CHAPTER IV.

On the following morning Albedir arose at sunrise, and visited the

stranger. He found him already risen, and employed in adorning the

lattice of his chamber with flowers from the garden. There was

something in his attitude and occupation singularly expressive of his

entire familiarity with the scene. Albedir’s habitation seemed to have

been his accustomed home. He addressed his host in a tone of gay and

affectionate welcome, such as never fails to communicate by sympathy

the feelings from which it flows.

“My friend,” said he, “the balm of the dew of our vale is sweet; or is

this garden the favoured spot where the winds conspire to scatter the

best odours they can find? Come, lend me your arm awhile, I feel very

weak.” He motioned to walk forth, but, as if unable to proceed, rested

on the seat beside the door. For a few moments they were silent, if the

interchange of cheerful and happy looks is to be called silence. At

last he observed a spade that rested against the wall. “You have only

one spade, brother,” said he; “you have only one, I suppose, of any of

the instruments of tillage. Your garden ground, too, occupies a certain

space which it will be necessary to enlarge. This must be quickly

remedied. I cannot earn my supper of to-night, nor of to-morrow; but

thenceforward, I do not mean to eat the bread of idleness. I know that

you would willingly perform the additional labour which my nourishment

would require; I know, also, that you would feel a degree of pleasure

in the fatigue arising from this employment, but I shall contest with

you such pleasures as these, and such pleasures as these alone.” His

eyes were somewhat wan, and the tone of his voice languid as he spoke.

As they were thus engaged, Khaled came towards them. The stranger

beckoned to her to sit beside him, and taking her hands within his

own, looked attentively on her mild countenance. Khaled inquired if

he had been refreshed by sleep. He replied by a laugh of careless

and inoffensive glee; and placing one of her hands within Albedir’s,

said, “If this be sleep, here in this odorous vale, where these sweet

smiles encompass us, and the voices of those who love are heard--if

these be the visions of sleep, sister, those who lie down in misery

shall arise lighter than the butterflies. I came from amid the tumult

of a world, how different from this! I am unexpectedly among you, in

the midst of a scene such as my imagination never dared to promise.

I must remain here--I must not depart.” Khaled, recovering from the

admiration and astonishment caused by the stranger’s words and manner,

assured him of the happiness which she should feel in such an addition

to her society. Albedir, too, who had been more deeply impressed

than Khaled by the event of his arrival, earnestly reassured him of

the ardour of the affection with which he had inspired them. The

stranger smiled gently to hear the unaccustomed fervour of sincerity

which animated their address, and was rising to retire, when Khaled

said, “You have not yet seen our children, Maimuna and Abdallah. They

are by the water-side, playing with their favourite snake. We have

only to cross yonder little wood, and wind down a path cut in the

rock that overhangs the lake, and we shall find them beside a recess

which the shore makes there, and which a chasm, as it were, among the

rocks and woods, encloses. Do you think you could walk there?” “To

see your children, Khaled? I think I could, with the assistance of

Albedir’s arm, and yours.”--So they went through the wood of ancient

cypress, intermingled with the brightness of many-tinted blooms,

which gleamed like stars through its romantic glens. They crossed the

green meadow, and entered among the broken chasms, beautiful as they

were in their investiture of odoriferous shrubs. They came at last,

after pursuing a path which wound through the intricacies of a little

wilderness, to the borders of the lake. They stood on the rock which

overhung it, from which there was a prospect of all the miracles of

nature and of art which encircled and adorned its shores. The stranger

gazed upon it with a countenance unchanged by any emotion, but, as it

were, thoughtfully and contemplatingly. As he gazed, Khaled ardently

pressed his hand, and said, in a low yet eager voice, “Look, look,

lo there!” He turned towards her, but her eyes were not on him. She

looked below--her lips were parted by the feelings which possessed her

soul--her breath came and went regularly but inaudibly. She leaned over

the precipice, and her dark hair hanging beside her face, gave relief

to its fine lineaments, animated by such love as exceeds utterance.

The stranger followed her eyes, and saw that her children were in the

glen below; then raising his eyes, exchanged with her affectionate

looks of congratulation and delight. The boy was apparently eight years

old, the girl about two years younger. The beauty of their form and

countenance was something so divine and strange, as overwhelmed the

senses of the beholder like a delightful dream, with insupportable

ravishment. They were arrayed in a loose robe of linen, through which

the exquisite proportions of their form appeared. Unconscious that they

were observed, they did not relinquish the occupation in which they

were engaged. They had constructed a little boat of the bark of trees,

and had given it sails of interwoven feathers, and launched it on the

water. They sat beside a white flat stone, on which a small snake lay

coiled, and when their work was finished, they arose and called to the

snake in melodious tones, so that it understood their language. For it

unwreathed its shining circles and crept to the boat, into which no

sooner had it entered than the girl loosened the band which held it to

the shore, and it sailed away. Then they ran round and round the little

creek, clapping their hands, and melodiously pouring out wild sounds,

which the snake seemed to answer by the restless glancing of his neck.

At last a breath of wind came from the shore, and the boat changed its

course, and was about to leave the creek, which the snake perceived

and leaped into the water, and came to the little children’s feet. The

girl sang to it, and it leaped into her bosom, and she crossed her fair

hands over it, as if to cherish it there. Then the boy answered with a

song, and it glided from beneath her hands and crept towards him. While

they were thus employed, Maimuna looked up, and seeing her parents on

the cliff, ran to meet them up the steep path that wound around it; and

Abdallah, leaving his snake, followed joyfully.

[Decoration]

ON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.

A Fragment.

The first law which it becomes a Reformer to propose and support, at

the approach of a period of great political change, is the abolition of

the punishment of death.

It is sufficiently clear that revenge, retaliation, atonement,

expiation, are rules and motives, so far from deserving a place in any

enlightened system of political life, that they are the chief sources

of a prodigious class of miseries in the domestic circles of society.

It is clear that however the spirit of legislation may appear to frame

institutions upon more philosophical maxims, it has hitherto, in

those cases which are termed criminal, done little more than palliate

the spirit, by gratifying a portion of it; and afforded a compromise

between that which is best;--the inflicting of no evil upon a sensitive

being, without a decisively beneficial result in which he should at

least participate;--and that which is worst; that he should be put to

torture for the amusement of those whom he may have injured, or may

seem to have injured.

Omitting these remoter considerations, let us inquire what _Death_ is;

that which is applied as a measure of transgressions of indefinite

shades of distinction, so soon as they shall have passed that

degree and colour of enormity, with which it is supposed no inferior

infliction is commensurate.

And first, whether death is good or evil, a punishment or a reward,

or whether it be wholly indifferent, no man can take upon himself

to assert. That that within us which thinks and feels, continues to

think and feel after the dissolution of the body, has been the almost

universal opinion of mankind, and the accurate philosophy of what I

may be permitted to term the modern Academy, by showing the prodigious

depth and extent of our ignorance respecting the causes and nature

of sensation, renders probable the affirmative of a proposition, the

negative of which it is so difficult to conceive, and the popular

arguments against which, derived from what is called the atomic system,

are proved to be applicable only to the relation which one object bears

to another, as apprehended by the mind, and not to existence itself,

or the nature of that essence which is the medium and receptacle of

objects.

The popular system of religion suggests the idea that the mind, after

death, will be painfully or pleasurably affected according to its

determinations during life. However ridiculous and pernicious we must

admit the vulgar accessories of this creed to be, there is a certain

analogy, not wholly absurd, between the consequences resulting to

an individual during life from the virtuous or vicious, prudent or

imprudent, conduct of his external actions, to those consequences which

are conjectured to ensue from the discipline and order of his internal

thoughts, as affecting his condition in a future state. They omit,

indeed, to calculate upon the accidents of disease, and temperament,

and organisation, and circumstance, together with the multitude of

independent agencies which affect the opinions, the conduct, and the

happiness of individuals, and produce determinations of the will, and

modify the judgment, so as to produce effects the most opposite in

natures considerably similar. These are those operations in the order

of the whole of nature, tending, we are prone to believe, to some

definite mighty end, to which the agencies of our peculiar nature are

subordinate; nor is there any reason to suppose, that in a future

state they should become suddenly exempt from that subordination. The

philosopher is unable to determine whether our existence in a previous

state has affected our present condition, and abstains from deciding

whether our present condition would affect us in that which may be

future. That, if we continue to exist, the manner of our existence will

be such as no inferences nor conjectures, afforded by a consideration

of our earthly experience, can elucidate, is sufficiently obvious.

The opinion that the vital principle within us, in whatever mode it

may continue to exist, must lose that consciousness of definite and

individual being which now characterises it, and become a unit in the

vast sum of action and of thought which disposes and animates the

universe, and is called God, seems to belong to that class of opinion

which has been designated as indifferent.

To compel a person to know all that can be known by the dead,

concerning that which the living fear, hope, or forget; to plunge him

into the pleasure or pain which there awaits him; to punish or reward

him in a manner and in a degree incalculable and incomprehensible by

us; to disrobe him at once from all that intertexture of good and

evil with which Nature seems to have clothed every form of individual

existence, is to inflict on him the doom of death.

A certain degree of pain and terror usually accompany the infliction of

death. This degree is infinitely varied by the infinite variety in the

temperament and opinions of the sufferers. As a measure of punishment,

strictly so considered, and as an exhibition, which, by its known

effects on the sensibility of the sufferer, is intended to intimidate

the spectators from incurring a similar liability, it is singularly

inadequate.

Firstly,--Persons of energetic character, in whom, as in men who suffer

for political crimes, there is a large mixture of enterprise, and

fortitude, and disinterestedness, and the elements, though misguided

and disarranged, by which the strength and happiness of a nation might

have been cemented, die in such a manner, as to make death appear

not evil, but good. The death of what is called a traitor, that is,

a person who, from whatever motive, would abolish the government of

the day, is as often a triumphant exhibition of suffering virtue,

as the warning of a culprit. The multitude, instead of departing

with a panic-stricken approbation of the laws which exhibited such a

spectacle, are inspired with pity, admiration and sympathy; and the

most generous among them feel an emulation to be the authors of such

flattering emotions, as they experience stirring in their bosoms.

Impressed by what they see and feel, they make no distinction between

the motives which incited the criminals to the actions for which they

suffer, or the heroic courage with which they turned into good that

which their judges awarded to them as evil, or the purpose itself

of those actions, though that purpose may happen to be eminently

pernicious. The laws in this case lose that sympathy, which it ought

to be their chief object to secure, and in a participation of which,

consists their chief strength in maintaining those sanctions by which

the parts of the social union are bound together, so as to produce, as

nearly as possible, the ends for which it is instituted.

