against the freedom of the press and discussion; to even discuss the
question of the divinity of Christ was considered blasphemy, and the
person so offending was punished most severely by the criminal laws.
At the present time this wretched remnant of the dark ages is
practically a dead letter. The friends of Shelley suffered from this
most intolerant spirit. Keats, it is believed by many, was wounded
unto death for daring to speak on behalf of freedom, and we are given
glimpses in the _Adonais_ of his feelings on the subject; Leigh Hunt
and his brother were imprisoned and fined for the same; the publisher
of the pirated edition of Shelley's _Queen Mab_ was cast into Newgate;
Eaton, a London bookseller, had been sentenced by Lord Ellenborough to
a lengthened incarceration, for publishing Paine's _Age of Reason_,
and hundreds of others suffered similarly. The abominable circumstance
of Eaton's conviction caused great uproar; the Marquis of Wellesley,
in the House of Lords, stated it was "contrary to the mild spirit of
the Christian religion; for no sanction can be found under that
dispensation which will warrant a government to impose disabilities
and penalties upon any man on account of his religious opinions."
Shelley, who was then only nineteen years of age, and had himself
suffered from bigotry at Oxford, threw himself publicly into the
controversy with great vehemence, with "a composition of great
eloquence and logical exactness of reasoning, and the truths which it
contains on the subject of universal toleration are now generally
admitted." Lady Shelley, from whom I have just quoted, says that her
husband's father, "from his earliest boyhood to his latest years,
whatever varieties of opinion may have marked his intellectual course,
never for a moment swerved from the noble doctrine of unbounded
liberty of thought and speech. To him the rights of intellect were
sacred; and all kings, teachers, or priests who sought to circumscribe
the activity of discussion, and to check by force the full development
of the reasoning powers, he regarded as enemies to the independence of
man, who did their utmost to destroy the spiritual essence of our
being."
To Shelley's able advocacy, and to his appeals against the stamping
out of political and social truths opposed to custom, particularly the
celebrated letter to Lord Ellenborough, it cannot be denied that the
toleration now enjoyed in Great Britain owes much.
Shelley was one of those who most earnestly deprecated punishment by
death. In his early years, if a man stole a sheep, or shot a hare,
committed forgery or larceny, was a recusant catholic or a wizard,
there was, on his conviction, but one penalty meted out--death. To
Shelley's sensitive nature, this painted and tinged everything around
him with an aspect of blood. In one of his political pamphlets,
summoning all his energies, he depicts in fearful colors, the depraved
example of an execution--how it brutalized the race, and how it was
the duty of man not to commit murder on his fellow-man, in the name of
the laws. The abolition of the first of these, he stated that
reformers should propose on the eve of a great political change. He
considered that the punishment by death harbored revenge and
retaliation, which legislation should be the means of eradicating, and
he urged that
"Governments which derive their institutions from the
existence of circumstances of barbarism and violence, with
some rare exceptions, perhaps, are bloody in proportion as
they are despotic, and form the manners of their subjects to
a sympathy with their own spirit."
In England, as in many other countries, capital punishment is now only
employed on conviction of murder or high treason. In Spain and Italy
it was totally abolished, on the foundation of their young republics.
Thus have the labors of Shelley, and other reformers for the good of
humanity, aided to extinguish crime made law.
Cruelty to animals was another reform agitated by Shelley. His love
for the animal kingdom and hatred of blood-shedding, was so great,
that he personally carried the passion to such an extent as to become
a vegetarian, and endeavored to induce others to be the same, in an
admirable argument of some length in the notes to "Queen Mab."
The subject of the Rights of Women is approached and expatiated on,
perhaps learnedly, by individuals utterly incompetent to deal with the
question. Such persons, frequently armed with Sunday-school
platitudes, believing in the inferiority of women, consequent on the
supposed fall, and doubtless with heads paved with good intentions, as
a certain place is said to be, do more harm than good to the cause.
