contains one upon Shelley, which deals very clearly and
satisfactorily, as far as it goes, with this part of Shelley's work.
Mr. Bagehot showed with his usual acuteness how Shelley's philosophy
reflected the abnormal peculiarities of his character. He speaks
less, however, of certain extraneous influences which must have
materially affected Shelley's intellectual developments, and, indeed,
seems to have partly overlooked them. He tells us, for example,
that Shelley's poems show an 'extreme suspicion of aged persons.'
Undoubtedly a youthful enthusiast is apt to be shocked by the dogged
conservatism of older men who have been hammered into a more accurate
measure of the immovable weight of superincumbent prejudice in
the human mind. Shelley could not revolt against things in general
without contracting some dislike to the forces against which he
inevitably ran his head at starting. Even here, indeed, the charm
of Shelley's unworldly simplicity for men of an opposite type, for
cynics like Hogg, and Peacock, and Byron, is one of the pleasantest
indications of his character. He attracted, and doubtless because he
was attracted by, many who had nothing but contempt for his favourite
enthusiasms, and it is still more evident that, however wayward was
his career in some relations of life, he had a full measure of the
young man's capacity for reverence. Dr. Lind seems to have been his
earliest idol; but a far more important connection was that with
Godwin. Godwin was in his fifty-sixth, and Shelley in his twentieth
year, when their correspondence began, and Godwin's most remarkable
book was published when Shelley was in the cradle. Young gentlemen
of nineteen, even though they belong to the immortals, consider a
man of fifty-six to be tottering upon the verge of the grave. Books
published before we could spell appear to have been composed before
the invention of letters. To Shelley, in short, Godwin was to all
intents and purposes a venerable sage, and a fitting embodiment
of hoary wisdom. A guide, philosopher, and friend—an oracle who
can sanction his aspirations and direct him to the most promising
paths—is almost a necessity to every youthful enthusiast; the more
necessary in proportion as he has more emphatically broken with
the established order. What J. S. Mill was to men who were in their
early youth some twenty or thirty years ago, or Newman to young men
of different views at a slightly earlier period, that Godwin was to
Shelley in the years of his most impetuous speculation. A lad of
genius reads old books with eager appetite and learns something from
them; but to get the full influence of ideas he must feel that they
come from a living mouth, clothed in modern dialect, and applied
to the exciting topics of the day. Perhaps neither Mill nor Newman
said anything which might not be found implicitly contained in the
writings of their spiritual ancestors. Much of Mill is already
to be found in Locke, and Newman is at times the interpreter of
Butler. But then Butler and Locke have been dead for a long time;
and what the impatient youth requires is the direct evidence that
the ancient principles are still alive and efficient. The old key
has probably become rusty, and is more or less obsolete in form. The
youth cannot wait to oil and repair it for himself. He wants the
last new invention spick and span, and ready to be applied at once
to open the obstinate lock. Shelley read Helvetius and Holbach, and
Berkeley and Hume; but, though they supplied him with a tolerably
modern version of some ancient theories, they could not tell him by
anticipation what precise form of argument would best crush Paley,
or what specific policy would regenerate Ireland out of hand. For
such purposes a young man wants the very last new teacher, and the
chances are that he will read even the older philosophers through the
spectacles which such a teacher is kind enough to provide.
Thus, when looking about in this dark world, given over, as he
thought, to antiquated prejudice embodied in cruel injustice, Shelley
greeted the writings of Godwin as the lost traveller greets a
beacon-fire on a stormy night. They seemed to contain a new gospel.
When he discovered the author to be a real human being, not one of
the fixed stars that have been already guiding us from the upper
firmament, he threw himself at the philosopher's feet with the rapt
fervour of a religious neophyte. In his first letters to Godwin he
pours out his heart: 'Considering these feelings' (the feelings,
namely, of reverence and admiration which he has entertained for the
name of Godwin), 'you will not be surprised at the inconceivable
emotions with which I learnt your existence and your dwelling. I had
enrolled your name in the lists of the honourable dead. I had felt
regret that the glory of your being had passed from this earth of
ours. It is not so; you still live and, I firmly believe, are still
planning the welfare of human kind.' A letter written soon afterwards
from Dublin is still more significant. It begins with a kind of
invocation, as to a saint. 'Guide thou and direct me,' exclaims the
young gentleman; 'in all the weakness of my inconsistencies bear
with me; ... when you reprove me, reason speaks; I acquiesce in her
decisions.' He presently defends the impatience which Godwin has
blamed by an argument which evidently struck even Godwin as having an
absurd side. The 'Political Justice,' he says, was first published
nearly twenty years before (or almost at the dawn of history!), but
yet what has resulted from the general diffusion of its doctrines?
'Have men ceased to fight? Have woe and misery vanished from the
earth?' Far from it! Obviously something must be done, and that at
once. Do I not well to be impatient, he says, when such reasonable
expectations have been so cruelly disappointed?
It must be a most delightful sensation to have so ardent a disciple;
but it must also be a trifle provoking when the ardour is of a kind
to justify some misgiving as to the sanity of the proselyte. Even
the vanity of a philosopher could hardly blind him to the fact that
such extravagance tended to throw ridicule upon its object. Godwin,
however, kept his countenance—a little too easily perhaps—and gave
very sensible advice to his proselyte. He pointed out in substance
that it was not altogether amazing that vice and misery had survived
the publication of his wonderful book, and still recommended patience
and acceptance of the strange stupidity of mankind. We are aware that
in later years Shelley's reverence lost a little of its warmth: he
came to know Godwin personally. Moreover, among his other tenets,
the calm philosopher held the comfortable doctrine that philosophers
might and ought to receive pecuniary assistance from the rich without
any loss of dignity. His practical application of this theory is
described by Professor Dowden. It no doubt soon convinced Shelley that
Godwin was not altogether free from earthly stains, and in fact not so
indifferent as he ought to have been to the possible advantages of a
connection with the heir to a baronetcy and a good estate.
For the present, however, Shelley sat humbly at Godwin's feet He
declared that from the 'Political Justice' he had learnt 'all that
was valuable in knowledge and virtue.' He mixed with the queer
little clique of vegetarians and crotchet-mongers who shared his
reverence for Godwin and excited the bitter contempt of Hogg. It is,
therefore, not surprising that we find Shelley's doctrines to present
a curiously close coincidence with Godwin's. Partly, no doubt, it was
simply a coincidence. Shelley's temperament predisposed him to accept
conclusions which were in the air of the time, and which were to be
found more or less represented in many of his other authorities. But,
at any rate, we may fairly assume not only that he, as he was eager to
proclaim, learnt much from Godwin, but also that his whole course of
thought was guided to a great degree by this living representative of
his favourite theories. He studied the 'Political Justice,' pondered
its words of wisdom, and examined its minutest details. One trifling
indication may be mentioned. Amongst Shelley's fragmentary essays is
one upon 'A System of Government by Juries'—a 'singular speculation,'
as Mr. Rossetti naturally remarks. But the explanation is simply that
Godwin's theory, worked out in the 'Political Justice,' sets forth
government by these so-called juries as the ultimate or penultimate
stage of human society. Shelley, like a faithful disciple, was
writing an incipient commentary upon one of his teacher's texts. The
fragmentary 'Essay on Christianity,' of about the same date (1815), is
virtually an attempt to show that the valuable part of the Christian
religion is its supposed anticipation of Godwin's characteristic
tenets. But the coincidence does not consist in any minute points of
external resemblance. Godwin's poetical writings seem to have been
pretty well forgotten, though some interest in him is maintained by
'Caleb Williams' and by his relationship to Shelley. Hogg is evidently
anxious to sink as much as possible the intellectual obligations of
the disciple to so second-rate a teacher; and later writers upon
Shelley are content to speak vaguely of Godwin as a man who had some
philosophic reputation in his day, and some influence upon the poet.
A full exposition of Godwin's theories would display the closeness
of the mental affinity. That may be found elsewhere; but a brief
indication of his main tendencies will be sufficient for the present
purpose.
Godwin appeared to many youthful contemporaries—as may be seen from
the brilliant sketch in Hazlitt's 'Spirit of the Age'—as a very
incarnation of philosophy. 'No work in our time,' says Hazlitt,
'gave such a blow to the philosophical mind of the country as the
celebrated "Enquiry concerning Political Justice." Tom Paine was
considered for the time a Tom fool to him, Paley an old woman, Edmund
Burke a flashy sophist. Truth, moral truth, it was supposed, had here
taken up its abode, and these were the oracles of thought.' Hazlitt
is not given to measuring his words, and he was probably wishing to
please the decaying old gentleman. But doubtless there is some truth
in the statement. Godwin was admirably fitted to be an apostle of
reason, so far as a man can be fitted for that high post, by the
negative qualifications of a placid temper and singular frigidity
of disposition. He works out the most startling and subversive
conclusions with all the calmness of a mathematician manipulating a
set of algebraical symbols. He lays down doctrines which shock not
only the religious reverence, but the ordinary conscience of mankind,
as quietly as if he were stating a proposition of Euclid. An entire
absence of even a rudimentary sense of humour is of course implied in
this placid enunciation of paradoxes without the slightest perception
of their apparent enormity. But then a sense of humour is just the
quality which we do not desiderate in a revered philosopher.