Secondly--persons of energetic character, in communities not modelled

with philosophical skill to turn all the energies which they contain to

the purposes of common good, are prone also to fall into the temptation

of undertaking, and are peculiarly fitted for despising the perils

attendant upon consummating, the most enormous crimes. Murder, rapes,

extensive schemes of plunder, are the actions of persons belonging to

this class; and death is the penalty of conviction. But the coarseness

of organisation, peculiar to men capable of committing acts wholly

selfish, is usually found to be associated with a proportionate

insensibility to fear or pain. Their sufferings communicate to those of

the spectators, who may be liable to the commission of similar crimes,

a sense of the lightness of that event, when closely examined, which

at a distance, as uneducated persons are accustomed to do, probably

they regarded with horror. But a great majority of the spectators are

so bound up in the interests and the habits of social union that no

temptation would be sufficiently strong to induce them to a commission

of the enormities to which this penalty is assigned. The more powerful,

the richer among them,--and a numerous class of little tradesmen are

richer and more powerful than those who are employed by them, and the

employer, in general, bears this relation to the employed,--regard

their own wrongs as, in some degree, avenged, and their own rights

secured by this punishment, inflicted as the penalty of whatever crime.

In cases of murder or mutilation, this feeling is almost universal. In

those, therefore, whom this exhibition does not awaken to the sympathy

which extenuates crime and discredits the law which restrains it, it

produces feelings more directly at war with the genuine purposes of

political society. It excites those emotions which it is the chief

object of civilisation to extinguish for ever, and in the extinction

of which alone there can be any hope of better institutions than those

under which men now misgovern one another. Men feel that their revenge

is gratified, and that their security is established, by the extinction

and the sufferings of beings, in most respects resembling themselves;

and their daily occupations constraining them to a precise form in all

their thoughts, they come to connect inseparably the idea of their own

advantage with that of the death and torture of others. It is manifest

that the object of sane polity is directly the reverse; and that laws

founded upon reason, should accustom the gross vulgar to associate

their ideas of security and of interest with the reformation, and the

strict restraint, for that purpose alone, of those who might invade it.

The passion of revenge is originally nothing more than an habitual

perception of the ideas of the sufferings of the person who inflicts

an injury, as connected, as they are in a savage state, or in such

portions of society as are yet undisciplined to civilisation, with

security that that injury will not be repeated in future. This feeling,

engrafted upon superstition and confirmed by habit, at last loses sight

of the only object for which it may be supposed to have been implanted,

and becomes a passion and a duty to be pursued and fulfilled, even to

the destruction of those ends to which it originally tended. The other

passions, both good and evil, Avarice, Remorse, Love, Patriotism,

present a similar appearance; and to this principle of the mind

over-shooting the mark at which it aims, we owe all that is eminently

base or excellent in human nature; in providing for the nutriment or

the extinction of which consists the true art of the legislator.[9]

Nothing is more clear than that the infliction of punishment in

general, in a degree which the reformation and the restraint of those

who transgress the laws does not render indispensable, and none more

than death, confirms all the inhuman and unsocial impulses of men. It

is almost a proverbial remark, that those nations in which the penal

code has been particularly mild, have been distinguished from all

others by the rarity of crime. But the example is to be admitted to

be equivocal. A more decisive argument is afforded by a consideration

of the universal connexion of ferocity of manners, and a contempt of

social ties, with the contempt of human life. 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.

The spectators who feel no abhorrence at a public execution, but rather

a self-applauding superiority, and a sense of gratified indignation,

are surely excited to the most inauspicious emotions. The first

reflection of such a one is the sense of his own internal and actual

worth, as preferable to that of the victim, whom circumstances have led

to destruction. The meanest wretch is impressed with a sense of his

own comparative merit. He is one of those on whom the tower of Siloam

fell not--he is such a one as Jesus found not in all Samaria, who, in

his own soul, throws the first stone at the woman taken in adultery.

The popular religion of the country takes its designation from that

illustrious person whose beautiful sentiment I have quoted. Any one who

has stript from the doctrines of this person the veil of familiarity,

will perceive how adverse their spirit is to feelings of this nature.

[9] The savage and the illiterate are but faintly aware of the

distinction between the future and the past; they make actions

belonging to periods so distinct, the subjects of similar feelings;

they live only in the present, or in the past as it is present. It is

in this that the philosopher excels one of the many; it is this which

distinguishes the doctrine of philosophic necessity from fatalism; and

that determination of the will, by which it is the active source of

future events, from that liberty or indifference, to which the abstract

liability of irremediable actions is attached, according to the notions

of the vulgar.

This is the source of the erroneous excesses of Remorse and Revenge;

the one extending itself over the future, and the other over the past;

provinces in which their suggestions can only be the sources of evil.

The purpose of a resolution to act more wisely and virtuously in

future, and the sense of a necessity of caution in repressing an enemy,

are the sources from which the enormous superstitions implied in the

words cited have arisen.

[Decoration]

ON LIFE.

Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel,

is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the

wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its

transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are

changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which

supported them; what is the birth and the extinction of religious and

of political systems, to life? What are the revolutions of the globe

which we inhabit, and the operations of the elements of which it is

composed, compared with life? What is the universe of stars, and suns,

of which this inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their

destiny, compared with life? Life, the great miracle, we admire not,

because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by

the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from

an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions

of that which is its object.

If any artist, I do not say had executed, but had merely conceived in

his mind the system of the sun, and the stars, and planets, they not

existing, and had painted to us in words, or upon canvas, the spectacle

now afforded by the nightly cope of heaven, and illustrated it by the

wisdom of astronomy, great would be our admiration. Or had he imagined

the scenery of this earth, the mountains, the seas, and the rivers;

the grass, and the flowers, and the variety of the forms and masses of

the leaves of the woods, and the colours which attend the setting and

the rising sun, and the hues of the atmosphere, turbid or serene, these

things not before existing, truly we should have been astonished, and

it would not have been a vain boast to have said of such a man, “Non

merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta.”[10] But now these

things are looked on with little wonder, and to be conscious of them

with intense delight is esteemed to be the distinguishing mark of a

refined and extraordinary person. The multitude of men care not for

them. It is thus with Life--that which includes all.

What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will,

and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our birth is

unremembered, and our infancy remembered but in fragments; we live

on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How vain is it to

think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being! Rightly used

they may make evident our ignorance to ourselves; and this is much.

For what are we? Whence do we come? and whither do we go? Is birth the

commencement, is death the conclusion of our being? What is birth and

death?

The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life,

which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which

the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us.

It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I

confess that I am one of those who am unable to refuse my assent to the

conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as

it is perceived.

It is a decision against which all our persuasions struggle, and we

must be long convicted before we can be convinced that the solid

universe of external things is “such stuff as dreams are made of.” The

shocking absurdities of the popular philosophy of mind and matter, its

fatal consequences in morals, and their violent dogmatism concerning

the source of all things, had early conducted me to materialism. This

materialism is a seducing system to young and superficial minds. It

allows its disciples to talk, and dispenses them from thinking. But

I was discontented with such a view of things as it afforded; man

is a being of high aspirations, “looking both before and after,”

whose “thoughts wander through eternity,” disclaiming alliance with

transience and decay; incapable of imagining to himself annihilation;

existing but in the future and the past; being, not what he is, but

what he has been and shall be. Whatever may be his true and final

destination, there is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness

and dissolution. This is the character of all life and being. Each is

at once the centre and the circumference; the point to which all things

are referred, and the line in which all things are contained. Such

contemplations as these, materialism and the popular philosophy of mind

and matter alike forbid; they are only consistent with the intellectual

system.

It is absurd to enter into a long recapitulation of arguments

sufficiently familiar to those inquiring minds, whom alone a writer on

abstruse subjects can be conceived to address. Perhaps the most clear

and vigorous statement of the intellectual system is to be found in Sir

William Drummond’s Academical Questions. After such an exposition, it

would be idle to translate into other words what could only lose its

energy and fitness by the change. Examined point by point, and word by

word, the most discriminating intellects have been able to discern no

train of thoughts in the process of reasoning, which does not conduct

inevitably to the conclusion which has been stated.

What follows from the admission? It establishes no new truth, it gives

us no additional insight into our hidden nature, neither its action

nor itself. Philosophy, impatient as it may be to build, has much

work yet remaining as pioneer for the overgrowth of ages. It makes

one step towards this object; it destroys error, and the roots of

error. It leaves, what it is too often the duty of the reformer in

political and ethical questions to leave, a vacancy. It reduces the

mind to that freedom in which it would have acted, but for the misuse

of words and signs, the instruments of its own creation. By signs, I

would be understood in a wide sense, including what is properly meant

by that term, and what I peculiarly mean. In this latter sense, almost

all familiar objects are signs, standing, not for themselves, but for

others, in their capacity of suggesting one thought which shall lead to

a train of thoughts. Our whole life is thus an education of error.

Let us recollect our sensations as children. What a distinct and

intense apprehension had we of the world and of ourselves! Many of the

circumstances of social life were then important to us which are now

no longer so. But that is not the point of comparison on which I mean

to insist. We less habitually distinguished all that we saw and felt,

from ourselves. They seemed, as it were, to constitute one mass. There

are some persons who, in this respect, are always children. Those who

are subject to the state called reverie, feel as if their nature were

dissolved into the surrounding universe, or as if the surrounding

universe were absorbed into their being. They are conscious of no

distinction. And these are states which precede, or accompany, or

follow an unusually intense and vivid apprehension of life. As men grow

up this power commonly decays, and they become mechanical and habitual

agents. Thus feelings and then reasonings are the combined result of

a multitude of entangled thoughts, and of a series of what are called

impressions, planted by reiteration.

The view of life presented by the most refined deductions of the

intellectual philosophy, is that of unity. Nothing exists but as

it is perceived. The difference is merely nominal between those two

classes of thought, which are vulgarly distinguished by the names of

ideas and of external objects. Pursuing the same thread of reasoning,

the existence of distinct individual minds, similar to that which

is employed in now questioning its own nature, is likewise found to

be a delusion. The words _I_, _you_, _they_, are not signs of any

actual difference subsisting between the assemblage of thoughts thus

indicated, but are merely marks employed to denote the different

modifications of the one mind.

Let it not be supposed that this doctrine conducts to the monstrous

presumption that I, the person who now write and think, am that one

mind. I am but a portion of it. The words _I_, and _you_, and _they_

are grammatical devices invented simply for arrangement, and totally

devoid of the intense and exclusive sense usually attached to them. It

is difficult to find terms adequate to express so subtle a conception

as that to which the Intellectual Philosophy has conducted us. We are

on that verge where words abandon us, and what wonder if we grow dizzy

to look down the dark abyss of how little we know!

The relations of _things_ remain unchanged, by whatever system. By the

word _things_ is to be understood any object of thought, that is, any

thought upon which any other thought is employed, with an apprehension

of distinction. The relations of these remain unchanged; and such is

the material of our knowledge.

What is the cause of life? that is, how was it produced, or what

agencies distinct from life have acted or act upon life? All recorded

generations of mankind have wearily busied themselves in inventing

answers to this question; and the result has been,--Religion. Yet, that

the basis of all things cannot be, as the popular philosophy alleges,

mind, is sufficiently evident. Mind, as far as we have any experience

of its properties, and beyond that experience how vain is argument!

cannot create, it can only perceive. It is said also to be the cause.

