Chapter M: De Voltaire (3)

"The Epicureans, instead of those bloody scenes of gallantry (which tyrants applaud,) undertook to manage carefully the inheritance of orphans; bringing up, at their own charge, the children of their deceased friends, and were counted good men, unless it were in front of religious worship; for they constantly affirmed that there were no Gods, or, at least, such as concerned themselves with human affairs, according to the poets. Neither doth the hope of immortality conduce to fortitude, as some vainly suggest, for Brutus was not more valiant than Cassius; and if we will confess the truth, the deeds of Brutus were more cruel than those of Cassius; for he used the Rhodians, who were his enemies, far more kindly than Brutus did those amicable cities which he governed. In a word, though they both, had a hand in Cæsar's murder, yet Brutus was the only parricide. So that the Stoics, which believed a Providence, lived as if there were none; whereas the Epicureans, who denied it, lived as if there were.... The next sect to the Epicureans, in point of incredulity, concerning the soul, I conceive to be the Sceptics, who were by some esteemed, not only the modestest, but the most perspicuous of all sects. They neither affirmed nor denied anything, but doubted of all things. They thought all our knowledge seemed rather like truth, than to be really true, and that for such like reasons as these:--

"1. They denied any knowledge of the Divine Nature, because, they say, to know adequately is to comprehend, and to comprehend is to contain, and the thing contained must be less than that which contains it; to know inadequately is not to know.

"2. From the uncertainty of our senses, as, for instance, our eyes represent things at a distance to be less than they really are. A straight stick in the water appears crooked; the moon to be no bigger than a cheese; the sun greater at rising and setting than at noon. The shore seems to move, and the ship to stand still; square things to be round at a distance; an erect pillar to be less at the top. Neither (say they) do we know whether objects are really as our eyes represent them to us, for the same thing which seems white to us seems yellow to a jaundiced man, and red to a creature afflicted with red eyes; also, if a man rubs his eyes, the figure which he beholds seems long or narrow, and therefore it is not improbable that goats, cats, and other creatures, which have long pupils of the eye, may think those things long which we call round, for as glasses represent the object variously, according to their shape, so it may be with our eyes. And so the sense of hearing deceives. Thus, the echo of a trumpet, sounded in a valley, makes the sound seem before us, when it is behind us. Besides, how can we think that an ear, which has a narrow passage, can receive the same sound with that which has a wide one? Or the ear, whose inside is full of hair, to hear the same with a smooth ear? Experience tells us that if we stop, or half stop, our ears, the sound cometh different as when the ears are open. Nor is the smelling, taste, or touch less subject to mistake; for the same scents please some, and displease others, and so in our tastes. To a rough and dry tongue that very thing seems bitter (as in an ague,) which to the most moist tongue seems otherwise, and so is it in other creatures. The like is true of the touch, for it were absurd to think that those creatures which are covered with shells, scales, or hairs, should have the same sense in touching with those that are smooth. Thus one and the same object is diversely judged of, according to the various qualities of the instruments of sense, which convinceth to the imagination; from all which the Sceptic concluded, that what these things are in their own nature, whether red, white, bitter, or sweet, he cannot tell; for, says he, why should I prefer my own conceit in affirming the nature of things to be thus, or thus, because it seemeth so to me--when other living creatures, perhaps, think it is otherwise? But the greatest fallacy is in the operation of our inward senses; for the fancy is sometimes persuaded that it hears and sees what it does not, and our reasoning is so weak, that in many disciplines scarce one demonstration is found, though this alone produces science. Wherefore it was Democritus's opinion that truth is hid in a well, that she may not be found by men. Now, although this doctrine be very inconsistent with Christianity, yet I could wish Adam had been of this persuasion, for then he would not have mortgaged his posterity for the purchase of a twilight knowledge. Now, from these sinister observations it was that they esteemed all our sciences to be but conjectures, and our knowledge but opinion. Whereupon, doubting the sufficiency of human reason, they would not venture to affirm or deny anything of the soul's future state; but civilly and quietly gave way to the doctrines and ordinances under which they lived, without raising or espousing any new opinions." Speaking of the "origin of the world," Gildon gives the following as a translation from Ocellus Lucanas:--"Again (says he,) as the frame of the world has been always, so it is necessary that its parts should likewise always have existed; by parts, I mean the heaven, earth, and that which lieth betwixt--viz., the sky; for not without these, but with these, and of these, the world consists. Also, if the parts exist, it is necessary that the things which are within them should also coexist; as with the heavens, the sun, moon, fixed stars, and planets; with the earth, animals, plants, minerals, gold, and silver; with the air, exhalations, winds, and alterations of weather, sometimes heat and sometimes cold, for with the world all those things do, and ever have existed, as parts thereof. Nor hath man had any original production from the earth, or elsewhere, as some believe, but have always been, as now he is, coexistent with the world, whereof he is a part. Now, corruptions and violent alterations are made according to the parts of the earth, by winds and waters imprisoned in the bowels thereof; but a universal, corruption of the earth never hath been, nor ever shall be. Yet these alterations have given occasion for the invention of many lies and fables. And thus are we to understand them that derive the original of the Greek history from Inachus, the Argive; not that he really was the original, as some make him, but because a most memorable alteration did then happen, and some were so unskilful as to attribute it to Inachus.... But for the universe, and all the parts whereof it subsists, as it is at present, so it ever was, and ever shall be; one nature perpetually moving, and another perpetually suffering, one always governing, and the other always being governed. The course which nature takes in governing the world, is by one contrary prevailing over another, as thus:--The moisture in the air prevaileth over the dryness of the fire; and the coldness of the wafer over the heat of the air, and the dryness of the earth over the moisture of the water; and so the moisture of the water over the dryness of the earth; and the heat in the air over the coldness of the water; and the dryness in the fire over the moisture of the air. And thus the alterations are made and produced, out of one another.... As nature cannot create by making something out of nothing, so neither can it annihilate, by turning something into nothing; whence it consequently follows, as there is no access, so there is no diminution in the universe, no more than in the alphabet, by the infinite combination and transposition of letters, or in the wax by the alteration of the seal stamped upon it. Now, as for the forms of natural bodies, no sooner doth any one abandon the matter he occupied, but another instantly steps into the place thereof; no sooner hath one acted his part and is retired, but another comes presently forth upon the stage, though it may be in a different shape, and so act a different part; so that no portion of the matter is, or at any time can be, altogether void and empty, but like Proteus, it burns itself into a thousand shapes, and is always supplied with one form or another, there being in nature nothing but circulation."

