CHAP. II.
On the Supposed Atheism of Queen Mab.
I shall now trouble you with a few comments, on what is called the Atheism of Mr. Shelley.—When reduced to its real nature, and stripped of the mystic veil, in which he endeavours to shroud it, it will be found as harmless, as it appears monstrous. His muse has the effect of a magic lanthorn. It is only the light, situation, and medium, through which we view his parodoxes, that render them so alarming. The very terrible creations of the lanthorn are deceptions produced from the most ordinary, and least formidable materials; and attract our attention from what they seem to be, not what they are:—so the illusions of Mr. Shelley startle us, because their real nature is disguised in the exaggeration of description. To dispel these shadows, however, is of comparatively little importance. What concerns our practice, comes home to the bosoms and business of us all; but our opinions may be indulged in more excursive flights;—and if the world of realities be not disturbed by the fictions of our dreamers, we may pardon them for building their castles in the air; and either giving, or denying,
"to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name!"
Of the fairies of his own creation, Mr. Shelley may dispose as he pleases:—either by gift, by lottery, or by sale:—but while he cannot make the present race of human beings better, it is not to be endured that he should make them worse, by recommending the extension of an acknowledged evil, as a means of securing the general good! This he has done by recommending the abolition of the marriage ceremony; but when he recommends atheism, he offers a chalice to the lips of which the wise and the good will refuse to drink, while the vicious and the ignorant will fear to taste.
An ordinary reader of the first cantos would believe him a profound theist. His first allusion to this subject, is an appeal to the Spirit of Nature, in p. 12, at the close of the first canto, in which he has borrowed the same idea of divinity which Pope adopts:—as of a spirit that—
"Lives through all life, extends through all extent."
After describing the scene to which the Fairy conducts the soul of Ianthe, he declares it to be the fitting temple for the Spirit of Nature; while nevertheless the lightest leaf, the meanest worm, are equally instinct with the eternal breath. In p. 16, we have the epithets of "changeless nature," and "eternal nature's law," as regulating the eloquent harmony of the "circling systems." At p. 19, we have an appeal to "the poor man's God," to sweep from the face of the earth something which displeases Mr. Shelley. Then we are asked, what must have been the nature of the being who taught that
"the God
Of Nature and benevolence had given
A special sanction to the trade of blood?"
"Spirit of nature, no!
The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs
Alike in every human heart:
Thou aye erectest there
Thy throne of power unappealable:
Thou art the judge beneath whose nod,
Man's brief and frail authority
Is powerless as the wind,
That passeth idly by.
Thine the tribunal which surpasseth
The shew of human justice,
As God surpasseth man!
Who would have imagined, from such language, he could ever arrive at the startling proposition, "there is no God!" In the following stanza, p. 31, we have man unconsciously fulfilling the will of the Spirit of Nature! In p. 35, we are asked—
"———Hath Nature's soul,
That formed this world so beautiful; that spread
Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord
Strung to unchanging unison; that gave
The happy birds their dwelling in the grove;
That yielded to the wanderers of the deep
The lovely silence of the unfathom'd main;
And fill'd the meanest worm that crawls in dust
With spirit, thought, and love:—on man alone,
Partial in causeless malice, wantonly
Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul
Blasted with withering curses; placed afar
The meteor happiness, that shuns his grasp,
But serving on the frightful gulph to glare,
Rent wide beneath his footsteps?
Nature! No?"
Who would not suppose that this was intended to "vindicate the ways of God to man?" rather than to afford any reason for supposing the author was about to deny the existence of a God? Setting aside the Pythagorean notion, that every worm has "spirit, thought, and love," this stanza might have been written by Bishop Porteus. So far from denying the existence of spirit, and adopting the doctrine of annihilation, which atheism proclaims, he contends that all is spirit!
"Throughout this varied and eternal world,
Soul is the only element. The block,
That for uncounted ages has remained
The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight,
Is active, living spirit! Every grain
Is sentient, both in unity and part,
And the minutest atom comprehends
A world of loves and hatreds!"