But cause is only a word expressing a certain state of the human mind

with regard to the manner in which two thoughts are apprehended to be

related to each other. If any one desires to know how unsatisfactorily

the popular philosophy employs itself upon this great question, they

need only impartially reflect upon the manner in which thoughts develop

themselves in their minds. It is infinitely improbable that the cause

of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind.

[Decoration]

[10] _Vide supra_, p. 35.--Ed.

[Decoration]

ON A FUTURE STATE.

It has been the persuasion of an immense majority of human beings

in all ages and nations that we continue to live after death,--that

apparent termination of all the functions of sensitive and intellectual

existence. Nor has mankind been contented with supposing that species

of existence which some philosophers have asserted; namely, the

resolution of the component parts of the mechanism of a living being

into its elements, and the impossibility of the minutest particle of

these sustaining the smallest diminution. They have clung to the idea

that sensibility and thought, which they have distinguished from the

objects of it, under the several names of spirit and matter, is, in its

own nature, less susceptible of division and decay, and that, when the

body is resolved into its elements, the principle which animated it

will remain perpetual and unchanged. Some philosophers--and those to

whom we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries in physical

science, suppose, on the other hand, that intelligence is the mere

result of certain combinations among the particles of its objects;

and those among them who believe that we live after death, recur to

the interposition of a supernatural power, which shall overcome the

tendency inherent in all material combinations, to dissipate and be

absorbed into other forms.

Let us trace the reasonings which in one and the other have conducted

to these two opinions, and endeavour to discover what we ought to

think on a question of such momentous interest. Let us analyse the

ideas and feelings which constitute the contending beliefs, and

watchfully establish a discrimination between words and thoughts. Let

us bring the question to the test of experience and fact; and ask

ourselves, considering our nature in its entire extent, what light we

derive from a sustained and comprehensive view of its component parts,

which may enable us to assert, with certainty, that we do or do not

live after death.

The examination of this subject requires that it should be stript of

all those accessory topics which adhere to it in the common opinion

of men. The existence of a God, and a future state of rewards and

punishments, are totally foreign to the subject. If it be proved that

the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no inference necessarily can

be drawn from that circumstance in favour of a future state. It has

been asserted, indeed, that as goodness and justice are to be numbered

among the attributes of the Deity, he will undoubtedly compensate the

virtuous who suffer during life, and that he will make every sensitive

being, who does not deserve punishment, happy for ever. But this view

of the subject, which it would be tedious as well as superfluous to

develop and expose, satisfies no person, and cuts the knot which we

now seek to untie. Moreover, should it be proved, on the other hand,

that the mysterious principle which regulates the proceedings of the

universe, is neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an

inconsistency to suppose at the same time, that the animating power

survives the body which it has animated, by laws as independent of any

supernatural agent as those through which it first became united with

it. Nor, if a future state be clearly proved, does it follow that it

will be a state of punishment or reward.

By the word death, we express that condition in which natures

resembling ourselves apparently cease to be that which they were. We

no longer hear them speak, nor see them move. If they have sensations

and apprehensions, we no longer participate in them. We know no more

than that those external organs, and all that fine texture of material

frame, without which we have no experience that life or thought can

subsist, are dissolved and scattered abroad. The body is placed under

the earth, and after a certain period there remains no vestige even

of its form. This is that contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy,

whose shadow eclipses the brightness of the world. The common observer

is struck with dejection of the spectacle. He contends in vain against

the persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to be. The

corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have

preceded him, and whose voice was delightful to his ear; whose touch

met his like sweet and subtle fire; whose aspect spread a visionary

light upon his path--these he cannot meet again. The organs of sense

are destroyed, and the intellectual operations dependent on them have

perished with their sources. How can a corpse see or feel? its eyes are

eaten out, and its heart is black and without motion. What intercourse

can two heaps of putrid clay and crumbling bones hold together? When

you can discover where the fresh colours of the faded flower abide,

or the music of the broken lyre, seek life among the dead. Such are

the anxious and fearful contemplations of the common observer, though

the popular religion often prevents him from confessing them even to

himself.

The natural philosopher, in addition to the sensations common to all

men inspired by the event of death, believes that he sees with more

certainty that it is attended with the annihilation of sentiment and

thought. He observes the mental powers increase and fade with those

of the body, and even accommodate themselves to the most transitory

changes of our physical nature. Sleep suspends many of the faculties

of the vital and intellectual principle; drunkenness and disease will

either temporarily or permanently derange them. Madness or idiotcy may

utterly extinguish the most excellent and delicate of those powers. In

old age the mind gradually withers; and as it grew and was strengthened

with the body, so does it together with the body sink into decrepitude.

Assuredly these are convincing evidences that so soon as the organs of

the body are subjected to the laws of inanimate matter, sensation, and

perception, and apprehension, are at an end. It is probable that what

we call thought is not an actual being, but no more than the relation

between certain parts of that infinitely varied mass, of which the rest

of the universe is composed, and which ceases to exist so soon as those

parts change their position with regard to each other. Thus colour,

and sound, and taste, and odour exist only relatively. But let thought

be considered as some peculiar substance, which permeates, and is the

cause of, the animation of living beings. Why should that substance

be assumed to be something essentially distinct from all others, and

exempt from subjection to those laws from which no other substance is

exempt? It differs, indeed, from all other substances, as electricity,

and light, and magnetism, and the constituent parts of air and earth,

severally differ from all others. Each of these is subject to change

and to decay, and to conversion into other forms. Yet the difference

between light and earth is scarcely greater than that which exists

between life, or thought, and fire. The difference between the two

former was never alleged as an argument for the eternal permanence of

either, in that form under which they first might offer themselves to

our notice. Why should the difference between the two latter substances

be an argument for the prolongation of the existence of one and not

the other, when the existence of both has arrived at their apparent

termination? To say that fire exists without manifesting any of the

properties of fire, such as light, heat, &c., or that the principle of

life exists without consciousness, or memory, or desire, or motive, is

to resign, by an awkward distortion of language, the affirmative of the

dispute. To say that the principle of life _may_ exist in distribution

among various forms, is to assert what cannot be proved to be either

true or false, but which, were it true, annihilates all hope of

existence after death, in any sense in which that event can belong to

the hopes and fears of men. Suppose, however, that the intellectual and

vital principle differs in the most marked and essential manner from

all other known substances; that they have all some resemblance between

themselves which it in no degree participates. In what manner can this

concession be made an argument for its imperishability? All that we

see or know perishes and is changed. Life and thought differ indeed

from everything else. But that it survives that period, beyond which we

have no experience of its existence, such distinction and dissimilarity

affords no shadow of proof, and nothing but our own desires could have

led us to conjecture or imagine.

Have we existed before birth? It is difficult to conceive the

possibility of this. There is, in the generative principle of each

animal and plant, a power which converts the substances by which it

is surrounded into a substance homogeneous with itself. That is, the

relation between certain elementary particles of matter undergo a

change, and submit to new combinations. For when we use the words

_principle_, _power_, _cause_, &c., we mean to express no real being,

but only to class under those terms a certain series of co-existing

phenomena; but let it be supposed that this principle is a certain

substance which escapes the observation of the chemist and anatomist.

It certainly _may be_; though it is sufficiently unphilosophical to

allege the possibility of an opinion as a proof of its truth. Does it

see, hear, feel, before its combination with those organs on which

sensation depends? Does it reason, imagine, apprehend, without those

ideas which sensation alone can communicate? If we have not existed

before birth; if, at the period when the parts of our nature on which

thought and life depend, seem to be woven together, they are woven

together; if there are no reasons to suppose that we have existed

before that period at which our existence apparently commences, then

there are no grounds for supposition that we shall continue to exist

after our existence has apparently ceased. So far as thought and life

is concerned, the same will take place with regard to us, individually

considered, after death, as had place before our birth.

It is said that it is possible that we should continue to exist in

some mode totally inconceivable to us at present. This is a most

unreasonable presumption. It casts on the adherents of annihilation

the burthen of proving the negative of a question, the affirmative of

which is not supported by a single argument, and which, by its very

nature, lies beyond the experience of the human understanding. It is

sufficiently easy, indeed, to form any proposition, concerning which

we are ignorant, just not so absurd as not to be contradictory in

itself, and defy refutation. The possibility of whatever enters into

the wildest imagination to conceive is thus triumphantly vindicated.

But it is enough that such assertions should be either contradictory

to the known laws of nature, or exceed the limits of our experience,

that their fallacy or irrelevancy to our consideration should be

demonstrated. They persuade, indeed, only those who desire to be

persuaded.

This desire to be for ever as we are; the reluctance to a violent and

unexperienced change, which is common to all the animated and inanimate

combinations of the universe, is, indeed, the secret persuasion which

has given birth to the opinions of a future state.

[Decoration]

SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS.

I. THE MIND.

I. It is an axiom in mental philosophy, that we can think of nothing

which we have not perceived. When I say that we can think of nothing,

I mean, we can imagine nothing, we can reason of noticing, we can

remember nothing, we can foresee nothing. The most astonishing

combinations of poetry, the subtlest deductions of logic and

mathematics, are no other than combinations which the intellect makes

of sensations according to its own laws. A catalogue of all the

thoughts of the mind, and of all their possible modifications, is a

cyclopædic history of the universe.

But, it will be objected, the inhabitants of the various planets of

this and other solar systems; and the existence of a Power bearing the

same relation to all that we perceive and are, as what we call a cause

does to what we call effect, were never subjects of sensation, and yet

the laws of mind almost universally suggest, according to the various

disposition of each, a conjecture, a persuasion, or a conviction of

their existence. The reply is simple; these thoughts are also to

be included in the catalogue of existence; they are modes in which

thoughts are combined; the objection only adds force to the conclusion,

that beyond the limits of perception and thought nothing can exist.

Thoughts, or ideas, or notions, call them what you will, differ from

each other, not in kind, but in force. It has commonly been supposed

that those distinct thoughts which affect a number of persons,

at regular intervals, during the passage of a multitude of other

thoughts, which are called _real_, or _external objects_, are totally

different in kind from those which affect only a few persons, and

which recur at irregular intervals, and are usually more obscure and

indistinct, such as hallucinations, dreams, and the ideas of madness.

No essential distinction between any one of these ideas, or any class

of them, is founded on a correct observation of the nature of things,

but merely on a consideration of what thoughts are most invariably

subservient to the security and happiness of life; and if nothing

more were expressed by the distinction, the philosopher might safely

accommodate his language to that of the vulgar. But they pretend to

assert an essential difference, which has no foundation in truth, and

which suggests a narrow and false conception of universal nature, the

parent of the most fatal errors in speculation. A specific difference

between every thought of the mind is, indeed, a necessary consequence

of that law by which it perceives diversity and number; but a generic

and essential difference is wholly arbitrary. The principle of the

agreement and similarity of all thoughts, is, that they are all

thoughts; the principle of their disagreement consists in the variety

and irregularity of the occasions on which they arise in the mind. That

in which they agree, to that in which they differ, is as everything to

nothing. Important distinctions, of various degrees of force, indeed,

are to be established between them, if they were, as they may be,

subjects of ethical and œconomical discussion; but that is a question

altogether distinct.

