worldling in art and in morals. The clear fire,
the sustained breath, the fervent accent of his poetry are due to his
faith in his philosophy. As Mrs. Shelley expressed it, he "had no care
for any of his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind,
and develop some high and abstruse truth." Had his poetry not dealt
with what was supreme in his own eyes, and dearest to his heart, it
could never have been the exquisite and entrancing poetry that it is.
It would not have had an adequate subject-matter, as, in spite of
Matthew Arnold, I think it had; for nothing can be empty that contains
such a soul. An angel cannot be ineffectual if the standard of
efficiency is moral; he is what all other things bring about, when
they are effectual. And a void that is alive with the beating of
luminous wings, and of a luminous heart, is quite sufficiently
peopled. Shelley's mind was angelic not merely in its purity and
fervour, but also in its moral authority, in its prophetic strain.
What was conscience in his generation was life in him.

The mind of man is not merely a sensorium. His intelligence is not
merely an instrument for adaptation. There is a germ within, a nucleus
of force and organisation, which can be unfolded, under favourable
circumstances, into a perfection inwardly determined. Man's
constitution is a fountain from which to draw an infinity of gushing
music, not representing anything external, yet not unmeaning on that
account, since it represents the capacities and passions latent in him
from the beginning. These potentialities, however, are no oracles of
truth. Being innate they are arbitrary; being _a priori_ they are
subjective; but they are good principles for fiction, for poetry, for
morals, for religion. They are principles for the true expression of
man, but not for the true description of the universe. When they are
taken for the latter, fiction becomes deception, poetry illusion,
morals fanaticism, and religion bad science. The orgy of delusion into
which we are then plunged comes from supposing the _a priori_ to be
capable of controlling the actual, and the innate to be a standard for
the true. That rich and definite endowment which might have made the
distinction of the poet, then makes the narrowness of the philosopher.
So Shelley, with a sort of tyranny of which he does not suspect the
possible cruelty, would impose his ideal of love and equality upon all
creatures; he would make enthusiasts of cl