We may smile at this; but want of faith cannot be attributed to the man who could form such a thesis. If there be no mistake in this matter, we should really treat the cuttings of our toes, and the parings of our finger nails, with more ceremony than to throw them behind the fire, since they comprehend many "worlds of loves and hatreds!" To be sure, when they are reduced to ashes, they remain atoms still, and the loves and hatreds may be only purified by the ordeal. The process by which the sentient principle was infused into them, after they were clipped, or filed off, would be a curious matter for Queen Mab to explain, when she next visits the earth:—or perhaps they are quite independent atoms; and while growing on the toe or finger nails, have each their separate "loves and hatreds" to themselves!
After this adoption and extension of the doctrine of Pythagoras, we are distinctly told that "man is of soul and body;" which conveys some little contradiction to the doctrine that every atom is sentient, and that the block basis of a mountain is a living and entire spirit;—but poets must not be measured by too strict rules. In either case, we have arrived at nothing like atheism yet.
At the commencement of the sixth Canto, we find it questioned, whether "the universal spirit" will not "re-vivify" this "wild and miserable world," which is most emphatically called in the peculiar style of Calvinistic energy a "withered limb of heaven!" And answering the question in the affirmative, he seems to prophecy of the Millenium, for he says:—
"How sweet a scene will earth become!
Of purest spirits a pure dwelling-place
Symphonious with the planetary spheres,
When man with changeless nature coalescing
Will undertake regeneration's work,
When its ungenial poles no longer point
To the red, and baneful sun,
That faintly twinkles there!"
How "changeless nature" is to change, until the poles change their direction, by a little of man's assistance in removing them, it was not worth Mr. Shelley's while to stoop from his flight to inform us; but, setting the absurdity aside, there is in these lines a full recognition of that superior power to which the name of God is peculiarly assigned. He employs the same figurative language, and ascribes to this power those attributes which are ascribed to him by the most devout writers. Mr. S. may exceed them in the fervour of his enthusiasm; but he has adopted the basis of all their ideas of divinity. That this Power should have been insulted, by being painted as the "prototype of human misrule," affords no reason for the climax at which Mr. S. afterwards arrives; not by any rational gradation, but by a sudden leap, which is made with such frantic energy as very far to over-shoot its mark.
At p. 57, we have another close imitation of the divinity of Pope:—so close, indeed, as to be a servile copy of the ideas of that poet. And this ushers in the first indication of the peculiar doctrines of our author. This "Spirit of Nature," this "all-sufficing power," is not meant to apply to the ordinary Deity of mankind; but to "Necessity," the "Mother of the world!" Mr. S. is simply a Necessarian! Every thing is, because it must be; and every thing has been, because it must have been. Those conjurers are perfectly safe, who wait until an event occurs, and then say none other could have happened! This is a species of witch-craft within anybody's reach. But is it worth any thing? Does it explain any thing? Does it help us a jot on our way to truth, or is it available in the pursuit of happiness? I think it is both useless and ridiculous. It seems to me a species of metaphysical Calvinism!—and to be as dangerous to morality, as predestination to the interests of religion. We perceive we are in existence—and the Necessarian tells us, very wisely, that we are here of necessity! We perceive the varied creation around us replete with life, and plenished with the means of enjoyment, and the Necessarian wisely tells us, all comes from necessity! What an encrease to our wisdom, is this information! The world is taken from the back of the elephant, who stands upon the tortoise, and put upon the shoulders of Dame Necessity, its august and venerable mother, if Mr. Shelley is sufficient authority for this portion of the parentage! The grand secret is merely an exchange of nomenclature. We are not to call the vivifying and superintending principle of creation by the name of God, because impostors have belied his character, and villains have abused his attributes; but we are to get rid of all difficulty and doubt, by hailing "Necessity" as the "Mother of the world!" Will it be thought too indecorous by the partizans of Mr. Shelley, if we proceed to make a little enquiry as to the origin of this prolific necessity? A necessity is generally defined to be an effect, arising out of a cause! What cause gave birth to this Necessity? What made Necessity the mother of the world? In what manner did Necessity conceive this glorious harmony of "changeless nature?" Whence did Necessity herself arise;—and whence the materials out of which this organization arose? Does the tame, passive, inert word necessity, convey any adequate idea of the stupendous creation and its origin? To say that it was necessary, because it exists; and that it owes its existence to necessity, is ringing a childish play on words.
