To this Godwin has no very intelligible answer, or perhaps he hardly sees that an answer is desirable. But, in truth, his whole system appears to be so grotesque when brought to one focus and distinctly stated, that we must in fairness recall two things: first, that most philosophical systems appear absurd when summarised after their extinction; and, secondly, that in bringing out in a very brief space the most salient features of such a doctrine, it is quite impossible to avoid caricature. There is enough not only of apparent philosophy in it, but of really intelligent—though strangely one-sided—reflection to enable us to understand how this deification of reason, falling in with the most advanced movements of the time, should affect Shelley's simple, impulsive, and marvellously imaginative nature. Men of much stricter logical training considered Godwin to be a great, if paradoxical, thinker, and Shelley, who had rather an affinity for abstract metaphysical ideas than a capacity for constructing them into logical wholes, was for a time entirely carried away. When after reading Godwin's quiet prosaic enunciation of the most startling paradoxes in the least impassioned language, we turn to Shelley's poetical interpretation, the two seem to be related as the stagnant pool to the rainbow-coloured mist into which it has been transmuted. Shelley's fervid enthusiasm has vapourised the slightly muddy philosophic prose, changed it into impalpable ether, and tinged it with the most brilliant, if evanescent, hue. Shelley had certainly learnt from others besides Godwin, and in particular had begun those Platonic readings which afterwards generated his characteristic belief in a transcendental world, the abode of the archetypal ideas of beauty, love, and wisdom. But through all his poetry we find a recurrence of the same ideas which he had originally imbibed from his first master.
The Godwinism, indeed, is strongest in the crude poetry of 'Queen Mab,' where many passages read like the 'Political Justice' done into verse. So, for example, we have a naïf statement of the incoherent theory which has already been noticed in Godwin's treatise. After pointing to some of the miseries which afflict unfortunate mankind, and observing that they are not due to man's 'evil nature,' which, it seems, is merely a figment invented to excuse crimes, the question naturally suggests itself, to what, then, can all this mischief be due? Nature has made everything perfect and harmonious, except man. On man alone she has, it seems, heaped 'ruin, vice, and slavery.' But the indignant answer is given:—
Nature! No!
Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower
Even in its tender bud; their influence darts
Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins
Of desolate society.
According to this ingenious view, 'kings, priests, and statesmen' are something outside of, and logically opposed to, Nature. They represent the evil principle in this strange dualism. Whence this influence arises, how George III. and Paley and Lord Eldon came to possess an existence independent of Nature, and acquired the power of turning all her good purpose to nought, is one of those questions which we can hardly refrain from asking, but which it would be obviously unkind to press. Still less would it be to the purpose to ask how this beneficent Nature is related to the purely neutral Necessity, which is 'the mother of the world,' or how, between the two, such a monstrous birth as the 'prolific fiend' Religion came into existence. The crude incoherence of the whole system is too obvious to require exposition; and yet it is simply an explicit statement of Godwin's theories put forth with inconvenient excess of candour. The absurdities slurred over by the philosopher are thrown into brilliant relief by the poet.
Shelley improved as a poet, and in a degree rarely exemplified in poetry, between 'Queen Mab' and the 'Prometheus'; but even in the 'Prometheus' and his last writings we find a continued reflection of Godwin's characteristic views. Everywhere as much a prophet as a poet, Shelley is always announcing, sometimes in exquisite poetry, the advent of the millennium. His conception of the millennium, if we try to examine precisely what it is, always embodies the same thought, that man is to be made perfect by the complete dissolution of all the traditional ties by which the race is at present bound together. In the passage which originally formed the conclusion to the 'Prometheus,' the 'Spirit of the Hour' reveals the approaching consummation. The whole passage is a fine one, and it is almost a shame to quote fragments; but we may briefly observe that in the coming world everybody is to say exactly what he thinks; women are to be—
gentle radiant forms,
From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;
Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,
Looking emotions once they feared to feel.
Thrones, altars, judgment seats, and prisons are to be abolished when reason is absolute; and when
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself.
To be 'unclassed, tribeless, and nationless', and we may add, without marriage, is to be in the lowest depths of barbarism. It is so, at least, in the world of realities. But the description will fit that 'state of nature' of which philosophers of the time delighted to talk. The best comment is to be found in Godwin. The great mistake of Rousseau, says that writer, was that whilst truly recognising government to be the source of all evil, he chose to praise the state which preceded government, instead of the state which, we may hope, will succeed its abolition. When we are perfect, we shall get rid of all laws of every kind, and thus, in some sense, the ultimate goal of all progress is to attain precisely to that state of nature which Rousseau regretted as a thing of the past and which is described in Shelley's glowing rhetoric.
The difficulty of making this view coherent is curiously reflected in the mechanism of Shelley's great poem; great it is, for the marvel of its lyrical excellence is fortunately independent of the conceptions of life and human nature which it is intended to set forth. If all the complex organisation which has slowly evolved itself in the course of history, the expression of which is civilisation, order, coherence, and co-operation in the different departments of life, is to be set down as an unmitigated evil, the fruit of downright imposture, all history becomes unintelligible. Man, potentially perfectible, has always been the sport of what seems to be a malignant and dark power of utterly inexplicable origin and character. Shelley, we are told, could not bear to read history. The explanation offered is that he was too much shocked by the perpetual record of misery, tyranny, and crime. A man who can see nothing else in history is obviously a very inefficient historian. Godwin tells us that he had learnt from Swift's bitter misanthropy the truth that all political institutions are hopelessly corrupt. A fusion of the satirist's view, that all which is is bad, with the enthusiast's view, that all which will be will be perfect, just expresses Shelley's peculiar mixture of optimism and pessimism. When we try to translate this into a philosophical view or a poetical representation of the world, the consequence is inevitably perplexing.