unimportant compared with the audacity of the Republic and the Symposium. Plato, indeed, is remarkable among philosophers for his union of moral and ethical fineness with extreme daring in moral speculation, and this union is just as characteristic of the disciple Shelley as it is of the master. We may perhaps divide the ideas which Shelley borrows from Plato into four main groups: (1) General religious and philosophical ideas; (2) Cosmic speculations; (3) Social and political ideas; (4) The theory of love. In dealing with the first group it becomes at once evident that Shelley's religious system is, speaking generally, rather Greek and Platonic than Christian or Biblical. Shelley was one of those to whom the Hebraic ideal appears naturally repugnant, his antipathy to it being as innate as Milton's sympathy. He disliked narrow-mindedness and exclusiveness, he disliked all kinds of formalism, he had the Greek detestation of priestcraft, severity of all kinds he abhorred and severity in morals appeared to him a contradiction in terms; the Jehovah of the Bible he not merely repudiates as an object of worship, he goes much further, and takes Jehovah as a supreme example of the worst type of moral evil. In Queen Mab he says of the temple at Jerusalem, in language whose anger has robbed it of all semblance of poetry: There an inhuman and uncultured race Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God; their victorious arms Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends: A special sanction to the trade of blood? His name and theirs are fading, and the tales, Itself into forgetfulness. In Prometheus Unbound Jupiter symbolizes all these religions of fear and terror which, originally given power by the mind of man (Prometheus) now tyrannize over and torture it, and the faith of the Bible is eminent among them; it is probably that Dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide As is the world it wasted. Shelley had no more sympathy with modern Hebraism than with ancient Hebraism. He loved Milton, since Milton was a Republican and a daring speculator in morals, but he declares: Milton's Devil as a moral being is as far superior to his God as one who perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture, is to one who in the cold security of undoubted triumph inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments.' 2 Nor was this all! Shelley not only disliked Hebraism but a much more serious loss-he was bitterly opposed to Christianity. There may have been nothing of the ancient Hebrew in his temperament, but there was certainly a great deal of the Christian, for he has many affinities even with St. Francis. But the school of thinkers whom Shelley so greatly admired—those of the Voltairean tradition—were opposed, quite inevitably, to historical Christianity. 'Let us not forget', says Lord Morley, 'that what Catholicism was accomplishing in France in the first half of the eighteenth century, was really not anything less momentous than the slow strangling of French civilization.' Their motto of 'Écrasez l'infâme' was, under the circumstances, unescapable. Shelley inherited from them this abhorrence: historical Christianity is to him always detestable. In Prometheus 1 Act III, Sc. 4. 2 Defence of Poetry. 3 3 Voltaire. Unbound he carefully distinguishes between the character of Christ, the most nobly beautiful that has ever appeared upon earth, and the horrible superstition which has perverted his teaching into one of the worst agents of evil. One came forth of gentle worth His words outlived him, like swift poison 'Tis his mild and gentle ghost Wailing for the faith he kindled.1 It was in this sense no doubt-because he hated established religions that Shelley called himself an atheist, but the whole structure of his mind was essentially religious. His religion was, however, Platonic both in its excellences and in what some might term its defects. Shelley like Plato believes in a supreme Power; it is beyond and above the world but also within, at once immanent and transcendent; it works from within the world, struggling with the obstructions of matter, transforming matter and moulding it to Its will. Like Plato, Shelley is vividly conscious of the unity of the world and of all life, and the underlying spirit, though it reveals itself in many forms, is everywhere and essentially the same. Plato contemplates it sometimes as the One in distinction to the many,2 sometimes as the supreme Good rising above all lesser goods, sometimes as the supreme Wisdom, sometimes as the supreme Beauty 5 above all lesser beauties. Shelley too celebrates this spirit in many different ways. With him also it is the One in contradistinction to the many: The One remains, the many change and pass. It is immanent in the world and yet transcendent; it is that Power Which wields the world with never-wearied Love In the very language of the Symposium Shelley describes it as the forming and formative spirit which compels matter to its will: the one Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there All new successions to the forms they wear; Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. It is the supreme Love above all other loves, which is represented (again in the language of the Symposium) as being excellent only in proportion as they reflect it: ... that sustaining Love It is also (as in the Phaedrus) the supreme Wisdom. Wisdom! thy irresistible children rise To hail thee, and the elements they chain 4 As is the case with Plato, Shelley's conception of the Supreme is much less anthropomorphic and personal than the God of the Bible. Another point of importance is that both Plato and Shelley lay hold of the idea of Deity largely from the aesthetic side. The God of the Bible is preeminently a moral ruler, a just and stern judge. Plato, loving as few men have ever loved the glorious beauty of the visible world, admires most in the Creator the element 1 Adonais. 3 Ibid. 4 Revolt of Islam, v. 51. 2 Ibid. of beauty; in the Symposium the supreme vision, the highest good, is represented as the culminating point of an ascent through different stages of aesthetic perception. Τοῦτο γὰρ δή ἐστι τὸ ὀρθῶς ἐπὶ τὰ ἐρωτικὰ ἰέναι ἢ ὑπ ̓ ἄλλου ἄγεσθαι, ἀρχόμενον ἀπὸ τῶνδε τῶν καλῶν ἐκείνου ἕνεκα τοῦ καλοῦ ἀεὶ ἐπανιέναι, ὥσπερ ἐπαναβαθμοῖς χρώμενον, ἀπὸ ἑνὸς ἐπὶ δύο καὶ ἀπὸ δυοῖν ἐπὶ πάντα τὰ καλὰ σώματα, καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν καλῶν σωμάτων ἐπὶ τὰ καλὰ ἐπιτηδεύματα, καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἐπιτηδευμάτων ἐπὶ τὰ καλὰ μαθήματα, καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν μαθημάτων ἐπ ̓ ἐκεῖνο τὸ μάθημα τελευτῆσαι, ὅ ἐστιν οὐκ ἄλλου ἢ αὐτοῦ ἐκείνου τοῦ καλοῦ μάθημα, καὶ γνῷ αὐτὸ τελευτῶν ὃ ἔστι καλόν. So with Shelley. His favourite method of approach to the supreme Power is the aesthetic one; it is the Intellectual Beauty of his early Hymn: Sudden thy shadow fell on me; I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! To thee and thine-have I not kept the vow? Again in Epipsychidion he speaks of Emily's beauty as being in that Beauty furled Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world. In Adonais it is That beauty in which all things work and move. Again it should be noted that, as with Plato, Shelley's God is only doubtfully omnipotent; Plato does not appear to solve to his own satisfaction the problem of evil; faced with the dilemma that either' He is not good or not omnipotent', Plato decides for the latter half of the dilemma and limits his Deity's omnipotence. In his later works, at least, he speaks as if there were a powerful spirit of evil interfering with the Supreme and marring its work. In the Timaeus the God of goodness has not merely helpers and subordinates but mighty opponents. In the Laws the beneficent principle of the world is matched against an evil principle which |