By considering all knowledge as bounded by perception, whose operations

may be indefinitely combined, we arrive at a conception of Nature

inexpressibly more magnificent, simple and true, than accords with the

ordinary systems of complicated and partial consideration. Nor does a

contemplation of the universe, in this comprehensive and synthetical

view, exclude the subtlest analysis of its modifications and parts.

* * * * *

A scale might be formed, graduated according to the decrees of

a combined ratio of intensity, duration, connexion, periods of

recurrence, and utility, which would be the standard, according to

which all ideas might be measured, and an uninterrupted chain of nicely

shadowed distinctions would be observed, from the faintest impression

on the senses, to the most distinct combination of those impressions;

from the simplest of those combinations, to that mass of knowledge

which, including our own nature, constitutes what we call the universe.

* * * * *

We are intuitively conscious of our own existence, and of that

connexion in the train of our successive ideas, which we term our

identity. We are conscious also of the existence of other minds; but

not intuitively. Our evidence, with respect to the existence of other

minds, is founded upon a very complicated relation of ideas, which it

is foreign to the purpose of this treatise to anatomise. The basis

of this relation is, undoubtedly, a periodical recurrence of masses

of ideas, which our voluntary determinations have, in one peculiar

direction, no power to circumscribe or to arrest, and against the

recurrence of which they can only imperfectly provide. The irresistible

laws of thought constrain us to believe that the precise limits of our

actual ideas are not the actual limits of possible ideas; the law,

according to which these deductions are drawn, is called analogy; and

this is the foundation of all our inferences, from one idea to another,

inasmuch as they resemble each other.

We see trees, houses, fields, living beings in our own shape, and

in shapes more or less analogous to our own. These are perpetually

changing the mode of their existence relatively to us. To express the

varieties of these modes, we say, _we move_, _they move_; and as this

motion is continual, though not uniform, we express our conception of

the diversities of its course by--_it has been_, _it is_, _it shall

be_. These diversities are events or objects, and are essential,

considered relatively to human identity, for the existence of the human

mind. For if the inequalities, produced by what has been termed the

operations of the external universe, were levelled by the perception

of our being, uniting, and filling up their interstices, motion and

mensuration, and time, and space; the elements of the human mind being

thus abstracted, sensation and imagination cease. Mind cannot be

considered pure.

I.--WHAT METAPHYSICS ARE. ERRORS IN THE USUAL METHODS OF CONSIDERING

THEM.

We do not attend sufficiently to what passes within ourselves. We

combine words, combined a thousand times before. In our minds we assume

entire opinions; and in the expression of those opinions, entire

phrases, when we would philosophise. Our whole style of expression and

sentiment is infected with the tritest plagiarisms. Our words are dead,

our thoughts are cold and borrowed.

Let us contemplate facts; let us, in the great study of ourselves,

resolutely compel the mind to a rigid consideration of itself. We

are not content with conjecture, and inductions, and syllogisms, in

sciences regarding external objects. As in these, let us also, in

considering the phenomena of mind, severely collect those facts which

cannot be disputed. Metaphysics will thus possess this conspicuous

advantage over every other science, that each student, by attentively

referring to his own mind, may ascertain the authorities, upon which

any assertions regarding it are supported. There can thus be no

deception, we ourselves being the depositaries of the evidence of the

subject which we consider.

Metaphysics may be defined as an inquiry concerning those things

belonging to, or connected with, the internal nature of man.

It is said that mind produces motion; and it might as well have been

said, that motion produces mind.

II.--DIFFICULTY OF ANALYSING THE HUMAN MIND.

If it were possible that a person should give a faithful history of

his being, from the earliest epochs of his recollection, a picture

would be presented such as the world has never contemplated before. A

mirror would be held up to all men in which they might behold their

own recollections, and, in dim perspective, their shadowy hopes and

fears,--all that they dare not, or that daring and desiring, they could

not expose to the open eyes of day. But thought can with difficulty

visit the intricate and winding chambers which it inhabits. It is like

a river whose rapid and perpetual stream flows outwards;--like one in

dread who speeds through the recesses of some haunted pile, and dares

not look behind. The caverns of the mind are obscure, and shadowy; or

pervaded with a lustre, beautifully bright indeed, but shining not

beyond their portals. If it were possible to be where we have been,

vitally and indeed--if, at the moment of our presence there, we could

define the results of our experience,--if the passage from sensation

to reflection--from a state of passive perception to voluntary

contemplation, were not so dizzying and so tumultuous, this attempt

would be less difficult.

III.--HOW THE ANALYSIS SHOULD BE CARRIED ON.

Most of the errors of philosophers have arisen from considering the

human being in a point of view too detailed and circumscribed. He is

not a moral, and an intellectual,--but also, and pre-eminently, an

imaginative being. His own mind is his law; his own mind is all things

to him. If we would arrive at any knowledge which should be serviceable

from the practical conclusions to which it leads, we ought to consider

the mind of man and the universe as the great whole on which to

exercise our speculations. Here, above all, verbal disputes ought to be

laid aside, though this has long been their chosen field of battle. It

imports little to inquire whether thought be distinct from the objects

of thought. The use of the words _external_ and _internal_, as applied

to the establishment of this distinction, has been the symbol and the

source of much dispute. This is merely an affair of words, and as the

dispute deserves, to say, that when speaking of the objects of thought,

we indeed only describe one of the forms of thought--or that, speaking

of thought, we only apprehend one of the operations of the universal

system of beings.

IV.--CATALOGUE OF THE PHENOMENA OF DREAMS, AS CONNECTING SLEEPING AND

WAKING.

I. Let us reflect on our infancy, and give as faithfully as possible a

relation of the events of sleep.

And first I am bound to present a faithful picture of my own peculiar

nature relatively to sleep. I do not doubt that were every individual

to imitate me, it would be found that among many circumstances peculiar

to their individual nature, a sufficiently general resemblance would

be found to prove the connexion existing between those peculiarities

and the most universal phenomena. I shall employ caution, indeed,

as to the facts which I state, that they contain nothing false or

exaggerated. But they contain no more than certain elucidations

of my own nature; concerning the degree in which it resembles, or

differs from, that of others, I am by no means accurately aware. It

is sufficient, however, to caution the reader against drawing general

inferences from particular instances.

I omit the general instances of delusion in fever or delirium, as well

as mere dreams considered in themselves. A delineation of this subject,

however inexhaustible and interesting, is to be passed over.

What is the connexion of sleeping and of waking?

II. I distinctly remember dreaming three several times,

between intervals of two or more years, the same precise

dream. It was not so much what is ordinarily called a

dream; the single image, unconnected with all other images,

of a youth who was educated at the same school with myself,

presented itself in sleep. Even now, after the lapse of

many years, I can never hear the name of this youth,

without the three places where I dreamed of him presenting

themselves distinctly to my mind.

III. In dreams, images acquire associations peculiar to

dreaming; so that the idea of a particular house, when it

recurs a second time in dreams, will have relation with

the idea of the same house, in the first time, of a nature

entirely different from that which the house excites, when

seen or thought of in relation to waking ideas.

IV. I have beheld scenes, with the intimate and

unaccountable connexion of which with the obscure parts

of my own nature, I have been irresistibly impressed. I

have beheld a scene which has produced no unusual effect

on my thoughts. After the lapse of many years I have

dreamed of this scene. It has hung on my memory, it has

haunted my thoughts, at intervals, with the pertinacity of

an object connected with human affections. I have visited

this scene again. Neither the dream could be dissociated

from the landscape, nor the landscape from the dream, nor

feelings, such as neither singly could have awakened, from

both. But the most remarkable event of this nature, which

ever occurred to me, happened five years ago at Oxford. I

was walking with a friend, in the neighbourhood of that

city, engaged in earnest and interesting conversation.

We suddenly turned the corner of a lane, and the view,

which its high banks and hedges had concealed, presented

itself. The view consisted of a windmill, standing in one

among many plashy meadows, inclosed with stone walls; the

irregular and broken ground, between the wall and the road

on which we stood; a long low hill behind the windmill, and

a grey covering of uniform cloud spread over the evening

sky. It was that season when the last leaf had just fallen

from the scant and stunted ash. The scene surely was a

common scene; the season and the hour little calculated

to kindle lawless thought; it was a tame uninteresting

assemblage of objects, such as would drive the imagination

for refuge in serious and sober talk, to the evening

fireside, and the dessert of winter fruits and wine. The

effect which it produced on me was not such as could have

been expected. I suddenly remembered to have seen that

exact scene in some dream of long[11]----

[11] _Here I was obliged to leave off, overcome by thrilling

horror._--This remark closes this fragment, which was written in

1815. I remember well his coming to me from writing it, pale and

agitated, to seek refuge in conversation from the fearful emotions it

excited.--[_Note by Mrs. Shelley._]

[Decoration]

FRAGMENTS.

SPECULATIONS ON MORALS.

I.--PLAN OF A TREATISE ON MORALS.

That great science which regards nature and the operations of the

human mind, is popularly divided into Morals and Metaphysics. The

latter relates to a just classification, and the assignment of distinct

names to its ideas; the former regards simply the determination of

that arrangement of them which produces the greatest and most solid

happiness. It is admitted that a virtuous or moral action is that

action which, when considered in all its accessories and consequences,

is fitted to produce the highest pleasure to the greatest number of

sensitive beings. The laws according to which all pleasure, since it

cannot be equally felt by all sensitive beings, ought to be distributed

by a voluntary agent, are reserved for a separate chapter.

The design of this little treatise is restricted to the development of

the elementary principles of morals. As far as regards that purpose,

metaphysical science will be treated merely so far as a source of

negative truth; whilst morality will be considered as a science,

respecting which we can arrive at positive conclusions.

The misguided imaginations of men have rendered the ascertaining of

what _is not true_, the principal direct service which metaphysical

science can bestow upon moral science. Moral science itself is the

doctrine of the voluntary actions of man, as a sentient and social

being. These actions depend on the thoughts in his mind. But there

is a mass of popular opinion, from which the most enlightened

persons are seldom wholly free, into the truth or falsehood of

which it is incumbent on us to inquire, before we can arrive at any

firm conclusions as to the conduct which we ought to pursue in the

regulation of our own minds, or towards our fellow-beings; or before we

can ascertain the elementary laws, according to which these thoughts,

from which these actions flow, are originally combined.

* * * * *

The object of the forms according to which human society is

administered, is the happiness of the individuals composing the

communities which they regard, and these forms are perfect or imperfect

in proportion to the degree in which they promote this end.

