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QUEEN MAB; 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL POEM 
 
 WITH NOTES. 
 
 BY 
 
 Verts i&Q&%fyt gfotlltQ. 
 
 ECRASEZ L'INFAME! 
 
 CORRESPONDANCE DE VOLTAIRE. 
 
 Avia Pieridum peragro Ioca, nullius ante 
 Trita solo ; juvat integros accedere fonteis ; 
 Atque haurire ; juratque novos decerpere flores. 
 
 Unde prius nulli velarint tempora iuusae. 
 Primum quod magnis doceo de rebus ; et arctis 
 Religionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo. 
 
 Lucret. lib. iv. 
 
 Aog 7TOV QTU), KCU KOfffiOV IClVTJffW. 
 
 Archimedes 
 
 Honfron: 
 
 PRINTED & PUBLISHED BY R. CARLILE, 55, FLEET STREET. 
 1823. 
 

 4Huwn iWatu 
 
 i. 
 
 How wonderful is Death, 
 
 Death and his brother Sleep ! 
 One, pale as yonder waning moon 
 
 With lips of lurid blue ; I 
 
 The other, rosy as the morn % 
 
 When throned on ocean's wave 
 
 It blushes o'er the world : 
 Yet both so passing wonderful! 
 
 Hath then the gloomy Power 
 Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres 
 
 Seized on her sinless soul ? 
 
 Must then that peerless form 
 Which love and admiration cannot view 
 Without a beating heart, those azure veins 
 Which steal like streams along a field of snow, 
 That lovely outline, which is fair 
 
 As breathing marble, perish ? 
 
 Must putrefaction's breath 
 
 
4 QUEEN MAB. 
 
 Leave nothing of this heavenly sight 
 
 But loathsomeness and ruin? 
 Spare nothing but a gloomy theme, 
 On which the lightest heart might moralize? 
 Or is it only a sweet slumber 
 
 Stealing o'er sensation, 
 Which the breath of roseate morning 
 
 Chaseth into darkness? 
 
 Will Ianthe wake again, 
 And give that faithful bosom joy 
 Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch 
 Light, life, and rapture from her smile?. 
 
 Yes ! she will wake again, 
 Although her glowing limbs are motionless, 
 
 And silent those sweet lips, 
 
 Once breathing eloquence 
 That might have soothed a tyger's rage, 
 Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror. 
 
 Her dewy e^es are closed, 
 And oh ■■their lids, whbse texture fine 
 Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath, 
 
 The baby Sleep is pillowed : 
 
 Her golden tresses shade r 
 
 The bosom's stainless' pride, 
 Curling like tendrils of the parasite 
 
 Around a marble column. 
 
 Hark! whence that rushing sound? 
 'Tis like the wondrous strain 
 That round a lonely ruin swells, 
 
I. QUEEN MAB. 5 
 
 Which, wandering on the echoing shore, 
 
 The enthusiast hears at evening : 
 'Tis softer than the west wind's sigh ; 
 s 'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes 
 Of that strange lyre whose strings 
 The genii of the breezes sweep : 
 • Those lines of rainbow light 
 Are like the moonbeams when they fall 
 Through some cathedral window, but the teints 
 
 Are such as may not find 
 
 Comparison on earth. 
 
 Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen! 
 Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air ; 
 Their filmy pennons at her word they furl, 
 And stop obedient to the reins of light: 
 
 These the Queen of Spells drew in, 
 
 She spread a charm around the spot, 
 And leaning graceful from the ethereal car^ 
 
 Long did she gaze, and silently, 
 Upon the slumbering maid. 
 
 Oh ! not the visioned poet in his dreams, 
 When silvery clouds float through the wildered brain, 
 When every sight of lovely, wild, and grand, 
 Astonishes, enraptures, elevates, 
 When fancy, at a glance, combines 
 The wondrous and the beautiful, — . , 
 So bright, so fair, so wild a shape 
 Hath ever yet beheld, 
 
 <"* e% 
 
6 QUEEN MAB. I. 
 
 As that which reined the coursers of the air, 
 And poured the magic of her gaze 
 Upon the maiden's sleep. 
 
 The broad and yellow moon 
 
 Shone dimly through her form — 
 That form of faultless symmetry ; 
 The pearly and pellucid car 
 
 Moved not the moonlight's line ; 
 
 'Twas not an earthly pageant : 
 Those who had looked upon the sight, 
 
 Passing all human glory, 
 
 Saw not the yellow moon, 
 
 Saw not the mortal scene!, 
 
 Heard not the night-wind's rush, 
 
 Heard not an earthly sound, 
 
 Saw but the fairy pageant, 
 
 Heard but the heavenly strains 
 
 That filled the lonely dwelling. 
 
 The Fairy's frame was slight, yon fibrous cloud, 
 That catches but the palest tinge of eveo, 
 And which the straining eye can hardly seize 
 When melting into eastern twilight's shadow, 
 Were scarce so thin, so slight ; but the fair star 
 That gems the glittering coronet of mom, 
 Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful, 
 As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form, 
 Spread a purpureal halo round the scene, 
 
 Yet with an undulating motion, 
 
 Swayed to her outline gracefully. 
 
I. QUEEN MAB. i 
 
 From her celestial car 
 The Fairy Queen descended, 
 And thrice she waved her wand 
 Circled with wreaths of amaranth : 
 Her thin and misty form 
 Moved with the moving air, 
 And the clear silver tones, 
 As thus she spoke, were such 
 As are unheard by all but gifted ear. 
 
 FAIRY. 
 
 Stars ! your balmiest influence shed ! 
 Elements ! your wrath suspend ! 
 Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds 
 That circle thy domain ! 
 Let not a breath be seen to stir 
 Around yon grass-grown ruin's height, 
 Let even the restless gossamer 
 Sleep on the moveless air ! 
 Soul of Ianthe ! thou, 
 Judged alone worthy of the envied boon, 
 That waits the good and the sincere ; that waits 
 Those who have struggled, and with resolute will 
 Vanquished earth's pride and meanness,bursts the chains, 
 The icy chains of custom, and have shone 
 The day-stars of their age; — Soul of Ianthe ! 
 Awake! arise! 
 
 Sudden arose 
 Ianthe's Soul ; it stood 
 
8 QUEEN MAB. 
 
 All beautiful in naked purity, 
 The perfect semblance of its bodily frame. 
 Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace, 
 Each stain of earthliness 
 Had passed away, it reassumed 
 Its native dignity, and stood 
 Immortal amid ruin. 
 
 Upon the couch the body lay 
 Wrapt in the depth of slumber : 
 Its features were fixed and meaningless, 
 
 Yet animal life was there, 
 And every organ yet performed 
 Its natural functions: 'twas a sight 
 Of wonder to behold the body and soul. 
 The self-same lineaments, the same 
 Marks of identity were there : 
 Yet, oh, how different! One aspires to Heaven, 
 Pants for its sempiternal heritage, 
 And ever-changing, ever-rising still, 
 
 Wantons in endless being. 
 The other, for a time the unwilling sport 
 Of circumstance and passion, struggles on; 
 Fleets through its sad duration rapidly : 
 Then like an useless and worn-out machine, 
 Rots, perishes, and passes. 
 
 FATRY. 
 
 Spirit ! who hast dived so deep ; 
 Spirit ! who hast soared so high ; 
 
I. QUEEN MAB. 
 
 Thou the fearless, thou the mild, 
 Accept the boon thy worth hath earned, 
 Ascend the car with me. 
 
 SPIRIT. 
 
 Do I dream? Is this new feeling 
 But a visioned ghost of slumber? 
 
 If indeed I am a soul, 
 A free, a disembodied soul, 
 Speak again to me. 
 
 FAIRY. 
 
 I am the Fairy Mab : to me 'tis given 
 
 The wonders of the human world to keep: 
 
 The secrets of the immeasurable past, 
 
 In the unfailing consciences of men, 
 
 Those stern, unflattering chroniclers, I find : 
 
 The future, from the causes which arise 
 
 In each event, I gather: not the sting 
 
 Which retributive memory implants 
 
 In the hard bosom of the selfish man ; 
 
 Nor that extatic and exulting throb 
 
 Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up 
 
 The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day, 
 
 Are unforeseen, unregistered by me: 
 
 And it is yet permitted me, to rend 
 
 The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit 
 
 Clothed in its changeless purity, may know 
 
 How soonest to accomplish the great end 
 
10 QUEEN MAB. 
 
 For which it hath its being, and may taste 
 That peace, which in the end all life will share. 
 This is the meed of virtue ; happy Soul, 
 Ascend the car with me! 
 
 The chains of earth's immurement 
 
 Fell from Ianthe's spirit ; 
 They shrank and break like bandages of straw 
 Beneath a wakened giant's strength. 
 
 She knew her glorious change, 
 And felt in apprehension uncontrolled 
 
 New raptures opening round : 
 Each day-dream of her mortal life, 
 Each frenzied vision of the slumbers 
 
 That closed, each well-spent day, 
 
 Seemed now to meet reality. 
 
 The Fairy and the Soul proceeded ; 
 The silver clouds disparted ; 
 And as the car of magic they ascended, 
 Again the speechless music swelled, 
 Again the coursers of the air 
 Unfurled their azure pennons, and the Queen 
 Shaking the beamy reins 
 Bade them pursue their way. 
 
 The magic car moved on. 
 The night was fair, and countless stars 
 Studded heaven's dark blue vault, — 
 
 Just o'er the eastern wave 
 Peeped the first faint smile of morn : — 
 
I. QUEEN MAB. 11 
 
 The magic car moved on — 
 From the celestial hoofs 
 The atmosphere in naming sparkles flew, 
 
 And where the burning wheels 
 Eddied above the mountain's loftiest peak, 
 Was traced a line of lightning. 
 Now it flew far above a rock, 
 The utmost verge of earth, 
 The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow 
 Lowered o'er the silver sea. 
 
 Far, far below the chariot's path, 
 
 Calm as a slumbering babe, 
 
 Tremendous Ocean lay. 
 The mirror of its stillness shewed 
 
 The pale and waning stars, 
 
 The chariot's fiery track, 
 
 And the grey light of morn 
 
 Tinging those fleecy clouds 
 
 That canopied the dawn. 
 Seemed it, that the chariot's way 
 Lay through the midst of an immense concave, 
 Radiant with million constellations, tinged 
 
 With shades of infinite colour, 
 
 And semicircled with a belt 
 
 FlashiDg incessant meteors. 
 
 The magic car moved on. 
 As they approached their goal 
 The coursers seemed to gather speed ; 
 The sea no longer was distinguished ; earth 
 
M QUEEN MAB. 
 
 Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere ; 
 
 The sun's unclouded orb 
 
 Rolled through the black concave; 
 
 Its rays of rapid light 
 Parted around the chariot's swifter course, 
 And fell, like ocean's feathery spray 
 
 Dashed from the boiling surge 
 
 Before a vessel's prow. 
 
 The magic car moved on. 
 
 Earth's distant orb appeared 
 The smallest light that twinkles in the heaven ; 
 
 Whilst round the chariot's way 
 
 Innumerable systems rolled, 
 
 And countless spheres diffused 
 
 An ever- varying glory. 
 It was a sight of wonder : some 
 Were horned like the crescent moon ; 
 Some shed a mild and silver beam 
 Like Hesperus o'er the western sea ; 
 Some dash'd athwart with trains of flame, 
 Like worlds to death and ruin driven ; 
 Some shone like suns, and as the chariot passed, 
 Eclipsed all other light. 
 
 Spirit of Nature ! here ! 
 In this interminable wilderness 
 Of worlds, at whose immensity 
 Even soaring fancy staggers, 
 Here is thy fitting temple. 
 Yet not the lightest leaf 
 
I. QUEEN MAB. 13 
 
 That quivers to the passing breeze 
 Is less instinct with thee : 
 Yet not the meanest worm 
 That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead 
 Less shares thy eternal breath. 
 
 Spirit of Nature ! thou ! 
 Imperishable as this scene, 
 Here is thy fitting temple. 
 