The truth is, that on the question of the nature of the Deity we are utterly at a loss, and there is no means afforded to our reason by which we can arrive at any conception of his being. We are at as great a loss on this subject, as we should be upon the subject of sounds, if we were born deaf; or of colours, if we had no eyes. We are compelled to admit what to our limited senses appears an absurdity; and though we are compelled to admit this, it does not help us in the slightest degree in our researches. We cannot conceive how any thing should be made, without a maker. Nor can we imagine how any maker could make himself. To our reason, an effect must be preceded by an adequate cause. When we talk of a "first cause," we state in fact that our reason cannot begin at any earlier point. The nature of our first cause remains unexplained; for while we are obliged to admit the existence of a power competent to produce the wonders which we see around us, because we do see them, we are equally compelled to confess that we do not know how they could be produced. If we do not know how creation could have been introduced into existence, how can we conceive the nature of the power which has called it into existence? The thing is an utter impossibility. We want a basis for our enquiries which is not afforded us. We only know that there exists a power superior, infinitely superior, to any thing that we see around us, and we call this power God! What advantage is obtained by changing the name! This is the Spirit of Nature! before which in all ages the human mind has bent; sometimes in rational worship; sometimes in idle ceremony; sometimes in cruel mockery of devotion.
Revelations, whether real or pretended, afford no light upon the subject of the nature of the Divinity. They only describe his attributes, and promulgate the laws by which he governs. And all the fanciful speculators that ever wrote, have not advanced our ideas an iota, as to an uncaused cause!—No torch has ever penetrated the thick darkness which surrounds this question; and it still remains as great an enigma as ever, how either the Creator of all should have created himself, or the materials with which he has organized the world. Milton tells us all originated from Chaos, and Old Night. But whence came Chaos? What produced Old Night? We laugh at the fable of the World being supported by an elephant, and the elephant by a tortoise, while the tortoise stands upon nothing;—but we forget that in pursuing a similar enquiry, our metaphysicians pursue a similar course of illustration. Of all the lame substitutes devised for creation, that of necessity seems the most childish, though universally useful in its application, if it were of any import. So, if we ask Mr. S. how he could imagine himself removing a difficulty, by introducing an absurdity, he will tell us it was of necessity! If we enquire how he comes to contradict himself, he will say it is of necessity! Or how he comes to lay down dangerous, and inexplicable doctrines,—it is all of necessity, sheer necessity! But unluckily this necessity, which has been aptly described as the plea of tyrants, and the creed of slaves, is equally applicable to vice, as to folly. The Inquisition may say, with equal truth, it roasts its victims out of absolute necessity! The despot may plead he lights up the conflagration of empires, and encreases the miseries of human nature to the most horrible climax of anguish, by the command of this necessity. The priest may deceive, the lawyer defraud, and the physician poison, by the same impulse of necessity. Pickpockets may steal, and ruffians murder, with the same excuse; and all the evils and horrors of which he complains, are as much matters of necessity, as his condemnation of them. Nor do I see ought of distinction between necessity and predestination; save that one is applied to a sectarian definition of the Christian faith, and the other is the general principle applied to the whole phenomena of nature. I understand the passage in which Necessity is asserted to be the mother of the world, is one of those which have been selected for persecution. Yet the continuation of the stanza breathes doctrines which would be considered as devout, were not the opinions of society shocked by the rudeness of substituting a new epithet, for that usually employed when speaking upon such matters. Allow Mr. Shelley to designate his ruling power by the term Necessity, and his theology remains as sound as that of other men. He is not an atheist, even where he fancies himself one. Speaking of the ruling power, he says, in this very stanza, "the caprice
Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee;
Than do the changeful passions of his breast
To thy unvarying harmony!"
Pope himself did not more distinctly draw the line between theism, and atheism, when he said—
"The workman from the work distinct was known."
It is true these lines contradict the idea of an ever-ruling necessity, to which would be of course attributed the caprice, and the changeful passions of humanity, as much as the actions which are declared to be absolutely controlled by this fatal necessity; for he very gravely observes afterwards—
"all that the wide world contains
Are but thy passive instruments."
I am, however, at some loss to guess why these lines are included in the indictment. Absurd as they are, I perceive no atheism in them. There is a change of epithets, but little more. He exclaims—
"Spirit of Nature! all sufficing power!"