This is not wanted, and is worse than useless. To found a real
republic on a solid basis, it can be legislated for only by removing
the ancient landmarks by a gradual process, and coming face to face
with a new order of things, without bias or prejudice borrowed from
the past. Thus that noble woman, Mary Wolstonecraft, as well as John
Stuart Mill, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and numerous others, have treated
this all-important question, which cannot be shirked by the race. True
reformers ask: What was the condition of the sex in the past? Look
down the revolving cycles and note. In ancient Egypt, woman in the
upper classes was almost the equal of man, and although, like
Cleopatra, she could wield the sceptre, yet in the lower her condition
was wretched; in Asia, a mere slave and object of Zenana lust; in
savagedom, a beast of burthen. In Rome and Greece, Shelley shall tell
the story:
"Among the ancient Greeks the male sex, one half of the
human race, received the highest cultivation and refinement;
whilst the other, so far as intellect is concerned, were
educated as slaves, and were raised but few degrees in all
that related to moral or intellectual excellence above the
condition of savages.... The Roman women held a higher
consideration in society, and were esteemed almost as the
equal partners with their husbands in the regulation of
domestic economy and the education of their children."
Regard the incidents of a Jewish wooing, in which the woman had no
voice, and of the marriage, the infernal punishments for adultery, and
the accounts of the seraglios of the Hebrew kings equalled only by
Turkish harems, and some of the passages in the inspired Book of
Numbers, for instance, in which the horrible truth is frequently too
evident, and only equalled by the fact that after lust had played out
its passion, unfortunate women, taken in captivity, could, by divine
command, be turned adrift to rot or starve. In Christian Feudalism we
find nothing much better. If I have read history correctly, and I may
be wrong--the upper-grade women in mediaeval Europe, who were adored,
not with love, but with lascivious and sensual worship, by Christian
knights and troubadours, and who, like criminals to the halter, were
forced, rarely with their own consent, into the arms of men they
disliked or had never seen, or were placed in conventual houses
against their wills. Of the lower-grade women, I need only offer one
example--and that is sufficient to show their awful degradation; the
French and German feudal lord had the right of _cuissage_, or, in
plain English, the embraces of his serf-retainer's bride on the
marriage night.
Shelley considered that in consequence of all this, men had forgotten
their duties to the other sex, and that even at the time at which he
lived woman was still in great social bondage, improperly educated,
tied down by restrictions, and refused participation in the higher
positions of labor. He called not in vain, against the inequality of
the sexes, and asserted that woman's position must and should be
altered by forgetting the tyranny of the past, and, be determined, for
the good of the future.
We should be rejoiced that eloquent exponents of the abominations of
former ages, the evils of the present, and the proper position of the
future, are now hard at work. The "Women's Rights" party is up
teaching men their duties on every continent; in distant India, the
Brahmo Somaj is battling, not vainly, against the horrors of the
Zenana, and in conservative England, which has been stormed, and the
forlorn hope is now taking possession of the citadel; everywhere it is
the same. Yes, woman, thanks to Shelley and the reformers, is about to
be emancipated and free; free to earn her living, how, where, and when
she likes; the equal of man, who shall no longer play such fantastic
tricks as he did in the past, in proof of his dignity and
superiority. The fourth of July is not long past and gone; I trust
that in the dim vista of the future, our descendants will keep a
national holiday, or a day to be set apart on which shall be
celebrated the "Declaration of the Independence of Women," and then,
perhaps, Shelley's description of woman in the "Episychidion" will be
more apparent:
"Seraph of heaven! too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath the radiant form of woman
All that is unsupportable in thee,
Of light, and love, and immortality."