14 QUEEN MA.B. II. 
 
 II. 
 
 —►►►•••«<— 
 
 If solitude hath ever led thy steps 
 To the wild ocean's echoing shore, 
 And thou hast lingered there, 
 Until the sun's broad orb 
 Seemed resting on the burnished wave, 
 
 Thou must have marked the lines 
 Of purple gold, that motionless 
 
 Hung o'er the sinking sphere : 
 Thou must have marked the billowy clouds 
 Edged with intolerable radiancy 
 Towering like rocks of jet 
 Crowned with a diamond wreath. 
 And yet there is a moment, 
 When the sun's highest point 
 Peeps like a star o'er ocean's western edge, 
 When those far clouds of feathery gold, 
 Shaded with deepest purple, gleam 
 Like islands on a dark blue sea ; 
 Then has thy fancy soared above the earth, 
 And furled its wearied wing 
 Within the Fairy's fane. 
 
 Yet not the golden islands 
 Gleaming in yon flood of light, 
 
II. QUEEN MAB. 15 
 
 Nor the feathery curtains 
 Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch, 
 Nor the burnished ocean waves 
 Paving that gorgeous dome, 
 So fair, so wonderful a sight 
 As Mab's ethereal palace could afford. 
 Yet likest evening's vault, that faery Hall ! 
 As Heaven, low resting on the wave, it spread 
 Its floors of flashing light, 
 Its vast and azure dome, 
 Its fertile golden islands 
 Floating on a silver sea ; 
 Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted 
 Through clouds of circumambient darkness, 
 And pearly battlements around 
 Looked o'er the immense of Heaven. 
 The magic car no longer moved. 
 The Fairy and the Spirit 
 Entered the Hall of Spells : 
 Those golden clouds 
 That rolled in glittering billows 
 Beneath the azure canopy 
 With the ethereal footsteps, trembled not : 
 
 The light and crimson mists, 
 Floating to strains of thrilling melody 
 Through that unearthly dwelling, 
 Yielded to every movement of the will. 
 Upon their passive swell the Spirit leaned, 
 And, for the varied bliss that pressed around, 
 Used not the glorious privilege 
 Of virtue and of wisdom. 
 
16 QUEEN MAB, IT. 
 
 Spirit ! the Fairy said, 
 And pointed to the gorgeous dome, 
 
 This is a wondrous sight 
 And mocks all human grandeur ; 
 But, were it virtue's only meed, to dwell 
 In a celestial palace, all resigned 
 To pleasurable impulses, immured 
 Within the prison of itself, the will 
 Of changeless nature would be unfulfilled. 
 Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come ! 
 This is thine high reward : — the past shall rise ; 
 Thou shalt behold the present ; I will teach 
 
 The secrets of the future. 
 
 The Fairy and the Spirit 
 Approached the overhanging battlement. — 
 Below lay stretched the universe ! 
 There, far as the remotest line 
 That bounds imagination's flight, 
 
 Countless and unending orbs 
 In mazy motion intermingled, 
 Yet still fulfilled immutably 
 Eternal nature's law. 
 Above, below, around 
 The circling systems formed 
 A wilderness of harmony ; 
 Each with undeviating aim, 
 In eloquent silence, through the depths of space 
 Pursued its wondrous way. 
 
II. QUEEN MAB. 17 
 
 There was a little light 
 That twinkled in the misty distance : 
 
 None but a spirit's eye 
 
 Might ken that rolling orb ; 
 
 None but a spirit's eye, 
 
 And in no other place 
 But that celestial dwelling, might behold 
 Each action of this earth's inhabitants. 
 
 But matter, space, and time 
 In those aerial mansions cease to act ; 
 And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps 
 The harvest of its excellence, o'erbounds 
 Those obstacles, of which an earthly soul 
 Fears to attempt the conquest. 
 
 The Fairy pointed to the earth. 
 The Spirit's intellectual eye 
 Its kindred beings recognized. 
 The thronging thousands, to a passing view, 
 Seemed like an anthill's citizens. 
 How wonderful ! that even 
 The passions, prejudices, interests, 
 That sway the meanest being, the weak touch 
 That moves the finest nerve, 
 And in one human brain 
 Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link 
 In the great chain of nature. 
 
 Behold, the Fairy cried. 
 Palmyra's ruined palaces !— 
 
 Behold ! where grandeur frowned ; 
 
 2 
 
18 QUEEN MAB. II. 
 
 Behold ! where pleasure smiled ; 
 What now remains? — the memory 
 
 Of senselessness and shame — 
 
 What is immortal there ? 
 
 Nothing — it stands to tell 
 
 A melancholy tale, to give 
 
 An awful warning: soon 
 Oblivion will steal silently 
 
 The remnant of its fame. 
 
 Monarchs and conquerors there 
 Proud o'er prostrate millions trod — 
 The earthquakes of the human race ; 
 Like them, forgotten when the ruin 
 
 That marks their shock is past. 
 
 Beside the eternal Nile, 
 
 The Pyramids have risen. 
 Nile shall pursue his changeless way : 
 
 Those pyramids shall fall ; 
 Yea ! not a stone shall stand to tell 
 
 The spot whereon they stood ; 
 Their very scite shall be forgotten, 
 
 As is their builder's name! 
 
 Behold yon sterile spot ; 
 Where now the wandering Arab's tent 
 
 Flaps in the desert blast. 
 There once old Salem's haughty fane 
 Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes, 
 And in the blushing face of day 
 Exposed its shameful glory.* 
 
II. QUEEN MAB. 19 
 
 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 God 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. 
 Their an inhuman and uncultured race 
 Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God; 
 They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb 
 The unborn child, — old age and infancy 
 Promiscuous perished ; their victorious arras 
 Left not a soul to breathe. Oh ! they were fiends : 
 But what was he who taught them that the God 
 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. 
 
 Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood, 
 There is a moral desart now : 
 The mean and miserable huts, 
 The yet more wretched palaces, 
 Contrasted with those ancient fanes, 
 Now crumbling to oblivion ; 
 The long and lonely colonnades, 
 Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks, 
 Seem like a well-known tune, 
 
20 QUEEN MAB- II. 
 
 Which, in some dear scene we have loved to hear, 
 
 Remembered now in sadness. 
 
 But, oh! how much more changed, 
 
 How gloomier is the contrast 
 
 Of human nature there ! 
 Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave, 
 A coward and a fool, spreads death around — 
 
 Then, shuddering, meets his own. 
 Where Cicero and Antoninus lived, 
 A cowled and hypocritical monk 
 
 Prays, curses, and deceives. 
 
 Spirit! ten thousand years 
 Have scarcely past away, 
 Since, in the w T aste where now the savage drinks 
 His enemy's blood, and aping Europe's sons, 
 Wakes the unholy song of war, 
 Arose a stately city, 
 Metropolis of the western continent : 
 
 There, now, the mossy column-stone, 
 Indented by time's unrelaxing grasp, 
 Which once appeared to brave 
 All, save its country's ruin ; 
 There the wide forest scene, 
 Rude in the uncultivated loveliness 
 
 Of gardens long run wild, 
 Seems, to the unwilling sojourner, whose steps 
 
 Chance in that desart has delayed, 
 Thus to have stood since earth was what it is. 
 
 Yet once it was the busiest haunt, 
 Whither, as to a common centre, flocked 
 
II. QUEEN MA.B. 21 
 
 Strangers, and ships, and merchandize : 
 Once peace and freedom blest 
 The cultivated plain : 
 But wealth, that curse of man, 
 Blighted the bud of its prosperity: 
 Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty^ 
 Fled, to return not, until man shall know 
 That they alone can give the bliss 
 
 Worthy a soul that claims 
 Its kindred with eternity. 
 
 There's not one atom of yon earth 
 
 But once was living man ; 
 Nor the minutest drop of rain, 
 That hangeth in its thinnest cloud, 
 
 But flowed in human veins: 
 
 And from the burning plains 
 
 Where Lybian monsters yell, 
 
 From the most gloomy glens 
 
 Of Greenland's sunless clime, 
 
 To where the golden fields 
 
 Of fertile England spread 
 
 Their harvest to the day, 
 
 Thou canst not find one spot 
 
 Whereon no city stood. 
 
 How strange is human pride! 
 I tell thee that those living things, 
 To whom the fragile blade of grass, 
 
 That springeth iu the morn 
 
 And perisheth ere noon, 
 
22 QUEEN MAB, II. 
 
 Is an unbounded world ; 
 I tell thee that those viewless beings,. 
 Whose mansion is the smallest particle 
 Of the impassive atmosphere, 
 
 Think, feel, and live like man; .„ 
 That their affections and antipathies, 
 Like his, produce the laws 
 Ruling their moral state; 
 And the minutest throb 
 That through their frame diffuses 
 The slightest, faintest motion, 
 Is fixed and indispensable 
 As the majestic laws 
 That rule yon rolling orbs. 
 
 The Fairy paused. The Spirit, 
 In extacy of admiration, felt 
 All knowledge of the past revived ; the events 
 
 Of old and wondrous times. 
 Which dim tradition interruptedly 
 Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded 
 In just perspective to the view ; 
 Yet dim from their infinitude. 
 The Spirit seemed to stand 
 High on an isolated pinnacle ; 
 The flood of ages combating below, 
 The depth of the unbounded universe 
 Above, and all around 
 Nature's unchanging harmony. 
 
III. QUEEN MAB. 
 
 III. 
 
 Fairy! the Spirit said, 
 And on the Queen of Spells 
 Fixed her ethereal eyes, 
 I thank thee. Thou hast given 
 A boon which I will not resign, and taught 
 A lesson not to be unlearned. I know 
 The past, and thence I will essay to glean 
 A warning for the future, so that man 
 May profit by his errors, and derive 
 
 Experience from his folly : 
 For, when the power of imparting joy 
 Is equal to the will, the human soul 
 Requires no other heaven. 
 
 MAB. 
 
 Turn thee, surpassing Spirit! 
 Much yet remains unscanned. 
 Thou knowest how great is man, 
 Thou knowest his imbecility : 
 Yet learn thou what he is ; 
 Yet learn the lofty destiny 
 Which* restless time prepares 
 For every living soul. 
 
24 QUEEN MAB. III. 
 
 Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid 
 
 Yon populous city, rears its thousand towers 
 
 And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops 
 
 Of centinels, in stern and silent ranks, 
 
 Encompass it around : the dweller there 
 
 Cannot be free and happy ; hearest thou not 
 
 The curses of the fatherless, the groans 
 
 Of those who have no friend ? He passes on : 
 
 The King, the wearer of a gilded chain 
 
 That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool 
 
 Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave 
 
 Even to the basest appetites — that man 
 
 Heeds not the shriek of penury ; he smiles 
 
 At the deep curses which the destitute 
 
 Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy 
 
 Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan 
 
 But for those morsels which his wantonness 
 
 Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save 
 
 All that they love from famine: when he hears 
 
 The tale of horror, to some ready-made face 
 
 Of hypocritical assent he turns, 
 
 Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him. 
 
 Flushes his bloated cheek. 
 
 Now to the meal 
 Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags 
 His palled unwilling appetite. If gold, 
 Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled 
 From every clime, could force the loathing sense 
 To overcome satiety, — if wealth 
 The spring it draws from poisons not, — or vice, 
 
III. QUEEN MAB. 25 
 
 Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not 
 
 Its food to deadliest venom; then that king - 
 
 Is happy; and the peasant who fulfils 
 
 His unforced task, when he returns at even, 
 
 And by the blazing faggot meets again 
 
 Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped, 
 
 Tastes not a sweeter meal. 
 
 Behold him now 
 Stretched on the gorgeous couch; his fevered brain 
 Reels dizzily awhile: But, ah ! too soon 
 The slumber of intemperance subsides, 
 And conscience, that undying serpent, calls 
 Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task. 
 Listen ! he'speaks ! oh ! mark that frenzied eye — 
 Oh ! mark that deadly visage. 
 
 KING. 
 
