“Will your baby tell us anything about pre-existence, madam?” he asked, in a piercing voice and with a wistful look.
The mother made no answer, but, perceiving that Shelley’s object was not murderous but altogether harmless, she dismissed her apprehension and relaxed her hold.
“Will your baby tell us anything about pre-existence, madam?” he repeated, with unabated earnestness.
“He cannot speak, sir,” said the mother, seriously.
“Worse and worse,” cried Shelley, with an air of deep disappointment, shaking his long hair most pathetically about his young face; “but surely the babe can speak if he will, for he is only a few weeks old. He may fancy, perhaps, that he cannot, but it is only a silly whim. He cannot have forgotten entirely the use of speech in so short a time. The thing is absolutely impossible!”
“It is not for me to dispute with you, gentlemen,” the woman meekly replied, her eye glancing at our academical garb, “but I can safely declare that I never heard him speak, nor any child, indeed, of his age.”
It was a fine, placid boy: so far from being disturbed by the interruption, he looked up and smiled. Shelley pressed his fat cheeks with his fingers; we commended his healthy appearance and his equanimity, and the mother was permitted to proceed, probably to her satisfaction, for she would doubtless prefer a less speculative nurse. Shelley sighed deeply as we walked on.
“How provokingly close are those new-born babes!” he ejaculated; “but it is not the less certain, notwithstanding the cunning attempts to conceal the truth, that all knowledge is reminiscence. The doctrine is far more ancient than the times of Plato, and as old as the venerable allegory that the Muses are the daughters of Memory; not one of the nine was ever said to be the child of Invention!”
In consequence of this theory, upon which his active imagination loved to dwell, and which he was delighted to maintain in argument with the few persons qualified to dispute with him on the higher metaphysics, his fondness for children—a fondness innate in generous minds—was augmented and elevated, and the gentle instinct expanded into a profound and philosophical sentiment. The Platonists have been illustrious in all ages on account of the strength and permanence of their attachments. In Shelley the parental affections were developed at an early period to an unusual extent. It was manifest, therefore, that his heart was formed by nature and by cultivation to derive the most exquisite gratification from the society of his own progeny, or the most poignant anguish from a natural or unnatural bereavement. To strike him here was the cruel admonition which a cursory glance would at once convey to him who might seek where to wound him most severely with a single blow, should he ever provoke the vengeance of an enemy to the active and fearless spirit of liberal investigation and to all solid learning—of a foe to the human race. With respect to the theory of the pre-existence of the soul, it is not wonderful that an ardent votary of the intellectual should love to uphold it in strenuous and protracted disputation, as it places the immortality of the soul in an impregnable castle, and not only secures it an existence independent of the body, as it were, by usage and prescription, but moreover, raising it out of the dirt on tall stilts, elevates it far above the mud of matter.
It is not wonderful that a subtle sophist, who esteemed above all riches and terrene honours victory in well-fought debate, should be willing to maintain a dogma that is not only of difficult eversion by those who, struggling as mere metaphysicians, use no other weapon than unassisted reason, but which one of the most illustrious Fathers of the Church—a man of amazing powers and stupendous erudition, armed with the prodigious resources of the Christian theology, the renowned Origen—was unable to dismiss; retaining it as not dissonant from his informed reason, and as affording a larger scope for justice in the moral government of the universe.