I now approach a very delicate portion of my essay: the question of
the marriage relation. By many it is scouted with much virtuous
indignation, but I conceive that the liberal, who, like too many, dare
not discuss this matter in its broadest and widest aspects, should be
stigmatized as unworthy of the name. Christ is reported to have urged
the admirers of his ethical system to take up their cross and follow
him, leaving father, mother, wife, children, and all they may
have--thus Shelley acted, and it bears as equally pregnant lessons to
free thinkers as it did to those Syrian fishermen. Oh, that liberals
had as much "faith" in the truth, in the efficacy of their cause, as
the first Christians are said to have had in the teachings of that
Christ whom they regarded not as a Divinity, but as a son of God, as
we to-day are sons of God, of the most high! Oh, that we could carry
that "faith" into our beliefs, and the determination to be stopped at
no obstacle which may bar the progress of truth, which must conquer in
the end!
The favorite theme in the writings of Shelley is "Eros," love of the
individual, of the race, of nature, and in this he follows Christ, in
whose system of Philosophy, Love is ever the pre-dominating idea which
permeates mankind with its beneficial effects, and will, when the
bastard tinsel with which the truths of the Nazarene are hidden, be
replaced by that pure gold which it is impossible to trace in the
enunciations of any previous philosopher. This subject is always
present to Shelley, and he thus appeals in one of his poems to the
"Great Spirit, deepest Love!
Which rulest and dost move
All things which live, and are."
In another place he inquires--
"What is love? Ask him who lives, what is life? Ask him who
adores, what is God?"
And in the same essay he describes love as
"The bond and sanction which connects man with man, and with
everything which exists."
Elsewhere he points out that the attainment of love
"urges forth the power of man to arrest the faintest shadow
of that without the possession of which there is no rest nor
respite to the heart over which it rules, (and that) so soon
as this want or power is dead, man becomes the living
sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk
of what once he was."
Of such was Shelley's philosophy of love, and I would ask if it be
conceivable that the abominable calumny prompted by theological virus,
that he kept a seraglio, as his friend Leigh Hunt informs us was
reported, had any real existence. Shelley was too pure for any such
idea as that of promiscuous sexual intercourse to be acted on by
himself; his life, which lies open before us, refutes the diabolical
invention. The fact was, that at the early age of nineteen he married
Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a retired tavern keeper, a woman
without soul and that congeniality of disposition which a man
overflowing with the pulses of genius should have chosen. After a
wretched existence without intellectual sympathy, and on the advice of
her father, who did not agree with his ideas on religion, they parted
by mutual consent, never to meet again. Shelley about this period met
his second wife, a woman of the highest powers of mind and charm of
body, Mary Wolstonecraft Godwin, the authoress of _Frankenstein_ and
other works, daughter of William Godwin, the novelist, and author of
_Political Justice_ and Mary Wolstonecraft, the gifted writer of _The
Rights of Women_. We are told by Lady Shelley that, "To her, as they
met one eventful day in St. Pancras churchyard, by her mother's grave,
Bysshe, in burning words, poured forth the tale of his wild past, how
he had suffered, how he had been misled, and how, if supported by her
love, he hoped, in future years, to enroll his name with the wise and
good, who had done battle for their fellow-men and been true through
all adverse storms to the cause of humanity. Unhesitatingly she placed
her hand in his, and linked her fortune with his own."
After the death of his first wife, on the solicitation of Godwin, who
was anxious for the landed interests of his grandchildren, a _legal_
union was performed. After looking on this episode, in the most
charitable manner, I am confident the sternest moralist cannot but
"acknowledge that the passionate love of a boy should not be held a
serious blemish, in a man whose subsequent life was exceptional in
virtue and beneficence."
Believing, as I have explained, in the divinity of love, Shelley
regarded everything in the relation of the sexes with the most intense
horror, which was not consistent with "freedom;" and by which he most
certainly did not signify the license attributed by many. When he
looked around and saw the withering blast of forced marriages,
conjugal hatred and prostitution, can we be astonished at his
passionately exclaiming:
"Even love is sold; the solace of all woe
Is turned to deadliest agony, old age
Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms,
And youth's corrupted impulses prepare
A life of horror from the blighting bane
Of commerce, whilst the pestilence that springs
From unenjoying sensualism, has filled
All human life with hydra-headed woes?"