It admits of more doubt whether Godwin possessed in any marked degree
the positive qualification of high reasoning power. What is called
'remorseless logic'—the ruthless sweeping aside of every consideration
that conflicts with our deductions from certain assumptions—is as
often a proof of weakness as of strength. Nothing is so easy as to be
perfectly symmetrical and consistent, if you will calmly accept every
paradox that flows from your principles and call it a plain conclusion
instead of a _reductio ad absurdum_. A man who is quite ready to say
that black is white whenever the whiteness of black is convenient for
his argument, may easily pass with some people for a great reasoner.
Godwin, however, was beyond question a man of considerable power,
though neither vigorous enough nor sufficiently familiar with the
wider philosophical conceptions to produce results of much permanent
value. Crude thinkers habitually mistake the blunders into which they,
like their fathers before them, have fallen for genuine discoveries.
They have once more made the old mistakes, and do not know that the
mistakes have been exposed.
Godwin was familiar with the recent school of French materialists, and
with the writings of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. He worked out by their
help a system which curiously combines opposite modes of thought. He
was, in one sense, a thoroughgoing sceptic. Nobody could set aside
more completely the whole body of theological speculation. He assumes
that all the old religions are exploded superstitions. He did not
argue against Theism, like Shelley; and, indeed, arguments that might
lead him into personal difficulty were not much to his taste. But he
virtually ignores all such doctrine as undeniably effete. So far he,
of course, sympathises with the French materialists, and with them he
abolishes at one blow all the traditional and prescriptive beliefs
of mankind. The fact that a doctrine has been generally accepted is
a presumption rather against it than in its favour. He will believe
nothing, nor even temporarily accept any practical precept which is
not capable of direct scientific proof. But, in the next place, Godwin
did not in any sense accept the materialism of the French writers.
He, like other English thinkers, had been profoundly impressed by the
idealism of Berkeley. But then he extends Berkeley by the aid of Hume.
He abolishes not only matter but mind. It may be still convenient to
use the word mind, but in fact there is nothing, so far as we know,
but a chain of 'ideas' which somehow link themselves together so as
to produce the complex idea we generally know by that name. Of any
substratum, any internal power which causes the coherence of these
ideas or of the universe in general, we know and can know absolutely
nothing.
When a man has got so far, he not unfrequently begins to feel himself
a little bewildered. Nothing is left—to quote from a philosopher of
whom neither Godwin nor Shelley apparently ever heard—but 'ceaseless
change.' 'I know of no being, not even of my own. Pictures are—they
are the only things which exist, and they know of themselves after
the fashion of pictures; pictures which float past without there
being anything past which they float, which by means of like pictures
are connected with each other; pictures without anything which is
pictured in them, without significance and without aim. I myself am
one of these pictures—nay, I am not even this, but merely a confused
picture of the pictures. All reality is transformed into a strange
dream, without a life which is dreamed of, and without a mind which
dreams it; with a dream which is woven together in a dream of itself.
Perception is the dream; thought is the dream of that dream.'
This description of the thoroughgoing sceptical position might pass
(to anticipate for a moment) for a description of the state of
mind produced by some of Shelley's poetry. It is, at any rate, a
state of mind from which a reasoner is generally anxious to provide
some escape, lest all ground for reasoning should be cut away.