This object is not merely the quantity of happiness enjoyed by

individuals as sensitive beings, but the mode in which it should be

distributed among them as social beings. It is not enough, if such a

coincidence can be conceived as possible, that one person or class

of persons should enjoy the highest happiness, whilst another is

suffering a disproportionate degree of misery. It is necessary that

the happiness produced by the common efforts, and preserved by the

common care, should be distributed according to the just claims of

each individual; if not, although the quantity produced should be

the same, the end of society would remain unfulfilled. The object is

in a compound proportion to the quantity of happiness produced, and

the correspondence of the mode in which it is distributed, to the

elementary feelings of man as a social being.

The disposition in an individual to promote this object is called

virtue; and the two constituent parts of virtue, benevolence and

justice, are correlative with these two great portions of the only true

object of all voluntary actions of a human being. Benevolence is the

desire to be the author of good, and justice the apprehension of the

manner in which good ought to be done.

Justice and benevolence result from the elementary laws of the human

mind.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE NATURE OF VIRTUE.

SECT. I. General View of the Nature and Objects of

Virtue.--2. The Origin and Basis of Virtue, as founded

on the Elementary Principles of Mind.--3. The Laws which

flow from the nature of Mind regulating the application of

those principles to human actions.--4. Virtue, a possible

attribute of man.

We exist in the midst of a multitude of beings like ourselves, upon

whose happiness most of our actions exert some obvious and decisive

influence.

The regulation of this influence is the object of moral science.

We know that we are susceptible of receiving painful or pleasurable

impressions of greater or less intensity and duration. That is called

good which produces pleasure; that is called evil which produces pain.

These are general names, applicable to every class of causes, from

which an over-balance of pain or pleasure may result. But when a human

being is the active instrument of generating or diffusing happiness,

the principle through which it is most effectually instrumental to that

purpose, is called virtue. And benevolence, or the desire to be the

author of good, united with justice, or an apprehension of the manner

in which that good is to be done, constitutes virtue.

But, wherefore should a man be benevolent and just? The immediate

emotions of his nature, especially in its most inartificial state,

prompt him to inflict pain, and to arrogate dominion. He desires to

heap superfluities to his own store, although others perish with

famine. He is propelled to guard against the smallest invasion of

his own liberty, though he reduces others to a condition of the most

pitiless servitude. He is revengeful, proud, and selfish. Wherefore

should he curb these propensities?

It is inquired for what reason a human being should engage in procuring

the happiness, or refrain from producing the pain of another? When a

reason is required to prove the necessity of adopting any system of

conduct, what is it that the objector demands? He requires proof of

that system of conduct being such as will most effectually promote the

happiness of mankind. To demonstrate this, is to render a moral reason.

Such is the object of Virtue.

A common sophism, which, like many others, depends on the abuse of a

metaphorical expression to a literal purpose, has produced much of the

confusion which has involved the theory of morals. It is said that no

person is bound to be just or kind, if, on his neglect, he should fail

to incur some penalty. Duty is obligation. There can be no obligation

without an obliger. Virtue is a law, to which it is the will of the

lawgiver that we should conform; which will we should in no manner

be bound to obey, unless some dreadful punishment were attached to

disobedience. This is the philosophy of slavery and superstition.

In fact, no person can be _bound_ or _obliged_, without some power

preceding to bind and oblige. If I observe a man bound hand and

foot, I know that some one bound him. But if I observe him returning

self-satisfied from the performance of some action, by which he has

been the willing author of extensive benefit, I do not infer that the

anticipation of hellish agonies, or the hope of heavenly reward, has

constrained him to such an act.[12]

* * * * *

It remains to be stated in what manner the sensations which constitute

the basis of virtue originate in the human mind; what are the laws

which it receives there; how far the principles of mind allow it to be

an attribute of a human being; and, lastly, what is the probability of

persuading mankind to adopt it as a universal and systematic motive of

conduct.

BENEVOLENCE.

There is a class of emotions which we instinctively avoid. A human

being, such as is man considered in his origin, a child a month old,

has a very imperfect consciousness of the existence of other natures

resembling itself. All the energies of its being are directed to the

extinction of the pains with which it is perpetually assailed. At

length it discovers that it is surrounded by natures susceptible of

sensations similar to its own. It is very late before children attain

to this knowledge. If a child observes, without emotion, its nurse or

its mother suffering acute pain, it is attributable rather to ignorance

than insensibility. So soon as the accents and gestures, significant of

pain, are referred to the feelings which they express, they awaken in

the mind of the beholder a desire that they should cease. Pain is thus

apprehended to be evil for its own sake, without any other necessary

reference to the mind by which its existence is perceived, than such

as is indispensable to its perception. The tendencies of our original

sensations, indeed, all have for their object the preservation of our

individual being. But these are passive and unconscious. In proportion

as the mind acquires an active power, the empire of these tendencies

becomes limited. Thus an infant, a savage, and a solitary beast,

is selfish, because its mind is incapable of receiving an accurate

intimation of the nature of pain as existing in beings resembling

itself. The inhabitant of a highly civilised community will more

acutely sympathise with the sufferings and enjoyments of others, than

the inhabitant of a society of a less degree of civilisation. He who

shall have cultivated his intellectual powers by familiarity with the

highest specimens of poetry and philosophy, will usually sympathise

more than one engaged in the less refined functions of manual labour.

Every one has experience of the fact, that to sympathise with the

sufferings of another, is to enjoy a transitory oblivion of his own.

The mind thus acquires, by exercise, a habit, as it were, of perceiving

and abhorring evil, however remote from the immediate sphere of

sensations with which that individual mind is conversant. Imagination

or mind employed in prophetically imaging forth its objects, is that

faculty of human nature on which every gradation of its progress, nay,

every, the minutest, change, depends. Pain or pleasure, if subtly

analysed, will be found to consist entirely in prospect. The only

distinction between the selfish man and the virtuous man is, that the

imagination of the former is confined within a narrow limit, whilst

that of the latter embraces a comprehensive circumference. In this

sense, wisdom and virtue may be said to be inseparable, and criteria

of each other. Selfishness is the offspring of ignorance and mistake;

it is the portion of unreflecting infancy, and savage solitude, or of

those whom toil or evil occupations have blunted or rendered torpid;

disinterested benevolence is the product of a cultivated imagination,

and has an intimate connexion with all the arts which add ornament, or

dignity, or power, or stability to the social state of man. Virtue

is thus entirely a refinement of civilised life; a creation of the

human mind; or, rather, a combination which it has made, according to

elementary rules contained within itself, of the feelings suggested by

the relations established between man and man.

All the theories which have refined and exalted humanity, or those

which have been devised as alleviations of its mistakes and evils, have

been based upon the elementary emotions of disinterestedness, which

we feel to constitute the majesty of our nature. Patriotism, as it

existed in the ancient republics, was never, as has been supposed, a

calculation of personal advantages. When Mutius Scævola thrust his hand

into the burning coals, and Regulus returned to Carthage, and Epicharis

sustained the rack silently, in the torments of which she knew that

she would speedily perish, rather than betray the conspirators to the

tyrant;[13] these illustrious persons certainly made a small estimate

of their private interest. If it be said that they sought posthumous

fame; instances are not wanting in history which prove that men have

even defied infamy for the sake of good. But there is a great error

in the world with respect to the selfishness of fame. It is certainly

possible that a person should seek distinction as a medium of personal

gratification. But the love of fame is frequently no more than a

desire that the feelings of others should confirm, illustrate, and

sympathise with, our own. In this respect it is allied with all that

draws us out of ourselves. It is the “last infirmity of noble minds.”

Chivalry was likewise founded on the theory of self-sacrifice. Love

possesses so extraordinary a power over the human heart, only because

disinterestedness is united with the natural propensities. These

propensities themselves are comparatively impotent in cases where the

imagination of pleasure to be given, as well as to be received, does

not enter into the account. Let it not be objected that patriotism, and

chivalry, and sentimental love, have been the fountains of enormous

mischief. They are cited only to establish the proposition that,

according to the elementary principles of mind, man is capable of

desiring and pursuing good for its own sake.

JUSTICE.

The benevolent propensities are thus inherent in the human mind. We are

impelled to seek the happiness of others. We experience a satisfaction

in being the authors of that happiness. Everything that lives is open

to impressions of pleasure and pain. We are led by our benevolent

propensities to regard every human being indifferently with whom we

come in contact. They have preference only with respect to those

who offer themselves most obviously to our notice. Human beings are

indiscriminating and blind; they will avoid inflicting pain, though

that pain should be attended with eventual benefit; they will seek to

confer pleasure without calculating the mischief that may result. They

benefit one at the expense of many.

There is a sentiment in the human mind that regulates benevolence in

its application as a principle of action. This is the sense of justice.

Justice, as well as benevolence, is an elementary law of human nature.

It is through this principle that men are impelled to distribute any

means of pleasure which benevolence may suggest the communication of

to others, in equal portions among an equal number of applications. If

ten men are shipwrecked on a desert island, they distribute whatever

subsistence may remain to them into equal portions among themselves.

If six of them conspire to deprive the remaining four of their share,

their conduct is termed unjust.

The existence of pain has been shown to be a circumstance which the

human mind regards with dissatisfaction, and of which it desires the

cessation. It is equally according to its nature to desire that the

advantages to be enjoyed by a limited number of persons should be

enjoyed equally by all. This proposition is supported by the evidence

of indisputable facts. Tell some ungarbled tale of a number of persons

being made the victims of the enjoyments of one, and he who would

appeal in favour of any system which might produce such an evil to

the primary emotions of our nature, would have nothing to reply. Let

two persons, equally strangers, make application for some benefit in

the possession of a third to bestow, and to which he feels that they

have an equal claim. They are both sensitive beings; pleasure and pain

affect them alike.

CHAPTER II.

It is foreign to the general scope of this little treatise to encumber

a simple argument by controverting any of the trite objections of habit

or fanaticism. But there are two; the first, the basis of all political

mistake, and the second, the prolific cause and effect of religious

error, which it seems useful to refute.

First, it is inquired, “Wherefore should a man be benevolent and just?”

The answer has been given in the preceding chapter.

If a man persists to inquire why he ought to promote the happiness

of mankind, he demands a mathematical or metaphysical reason for a

moral action. The absurdity of this scepticism is more apparent, but

not less real, than the exacting a moral reason for a mathematical

or metaphysical fact. If any person should refuse to admit that all

the radii of a circle are of equal length, or that human actions are

necessarily determined by motives, until it could be proved that these

radii and these actions uniformly tended to the production of the

greatest general good, who would not wonder at the unreasonable and

capricious association of his ideas?

* * * * *

The writer of a philosophical treatise may, I imagine, at this

advanced era of human intellect, be held excused from entering into a

controversy with those reasoners, if such there are, who would claim an

exemption from its decrees in favour of any one among those diversified

systems of obscure opinion respecting morals, which, under the name of

religions, have in various ages and countries prevailed among mankind.