In a most important essay bearing on this passage, which should be
widely studied, he observes:
"Love is inevitably consequent upon the perception of
loveliness. Love withers under constraint; its very essence
is liberty; it is compatible neither with obedience,
jealousy, nor fear; it is then most pure, perfect, and
unlimited, where its votaries live in confidence, equality,
and unreserve."
He then urges:
"A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they
love each other. Any law which should bind them to
cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their
affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most
unworthy of toleration; and there is nothing _immoral_ in
this separation, for love is free. To promise forever to
love the same woman, is not less absurd than to promise to
believe the same creed."
He states categorically that
"The present system of constraint does no more, in the
majority of instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies.
Persons of delicacy and virtue, unhappily united to those
whom they find it impossible to love, spend the loveliest
season of their lives in unproductive efforts to appear
otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of
their partners or the welfare of their mutual offspring; and
that the early education of their children takes its color
from the squabbles of the parents. They are nursed in a
systematic school of ill-humor, violence, and falsehood, and
the conviction that wedlock is indissoluble holds out the
strongest of all temptations to the perverse. They indulge
without restraint in acrimony and all the little tyrannies
of domestic life, when they know that their victim is
without appeal. If this connection were put on a rational
basis, each would be assured that habitual ill-temper would
terminate in separation, and would check this vicious and
dangerous propensity."
He conceived from the re-arrangement of the marriage relation by
greater facility of divorce than was to be had sixty years ago,[F]
"A fit and natural arrangement would result."
[Footnote F: It should be remembered that in Shelley's day divorce was
obtainable by the most wealthy only, at an enormous cost and by a
lengthy process, precluding the slightest opportunity for the middle
and poorer classes to avail themselves thereof.]
Shelley by no means asserts that the intercourse would be promiscuous,
but on the contrary believed that from the relation of parent to child
a union is generally of longer duration, placed on such a footing, and
marked above all others with generosity and self-devotion.
We are on the eve of great religious changes, which must consequently
disturb all the social relations. Historical Christianity still holds
to her old text, of marriage being a sacrament, and therefore
indissoluble. The founder of Comtism developing this dogma, urges that
after the death of either husband or wife the duty of the survivor is
not to re-marry. Great Britain and many of the American States have
conceded greater freedom in divorce, so as to carry out in a large
measure the arguments of Shelley, while the theory of what is termed
the "sovereignty of the individual" is propounded by the leaders of
the free love party, as a cure for the present and former
difficulties.
Whatever may be the outcome of the present widespread discussions I
know not, but I have belief in the supreme intelligence and in
humanity, and am certain that neither the home nor the race will
suffer, but that out of all this agitation will come more refined
sentiment and truer morality.
I must now conclude. It has been said that there are two things in
which the professors of all theologies have agreed-"To persecute all
other sects, and plunder their own." Shelley, who subscribed to no
theology, was persecuted by them during his entire life, but he ever
forgave his persecutors, who he was confident acted through ignorance
of his real motives, and he tells us:
"I have thought to appeal to something in common and
unburden my inmost soul to them. I have found my language
misunderstood, like one in a distant and savage land. The
more opportunities they have afforded me for experience, the
wider has appeared the interval between us, and to a greater
distance have the points of sympathy been withdrawn. With a
spirit ill-fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and
feeble through its tenderness, I have everywhere sought
sympathy, and have found only repulse and disappointment."
Do _we_ misunderstand him? I think not, and William Howitt, a
representative of the people, shall answer for them: "For liberty of
every kind he was ready to die. For knowledge, and truth, and
kindness, he desired only to live. He was a rare instance of the union
of the finest moral nature and the finest genius. If he erred, the
world took ample revenge upon him for it, while he conferred in return
his amplest blessing on the world. It was long a species of heresy to
mention his name in society; that is passing fast away. It was next
said that he never could become popular, and therefore the mischief he
could do was limited. He _has_ become popular, and the good he is
likely to do will be unlimited. The people read him, though we may
wonder at it, and they comprehend him."