How can knowledge be possible if the mind is merely a stream of
baseless impressions, cohering or separating according to radically
unknowable laws? Godwin, however, goes on calmly, without any attempt
to solve our difficulties, and proceeds to build up his scheme of
perfectibility. Upon this shifting quicksand of utter scepticism he
lays the foundations of his ideal temple of reason. For, as he argues,
since a man is nothing but an aggregate of 'ideas' he is capable of
indefinite modification. Education or the influences of climate or
race can have no ineradicable power upon this radically arbitrary
combination of flitting phantasms. Anything may be the cause of
anything; for cause means nothing but the temporary coherence of two
sets of unsubstantial images. And hence, we may easily abolish all the
traditional ties by which people have hitherto been bound together,
and rearrange the whole structure of human society on principles
of mathematical and infallible perfection. The force which is to
weave ropes of sand, or rather to arrange the separate independent
unsubstantial atoms in a perfect mathematical sphere, rounded,
complete and eternal, is the force of reason.
Godwin is troubled by no misgiving as to the power of reason when all
reality seems to have been abolished. He quietly takes for granted
that reason is the sole and sufficient force by which men are or may
be guided, and that it is adequate for any conceivable task. Not only
can it transform society at large, but it is potentially capable
of regenerating any given individual. The worst scoundrel could
be made into a saint if only you could expose him to a continuous
discharge of satisfactory syllogisms. Reason, as he calmly observes,
is 'omnipotent.' Therefore, he infers, when a man's conduct is wrong,
a very simple statement will not only show it to be wrong—just as it
is easy to show that two sides of a triangle are greater than the
third—but make him good. No perverseness, he thinks, would resist
a sufficiently intelligible statement of the advantages of virtue.
From this agreeable postulate, which he regards as pretty nearly
self-evident, Godwin draws conclusions from some of which, great as
was his courage in accepting absurdities, he afterwards found it
expedient to withdraw. Thus, for example, morality, according to him,
means simply the right calculation of consequences—I must always act
so as to produce the greatest sum of happiness. The accidental ties,
the associations formed by contingent circumstances, are no more to
override this principle than a proposition of Euclid is to vary when
applied to different parts of space. Three angles of a triangle are
as much equal to two right angles in England as in France. Similarly
the happiness of an Englishman is just as valuable as the happiness of
a Frenchman, and the happiness of a stranger as the happiness of my
relations. Hence—so runs his logic—friendship, gratitude, and conjugal
fidelity are simply mistakes. If my father is a worse man than a
stranger, I should rather save the stranger's life than my father's,
for I shall be contributing more to human happiness. If my wife and I
are tired of each other, we had better form new connections, for it
is unreasonable to sacrifice happiness to any accidental ties. Any
particular rule, indeed, is so far a mistake; for to act upon such a
rule is to disregard the general principles of reason. In every action
and in every relation of life, I should hold myself absolutely free
to act simply and solely with reference to the greatest happiness.
Habits are bad, for habits imply disregard of reason, and all promises
are immoral, for to keep a promise is to pay a blind obedience to the
past. To punish is unreasonable; for, in pure reason, we have no more
right to hate a villain than a viper or a cup of poison. The only
legitimate end of punishment is reform, and reform should be produced
by argument instead of imprisonment. All coercion is clearly bad, for
coercion is not argument; and, since all government implies coercion,
all government is immoral. Society, in short, must be reduced to an
aggregate of independent atoms, free from all conventions, from all
prescriptive rights and privileges, without the slightest respect for
any traditional institutions, and acting at every moment in obedience
to the pure dictates of reason.
When these principles have forced their way, and the omnipotence of
reason shows their triumph to be only a question of time, we shall
reach the millennium. Mind will then be omnipotent over matter (though
it is rather hard to say what either of those two entities may be);
kings, priests, laws, and family associations will disappear; and
every man will live in perfect peace and happiness in the light of
reason. One difficulty, indeed, suggests itself. Why, if reason be
thus omnipotent, has it done so little in the past? Whence this
persistence of inequality and injustice, this enormous power of sheer
obstinate, unreasoning prejudice in a set of beings who are to be
so completely regenerated by the power of pure reason? Monarchy, he
declares summarily, is founded on imposture. How, if reason be the one
force, has imposture been so successful, and, if successful for so
long, why should it not be successful hereafter?
To this Godwin has no very intelligible answer, or perhaps he hardly
sees that an answer is desirable. But, in truth, his whole system
appears to be so grotesque when brought to one focus and distinctly
stated, that we must in fairness recall two things: first, that
most philosophical systems appear absurd when summarised after their
extinction; and, secondly, that in bringing out in a very brief space
the most salient features of such a doctrine, it is quite impossible
to avoid caricature. There is enough not only of apparent philosophy
in it, but of really intelligent—though strangely one-sided—reflection
to enable us to understand how this deification of reason, falling
in with the most advanced movements of the time, should affect
Shelley's simple, impulsive, and marvellously imaginative nature. Men
of much stricter logical training considered Godwin to be a great,
if paradoxical, thinker, and Shelley, who had rather an affinity
for abstract metaphysical ideas than a capacity for constructing
them into logical wholes, was for a time entirely carried away.
When after reading Godwin's quiet prosaic enunciation of the most
startling paradoxes in the least impassioned language, we turn to
Shelley's poetical interpretation, the two seem to be related as the
stagnant pool to the rainbow-coloured mist into which it has been
transmuted. Shelley's fervid enthusiasm has vapourised the slightly
muddy philosophic prose, changed it into impalpable ether, and tinged
it with the most brilliant, if evanescent, hue. Shelley had certainly
learnt from others besides Godwin, and in particular had begun those
Platonic readings which afterwards generated his characteristic
belief in a transcendental world, the abode of the archetypal ideas
of beauty, love, and wisdom. But through all his poetry we find a
recurrence of the same ideas which he had originally imbibed from his
first master.
The Godwinism, indeed, is strongest in the crude poetry of 'Queen
Mab,' where many passages read like the 'Political Justice' done into
verse. So, for example, we have a naïf statement of the incoherent
theory which has already been noticed in Godwin's treatise. After
pointing to some of the miseries which afflict unfortunate mankind,
and observing that they are not due to man's 'evil nature,' which, it
seems, is merely a figment invented to excuse crimes, the question
naturally suggests itself, to what, then, can all this mischief be
due? Nature has made everything perfect and harmonious, except man. On
man alone she has, it seems, heaped 'ruin, vice, and slavery.' But the
indignant answer is given:—
Nature! No!
Kings, priests, and statesmen blast the human flower
Even in its tender bud; their influence darts
Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins
Of desolate society.
According to this ingenious view, 'kings, priests, and statesmen' are
something outside of, and logically opposed to, Nature. They represent
the evil principle in this strange dualism. Whence this influence
arises, how George III. and Paley and Lord Eldon came to possess an
existence independent of Nature, and acquired the power of turning all
her good purpose to nought, is one of those questions which we can
hardly refrain from asking, but which it would be obviously unkind
to press. Still less would it be to the purpose to ask how this
beneficent Nature is related to the purely neutral Necessity, which is
'the mother of the world,' or how, between the two, such a monstrous
birth as the 'prolific fiend' Religion came into existence. The crude
incoherence of the whole system is too obvious to require exposition;
and yet it is simply an explicit statement of Godwin's theories put
forth with inconvenient excess of candour. The absurdities slurred
over by the philosopher are thrown into brilliant relief by the poet.
Shelley improved as a poet, and in a degree rarely exemplified in
poetry, between 'Queen Mab' and the 'Prometheus'; but even in the
'Prometheus' and his last writings we find a continued reflection
of Godwin's characteristic views. Everywhere as much a prophet as a
poet, Shelley is always announcing, sometimes in exquisite poetry,
the advent of the millennium. His conception of the millennium, if
we try to examine precisely what it is, always embodies the same
thought, that man is to be made perfect by the complete dissolution
of all the traditional ties by which the race is at present bound
together. In the passage which originally formed the conclusion to
the 'Prometheus,' the 'Spirit of the Hour' reveals the approaching
consummation. The whole passage is a fine one, and it is almost a
shame to quote fragments; but we may briefly observe that in the
coming world everybody is to say exactly what he thinks; women are to
be—
gentle radiant forms,
From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;
Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,
Looking emotions once they feared to feel.
Thrones, altars, judgment seats, and prisons are to be abolished when
reason is absolute; and when
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself.
To be 'unclassed, tribeless, and nationless', and we may add, without
marriage, is to be in the lowest depths of barbarism. It is so, at
least, in the world of realities. But the description will fit that
'state of nature' of which philosophers of the time delighted to
talk. The best comment is to be found in Godwin. The great mistake
of Rousseau, says that writer, was that whilst truly recognising
government to be the source of all evil, he chose to praise the state
which preceded government, instead of the state which, we may hope,
will succeed its abolition. When we are perfect, we shall get rid of
all laws of every kind, and thus, in some sense, the ultimate goal
of all progress is to attain precisely to that state of nature which
Rousseau regretted as a thing of the past and which is described in
Shelley's glowing rhetoric.