Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer Part 6

In a most important essay bearing on this pa.s.sage, which should be widely studied, he observes:

"Love is inevitably consequent upon the perception of loveliness. Love withers under constraint; its very essence is liberty; it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear; it is then most pure, perfect, and unlimited, where its votaries live in confidence, equality, and unreserve."

He then urges:

"A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each other. Any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration; and there is nothing _immoral_ in this separation, for love is free. To promise forever to love the same woman, is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed."

He states categorically that

"The present system of constraint does no more, in the majority of instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies.

Persons of delicacy and virtue, unhappily united to those whom they find it impossible to love, spend the loveliest season of their lives in unproductive efforts to appear otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of their partners or the welfare of their mutual offspring; and that the early education of their children takes its color from the squabbles of the parents. They are nursed in a systematic school of ill-humor, violence, and falsehood, and the conviction that wedlock is indissoluble holds out the strongest of all temptations to the perverse. They indulge without restraint in acrimony and all the little tyrannies of domestic life, when they know that their victim is without appeal. If this connection were put on a rational basis, each would be a.s.sured that habitual ill-temper would terminate in separation, and would check this vicious and dangerous propensity."

He conceived from the re-arrangement of the marriage relation by greater facility of divorce than was to be had sixty years ago,[F]

"A fit and natural arrangement would result."

[Footnote F: It should be remembered that in Sh.e.l.ley's day divorce was obtainable by the most wealthy only, at an enormous cost and by a lengthy process, precluding the slightest opportunity for the middle and poorer cla.s.ses to avail themselves thereof.]

Sh.e.l.ley by no means a.s.serts that the intercourse would be promiscuous, but on the contrary believed that from the relation of parent to child a union is generally of longer duration, placed on such a footing, and marked above all others with generosity and self-devotion.

We are on the eve of great religious changes, which must consequently disturb all the social relations. Historical Christianity still holds to her old text, of marriage being a sacrament, and therefore indissoluble. The founder of Comtism developing this dogma, urges that after the death of either husband or wife the duty of the survivor is not to re-marry. Great Britain and many of the American States have conceded greater freedom in divorce, so as to carry out in a large measure the arguments of Sh.e.l.ley, while the theory of what is termed the "sovereignty of the individual" is propounded by the leaders of the free love party, as a cure for the present and former difficulties.

Whatever may be the outcome of the present widespread discussions I know not, but I have belief in the supreme intelligence and in humanity, and am certain that neither the home nor the race will suffer, but that out of all this agitation will come more refined sentiment and truer morality.

I must now conclude. It has been said that there are two things in which the professors of all theologies have agreed-"To persecute all other sects, and plunder their own." Sh.e.l.ley, who subscribed to no theology, was persecuted by them during his entire life, but he ever forgave his persecutors, who he was confident acted through ignorance of his real motives, and he tells us:

"I have thought to appeal to something in common and unburden my inmost soul to them. I have found my language misunderstood, like one in a distant and savage land. The more opportunities they have afforded me for experience, the wider has appeared the interval between us, and to a greater distance have the points of sympathy been withdrawn. With a spirit ill-fitted to sustain such proof, trembling and feeble through its tenderness, I have everywhere sought sympathy, and have found only repulse and disappointment."

Do _we_ misunderstand him? I think not, and William Howitt, a representative of the people, shall answer for them: "For liberty of every kind he was ready to die. For knowledge, and truth, and kindness, he desired only to live. He was a rare instance of the union of the finest moral nature and the finest genius. If he erred, the world took ample revenge upon him for it, while he conferred in return his amplest blessing on the world. It was long a species of heresy to mention his name in society; that is pa.s.sing fast away. It was next said that he never could become popular, and therefore the mischief he could do was limited. He _has_ become popular, and the good he is likely to do will be unlimited. The people read him, though we may wonder at it, and they comprehend him."

This estimate is not overrated, for, having confidence in his mission to humanity, he was fortified by the belief of his existing as an indestructible portion of interminable nature and the universal mind, which in all high intelligences lives through the ages, not only in the individual consciousness of the spirit, but in that immortality of soul or mind, which lives in the race.

He hated the superst.i.tions of Christian Fetishism and tyranny over the intellect, but loved Christ and the other philosophers with a genuine affection; he loved humanity, and was ever fond of examining its highest phases, as, for instance, through the doctrines of perfect equality in the s.e.xes--yet he recognised that sudden changes were prejudicial before sufficient progress had been accomplished. "To destroy, you must replace." Justice he considered the sole guide, reason and duty the only law. His morality was not that of pharasaical tartuffes, nor of prudish knickerbockers, who with wide phylacteries, sit in the high places to be seen of men. He only combatted evil principles and fought hard in favor of good.