The following are the principal works of Blount:--"Anima Mundi; or, an Historical Narration of the Opinions of the Ancients concerning Man's Soul after this Life, according to Enlightened Nature;" published in 1679. Upwards of twenty answers were published to this work. In 1680 he published a translation, with notes, of the life of Apolloninis, of Tyana. This work was suppressed. During the same year, he gave the world "Great is Diana of the Ephesians; or, the Original of Idolatry."

By able critics this is considered one of his ablest works in 1683, "Religio Laici" appeared, which is published frum a Latin work of Lord Herbert's. In 1688 he wrote "A Vindication of Learning, and of the Liberty of the Press." This tractate sparkles with wit and argument. But by far the most important work he was connected with, was published in the year he died, and mainly written by himself, "The Oracles of Reason" a favorite title with both American and English Freethinkers. It consists of sixteen sections; the most interesting being the first four, containing "A Vindication of Dr. Burnett's Archiologie." The seventh and eighth chapters (translated) of the same, of "Moses's Description of the Original State of Man," and Dr. Burnett's "Appendix of the Brahmin's Religion." We would quote from these sections of the "Oracles," but intend to form separate "Half-Hours," with sketches of Drs. Brown and Burnett; it will be more appropriate to use Blount's translation in describing those quaint, but highly instructive authors. In the general style of Blount's works, he is not seen to advantage; there is too much heaviness, enhanced by the perpetual Greek and Latin quotations; but as his works were intended for scholars, and the time in which they were written was essentially the most pedantic era of our literary history, we cannot expect that vivacity and clearness which other writers in a later age possessed. It was in his character as a man that Blount excelled--he was the leader of the chivalry of the period, as in the next age Woolston was his successor. At the Court he was the gayest of the gay, without the taint of immorality, in a period of the grossest licentiousness; he defended the honor of his friends, frequently at the expense of calumny and danger. In witty repartees he was equal to Rochester; while for abstruse learning he was superior to many of the most learned theologians. Daintily brave and skilfully alive to the requirements of friends and foes, he passed through life in the gilded barge of pleasure, and ended it sailing through a cloud where he foundered. But the darkness which enveloped his history is now charged with that sympathetic power which draws the young to his grave, and compels the gloomiest to shed a tear over his unhappy fate.

