The actions of every human being are determined by the dictates of reason; and, like the operations of nature, are subject to the law of necessity. This idea of necessity is obtained from our experience of the uniformity of the phenomena of nature. Similar causes invariably produce the same effect. In the material world an immense chain of causes and effects appears, the connection between which we cannot understand. The same thing is true of the moral world. There, motive is to voluntary action what cause is to effect in the physical order. A man cannot resist the strongest motive any more than a stone left unsuspended can remain in the air. Will is simply an act of the judgment determined by logical impressions. The murderer is no more responsible for his deed than the knife with which the crime was committed. Both were set in motion from without; the knife, by material impulse; the man, by inducement and persuasion. To hate a murderer, then, is as unreasonable as to hate his weapon. Educate him, but do not punish. In the material world
No atom of this turbulence fulfills
A vague and unnecessitated chance,
Or acts but as it must and ought to act.[161]
In the same way
Not a thought, a will, an act,
No working of the tyrant’s moody mind,
Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast
Their servitude, to hide the shame they feel,
Nor the events enchaining every will,
That from the depths of unrecorded time
Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass
Unrecognized, or unforeseen by thee,
Soul of the Universe![162]
In his notes to Queen Mab, Shelley admits that the doctrine of necessity tends to introduce a great change into the established notions of morality, and utterly to destroy Religion. It teaches that no event could happen but as it did happen; and that if God is the author of good He is also the author of evil.
Shelley soon broke away from the teaching of Godwin and Spinoza with regard to the freedom of the will. He maintained that the will is unrestrainedly free and that man is his own master. Thus, “Man whose will has power when all beside is gone” (The Revolt, VIII, 16). “Such intent as renovates the world a will omnipotent” (Ibid., II, 41). “Who if ye dared might not aspire less than ye conceive of power” (Ibid., XI, 16).
Man can obtain freedom if he really desires it. Godwin held that freedom from external restraints leads to freedom of the mind, whereas Shelley sees in external political freedom the blossoming forth of already obtained freedom of the soul. The interior freedom is obtained through self-abnegation and the determination of the will. Mrs. Shelley says in the introduction to Prometheus Unbound that Shelley believed mankind had only to will that there should be no evil and there would be none. Evil is not something inherent in creation, but an accident that may be expelled. “But we are taught,” writes Shelley, “by the doctrine of necessity, that there is neither good nor evil in the universe, otherwise than as the events to which we apply these epithets have relation to our own peculiar mode of being.”[163]
This view is very similar to that of Drummond. He held that order and disorder have no place but in our own imagination, and are the modes in which we survey the eternal and necessary series of things. Ideas of right and wrong depend upon the circumstances in which people are placed. They vary so much that we do not find the standard of morality to be precisely the same in any two countries of the world. Good and evil are modes of thinking; and what appears good to one person may appear bad to another, and neither good nor bad to a third. This is Spinoza’s doctrine: “Bonum et malum quod attinet, nihil etiam positivum in rebus, in se scilicet consideratis, indicant, nec aliud sunt praeter cogitandi modos, seu motiones, quas formamus ex eo, quod res ad invicem comparamus nam una eademque res potest eodem tempore bona et mala, et etiam indiffereus esse.” Ethics, IV.
Shelley has two versions of the origin of good and evil. The first is manichean and represents them as twin genii of balanced power and opposite tendencies ruling the world. “This much is certain: that Jesus Christ represents God as the fountain of all goodness, the eternal enemy of pain and evil.... According to Jesus Christ, and according to the indisputable facts of the case, some evil spirit has dominion in this imperfect world.”[164] Good is represented by the morning star and evil by a comet. According to the second version, which is Shelley’s own view, evil has not the same power that good has, and came later into the world. Evil is strong because man permits it to exist, and must disappear as soon as man wills this. Since it could be entirely eliminated, it is not an integral part of the world.
Man is naturally good. His vices are the result of bad education. They are nothing but errors of judgment. Let truth prevail; educate men properly, and then vice will entirely disappear. Shelley also writes: