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Bank of Wisdom, Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
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LITTLE BLUEBOOK NO. 935
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
The Necessity of Atheism
by
Percy Bysshe Shelley
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS
FOREWORD
BY HENRY S. SALT
As a brief summary of Shelley's attitude toward the Christian
religion, I may be allowed to quote from what I have written
elsewhere. [Percy Bysshe shelley, Poet and Pioneer (Watts & Co.,
1913]
"I regard Shelley's early 'atheism' and later Pantheism, as
simply the negative and the affirmative side of the same
progressive but harmonious life-creed. In his earlier years his
disposition was towards a vehement denial of a theology which he
never ceased to detest; in his maturer years he made more frequent
reference to the great World Spirit in whom he had from the first
believed. He grew wiser in the exercise of his religious faith, but
the faith was the same throughout; there, was progression, but no
essential change."
The sequence of his thought on the Subject may be clearly
traced in several of his essays. In "The Necessity of Atheism," the
tract which led to his expulsion from Oxford University, we see
Shelley in his youthful mood of open denial and defiance. It has
been suggested that the pamphlet was originally intended by its
author to be a hoax; but such an explanation entirely misapprehends
not only the facts of the case, but the character of Shelley
himself. This was long ago pointed out by De guincey: "He affronted
the armies of Christendom. Had it been possible for him to be
jesting, it would not have been noble; but here, even in the most
monstrous of his undertakings -- here, as always, he was perfectly
sincere and single-minded." That this is true may be seen not only
from the internal evidence of "The Necessity" itself, but from the
fact that the conclusion which, Shelley meant to be drawn, from the
dialogue "A Refutation of Deism," published in 1814, was that there
is no middle course between accepting revealed religion and
disbelieving in the existence of a deity -- another way of stating
the necessity of atheism.
Shelley resembled Blake in the contrast of feeling with which
he regarded the Christian religion and its founder. For the human
character of Christ he could feel the deepest veneration, as may be
seen not only from the "Essay on Christianity," but from the
"Letter to Lord Ellenborough" (1812), and also from the notes to
"Hellas" and passages in that poem and in "Prometheus Unbound"; but
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The Necessity of Atheism by Percy Bysshe Shelley
he held that the spirit of established Christianity was wholly out
of harmony with that of Christ, and that a similarity to Christ was
one of the qualities most detested by the modern Christian. The
dogmas of the Christian faith were always repudiated by him, and
there is no warrant whatever in his writings for the strange
pretension that, had he lived longer, his objections to
Christianity might in some way have been overcome.
In conclusion, it may be said that Shelley's prose, if, not
great in itself, is the prose of a great poet, for which reason it
possesses an interest that is not likely to fail. It is the key to
the right understanding of his. intellect, as his poetry is the
highest expression of his genius.
THE NECESSITY OF ATHEISM
[NOTE -- The Necessity of Atheism was published by Shelley in
1811. In 1813 he printed a revised and expanded version of it as
one of the notes to his poem Queen Mab. The revised and expanded
version is the one here reprinted.]
THERE IS NO GOD
This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative
Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit co-eternal with the
universe remains unshaken.
A close examination of the validity of the proofs adduced to
support any proposition is the only secure way of attaining truth,
on the advantages of which it is unnecessary to descant: our
knowledge of the existence, of a Deity is a subject of such
importance that it cannot be too minutely investigated; in
consequence of this conviction we proceed briefly and impartially
to examine the proofs which have been adduced. It is necessary
first to consider the nature of belief.
When a proposition is offered to the mind, It perceives the
agreement or disagreement of the ideas of which it is composed. A
perception of their agreement is termed belief. Many obstacles
frequently prevent this perception from being immediate; these the
mind attempts to remove in order that the perception may be
distinct. The mind is active in the investigation in order to
perfect the state of perception of the relation which the component
ideas of the proposition bear to each, which is passive; the
investigation being confused with the perception has induced many
falsely to imagine that the mind is active in belief. -- that
belief is an act of volition, -- in consequence of which it may be
regulated by the mind. Pursuing, continuing this mistake, they have
attached a degree of criminality to disbelief; of which, in its
nature, it is incapable: it is equally incapable of merit.
Belief, then, is a passion, the strength of which, like every
other passion, is in precise proportion to the degrees of
excitement.
The degrees of excitement are three.
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The Necessity of Atheism by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The senses are the sources of all knowledge to the mind;
consequently their evidence claims the strongest assent.
The decision of the mind, founded upon our own experience,
derived from these sources, claims the next degree.
The experience of others, which addresses itself to the former
one, occupies the lowest degree.
(A graduated scale, on which should be marked the capabilities
of propositions to approach to the test of the senses, would be a
just barometer of the belief which ought to be attached to them.)
Consequently no testimony can be admitted which is contrary to
reason; reason is founded on the evidence of our senses.
Every proof may be referred to one of these three divisions:
it is to be considered what arguments we receive from each of them,
which should convince us of the existence of a Deity.
1st, The evidence of the senses. If the Deity should appear to
us, if he should convince our senses of his existence, this
revelation would necessarily command belief. Those to whom the
Deity has thus appeared have the strongest possible conviction of
his existence. But the God of Theologians is incapable of local
visibility.
2d, Reason. It is urged that man knows that whatever is must
either have had a beginning, or have existed from all eternity, he
also knows that whatever is not eternal must have had a cause. When
this reasoning is applied to the universe, it is necessary to prove
that it was created: until that is clearly demonstrated we may
reasonably suppose that it has endured from all eternity. We must
prove design before we can infer a designer. The only idea which we
can form of causation is derivable from the constant conjunction of
objects, and the consequent inference of one from the other. In a
base where two propositions are diametrically opposite, the mind
believes that which is least incomprehensible; -- it is easier to
suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity than to
conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it: if the
mind sinks beneath the weight of one, is it an alleviation to
increase the intolerability of the burthen?
The other argument, which is founded on a Man's knowledge of
his own existence, stands thus. A man knows not only that he now
is, but that once he was not; consequently there must have been a
cause. But our idea of causation is alone derivable from the
constant conjunction of objects and the consequent Inference of one
from the other; and, reasoning experimentally, we can only infer
from effects caused adequate to those effects. But there certainly
is a generative power which is effected by certain instruments: we
cannot prove that it is inherent in these instruments" nor is the
contrary hypothesis capable of demonstration: we admit that the
generative power is incomprehensible; but to suppose that the same
effect is produced by an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent being
leaves the cause in the same obscurity, but renders it more
incomprehensible.
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The Necessity of Atheism by Percy Bysshe Shelley
3d, Testimony. It is required that testimony should not be
contrary to reason. The testimony that the Deity convinces the
senses of men of his existence can only be admitted by us, if our
mind considers it less probable, that these men should have been
deceived than that the Deity should have appeared to them. Our
reason can never admit the testimony of men, who not only declare
that they were eye-witnesses of miracles, but that the Deity was
irrational; for he commanded that he should be believed, he
proposed the highest rewards for, faith, eternal punishments for
disbelief. We can only command voluntary actions; belief is not an
act of volition; the mind is ever passive, or involuntarily active;
from this it is evident that we have no sufficient testimony, or
rather that testimony is insufficient to prove the being of a God.
It has been before shown that it cannot be deduced from reason.
They alone, then, who have been convinced by the evidence of the
senses can believe it.
Hence it is evident that, having no proofs from either of the
three sources of conviction, the mind cannot believe the existence
of a creative God: it is also evident that, as belief is a passion
of the mind, no degree of criminality is attachable to disbelief;
and that they only are reprehensible who neglect to remove the
false medium through which their mind views any subject of
discussion. Every reflecting mind must acknowledge that there is no
proof of the existence of a Deity.
God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof:
the onus probandi rests on the theist. Sir Isaac Newton says:
Hypotheses non fingo, quicquid enim ex phaenomenis non deducitur
hypothesis, vocanda est, et hypothesis vel metaphysicae, vel
physicae, vel qualitatum occultarum, seu mechanicae, in philosophia
locum non habent. To all proofs of the existence of a creative God
apply this valuable rule. We see a variety of bodies possessing a
variety of powers: we merely know their effects; we are in a estate
of ignorance with respect to their essences and causes. These
Newton calls the phenomena of things; but the pride of philosophy
is unwilling to admit its ignorance of their causes. From the
phenomena, which are the objects of our attempt to infer a cause,
which we call God, and gratuitously endow it with all negative and contradictory qualities. From this hypothesis we invent this
general name, to conceal our ignorance of causes and essences. The
being called God by no means answers with the conditions prescribed
by Newton; it bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical
conceit, to hide the ignorance of philosophers even from
themselves. They borrow the threads of its texture from the
anthropomorphism of the vulgar. Words have been used by sophists
for the same purposes, from the occult qualities of the
peripatetics to the effuvium of Boyle and the crinities or nebulae
of Herschel. God is represented as infinite, eternal,
incomprehensible; he is contained under every predicate in non that
the logic of ignorance could fabricate. Even his worshippers allow
that it is impossible to form any idea of him: they exclaim with
the French poet,
Pour dire ce qu'il est, il faut etre lui-meme.
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Lord Bacon says that atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy,
natural piety, laws, reputation, and everything that can serve to
conduct him to virtue; but superstition destroys all these, and
erects itself into a tyranny over the understandings of men: hence
atheism never disturbs the government, but renders man more clear-
sighted, since he sees nothing beyond the boundaries of the present
life. -- Bacon's Moral Essays.
The [Beginning here, and to the paragraph ending with Systeme
de la Nature," Shelley wrote in French. A free translation has been substituted.] first theology of man made him first fear and adore
the elements themselves, the gross and material objects of nature;
he next paid homage to the agents controlling the elements, lower
genies, heroes or men gifted with great qualities. By force of
reflection he sought to simplify things by submitting all nature to
a single agent, spirit, or universal soul, which, gave movement to
nature and all its branches. Mounting from cause to cause, mortal
man has ended by seeing nothing; and it is in this obscurity that
he has placed his God; it is in this darksome abyss that his uneasy
imagination has always labored to fabricate chimeras, which will
continue to afflict him until his knowledge of nature chases these
phantoms which he has always so adored.
If we wish to explain our ideas of the Divinity we shall be
obliged to admit that, by the word God, man has never been able to
designate but the most hidden, the most distant and the most
unknown cause of the effects which he saw; he has made use of his
word only when the play of natural and known causes ceased to be
visible to him; as soon as he lost the thread of these causes, or
when his mind could no longer follow the chain, he cut the
difficulty and ended his researches by calling God the last of the
causes, that is to say, that which is beyond all causes that he
knew; thus he but assigned a vague denomination to an unknown
cause, at which his laziness or the limits of his knowledge forced
him to stop. Every time we say that God is the author of some
phenomenon, that signifies that we are ignorant of how such a
phenomenon was able to operate by the aid of forces or causes that
we know in nature. It is thus that the generality of mankind, whose
lot is ignorance, attributes to the Divinity, not only the unusual
effects which strike them, but moreover the most simple events, of
which the causes are the most simple to understand by whomever is
able to study them. In a word, man has always respected unknown
causes, surprising effects that his ignorance kept him from
unraveling. It was on this debris of nature that man raised the
imaginary colossus of the Divinity.
If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, knowledge of nature
is made for their destruction. In proportion as man taught himself,
his strength and his resources augmented with his knowledge;
science, the arts, industry, furnished him assistance; experience
reassured him or procured for him means of resistance to the
efforts of many causes which ceased to alarm as soon as they became
understood. In a word, his terrors dissipated in the same
proportion as his mind became enlightened. The educated man ceases
to be superstitious.
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It is only by hearsay (by word of mouth passed down from
generation to generation) that whole peoples adore the God of their
fathers and of their priests: authority, confidence, submission and
custom with them take the place of conviction or of proofs: they
prostrate themselves and pray, because their fathers taught them to
prostrate themselves and pray: but why did their fathers fall on
their knees? That is because, in primitive times, their legislators
and their guides made it their duty. "Adore and believe," they
said, "the gods whom you cannot understand; have confidence in our
profound wisdom; we know more than you about Divinity." But why
should I come to you? It is because God willed it thus; it is
because God will punish you if you dare resist. But this God, is
not he, then, the thing in question? However, man has always
traveled in this vicious circle; his slothful mind has always made
him find it easier to accept the judgment of others. All religious
nations are founded solely on authority; all the religions of the
world forbid examination and do not want one to reason; authority
wants one to believe in God; this God is himself founded only on
the authority of a few men who pretend to know him, and to come in
his name and announce him on earth. A God made by man undoubtedly
has need of man to make himself known to man.
Should it not, then, be for the priests, the inspired, the
metaphysicians that should be reserved the conviction of the
existence of a God, which they, nevertheless, say is so necessary
for all mankind? But Can you find any harmony in the theological
opinions of the different inspired ones or thinkers scattered over
the earth? They themselves, who make a profession of adoring the
same God, are they in Agreement? Are they content with the proofs
that their colleagues bring of his existence? Do they subscribe
unanimously to the ideas they present on nature, on his conduct, on
the manner of understanding his pretended oracles? Is there a
country on earth where the science of God is really perfect? Has
this science anywhere taken the consistency and uniformity that we
the see the science of man assume, even in the most futile crafts,
the most despised trades. These words mind immateriality, creation, predestination and grace; this mass of subtle distinctions with
which theology to everywhere filled; these so ingenious inventions,
imagined by thinkers who have succeeded one another for so many
centuries, have only, alas! confused things all the more, and never
has man's most necessary science, up to this time acquired the
slightest fixity. For thousands of years the lazy dreamers have
perpetually relieved one another to meditate on the Divinity, to
divine his secret will, to invent the proper hypothesis to develop
this important enigma. Their slight success has not discouraged the
theological vanity: one always speaks of God: one has his throat
cut for God: and this sublime being still remains the most unknown
and the most discussed.
Man would have been too happy, if, limiting himself to the
visible objects which interested him, he had employed, to perfect
his real sciences, his laws, his morals, his education, one-half
the efforts he has put into his researches on the Divinity. He
would have been still wiser and still more fortunate if he had been
satisfied to let his jobless guides quarrel among themselves,
sounding depths capable of rendering them dizzy, without himself
mixing in their senseless disputes. But it is the essence of
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The Necessity of Atheism by Percy Bysshe Shelley
ignorance to attach importance to that which it does not
understand. Human vanity is so constituted that it stiffens before difficulties. The more an object conceals itself from our eyes, the
greater the effort we make to seize it, because it pricks our
pride, it excites our curiosity and it appears interesting. In
fighting for his God everyone, in fact, fights only for the
interests of his own vanity, which, of all the passions produced by
the mal-organization of society, is the quickest to take offense,
and the most capable of committing the greatest follies.
If, leaving for a moment the annoying idea that theology gives
of a capricious God, whose partial and despotic decrees decide the
fate of mankind, we wish to fix our eyes only on the pretended
goodness, which all men, even trembling before this God, agree is
ascribing to him, if we allow him the purpose that is lent him of
having worked only for his own glory, of exacting the homage of
intelligent beings; of seeking only in his works the well-being of
mankind; how reconcile these views and these dispositions with the
ignorance truly invincible in which this God, so glorious and so
good, leaves the majority of mankind in regard to God himself? If
God wishes to be known, cherished, thanked, why does he not show
himself under his favorable features to all these intelligent
beings by whom he wishes to be loved and adored? Why not manifest
himself to the whole earth in an unequivocal manner, much more
capable of convincing us than these private revelations which seem
to accuse the Divinity of an annoying partiality for some of his
creatures? The all-powerful, should he not heave more convincing
means by which to show man than these ridiculous metamorphoses,
these pretended incarnations, which are attested by writers so
little in agreement among themselves? In place of so many miracles,
invented to prove the divine mission of so many legislators revered
by the different people of the world, the Sovereign of these
spirits, could he not convince the human mind in an instant of the
things he wished to make known to it? Instead of hanging the sun in
the vault of the firmament, instead of scattering stars without
order, and the constellations which fill space, would it not have
been more in conformity with the views of a God so jealous of his
glory and so well-intentioned for mankind, to write, in a manner
not subject to dispute, his name, his attributes, his permanent
wishes in ineffaceable characters, equally understandable to all
the inhabitants of the earth? No one would then be able to doubt
the existence of God, of his clear will, of his visible intentions.
Under the eyes of this so terrible God no one would have the
audacity to violate his commands, no mortal would dare risk
attracting his anger: finally, no man would have the effrontery to
impose on his name or to interpret his will according to his own
fancy.
In fact, even while admitting the existence of the theological
God, and the reality of his so discordant attributes which they
impute to him, one can conclude nothing to authorize the conduct or
the cult which one is prescribed to render him. Theology is truly
the sieve of the Danaides. By dint of contradictory qualities and
hazarded assertions it has, that is to say, so handicapped its God
that it has made it impossible for him to act. If he is infinitely
good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely
wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows
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The Necessity of Atheism by Percy Bysshe Shelley
all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If
he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear
that he will punish the creatures that he has, filled with
weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he
have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him,
how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the
blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If
he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his
decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF
HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED? If the knowledge
of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and
the clearest. -- Systame de la Nature. London, 1781.
The enlightened and benevolent Pliny thus Publicly professes
himself an atheist, -- Quapropter effigiem Del formamque quaerere imbecillitatis humanae reor. Quisquis est Deus (si modo est alius)
et quacunque in parte, totus est gensus, totus est visus, totus
auditus, totus animae, totus animi, totus sul. ... Imperfectae vero
in homine naturae praecipua solatia, ne deum quidem omnia. Namque
nec sibi protest mortem consciscere, si velit, quod homini dedit
optimum in tantis vitae poenis; nee mortales aeternitate donare,
aut revocare defunctos; nec facere ut qui vixit non vixerit, qui
honores gessit non gesserit, nullumque habere In praeteritum ius
praeterquam oblivionts, atque (ut. facetis quoque argumentis
societas haec cum, deo compuletur) ut bis dena viginti non sint, et
multa similiter efficere non posse. -- Per quaedeclaratur haud
dubie naturae potentiam id quoque ease quod Deum vocamus. -- Plin.
Nat. Hist. cap. de Deo.
The consistent Newtonian is necessarily an atheist. See Sir W.
Drummond's Academical Questions, chap. iii. -- Sir W. seems to
consider the atheism to which it leads as a sufficient presumption
of the falsehood of the system of gravitation; but surely it is
more consistent with the good faith of philosophy to admit a
deduction from facts than an hypothesis incapable of proof,
although it might militate, with the obstinate preconceptions of
the mob. Had this author, instead of inveighing against the guilt
and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct
would have, been more suited to the modesty of the skeptic and the
toleration of the philosopher.
Omnia enim per Dei potentiam facta aunt: imo quia naturae
potentia nulla est nisi ipsa Dei potentia. Certum est nos eatenus
Dei potentiam non intelligere, quatenus causas naturales ignoramus;
adeoque stulte ad eandem Dei potentism recurritur, quando rei
alicuius causam naturalem, sive est, ipsam Dei potentiam ignoramusd
-- Spinoza, Tract. Theologico-Pol. chap 1. P. 14.
ON LIFE
Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and
feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures
from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at
some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great
miracle. What are changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with
the opinions which support them; what is the birth and the
extinction of religious and of political systems, to life? What are
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the revolutions of the globe which we inhabit, and the operations
of the elements of which it is composed, compared with life? What
is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this inhabited earth
is one, and their motions, and their destiny, compared with life?
Life, the great miracle, we admire not because it is so miraculous.
It is well that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is
at once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which
would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that which is
its object.
If any artist, I do not say had executed, but had merely
conceived in his mind the system of the sun, and the stars, and
planets, they not existing, and had painted to us in words, or upon
canvas, the spectacle now afforded by the nightly cope of heaven,
and illustrated it by the wisdom of astronomy, great would be our
admiration. Or had he imagined the scenery of this earth, the
mountains, the seas, and the rivers; the grass, and the flowers,
and the variety of the forms and masses of the leaves of the woods,
and the colors which attend the setting and the rising sun, and the
hues of the atmosphere, turbid or serene, these things not before
existing, truly we should have been astonished, and it would not
have been a vain boast to have said of such a man, "Non merita nome
di creatore, se non Iddio ed il Poeta." But how these things are
looked on with little wonder, and to be conscious of them with
intense delight is esteemed to be the distinguishing mark of a
refined and extraordinary person. The multitude of men care not for
them. It is thus with Life -- that which includes all.
What is life? Thoughts and feelings arise, with or without,
our will, and we employ words to express them. We are born, and our
birth is unremembered, and our infancy remembered but in fragments;
we live on, and in living we lose the apprehension of life. How
vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our
being! Rightly used they may make evident our ignorance to
ourselves; and this is much. For what are we? Whence do we come?
and whither do we go? Is birth the commencement, is death the
conclusion of our being? What is birth and death?
The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of
life, which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact,
that which the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has
extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from
this scene of things. I confess that I am one of those who am
unable to refuse my assent to the conclusion of those philosophers
who assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived.
It is a decision against which all our persuasions struggle,
and we must be long convicted before we can be convinced that the
solid universe of external things is "such stuff as dreams are made
of." The shocking absurdities of the popular philosophy of mind and
matter, its fatal consequences in morals, and their violent
dogmatism concerning the source of all things, had early conducted
me to materialism. This materialism is a seducing system to young
and superficial minds. It allows its disciples to talk, and
dispenses them from thinking. But I was discontented with such a
view of things as it afforded; man is a being of high aspirations,
"looking both before and after," whose "thoughts wander through
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eternity," disclaiming alliance with transience and decay:
incapable of imagining to himself annihilation; existing but in the
future and the past; being, not what he is, but what he has been
and all be. Whatever may be his true and final destination, there
is a spirit within him at enmity with nothingness and dissolution.
This is the character of all life and being. Each is at once the
center and the circumference; the point to which all things are
referred, and the line in which all things are contained. Such
contemplations as these, materialism and the popular philosophy of
mind and matter alike they are only consistent with the
intellectual system.