 No cessation ! 
 Oh ! must this last for ever! Awful death, 
 I wish, yet fear to clasp thee ! — Not one moment 
 Of dreamless sleep ! O dear and blessed peace! 
 Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity 
 In penury and dungeons? wherefore lurkest 
 With danger, death, and solitude; yet shunn'st 
 The palace I have built thee ? Sacred peace ! 
 Oh visit me but once, but pitying shed 
 One drop of balm upon my withered soul. 
 
 Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart, 
 And peace defileth not her snowy robes 
 
26 QUEEN MAB. III. 
 
 In such a shed as thine. Hark ! yet he mutters ; 
 
 His slumbers are but varied agonies, 
 
 They prey like scorpions on the springs of life. 
 
 There needeth not the bell that bigots frame 
 
 To punish those who err : earth in itself 
 
 Contains at once the evil and the cure; 
 
 And all-sufficing nature can chastise 
 
 Those who transgress her law, — she only knows 
 
 How justly to proportion to the fault 
 
 The punishment it merits. 
 
 Is it strange 
 That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe? 
 Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug 
 The scorpion that consumes him ? Is it strange 
 That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns, 
 Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured 
 Within a splendid prison, whose stern bounds 
 Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth, 
 His soul asserts not its humanity? 
 That man's mild nature rises not in war 
 Against a king's employ? No — 'tis not strange. 
 He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts and lives 
 Just as his father did; the un.couquered powers 
 Of precedent and custom interpose 
 Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet, 
 To those who know not nature, nor deduce 
 The future from the present, it may seem, 
 That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes 
 Of this unnatural being ; not one wretch, 
 Whose children famish, and whose nuptial bed 
 
III. QUEEN MAB. 27 
 
 In earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm 
 To dash him from his throne! 
 
 Those gilded flies 
 That, basking in the sunshine of a court, 
 Fatten on its corruption ! — what are they ? 
 ■ — The drones of the community ; they feed 
 On the mechanic's labour : the starved hind 
 For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield 
 Its unshared harvests ; and yon squalid form, 
 Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes 
 A sunless life in the unwholesome mine, 
 Drags out in labour a protracted death, 
 To glut their grandeur; many faint with toil, 
 That few may know the cares and woe of sloth. 
 
 Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose? 
 
 Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap 
 
 Toil and unvanquishable penury 
 
 On those who build their palaces, and bring 
 
 Their daily bread ? — From vice, black loathsome vice; 
 
 From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong ; 
 
 From all that genders misery, and makes 
 
 Of earth this thorny wilderness ; from lust, 
 
 Revenge, and murder And when reason's voice, 
 
 Loud as the voice of nature, shall have waked 
 The nations ; and mankind perceive that vice 
 Is discord, war, and misery ; that virtue 
 Is peace, and happiness, and harmony ; 
 When man's maturer nature shall disdain 
 The playthings of its childhood ; — kingly glare 
 
28 QUEEN MAB. III. 
 
 Will lose its power to dazzle; its authority 
 Will silently pass by ; the gorgeous throne 
 Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall, 
 Fast falling to decay ; whilst falsehood's trade 
 Shall be as hateful and unprofitable 
 As that of truth is now. 
 
 Where is the fame 
 Which the vain-glorious mighty of the earth 
 Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound 
 From time's light footfall, the minutest wave 
 That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing 
 The unsubstantial bubble. Aye ! to-day 
 Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze 
 That flashes desolation, strong the arm 
 That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes ! 
 That mandate is a thunder-peal that died 
 In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash 
 On which the midnight closed, and on that arm 
 The worm has made his meal. 
 
 The virtuous man, 
 Who, great in his humility, as kings 
 Are little in their grandeur; he who leads 
 Invincibly a life of resolute good, 
 And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths 
 More free and fearless than the trembling judge, 
 Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove 
 To bind the impassive spirit; — when he falls, 
 His mild eye beams benevolence no more : 
 Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve ; 
 
III. QUEEN MAB. 29 
 
 Sunk reason's simple eloquence that rolled 
 But to appal the guilty. Yes ! the grave 
 Hath quenched that eye, and death's relentless frost 
 Withered that arm : but the unfading fame 
 Which virtue hangs upon its votary's tomb ; 
 The deathless memory of that man, whom kings 
 Call to their mind and tremble; the remembrance 
 With which the happy spirit contemplates i/ 
 
 Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth, 
 Shall never pass away. 
 
 Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; 
 The subject not the citizen : for kings 
 And subjects, mutual foes, for ever play 
 A losing game into each other's hands, 
 Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man 
 Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. 
 Power, like a desolating pestilence, 
 Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, 
 Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, 
 Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, 
 A mechanized automaton. 
 
 When Nero, 
 High over flaming Rome, with savage joy 
 Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear 
 The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld 
 The frightful desolation spread, and felt 
 A new created sense within his soul 
 Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound ; 
 Thinkest thou his grandeur had not overcome 
 
30 QUEEN MAB. III. 
 
 The force of human kindness ? and, when Rome, 
 With one stern blow, hurled not the tyrant down, 
 Crushed not the arm red with her dearest blood, 
 Had not submissive abjectness destroyed 
 Nature's suggestions? 
 
 Look on yonder earth : 
 The golden harvests spring ; the unfailing sun 
 Sheds light and life ; the fruits, the flowers, the trees, 
 Arise in due succession ; all things speak 
 Peace, harmony, and love. The universe, 
 In nature's silent eloquence, declares 
 That all fulfil the works of love and joy, — 
 All but the outcast man. He fabricates 
 The sword which stabs his peace ; he cherisheth 
 The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up 
 The tyrant, whose delight is in his woe, 
 Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun, 
 Lights it the great alone ? Yon silver beams, 
 Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch, 
 Than on the dome of kings? Is mother earth 
 A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn 
 Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil ; 
 A mother only to those puling babes 
 Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men 
 The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, 
 In self-important childishness, that peace 
 Which men alone appreciate ? 
 
 Spirit of Nature! no. 
 The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs 
 
III. QUEEN MAB. 31 
 
 Alike in every human heart. 
 
 Thou, aye, erectest there 
 Thy throne of power unappealable : 
 Thou art the judge beneath whose nod 
 Man's brief and frail authority 
 
 Is powerless as the wind 
 
 That passeth idly by. 
 Thine the tribunal which surpasseth 
 The shew of human justice, 
 
 As God surpasses man. 
 
 Spirit of Nature ! thou 
 Life of interminable multitudes ; 
 Soul of those mighty spheres 
 Whose changeless paths thro' Heaven's deep silence lie; 
 Soul of that smallest being, 
 
 The dwelling of whose life 
 Is one faint April sun-gleam ; — 
 Man, like these passive things, 
 Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth : 
 Like theirs, his age of endless peace, 
 Which time is fast maturing, 
 Will swiftly, surely come ; 
 And the unbounded frame, which thou pervadest, 
 Will be without a flaw 
 Marring its perfect symmetry. 
 
QUEEN MAB. IV. 
 
 IV. 
 
 How beautiful this night ! the balmiest sigh, 
 
 Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, 
 
 Were discord to the speaking quietude 
 
 That wra<ps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault, 
 
 Studded with stars. unutterably bright, 
 
 Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, 
 
 Seems like a canopy which love had spread 
 
 To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills, 
 
 Robed in a garment of untrodden snow ; 
 
 Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, 
 
 So stainless, that their white and glittering spires 
 
 Tinge not the moon's pure beam ; yon castled steep, 
 
 Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower 
 
 So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it 
 
 A metaphor of peace ; — all form a scene 
 
 Where musing solitude might love to lift 
 
 Her soul above this sphere of earthliness ; 
 
 Where silence undisturbed might watch alone, 
 
 So cold, so bright, so still. 
 
 The orb of day, 
 In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless field 
 Sinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest breath 
 Steals o'er the unruffled deep ; the clouds of eve 
 
IV. QUEEN MAB. 33 
 
 Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day ; 
 And vesper's image on the western main 
 Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes : 
 Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass, 
 Roll o'er the blackened waters; the deep roar 
 Of distant' thunder mutters awfully ; 
 Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom 
 That shrouds the boiling surge ; the pityless fiend, 
 With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey; 
 The torn deep yawns, — the vessel finds a grave 
 Beneath its jagged gulf. 
 
 Ah ! whence yon glare 
 That fires the arch of heaven ? — that dark red smoke 
 Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched 
 In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow 
 Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round ! 
 Hark to that roar, whose swift and deafening peals 
 In countless echoes through the mountains ring, 
 Startling pale midnight on her starry throne! 
 Now swells the intermingling din ; the jar 
 Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb ; 
 The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout, 
 The ceaseless clangour, and the rush of men 
 Inebriate with rage : — loud, and more loud 
 The discord grows ; till pale death shuts the scene, 
 And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws 
 His cold and bloody shroud. — Of all the men 
 Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there, 
 In proud and vigorous health ; of all the hearts 
 That beat with anxious life at sun-set there ; 
 
 3 
 
34 % QUEEN MAB. IV. 
 
 How few survive, how few are beating now ! 
 All is deep silence, like the fearful calm 
 That slumbers in the storms portentous pause ; 
 Save when the frantic wail of widowed love 
 Comes shuddering on tue blast, or the faint moan 
 With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay 
 Wrapt round its struggling powers. 
 
 The grey morn 
 Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke 
 Before the icy wind slow rolls away, 
 And the bright beams of frosty morning dance 
 Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood 
 Even to the forest's depth, and scatter'd arms, 
 And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments 
 Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path 
 Of the outsallying victors: far behind, 
 Black ashes note where their proud city stood. 
 Within yon forest is a gloomy glen — 
 Each tree which guards its darkness from the day, 
 Waves o'er a warrior's tomb. 
 
 I see thee shrink, 
 Surpassing Spirit! — wert thou human else? 
 I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet 
 Across thy stainless features: yet fear not; 
 This is no unconnected misery, 
 Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable. 
 Man's evil nature, that apology 
 
 Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up 
 For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood 
 
IV. QUEEN MAB. 35 
 
 Which desolates the discord-wasted land. 
 From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose, 
 Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe, 
 Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe 
 Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall ; 
 And where its venomed exhalations spread 
 Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay 
 Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones 
 Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast, 
 A garden shall arise, in loveliness 
 Surpassing fabled Eden. 
 
 Hath Nature's soul, 
 That formed this world so beautiful, that spread 
 Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord 
 Strung to unchanging unison, that gave 
 The happy birds their dwelling in the grove, 
 That yielded to the wanderers of the deep 
 The lovely silence of the unfathomed main, 
 And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust 
 With spirit, thought, and love; on Man alone, 
 Partial in causeless malice, wantonly 
 Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery ; his soul 
 Blasted with withering curses ; placed afar 
 The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp, 
 But serving on the frightful gulph to glare, 
 Rent wide beneath his footsteps? 
 
 Nature ! — no ! 
 Kings, priests, and statesmen, blast the human flower 
 Even in its tender bud ; their influence darts 
 
36 QUEEN MAB. IV. 
 
 Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins 
 
 Of desolate society. The child, 
 
 Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name, 
 
 Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts 
 
 His baby-sword even in a hero's mood. 
 
 This infant-arm becomes the bloodiest scourge 
 
 Of devastated earth ; whilst specious names, 
 
 Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour, 
 
 Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims 
 
 Bright reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword 
 
 Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood. 
 
 Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man 
 
 Inherits vice and misery, when force 
 
 And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe, 
 
 Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good. 
 
 Ah! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps 
 From its new tenement, and looks abroad 
 For happiness and sympathy, how stern 
 And desolate a tract is this wide world ! 
 How withered all the buds of natural good! 
 No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms 
 Of pityless power! On its wretched frame, 
 Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe 
 Heaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung 
 By morals, law, and custom, the pure winds 
 Of heaven, that renovate the insect tribes, 
 May breathe not. The untainting light of day 
 May visit not its longings. It is bound 
 Ere it has life : yea, all the chains are forged 
 Long ere its being : all liberty and love 
 
IV. QUEEN MAB. 37 
 
 And peace is torn from its defencelessness ; 
 Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed 
 To abjectness and bondage ! 
 
 Throughout this varied and eternal world 
 
 Soul is the only element, the block 
 
 That for uncounted ages has remained. 
 