Besides that if, as these reasoners have pretended, eternal torture

or happiness will ensue as the consequence of certain actions, we

should be no nearer the possession of a standard to determine what

actions were right and wrong, even if this pretended revelation, which

is by no means the case, had furnished us with a complete catalogue

of them. The character of actions as virtuous or vicious would by no

means be determined alone by the personal advantage or disadvantage

of each moral agent individually considered. Indeed, an action is

often virtuous in proportion to the greatness of the personal calamity

which the author willingly draws upon himself by daring to perform

it. It is because an action produces an overbalance of pleasure or

pain to the greatest number of sentient beings, and not merely because

its consequences are beneficial or injurious to the author of that

action, that it is good or evil. Nay, this latter consideration has a

tendency to pollute the purity of virtue, inasmuch as it consists in

the motive rather than in the consequences of an action. A person who

should labour for the happiness of mankind lest he should be tormented

eternally in Hell, would with reference to that motive possess as

little claim to the epithet of virtuous, as he who should torture,

imprison, and burn them alive, a more usual and natural consequence of

such principles, for the sake of the enjoyments of Heaven.

My neighbour, presuming on his strength, may direct me to perform or

to refrain from a particular action; indicating a certain arbitrary

penalty in the event of disobedience within his power to inflict. My

action, if modified by his menaces, can in no degree participate in

virtue. He has afforded me no criterion as to what is right or wrong.

A king, or an assembly of men, may publish a proclamation affixing any

penalty to any particular action, but that is not immoral because such

penalty is affixed. Nothing is more evident than that the epithet of

virtue is inapplicable to the refraining from that action on account

of the evil arbitrarily attached to it. If the action is in itself

beneficial, virtue would rather consist in not refraining from it, but

in firmly defying the personal consequences attached to its performance.

Some usurper of supernatural energy might subdue the whole globe to his

power; he might possess new and unheard-of resources for induing his

punishments with the most terrible attributes of pain. The torments

of his victims might be intense in their degree, and protracted to

an infinite duration. Still the “will of the lawgiver” would afford

no surer criterion as to what actions were right or wrong. It would

only increase the possible virtue of those who refuse to become the

instruments of his tyranny.

II.--MORAL SCIENCE CONSISTS IN CONSIDERING THE DIFFERENCE, NOT THE

RESEMBLANCE, OF PERSONS.

The internal influence, derived from the constitution of the mind from

which they flow, produces that peculiar modification of actions, which

makes them intrinsically good or evil.

To attain an apprehension of the importance of this distinction, let

us visit, in imagination, the proceedings of some metropolis. Consider

the multitude of human beings who inhabit it, and survey, in thought,

the actions of the several classes into which they are divided. Their

obvious actions are apparently uniform: the stability of human society

seems to be maintained sufficiently by the uniformity of the conduct of

its members, both with regard to themselves and with regard to others.

The labourer arises at a certain hour, and applies himself to the task

enjoined him. The functionaries of government and law are regularly

employed in their offices and courts. The trader holds a train of

conduct from which he never deviates. The ministers of religion employ

an accustomed language, and maintain a decent and equable regard. The

army is drawn forth, the motions of every soldier are such as they were

expected to be; the general commands, and his words are echoed from

troop to troop. The domestic actions of men are, for the most part,

undistinguishable one from the other, at a superficial glance. The

actions which are classed under the general appellation of marriage,

education, friendship, &c., are perpetually going on, and to a

superficial glance, are similar one to the other.

But, if we would see the truth of things, they must be stripped of this

fallacious appearance of uniformity. In truth, no one action has, when

considered in its whole extent, any essential resemblance with any

other. Each individual, who composes the vast multitude which we have

been contemplating, has a peculiar frame of mind, which, whilst the

features of the great mass of his actions remain uniform, impresses the

minuter lineaments with its peculiar hues. Thus, whilst his life, as a

whole, is like the lives of other men, in detail it is most unlike; and

the more subdivided the actions become, that is, the more they enter

into that class which have a vital influence on the happiness of others

and his own, so much the more are they distinct from those of other men.

“Those little nameless unremember’d acts

Of kindness and of love,”[14]

as well as those deadly outrages which are inflicted by a look, a

word--or less--the very refraining from some faint and most evanescent

expression of countenance; these flow from a profounder source than

the series of our habitual conduct, which, it has been already said,

derives its origin from without. These are the actions, and such as

these, which make human life what it is, and are the fountains of

all the good and evil with which its entire surface is so widely and

impartially overspread; and though they are called minute, they are

called so in compliance with the blindness of those who cannot estimate

their importance. It is in the due appreciating the general effects of

their peculiarities, and in cultivating the habit of acquiring decisive

knowledge respecting the tendencies arising out of them in particular

cases, that the most important part of moral science consists. The

deepest abyss of these vast and multitudinous caverns, it is necessary

that we should visit.

This is the difference between social and individual man. Not that this

distinction is to be considered definite, or characteristic of one

human being as compared with another; it denotes rather two classes

of agency, common in a degree to every human being. None is exempt,

indeed, from that species of influence which affects, as it were, the

surface of his being, and gives the specific outline to his conduct.

Almost all that is ostensible submits to that legislature created by

the general representation of the past feelings of mankind--imperfect

as it is from a variety of causes, as it exists in the government,

the religion, and domestic habits. Those who do not nominally, yet

actually, submit to the same power. The external features of their

conduct, indeed, can no more escape it, than the clouds can escape from

the stream of the wind; and his opinion, which he often hopes he has

dispassionately secured from all contagion of prejudice and vulgarity,

would be found, on examination, to be the inevitable excrescence of

the very usages from which he vehemently dissents. Internally all

is conducted otherwise; the efficiency, the essence, the vitality

of actions, derives its colour from what is no ways contributed to

from any external source. Like the plant, which while it derives the

accident of its size and shape from the soil in which it springs, and

is cankered, or distorted, or inflated, yet retains those qualities

which essentially divide it from all others; so that hemlock continues

to be poison, and the violet does not cease to emit its odour in

whatever soil it may grow.

We consider our own nature too superficially. We look on all that in

ourselves with which we can discover a resemblance in others; and

consider those resemblances as the materials of moral knowledge. It is

in the differences that it actually consists.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] A leaf of manuscript is wanting here, manifestly treating of

self-love and disinterestedness.--[_Note by Mrs. Shelley._]

[13] Tacitus.

[14] Wordsworth, _Tintern Abbey_.--Ed.

[Decoration]

[Decoration]

GHOST STORIES.

_Geneva, Sunday, 18th August 1816._

See Apollo’s Sexton,[15] who tells us many mysteries of his trade.

We talk of Ghosts. Neither Lord Byron nor M. G. L. seem to believe

in them; and they both agree, in the very face of reason, that none

could believe in ghosts without believing in God. I do not think that

all the persons who profess to discredit these visitations, really

discredit them; or, if they do in the daylight, are not admonished by

the approach of loneliness and midnight, to think more respectfully of

the world of shadows.

Lewis recited a poem, which he had composed at the request of the

Princess of Wales. The Princess of Wales, he premised, was not only a

believer in ghosts, but in magic and witchcraft, and asserted, that

prophecies made in her youth had been accomplished since. The tale was

of a lady in Germany.

This lady, Minna, had been exceedingly attached to her husband, and

they had made a vow that the one who died first, should return after

death to visit the other as a ghost. She was sitting one day alone

in her chamber, when she heard an unusual sound of footsteps on the

stairs. The door opened, and her husband’s spectre, gashed with a deep

wound across the forehead, and in military habiliments, entered. She

appeared startled at the apparition; and the ghost told her, that when

he should visit her in future, she would hear a passing bell toll, and

these words distinctly uttered close to her ear, “Minna, I am here.” On

inquiry, it was found that her husband had fallen in battle on the very

day she was visited by the vision. The intercourse between the ghost

and the woman continued for some time, until the latter laid aside all

terror, and indulged herself in the affection which she had felt for

him while living. One evening she went to a ball, and permitted her

thoughts to be alienated by the attentions of a Florentine gentleman,

more witty, more graceful, and more gentle, as it appeared to her,

than any person she had ever seen. As he was conducting her through

the dance, a death bell tolled. Minna, lost in the fascination of the

Florentine’s attentions, disregarded, or did not hear the sound. A

second peal, louder and more deep, startled the whole company, when

Minna heard the ghost’s accustomed whisper, and raising her eyes, saw

in an opposite mirror the reflection of the ghost, standing over her.

She is said to have died of terror.

Lewis told four other stories--all grim.

I.

A young man who had taken orders, had just been presented with a

living, on the death of the incumbent. It was in the Catholic part

of Germany. He arrived at the parsonage on a Saturday night; it

was summer, and waking about three o’clock in the morning, and it

being broad day, he saw a venerable-looking man, but with an aspect

exceedingly melancholy, sitting at a desk in the window, reading, and

two beautiful boys standing near him, whom he regarded with looks

of the profoundest grief. Presently he rose from his seat, the boys

followed him, and they were no more to be seen. The young man, much

troubled, arose, hesitating whether he should regard what he had seen

as a dream, or a waking phantasy. To divert his dejection, he walked

towards the church, which the sexton was already employed in preparing

for the morning service. The first sight that struck him was a

portrait, the exact resemblance of the man whom he had seen sitting in

his chamber. It was the custom in this district to place the portrait

of each minister, after his death, in the church.

He made the minutest inquiries respecting his predecessor, and learned

that he was universally beloved, as a man of unexampled integrity and

benevolence; but that he was the prey of a secret and perpetual sorrow.

His grief was supposed to have arisen from an attachment to a young

lady, with whom his situation did not permit him to unite himself.

Others, however, asserted, that a connexion did subsist between them,

and that even she occasionally brought to his house two beautiful boys,

the offspring of their connexion.--Nothing further occurred until the

cold weather came, and the new minister desired a fire to be lighted in

the stove of the room where he slept. A hideous stench arose from the

stove as soon as it was lighted, and, on examining it, the bones of two

male children were found within.

II.

Lord Lyttelton and a number of his friends were joined during the chase

by a stranger. He was excellently mounted, and displayed such courage,

or, rather so much desperate rashness, that no other person in the

hunt could follow him. The gentlemen, when the chase was concluded,

invited the stranger to dine with them. His conversation was something

of a wonderful kind. He astonished, he interested, he commanded the

attention of the most inert. As night came on, the company, being

weary, began to retire one by one, much later than the usual hour: the

most intellectual among them were retained latest by the stranger’s

fascination. As he perceived that they began to depart, he redoubled

his efforts to retain them. At last, when few remained, he entreated

them to stay with him; but all pleaded the fatigue of a hard day’s

chase, and all at last retired. They had been in bed about an hour,

when they were awakened by the most horrible screams, which issued

from the stranger’s room. Every one rushed towards it. The door was

locked. After a moment’s deliberation they burst it open, and found the

stranger stretched on the ground, writhing with agony, and weltering in

blood. On their entrance he arose, and collecting himself, apparently

with a strong effort, entreated them to leave him--not to disturb him,

that he would give every possible explanation in the morning. They

complied. In the morning, his chamber was found vacant, and he was seen

no more.