It is absurd to enter into a long recapitulation of arguments
sufficiently familiar to those inquiring minds, whom alone a writer
on abstruse subjects can be conceived to address. Perhaps the most
clear and vigorous statement of the intellectual system is to be
found in Sir William Drummond's Academical Questions. After such an
exposition, it would be idle to translate into other words what
could only lose its energy and fitness by the change. Examined
point by point, and word by word, the most discriminating
intellects have been able to discern no train of thoughts in the
process of reasoning, which does not conduct inevitably to the
conclusion which has been stated.
What follows from the admission? It establishes no new truth,
it gives us no additional insight into our hidden nature, neither
its action nor itself: Philosophy, impatient as it may be to build,
has much work yet remaining as pioneer for the overgrowth of ages.
it makes one step towards this object; it destroys error, and the
roots of error. It leaves, what it is too often the duty of the
reformer in political and ethical questions to leave, a vacancy. it
reduces the mind to that freedom in which it would have acted, but
for the misuse of words and signs, the instruments of its own
creation. By signs, I would be understood in a wide sense,
including what is properly meant by that term, and what I
peculiarly mean. In this latter sense, almost all familiar objects
are signs, standing, not for themselves, but for others, in their
capacity of suggesting one thought which shall lead to a train of
thoughts. Our whole life is thus an education of error.
Let us recollect our sensations as children. What a distinct
and intense apprehension had we of the world and of ourselves! Many
of the Circumstances of social life were then important to us which
are now no longer so. But that is not the point of comparison on
which I mean to insist. We less habitually distinguished all that
we saw and felt, from ourselves. They seemed, as it were, to
constitute one mass. There are some persons who, in this respect,
are always children. Those who are subject to the state called
reverie, feel as if their nature were dissolved into the
surrounding universe, or as if the surrounding universe were
absorbed into their being. They are conscious of no distinction.
And these are states which precede, or accompany, or follow an
unusually intense and vivid apprehension of life. As men grow up
this power commonly decays, and they become mechanical and habitual
agents. Thus feelings and then reasoning are the combined result of
a multitude of entangled thoughts, and of a series of what are
called impressions, planted by reiteration.
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The Necessity of Atheism by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The view of life presented by the most refined deductions of
the intellectual philosophy, to that of unity. Nothing exists but
as it is perceived. The difference is merely nominal between those
two classes of thought which are distinguished by the names of
ideas and of external objects. Pursuing the same thread of
reasoning, the existence of distinct individual minds, similar to
that which is employed in now questioning its own nature, is
likewise found to be a delusion. The words, I, you, they, are not
signs of any actual difference subsisting between the assemblage of
thoughts thus indicated, but are merely marks employed to denote
the different modifications of the one mind.
Let it not be supposed that this doctrine conducts the
monstrous presumption that I, the person who now write and think,
am that one mind. I am but a portion of it. The words I, and you,
and they are grammatical devices invented simply for arrangement,
and totally devoid of the intense and exclusive sense usually
attached to them. It is difficult to find terms adequate to express
so subtle a conception as that to which the Intellectual Philosophy
has conducted us. We are on that verge where words abandon us, and
what wonder if we grow dizzy to look down the dark abyss of how
little we know!
The relations of things remain unchanged, by whatever system.
By the word things is to be understood any object of thought, that
is, any thought upon which any other thought is employed, with an
apprehension of distinction. The relations of these remain
unchanged; and such is the material of our knowledge.
What is the cause of life? That is, how was it produced, or
what agencies distinct from life have acted or act upon life? All
recorded generations of mankind have wearily busied themselves in
inventing answers to this question; and the result has been --
Religion. Yet that the basis of all things cannot be, as the
popular philosophy alleges, mind, is sufficiently evident. 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. It is said also to be the cause. But cause is only a word
expressing a certain state of the human mind with regard to the
manner in which two thoughts are apprehended to be related to each
other. If anyone desires to know how unsatisfactorily the popular
philosophy employs itself upon this great question, they need only
impartially reflect upon the manner in which thoughts develop
themselves in their minds. It is infinitely improbable that the
cause of mind, that is, of existence, is similar to mind.