At the close of August, in 1693, a few friends met near the grave of Blount, to join in their last respects to their lost friend. Foremost amongst them was Charles Gildon, who so soon repented of the part he had taken in the "Oracles of Reason," but never forgot the kindness he experienced from Blount. He lived long enough for Pope to be revenged on his apostacy, by inserting his name in his great satire. At the time we speak he was mournful and deeply grieved at the loss he had sustained; near him was Harvey Wilwood, whose bold demeanor and sorrowful countenance told of heart-struck grief, for of the few able to appreciate the genius of Blount, he was one of the earliest and most devoted in his friendship. Now we see the noble Lord, whom Blount always addressed as "the most ingenious Strephon;" along with him there is the pretty Anne Rogers, with Savage, and Major Arkwright; we look in vain for Eliza Tyr-rel; they talk slowly over him that is no more; they recount to themselves the intellectual achievements, and the brilliant hours they have spent in the past; and while they speak so kindly, and think so deeply, they kneel on the hallowed spot, but not to pray; some of them pledge their enmity against Christian laws and Christian priests, and they executed it. During this time, the calm radiance of the lunar light shines on the church of Ridge, illumining those ghostly tablets of white marble, where the forefathers of Blount lie entombed. The baronial arms are emblazoned on the wall; heraldic pomp is keeping watch over the mouldering bones of the now-levelled great. Anne Rogers weeps wildly for Eliza and Eleanora. Those metaphysical disquisitions which have exalted woman to so high a nature, that devotion to esthetics which woman should always cultivate, not as a household slave, but as one of equal rights with man, and his leader in everything which concerns taste, elegance, and modesty; such gifts in no ordinary degree had Anne Rogers--and often in dialectic subtlety had she mastered her relative, who stood by her side, and given tokens of her admiration of Blount's philosophy and conduct. "Strephon" was passionately attached to his confidant and friend, and could not give so calm an expression to his loss. He wept wildly, for he had lost one who tempered his rebuke with a kind word, and pointed out that Epicurean path which leads to enjoyment without excess: to pleasure, without a reaction. It was a memorable meeting. While the remembrance of past deeds of love lighted up the eye and made the blood course faster through their veins, Anne Rogers detailed the following episode in his character:--Blount had visited the Court of King James, and had been singled out by that monarch for one of his savage fits of spleen. "I hear, Mr. Blount, you are very tenacious of the opinions of Sir Henry, your father, and you consider his conduct during the Rebellion as worthy of imitation. Is it so?" "Your Majesty," replies Blount, "has been correctly informed; I admire my father's conduct." "What!" says James, "in opposing his king?" Blount quickly answered, "A king, my liege, is the chief magistrate of the Commonwealth, and is so hereditarily while he obeys the laws of that Commonwealth, whose power he represents; but when he usurps the direction of that power, he is king no longer, and such was the case with your royal father." With a scowl of defiance on his face, King James left the Freethinker, and sought more congenial company; and as Anne Rogers told the story, each eye was dimmed with tears. The moon had risen high in the heavens ere the mourners prepared to depart--the first streaks of dawn broke through the Eastern sky, and revealed the grave watered with tears, where the most chivalrous Freethinker of his age reposed, in that sleep which knows of no awakening.

"A. C."

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (the son and heir of a wealthy English baronet, Sir Timothy Shelley, of Castle Goring, in the county of Sussex) was born at Field Place, near Horsham, in that county, on the 4th of August, 1792. Ushered into the world in the midst of wealth and fashion, with all the advantages of family distinction, the future of Shelley's life appeared a bright one; but the sunshine of the morning only served to render the darkness which came over his noontide more dark, and to make poor Shelley still more susceptible of the hardships he had to encounter. First educated at Eton, his spirit there manifested itself by an unflinching opposition to the fagging system, and by revolt against the severe discipline of the school; in his "Revolt of Islam" Shelley has thus portrayed his feeling:--

"I do remember well the hour which burst
My spirit's sleep; a fresh May dawn it was
When I walked forth upon the glittering grass
And wept, I knew not why: until there rose
From the near school-room voices that, alas!
Were but one echo from a world of woes,
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.

And then I clasped my hands and looked around,
And none was near to mock my streaming eyes,
Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground;
So, without shame, I spake--' I will be wise,
And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
Such power, for I grow weary to behold
The selfish, and the strong still tyrannize
Without reproach or check.'"

.....

And from that hour did I, with earnest thought,
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore;
Yet nothing that ray tyrants knew or taught
I cared to learn, but from that secret store
Wrought linked armour for my soul, before
It might walk forth to war among mankind."

From Eton, Shelley went to Oxford, and while there he, scarce at the age of eighteen, published a volume of political rhymes, entitled "Margaret Nicholson's Remains," the said Margaret being a woman who tried to assassinate George III. He also wrote a pamphlet in defence of Atheism. A copy of this pamphlet he caused to be sent to the head of each of the colleges in Oxford, with a challenge to discuss and answer.--The answer to this was the edict which expelled Shelley from Oxford, and at the same time placed a wide chasm between him and his family. This breach was still further widened in the following year by his marriage, at the age of nineteen, with a beautiful girl named Westbrook. Although Miss Westbrook was respectfully connected, Shelley's aristocratic family regarded this as a _mesalliance_, and withdrew his pecuniary allowance; and had it not been for the bride's father, who allowed the young couple £200 a year, they would have been reduced to actual poverty. This was an unfortunate marriage for both. After having two children, disagreements arose, and Shelley was separated from his wife. She (like all beautiful women) was soon attacked by the busy tongue of slander, and, unable to bear the world's taunts, committed suicide by throwing herself into a pond, just four years from the date of their marriage. Shelley, on this account, suffered much misery and misrepresentation, and this misery was much increased by his family, who applied to the Court of Chancery, and obtained a decree, by which Shelley was deprived of the custody of his children, on the ground of his Atheism. The same spirit even now pervades the Shelley family, and scarce a copy of his poems can be found in the neighborhood of his birth-place. Shelley afterwards contracted a second marriage with the daughter of Godwin, the author of "Caleb Williams," and Mary Wollstonecroft (who died in giving birth to Shelley's wife), and for sometime the poet resided at Marlow in Buckinghamshire, where he composed the "Revolt of Islam;" and it is a strong proof of the reality of Shelley's poetical pleadings for the oppressed amongst the human race, that he was indefatigable in his attentions to the poor cottagers of his neighborhood; and that he suffered severely from an attack of opthalmia, which was originated in one of his benevolent visits. Nearly the first of Shelley's poems was his "Queen Mab," in which (having in vain struggled to devote himself to metaphysics apart from poetry), he blended his metaphysical speculation with his poetical aspirations. The following quotations are taken from that poem, in which his wonderful command of language is well shown:--

"There's not one atom of yon earth
But once was living man;
Nor the minutest drop of rain,
That hangeth in its thinnest cloud,
But flowed in human veins;

And from the burning plains
Where Lybian monsters yell,
From the most gloomy glens
Of Greenland's sunless clime,
To where the golden fields
Of fertile England spread
Their harvest to the day,
Thou canst not find one spot
Whereon no city stood.

How strange is human pride!
I tell thee that those living things,
To whom the fragile blade of grass,
That springeth in the morn
And perishes ere noon.

In an unbounded world;
I tell thee that those viewless beings.
Whose mansion is the smallest particle
Of the impassive atmosphere,
Think, feel, and live, like man:
That their affections and antipathies,
Like his, produce the laws
Ruling their mortal state;
And the minutest throb.

That through their frame diffuses
The slightest, faintest motion,
Is fixed and indispensable
As the majestic laws
That rule yon rolling orbs.

.....

How bold the flight of passion's wandering wing,
How swift the step of reason's firmer tread,
How calm and sweet the victories of life.
How terrorless the triumph of the grave!
How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm,
Vain his loud threat and impotent his frown!
How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar!
The weight of his exterminating curse,
How light! and his affected charity,
To suit the pressure of the changing times,
What palpable deceit!--but for thy aid,
Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend,
Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men,
And heaven with slaves!

Thou taintest all thou look'st upon!--The stare,
Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet,
Were gods to the distempered playfulness
Of thy untutored infancy: the trees,
The grass, the clouds, the mountains, and the sea,

All living things that walk, swim, creep, or fly,
Were gods: the sun had homage, and the moon
Her worshipper. Then thou becam'st a boy,
More daring in thy frenzies: every shape,
Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild,
Which, from sensation's relics, fancy culls;
The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost,
The genii of the elements, the powers
That give a shape to nature's varied works,
Had life and place in the corrupt belief
Of thy blind heart--yet still thy youthful hands
Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave
Its strength and ardor to thy frenzied brain;
Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene,
Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride.

Their everlasting and unchanging laws
Reproached thine ignorance.
Awhile thou stood'st
Baffled and gloomy; then thou did'st sum up
The elements of all that thou did'st know.

The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign,
The budding of the heaven-breathing trees,
The eternal orbs that beautify the night,
The sunrise, and the setting of the moon,
Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease,
And all their causes, to an abstract point,
Converging, thou did'st bend, and called it God;
The self-sufficing, the omnipotent,
The merciful, and the avenging God!

Who, prototype of human misrule, sits
High in Heaven's realm, upon a golden throne,
Even like an earthly king: and whose dread work,
Hell gapes forever for the unhappy slaves
Of fate, whom he created in his sport,
To triumph in their torments when they fell!

Earth heard the name; earth trembled, as the smoke
Of his revenge ascended up to Heaven,
Blotting the constellations: and the cries
Of millions, butchered in sweet confidence,
And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds
Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths,

Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land;
Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear,
And thou did'st laugh to hear the mother's shriek
Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel
Felt cold in her torn entrails!

Religion! thou wert then in manhood's prime;
But age crept on: one God would not suffice
For senile puerility; thou fram'dst
A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut
Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend
Thy wickedness had pictured might afford
A plea for sating the unnatural thirst
For murder, rapine, violence, and crime,
That still consumed thy being, even when
Thou heard'st the step of fate:--that flames might light
Thy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent shrieks
Of parents dying on the pile that burned
To light their children to thy paths, the roar
Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries
Of thine apostles, loud commingling there,
Might sate thy hungry ear
Even on the bed of death!

But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs;
Thou art descending to the darksome grave,
Unhonored and unpitied, but by those
Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds
Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun
Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night
That long has lowered above the ruined world."

Speaking of the Atheist's martyrdom in answer to the spirit of "Ianthe," Shelley makes his fairy say:--

"There is no God!
Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed.
Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race,
His ceaseless generations, tell their tale;

Let every part depending on the chain
That links it to the whole, point to the hand
That grasps its term! Let every seed that falls
In silent eloquence unfold its store
Of argument. Infinity within,
Infinity without, belie creation;
The exterminate spirit it contains
Is nature's only God: but human pride
Is skilful to invent most serious names
To hide its ignorance.