III.

Miles Andrews, a friend of Lord Lyttelton, was sitting one night alone

when Lord Lyttelton came in, and informed him that he was dead, and

that this was his ghost which he saw before him. Andrews pettishly told

him not to play any ridiculous tricks upon him, for he was not in a

temper to bear them. The ghost then departed. In the morning Andrews

asked his servant at what hour Lord Lyttelton had arrived. The servant

said he did not know that he had arrived, but that he would inquire.

On inquiry it was found that Lord Lyttelton had not arrived, nor had

the door been opened to any one during the whole night. Andrews sent to

Lord Lyttelton, and discovered, that he had died precisely at the hour

of the apparition.

IV.

A gentleman on a visit to a friend who lived on the skirts of an

extensive forest in the east of Germany, lost his way. He wandered

for some hours among the trees, when he saw a light at a distance. On

approaching it, he was surprised to observe, that it proceeded from the

interior of a ruined monastery. Before he knocked he thought it prudent

to look through the window. He saw a multitude of cats assembled round

a small grave, four of whom were letting down a coffin with a crown

upon it. The gentleman, startled at this unusual sight, and imagining

that he had arrived among the retreats of fiends or witches, mounted

his horse and rode away with the utmost precipitation. He arrived at

his friend’s house at a late hour, who had sat up for him. On his

arrival his friend questioned as to the cause of the traces of trouble

visible in his face. He began to recount his adventure, after much

difficulty, knowing that it was scarcely possible that his friends

should give faith to his relation. No sooner had he mentioned the

coffin with a crown upon it, than his friend’s cat, who seemed to have

been lying asleep before the fire, leaped up, saying--“Then I am the

King of the Cats!” and scrambled up the chimney, and was seen no more.

* * * * *

Thursday, 29th August.--We depart from Geneva, at nine in the morning.

The Swiss are very slow drivers; besides which we have Jura to

mount; we, therefore, go a very few posts to-day. The scenery is very

beautiful, and we see many magnificent views. We pass Les Rousses,

which, when we crossed in the spring, was deep in snow. We sleep at

Morrez.

* * * * *

Friday, 30th.--We leave Morrez, and arrive in the evening at Dole,

after a various day.

* * * * *

Saturday, 31st.--From Dole we go to Rouvray, where we sleep. We pass

through Dijon; and, after Dijon, take a different route than that which

we followed on the two other occasions. The scenery has some beauty

and singularity in the line of the mountains which surround the Val de

Suzon. Low, yet precipitous hills, covered with vines or woods, and

with streams, meadows, and poplars, at the bottom.

* * * * *

Sunday, September 1st.--Leave Rouvray, pass Auxerre, where we dine; a

pretty town, and arrive, at two o’clock, at Villeneuve le Guiard.

* * * * *

Monday, 2d.--From Villeneuve le Guiard, we arrive at Fontainebleau.

The scenery around this palace is wild and even savage. The soil is

full of rocks, apparently granite, which on every side break through

the ground. The hills are low, but precipitous and rough. The valleys,

equally wild, are shaded by forests. In the midst of this wilderness

stands the palace. Some of the apartments equal in magnificence

anything that I could conceive. The roofs are fretted with gold, and

the canopies of velvet. From Fontainebleau we proceed to Versailles, in

the route towards Rouen. We arrive at Versailles at nine.

* * * * *

Tuesday, 3d.--We saw the palace and gardens of Versailles and le Grand

et Petit Trianon. They surpass Fontainebleau. The gardens are full

of statues, vases, fountains, and colonnades. In all that essentially

belongs to a garden they are extraordinarily deficient. The orangery is

a stupid piece of expense. There was one orange-tree, not apparently

so old, sown in 1442. We saw only the gardens and the theatre at the

Petit Trianon. The gardens are in the English taste, and extremely

pretty. The Grand Trianon was open. It is a summer palace, light,

yet magnificent. We were unable to devote the time it deserved to

the gallery of paintings here. There was a portrait of Madame de la

Vallière, the repentant mistress of Louis XIV. She was melancholy, but

exceedingly beautiful, and was represented as holding a skull, and

sitting before a crucifix, pale, and with downcast eyes.

We then went to the great palace. The apartments are unfurnished,

but even with this disadvantage, are more magnificent than those of

Fontainebleau. They are lined with marble of various colours, whose

pedestals and capitals are gilt, and the ceiling is richly gilt with

compartments of painting. The arrangement of these materials has in

them, it is true, something effeminate and royal. Could a Grecian

architect have commanded all the labour and money which was expended

on Versailles, he would have produced a fabric which the whole world

has never equalled. We saw the Hall of Hercules, the balcony where the

King and the Queen exhibited themselves to the Parisian mob. The people

who showed us through the palace, obstinately refused to say anything

about the Revolution. We could not even find out in which chamber the

rioters of the 10th August found the king. We saw the Salle d’Opera,

where are now preserved the portraits of the kings. There was the race

of the house of Orleans, with the exception of Egalité, all extremely

handsome. There was Madame de Maintenon, and beside her a beautiful

little girl, the daughter of La Vallière. The pictures had been hidden

during the Revolution. We saw the Library of Louis XVI. The librarian

had held some place in the ancient court near Marie Antoinette. He

returned with the Bourbons, and was waiting for some better situation.

He showed us a book which he had preserved during the Revolution.

It was a book of paintings, representing a Tournament at the Court

of Louis XIV.; and it seemed that the present desolation of France,

the fury of the injured people, and all the horrors to which they

abandoned themselves, stung by their long sufferings, flowed naturally

enough from expenditures so immense, as must have been demanded by the

magnificence of this tournament. The vacant rooms of this palace imaged

well the hollow show of monarchy. After seeing these things we departed

toward Havre, and slept at Auxerre.

* * * * *

Wednesday, 4th.--We passed through Rouen, and saw the cathedral,

an immense specimen of the most costly and magnificent gothic. The

interior of the church disappoints. We saw the burial-place of Richard

Cœur de Lion and his brother. The altar of the church is a fine piece

of marble. Sleep at Yvetot.

* * * * *

Thursday, 5th.--We arrive at Havre, and wait for the packet--wind

contrary.

FRAGMENT FROM JOURNAL.

_Thursday, March 26, 1818._

In a brief journal I kept at that time, I find a few pages

in Shelley’s handwriting, descriptive of the passage over

the mountains of Les Eschelles.--[_Note by Mrs. Shelley._]

March 26, Thursday.--We travel towards the mountains, and begin to

enter the valleys of the Alps. The country becomes covered again with

verdure and cultivation, and white chateaux and scattered cottages

among woods of old oak and walnut trees. The vines are here peculiarly

picturesque; they are trellised upon immense stakes, and the trunks

of them are moss-covered and hoary with age. Unlike the French vines,

which creep lowly on the ground, they form rows of interlaced bowers,

which, when the leaves are green and the red grapes are hanging among

those hoary branches, will afford a delightful shadow to those who sit

upon the moss underneath. The vines are sometimes planted in the open

fields, and sometimes among lofty orchards of apple and pear-trees, the

twigs of which were just becoming purple with the bursting blossoms.

We dined at Les Eschelles, a village at the foot of the mountain of

the same name, the boundaries of France and Savoy. Before this we had

been stopped at Pont Bonvoisin, where the legal limits of the French

and Sardinian territories are placed. We here heard that a Milanese

had been sent back all the way to Lyons, because his passport was

unauthorised by the Sardinian Consul, a few days before, and that

we should be subjected to the same treatment. We, in respect to the

character of our nation I suppose, were suffered to pass. Our books,

however, were, after a long discussion, sent to Chambery, to be

submitted to the censor; a priest, who admits nothing of Rousseau,

Voltaire, &c., into the dominions of the King of Sardinia. All such

books are burned.

After dinner we ascended Les Eschelles, winding along a road, cut

through perpendicular rocks, of immense elevation, by Charles Emanuel,

Duke of Savoy, in 1582. The rocks, which cannot be less than a thousand

feet in perpendicular height, sometimes overhang the road on each

side, and almost shut out the sky. The scene is like that described

in the Prometheus of Æschylus. Vast rifts and caverns in the granite

precipices, wintry mountains with ice and snow above; the loud sounds

of unseen waters within the caverns, and walls of toppling rocks, only

to be scaled as he describes, by the winged chariot of the ocean nymphs.

Under the dominion of this tyranny, the inhabitants of the fertile

valleys, bounded by these mountains, are in a state of most frightful

poverty and disease. At the foot of this ascent, were cut into the

rocks at several places, stories of the misery of the inhabitants, to

move the compassion of the traveller. One old man, lame and blind,

crawled out of a hole in the rock, wet with the perpetual melting of

the snows of above, and dripping like a shower-bath.

The country, as we descended to Chambéry, continued as beautiful;

though marked with somewhat of a softer character than before; we

arrived a little after night-fall.

[15] Matthew Gregory Lewis--so named in _English Bards and

Scotch Reviewers_. When Lewis first saw Lord Byron, he asked him

earnestly,--“Why did you call me Apollo’s sexton?” The noble poet found

it difficult to reply to this categorical species of reproof. The above

stories have, some of them, appeared in print; but, as a ghost story

depends entirely on the mode in which it is told, I think the reader

will be pleased to read these, written by Shelley, fresh from their

relation by Lewis.--[_Note by Mrs. Shelley._]

[Decoration]

LETTERS FROM ITALY.

[Decoration]

LETTERS FROM ITALY.

TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

_Milan, April, 1818._

My dear Peacock,

Behold us arrived at length at the end of our journey--that is, within

a few miles of it--because we design to spend the summer on the

shore of the Lake of Como. Our journey was somewhat painful from the

cold--and in no other manner interesting until we passed the Alps:

of course I except the Alps themselves; but no sooner had we arrived

at Italy, than the loveliness of the earth and the serenity of the

sky made the greatest difference in my sensations. I depend on these

things for life; for in the smoke of cities, and the tumult of human

kind, and the chilling fogs and rain of our own country, I can hardly

be said to live. With what delight did I hear the woman, who conducted

us to see the triumphal arch of Augustus at Susa, speak the clear and

complete language of Italy, though half unintelligible to me, after

that nasal and abbreviated cacophony of the French! A ruined arch of

magnificent proportions, in the Greek taste, standing in a kind of road

of green lawn, overgrown with violets and primroses, and in the midst

of stupendous mountains, and a _blonde_ woman, of light and graceful

manners, something in the style of Fuseli’s Eve, were the first things

we met in Italy.

This city is very agreeable. We went to the opera last night--which is

a most splendid exhibition. The opera itself was not a favourite, and

the singers very inferior to our own. But the ballet, or rather a kind

of melodrame or pantomimic drama, was the most splendid spectacle I

ever saw. We have no Miss Melanie here--in every other respect, Milan

is unquestionably superior. The manner in which language is translated

into gesture, the complete and full effect of the whole as illustrating

the history in question, the unaffected self-possession of each of the

actors, even to the children, made this choral drama more impressive

than I could have conceived possible. The story is _Othello_, and

strange to say, it left no disagreeable impression.