This refers to that principle which regulates the movements of the creation; which he calls—
"Necessity, thou mother of the world!"
It is an odd phrase, and excites some odd ideas. Had he called Jove the father of the world, no objection would have been taken to the epithet. It is a deviation from the ordinary mode of expression, perhaps without cause, but which might be made without guilt. And when he adds—
"Unlike the God of human error, thou
Requirest no prayers, or praises!"
he adopts the Epicurean idea, that the gods look with indifference upon the conduct of men, having placed their happiness in their virtue, and leaving their misery to correct their vices. Christians say that God needs no prayers, or praises. If he need them not, he requires them not;—for he cannot require what he does not need, Nor would they be of any value were they the result of any sense of duty. Where praise is not spontaneously offered, it is better repressed. Unless the heart beat in unison with the tongue, the prayer ought to be disregarded, and the praise is hypocrisy. Besides it would be a strange assumption to single out the Christian deity, as the god of human error, when the earth abounds both with false gods, and with false ideas of the divinity. The catholic, who deems the protestants entertain erroneous notions of the Supreme Being, must think the protestant deity a deity of human error. The enmity of Mr. Shelley to the Christian Faith is evident enough; but it is not from this passage I should have expected it to be gathered. In allusion to some god of human error, he says, Necessity (his favourite impulse and origin of all) shall live unchangeable, when the broken altars of this deity shall have bent to the storm of time. What this means, if it mean not that the God of Nature shall triumph over the false opinions of erring humanity, I know not. Mr. S. is so little in agreement with himself, that the charge of this being deism, while he is an atheist, will not be thought of much value. Besides Mr. S. does not profess himself an atheist. He has endeavoured to assimilate his deity to his own imagination, as all enthusiasts do; but though he denies the deities of others, he does not refuse to admit there is one. Nay, more, he attempts to define what the divinity is; and though I cannot but smile at his definition, I am not authorised to dispute his sincerity. All I am disposed to contend for, is that he has made distinctions without difference; and has made people believe him a monster, who would have idolized him, had he been content to express his ideas in ordinary terms.
I now arrive at that appalling declaration, which it was natural to believe would be prosecuted, as throwing down the gauntlet which summons all the feelings of the age to mortal combat. The burning of atheists, (a terrible method of purifying their sentiments) with the natural horror he must have entertained at the idea of such tortures being inflicted upon men for holding opinions which he deemed similar to his own, seems to have taken deep hold upon his fancy. His introduction to the startling declaration, is perhaps the most genuine poetry in the volume. It is simple, affecting, and animated, in a superlative degree. He makes the spirit of Ianthe say—
"I was an infant when my mother went
To see an atheist burned. She took me there!
The dark-robed priests were met around the pile,
The multitude was gazing silently;
And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien,
Tempered disdain in his unaltered eye,
Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth:
The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs!
His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon;
His death-pang rent my heart! The insensate mob
Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept.
Weep not, child? cried my mother, for that man
Has said, There is no God!"
Upon this, Mr. Shelley rushes to the avowal of his faith:—and, because no God could have commanded the sacrifice of a human being, for an error of judgment;—mistaking most unwarrantably the conduct of the murderers for the sanction of the Deity whom they insulted, while they pretended to worship,—he madly exclaims
"There is no God?
Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed."
And then, sinking most miserably from his poetical beauty, in the same proportion as he abandons his reason, he has the following weak and incomprehensible explanation of this unfounded assertion.
"Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race,
His ceaseless generations tell their tale;
Let every part, depending on the chain
That links it to the whole, point to the hand
That grasps its term! Let every seed that falls,
In silent eloquence unfold its store
Of argument. Infinity within,
Infinity without, belie creation!
The inexterminable spirit it contains,
Is nature's only god! but human pride
Is skilful to invent most serious names
To hide its ignorance. The name of God
Has fenc'd about all crime with holiness,
Himself the creature of his worshippers,
Whose names, and attributes, an passions change,
Seeva, Budh, Foh, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!"
"Is skilful to invent most serious names
To hide its ignorance."
