Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer Part 2

This is but a rough outline of some of the princ.i.p.al features of his considerations on soul immortality from a logical basis, and which, after all, only const.i.tute an argument, to which, and the thoughts presented therein, he did not necessarily bind himself. There can be little doubt, independently of what I have quoted, that he did not believe in a future state as popularly accepted. Trelawney asked him on one occasion: "Do you believe in the immortality of the spirit?"

Sh.e.l.ley's answer was unmistakable, "Certainly not; how can I? We know nothing; we have no evidence."[B]

[Footnote B: Those who desire to fully investigate Sh.e.l.ley's ideas on the immortality of the soul, and the existence, or nature, of Deity, will be amply repaid by reading W.M. Rossetti's admirable memoir of the poet, appended to the last two-volume London edition of his works.]

When we take Sh.e.l.ley from a poetical standpoint, or with the divine truism implanted by the Ain-soph clamoring within to his intelligence for expression, how confident he appears of a hereafter, as in the "Adonais," or in the following extract from an unpublished letter to his father-in-law, William G.o.dwin, the property of my friend C.W.

Frederickson, of New York, one of the most enthusiastic admirers of Sh.e.l.ley, and who has been often known to pay more than the weight in gold for Sh.e.l.leyana:

"With how many garlands we can beautify the tomb. If we begin betimes, we can learn to make the prospect of the grave the most seductive of human visions. By little and little we hive therein all the most pleasing of our dreams.

Surely, if any spot in the world be sacred, it is that in which grief ceases, and for which, if the voice within our hearts mocks us not with an everlasting lie, we spring upon the untiring wings of a pangless and seraphic life--those whom we love around us--our nature, universal intelligence, our atmosphere, eternal love."

How exquisite these remarks and his description of a disembodied spirit:

"it stood All beautiful in naked purity, The perfect semblance of its bodily frame, Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace, Each stain of earthliness Had pa.s.sed away, it re-a.s.sumed Its native dignity, and stood Immortal amid ruin."

It must appear impossible to any rational mind, that, with the full evidence before their eyes, materialists can attempt to claim Sh.e.l.ley as endorsing their doctrines, for even in the "Queen Mab," which has been considered by those not understanding it as a most atheistical poem, he speaks of--

"the remembrance With which the happy spirit contemplates Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth."

Positive dogmatists are tyrannically endeavoring to crush the belief in a soul, that All which makes the-present life happy on earth, the hope of our heritage in a future state. To them the fact that the race from the dawn of history, and through the ages has knelt down in abnegation before this inscrutable truth is nothing. This glorious belief evolved from the primaeval Cabala, taught in ancient Egypt, found contemporaneously in India, enunciated by scholarly Rabbis, ever present before the Chaldaean and a.s.syrian Magi, and laid down as axioms in the philosophical schools of Greece and Rome, not only to be discovered a fundamental in the Egyptian, the Hebraistic, the Brahminical, the Buddhistic, the Vedic, but also in all the sacred books of every nation, and handed down and perpetuated to these days as a sacred legacy from the past, by both Mohammed and Christ. This, the great co-mystery of all the ancient mysteries, shall remain ever present through all futurity like "the existing order of the Universe, or rather, of the _part of it known to us_," to use the phraseology of John Stuart Mill. Nations may rise and fall, theologies may flourish and decay, but this glorious and divine inheritance shall never pa.s.s away. Let pseudo-scientists avail themselves of stale and exploded arguments, and urge that there is no invisible world, and therefore no immortality for man, but honest scientists, like Professors Tait and Stewart, in the "Unseen Universe,"

will agree with the Illuminati: "in the position a.s.signed by Swedenborg, and by the Spiritualists, according to which they look upon the invisible world not as something absolutely distinct from the visible universe, and absolutely unconnected with it, as is frequently thought to be the case, but rather as a universe that has some bond of union with the present;" and like Tyndall, will be obliged in abject humility to acknowledge, unlike the initiated occultist, that: "When we endeavor to pa.s.s from the phenomena of physics to those of thought, we meet a problem which transcends any conceivable expansion of the powers we now possess. We may think over the subject again and again--it eludes all intellectual presentation--we stand at length face to face with the incomprehensible."