He has been quoted as being too transcendental; he may be to dullards with imperfect reasoning faculties, or theologians, who only see through fanatical and green-monsterish spectacles, but to men who have a _live_ philosophy equally adapted to modern as well as ancient thought, he is as clear as the noon-day sun. All that is required, to comprehend Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley, is integralism of that high order which has ever believed in the ultimate perfectibility of human nature, and looked "forward to a period when a new golden age would return to earth, when all the different creeds and systems of the world would be amalgamated into one, crime disappear, and man, freed from shackles, civil and religious, bow before the throne 'of his own awless soul,' or 'of the power unknown,'" whose veil it is the ambition of theosophy to raise for humanity, and remain the "inscrutable" no longer.

I have completed my task, and with humility I make the statement, knowing that before me are many who could have performed it as completely as I have crudely. I look upon my essay, in which I have treated my subject popularly, with intention, as a beacon, whence a little light may be shed dimly, hoping that others, better qualified, will bring you face to face with the full rays.

I have shown you Sh.e.l.ley in his writings, his life and poetry, only where they trench on his philosophical and reform ideas--I could have related to you much about his inflexibly moral, generous, and unselfishly benevolent character--his pure, gentle and loveable existence--his utter abnegation of self, learnt from the hermetic philosophy, and his despisal of transitory legislative honors--how he, the heir to thousands of dollars annually, and a baronetage, threw aside pecuniary considerations for love of the truth and benevolence,[G] and how, therefrom, he was often nearly dying of hunger in the streets. I could have treated him simply as a poet, full of experienced impetuosity, subtlety of expression, and precision of verse, but I have aimed to exhibit one side of his immortality to you, which lives in and by the race, for humanity.

[Footnote G: "In his heart there was nothing depraved or unsound; those who had opportunities of knowing him best, tell us that his life was spent in the contemplation of nature, in arduous study, or in acts of kindness and affection. A man of learning, who shared the poverty so often attached to it, enjoyed from him at one period a pension of a hundred pounds sterling a year, and continued to enjoy it till fortune rendered it superfluous. To another man of letters, in similar circ.u.mstances, he presented fourteen hundred pounds; and many other acts like these are on record to his immortal honor. Himself a frugal and abstemious ascetic, by saving and economising, he was able to a.s.sist the industrious poor--and they had frequent cause to bless his name."--_National Magazine._]

Cut short in the youth of manhood, who can tell what Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley might, not have become, living for us even perhaps at this moment? What need we care, though, for does not the "Empire of the dead increase of the living from age to age?" Sh.e.l.ley's terrestrial body may have been cast up by the waves on the lonely Italian sh.o.r.e, in sweet companionship with the souls of Keats and Sophocles. His mundane elements, purified through the fire, may have returned to their kindred elements, and been

"made one with Nature, where is heard His voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird; He is a presence to be felt and known, In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, Spreading itself where'er that Power move, Which has withdrawn his being to its own; Which wields the world with never-wearied love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above."

His cinereal ashes may lie beneath the cypresses, near the dust of the "Adonais" of his muse, under Roman sod, and where he said:

"To see the sun shining on its bright gra.s.s, and hear the whispering of the wind among the leaves of the trees, which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, mostly of women and young children, who, buried there, we might, if we were to die, desire a sleep they seem to sleep."

All this may have happened, but why need we repine, for as eternal as the sea, as infinite as Nature, and as the phoenix, he revivifying lives, transmigrated and transfused into humanity, for with certainty we know that

"He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he."

Immortal amid immortals, his spirit in communion with the Most High, fully conscious in its individuality--immortal amid mortals, his place need never be refilled, for he stands betwixt the old and the new--immortal amid the sons of song, do poets still breathe his divine afflatus--immortal amid philosophers and the regenerators of the race, with Buddha, with Moses, with Socrates, with Mahomet, with Christ--immortal amid the n.o.ble, the virtuous, the good, the wise--immortal as when living here, for from spirit-spheres we hear him bidding us repeat:

"Nor let us weep that our delight is fled Far from these carrion-kites that scream below; He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.

Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal, which must glow Through time and change, unquenchably the same,"

"Peace! peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep-- He hath awaken'd from the dream of life-- 'Tis we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife; And in mad trance, strike with our spirits' knife, Invulnerable nothings!"

FINIS CORONAT OPUS.