 The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight 
 
 Is active, living spirit. Every grain 
 
 Is sentient both in unity and part, 
 
 And the minutest atom comprehends 
 
 A world of loves and hatreds; these beget 
 
 Evil and good: hence truth, and falsehood spring; 
 
 Hence will, and thought, and action, all the germs 
 
 Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or bate, 
 
 That variegate the eternal universe. 
 
 Soul is not more polluted than the beams 
 
 Of heaven's pure orb, ere round their rapid lines 
 
 The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise. 
 
 Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds 
 
 Of high resolve, on fancy's boldest wing 
 
 To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn 
 
 The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste 
 
 The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield. 
 
 Or he is formed for abjectness and woe, 
 
 To grovel on the dunghill of his fears, 
 
 To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame 
 
 Of natural love in sensualism, to know 
 
 That hour as blest when on his worthless days 
 
 The frozen hand of death shall set its seal, 
 
 Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease. 
 
38 QUEEN MAB. IV. 
 
 The one is man that shall hereafter be ; 
 The other, man as vice has made him now. 
 
 War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, 
 The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade, 
 And, to those royal murderers, whose mean thrones 
 Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore, 
 The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean. 
 Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround 
 Their palaces, participate the crimes 
 That force defends, and from a nation's rage 
 Secures the crown, which all the curses reach 
 That famine, frenzy, woe, and penury breathe. 
 These are the hired bra vos who defend 
 The tyrant's throne — the bullies of his fear : 
 These are the sinks and channels of worst vice, 
 The refuse of society, the dregs 
 Of all that is most vile: their cold hearts blend 
 Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride, 
 All that is mean and villainous, with rage 
 Which hopelessness of good, and self-contempt, 
 Alone might kindle; they are decked in wealth, 
 Honour and power, then are sent abroad 
 To do their work. The pestilence that stalks 
 In gloomy triumph through some eastern land 
 Is less destroying. They cajole with gold, 
 And promises of fame, the thoughtless youth 
 Already crushed with servitude: he knows 
 His wretchedness too late, and cherishes 
 Repentance for his ruin, when his doom 
 Js sealed in gold and blood ! 
 
IV. QUEEN MAB. 39 
 
 Those too the tyrant serve, who, skilled to snare 
 
 The feet of justice in the toils of law, 
 
 Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still ; 
 
 And, right or wrong, will vindicate for gold, 
 
 Sneering at public virtue, which beneath 
 
 Their pityless tread lies torn and trampled, where 
 
 Honour sits smiling at the sale of truth. 
 
 Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites, 
 
 Without a hope, a passion, or a love, 
 
 Who, through a life of luxury and lies, 
 
 Have crept by flattery to the seats of power, 
 
 Support the system whence their honours flow.... 
 
 They have three words: — well tyrants know their use, 
 
 Well pay them for the loan, with usury 
 
 Torn from a bleeding world ! — God, Hell, and Heaven. 
 
 A vengeful, pityless, and almighty fiend, 
 
 Whose mercy is a nick-name for the rage 
 
 Of tameless tygers hungering for blood. 
 
 Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire, 
 
 Where poisonous and undying worms prolong 
 
 Eternal misery to those hapless slaves 
 
 Whose life has been a penance for its crimes. 
 
 And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie 
 
 Their human nature, quake, believe, and cringe 
 
 Before the mockeries of earthly power. 
 
 These tools the tyrant tempers to his work, 
 Wields in his wrath, and as he wills destroys, 
 Omnipotent in wickedness : the while 
 Youth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does 
 
40 QUEEN MAB. IV. 
 
 His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend 
 Force to the weakness of his trembling arm. 
 
 They rise, they fall ; one generation comes 
 Yielding its harvest to destruction's scythe. 
 It fades, another blossoms, yet behold ! 
 Red glows the tyrant's stamp-mark on its bloom, 
 Withering and cankering deep its passive prime. 
 He has invented lying words and modes, 
 Empty and vain as his own coreless heart ; 
 Evasive meanings, nothings of much sound, 
 To lure the heedless victim to the toils 
 Spread round the valley of its paradise. 
 
 Look to thyself, priest, conqueror, or prince ! 
 Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lusts 
 Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor, 
 With whom thy master was: — or thou delightst 
 In numbering o'er the myriads of thy slain, 
 All misery weighing nothing in the scale 
 Against thy short-lived fame : or thou dost load 
 With cowardice and crime the groaning land, 
 A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self! 
 Aye, art thou not the veriest slave that e'er 
 Crawled on the loathing earths Are not thy days 
 Days of unsatisfying listlessness ? 
 Dost thou not cry, ere night's long rack is o'er, 
 When will the morning come? Is not thy youth 
 A vain and feverish dream of sensualism ? 
 Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease? 
 Are not thy views of unregretted death 
 
IV. QUEEN MAB. 41 
 
 Drear, comfortless, and horrible ? Thy mind 
 Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame, 
 Incapable of judgment, hope, or love ? 
 And dost thou wish the errors to survive 
 That bar thee from all sympathies of good, 
 After the miserable interest 
 
 Thou holdst in their protraction? When the grave 
 Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself, 
 Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth 
 To twine its roots around thy coffined clay, 
 Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb, 
 That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die? 
 
42 QUEEN MAB. 
 
 V. 
 
 Thus do the generations of the earth 
 
 Go to the grave, and issue from the womb, 
 
 Surviving still the imperishable change 
 
 That renovates the world; even as the leaves 
 
 Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year 
 
 Has scattered on the forest soil, and heaped 
 
 For many seasons there, though long they choke, 
 
 Loading with loathsome rottenness the land, 
 
 All germs of promise. Yet when the tall trees 
 
 From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes, 
 
 Lie level with the earth to moulder there, 
 
 They fertilize the land they long deformed, 
 
 Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs 
 
 Of youth, integrity, and loveliness, 
 
 Like that which gave it life, to spring and die. 
 
 Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights 
 
 The fairest feelings of the opening heart, 
 
 Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil 
 
 Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love, 
 
 And judgment cease to wage unnatural war 
 
 With passion's unsubduable array. 
 
 Twin-sister of religion, selfishness ! • 
 Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all 
 
V. QUEEN MAB. 43 
 
 The wanton horrors of her bloody play; 
 Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless, 
 Shunning the light, and owning not its name, 
 Compelled, by its deformity, to screen 
 With flimsy veil of justice and of right, 
 Its unattractive lineaments, that scare 
 All, save the brood of ignorance : at once 
 The cause and the effect of tyranny ; 
 Unblushing, hardened, sensual, and vile ; 
 Dead to all love but of its abjectuess, 
 With heart impassive by more noble powers 
 Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame; 
 Despising its own miserable being, 
 Which still it longs, yet fears to disenthrall. 
 
 Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange 
 
 Of all that human art or nature yield ; 
 
 Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand, 
 
 And natural kindness hasten to supply 
 
 From the full fountain of its boundless love, 
 
 For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now. 
 
 Commerce! beneath w T hose poison-breathing shade 
 
 No solitary virtue dares to spring, 
 
 But poverty and wealth with equal hand 
 
 Scatter their withering curses, and unfold 
 
 The doors of premature and violent death, 
 
 To pining famine and full-fed disease, 
 
 To all that shares the lot of human life, 
 
 Which poisoned body and soul, scarce drags the chain, 
 
 That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind. 
 
44 QUEEN MAB. % 
 
 Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, 
 The signet of its all-enslaving power 
 Upon a shining ore, and called it gold : 
 Before whose image bow the vulgar great, 
 The vainly rich, the miserable proud, 
 The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, 
 And with blind feelings reverence the power 
 That grinds them to the dust of misery. 
 But in the temple of their hireling hearts 
 i Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn 
 All earthly things but virtue. 
 
 Since tyrants, by the sale of human life, 
 
 Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame 
 
 To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride, 
 
 Success has sanctioned to a credulous world 
 
 The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war. 
 
 His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes 
 
 The despot numbers ; from his cabinet 
 
 These puppets of his schemes he moves at will, 
 
 Even as the slaves by force or famine driven, 
 
 Beneath a vulgar master, to perform 
 
 A task of cold and brutal drudgery; — 
 
 Hardened to hope, insensible to fear, 
 
 Scarce living pullies of a dead machine, 
 
 Mere wheels of work and articles of trade, 
 
 That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth ! 
 
 The harmony and happiness of man 
 
 Yields to the wealth of nations: that which lifts 
 
$£ QUEEN MAB. 45 
 
 His nature to the heaven of its pride, 
 
 Is bartered for the poison of his soul ; 
 
 The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes, 
 
 Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain, 
 
 Withering all passion but of slavish fear, 
 
 Extinguishing all free and generous love 
 
 Of enterprize and daring, even the pulse 
 
 That fancy kindles in the beating heart 
 
 To mingle with sensation, it destroys, — 
 
 Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self, 
 
 The groveling hope of interest and gold, 
 
 Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed 
 
 Even by hypocrisy. 
 
 And statesmen boast 
 Of wealth! The wordy eloquence that lives 
 Afterthe ruin of their hearts, can gild 
 The bitter poison of a nation's woe, 
 Can turn the worship of the servile mob 
 To their corrupt and glaring idol fame, 
 From virtue, trampled by its iron tread, 
 Although its dazzling pedestal be raised 
 Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field, 
 With desolated dwellings smoking round. 
 The man of ease, who, by his warm fire-side, 
 To deeds of charitable intercourse 
 And bare fulfilment of the common laws 
 Of decency and prejudice, confines 
 The struggling nature of his human heart, 
 Is duped by their cold sophistry ; he sheds 
 A passing tear perchance upon the wreck 
 
46 QUEEN MAB. 
 
 Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling's door 
 The frightful waves are driven, — when his son 
 Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion 
 Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man, 
 Whose life is misery, and fear, and care ; 
 Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil; 
 Who ever hears his famished offsprings scream, 
 Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze 
 For ever meets, and, the proud rich man's eye 
 Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene 
 Of thousands like himself; — he little heeds 
 The rhetoric of tyranny ; his hate 
 Is quenchless as his wrongs ; he laughs to scorn 
 The vain and bitter mockery of words, 
 Feeling the horror of the tyrant's deeds, 
 And unrestrained, but by the arm of power, 
 That knows and dreads his enmity. 
 
 The iron rod of penury still compels 
 
 Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth, 
 
 And poison, with unprofitable toil, 
 
 A life too void of solace to confirm 
 
 The very chains that bind him to his doom. 
 
 Nature, impartial in munificence, 
 
 Has gifted man with all-subduing will. 
 
 Matter, with all its transitory shapes, 
 
 Lies subjected and plastic at his feet, 
 
 That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread. 
 
 I How many a rustic Milton has past by, 
 Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, 
 
 | In unremitting drudgery and care ! 
 
V. QUEEN MAB. , 47 
 
 How many a vulgar Cato has compelled 
 His energies, no longer tameless then, 
 To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail ! 
 How many a Newton, to whose passive ken 
 Those mighty spheres that gem infinity 
 Were only specks of tinsel, fixed in heaven 
 To light the midnights of his native town ! 
 
 /Yet every heart contains perfection's germ : 
 The wisest of the sages of the earth, 
 That ever from the stores of reason drew 
 Science and truth, and virtue's dreadless tone, 
 Were but a weak and inexperienced boy, 
 Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued 
 With pure desire and universal love, 
 Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain, 
 Untainted passion, elevated will, 
 Which death (who even would linger long in awe 
 Within his noble presence, and beneath 
 His changeless eyebeam,) might alone subdue. 
 Him, every slave now dragging through the filth 
 Of some corrupted city his sad life, 
 Pining with famine, swoln with luxury, 
 Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense 
 With narrow schemings and unworthy cares, 
 Or madly rushing through all violent crime, 
 To move the deep stagnation of his soul, — 
 Might imitate and equal. 
 