This estimate is not overrated, for, having confidence in his mission
to humanity, he was fortified by the belief of his existing as an
indestructible portion of interminable nature and the universal mind,
which in all high intelligences lives through the ages, not only in
the individual consciousness of the spirit, but in that immortality of
soul or mind, which lives in the race.
He hated the superstitions of Christian Fetishism and tyranny over the
intellect, but loved Christ and the other philosophers with a genuine
affection; he loved humanity, and was ever fond of examining its
highest phases, as, for instance, through the doctrines of perfect
equality in the sexes--yet he recognised that sudden changes were
prejudicial before sufficient progress had been accomplished. "To
destroy, you must replace." Justice he considered the sole guide,
reason and duty the only law. His morality was not that of pharasaical
tartuffes, nor of prudish knickerbockers, who with wide phylacteries,
sit in the high places to be seen of men. He only combatted evil
principles and fought hard in favor of good.
He has been quoted as being too transcendental; he may be to dullards
with imperfect reasoning faculties, or theologians, who only see
through fanatical and green-monsterish spectacles, but to men who
have a _live_ philosophy equally adapted to modern as well as ancient
thought, he is as clear as the noon-day sun. All that is required, to
comprehend Percy Bysshe Shelley, is integralism of that high order
which has ever believed in the ultimate perfectibility of human
nature, and looked "forward to a period when a new golden age would
return to earth, when all the different creeds and systems of the
world would be amalgamated into one, crime disappear, and man, freed
from shackles, civil and religious, bow before the throne 'of his own
awless soul,' or 'of the power unknown,'" whose veil it is the
ambition of theosophy to raise for humanity, and remain the
"inscrutable" no longer.
I have completed my task, and with humility I make the statement,
knowing that before me are many who could have performed it as
completely as I have crudely. I look upon my essay, in which I have
treated my subject popularly, with intention, as a beacon, whence a
little light may be shed dimly, hoping that others, better qualified,
will bring you face to face with the full rays.
I have shown you Shelley in his writings, his life and poetry, only
where they trench on his philosophical and reform ideas--I could have
related to you much about his inflexibly moral, generous, and
unselfishly benevolent character--his pure, gentle and loveable
existence--his utter abnegation of self, learnt from the hermetic
philosophy, and his despisal of transitory legislative honors--how he,
the heir to thousands of dollars annually, and a baronetage, threw
aside pecuniary considerations for love of the truth and
benevolence,[G] and how, therefrom, he was often nearly dying of
hunger in the streets. I could have treated him simply as a poet, full
of experienced impetuosity, subtlety of expression, and precision of
verse, but I have aimed to exhibit one side of his immortality to you,
which lives in and by the race, for humanity.
[Footnote G: "In his heart there was nothing depraved or unsound;
those who had opportunities of knowing him best, tell us that his life
was spent in the contemplation of nature, in arduous study, or in acts
of kindness and affection. A man of learning, who shared the poverty
so often attached to it, enjoyed from him at one period a pension of a
hundred pounds sterling a year, and continued to enjoy it till fortune
rendered it superfluous. To another man of letters, in similar
circumstances, he presented fourteen hundred pounds; and many other
acts like these are on record to his immortal honor. Himself a frugal
and abstemious ascetic, by saving and economising, he was able to
assist the industrious poor--and they had frequent cause to bless his
name."--_National Magazine._]
Cut short in the youth of manhood, who can tell what Percy Bysshe
Shelley might, not have become, living for us even perhaps at this
moment? What need we care, though, for does not the "Empire of the
dead increase of the living from age to age?" Shelley's terrestrial
body may have been cast up by the waves on the lonely Italian shore,
in sweet companionship with the souls of Keats and Sophocles. His
mundane elements, purified through the fire, may have returned to
their kindred elements, and been
"made one with Nature, where is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known,
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where'er that Power move,
Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
Which wields the world with never-wearied love,
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above."