SHELLEY Among the great poets of the early part of the nineteenth century Shelley and Byron were both poets of religious as well as of political and social revolt. Their attacks were directed, not in the main against religion and society as such, but against the established conventions of religion and society. As regards their feelings-interest in Nature, love of unfettered freedom, etc.—and the free and personal expression of them they were children of the nineteenth century, but as regards their thought— its sources and grounds-they were true products of the eighteenth century. Byron early and late was a partisan of the school of Pope, and poems like the Essay on Man contained the type of thinking on the whole best suited to his mind. Shelley early absorbed the writings of eighteenth century philosophers-French and English— and adopted outright as his spiritual leader and guide one of the latest of them-William Godwin. In this day it is difficult to conceive how profoundly the youth of the latter part of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century were influenced by such writers as Locke and Hume, Voltaire and Pope. As Wordsworth and Coleridge began their work wholly in the spirit of the eighteenth century tradition, so did Byron and Shelley. But whereas Wordsworth and Coleridge effected a constructive reaction against that tradition, Byron and Shelley, either because of their youth or because of lack of original constructive philosophical thinking, never at 195 tained to a clear philosophic conversion from their early masters. To be sure Shelley intermixed a number of Platonic ideas with his own creations; but so did Coleridge in his youth. Yet had Coleridge died at the age of twenty-nine (Shelley died at that age), no one would consider him a Platonist. The claim, made by various Shelley enthusiasts, that Shelley inherited the mantle of Plato is extravagant, to say the least. It is a striking fact about Shelley that his mind was preoccupied, especially in the formative years of his life, with the subject of religion, and it is significant that the piece of writing which first attracted any considerable attention to him was the essay The Necessity of Atheism, published in 1811 when he was eighteen and a student at Oxford. The essay not only is revolutionary in spirit, but also reveals a mind precociously occupied with religious problems. It furnishes the starting point for the study of the growth of the poet's mind. With condensed expression and close-knit argument the essay attempts briefly to prove nothing less than the nonexistence of Deity. The proof to Shelley seemed easy: there are only three sources of evidence-the senses, reason, and testimony-and these do not suffice to establish belief. The major premise in the essay is really the common eighteenth century dictum that "the senses are the sources of all knowledge to the mind." If we grant this, the argument is logical enough. Shelley, of course, had no doubt of its validity. Yet the truly religious mind, which believes in the primacy of the Spirit over the senses, cannot accept it as valid. It is easier to believe in the existence of Deity than in Shelley's major premise. In a letter to Elizabeth Hitchener, written in June, 1811, several months after the publication of The Neces sity of Atheism, Shelley reveals what was probably the direct source of the major premise in his essay: Locke proves that there are no innate ideas, that in consequence, there can be no innate speculative or practical principles, thus overturning all appeals of feeling in favor of Deity, since that feeling must be referable to some origin. There must have been a time when it did not exist; in consequence, a time when it began to exist. Since all ideas are derived from the senses, this feeling must have originated from some sensual excitation, consequently the possessor of it may be aware of the time, of the circumstances, attending its commencement. Locke proves this by induction too clearly to admit of rational objection.1 That is to say, the feeling men have for Deity, arising from a sensual excitation that can be traced to a specific point of time, proves only a certain psychological process of the mind and nothing whatever concerning the existence of Deity. It is also to be noted that twice in the essay Shelley asserts that "belief is not an act of volition" and that therefore "no degree of criminality is attachable to disbelief." And in a letter to his father dated February 8, 1811, first published by F. Ingpen in his Shelley in England (1917), he attacked Christianity on the same grounds. Of the coming of Christ as being called good tidings, he says: "It is hard to believe how those tidings could be good which are to condemn more than half of the world to the Devil, for, as St. Athanasius says, 'He who does not believe should go into eternal fire'—as if belief were voluntary, or an action, not a passion (as it is) of the mind." Accordingly, to him who perceives that belief is purely involuntary and who considers there 1 In another letter to Miss Hitchener, dated June 25, 1811, and in still another to her, dated Aug. 18, 1811, he repeats these references to Locke's arguments against innate ideas. |