In the total impossibility of deciding correctly, why affect to decide at all? Where is the necessity for a decision? We can reject whatever is unworthy of the Eternal Mind, without denying the existence of a spirit and intelligence which we cannot comprehend. We may refuse our credence to the vulgar errors of attributing the human form or the human passions to the Deity, without denying the existence of a God! And even this denial is only made in words. Mr. Shelley feels there is a power beyond the comprehension of all other men; and to seem wiser than his fellows, he denies their discovery of what cannot be discovered; and talks mysteriously to disguise his own failure, and his close resemblance to themselves. In this dilemma, I think it much the wiser, and the better mode, to take the advice of Pope:—
"Hope humbly then, on trembling pinions soar,
Wait the great teacher death, and God adore."
Mr. S. may adore Necessity, if he will have necessity to be his Deity. The spirit and author of Nature is the real object of adoration: and it matters little by what epiphet he is designated. The errors and absurdities of human creeds can only be charged upon human folly. The Deity is not injured, because his creatures know not what he is, and hit upon ridiculous modes of service. It is true, and it is to be lamented, that
"the name of God
Has fenc'd about all crime with holiness:"
and that madmen, in their ignorance, their interests, and their vices, have made him
"The creature of his worshippers!"
"In religion,
What damned error, but some holy cheat,
Can gloss it over!"
Pope to the same effect, tracing the progress of superstition, says—
"Fear made their devils, and weak hope their Gods;
Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust,
Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust!
Zeal then, not charity, became the guide,
And hell was built in spite, and heaven in pride."
Some French writer observes that—
"Priests are all for vengeance, force, and fire,
And only in his thunders act their God!"
Thus human passions have contaminated the shrines which human reason should have raised to heaven—and thus, as Mr. Shelley justly remarks,
"Priests babble of a God of peace,
E'en while their hands are red with guiltless blood!"
Thus once the Christian crusaders made a slaughter-house of Turkey, for the conquest of Jerusalem in the name of Christ; and a few weeks since Constantinople has seen the Greek Christians, with their patriarch at their head, murdered to the honor and glory of the god of Mahomet. But is the Great Author of All, the Eternal Immutable Spirit, to be denied, because some beings,
"drest in a little brief authority,
Play such fantastic tricks before high heaven,
As make e'en angels weep!"
All this folly and barbarity very clearly prove that their authors have neither knowledge, nor fear, of the Deity, before whom they bend in solemn mockery. Did they fear him, they would respect his laws, and imitate his conduct;—did they know him, they would not attribute actions to him of which they are ashamed themselves, and yet perpetrate in the abuse of his authority. But all this does not disprove the existence of a Superior Ruling Power—of that Being with respect to whom the Athenians candidly confessed their ignorance, when they erected an altar to the unknown god! Neither infinity, nor eternity, nor creation, nor necessity, explain the difficulty. He has chosen to shroud himself in mystery, as to his origin, and nature:—but enough of his power and benevolence are known, to induce us to adoration—not because he needs it, but because we cannot possess our reason, and not adore the author of a system which produces so much happiness. That atheism is not capable of removing the obscurity in which the system of nature is involved—or that Mr. S. is not an atheist;—must be admitted even by his admirers.
In a note upon the line,
"Necessity, thou mother of the world!"
