasoning is entirely independent of volition. No man pretends that he can choose whether he shall feel or not. It is not because the mind previously wills it that one association of ideas gives place to another. It is because the new ideas excite that attention which the old no longer employ. Trains of ideas may be always referred to one principal idea. “Whatever be the state of the soul, we always find it to result from some one prevailing sentiment, or idea, which determines the association of our thoughts and directs for a time the course which they take.”[135] We are impelled to action by the influence of the stronger motive. In his letter to Lord Ellenborough, Shelley holds that “belief and disbelief are utterly distinct from and unconnected with volition. They are the apprehension of the agreement or disagreement of the ideas which compose any proposition. Belief is an involuntary operation of the mind, and, like other passions, its intensity is purely proportionate to the degrees of excitement.”[136] There is no certainty that Shelley was acquainted with the works of Spinoza when he wrote Queen Mab. It is likely that he obtained his Spinozan views from William Drummond.
“It is necessary to prove,” Shelley wrote, “that it (the universe) was created; until that is clearly demonstrated we may reasonably suppose that it has endured from all eternity.... It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity than to conceive a being (beyond its limits) capable of creating it.”[137] Again in his Essay on a future state: “But let thought be considered as some peculiar substance which permeates, and is the cause of, the animation of living things. Why should that substance be assumed to be something essentially distinct from all others and exempt from subjection to those laws from which no other substance is exempt.” To Shelley everything was God.