Flowers of Freethought Volume I Part 6

On another occasion Sh.e.l.ley said to Trelawny--"The knaves are the cleverest; they profess to know everything; the fools believe them, and so they govern the world." Which is a most sagacious observation. He said that "Atheist!" in the mouth of orthodoxy was "a word of abuse to stop discussion, a painted devil to frighten the foolish, a threat to intimidate the wise and good."

Mr. Gosse may reply that Sh.e.l.ley's conversations with Trelawny are not absolute evidence; that they were written down long afterwards, and that we cannot be sure of Sh.e.l.ley's using the precise words attributed to him. Very well then; be it so. Mr. Gosse has appealed to Sh.e.l.ley's "writings," and to Sh.e.l.ley's writings we will go. True, the epithet "best" is inserted by Mr. Gosse as a saving qualification; but we shall disregard it, partly because "best" is a disputable adjective, but more because _all_ Sh.e.l.ley's writings attest his Atheism.

Let us first go to Sh.e.l.ley's prose, not because it is his "best" work (though some parts of it are exquisitely beautiful, often very powerful, and always chaste), but because prose is less open than verse to false conception and interpretation. In the fine fragment "On Life" he acutely observes that "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." And he concludes "It is infinitely improbable that the cause of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind." Be it observed, however, that Sh.e.l.ley does not dogmatise. He simply cannot conceive that mind is the _basis_ of all things. The cause of life is still obscure. "All recorded generations of mankind," Sh.e.l.ley says, "have wearily-busied themselves in inventing answers to this question; and the result has been--Religion."

Sh.e.l.ley's essay "On a Future State" follows the same line of reasoning as his essay "On Life." He considers it highly probable that _thought_ is "no more than the relation between certain parts of that infinitely varied ma.s.s, of which the rest of the universe is composed, and which ceases to exist as soon as those parts change their positions with regard to each other." His conclusion is that "the desire to be for ever as we are, the reluctance to a violent and unexperienced change," which is common to man and other living beings, is the "secret persuasion which has given birth to the opinions of a future state."

If we turn to Sh.e.l.ley's published letters we shall find abundant expressions of hostility to and contempt for religion. Those letters may deserve the praise of Matthew Arnold or the censure of Mr. Swinburne; but, in either case, they may be taken as honest doc.u.ments, written to all sorts of private friends, and never intended for publication.

Byron's letters were pa.s.sed about freely, and largely written for effect; Sh.e.l.ley's were written under ordinary conditions, and he unbosomed himself with freedom and sincerity.

From one of his early letters we find that he contemplated a translation of the _System of Nature_, which is frequently quoted in the notes to _Queen Mob_. He couples Jehovah and Mammon together as fit for the wors.h.i.+p of "those who delight in wickedness and slavery." In a letter to Henry Reveley he pictures G.o.d as delighted with his creation of the earth, and seeing it spin round the sun; and imagines him taking out "patents to supply all the suns in s.p.a.ce with the same manufacture."

When the poet was informed by Oilier that a certain gentleman (it was Archdeacon Hare) hoped he would humble his soul and "receive the spirit into him," Sh.e.l.ley replied: "if you know him personally, pray ask him from me what he means by receiving the _spirit into me_; and (if really it is any good) how one is to get at it." He goes on to say: "I was immeasurably amused by the quotation from Schlegel about the way in which the popular faith is destroyed--first the Devil, then the Holy Ghost, then G.o.d the Father. I had written a Lucianic essay to prove the same thing." In the very year of his death, writing to John Gisborne, he girds at the popular faith in G.o.d, and with reference to one of its most abhorrent doctrines he exclaims--"As if, after sixty years' suffering here, we were to be roasted alive for sixty million more in h.e.l.l, or charitably annihilated by a _coup de grace_ of the bungler who brought us into existence at first."--A dozen other quotations from Sh.e.l.ley's letters might be given, all to pretty much the same effect, but the foregoing must suffice.

A thorough a.n.a.lysis of Sh.e.l.ley's poetry, showing the essential Atheism which runs through it from beginning to end, would require more s.p.a.ce than we have at our command. We shall therefore simply point out, by means of instances, how indignantly or contemptuously he always refers to religion as the great despot and impostor of mankind.

The _Revolt of Islam_ stigmatises "Faith" as "an obscene worm." The sonnet on the Fall of Bonaparte concludes with a reference to "b.l.o.o.d.y Faith, the foulest birth of time." Sh.e.l.ley frequently conceives Faith as serpentine and disgusting. In _Rosalind and Helen_ he writes--

Grey Power was seated Safely on her ancestral throne; And Faith, the Python, undefeated, Even to its blood-stained steps dragged on Her foul and wounded train.

In the great and splendid _Ode to Liberty_ the image undergoes a Miltonic sublimation.

Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves Hung tyranny; beneath, sat deified The sister-pest, congregator of slaves.

Invariably does the poet cla.s.s religion and oppression together--"Religion veils her eyes: Oppression shrinks aghast."--"Destruction's sceptred slaves, and Folly's mitred brood."--"And laughter fills the Fane, and curses shake the Throne."