Sh.e.l.ley was ever calling attention to the fact that either from ignorance or the casuistical sophistries of mal-interested teachers who have distorted the divine pristine truths for their own base ends, emanated superst.i.tion, the taint of all it looked upon; and with no unsparing hand he flagellated the professors of the numerous false faiths, b.a.s.t.a.r.dized from their original purity, which have in their decay, darkened the earth, and with all the force of his powerful pen, mightier than any sword, he ridiculed these gross theologies existant among men, as in the following:

"Barbarous and uncivilized nations have uniformly adored, under various names, a G.o.d of which themselves were the model: revengeful, blood-thirsty, groveling and capricious.

The idol of a savage is a demon that delights in carnage.

The steam of slaughter, the dissonance of groans, the flames of a desolated land, are the offerings which he deems acceptable, and his innumerable votaries throughout the world have made it a point of duty to wors.h.i.+p him to his taste. The Phoenicians, the Druids and the Mexicans have immolated hundreds at the shrines of their divinity, and the high and holy name of G.o.d has been in all ages the watchword of the most unsparing ma.s.sacres, the sanction of the most atrocious perfidies."

Of the treatment Judaism, the foster mother of Christianity, received at the poet's hands, I will now recite two examples. To Moses, the Jehovah of the Hebrews is thus made to speak:

"From an eternity of idleness I, G.o.d, 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 l.u.s.ts _I_ planted in their hearts.

Here I command thee hence to lead them on, Until, with harden'd 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 fulfill the blind revenge (Which you to men call justice) of their G.o.d."

In another place Sh.e.l.ley is equally descriptive of the early stages of Jewish history, and makes the following observations on the building of the Temple of Jerusalem, which rearing high its thousand golden domes to heaven, exposed its glory to the face of day:

"Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed The building of that fane; and many a father, Worn out with toil and slavery, implored The poor man's G.o.d to sweep it from the earth, And spare his children the detested task Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning The choicest days of life, To soothe a dotard's vanity.

There an inhuman and uncultured race Howl'd hideous praises to their demon--G.o.d; They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb The unborn child--old age and infancy Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends, And what was he who taught them that the G.o.d Of nature and benevolence had given A special sanction to the trade of blood?

His name and theirs are fading, and the tales Of this barbarian nation, which imposture Recites till terror credits, are pursuing Itself into forgetfulness."

With the enlightenment of the present century in every department of knowledge, so has a corresponding degree of advancement been thrown on the science of history, which Sh.e.l.ley only partially apprehended. An enormous amount of new information is now to be gleaned from the writings of Ewald, Fergusson, Bunsen, Deutsch, Max Muller, Baring-Gould, Stanley, and other scholars of Orientation, which shows that the Hebrews, like every other nation, pa.s.sed through the various phases of Nomadism and Pastoralism, to that of offensive and defensive war. The same as other races, they came through the usual steps in religious progress--Fetis.h.i.+sm, Astrolatry, Polytheism and Monotheism.

During phases in their history they partic.i.p.ated in the various forms of tree and serpent, Phallic, or fire-wors.h.i.+p. They had, as the Talmud, Targums, and the Old Testament show, a knowledge of the Egyptian or Chaldaic account of the creation and fall, the latter still to be seen on the walls of the temple of Osiris at Philae. They had much knowledge of the Cabala, through their great prophet Moses, who was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," and, like Pythagoras, had been initiated into their mysteries, and who both imparted the knowledge in part to their compatriots, on which they both founded systems.

A great traveler, and most learned modern writer on Occultism, who claims, on good grounds, to have been received into the ancient branch of the Rosie Cross in the far East, Madame Helena P. de Blavatsky, imparts the following particulars: "The first Cabala in which a mortal man ever dared to explain the greatest mysteries of the universe, and show the keys to those masked doors in the ramparts of Nature, through which no mortal can ever pa.s.s without rousing dread sentries never seen upon this side her wall, was compiled by a certain Simeon Ben Jochai, who lived at the time of the second temple's destruction. Only about thirty years after the death of this renowned Cabalist, his MSS.

and written explanations, which had till then remained in his possession as a most precious secret, were used by his son, Rabbi Elizzar, and other learned men. Making a compilation of the whole, they so produced the famous work called _Zohar_ (G.o.d's splendor). This book proved an inexhaustible mine for all the subsequent Cabalists, their source of information and knowledge, and all more recent and genuine Cabalas were all more or less carefully copied from the former. Before that, all the mysterious doctrines had come down in an unbroken line of merely oral tradition as far back as man could trace himself on earth. They were scrupulously and jealously guarded by the wise men of Chaldea, India, Persia and Egypt, and pa.s.sed from one initiate to another, in the same purity of form as when handed down to the first man by the angels, students of G.o.d's great Theosophic seminary."

Many Free Thinkers, in their anxiety to crush everything belonging to Christianity, often forget that, in throwing aside the Hebrew records as utterly worthless, they are getting rid of one of the most ancient literatures in the world. They also do not remember the history of a peculiar nation, strangely preserved amid the fluctuations of time, the purity and excellence of the Book of Job, the Psalms, and others which I could name. They cast unmerited contempt on these compilations, when, at the same time, they will throw themselves, with almost Fetish reverence, and apparently rapt adoration, before the Inst.i.tutes of Menu, the Bhagvat-Geeta, the morals of Chaoung-Fou-Tszee, the Zend-Avesta, the Rig-Veda, the Oracles of Zoroaster, the Book of the Dead, the Puranas, the Shastras, and the like.

Well may the Sons of Israel be proud of their ancient descent. They suffered through Christian persecutions uncomplainingly--the torture, the rack, the _auto-da-fe_--and yet they bowed their heads in submission to the will of Adonai. To-day they stand upright and united, as in olden times. They have gained the victory over the false disciples of the Nazarene, who, in days gone by, forgot their erudition, their medical knowledge, their commercial activity, and general culture. Pre-eminent in wealth and learning, they are found on the lecture-platform, in the fields of literature and science, in the councils of rulers, on the exchange, in the legislature--everywhere.

When Greece and Rome were in their infancy, this extraordinary people was in middle age; and when our Saxon forefathers were in the lowest stage of barbarism, they were in a state of high civilization; and to-day, although scattered, they show a compact front, firmly knit in the bonds of brotherly love, a model for Christians. The great reform movement now agitating Judaism, as well as every other species of political and metaphysical thought, will eventually aid to consolidate all the races into one race--Humanity.

In order to make Christians prejudge Sh.e.l.ley it has been the wont of theologians, as usual in fighting their antagonists, to cry up a false issue, and to make their followers believe that he was rather more than a mere hater of Jesus Christ, and of the teachings of that religious and social reformer, in fact, that he was an infidel of infidels. To have no misconceptions--for it has been stated that Sh.e.l.ley changed his views on Christ, which after ten years' careful study of his writings, I utterly deny, it should be thoroughly understood that he regarded this pious Israelite in a duismal aspect--as Christ the Man, and as Christ the G.o.d. I must not, while here, forget that many advanced metaphysicians agree that they cannot satisfactorily prove the historical existence of Christ, and that they have to winnow through a vast amount of chaff to get at his presumed philosophy, and the facts in his life, which like that of Buddha is wrapped up in traditional fable.

For the Man Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter's carnate son, the mystical Essene and occultist, Sh.e.l.ley exceeded in love and reverence many of the most earnest Christians, and in no theological writings can there be discovered such beautiful sentiments concerning the "The Regenerator of the World," and the "Meek Reformer," of whom he speaks as contemplating that mysterious principle called G.o.d, the fundamental of all good, and the source of all happiness, as every true poet and philosopher must have done. It is impossible to turn to any page of his works, where, in speaking of Christ, he fails in this--he expatiates with as great fervor as Renan, Seeley, or Strauss, on Christ's exposing with earnest eloquence, like all true members of the brotherhood of Illuminati, to which he belonged, the panic fears and hateful superst.i.tions which have enslaved mankind for ages, and extols

"His extraordinary genius, the wide and rapid effects of his unexampled doctrines, his invincible gentleness and benignity, (and) the devoted love borne to him by his adherents."

