Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.")/Shelley's Religious Opinions
My dear Eikonoklastes,—In the National Reformer of August the 4th, you quote a few words from one G. T., in support of your own opinion that Shelley was an Atheist. Can you spare me space for a few remarks on the subject?
I have none of Shelley's letters by me, save those which are included in Mrs. Shelley's edition of his prose writings. But a man's letters do not always afford the best evidence concerning his opinions upon the most important questions put to us by life. In friendly letters one permits himself to give the reins to his mood, to throw off rough and ready sketches with little care as to the accurate shading, to be capricious and paradoxical—in short, to speak not as one who is delivering testimony on oath. Of course I do not speak of serious and solemn epistles, but of the general run of correspondence. On the other hand, you may be sure that the public works of a man so brave, so honest, so enthusiastic as Shelley record his profoundest convictions on the most momentous subjects. I wish, therefore, to bring to your notice some passages of these works which tend to elucidate the question as to his creed.
Let us begin by putting the "Queen Mab" out of court. It was written when he was a mere youth, and its doctrines are shortly condemned in a couple of sentences by himself, written in some after year.
"This materialism is a seducing system to young and superficial minds. It allows its disciples to talk, and dispenses them from thinking." These words are from his fragment "On Life," and allude to his own early materialism.
"Alastor," written in 1815, is pervaded with an indefinite Nature-worship, which you would probably call Cosmism. This reappears, much modified or developed, sometimes seemingly contradicted, in all the more important of his subsequent poems. Such physiolatry is not uncommon in young minds, being the result, not of comprehensive analytical thought, but of enthusiastic love for nature, and vague yearning awe in the contemplation of the mystery of her processes and the immutability of her laws. Nor is it wholly without moral palliation. For though nature is no saint, but systematically sets most of her children to live by devouring one another—massacres good and bad, wise and foolish indiscriminately with storms and earthquakes, plagues and murrains; is fond of implanting incipient scoundrels in royal wombs, and excellent brains in crazy bodies, &c.; yet the good lady has some barbaric virtues of her own—is thoroughly just and independent in her own way; and never yet, in the course of her long existence, cheated the sower of wheat seed by paying him with a rye harvest. Poor man, on the contrary, with soul, and reason, and virtue, and all sorts of fine pretences, is very weak and much given to roguery; with all the cardinal virtues to help him, he is quite overruled in the conclave by the more numerous and strong-willed and cardinal vices. Our palace is so grand and we are such pigmies: let us fall down and worship this brave palace, though merely built for us to dwell in as kings! We are like the parvenu leading Aristippus through his sumptuous mansion, on whom the philosopher spat, finding no other object in the place mean enough to be fouled with expectoration.
In the preface to the "Revolt of Islam," written in 1817, Shelley speaks of Supreme Being and Deity, not, as heretofore, of Power. He declares that he does not speak against the Supreme Being itself, but against the erroneous and degrading idea which men have conceived of a Supreme Being. In the first half of the first canto he distinctly and magnificently develops a sort of Manicheism. Two spirits, the good and the evil, are struggling for the supreme sway. The evil spirit is still predominant; but each successive combat finds him weaker and the good stronger than heretofore. The final issue shall be the perfect triumph of the good and destruction of the evil. This philosophy is yet further expounded in the "Prometheus Unbound," written in 1819. Herein Jupiter, the representative of the Evil spirit, is cast down, and "the tyranny of heaven shall never be reassumed." Herein also Shelley (like Plato, among others, before him) declares that "Almighty God," "Merciful God," made the living world and all that it contains of good; and the Evil spirit, now ruling, all the evil—"madness, crime, remorse, hell, or the sharp fear of hell." Scene 3, Act ii., shows the nature-worship fading away. But the most prominent and pervading idea of the poem is Pantheistic. The Good spirit, which at last triumphs, is, indeed, typified in the Titan Prometheus, and not in a man; but no faith in or worship of this deliverer is required from men who would be saved. The Universal Mind is freed and purified; the earth and the moon grow more glorious, and fertile, and beautiful, inspired by the renewed health of the informing spirit. The poem is an apotheosis of the One Infinite Soul, self-subsisting, informing all things, one and the same in all masks of man, and beast, and worm, and plant, and slime. The conclusion of the "Sensitive Plant," written in 1820, puts forth somewhat hesitatingly a species of transcendental idealism, which there is no space here for considering.
We now come to the poems written in 1821, the year before his death.
"Hellas" (in the wonderful chorus commencing, "Worlds on worlds are rolling ever, from creation to decay") contains a noble recognition of the character of Jesus Christ, a recognition much more decided than that in the First Act of the Prometheus. It also contains, in the speeches of Ahasuerus to Mahmud, one of the two grandest assertions of Idealism with which I am acquainted; the other is developed in his "Ode to Heaven," written in 1819. It is pure Berkeleyan philosophy, with the Kantian extension—that space and time are merely necessary forms of human thought, and have no existence separate from the human mind. Having no room for these passages in extenso, I refrain from injuring them by fragmentary citation.
From the "Adonais," I must quote a little, in order to show what Pantheism pervades it. He asserts of the dead Keats:—
"He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there All new successions to the forms they wear; Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; And bursting, in its beauty and its might, From trees, and beasts, and men, into the Heaven's light."
And, again: —
"The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!"
And, finally: —
"That Light, whose smile kindles the Universe, That Beauty, in which all things work and move. That Benediction, which the eclipsing curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love, Which through the web of being blindly wove By man, and beast, and earth, and air, and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality."
Such doctrine as is expressed and implied in these lines differs little from what is called pure Theism. It simply dwells so continually on the Infinity of God as to overlook, or slightly regard His Personality: it is Spiritualism and Theism, but of the Greeks rather than the Hebrews. The fact is that Shelley, like every other brave Recusant, is credited with much more infidelity than he really had. Finding a vast State Church, based upon politico-theology, everywhere in the ascendant, he was naturally more occupied in negativing dominant assumptions than in affirming his own positive convictions. If a man asserts his right to crush me under his feet, it is not probable that my reply will contain an exact recognition of whatever wisdom and goodness he may really have.
So much for formulas: but, of course, we are agreed that Shelley's real religious character consisted in his unquenchable love and reverence for all holiness, truth, and beauty. He believed so much more than the generality of us, he strove with so unusual an ardour to realise his belief in his life, that he is necessarily accounted an infidel and semi-maniac by the great majority.
"I never knew that time in England, when men of truest religion were not counted sectaries. . . . Certainly, if ignorance and perverseness will needs be national and universal, then they who adhere to wisdom and to truth are not therefore to be blamed for being so few as to seem a sect or faction." Which are two sentences of (John Milton's) "Eikonoklastes."—Your sincere Friend,
- ↑ This letter appeared in the National Reformer, which was then edited by Charles Bradlaugh, who at that time called himself "Iconoclast," in his public capacity as editor and lecturer.