Mr. Herbert Spencer writes with learning and eloquence about the Power of the Universe and the Unknowable. Sh.e.l.ley p.r.i.c.ked this bubble of speculation in the following pa.s.sage:

What is that Power?

Some moonstruck sophist stood Watching the shade from his own soul upthrown Fill Heaven and darken Earth, and in such mood The Form he saw and wors.h.i.+pped was his own, His likeness in the world's vast mirror shown.

In one verse of the _Ode to Liberty_ the poet exclaims:

O that the free would stamp the impious name Of ------ into the dust or write it there.

What is the omitted word? Mr. Swinburne says the only possible word is--G.o.d. We agree with him. Anything else would be a ridiculous anti-climax, and quite inconsistent with the powerful description of--

This foul gordian word, Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind Into a ma.s.s, irrefragably firm, The axes and the rods that awe mankind.

"Pope" and "Christ" are alike impossible. With respect to "mankind" they are but local designations. The word must be universal. It is _G.o.d_.

The glorious speech of the Spirit of the Hour, which terminates the third Act of _Prometheus Unbound_--that superb drama of emanc.i.p.ate Humanity--lumps together "Thrones, altars, judgment seats, and prisons,"

as parts of one gigantic system of spiritual and temporal misrule. Man, when redeemed from falsehood and evil, rejects his books "of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance"; and the veil is torn aside from all "believed and hoped." And what is the result? Let the Spirit of the Hour answer.

The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains Sceptreless, free, uncirc.u.mscribed, but man Equal, uncla.s.sed, tribeless, and nationless, Exempt from awe, wors.h.i.+p, degree, the king Over himself; just, gentle, wise; but man Pa.s.sionless? no, yet free from guilt or pain, Which were, for his will made or suffered them; Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves, From chance, and death, and mutability, The clogs of that which else might oversoar The loftiest star of unascended heaven, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

What a triumphant flight! The poet springs from earth and is speedily away beyond sight--almost beyond conception--like an elemental thing.

But his starting-point is definite enough. Man is exempt from awe and wors.h.i.+p; from spiritual as well as political and social slavery; king over himself, ruling the anarchy of his own pa.s.sions. And the same idea is sung by Demogorgon at the close of the fifth Act. The "Earth-born's spell yawns for heaven's despotism," and "Conquest is dragged captive through the deep."

Love, from its awful throne of patient power In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour Of dread endurance, from the slippery steep, And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs And folds over the world its healing wings.

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and endurance, These are the seals of that most firm a.s.surance Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength; And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, Mother of many acts and hours, should free The serpent that would clasp her with his length, These are the spells by which to re-a.s.sume An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, t.i.tan! is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!

This is the Atheism of Sh.e.l.ley. Man is to conquer, by love and hope and thought and endurance, his birthright of happiness and dignity. Humanity is to take the place of G.o.d.

It has been argued that if Sh.e.l.ley had lived he would have repented the "indiscretions of his youth," and gravitated towards a more "respectable" philosophy. Well, it is easy to prophesy; and just as easy, and no less effectual, to meet the prophet with a flat contradiction. "Might have been" is no better than "might not have been." Was it not declared that Charles Bradlaugh would have become a Christian if he had lived long enough? Was not the same a.s.serted of John Stuart Mill? One was nearly sixty, the other nearly seventy; and we have to wonder what is the real age of intellectual maturity. Only a few weeks before his death, Sh.e.l.ley wrote of Christianity that "no man of sense could think it true." That was his deliberate and final judgment.

Had he lived long enough to lose his sense; had he fallen a victim to some nervous malady, or softening of the brain; had he lingered on to a more than ripe (a rotten) old age, in which senility may unsay the virile words of manhood; it is conceivable that Sh.e.l.ley might have become a devotee of the faith he had despised. But none of these things did happen. What Sh.e.l.ley _was_ is the only object of sane discussion.

And what he was we know--an Atheist, a lover of Humanity.

LONG FACES.

Every one who has turned over old volumes of sermons, adorned with the authors' portraits, must have been struck with the length of their faces. They seem to say--parodying the famous line of Dante--"Abandon jokes all ye who enter here." Those men preached a solemnly absurd creed, and they looked absurdly solemn. Their faces seemed as devoid of merriment as the faces of jacka.s.ses, and the heads above them were often as stupid. Justice forbid that I should run down a Hooker, a Barrow, a Taylor, or a South. They were men of _genius_, and all genius is of the blood royal. I read their writings with pleasure and profit, which is more than nine-tenths of the clergy can say with any approach to honesty. But a single swallow does not make a summer, and a few men of genius do not elevate a profession. I am perfectly convinced that the great bulk of the preaching fraternity have cultivated a solemn aspect--not perhaps deliberately, but at least instinctively--in order to impose on the ignorant and credulous mult.i.tude. The very tone of voice in which they pray, give out hymns, and preach, is _artificial_; in keeping with their artificial ideas and artificial sentiments; which, if they were expressed in natural tones, would excite universal contempt and derision.