For the G.o.d Christ, as depicted by the Sacerdotal order, he had the greatest contempt. It was impossible for a mind const.i.tuted like his to tamely rest contented with the incredible story forced on mankind's intelligence, that the Supreme Power could or would for any wise purpose be transformed into a dove, and re-enact the mythical part of Jupiter with a Christian Leda, the Jew carpenter's wife, Mary, under the disguise of a bird. Such a story and the theory on which it rests Sh.e.l.ley summarised as follows:

"According to this book, G.o.d created Satan, who, instigated by the impulses of his nature, contended with the Omnipotent for the throne of Heaven. After a contest for the empire, in which G.o.d was victorious, Satan was thrust into a pit of burning sulphur. On man's creation, G.o.d placed within his reach a tree whose fruit he forbade him to taste, on pain of death; permitting Satan, at the same time, to employ all his artifice to persuade this innocent and wondering creature to transgress the fatal prohibition.

"The first man yielded to this temptation; and to satisfy Divine Justice the whole of his posterity must have been eternally burned in h.e.l.l, if G.o.d had not sent his only Son on earth, to save those few whose salvation had been foreseen and determined before the creation of the world."

The hero of this fabulous episode, beneath which a great truth lies hidden, the Christian Ahrimanes or Typhon, the Devil, as painted by Milton, he considered a moral being, far superior to the G.o.d depicted by the same author, and who, under the form of the second person of the Christian Trinity, Sh.e.l.ley tells us of coming humbly,

"Veiling his horrible G.o.d-head in the shape Of man, scorn'd by the world, his name unheard, Save by the rabble of his native town, Even as a parish demagogue. He led The crowd; he taught them justice, truth, and peace, In semblance; but he lit within their souls The quenchless flame of zeal, and blest the sword He brought on earth to satiate with the blood Of truth and freedom his malignant soul."

Elsewhere, in extension of the same, he puts the accompanying words in the mouth of G.o.d the Father, to ill.u.s.trate the doctrine of Christian Atonement:

"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 he 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 G.o.d, 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 unredeem'd go to the gaping grave; Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale, Such as the nurses frighten babes withal; These, in a gulf of anguish an I 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 call'd but few will I elect."

The popular faith of Europe and America, which experience demonstrates to this age has, even as a means of reforming humanity, been a complete failure, Sh.e.l.ley correctly believed, had the same human foundation and origin as that of other revealed theologies--he sums up the proofs on which Christianity rests, miracles, prophecies, and martyrdoms, with great clearness; proves the absurdity of the doctrine of miracles, as taught by Christian writers, shows the falseness of the so-called prophecies, even granting the utmost warping of the real meaning of the Old Testament texts for Christian purposes, which he a.s.serted were to be compared unfavorably with the oracles of Delphos, and points out that the Mohammedan dying for his prophet, or the Hindoo immolating himself under the wheels of Juggernaut could be cited equally as a proof of the divine origin of their faiths, as the reputed martyrdoms of Christians could of theirs.

The development of Christianity, which was really founded by Paul, was a subject to which Sh.e.l.ley devoted much attention--he tells us that

"The same means that have supported every other belief, have supported Christianity. War, imprisonment, a.s.sa.s.sination, and falsehood; deeds of unexampled and incomparable atrocity, have made it what it is. The blood shed by the votaries of the G.o.d of mercy and peace, since the establishment of his religion, would probably suffice to drown all other sectaries now on the habitable globe. We derive from our ancestors a faith thus fostered and supported; we quarrel, persecute, and hate, for its maintenance. Even under a government which, while it infringes the very right of thought and speech, boasts of permitting the liberty of the press, a man is pilloried and imprisoned because he is a deist, and no one raises his voice in the indignation of outraged humanity."

