ance of injustice."

Shelley was an atheist because Christians used the name of God to
sanctify persecution. That was really his ultimate emotional reason. His
mythology, when he came to paint the world in myths, was Manichean. His
creed was an ardent dualism, in which a God and an anti-God contend and
make history. But in his mood of revolt it suited him to confuse the
names and the symbols. The snake is everywhere in his poems the
incarnation of good, and if we ask why, there is probably no other
reason than that the Hebrew mythology against which he revolted, had
taken it as the symbol of evil. The legitimate Gods in his Pantheon are
always in the wrong. He belongs to the cosmic party of opposition, and
the Jupiter of his _Prometheus_ is morally a temporarily omnipotent
devil. Like Godwin he felt that the God of orthodoxy was a "tyrant," and
he revolted against Him, because he condemned the world which He had
made.

The whole point of view, as it concerns Christian theology, is stated
with a bitter clearness, in the speech of Ahasuerus in _Queen Mab_. The
first Canto of the _Revolt of Islam_ puts the position of dualism
without reserve:

Know, then, that from the depths of ages old
Two Powers o'er mortal things dominion hold,
Ruling the world with a divided lot,
Immortal, all-pervading, manifold,
Twin Genii, equal Gods--when life and thought
Sprang forth, they burst the womb of inessential Nought.

The good principle was the Morning Star (as though to remind us of
Lucifer) until his enemy changed him to the form of a snake. The
anti-God, whom men worship blindly as God, holds sway over our world.
Terror, madness, crime, and pain are his creation, and Asia in
_Prometheus_ cries aloud--

Utter his name: a world pining in pain
Asks but his name: curses shall drag him down.

In the sublime mythology of _Prometheus_ the war of God and anti-God is
seen visibly, making the horrors of history. As Jupiter's Furies rend
the heart of the merciful Titan chained to his rock on Caucasus, murders
and crucifixions are enacted in the world below. The mythical cruelties
in the clouds are the shadows of man's sufferings below; and they are
also the cause. A mystical parallelism links the drama in Heaven with
the tragedy on earth; we suffer from the malignity of the World's Ruler,
and triumph by the endurance of Man's Saviour.

Nothing could be more absurd than to call Shelley a Pantheist. Pantheism
is the