Now this solemnity is the best trick in the priest's game. Gravity is always mistaken by the mult.i.tude for wisdom. A round-faced merry fellow shall make a bright, sensible speech, and he will be voted frivolous; but a long-faced, saturnine fellow shall utter a string of dull plat.i.tudes, and he will be voted a Solon. This is well known to the clergy, who have developed a perfect art of dullness. They talk an infinite deal of nothing, use a mult.i.tude of solemn words to hide an absurdity or no meaning at all, and utter the inherited s.h.i.+bboleths of their craft like the august oracles of a recent revelation.

Concede them the advantage of solemnity, or reverence, or whatever else it is called, and you give them the victory at the beginning of the battle. If _you_ pull a long face over their nonsense, the spectators, after all your arguments, will say, "There _must_ be something in it, though, for see how _serious_ he is." Whereas a light jest and a merry smile will show you are heart-free, and beyond the range of clerical artillery.

I do not pretend, however, that the efforts of Free-thought critics should have no background of seriousness. Wit without reason, says Heine, is but a sneeze of the intelligence. But has not wit ever been the keenest weapon of the great emanc.i.p.ators of the human mind? Not the mere plaything of an idle mind in an idle hour, but the coruscating blade to pierce the weak places of folly and imposture. Aristophanes, Lucian, Rabelais, Erasmus, and Voltaire--to take a few great instances--were all serious in aim and intention. They valued truth, goodness, and beauty, as much as the dreariest preachers. But they felt, because of their temperament, that while the dry light of the intellect is suited to the study of science, it is inadequate in the realm of political, social, and religious debate, where everything is steeped in feeling, and hopes and fears strive together, and imagination kindles the very senses into keener play.

After all, perhaps, this word _temperament_ is a solution in itself.

When Bishop South was taken to task by a brother bishop for his witticisms, he replied, "Do you mean to say that if G.o.d had given you any wit you would not have used it?" Thus is wisdom justified of her children.

My friendly though severe critic, Dr. Coit, who recently discoursed at South-place Inst.i.tute (or is it Chapel?) on the National Secular Society in general and myself in particular, could hardly deny that Voltaire was a master of wit, sarcasm, irony, and ridicule. Well, now, let us see what some serious writers have said of this nimble spirit. Robert Browning, in _The Two Poets of Croisic_ thus salutes him:

Ay, sharpest shrewdest steel that ever stabbed To death Imposture through the armor-joints!

Carlyle says "He gave the death-stab to modern superst.i.tion," and "it was a most weighty service." Buckle says he "used ridicule, not as the test of truth, but as the scourge of folly," and thus "produced more effect than the gravest arguments could have done." "Nor can any one since the days of Luther be named," says Brougham, "to whom the spirit of free inquiry, nay, the emanc.i.p.ation of the human mind from spiritual tyranny, owes a more lasting debt of grat.i.tude."

There is a story of the ma.n.u.script of Harrington's _Oceana_ being filched and given to Cromwell, and the sagacious "usurper" returned it saying, "My government is not to be overturned with paper pellets." But the ironical pamphlet, _Killing no Murder_, produced a different effect.

Nor did the royal and imperial despots, and their priestly abettors, in the eighteenth century, dread the solemn lovers of freedom. But the winged pen of Voltaire was a different matter. "Bigots and tyrants,"

says Macaulay, "who had never been moved by the wailing and cursing of millions, turned pale at his name."

If Dr. Coit imagines that Voltaire has lost his influence in France, I venture to say he is mistaken. The hand of Voltaire is on Renan, and on dozens of living soldiers in the French army of progress. And what man of letters in England--a country abounding in "the oxen of the G.o.ds,"

strong, slow, and stupid--is free from his influence? Carlyle's early essay on Voltaire is a mixture of hatred and admiration. But read the Life of Frederick, and see how the French snake fascinates the Scotch Puritan, until at last he flings every reservation aside, and hails with glowing panegyric the Savior of Calas.

Let me refer Dr. Coit to the delightful preface of a delightful book--Leland's introduction to his fine translation of Heine's _Reisebilder_. "Woe to those who are standing near," says Leland, "when a humorist of this stamp is turned loose upon the world. He knows nothing of your old laws,--like an Azrael-Napoleon he advances conscienceless, feeling nothing but an overpowering impulse, as of some higher power which bids him strike and spare not." But, after all, the main cause of progress is _agitation_, and though the agitation may be "eminently disagreeable to many, even friends, who are brought within its immediate action, it will be eminently beneficial in the end."

Yes, the hard-bound human mind, like the hardbound soil, has to be ploughed up. Let it shriek as it will, the work must be done, or the light and air will never penetrate, and an ocean of seeds will lie barren on the surface.

Dr. Coit need not fear that ridicule will excite apprehensions about the multiplication table. Ridicule has a fine scent for its proper prey.

It must detect the _ridiculous_ before it couches and springs. Truth, honor, consistency, disinterestedness, are invulnerable. What ridicule can kill deserves to die.