The numerical majority of Christians--the Greek and Roman Catholic--are as much pagans as their ancestors, the ancient Greeks and Romans were exoterically. And why? Simply because on the break-up of the Roman empire--like Mohammedanism afterwards, which was the natural reformation and revolution from Christian image-wors.h.i.+p--Christianity, in a natural succession, and by fortuitous circ.u.mstances, took possession of the executive, and placed on the seat of power a Christian Byzantine emperor in lieu of a pagan. Basilicas, dedicated to Jupiter, Mercury, Adonis, Venus and the deities of High Olympus, were re-dedicated to G.o.d the Father, G.o.d the Son, G.o.d the Holy Ghost, the Virgin Mary, and the other saints (or G.o.ds) of the Christian Pantheon. Statues therein were rechristened, and the sacrificial altars were simply transferred for the use of the eucharistical sacrifice. The vestal virgins became nuns of the church; the _Sacerdotes_, her priests; the mysteries of Isis, her Agapae. Her incense, her pictures, her image-wors.h.i.+p, her holy water, her processions, and her prodigies, too, all came from the same source.

Thus were the socialistic and communistic teachings, based on the Philoic-Essenism of the Reformer of Nazareth, paganized, prost.i.tuted, and entirely misrepresented. His life and labors were transformed from the natural into what was considered by the vulgar the supernatural, and all those who dared--like Hypatia, with thousands of other pious and n.o.ble ancients--to deny his divinity, were sacrificed to this new Moloch, set up by parricide Constantines, or adulterers of the Theodosius caste. Thus through the ages, has the race suffered under such murder, rapine, and l.u.s.t, as never disgraced tolerant ancient heathendom in the interests of paganism, even as recently happened in Central America,[C] and would happen everywhere else, if priestcraft had the power to act without restraint, so that, as Sh.e.l.ley says,

"Earth groans beneath religion's iron age, And priests dare babble of a G.o.d 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."

[Footnote C: I refer to the abominable outrages perpetrated a few months ago at San Miguel, Panama, where popular preachers were forced by the ecclesiastical powers to foment rebellion by violently denouncing the State authorities, who had refused to allow a pastoral of the Christian Bishop of San Salvador, hostile to the laws, to be read in the churches. Having been put into a state of frenzy by one Palacios, a canon of the cathedral, a fanatic mob revolted, liberated prisoners, murdered generals in command, ma.s.sacred numbers of the best citizens, set fire to the city with kerosene, and destroyed over one million dollars' worth of property. After this theological revolt had been put down, pa.s.sports, couched in the following terms, and sealed with the seal of the bishopric, were found on the bodies of some of these holy murderers;

"PETER.--Open to the bearer the gates of heaven, who has died for religion.

(Signed), GEORGE, Bishop of San Salvador."

Similar attempts were made by the Christian hierarchy in Brazil against the Masonic body; but, fortunately, the emperor, a liberal and an enlightened savant, crushed the attempt under foot, and unmistakably proved, to the satisfaction of humanity, that he was not to be transformed into a nineteenth century Charles the Ninth or Philip the Second, and act the cat's paw for Pio Nono, ex-carbonari and recusant mason, to wreak his vengeance on the brethren whom he had betrayed.]

To those who will look down the ages, I would ask, is this picture overdrawn? and further, to remember that in Sh.e.l.ley's own words:

"Eleven millions of men, women and children have been killed in battle, butchered in their sleep, burned to death at public festivals of sacrifice, poisoned, tortured, a.s.sa.s.sinated and pillaged in the spirit of the religion of peace, and for the glory of the most merciful G.o.d."

Is it amazing that he should have written such a "highly wrought and admirably sustained" tragedy as the "Cenci," founded on facts, and which has been deemed by competent critics the first since Shakspeare--that he should have brought forward, with vivid delineation, the crimes of the priesthood--and that he should have made us remember the terrors of the b.l.o.o.d.y wars on heretics and heathen, in words such as these:

"Yes! I have seen G.o.d's wors.h.i.+ppers unsheathe The sword of His revenge, when grace descended, Confirming all unnatural impulses, To sanctify their desolating deeds; And frantic priests wave the ill-omen'd cross O'er the unhappy earth; then shone the sun On showers of gore from the upflas.h.i.+ng steel Of safe a.s.sa.s.sination, and all crime Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord.