Gleïzès instances the case of Cows and of Reindeer who, in Norway, have been denaturalised so far as to feed on fish, and readily to take to that unnatural food.
“It would be too long to enumerate here all the causes which may have produced so great an aberration. This will be the matter of another Discourse. I shall content myself for the moment with saying some words upon that which perpetuates it. It is essentially that lightness of mind, or, rather, that sort of stupidity, which makes all reflection upon anything which is opposed to their habits painful to the generality of mankind. They would turn their head aside with horror if they saw what a single one of their repasts costs Nature. They eat animals as some amongst them launch a bomb into the midst of a besieged town, without thinking of the evils which it must bring to a crowd of individuals, strangers to war—women, children, and old men—evils the near spectacle of which they could not support, in spite of the hardness of their hearts.... To-day, when everything is calculated with so much precision [he remarks with bitterness], there will not be wanting persons with sufficient assurance to attempt to prove that there is more of advantage for the domesticated animals to be born and live on condition of having their throats cut, than if they had remained in ‘nothingness,’ or in the natural state. As for the word ‘nothingness,’ I confess that I do not understand it, but I understand the other very well; and I have never conceived how man could have had the barbarity to accumulate all the calamities of the earth upon a single individual; that is to say, to slaughter it in return for having caused its degeneracy. But if he thinks himself to escape from the influence of an action so dastardly and so infamous, he would be in a very great error....
“I shall finish these prolegomena with an important remark. I have known a large number of good souls who offered up the most sincere wishes for the establishment of this doctrine of humaneness, who thought it just and true in all its aspects, who believed in all that it announces; but who, in spite of so praiseworthy a disposition, dared not be the first to give the example. They awaited this movement from minds stronger than their own. Doubtless they are the minds which give the impulse to the world; but is it necessary to await this movement when one is convinced of one’s self? Is it permissible to temporise in a question of life or death for innocent beings whose sole crime is to have been born, and is it in a case like this that strength of mind should fail justice? No! Well-doing is, happily, not so difficult. Ah! what is your excuse, besides, pusillanimous souls? I blush for you at the miserable pretexts which keep you back. It would be necessary, say you, to separate one’s self from the world; to renounce one’s friends and neighbours. I see no such necessity, and I think, on the contrary, that if you truly loved the world and your neighbours, you would hasten to give them an example which must have so powerful an influence upon their present happiness and upon their future destiny.”[231]
We have reason once again to lament the perversity of literary or publishing enterprise which will produce and reproduce, ad infinitum, books of no real and permanent value to the world, and altogether neglect its true luminaries. This is, in an especial manner, the case with Gleïzès. The Nouvelle Existence has never been republished, we believe, in the author’s own country; while it has never found a translator, perhaps scarcely a reader, in this country outside the Vegetarian ranks. Germany, as we have already noticed, alone has the honour of attempting to preserve from oblivion one of the few who have deserved immortality.
XLI.
SHELLEY. 1792–1822.
THAT a principle of profound significance for the welfare of our own species in particular, and for the peaceful harmony of the world in general—that a true spiritualism, of which some of the most admirable of the poets of the pre-Christian ages proved themselves not unconscious, has been, for the most part, altogether overlooked or ignored by modern aspirants to poetic fame is matter for our gravest lament. Thomson, Pope, Shelley, Lamartine—to whom Milton, perhaps, may be added—these form the small band who almost alone represent, and have developed the earlier inspiration of a Hesiod, Ovid, or Virgil, the prophet-poets who, faithful to their proper calling,[232] have sought to unbarbarise and elevate human life by arousing, in various degree, feelings of horror and aversion from the prevailing materialism of living.
Of this illustrious band, and, indeed, of all the great intellectual and moral luminaries who have shed a humanising influence upon our planet—who have left behind them “thoughts that breathe and words that burn”—none can claim more reverence from humanitarians than the poet of poets—the influence of whose life and writings, considerable even now, and gradually increasing, doubtless in a not remote future is destined to be equal to that of the very foremost of the world’s teachers, and of whom our sketch, necessarily limited though it is, will be extended beyond the usual allotted space.
Percy Bysshe Shelley descended from an old and wealthy family long settled in Sussex. At the age of 13 he was sent to Eton, where (such was the spirit of the public and other schools at that time, and, indeed, of long afterwards) he was subjected to severe trials of endurance by the rough and rude manners of the ordinary schoolboy, and the harsh and unequal violence of the schoolmaster. Of an exceptionally refined and sensitive temperament, he was none the less determined in resistance to injustice and oppression, and his refusal to submit tamely to their petty tyrannies seems to have brought upon him more than the common amount of harsh treatment. It penetrated into his inmost soul, and inspired the opening stanzas of “The Revolt of Islam,” in intensity of feeling seldom equalled. Some alleviation of these sufferings of childhood he found in his own mental resources. For his amusement he translated, we are assured, several books of the Natural History of Pliny. Of Greek writers he even then (in an English version) read Plato, who afterwards, in his own language, always remained one of his chief literary companions, and he applied himself also to the study of French and of German. In natural science, Chemistry seems to have been his especial pursuit.
In 1810, at the age of seventeen, he entered University College, Oxford. There he studied and wrote unceasingly. With a strong predilection for metaphysics, he devoted himself in particular to the great masters of dialectics, Locke and Hume, and to their chief representatives in French philosophy. Ardent and enthusiastic in the pursuit of truth, he sought to enlarge his knowledge and ideas from every possible quarter, and he engaged in correspondence with distinguished persons, suggested to him by choice or chance, with whom he discussed the most interesting philosophical questions. Like all truly fruitful minds, the youthful inquirer was not satisfied with the dicta of mere authority, or with the consensus, however general, of past ages, and he hesitated not, in matters of opinion in which every well-instructed intelligence is capable of judging for itself, to bring to the test of right reason the most widely-received dogmas of Antiquity. Actuated by this spirit, rather than by any matured convictions, and wishing to elicit sincere as well as exhaustive argument on the deepest of all metaphysical inquiries, in an unfortunate moment for himself, he caused to be printed an abstract of anti-theistic speculations, drawn from David Hume and other authorities, presented in a series of mathematically-expressed propositions. Copies of this modest thesis of two pages were sent either by the author, or by some other hand, to the heads of his College. The clerical dignitaries, listening to the dictates of outraged authority, rather than influenced by calm reflection, which would have, perhaps, shewn them the useless injustice of so extreme a measure, proceeded at once to expel him from the University.[233]