Daniel J. MacDonald

“ Francis Thompson does not believe that any one ever had his faith shaken through reading Shelley. He knows, too, only of three passages to which exception might be taken from a moral point of view. Shelley extolled Justice, Freedom and Equality; and he denounced tyranny and injustice. His poetry should inspire men to be more charitable and tolerant, to seek less after wealth and the applause of the world, to sympathize more and more with suffering humanity, to return good for evil and to pursue the common good of all with more zeal and enthusiasm. ”

“ Gisborne, June, 1822, Shelley says: “I think one is always in love with something or other; the error—and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it—consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps eternal.” “Such illusions,” says Dowden, “may be of service in keeping alive within us the aspiration for the highest things, but assuredly they have a tendency to draw away from real persons some of those founts of feeling which are needed to keep fresh and bright the common ways and days of our life.” ”

“ Prometheus represents mankind. He is oppressed by the very being, Jupiter, to whom he himself has given power. Jupiter must not be considered as the abstract power of moral evil. He represents those institutions, political and religious, which man himself has created. Jupiter’s downfall is brought about by his own offspring; man himself can overthrow tyranny. In the marriage of Jupiter and Thetis, Shelley seems to portray the overweening arrogance through which a political tyranny invests itself with the pomp of a false glory and which always precedes its downfall. ”

“ Shelley’s mind moved in charity, but turned anywhere except upon the poles of the earth.
Notwithstanding all its shortcomings radicalism fulfils a very useful purpose in society. It keeps before our eyes the ideal. “It emphasizes the moral over the material; man over property. Its prominence in society insures progress and gives promise that ideals shall not perish; that hope shall not wane, and that society shall long for perfection and peace, without which longing no progress is possible.” [206] Radicalism emphasizes the ideal; conservatism the real. ”

“ This is particularly true of the poetry of Shelley. It embodies the aspirations and ideals of the philosophers of his time. Its themes are liberty, justice and revolt. On every side are heard protests against conventionality, against government, and against religion. The philosophers of the French Revolution are hailed as the saviors of society and their theories put forth as a panacea for all human ills. Shelley is the high water mark of the waves of revolt which threatened to inundate the country. ”

“ The struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors will be merely nominal if the oppressed are enlightened and animated by a distinct and powerful apprehension of their object. “The minority perceive the approaches of the development of an irresistible force, by the influence of the public opinion of their weakness on those political forms, of which no government but an absolute despotism is devoid. They divest themselves of their usurped distinctions, and the public tranquillity is not disturbed by the revolution.” ”

“ Poetry and radicalism then go hand in hand. When radicalism is in the ascendant, poetry will throb with the feverish energy of the people. It will not only be more abundant, but it will show more of real life—the stuff of which literature is made. In conservative times questions concerning life do not agitate men’s minds to any great extent. People take things as they find them. ”

“ This bears some resemblance to that part of Cythna’s speech in the cavern, Canto IX, where she glories in the triumph of their love over the opposition of the world.
I fear nor prize
Aught that can now betide unshared by thee.
Cythna thinks that she will soon die and believes like Luxima that the story of their love will be a source of inspiration to mankind
Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love,
Our happiness, and all that we have been
Immortally must live and burn and move
When we shall be no more. ”

“ If the government refuse to act, the nation will take the task of reformation into its own hands and the abolition of monarchy must inevitably follow. “No friend of mankind and of his country can desire that such a crisis should arrive.” “If reform shall be begun by the existing government, let us be contented with a limited beginning with any whatsoever opening. Nothing is more idle than to reject a limited benefit because we cannot without great sacrifices obtain an unlimited one.” ”

“ In his first wife, Harriet, he saw courage, a desire for freedom, and a willingness to learn his doctrines.
Thou art sincere and good, of resolute mind
Free from heart-withering customs’ cold control,
Of passion lofty, pure and subdued.
As soon as she ceased to take interest in his studies, his love for her began to wane. “Every one must know,” he tells Peacock, “that the partner of my life should be one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy.” A month or two after his first marriage he tells Elizabeth Hitchener that he loves her. ”

“ Godwin says that new inventions and the refinements of luxury are inimical to the welfare of society. These mean more work for the poor while only the rich are benefited. [102] “The poor,” writes Shelley, “are set to labor—for what? Not the food for which they famish; not the blankets for want of which ... no; for the pride of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hundredth part of society.” Godwin says that the direct pleasure which luxuries give is very small. They are prized because of the love of distinction which is characteristic of every human mind. ”

“ Marriage was a mere formality for a great many. In France, Montesquieu writes, “a husband, who would wish to keep his wife to himself, would be considered a disturber of the public happiness, and as a madman who would monopolise the light of the sun. He who loves his own wife, is one who is not agreeable enough to gain the affections of any other man’s wife, who takes advantage of a law to make amends for his own want of amiability; and who contributes, as far as lies in his power, to overturn a tacit convention, that is conducive to the happiness of both sexes.” ”

“ Asia, the Spirit of Love, comes in contact with Demogorgon, Reason, and moves it to action. The poet here means to image to us the profound truth, that it is only through contact with emotion that abstract thought can become roused to action and be a vital and dynamic power in the sphere of practical life. It is only after having met Demogorgon that the power of Asia is set free. If reason must be inspired by passion before it can prevail, “love on the other hand must become instinct with wisdom before it can be made manifest in that glory which shall save the world.” ”

“ Jupiter falls into the abyss. Prometheus is then released by Hercules. Strength ministers to wisdom, courage, and long-suffering Love, as a slave to its master. Prometheus is united with Asia; mankind with love. The Golden Age has at last arrived. Henceforth there is to be no tyranny nor evil of any kind. Love is to be supreme and is to make all wise and happy. Man is released from bondage and is now free to do as reason directs. ”

“ Some of Shelley’s poetry is calculated to arouse one’s anger and hatred of wrong. A people who are destitute of these emotions are fit subjects for the yoke. As long as there are men ready to take advantage of another’s weakness; as long as there are selfish men who will advance themselves at the expense of others, so long will it be necessary to keep alive in men the spirit of hatred of injustice.
The difficulty with a great many critics of Shelley is that they confound Shelley’s railing at the evils of religion and governments with railing at religion and government itself. ”

“ A poet, he explains, is a genius, and should not be hampered by any conventions of art or traditions of society. His imagination is the purifying fire which transmutes the rough ore of the commonplace into the choice gold of literature. “Good poetry,” he writes, “is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” “He (the poet) is a man speaking to men; a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind ”

“ A man who would solve all the problems of life without falling back on tradition would be obliged, in each of the decisions that he would make, to follow a line of thought or argumentation which would impose an intolerable burden on him. According to Shelley, the morality of an act is to be measured by the utilitarian standard, “the greatest good of the greatest number.” How though can we measure the pleasure and the pain that flows from an action? In many cases we must take the judgment of the race; we must be guided by prejudice or tradition. ”

“ But to subjugate a rational being to the mere will of another, after he is of age to answer to society for his own conduct, is a most cruel and undue stretch of power, and perhaps as injurious to morality as those religious systems which do not allow right and wrong to have any existence, but in the Divine will. ”

“ Again in a letter to Miss Hitchener, November 24, 1811: “Yet that flower has a soul; for what is soul but that which makes an organized being to be what it is?... I will say then that all nature is animated; that microscopic vision, as it has discovered to us millions of animated beings, so might it, if extended, find that nature itself was but a mass of organized animation.” ”

“ One or more of the faculties of every poet are more highly developed than those of ordinary people. In some cases it is the senses; in others the imagination. Tennyson and Wordsworth are good examples of the first class. They note and describe shades of color—in flowers, in the sky—the music of waters, and a hundred other things that escape the notice of common mortals. In Shelley it is his imagination, his faculty for feeling the sufferings of others that is abnormal. He sees a woman afflicted with elephantiasis, and straightway imagines that he himself has the same disease. ”

“ This action and reaction is reflected in the literature of a nation. No matter what definition of literature we may accept, whether it be Newman’s personal use of language, Swinburne’s imagination and harmony, or Matthew Arnold’s criticism of life, it will always be found that literature is a crystallization of the ideals of the age. This is true both of poetry and of prose. The poet is not an isolated individual. ”

“ Godwin’s principle of justice is that each should do to others all the good that is in his power. It is an impartial treatment of every man in matters that relate to his happiness—a treatment which is to be measured solely by a consideration of the properties of the receiver and the capacity of him who bestows. Everything should be so disposed—material comforts so distributed as to give the same amount of pleasure to all. Personal and private feelings such as gratitude and parental affection should be destroyed. A just man will consider the general good only. ”

“ Since that time a radical has come to mean any root-and-branch reformer; and radicalism itself may be defined as a tendency to abolish existing institutions or principles. As soon as either of these seems to have outlived its usefulness, radicalism will clamor for its suppression. Discontent, then, is a source of radicalism. This, however, is of a dual nature—discontent with conditions and discontent with institutions or principles. ”

“ An enlightened radicalism has regard for righteousness and good government, and will resist all enslavement to old forms and traditions, and will set them aside unless it shall appear that any of these have a radically just and defensible reason for their existence and continuance.”
Radicalism thrives where conditions are favorable to a change in ideals. It aims to establish new institutions or to propagate new principles, and this presupposes new ideals. As the habits of a man tend to correspond to his ideals, so too the institutions of a nation conform in a broad way to its ideals. ”

“ Soon morality itself will come to be rationally viewed; it will be universally acknowledged that there is only one law, that of nature; only one code, that of reason; only one throne, that of justice; and only one altar, that of concord. [112] Shelley had unbounded faith in human nature and believed that the downfall of tyranny must soon take place. He believed that the world would resolve itself into one large communistic family, where every man would be independent and free.
Godwin says that “there will be no war, no crime, no administration of justice, as it is called, and no government. ”

“ Almost every person who is of any importance in his community will be found to have started out in life, boiling over with enthusiasm and eager to help on reform by advocating a change in this or that institution. Very often this interferes with their judgment. Bacon had this in mind when he wrote: “Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to be regarded wherein he saith that young men are not fit auditors of moral philosophy, because they are not settled from the boiling-heat of their affections nor tempered with time and experience.” ”

“ All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights that we may enjoy others. Man acts from motives relative to his interests; and not on metaphysical speculations.”
Shelley could not understand how it is that evils continue so pertinaciously to exist in society. He believed that men had but to will that there would be no evil and there would be none. ”

“ Now nothing remains but to prove that this Deity has a care or rather that its only employment consists in regulating the present and future happiness of its creation.... Oh that this Deity were the soul of the universe, the spirit of universal, imperishable love! Indeed, I believe it is.” “The Deity must be judged by us from attributes analogical to our situation.” In a letter of June 11, 1811, he says God is “the existing power of existence.” It is another word for the essence of the universe. ”