The name of God
Has fenced about all crime with holiness,
Himself the creature of his worshippers,
Whose names and attributes and passions change,
Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, Goa, or Lord,
Even with the human dupes who build his shrines.
Still serving o'er the war-polluted world
For desolation's watch-word; whether hosts
Stain his death-blushing chariot wheels, as on
Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise
A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans;
Or countless partners of his powers divide
His tyranny to weakness: or the smoke
Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,
Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy,
Horribly massacred, ascend to heaven
In honor of his name; or, last and worst,
Earth groans beneath religion's iron age,
And priests dare babble of a God of peace,
Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,
Murdering the while, uprooting every germ
Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,
Making the earth a slaughter-house."

"Ianthe's" spirit, however, asks still further, and the ghost of Ahasuerus having been summoned, the question is repeated, "Is there a God?"

"_Ahasuerus_.--Is there a God? ay, an Almighty God,
And vengeful as Almighty! Once his voice
Was heard on earth: earth shuddered at the sound,
The fiery-visaged firmament expressed
Abhorrence, and the grave of nature yawned
To swallow all the dauntless and the good
That dared to hurl defiance at his throne,
Girt as it was with power. None but slaves
Survived,--cold-blooded slaves, who did the work
Of tyrannous omnipotence: whose souls
No honest indignation ever urged
To elevated daring, to one deed
Which gross and sensual self did not pollute.
These slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend,
Gorgeous and vast: the costly altars smoked
With human blood, and hideous moans rung
Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard
His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts
Had raised him to his eminence in power,
Accomplice of omnipotence in crime,
And confidant of the all-knowing one.

These were Jehovah's words:
"From an eternity of idleness,
God, awoke: in seven days toil made earth
From nothing; rested, and created man.
I placed him in a paradise, and there
Planted the tree of evil, so that he
Might eat and perish, and my soul procure
Wherewith to sate its malice, and to turn,
Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth,
All misery to my fame. The race of men,
Chosen to my honor, with impunity,
May sate the lusts I planted in their heart.
Here I command thee hence to lead them on,
Until, with hardened feet, their conquering troops
Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood,
And make my name be dreaded through the land.
Yet ever burning flame and ceaseless woe
Shall be the doom of their eternal souls,
With every soul on this ungrateful earth,
Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong,--even all
Shall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge
Which you, to men, call justice, of their God."

The murderer's brow
Quivered with horror.
God omnipotent!
Is there no mercy? must our punishment
Be endless? will long ages roll away,
And see no 'term? Oh! wherefore hast thou made
In mockery and wrath this evil earth?
Mercy becomes the powerful--be but just:
O God! repent and save.

"One way remains!
I will beget a son, and he shall bear
The sins of all the world: he shall arise
In an unnoticed corner of the earth,

And there shall die upon a cross, and purge
The universal crime; so that the few
On whom my grace descends, those who are marked
As vessels to the honor of their God,
May credit this strange sacrifice, and save
Their souls alive. Millions shall live and die
Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name,
But, unredeemed, go to the gaping, grave.
Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale,
Such as the nurses frighten babes withal.
These in a gulph of anguish and of flame
Shall curse their reprobation endlessly.
Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow,
Even on their beds of torment, where they howl,
My honor, and the justice of their doom.
What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts
Of purity, with radiant genius bright,
Or lit with human reason's earthly ray?
Many are called, but few I will elect.
Do thou my bidding, Moses!"

In his poem of "Rosalind and Helen," the poet indulges in the following prophecy, which he puts in the mouth of Helen:--

"Fear not the tyrants shall rule forever,
Or the priests of the bloody faith;
They stand on the brink of that mighty river,
Whose waves they have tainted with death.
It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams, and rages, and swells;
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,
Like wrecks on the surge of eternity."

Beside the poems mentioned, Shelley wrote "The Cenci," "Alastor," "Prometheus Unbound," and many others, including a beautiful little ode to a "Skylark," and the well-known "Sensitive Plant."

Shelley was a true and noble man--no poet was ever warmed by a more genuine and unforced aspiration.--De Quincey says, "Shelley would, from his earliest manhood, have sacrificed all that he possessed for any comprehensive purpose of good for the race of man. He dismissed all insults and injuries from his memory. He was the sincerest and most truthful of human creatures.

"If he denounced marriage as a vicious institution, _that_ was but another phase of the partial lunacy which affected him: for to no man were purity and fidelity more essential elements in the idea of real love. Again, De Quincey speaks of Shelley's "fearlessness, his gracious nature, his truth, his purity from all flesh-liness of appetite, his freedom from vanity, his diffusive love and tenderness." This testimony is worth much, the more especially when we remember that it is from the pen of Thomas de Quincey, who, while truthfully acknowledging the man, hesitates not to use polished irony, rough wit, and covert sneering, when dealing with the man's uttered thinkings.