ON A FUTURE STATE
It has been the persuasion of an immense majority of human
beings in all ages and nations that we continue to live after death
-- that apparent termination of all the functions of sensitive and
intellectual existence. Nor has mankind been contented with
supposing that species of existence which some philosophers have
asserted; namely, the resolution of the component parts of the
mechanism of a living being into its elements, and the
impossibility of the minutest particle of these sustaining the
smallest diminution. They have clung to the idea that sensibility
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The Necessity of Atheism by Percy Bysshe Shelley
and thought, which they have distinguished from the objects of it,
under the several names of spirit and matter, is, in its own
nature, less susceptible of division and decay, and that, when the
body is resolved into its elements, the principle which animated it
will remain perpetual and unchanged. Some philosophers -- and those
to whom we are indebted for the most stupendous discoveries in
physical science -- suppose, on the other hand, that intelligence
is the mere result of certain combinations among the particles of
its objects; and those among them who believe that we live after
death, recur to the interposition of a supernatural power, which
shall overcome the tendency inherent in all material combinations,
to dissipate and be absorbed into other forms.
Let us trace the reasoning which in one and the other have
conducted to these two opinions, and endeavor to discover what we
ought to think on a question of such momentous interest. Let us
analyze the ideas and feelings which constitute the contending
beliefs, and watchfully establish a discrimination between words
and thoughts. Let us bring the question to the test of experience
and fact; and ask ourselves, considering our nature in its entire
extent, what light we derive from a sustained and comprehensive
view of its component parts, which may enable us to assert, with
certainty,, that we do or do not live after death.
The examination of this subject requires that it should be
stripped of all those accessory topics which adhere to it in the
common opinion of men. The existence of a God, and a future state
of rewards and punishments are totally foreign to the subject. If
it be proved that the world is ruled by a Divine Power, no
inference necessarily can be drawn from that circumstance in favor
of a future state. It has been asserted, indeed, that as goodness
and justice are to be numbered among the attributes of the Deity,
he will undoubtedly compensate the virtuous who suffer during life,
and that he will make every sensitive being, who does not deserve
punishment, happy forever. But this view of the subject, which it
would be tedious as well as superfluous to develop and expose,
satisfies no person, and cuts the knot which we now seek to untie.
Moreover, should it be proved, on the other hand, that the
mysterious principle which regulates the proceedings of the
universe, to neither intelligent nor sensitive, yet it is not an
inconsistency to suppose at the same time, that the animating power
survives the body which it has animated, by laws as independent of
any supernatural agent as those through which it first became
united with it. Nor, if a future state be clearly proved, does it
follow that it will be a state of punishment or reward.
By the word death, we express that condition in which natures
resembling ourselves apparently cease to be that which they are. We
no longer hear them speak, nor see them move. If they have
sensations and apprehensions, we no longer participate in them. We
know no more than that those external organs, and all that fine
texture of material frame, without which we have no experience that
life or thought can subsist, are dissolved and scattered abroad.
The body is placed under the earth, and after a certain period
there remains no vestige even of its form. This is that
contemplation of inexhaustible melancholy, whose shadow eclipses
the brightness of the world. The common observer is struck with
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The Necessity of Atheism by Percy Bysshe Shelley
dejection of the spectacle. He contends in vain against the
persuasion of the grave, that the dead indeed cease to be. The
corpse at his feet is prophetic of his own destiny. Those who have
preceded him, and whose voice was delightful to his ear; whose
touch met his like sweet and subtle fire: whose aspect spread a
visionary light upon his path -- these he cannot meet again. The
organs of sense are destroyed, and the intellectual operations
dependent on them have perished with their sources. How can a
corpse see or feel? its eyes are eaten out, and its heart is black
and without motion. What intercourse can two heaps of putrid Clay
and crumbling bones hold together? When you can discover where the
fresh colors of the faded flower abide, or the music of the broken
lyre seek life among the dead. Such are the anxious and fearful
contemplations of the common observer, though the popular religion
often prevents him from confessing them even to himself.
The natural philosopher, in addition to the sensations common
to all men inspired by the event of death, believes that he sees
with more certainty that it is attended with the annihilation of
sentiment and thought. He observes the mental powers increase and
fade with those of the body, and even accommodate themselves to the
most transitory changes of our physical nature. Sleep suspends many
of the faculties of the vital and intellectual principle;
drunkenness and disease will either temporarily or permanently
derange them. Madness or idiocy may utterly extinguish the most
excellent and delicate of those powers. In old age the mind
gradually withers; and as it grew and was strengthened with the
body, so does it together with the body sink into decrepitude.
Assuredly these are convincing evidences that so soon as the organs
of the body are subjected to the laws of inanimate matter,
sensation, and perception, and apprehension, are at an end. It is
probable that what we call thought is not an actual being, but no
more than the relation between certain parts of that infinitely
varied mass, of which the rest of the universe is composed, and
which ceases to exist so soon as those parts change their position
with regard to each other. Thus color, and sound, and taste, and
odor exist only relatively. But let thought be considered only as
some peculiar substance, which permeates, and is the cause of, the
animation of living beings. Why should that substance be assumed to
be something essentially distinct from all others, and exempt from
subjection to those laws from which no other substance is exempt?