he enters into a prose dissertation on this new-found deity, which is to depose all the ancient and the modern divinities. In this it is attempted to assimilate the human mind to that part of the creation, in which from given causes, are produced certain effects. The folly of this reasoning consists in the want of analogy between the things compared. The material and the moral world are essentially different. There are certain fixed laws to which the material world is subject, which enable us to speak with certainty of effects as following causes:—but in the moral world, we have no such assurance. The disposition of matter depends upon the laws which regulate matter, which are definite:—but the mind is not governed by any such determinate principles; nor can we argue that the same causes shall produce the same effects on the minds of different individuals. If it be said, if they were exactly in the same circumstances, the same effect would follow the same cause the reasoning would still fail, for it would be impossible to find this agreement of circumstances. We can readily admit the necessity that a grain of wheat shall produce its likeness, when subjected to the process of vegetation:—or that an acorn should produce an oak. In these operations, "nature is uniform," and "the constant conjunction of similar events," leads to the "consequent inference of one from another." But where this evident uniformity ceases, there also ceases the doctrine of Necessity. Unless you can tell me what I am about to do, as distinctly as you can predict the expansion of an oak from an acorn, you cannot apply the same doctrine to the one as to the other. An inference from a certainty, is not an equal certainty; and a supposition from a fact is entitled to little credit. "Liberty applied to mind," is not, as Mr. Shelley says, "analogous to chance, as applied to matter." There is no greater analogy between them, than there is between mind, and a dead corpse; or between the head and the hair which grows upon it; and it is equally wide of conclusive reasoning to remark, that "the precise character and motives of any man, on any occasion, being given, the moral philosopher could predict his actions with as much certainty, as the natural philosopher could predict the effects of the mixture of any particular chemical substances." The "precise character," and the "motives" can never be obtained; and the boast is as idle as that of Archemides, that if he had a place whereon to place his lever, he could raise the earth. It is a mere sophistical evasion to demand conditions which cannot be fulfilled, as the data of conclusions which are to be expected. If the conditions were attainable, the matter would be then to be proved. As it stands, no proof is possible; and the supposition does not warrant the inference. We know we have never yet approached the knowledge of mind, if such doctrines are correct. The "indisciplinable wanderings of passion," of which Mr. Shelley speaks in his note upon marriage, seem to deride all motive, and to laugh at all rational deductions. The "aged husbandman," is not "more experienced than the young beginner," as Mr. Shelley supposes, "because there is a uniform, undeniable necessity in the operations of nature;" but because he has seen more of these operations. Now the more we see of the operations of the human mind, the less we are able to comprehend its nature. We are perpetually startled by endless contradictions:—
"The rogue, and fool, by fits, is fair and wise!
And e'en the best, by fits, what they despise."
Instead of that immutable certainty, which characterises the laws of nature in the material world, we find nothing but uncertainty. "An old statesman" is not always "more skilful than a raw politician." Polonius knows no more of Hamlet's madness than Rosencrantz or Guildenstern. What Mr. Shelley attempts to illustrate by saying, "No farmer carrying his corn to market, doubts the sale of it at market price," I am at a loss to guess. It is of a piece, however, with many other of his illustrations, and can illustrate nothing, because it is a fallacy. If he can sell it in the market at all, he knows he will sell it at the market price! And yet he may have doubts, whether he can effect a sale; and these doubts have often been converted into realities. Such illustrations suit very well with such reasoners as talk about "voluntary actions," and yet tell us "every human being is irresistibly impelled to act precisely as he does act, by a chain of causes generated in the eternity which preceded his birth." An illustration to a similar purpose, states "the master of a manufactory no more doubts that he can purchase the human labour necessary for his purpose, than that his machinery will act as it has been accustomed to act." It is not necessary to have been a manufacturer, to see that this is sometimes a falsehood and must always be a fallacy.
"In the only true sense of the word power," says Mr. Shelley, "it applies with equal force to the loadstone, as to the human will! Do you think these motives, which I shall present, are powerful enough to rouse him? is a question as common as, Do you think this lever has the power of raising this weight?" This is true; but the answers are not so certain of being similar. We can tell when the lever is powerful enough to raise the weight; but we may in vain endeavour to ascertain the motives that are strong enough to rouse the mind. The difference is, that the weight is passive to the power, and is necessitated to obey its influence. It is the active and determining principle; but the mind bears no similitude to the weight. It may refuse to be acted upon by any motive—the motives we imagine sufficiently powerful to rouse it, may be disregarded; and the motives have not the power of the lever, to enforce the necessity of action. The reason is plain. The mind thinks for itself—the weight obeys the superior impulse of the lever. There is no analogy between them:—and the argument fails from the want of a just degree of comparison.
In this note, however, I find a valuable admission, which sets the supposed atheism of Mr. Shelley entirely at rest. He says, "It is probable that the word God was originally only an expression denoting the unknown cause of the known events which men perceived in the universe." This is clear—and the word which Mr. Shelley chooses to employ instead of the word God, to denote the cause of these unknown events, is the word "Necessity!" This brings us to the point from which we set out—to the—
"Father of all, in every age
In every clime ador'd;
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord."
Mr. Shelley's alteration of the text to "Mother," instead of Father, may strike us as very useless, but we can hardly deem it so wicked, as to deserve, "death here, and hell hereafter." Though Lord Bacon prefers atheism to superstition, and says the former may leave a man to the domestic virtues and to science, while the latter makes a wild beast of him; yet a poetical atheist would have been a most ungracious animal—a sort of traitor to his profession, and a heretic to his creed:—and I am happy to have discovered, that Mr. Shelley is a true worshipper of the divinity, though he refuses to kneel at the ordinary altars, and has endeavoured to frame a liturgy for himself.
I do not give much credit to the motives of the prosecutors of Queen Mab, because it attacks the received notions of a divinity; or because it disputes the authenticity of the Jewish and Christian revelations. The Lord Chief Justice Abbott declares it is not illegal to doubt the truth of Christianity, provided such doubts be not expressed in a reviling manner:—but if it be not illegal to doubt, no mode of expressing doubt can be illegal. It were wiser to leave reviling to neglect. The decision of twelve Christians is no better proof of the truth of Christianity, than the verdict of twelve Mahometans of the truth of the divine mission of Mahomet.
Mr. Shelley, in his Vision of Ahasuerus, the wandering Jew, certainly treats with very little ceremony the Jewish and the Christian revelations:—but his objections admit of a most easy reply—one which he himself furnishes. His deity, "Necessity," is to the full as answerable for all the deeds of horror committed in the name of any other deity, as the peculiar being whose pretended worship authorized the barbarities. Mr. Shelley declares―
"No atom … fulfils
A vague and unnecessitated act,
Or acts but as it must and ought to act."
If this be the case, his charges that "slaves built temples for the Omnipotent,"—that "costly altars smoked with human blood,"—that, "hideous pæans rung through long-drawn aisles,"—are idle, as occurring out of inevitable necessity; and it matters little to the barbarities, or the errors, if they are admitted to be so, in what name they were committed, or perpetrated. There is in the language attributed to Ahasuerus, much of what might be called reviling; but the peculiar situation of the party represented will account for much. The dramatist is not answerable for the sentiments of his characters;—he has only to represent them in their proper light. Otherwise the Bible itself might be prosecuted as an atheistical work, because there is in it a declaration that "there is no God." An Attorney-General would have only to omit the context, "the fool hath said in his heart," to make the prophet answerable for the language of the fool.
It may be here remarked, that if the destruction of human life lead Mr. Shelley to reject revelations which attribute such commands to the deity, he ought in like manner to renounce his praises of Necessity, from the misery and wreck of human happiness occasioned by such calamities as the overflowings of Etna and Vesuvius—the overwhelming of Pompeii and Herculaneum—the swallowing up of Lisbon—the devastation of tempests—the agony of acute diseases—and the murders committed in the mask of war! These are as much opposed to the benevolence of "Necessity, the mother of the world," as to the wisdom and goodness of any other deity. It matters not to the sufferer, whether the earthquake devour him, the burning lava overwhelm him, or the dagger hasten him to a premature grave.
Mr. Shelley says the present evil is requisite to bring about ulterior good. Of this there is no proof. I cannot tell whether the climate of the poles will ever be so far assimilated to that of the torrid zone, as to make pine apples as plentiful at Nova Zembla, as now in the West Indies. Astronomers may decide that the earth is in its progress to a better state; but I perceive no prospect from this of any alteration in the condition of man. His happiness does not depend upon climates or seasons. When the "equator coincides with the ecliptic," and "the nights and days are equal on the earth throughout the year," which Mr. Shelley thinks "exceedingly probable," there will in the same probability be as much error, venality, prejudice, and ignorance, as at present. The happiest climates, instead of producing the happiest and wisest men, afford specimens of the reverse. If it were possible to give into these dreams of worlds of endless bliss, which are destined to arise out of the maturity of the universe, what are they to us, who are not destined to approach within centuries upon centuries of their existence?
All these visions are but other views of the millenium, and of those heavens, into which human nature is perpetually endeavouring to pry for that happiness which it cannot find in the present state of things. These idle expectations are the common solace of indolence, the common food of discontent. Mr. Shelley has served up the same dish, varied in the cooking, and with a more savory sauce;—but equally visionary, unsatisfactory, and unsubstantial:—Those who set down to the banquet will find only a feast of air.
FINIS.