"That Shelley understood the true mission of a poet, and the true nature of poetry, will appear from the following extract from one of his prose essays:--"Poetry," he says, "is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling, sometimes associated with place and person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen, and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression. Poets are not only subject to these experiences, as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can color all they combine with the evanescent lines of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or passion will touch the enchanted cord, and reanimate in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide--abide, because there is no portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things."

Shelley's beautiful imagery and idealistic drapery is sometimes so accumulated in his poems, that it is difficult to follow him in his thinkings. In his verse he wishes to stand high as a philosophical reasoner, and this, together with his devotion to the cause, which even men of De Quincey's stamp call "Insolent Infidelity," has prevented Shelley from becoming so popular as he might have been.

Shelley lived a life of strife, passed his boyhood and youth in struggling to be free--misunderstood and misinterpreted: and when at last in his manhood happier circumstances were gathering around him, a blast of wind came, and the waves of the sea washed away one who was really and truly "a man and a poet."

On Monday. July 8th, 1822, being then in his 29th year, Shelley was returning from Leghorn to his home at Lerici, in a schooner-rigged boat of his own, with one friend and an English servant; when the boat had reached about four miles from the shore, the storm suddenly rose, and the wind suddenly shifted. From excessive smoothness, all at once the sea was foaming, and breaking, and getting up in a heavy swell. The boat is supposed to have filled to leeward, and (carry-ins: two tons of ballast) to have sunk instantaneously--all on board were drowned. The body of Shelley was washed on shore eight days afterwards, near Via Reggio, in an advanced state of decomposition, and was therefore burned on a funeral pyre in the presence of Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron, Mr. Trelawney, and a Captain Shenley.

Thus died Shelley in the mid day of life, and ere the warm sun of that mid-day could dispel the clouds that had gathered round the morning of his career. The following comparison made between the personal appearance of Shelley and of Byron, by Gilfillan, has been called by De Quincey "an eloquent parallel," and we therefore conclude the present number by quoting it:--

"In the forehead and head of Byron there is more massive power and breadth: Shelley has a smooth, arched, spiritual expression; wrinkle there seems none on his brow; it is as if perpetual youth had there dropped its freshness. Byron's eye seems the focus of pride and lust: Shelley's is mild, pensive, fixed on you, but seeing you through the mist of his own idealism. Defiance curls on Byron's nostril, and sensuality steps his full large lips. The lower features of Shelley's face are frail, feminine, flexible.--Byron's head is turned upwards as if having risen proudly above his contemporaries, he were daring to claim kindred, or demand a contest with a superior order of beings. Shelley's is half bent, in reverence and humility, before some vast vision seen by his own eye alone. Misery erect, and striving to cover its retreat under an aspect of contemptuous fury, is the permanent and pervading expression of Byron's countenance. Sorrow, softened and shaded away by hope and habit, lies like a 'holier day' of still moonshine upon that of Shelley. In the portrait of Byron, taken at the age of nineteen, you see the unnatural age of premature passion; his hair is young, his dress is youthful, but his face is old. In Shelley you see the eternal child, none the less that his hair is grey, and that sorrow seems half his immortality."

"I."

CLAUD ARIAN HELVETIUS.

If France, at the present day, has not reason to be proud of its "leading man," it has in former times produced those minds that shed lustre upon the country, and who, by their literature, add immortality to its renown. During the eighteenth century, when religious persecution and intolerance were rampant throughout Europe, France furnished men to check oppression and expose superstition, while others followed to lay the foundation of excellence and greatness in the examination and cultivation of its true source--the mind. Heivetius sought to direct men's attention to self-examination, and to show how many disputes might be avoided if each person understood _what_ he was disputing about. "Helvetius on the Mind" is a work that ought to be read widely, and studied attentively, especially by "rising young men," as it is one of those _Secular_ works too rarely found among our literature.

Claud Arian Helvetius was born in Paris in the year 1715. After his preparatory studies, he was sent to the College of Louis le Grand, having for his tutor the famous Poree, who bestowed additional attention upon Heivetius, perceiving in him great talent and genius. Early in life Heivetius formed the friendship of some of the leading minds of France, Montesquieu being his intimate friend. Voltaire, too, sought his correspondence when at the age of twenty-three, calling him his "Young Apollo," and his "Son of Parnassus." The first literary attempts of Helvetius consisted of poetry--"Epistles on Happiness," which appeared as a posthumous production, with the "lavish commendations" of Voltaire. After ten years' thought and study Helvetius in 1758, published a work entitled "De L'Esprit," which brought upon him a great amount of persecution. The Parliament of Paris condemned it, and Helvetius was removed from the office he held of "Maitre d'Hotel to the Queen." Voltaire remarks:--"it is a little extraordinary that they should have persecuted, disgraced, and harassed, a much respected philosopher of our days, the innocent, the good Helvetius, for having said that if men had been without hands they could not have built houses, or worked in tapestry. Apparently those who have condemned this proposition, have a secret for cutting stones and wood, and for sewing with the feet.... I have no doubt that they will soon condemn to the galleys the first who shall have the insolence to say, that a man cannot think without his head; for, some bachelor will tell him, the soul is a pure spirit, the head is nothing but matter: God can place the soul in the nails, as well as in the skull, therefore I proscribe you as impious."