It differs, indeed, from all other substances, as electricity, and
light, and magnetism, and the constituent parts of air and earth,
severally differ from all others. Each of these is subject to
change and decay, and to conversion into other forms. Yet the
difference between light and earth is scarcely greater than that
which exists between life, or thought, and fire. The difference
between the two former was never alleged as an argument for eternal
permanence of either, in that form under which they first might
offer themselves to our notice. Why should the difference between
the two latter substances be an argument for the prolongation of
the existence of one and not the other, when the existence of both
has arrived at their apparent termination? To say that fire exists
without manifesting any of the properties of fire, such as light,
heat, etc., or that the Principle of life exists without
consciousness, or memory, or desire, or motive, is to resign, by an
awkward distortion of language, the affirmative of the dispute. To
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The Necessity of Atheism by Percy Bysshe Shelley
say that the principle of life may exist in distribution among
various forms, is to assert what cannot be proved to be either true
or false, but which, were it true, annihilates all hope of
existence after death, in any sense in which that event can belong
to the hopes and fears of men. Suppose, however, that the
intellectual and vital principle differs in the most marked and
essential manner from all other known substances; that they have
all some resemblance between themselves which it in no degree
participates. In what manner can this concession be made an
argument for its imperishabillity? All that we see or know perishes
and is changed. Life and thought differ indeed from everything
else. But that it survives that period, beyond which we have no
experience of its existence, such distinction and dissimilarity
affords no shadow of proof, and nothing but our own desires could
have led us to conjecture or imagine.
Have we existed before birth? It is difficult to conceive the
possibility of this. There is, in the generative principle of each
animal and plant, a power which converts the substances homogeneous
with itself. That is, the relations between certain elementary
particles of matter undergo a change, and submit to new
combinations. For when we use words: principle, power, cause, etc.,
we mean to express no real being, but only to class under those
terms a certain series of coexisting phenomena; but let it be
supposed that this principle is a certain substance which escapes
the observation of the chemist and anatomist. It certainly may be;
thought it is sufficiently unphilosophical to allege the
possibility of an opinion as a proof of its truth. Does it see,
hear, feel, before its combination with those organs on which
sensation depends? Does it reason, imagine, apprehend, without
those ideas which sensation alone can communicate? If we have not
existed before birth; If, at the period when the parts of our
nature on which thought and life depend, seem to be woven together;
If there are no reasons to suppose that we have existed before that
period at which our existence apparently commences, then there are
no grounds for supposing that we shall continue to exist after our
existence has apparently ceased. So far as thought and life is
concerned, the same will take place with regard to us, individually
considered, after death, as had taken place before our birth.
It is said that it is possible that we should continue to
exist in some mode totally inconceivable to us at present. This is
a most unreasonable presumption. It casts on the adherents of
annihilation the burden of proving the negative of a question, the
affirmative of which is not supported by a single argument, and
which, by its very nature, lies beyond the experience of the human understanding. It is sufficiently easy. indeed, to form any
proposition, concerning which we are ignorant, just not so absurd
as not to be contradictory in itself, and defy refutation. The
possibility of whatever enters into the wildest imagination to
conceive is thus triumphantly vindicated. But it is enough that
such assertions should be either contradictory to the known laws of
nature, or exceed the limits of our experience, that their fallacy
or irrelevancy to our consideration should be demonstrated. They
persuade, indeed, only those who desire to be persuaded.
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The Necessity of Atheism by Percy Bysshe Shelley
This desire to be forever as we are; the reluctance to a
violent and unexperienced change, which is common to all the
animated and inanimate combinations of the universe, is, indeed,
the secret persuasion which has given birth to the opinions of a
future state.
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The Bank of Wisdom is a collection of the most thoughtful,
scholarly and factual books. These computer books are reprints of
suppressed books and will cover American and world history; the
Biographies and writings of famous persons, and especially of our
nations Founding Fathers. They will include philosophy and
religion. all these subjects, and more, will be made available to
the public in electronic form, easily copied and distributed, so
that America can again become what its Founders intended --
The Free Market-Place of Ideas.
The Bank of Wisdom is always looking for more of these old,
hidden, suppressed and forgotten books that contain needed facts
and information for today. If you have such books please contact
us, we need to give them back to America.
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