I write, but I am not in the humour to write, and you must expect

longer, if not more entertaining, letters soon--that is, in a week or

so--when I am a little recovered from my journey. Pray tell us all

the news with regard to our own offspring, whom we left at nurse in

England; as well as those of our friends. Mention Cobbett and politics

too--and Hunt--to whom Mary is now writing--and particularly your own

plans and yourself. You shall hear more of me and my plans soon. My

health is improved already--and my spirits something--and I have many

literary schemes, and one in particular--which I thirst to be settled

that I may begin. I have ordered Ollier to send you some sheets &c. for

revision.

Adieu.

--Always faithfully yours, P. B. S.

TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

_Milan, April 20, 1818._

My dear Peacock,

I had no conception that the distance between us, measured by time in

respect of letters, was so great. I have but just received yours dated

the 2d--and when you will receive mine written from this city somewhat

later than the same date, I cannot know. I am sorry to hear that you

have been obliged to remain at Marlow; a certain degree of society

being almost a necessity of life, particularly as we are not to see you

this summer in Italy. But this, I suppose, must be as it is. I often

revisit Marlow in thought. The curse of this life is, that whatever is

once known, can never be unknown. You inhabit a spot, which before you

inhabit it, is as indifferent to you as any other spot upon earth, and

when, persuaded by some necessity, you think to leave it, you leave

it not; it clings to you--and with memories of things, which, in your

experience of them, gave no such promise, revenges your desertion. Time

flows on, places are changed; friends who were with us, are no longer

with us; yet what has been seems yet to be, but barren and stripped of

life. See, I have sent you a study for Nightmare Abbey.

Since I last wrote to you we have been to Como, looking for a house.

This lake exceeds any thing I ever beheld in beauty, with the exception

of the arbutus islands of Killarney. It is long and narrow, and has

the appearance of a mighty river winding among the mountains and the

forests. We sailed from the town of Como to a tract of country called

the Tremezina, and saw the various aspects presented by that part

of the lake. The mountains between Como and that village, or rather

cluster of villages, are covered on high with chesnut forests (the

eating chesnuts, on which the inhabitants of the country subsist

in time of scarcity), which sometimes descend to the very verge of

the lake, overhanging it with their hoary branches. But usually the

immediate border of this shore is composed of laurel-trees, and bay,

and myrtle, and wild-fig trees, and olives, which grow in the crevices

of the rocks, and overhang the caverns, and shadow the deep glens,

which are filled with the flashing light of the waterfalls. Other

flowering shrubs, which I cannot name, grow there also. On high, the

towers of village churches are seen white among the dark forests.

Beyond, on the opposite shore, which faces the south, the mountains

descend less precipitously to the lake, and although they are much

higher, and some covered with perpetual snow, there intervenes between

them and the lake a range of lower hills, which have glens and rifts

opening to the other, such as I should fancy the _abysses_ of Ida or

Parnassus. Here are plantations of olive, and orange, and lemon-trees,

which are now so loaded with fruit, that there is more fruit than

leaves,--and vineyards. This shore of the lake is one continued

village, and the Milanese nobility have their villas here. The union

of culture and the untameable profusion and loveliness of nature is

here so close, that the line where they are divided can hardly be

discovered. But the finest scenery is that of the Villa Pliniana;

so called from a fountain which ebbs and flows every three hours,

described by the younger Pliny, which is in the court-yard. This house,

which was once a magnificent palace, and is now half in ruins, we

are endeavouring to procure. It is built upon terraces _raised from_

the bottom of the lake, together with its garden, at the foot of a

semi-circular precipice, overshadowed by profound forests of chesnut.

The scene from the colonnade is the most extraordinary, at once, and

the most lovely that eye ever beheld. On one side is the mountain, and

immediately over you are clusters of cypress-trees of an astonishing

height, which seem to pierce the sky. Above you, from among the

clouds, as it were, descends a waterfall of immense size, broken by the

woody rocks into a thousand channels to the lake. On the other side

is seen the blue extent of the lake and the mountains, speckled with

sails and spires. The apartments of the Pliniana are immensely large,

but ill furnished and antique. The terraces, which overlook the lake,

and conduct under the shade of such immense laurel-trees as deserve the

epithet of Pythian, are most delightful. We stayed at Como two days,

and have now returned to Milan, waiting the issue of our negotiation

about a house. Como is only six leagues from Milan, and its mountains

are seen from the cathedral.

This cathedral is a most astonishing work of art. It is built of white

marble, and cut into pinnacles of immense height, and the utmost

delicacy of workmanship, and loaded with sculpture. The effect of it,

piercing the solid blue with those groups of dazzling spires, relieved

by the serene depth of this Italian heaven, or by moonlight when the

stars seem gathered among those clustered shapes, is beyond any thing

I had imagined architecture capable of producing. The interior, though

very sublime, is of a more earthly character, and with its stained

glass and massy granite columns overloaded with antique figures, and

the silver lamps, that burn forever under the canopy of black cloth

beside the brazen altar and the marble fretwork of the dome, give it

the aspect of some gorgeous sepulchre. There is one solitary spot among

those aisles, behind the altar, where the light of day is dim and

yellow under the storied window, which I have chosen to visit, and read

Dante there.

I have devoted this summer, and indeed the next year, to the

composition of a tragedy on the subject of Tasso’s madness, which I

find upon inspection is, if properly treated, admirably dramatic and

poetical. But, you will say, I have no dramatic talent; very true,

in a certain sense; but I have taken the resolution to see what kind

of a tragedy a person without dramatic talent could write. It shall

be better morality than _Fazio_, and better poetry than _Bertram_,

at least. You tell me nothing of _Rhododaphne_, a book from which, I

confess, I expected extraordinary success.

Who lives in my house at Marlow now, or what is to be done with it? I

am seriously persuaded that the situation was injurious to my health,

or I should be tempted to feel a very absurd interest in who is to

be its next possessor. The expense of our journey here has been very

considerable--but we are now living at the hotel here, in a kind of

pension, which is very reasonable in respect of price, and when we

get into a ménage of our own, we have every reason to expect that we

shall experience something of the boasted cheapness of Italy. The

finest bread, made of a sifted flour, the whitest and the best I ever

tasted, is only _one English penny_ a pound. All the necessaries of

life bear a proportional relation to this. But then the luxuries, tea,

&c., are very dear,--and the English, as usual, are cheated in a way

that is quite ridiculous, if they have not their wits about them. We

do not know a single human being, and the opera, until last night, has

been always the same. Lord Byron, we hear, has taken a house for three

years, at Venice; whether we shall see him or not, I do not know. The

number of English who pass through this town is very great. They ought

to be in their own country in the present crisis. Their conduct is

wholly inexcusable. The people here, though inoffensive enough, seem

both in body and soul a miserable race. The men are hardly men; they

look like a tribe of stupid and shrivelled slaves, and I do not think

that I have seen a gleam of intelligence in the countenance of man

since I passed the Alps. The women in enslaved countries are always

better than the men; but they have tight-laced figures, and figures

and mien which express (O how unlike the French!) a mixture of the

coquette and prude, which reminds me of the worst characteristics of

the English. Everything but humanity is in much greater perfection here

than in France. The cleanliness and comfort of the inns is something

quite English. The country is beautifully cultivated; and altogether,

if you can, as one ought always to do, find your happiness in yourself,

it is a most delightful and commodious place to live in.

Adieu.--Your affectionate friend,

P. B. S.

TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

_Milan, April 30th, 1818._

My dear Peacock,

I write, simply to tell you, to direct your next letters, Poste

Restante, Pisa. We have engaged a vetturino for that city, and leave

Milan to-morrow morning. Our journey will occupy six or seven days.

Pisa is not six miles from the Mediterranean, with which it

communicates by the river Arno. We shall pass by Piacenza, Parma,

Bologna, the Apennines, and Florence, and I will endeavour to tell you

something of these celebrated places in my next letter; but I cannot

promise much, for, though my health is much improved, my spirits are

unequal, and seem to desert me when I attempt to write.

Pisa, they say, is uninhabitable in the midst of summer--we shall

do, therefore, what other people do, retire to Florence, or to the

mountains. But I will write to you our plans from Pisa, when I shall

understand them better myself.

You may easily conjecture the motives which led us to forego the

divine solitude of Como. To me, whose chief pleasure in life is the

contemplation of nature, you may imagine how great is this loss.

Let us hear from you _once a fortnight_. Do not forget those who do not

forget you.

Adieu.--Ever most sincerely yours,

P. B. Shelley.

TO THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

_Livorno, June 5, 1818._

My dear Peacock,

We have not heard from you since the middle of April--that is, we

have received only _one_ letter from you since our departure from

England. It necessarily follows that some accident has intercepted

them. Address, in future, to the care of Mr. Gisborne, Livorno--and I

shall receive them, though sometimes somewhat circuitously, yet always

securely.

We left Milan on the first of May, and travelled across the Apennines

to Pisa. This part of the Apennine is far less beautiful than the

Alps; the mountains are wide and wild, and the whole scenery broad and

undetermined--the imagination cannot find a home in it. The plain of

the Milanese, and that of Parma, is exquisitely beautiful--it is like

one garden, or rather cultivated wilderness; because the corn and the

meadow-grass grow under high and thick trees, festooned to one another

by regular festoons of vines. On the seventh day we arrived at Pisa,

where we remained three or four days. A large disagreeable city, almost

without inhabitants. We then proceeded to this great trading town,

where we have remained a month, and which, in a few days, we leave for

the Bagni di Lucca, a kind of watering-place situated in the depth of

the Apennines; the scenery surrounding this village is very fine.

We have made some acquaintance with a very amiable and acccomplished

lady, Mrs. Gisborne, who is the sole attraction in this most

unattractive of cities. We had no idea of spending a month here, but

she has made it even agreeable. We shall see something of Italian

society at the Bagni di Lucca, where the most fashionable people resort.

When you send my parcel--which, by-the-bye, I should request you to

direct to Mr. Gisborne--I wish you could contrive to enclose the two

last parts of Clarke’s Travels, relating to Greece, and belonging to

Hookham. You know I subscribe there still--and I have determined to

take the _Examiner_ here. You would, therefore, oblige me, by sending

it weekly, after having read it yourself, to the same direction, and so

clipped, as to make as little weight as possible.

I write as if writing where perhaps my letter may never arrive.

With every good wish from all of us, Believe me most sincerely yours,

P. B. S.

TO MR. AND MRS. GISBORNE

(LEGHORN).

_Bagni di Lucca, July 10th, 1818._

You cannot know, as some friends in England do, to whom my silence is

still more inexcusable, that this silence is no proof of forgetfulness

or neglect.