During the persecution raised against him, Helvetius visited England in 1764. In 1765 he visited Prussia, being well received by Frederick, in whose place he lodged. Voltaire strongly advised Helvetius to leave France in these words:--"In your place, I should not hesitate a moment to sell all that I have in France; there are some excellent estates in my neighborhood, and there you might cultivate in peace the arts you love." About this period Hume became acquainted with Helvetius, whom he styles, in writing to Dr. Robertson, "a very fine genius and worthy man." In 1765, Helvetius returned from Prussia, and retired to his estate at Vore. The sight of misery much affected him; and when relieving distress, he enjoined strict secrecy. Sometimes, when told he relieved those undeserving his aid, he would say, "If I were a king I would correct them, but as I am only rich and they are poor, I do my duty in relieving them." An attack of gout in the head and stomach terminated his life in December, 1771, in the fifty-sixth year of his age.

In "De L'Esprit, or, Essays on the Mind," chap. I.. Helvetius makes the following remarks on the "Mind considered in itself":--

"We hear every day disputes with regard to what ought to be called the Mind; each person delivers his thoughts, but annexes different ideas to the word; and thus the debate is continued, without understanding each other. In order, therefore, to enable us to give a just and precise idea of the word Mind, and its different acceptations, it is necessary first to consider the Mind in itself. We consider the Mind either as the effect of the faculty of thinking, and in this sense the Mind is no more than an assemblage of our thoughts, or, we consider it as the very faculty of thinking. But in order to understand what is meant by the Mind, in the latter acceptation, we ought previously to know the productive causes of our ideas. Man has two faculties; or, if I may be allowed the expression, two passive powers whose existence is generally and distinctly acknowledged. The one is the faculty of receiving the different impressions caused by external objects, and is called Physical Sensibility. The other is the faculty of preserving the impressions caused by those objects, called Memory; and Memory is nothing more than a continued, but weakened sensation.--Those faculties which I consider as the productive causes of our thoughts, and which we have in common with beasts, would produce but a very small number of ideas, if they were not assisted by certain external organizations. If Nature, instead of hands and flexible fingers, had terminated our wrist with the foot of a horse, mankind would doubtless have been totally destitute of art, habitation, and defence against other animals. Wholly employed in the care of procuring food, and avoiding the beasts of prey, they would have still continued wandering in the forests, like fugitive flocks. It is therefore evident that, according to this supposition, the police would never have been carried in any society to that degree of perfection, to which it is now arrived. There is not a nation now existing, but, with regard to the action of the mind, must not have continued very inferior to certain savage nations, who have not two hundred different ideas, nor two hundred words to express those ideas; and whose language must consequently be reduced, like that of animals, to five or six different sounds or cries, if we take from it the words bow, arrow, nets, etc., which suppose the use of hands. From whence I conclude, that, without a certain exterior organization, sensibility and memory in us would prove two sterile faculties. We ought to examine if these two faculties, by the assistance of this organization, have in reality produced all our thoughts. But; before we examine this subject, I may possibly be asked whether these two faculties are modifications of a spiritual or a material substance? This question, which has formerly been so often debated by philosophers, and by some persons revived in our time, does not necessarily fall within the limits of my work.---What I have to offer, with regard to the Mind, is equally conformable to either of these hypothesis. I shall therefore only observe that, if the church had not fixed our belief in respect to this particular, and we had been obliged by the light of reason alone to acquire a knowledge of the thinking, principle, we must have granted, that neither opinion is capable of demonstration; and consequently that, by weighing the reasons on both sides, balancing the difficulties, and determining in favor of the greater number of probabilities, we should form only conditional judgments. It would be the fate of this problem, as it hath been of many others, to be resolvable only by the assistance of the calculation of probabilities."

Helvetius, on the question "whether genius ought to be considered as a natural gift, or as an effect of education," says:--

"I am going to examine in this discourse what the mind receives from nature and education; for which purpose it is necessary first, to determine what is here meant by the word Nature. This word may raise in our minds a confused idea of a being or a force that has endued us with all our senses: now the senses are the sources of all our ideas. Being deprived of our senses, we are deprived of all the ideas relative to them: a man born blind has for this reason no idea of colors; it is then evident that, in this signification, genius ought to be considered as a gift of nature. But, if the word be taken in a different acceptation, and we suppose that among the men well formed and endued with all their senses, without any perceivable defect of their organization, nature has made such a remarkable difference, and formed such an unequal distribution of the intellectual powers, that one shall be so organized as to be stupid, and the other be a man of genius, the question will become more delicate. I confess that, at first, we cannot consider the great inequality in the minds of men, without admitting that there is the same difference between them as between bodies, some of which are weak and delicate, while others are strong and robust. What can here occasion such variations from the uniform manner wherein nature operates? This reasoning, it is true, is founded only on analogy. It is like that of the astronomers who conclude that the moon is inhabited, because it is composed of nearly the same matter as our earth.--How weak soever this reasoning may be, it must yet appear demonstrative; for, say they, to what cause can be attributed the great disproportion of intellects observable between people who appear to have had the same education! In order to reply to this objection, it is proper first to inquire, whether several men can, strictly speaking, have the same education; and for this purpose to fix the idea included in the word Education. If by education we merely understand that received in the same places, and under the same masters; in this sense the education is the same with an infinite number of men. But, if we give to this word a more true and extensive signification, and in general comprehend everything that relates to our instruction; then I say, that nobody receives the same education; because each individual has, for his preceptors, if I may be allowed to say so, the form of government under which he lives, his friends, his mistresses, the people about him, whatever he reads, and in short chance; that is, an infinite number or events, with respect to which our ignorance will not permit us to perceive their causes, and the chain that connects them together. Now, this chance has a greater share in our education than is imagined. It is this places certain objects before us, and in consequence of this, occasions more happy ideas, and sometimes leads to the greatest discoveries. To give some examples: it was chance that conducted Galileo into the gardens of Florence, when the gardeners were working the pumps: it was that which inspired those gardeners, when, not being able to raise the water above the height of 32 feet, to ask him the cause, and by that question piqued the vanity of the philosopher, put in action by so casual a question, that obliged him to make this natural effect the subject of his thoughts, till, at last, by discovering the weight of the air, he found the solution of the problem. In the moment when the peaceful soul of Newton was employed by no business, and agitated by no passion, it was also chance that, drawing him under an apple tree, loosened some of the fruit from the branches, and gave that philosopher the first idea of his system on gravitation: it was really this incident that afterwards made him turn his thoughts to inquire whether the moon does not gravitate towards the earth with the same force as that with which bodies fall on its surface? It is then to chance that great geniuses are frequently obliged for their most happy thoughts. How many great minds are confounded among the people of moderate capacities for want of a certain tranquillity of soul, the question of a gardener, or the fall of an apple!"

Of the "exclusive qualities of the Mind and Soul," Helvetius observes:--

"My view in the preceding chapters was to affix clear ideas to the several qualities of the mind, I propose in this to examine if there are talents that must necessarily exclude each other? This question, it is said, is determined by facts; no person is, at the same time, superior to all others in many different kinds of knowledge. Newton is not reckoned among the poets, nor Milton among the geometricians: the verses of Leibnitz are bad. There is not a man who, in a single art, as poetry, or painting, has succeeded in all the branches of it. Corneille and Racine have done nothing in comedy comparable to Molière: Michael Angelo has not drawn the pictures of Albani, nor Albani painted those of Julius Romano. The genius of the greatest men appears then to be confined within very narrow limits. This is, doubtless, true: but I ask, what is the cause? Is it time, or is it wit, which men want to render themselves illustrious in the different arts and sciences? The progress of the human mind, it is said, ought to be the same in all the arts and sciences: the operations of the mind are reduced to the knowledge of the resemblances and differences that subsist between various objects. It is then by observation that we obtain, in all the different kinds of study, the new and general ideas on which our superiority depends. Every great physician, every great chemist, may then become a great geometrician, a great astronomer, a great politician, and the first, in short, in all the sciences This fact being stated, it will doubtless be concluded, that it is the short duration of human life that forces superior minds to limit themselves to one kind of study. It must, however, be confessed, that there are talents and qualities possessed only by the exclusion of some others. Among mankind some are filled with the love of glory, and are not susceptible of any other of the passions: some may excel in natural philosophy, civil law, geometry, and, in short, in all the sciences that consist in the comparison of ideas. A fondness for any other study can only distract or precipitate them into errors. There are other men susceptible not Only of the love of glory, but an infinite number of other passions: these may become celebrated in different kinds of study, where the success depends on being moved. Such is, for instance, the dramatic kind of writing: but, in order to paint the passions, we must, as I have already said, feel them very warmly: we are ignorant both of the language of the passions and of the sensations they excite in us, when we have not experienced them. Thus ignorance of this kind always produces mediocrity. If Fontenelle had been obliged to paint the characters of Rhadamistus, Brutus, or Cataline, that great man would certainly have fallen much below mediocrity.... Let a man, for instance, like M. de Fontenelle, contemplate, without severity, the wickedness of mankind; let him consider it, let him rise up against crimes without hating the criminals, and people will applaud his moderation; and yet, at the same instant, they will accuse him of being too lukewarm in friendship. They do not perceive, that the same absence of the passions, to which he owes the moderation they commend, must necessarily render him less sensible of the charms of friendship."

The "abuse of words" by different schools of philosophers is thus ably pointed out:--