n advantage over Nietzsche
in his recognition of the transformative power of love. In this respect,
iconoclast though he is, he is rather with the Buddha and the Christ
than with the modern antinomians.

His _mania_ for "love"--one can call it nothing else--frees his
revolutionary thought from that arbitrary isolation, that savage
subjectivity, which one notes in many philosophical anarchists. His
Platonic insistence, too, on the more spiritual aspects of love
separates his anti-Christian "immorality" from the easy-going,
pleasant hedonism of such a bold individualist as Remy de
Gourmont.

Shelley's individualism is always a thing with open doors; a thing
with corridors into Eternity. It never conveys that sad, cynical,
pessimistic sense of "eating and drinking" before we die, which one
is so familiar with just now.

It is precisely this fact that those who reprobate Shelley's
"immorality" should remember. With him "love" was truly a
mystical initiation, a religious sacrament, a means of getting into
touch with the cosmic secret, a path--and perhaps the only path--to
the Beatific Vision.

It is not wise to turn away from Shelley because of his lack of
"humour," of his lack of a "sense of proportion." The mystery of the
world, whatever it may be, shows itself sometimes quite as
indifferent as Shelley to these little nuances. We hear it crying aloud
in the night with no humorous cry; and it is too often to stop our ears
to what we hear, that we jest so lightly! It is doubtful whether
Nature cares greatly for our "sense of proportion."

To return to his poetry, as poetry. The remarkable thing about
Shelley's verse is the manner in which his whole physical and
psychic temperament has passed into it. This is so in a measure with
all poets, but it is so especially with him. His beautiful epicene face,
his boyish figure, his unearthly sensitiveness, haunt us as we read
his lines. They allure and baffle us, as the smile on the lips of the
Mona Lisa. One has the impression of listening to a being who has
really traversed the ways of the sea and returned with its secret. How
else could those indescribable pearly shimmerings, those opal tints
and rosy shadows, be communicated to our poor language? The very
purity of his nature, that ethereal quality in it that strikes a chill into
the heart of "normal humanity," lends a magic, like the reflection of
moonlight upon ice, to these inter-lunar melodies. The same ethereal
trans