 But mean lust 
 Has bound its chains so tight around the earth, 
 
48 QUEEN MAB. 
 
 That all within it but the virtuous man 
 Is venal : gold or fame will surely reach 
 The price prefixed by selfishness, to all 
 But him of resolute and unchanging will ; 
 Whom, nor the plaudits of a servile crowd, 
 Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury, 
 Can bribe to yield his elevated soul 
 To tyranny or falsehood, though they wield 
 With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world. 
 
 All things are sold : the very light of heaven 
 
 Is venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love, 
 
 The smallest and most despicable things 
 
 That lurk in the abysses of the deep, 
 
 All objects of our life, even life itself, 
 
 And the poor pittance which the laws allow 
 
 Of liberty, the fellowship of man, 
 
 Those duties which his heart of human love 
 
 Should urge him to perform instinctively, 
 
 Are bought and sold as in a public mart 
 
 Of undisguising selfishness, that sets 
 
 On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign. 
 
 Even love is sold ; the solace of all woe 
 
 Is turned to deadliest agony, old age 
 
 Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms, 
 
 And youth's corrupted impulses prepare 
 
 A life of horror from the blighting bane 
 
 Of commerce ; whilst the pestilence that springs 
 
 From unenjoying sensualism, has filled 
 
 All human life with hydra-headed woes. 
 
V. QUEEN MAB. 49 
 
 Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs 
 Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest 
 Sets no great value on his hireling faith : 
 A little passiug pomp, some servile souls, 
 Whom cowardice itself might safely chain, 
 Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe 
 To deck, the triumph of their languid zeal, 
 Can make him minister to tyranny. 
 More daring crime requires a loftier meed : 
 Without a shudder, the slave-soldier lends 
 His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart, 
 When the dread eloquence of dying men, 
 Low mingling on the lonely field of fame, 
 Assails that nature, whose applause he sells 
 For the gross blessings of a patriot mob, 
 For the vile gratitude of heartless kings, 
 And for a cold world's good word, — viler still ! 
 
 There is a nobler glory, which survives 
 Until our being fades, and, solacing 
 All human care, accompanies its change ; 
 Deserts not virtue in the dungeon's gloom, 
 And, in the precincts of the palace, guides 
 Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime ; 
 Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness, 
 Even when, from power's avenging hand, he takes 
 Its sweetest, last, and noblest title — death ; 
 — The consciousness of good, which neither gold, 
 Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss, 
 Can purchase ; but a life of resolute good, 
 
 4 
 
50 QUEEN MAB. 
 
 Unalterable will, quenchless desire 
 Of universal happiness, the heart 
 That beats with it in unison, the brain, 
 Whose ever wakeful wisdom toils to change 
 Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal. 
 
 This commerce of sincerest virtue needs . 
 
 No mediative signs of selfishness, 
 
 No jealous intercourse of wretched gain, 
 
 No balancings of prudence, cold and long ; 
 
 In just and equal measure all is weighed, 
 
 One scale contains the sum of human weal, - - 
 
 And one, the good man's heart. 
 
 How vainly seek 
 The selfish for that happiness denied 
 To aught but virtue ! Blind and hardened, they, 
 Who hope for peace amid the storms of care, 
 Who covet power they know not how to use, 
 And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give, — 
 Madly they frustrate still their own designs ; 
 And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy 
 Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, 
 Pining regrets, and vain repentances, 
 Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervade 
 Their valueless and miserable lives. 
 
 But hoary-headed selfishness has felt 
 Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave: 
 A brighter morn awaits the human day, 
 When every transfer of earth's natural gifts 
 
V. QUEEN MAB. 51 
 
 Shall be a commerce of good words and works ; 
 When poverty aDd wealth, the thirst of fame, 
 The fear of infamy, disease, and woe, 
 War with its million horrors, and fierce hell 
 Shall live but in the memory of time, 
 Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start, 
 Look back, and shudder at his younger years. 
 
52 QUEEN MAB. VI. 
 
 VI. 
 
 All touch, all eye, all ear, 
 The Spirit felt the Fairy's burning speech. 
 
 O'er the thin texture of its .frame, 
 The varying periods painted changing glows, 
 
 As on a summer even, 
 When soul-enfolding music floats around, 
 The stainless mirror of the lake 
 Re-images the eastern gloom, 
 Mingling convulsively its purple hues 
 With sunset's burnished gold. 
 
 Then thus the Spirit spoke : 
 It is a wild and miserable world! 
 
 Thorny, and full of care, 
 Which every fiend can make his prey at will. 
 O Fairy ! in the lapse of years, 
 Is there no hope in store? 
 Will yon vast suns roll on 
 Interminably, still illuming 
 The night of so many wretched souls, 
 And see no hope for them ? 
 Will not the universal Spirit e'er 
 Revivify this withered limb of Heaven? 
 
VI. QUEEN MAB. 53 
 
 The Fairy calmly smiled 
 In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope 
 
 Suffused the Spirits lineaments. 
 Oh ! rest thee tranquil ; chase those fearful doubts, 
 Which ne'er could rack an everlasting soul, 
 That sees the chains which bind it to its doom. 
 Yes ! crime and misery are in yonder earth, 
 
 Falsehood, mistake, and lust; 
 
 But the eternal world 
 Contains at once the ev;l and the cure. 
 Some eminent in virtue shall start up, 
 
 Even in perversest time: 
 The truths of their pure lips, that never die, 
 Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath 
 
 Of ever-living flame, 
 Until the monster sting itself to death. 
 
 How sweet a scene will earth become! 
 Of purest spirits, a pure dwelling-place, 
 Symphonious with the planetary spheres, 
 When man, with changeless nature coalescing, 
 Will undertake regeneration's work, 
 When its ungenial poles no longer point 
 
 To the red and baleful sun 
 
 That faintly twinkles there, 
 
 Spirit ! on yonder earth, 
 Falsehood now triumphs ; deadly power 
 Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth! 
 
 Madness and misery are there ! 
 The happiest is most wretched ! yet confide, 
 Until pure health-drops from the cup of joy, 
 
54 QUEEN MAB. VI. 
 
 Fall like a dew of balm upon the world. 
 
 Now, to the scene I shew, in silence turn, 
 
 And read the blood-stained charter of all woe, 
 
 Which nature soon, with recreating hand, 
 
 Will blot in mercy from the book of earth. 
 
 How bold the flight of passion's wandering wing, 
 
 How swift the step of reason's firmer tread, 
 
 How calm and sweet the victories of life, 
 
 How terrorless the triumph of the grave ! 
 
 How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm, 
 
 Vain his loud threat, and impotent his frown ! 
 
 How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar ! 
 
 The weight of his exterminating curse, 
 
 How light! aud his affected charity, 
 
 To suit the pressure of the changing times, 
 
 What palpable deceit ! — but for thy aid, 
 
 Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend, 
 
 Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men, 
 
 And heaven with slaves ! 
 
 Thou taintest all thou lookest upon! — the stars, 
 Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet, 
 Were gods to the distempered playfulness 
 Of thy untutored infancy : the trees, 
 The grass, the clouds, the mountains, and the sea, 
 All living things that walk, swim, creep, or fly, 
 Were gods : the sun had homage, and the moon 
 Her worshipper. Then thou becamest, a boy, 
 More daring in thy frenzies : every shape, 
 Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild, 
 Which, from sensation's relics, fancy culls ; 
 
VI. QUEEN MAB. 55 
 
 The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost, 
 
 The genii of the elements, the powers 
 
 That give a shape to nature's varied works, 
 
 Had life and place in the corrupt belief 
 
 Of thy blind heart: yet still thy youthful hands 
 
 Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave 
 
 Its strength and ardour to thy frenzied brain ; 
 
 Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene 
 
 Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride : 
 
 Their everlasting and unchanging laws 
 
 Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stoodst 
 
 Baffled and gloomy ; then thou didst sum up 
 
 The elements of all that thou didst know ; 
 
 The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign, 
 
 The budding of the heaven-breathing trees, 
 
 The eternal orbs that beautify the night, 
 
 The sun-rise, and the setting of the moon, 
 
 Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease, 
 
 And all their causes, to an abstract point, 
 
 Converging, thou didst bend, and called it — God! 
 
 The self-sufficing, the omnipotent, 
 
 The merciful, and the avenging God ! 
 
 Who, prototype of human misrule, sits 
 
 High in heaven's realm, upon a golden throne, 
 
 Even like an earthly king ; and whose dread work, 
 
 Hell gapes for ever for the unhappy slaves 
 
 Of fate, whom he created, in his sport, 
 
 To triumph in their torments when they fell! 
 
 Earth heard the name; earth trembled, as the smoke 
 
 Of his revenge ascended up to heaven, 
 
 Blotting the constellations ; and the cries 
 
56 QUEEN MAB. VI. 
 
 Of millions, butchered in sweet confidence 
 
 And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds 
 
 Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths 
 
 Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land ; 
 
 Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear, 
 
 And thou didst laugh to hear the mother's shriek 
 
 Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel 
 
 Felt cold in her torn entrails ! 
 
 Religion! thou wert then in manhood's prime: 
 
 But age crept on : one God would not suffice 
 
 For senile puerility ; thou framedst 
 
 A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut 
 
 Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend 
 
 Thy wickedness had pictured, might afford 
 
 A plea for sating the unnatural thirst 
 
 For murder, rapine, violence, and crime, 
 
 That still consumed thy being, even when 
 
 Thou heardest the step of fate ; — that flames might lighr, 
 
 Thy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent shrieks 
 
 Of parents dying on the pile that burned 
 
 To light their children to thy paths, the roar 
 
 Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries 
 
 Of thine apostles, loud commingling there, 
 
 Might sate thine hungry ear 
 
 Even on the bed of death ! 
 
 But now contempt is mocking thy grey hairs ; 
 Thou art descending to the darksome grave, 
 Unhonoured and unpitied, but by those 
 Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds, 
 
VI. QUEEN MAB. 57 
 
 Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun 
 Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night 
 That long has lowered above the ruined world. 
 
 Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light, 
 
 Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused 
 
 A spirit of activity and life, 
 
 That knows no terra, cessation, or decay; 
 
 That fades not when the lamp of earthly life, 
 
 Extinguished in the dampness of the grave, 
 
 Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe 
 
 In the dim newness of its being feels 
 
 The impulses of sublunary things, 
 
 And all is wonder to unpractised sense: 
 
 But, active, stedfast, and eternal, still 
 
 Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars, 
 
 Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves, 
 
 Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease; 
 
 And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly 
 
 Rolls round the eternal universe, and shakes 
 
 Its undecayiug battlement, presides, 
 
 Apportioning with irresistible law 
 
 The place each spring of its machine shall fill ; 
 
 So that when waves on waves tumultuous heap 
 
 Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven 
 
 Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean-fords, 
 
 Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner, 
 
 Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock, 
 
 All seems unlinked contingency and chance : 
 
 No atom of this turbulence fulfils 
 
 A vague and unnecessitated task, 
 
* 
 
 58 QUEEN MAB. VI. 
 
 Or acts but as it must and ought to act. 
 
 Even the minutest molecule of light, 
 
 That in an April sun-beam's fleeting glow 
 
 Fulfills its destined, though invisible work, 
 
 The universal Spirit guides ; nor less, 
 
 When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, 
 
 Has led two hosts of dupes to battle-field, 
 
 That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves, 
 
 And call the sad work — glory, does it rule 
 
 All passions : not a thought, a will, au act, 
 
 No working of the tyrant's moody mind, 
 
 Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast 
 
 Their servitude, to hide the shame they feel, 
 
 Nor the events enchaining every will, 
 
 That from the depths of unrecorded time 
 
 Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass 
 
 Unrecognized, or unforeseen by thee, 
 
 Soul of the Universe ! eternal spring 
 
 Of life and death, of happiness and woe. 
 
 Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene 
 
 That floats before our eyes in wavering light, 
 
 Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison, 
 
 Whose chains and massy walls 
 
 We feel, but cannot see. 
 
 Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power, 
 Necessity! thou mother of the world! 
 Unlike the God of human error, thou 
 Requirest no prayers or praises ; the caprice 
 Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee 
 Than do the changeful passions of his breast 
 
VI. QUEEN MAB. 59 
 
 To thy unvarying harmony: the slave, 
 
 Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world, 
 
 And the good man, who lifts, with virtuous pride, 
 
 His being, in the sight of happiness, 
 
 That springs from his own works ; the pc-ison-tree, 
 
 Beneath whose shade all life is withered up, 
 
 And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords 
 
 A temple where the vows of happy love 
 
 Are registered, are equal in thy sight: 
 
 No love, no hate thou cherishest ; revenge 
 
 And favoritism, and worst desire of fame 
 
 Thou knowest not: all that the wide world contains 
 
 Are but thy passive instruments, and thou 
 
 Regardst them all with an impartial eye, 
 
 Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel, 
 
 Because thou hast not human sense, 
 
 Because thou art not human mind. 
 
 Yes ! when the sweeping storm of time 
 Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruined fanes 
 And broken altars of the almighty fiend, 
 Whose name usurps thy honours, and the blood 
 Through centuries clotted there, has floated down 
 The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live 
 Unchangeable! A -shrine is raised to thee, 
 
 Which, nor the tempest-breath of time, 
 
 Nor the interminable flood, 
 
 Over earth's slight pageant rolling, 
 Availeth to destroy, — 
 The sensitive extension of the world. 
 
60 QUEEN MAB. VII. 
 
 That wonderous and eternal fane, 
 Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join, 
 To do the will of strong necessity, 
 
 And life, in multitudinous shapes, 
 Still pressing forward where no term can be, 
 
 Like hungry and unresisting flame 
 Curls round the eternal columns of its strength. 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. 61 
 
 VII. 
 
 SPIRIT. 
 
 I was an infant when my mother went 
 
 To see an atheist burned. She took me there : 
 
 The dark-robed priests were met around the pile ; 
 
 The multitude was gazing silently ; 
 
 And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien, 
 
 Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye, 
 
 Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth : 
 
 The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs ; 
 
 His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon ; 
 
 His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob 
 
 Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept. 
 
 Weep not, child ! cried my mother, for that man 
 
 Has said, There is no God. 
 
 FAIRY. 
 
 There is no God ! 
 Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed : 
 Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race, 
 His ceaseless generations tell their tale ; 
 Let every part depending on the chain 
 That links it to the whole, point to the hand 
 That grasps its term ! let every seed that falls 
 
62 QUEEN MAB. VII. 
 
 In silent eloquence unfold its store 
 Of argument: infinity within, 
 Infinity without, belie creation ; 
 The exterrainable spirit it contains 
 Is nature's only God ; but human pride 
 Is skilful to invent most serious names 
 To hide its ignorance. 
 
 The name of God 
 Has fenced about all crime with holiness, 
 Himself the creature of his worshippers, 
 Whose names, and attributes, and passions change, 
 Seeva, Buddh, Fob, Jehovah, God, or Lord, 
 Even with the human dupes who build his shrines, 
 Still serving o'er the war-polluted world 
 For desolation's watch-word ; whether hosts 
 Stain his death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on 
 Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise 
 A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans ; 
 Or countless partners of his powers divide 
 His tyranny to weakness; or the smoke 
 Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness, 
 Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy, 
 Horribly massacred, ascend to heaven 
 In honour of his name ; or, last and worst, 
 Earth groans beneath religion's iron age, 
 And priests dare babble of a God 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! 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. 63 
 
 O Spirit! through the sense 
 By which thy inner nature was apprised 
 
 Of outward shews, vague dreams have rolled, 
 And varied reminiscences have waked 
 
 Tablets that never fade; 
 All things have been imprinted there, 
 The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky, 
 Even the unshapeliest lineaments 
 Of wild and fleeting visions 
 
 Have left a record there 
 
 To testify of earth. 
 
 These are my empire, for to me is given 
 The wonders of the human world to keep, 
 And fancy's thin creations to endow 
 With manner, being, and reality ; 
 Therefore a wondrous phantom, from the dreams 
 Of human errors dense and purblind faith, 
 I will evoke, to meet thy questioning. 
 Ahasuerus, rise! 
 
 A strange and woe-worn wight 
 Arose beside the battlement, 
 
 And stood unmoving there. 
 His inessential figure cast no shade 
 
 Upon the golden floor; 
 His port and mien bore mark of many years, 
 And chronicles of untold ancientness 
 Were legible within his beamless eye: 
 
 Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth ; 
 Freshness and vigour knit his manly frame; 
 
64 QUEEN MAB. VII. 
 
 The wisdom of old age was mingled there 
 With youth's primaeval dauntlessness ; 
 And inexpressible woe, 
 Chastened by fearless resignation, gave 
 An awful grace to his all-speaking brow. 
 
 SPIRIT. 
 
 Is there a God ? 
 
 AHASUERTJS. 
 
 Is there a God? — aye, an almighty God, 
 
 And vengeful as almighty ! Once his voice 
 
 Was heard on earth: earth shuddered' at the sound; 
 
 The fiery-visaged firmament expressed 
 
 Abhorrence, and the grave of nature yawned 
 
 To swallow all the dauntless and the good 
 
 That dared to hurl defiance at his throne, 
 
 Girt as it was with power. None but slaves 
 
 Survived, — cold-blooded slaves, who did the work 
 
 Of tyrannous omnipotence; whose souls 
 
 No honest indignation ever urged 
 
 To elevated daring, to one deed 
 
 Which gross and sensual self did not pollute. 
 
 These slaves built temples for the omnipotent, 
 
 Gorgeous and vast: the costly altars smoked 
 
 With human blood, and hideous paeans rung 
 
 Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard 
 
 His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts 
 
 Had raised him to his eminence in power, 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. 65 
 
 Accomplice of omnipotence in crime, 
 And confidant of the all-knowing one. 
 These were Jehovah's words. 
 
 From an eternity of idleness 
 
 I, God, 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 honour, with impunity 
 
 May sate the lusts I planted in their heart. 
 
 Here I command thee hence to lead them on* 
 
 Until, with hardened 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 fulfil the blind revenge 
 
 (Which you, to men, call justice) of their God. 
 
 The murderer's brow 
 Quivered with horror. 
 
 God omnipotent, 
 Is there no mercy ? must our punishment 
 
 5 
 
6Q QUEEN MAB. VII. 
 
 Be endless? will long ages roll away, 
 
 And see no term ? Oh ! wherefore hast thou made 
 
 In mockery and wrath this evil earth ? 
 
 Mercy becomes the powerful — be but just: 
 
 God ! repent and save. 
 
 One way remains: 
 
 1 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 there 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 honour of their God, 
 
 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, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave. 
 
 Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale, 
 
 Such as the nurses frighten babes withal : 
 
 These, in a gulph of anguish and 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 honour, 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 called, but few will I elect. 
 
 Do thou my bidding, Moses! 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. 67 
 
 Even the murderer's cheek 
 Was blanched with horror, and his quivering lips 
 Scarce faintly uttered — O almighty one, 
 I tremble and obey ! 
 
 Spirit! centuries have set their seal 
 
 On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain, 
 
 Since the Incarnate came : humbly he came, 
 
 Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape 
 
 Of man, scorned 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 flames of zeal, and blest the sword 
 
 He brought on earth to satiate with the blood 
 
 Of truth and freedom his malignant soul. 
 
 At length his mortal frame was led to death. 
 
 1 stood beside him : on the torturing cross 
 No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense ; 
 And yet he groaned. Indignantly, I summed 
 The massacres and miseries which his name 
 Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried, 
 Go ! go t in mockery. 
 
 A smile of godlike malice re-illumined 
 His fading lineaments. — I go, he cried, 
 But thou shalt wander o'er the unquiet earth 
 
 Eternally. The dampness of the grave 
 
 Bathed my imperishable front. I fell, 
 
 And long lay tranced upon the charmed soil. 
 
68 QUEEN MAB. VII. 
 
 When I awoke hell burned within my brain, 
 Which staggered on its seat ; for all around 
 The mouldering relics of my kindred lay, 
 Even as the Almighty's ire arrested them, 
 And in their various attitudes of death 
 My murdered children's mute and eyeless sculls 
 Glared ghastily upon me. 
 
 But my soul, 
 From sight and sense of the polluting woe 
 Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer 
 Hell's freedom to the servitude of heaven. 
 Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began 
 My lonely and unending pilgrimage, 
 Resolved to wage unweariable war 
 With my almighty tyrant, and to hurl 
 Defiance at his impotence to harm 
 Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand 
 That barred my passage to the peaceful grave 
 Has crushed the earth to misery, and given 
 Its empire to the chosen of his slaves. 
 These have I seen, even from the earliest dawn 
 Of weak, unstable, and precarious power ; 
 Then preaching peace, as now they practise war, 
 So, when they turned but from the massacre 
 Of unoffending infidels, to quench 
 Their thirst for ruin in the very blood 
 That flowed in their own veins, and pityless zeal 
 Froze every human feeling, as the wife 
 Sheathed in her husband's heart the sacred steel, 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. 69 
 
 Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love; 
 And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood 
 Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war, 
 Scarce satiable by fate's last death-draught waged, 
 Drunk from the wine-press of the Almighty's wrath ; 
 Whilst the red cross in mockery of pe*ace, 
 Pointed to victory ! When the fray was done, 
 No remnant of the exterminated faith 
 Survived to. tell its ruin, but the flesh, 
 With putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere, 
 That rotted on the half-extinguished pile." 
 
 Yes ! I have seen God's worshippers unsheathe 
 
 The sword of his revenge, when grace descended, 
 
 Confirming all unnatural impulses, 
 
 To sanctify their desolating deeds ; 
 
 And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross 
 
 O'er the unhappy earth : then shone the Sun 
 
 On showers of gore from the upflashing steel 
 
 Of safe assassination, and all crime 
 
 Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord, 
 
 And blood-red rainbows canopied the land. 
 
 Spirit ! no year of my eventful being 
 
 Has passed unstained by crime and misery, 
 
 Which flows from God's own faith. I've marked his 
 
 slaves 
 With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile 
 The insensate mob, and whilst one hand was red 
 With murder, feign to stretch the other out 
 For brotherhood and peace ; and that they now 
 
70 QUEEN MAB. VII. 
 
 Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds 
 
 Are marked with all the narrowness and crime 
 
 That freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise ; 
 
 Reason may claim our gratitude, who now 
 
 Establishing the imperishable throne 
 
 Of truth, and stubborn virtue, maketh vain 
 
 The unprevailing malice of my foe, 
 
 Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave, 
 
 Adds impotent eternities to pain, . 
 
 Whilst keenest disappointment racks his breast 
 
 To see the smiles of peace around them play, 
 
 To frustrate, or to sanctify their doom. 
 
 Thus have I stood, — through a wild waste of years 
 
 Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony, 
 
 Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined, 
 
 Mocking my powerless tyrant's horrible curse 
 
 With stubborn and unalterable will, 
 
 Even as a giant oak, which heaven's fierce flame 
 
 Had scathed in the wilderness, to stand 
 
 A monument of fadeless ruin there ; 
 
 Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves 
 
 The midnight conflict of the wintry storm, 
 
 As in the sun-light's calm it spreads 
 
 Its worn and withered arras on high 
 To meet the quiet of a summer's noon. 
 
 The Fairy waved her wand: 
 Ahasuerus fled 
 Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist, 
 
VII. QUEEN MAB. 71 
 
 That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, 
 Flee from the morning beam : 
 The matter of which dreams are made 
 Not more endowed with actual life 
 Than this phantasmal portraiture 
 Of wandering human thought. 
 
72 QUEEN MAB. VI 11. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The present and the past thou hast beheld : 
 It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn 
 
 The secrets of the future. — Time! 
 Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom, 
 Render thou up thy half-devoured babes, 
 And from the cradles of eternity, 
 Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep 
 By the deep murmuring stream of passing things, 
 Tear thou that gloomy shroud. — Spirit, behold 
 Thy glorious destiny ! 
 
 Joy to the Spirit came. 
 Through the wide rent in Time's eternal veil, 
 Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear 
 
 Earth was no longer hell ; 
 
 Love, freedom, health, had. given 
 Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime, 
 
 And all its pulses beat 
 Symphonious to the planetary spheres : 
 
 Then dulcet music swelled 
 Concordant with the life-strings of the soul ; 
 It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there, 
 Catching new life from transitory death, — 
 Like the vague sighings of a wind at even, 
 
VIII. QUEEN MAB. 73 
 
 That wakes the wavelets of the slumberiDg sea 
 And dies on the creation of its breath, 
 And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits : 
 Was the pure stream of feeling 
 That sprung from these sweet notes, 
 And o'er the Spirit's human sympathies 
 With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed. 
 
 Joy to the Spirit came, — 
 Such joy as when a lover sees 
 The chosen of his soul in happiness, 
 
 And witnesses her peace 
 Whose woe to him were bitterer than death, 
 
 Sees her un faded cheek 
 Glow mantling in first luxury of health, 
 
 Thrills with her lovely eyes, 
 Which like two stars amid the heaving main 
 
 Sparkle through liquid bliss. 
 
 Then in her triumph spoke. the Fairy Queen: 
 I will not call the ghost of ages gone 
 To unfold the frightful secrets of its lore ; 
 
 The present now is past, 
 And those events that desolate the earth 
 Have faded from the memory of Time, 
 Who dares not give reality to that 
 Whose being I annul. To me is given 
 The wonders of the human world to keep, 
 Space, matter, time, and mind. Futurity 
 Exposes now its treasure ; let the sight 
 Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope. 
 
74 QUEEN MAB. VIII. 
 
 O human Spirit! spur thee to the goal 
 Where virtue fixes universal peace, 
 And midst the ebb and flow of human things, 
 Shew somewhat stable, somewhat certain still, 
 A lighthouse o'er the wild of dreary waves. 
 
 The habitable earth is full of bliss ; 
 
 Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled 
 
 By everlasting snow-storms round the poles, 
 
 Where matter dared not vegetate or live, 
 
 But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude 
 
 Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed ; 
 
 And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles 
 
 Ruffle the placid ocean-deep that rolls 
 
 Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand, 
 
 Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet 
 
 To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves 
 
 And melodize with man's blest nature there. 
 
 Those deserts of immeasurable sand, 
 
 Whose age-collected fervours scarce allowed 
 
 A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring, 
 
 Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard's love 
 
 Broke on the sultry silentness alone, 
 
 Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, 
 
 Corn-fields, and pastures, and white cottages; 
 
 And where the startled wilderness beheld 
 
 A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood, 
 
 A tygress sating with the flesh of lambs, 
 
 The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, 
 
 Whilst shouts and bowlings through the desert rang, 
 
VIII. QUEEN MAB. 75 
 
 Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn, 
 Offering sweet incense to the sun-rise, smiles 
 To see a babe before his mother's door, 
 
 Sharing his morning's meal 
 With the green and golden basilisk 
 
 That comes to lick his feet. 
 
 Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail 
 
 Has seen above the illimitable plain, 
 
 Morning on night, and night on morning rise, 
 
 Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread 
 
 Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea, 
 
 Where the loud roarings of the tempest- waves 
 
 So long have mingled with the gusty wind 
 
 In melancholy loneliness, and swept 
 
 The desert of those ocean solitudes, 
 
 But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek, 
 
 The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm, 
 
 Now to the sweet and many mingling sounds 
 
 Of kindliest human impulses respond. 
 
 Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem, 
 
 With lightsome clouds and shining seas between, 
 
 And fertile vallies resonant with bliss, 
 
 Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave, 
 
 Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore, 
 
 To meet the kisses of the flowrets there. 
 
 All things are recreated, and the flame 
 Of consentaneous love inspires all life : 
 The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck 
 To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, 
 
76 QUEEN MAB. VIII. 
 
 Rewarding her with their pure perfectness: 
 The balmy breathings of the wind inhale 
 Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad: 
 Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, 
 Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream: 
 No storm deforms the beaming brow of heaven, 
 Nor scatters in the freshness of its pride 
 The foliage of the ever-verdant trees ; 
 But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, 
 And autumn proudly bears her matron grace, 
 Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of spring, 
 Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit 
 Reflects its tint and blushes into love, 
 
 The lion now forgets to thirst for blood: 
 
 There might you see him sporting in the sun 
 
 Beside the dreadless kid ; his claws are sheathed, 
 
 His teeth are harmless, custom's force has made 
 
 His nature as the nature of a lamb. 
 
 Like passion's fruit, the nightshade's tempting bane 
 
 Poisons no more the pleasure it bestows: 
 
 All bitterness is past ; the cup of joy 
 
 Unmingled mantles to the goblet's brim, 
 
 And courts the thirsty lips it fled before. 
 
 But chief, ambiguous man, he that can know 
 More misery, and dream more joy than all; 
 Whose keen sensations thrill within his breast 
 To mingle with a loftier instinct there, 
 Lending their power to pleasure and to pain, 
 Yet raising, sharpening, and refining each ; 
 
VIII. QUEEN MAB. 77 
 
 Who stands amid the ever-varying world, 
 
 The burthen or the glory of the earth ; 
 
 He chief perceives the change, his being notes 
 
 The gradual renovation, and defines 
 
 Each movement of its progress on his mind. 
 
 Man, where the gloom of the long polar night 
 
 Lowers o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil, 
 
 Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost 
 
 Basks in the moonlight's ineffectual glow, 
 
 Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night; 
 
 His chilled and narrow energies, his heart, 
 
 Insensible to courage, truth, or love, 
 
 His stunted stature and imbecile frame, 
 
 Marked him for some abortion of the earth, 
 
 Fit compeer of the bears that roamed around, 
 
 Whose habits and enjoyments were his own: 
 
 His life a feverish dream of staguant woe, 
 
 Whose meagre wants but scantily fulfilled, 
 
 Apprised him ever of the joyless length 
 
 Which his short being's wretchedness had reached ; 
 
 His death a pang, which famine, cold, and toil 
 
 Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark 
 
 Clung to the body stubbornly, had brought: 
 
 All was inflicted here that earth's revenge 
 
 Could wreak on the infringers of her law ; 
 
 One curse alone was spared — the name of God. 
 
 Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day 
 With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame, 
 Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere 
 
78 QUEEN MAB. VIII. 
 
 Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed 
 
 Unnatural vegetation, where the land 
 
 Teemed with all earthquake, tempest, and disease, 
 
 Was man a nobler being ; slavery 
 
 Had crushed him to his country's blood-stained dust; 
 
 Or he was bartered for the fame of power, 
 
 Which all internal impulses destroying, 
 
 Makes human will an article of trade; 
 
 Or he was changed with Christians for their gold, 
 
 And dragged to distant isles, where to the sound 
 
 Of the flesh-mangling scourge, he does the work 
 
 Of all-polluting luxury and wealth, 
 
 Which doubly visits on the tyrants' heads 
 
 The long-protracted fulness of their woe; 
 
 Or he was led to legal butchery, 
 
 To turn to worms beneath that burning sun, 
 
 Where kings first leagued against the rights of men, 
 
 And priests first traded with the name of God. 
 
 Even where the milder zone afforded man 
 
 A seeming shelter, yet contagion there, 
 
 Blighting his being with unnumbered ills, 
 
 Spread like a quenchless fire ; nor truth till late 
 
 Availed to arrest its progress, or create 
 
 That peace which first in bloodless victory waved 
 
 Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime : 
 
 There man was long the train-bearer of slaves, 
 
 The mimic of surrounding misery, 
 
 The jackall of ambition's lion-rage, 
 
 The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal. 
 
VIII. QUEEN MAB. 79 
 
 Here now the human being stands adorning 
 
 This loveliest earth, with taintless body and mind; 
 
 Blest from his birth with all bland impulses, 
 
 Which gently in his noble bosom wake 
 
 All kindly passions and all pure desires. 
 
 Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing, 
 
 Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal 
 
 Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise 
 
 In time-destroying infiniteness, gift 
 
 With self- enshrined eternity, that mocks 
 
 The unprevailing hoariness of age, 
 
 And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene 
 
 Swift as an unremembered vision, stands 
 
 Immortal upon earth : no longer now 
 
 He slays the lamb that looks him in the face, 
 
 And horribly devours his mangled flesh, 
 
 Which still avenging nature's broken law, 
 
 Kindled all putrid humours in his frame, 
 
 All evil passions, and all vain belief, 
 
 Hatred, despair, and loathing in his mind, 
 
 The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime. 
 
 No longer now the winged habitants, 
 
 That in the woods their sweet lives sing away, 
 
 Flee from the form of man ; but gather round, 
 
 And prune their sunny feathers on the hands 
 
 Which little children stretch in friendly sport 
 
 Towards these dreadless partners of their play. 
 
 All things are void of terror : man has lost 
 
 His terrible prerogative, and stands 
 
 An equal amidst equals : happiness 
 
 And science dawn though late upon the earth ; 
 
80 QUEEN MAB. VIII. 
 
 Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame; 
 Disease and pleasure cease to mingle hare, 
 Reason and passion cease to combat there ; 
 Whilst each unfettered o'er the earth extend 
 Their all-subduing energies, and wield 
 The sceptre of a vast dominion there ; 
 Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends 
 Its force to the omnipotence of mind, 
 Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth 
 To decorate its paradise of peace. 
 
IX. QUEEN MAB. 81 
 
 IX. 
 
 — *►•••««- 
 
 O happy Earth! reality of Heaven! 
 To which those restless souls that ceaselessly 
 Throng through the human universe, aspire ; 
 Thou consummation of all mortal hope ! 
 Thou glorious prize of blindly- working will! 
 Whose rays diffused throughout all space and time, 
 Verge to one point and blend for ever there: 
 Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place ! 
 Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime, 
 Languor, disease, and ignorance, dare not come: 
 O happy Earth, reality of Heaven! 
 
 Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams, 
 And dim forebodings of thy loveliness 
 Haunting the human heart, have there entwined 
 Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss 
 Where friends and lovers meet to part no more. 
 Thou art the end of all desire and will, 
 The product of all action : and the souls 
 That by the paths of an aspiring change 
 Have reached thy haven of perpetual peace, 
 There rest from the eternity of toil 
 That framed the fabric of thy perfectness. 
 
 6 
 
82 QUEEN MAB. IX. 
 
 Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear ; 
 
 That hoary giant, who, in lonely pride, 
 
 So long had ruled the world, that nations fell 
 
 Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids, 
 
 That for millenniums had withstood the tide 
 
 Of human things, his storm-breath drove in sand 
 
 Across that desert where their stones survived 
 
 The name of him whose pride had heaped them there. 
 
 Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp, 
 
 Was but the mushroom of a summer day, 
 
 That his light-winged footstep pressed to dust: 
 
 Time was the king of earth : all things gave way 
 
 Before him, but the fixed and virtuous will, 
 
 The sacred sympathies of soul and sense, 
 
 That mocked his fury and prepared his fall. 
 
 Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn of love ; 
 
 Long lay the clouds of darkness o'er the scene, 
 
 Till from its native heaven they rolled away: 
 
 First, crime, triumphant o'er all hope, careered 
 
 Unblushing, undisguising, bold, and strong; 
 
 Whilst falsehood, tricked in virtue's attributes, 
 
 Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe, 
 
 Till done by her own venomous sting to death, 
 
 She left the moral world without a law, 
 
 No longer fettering passion's fearless wing, 
 
 Nor searing reason with the brand of God. 
 
 Then steadily the happy ferment worked ; 
 
 Reason was free ; and wild though passion went 
 
 Through tangled glens and wood-embosomed meads, 
 
 Gathering a garland of the strangest flowers, 
 
IX. QUEEN MAB. 8S 
 
 Yet like the bee returning to her queen, 
 She bound the sweetest on her sister's brow, 
 Who, meek and sober, kissed the sportive child, 
 No longer trembling, at the broken rod. 
 
 Mild was the slow necessity of death : 
 
 The tranquil Spirit failed beneath its grasp, 
 
 Without a groan, almost without a fear, 
 
 Calm as a voyager to some distant land, 
 
 And full of wonder, full of hope as he. 
 
 The deadly germs of languor and disease 
 
 Died in the human frame, and purity 
 
 Blest with all gifts her earthly worshippers. 
 
 How vigorous then the athletic form of age! 
 
 How clear its open and unwrinkled brow ! 
 
 Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care, 
 
 Had stamped the seal of grey deformity 
 
 On all the mingling lineaments of time. 
 
 How lovely the intrepid front of youth ! 
 
 Which meek-eyed courage decked with freshest grace; 
 
 Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name, 
 
 And elevated will, that journeyed on 
 
 Through life's phantasmal scene in fearlessness, 
 
 With virtue, love, and pleasure, hand in hand. 
 
 Then, that sweet bondage which is freedom's self, 
 And rivets with sensation's softest tie 
 The kindred sympathies of human souls, 
 Needed no fetters of tyrannic law: 
 Those delicate and timid impulses 
 
84 QUEEN MAB. IX. 
 
 In nature's primal modesty arose, 
 
 And with undoubting confidence disclosed 
 
 The growing longings of its dawning love, 
 
 Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity, 
 
 That virtue of the cheaply virtuous, 
 
 Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost. 
 
 No longer prostitution's venomed bane 
 
 Poisoned the springs of happiness and life ; 
 
 Woman and man, in confidence and love, 
 
 Equal, and free, and pure, together trod 
 
 The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more 
 
 Were stained with blood from many a pilgrim's feet. 
 
 Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride 
 The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked 
 Famine's faint groan, and penury's silent tear, 
 • A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw 
 Year after year their stones upon the field, 
 Wakening a lonely echo ; and the leaves 
 Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower 
 Usurped the royal ensign's grandeur, shook 
 In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower 
 And whispered strange tales in the whirlwind's ear. 
 
 Low through the lone cathedral's roofless aisles 
 The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung: 
 It were a sight of awfulness to see 
 The works of faith and slavery, so vast, 
 So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal ! 
 Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall. 
 
IX. QUEEN MAB. 85 
 
 A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death 
 To-day, the breathing marble glows above 
 To decorate its memory, and tongues 
 Are busy of its life : to-morrow worms 
 In silence and in darkness seize their prey. 
 
 Within the massy prison's mouldering courts, 
 
 Fearless and free the ruddy children played, 
 
 Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows 
 
 With the green ivy and the red wall-flower, 
 
 That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom ; 
 
 The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron, 
 
 There rusted amid heaps of broken stone 
 
 That mingled slowly with their native earth : 
 
 There the broad beam of day, which feebly once 
 
 Lighted the cheek of lean captivity 
 
 With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone 
 
 On the pure smiles of infant playfulness : 
 
 No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair 
 
 Pealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes 
 
 Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds 
 
 And merriment were resonant around. 
 
 These ruins soon left not a wreck behind : 
 Their elements, wide scattered o'er the globe, 
 To happier shapes were moulded, and became 
 Ministrant to all blissful impulses : 
 Thus human things were perfected, and earth, 
 Even as a child beneath its mother's love, 
 Was strengthened in all excellence, and grew 
 Fairer and nobler with each passing year. 
 
86 QUEEN MAB. IX. 
 
 Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene 
 
 Closes in stedfast darkness, and the past 
 
 Fades from our charmed sight. My task is done: 
 
 Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own, 
 
 With all the fear and all the hope they bring. 
 
 My spells are past : the present now recurs. 
 
 Ah me ! a pathless wilderness remains 
 
 Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand. 
 
 Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course, 
 
 Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue 
 
 The gradual paths of an aspiring change: 
 
 For birth, and life, and death, and that strange state 
 
 Before the naked soul has found its home, 
 
 All tend to perfect happiness, and urge 
 
 The restless wheels of being on their way, 
 
 Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life, 
 
 Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal: 
 
 For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense 
 
 Of outward shews, whose unexperienced shape 
 
 New modes of passion to its frame may lend ; 
 
 Life is its state of action, and the store 
 
 Of all events is aggregated there 
 
 That variegate the eternal universe ; 
 
 Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, 
 
 That leads to azure isles and beaming skies 
 
 And happy regions of eternal hope. 
 
 Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on: 
 
 Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, 
 
 Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom, 
 
 Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth, 
 
IX. QUEEN MAB. 87 
 
 To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower, 
 That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, 
 Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile. 
 
 Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrobing hand, 
 
 So welcome when the tyrant is awake, 
 
 So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch burns ; 
 
 'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour, 
 
 The transient gulph-dream of a startling sleep. 
 
 Death is no foe to virtue : Earth has seen 
 
 Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom, 
 
 Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there, 
 
 And presaging the truth of visioned bliss. 
 
 Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene 
 
 Of linked and gradual being has confirmed ? 
 
 Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still, 
 
 When to the moonlight walk by Henry led, 
 
 Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death? 
 
 And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast, 
 
 Listening supinely to a bigot's creed, 
 
 Or tamely crouching to the tyrant's rod, 
 
 Whose iron thongs are red with human gore ? 
 
 Never: but bravely bearing on, thy will, 
 
 Is destined an eternal war to wage 
 
 With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot 
 
 The germs of misery from the human heart. 
 
 Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe 
 
 The thorny pillow of unhappy crime, 
 
 Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, 
 
 Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease: 
 
 Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy 
 
88 QUEEN MAB. IX. 
 
 Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will, 
 When fenced by power and master of the world. 
 Thou art sincere and good ; of resolute mind, 
 Free from heart- withering custom's cold controul, 
 Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued. 
 Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee, 
 And therefore art thou worthy of the boon 
 Which thou hast now received : virtue shall keep 
 Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod, 
 And many days of beaming hope shall bless 
 Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love. 
 Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy 
 Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch 
 Light, life, and rapture from thy smile. 
 
 The Fairy waves her wand of charm. 
 Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car, 
 
 That rolled beside the battlement, 
 Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness. 
 
 Again the enchanted steeds were yoked, 
 
 Again the burning wheels inflame 
 The steep descent of heaven's untrodden way. 
 
 Fast and far the chariot flew : 
 
 The vast and fiery globes that rolled 
 
 Around the Fairy's palace-gate 
 Lessened by slow degrees, and soon appeared 
 Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs 
 That there attendant on the solar power 
 With borrowed light pursued their narrower way. 
 Earth floated then below : 
 
 The chariot paused a moment there ; 
 
IX. QUEEN MAB. 89 
 
 The Spirit then descended : 
 The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil, 
 Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done, 
 Unfurled their pinions to the winds of heaven. 
 
 The Body and the Soul united then, 
 A gentle start convulsed Ianthe's frame : 
 Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed ; 
 Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained : 
 She looked around in wonder and beheld 
 Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch, 
 Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love, 
 
 And the bright beaming stars 
 
 That through the casement shone. 
 
NOTES. 
 
It will be seen by the author of Queen Mab, and 
 those few gentlemen who have a copy of the former 
 edition, that I have been studious in adhering to the 
 original copy. The notes in French, Latin, and 
 Greek are printed verbatim, as the classical scholar 
 would prefer them in the language they were origi- 
 nally written in, and the general reader in translation. 
 
 W. CLARK. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 —*►•••<««— 
 
 I. Page 12. 
 
 The sun's unclouded orb 
 
 Rolled through the black concave. 
 
 Beyond our atmosphere the sun would appear a ray- 
 less orb of fire in the midst of a black concave. The 
 equal diffusion of its light on earth is owing to the 
 refraction of the rays by the atmosphere, and their 
 reflection from other bodies. Light consists either of 
 vibrations propagated through a subtle medium, or of 
 numerous minute particles repelled in all directions 
 from the luminous body. Its velocity greatly exceeds 
 that of any substance with which we are acquainted: 
 observations on the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites have 
 demonstrated that light takes up no more than 8' 7" 
 in passing from the sun to the earth, a distance of 
 95,000,000 miles. Some idea may be gained of the 
 immense distance of the fixed stars, when it is com- 
 puted that many years would elapse before light could 
 reach this earth from the nearest of them ; yet in one 
 year light travels 5,422,400,000,000 miles, which is a 
 distaDce 5,707,600 times greater than that of the sun 
 from the earth. 
 
94 NOTES. 
 
 I. Page 12. 
 
 Whilst round the chariot's way 
 Innumerable systems rolled. 
 
 The plurality of worlds, the indefinite immensity of 
 the universe is a most awful subject of contemplation. 
 He who rightly feels its mystery and grandeur, is in 
 no danger of seduction from the falsehoods of religious 
 systems, or of deifying the principle of the universe. 
 It is impossible to believe that the Spirit that pervades 
 this infinite machine, begat a son upon the body of a 
 Jewish woman ; or is angered at the consequences of 
 that necessity, which is a synonyme of itself. All 
 that miserable tale of the Devil, and Eve, and an 
 Intercessor, with the childi-sh mummeries of the God 
 of the Jews, is irreconcileable with the knowledge of 
 the stars. The w r orks of his fingers have borne witness 
 against him. 
 
 The nearest of the fixed stars is inconceivably dis- 
 tant from the earth, and they are probably proportion- 
 ably distant from each other. By a calculation of 
 the velocity of light, Syrius is supposed to be at least 
 54',224,000,000,000 miles from the earth*. That which 
 appears only like a thin and silvery cloud streaking 
 the heaven, is in effect composed of innumerable clus- 
 ters of suns, each shining with its own light, and illumi- 
 nating numbers of planets that revolve around them. 
 Millions and millions of suns are ranged around us, all 
 
 a See Nicholson's Encyclopedia, art. Light. 
 
NOTES. 95 
 
 attended by innumerable worlds, yet calm, regular, 
 and harmonious, all keeping the paths of immutable 
 necessity. 
 
 IV. Page 38. 
 
 These are the hired bravoes who defend 
 The tyrant's throne. 
 
 To employ murder as a means of justice, is an idea 
 which a man of an enlightened mind will not dwell 
 upon with pleasure. To march forth in rank and file, 
 with all the pomp of streamers and trumpets, for the 
 purpose of shooting at our feilow-men as a mark ; to 
 inflict upon them all the variety of wound and anguish ; 
 to leave them weltering in their blood ; to wander over 
 the field of desolation, and count the number of the 
 dying and the dead, — are employments which in thesis 
 we may maintain to be necessary, but which no good 
 man will contemplate with gratulation and delight. A 
 battle we suppose is won : — thus truth is established; — 
 thus the cause of justice is confirmed ! It surely re-- 
 quires no common sagacity to discern the connection 
 between this immense heap of calamities, and the as- 
 sertion of truth, or the maintenance of justice. 
 
 Kings, and ministers of state, the real authors of the 
 calamity, sit unmolested in their cabinet, while those 
 against whom the fury of the storm is directed, are, for 
 the most part, persons who have been trepanned into 
 the service, or who are dragged unwillingly from their 
 peaceful homes into the field of battle. A soldier is a 
 man whose business it is to kill those who never of- 
 
96 NOTES. 
 
 feuded him, and who are the innocent martyrs of other 
 men's iniquities. Whatever may become of the ab- 
 stract question of the justifiableness of war, it seems 
 impossible that the soldier should not be a depraved 
 and unnatural being. 
 
 To these more serious and momentous considera- 
 tions it may ,be proper to add a recollection of the 
 ridiculousness of the military character. Its first con- 
 stituent is obedience : a soldier is, of all descriptions of 
 men, the most completely a machine ; yet his profes- 
 sion inevitably teaches him something of dogmatism, 
 swaggering, and self-consequence : he is like the pup- 
 pet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to 
 strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we 
 perfectly know cannot assume the most insignificant 
 gesture, advance either to the right or the left, but as 
 he is moved by his exhibitor. — Godwin's Enquirer, 
 Essay V. 
 
 I will here subjoin a little poem, so strongly expres- 
 sive of my abhorrence of despotism and falsehood, 
 that I fear lest it never again may be depictured so 
 vividly. This opportunity is perhaps the only one 
 that ever will occur of rescuing it from oblivion. 
 
 FALSEHOOD AND VICE. 
 
 A DIALOGUE. 
 
 Whilst monarchs laughed upon their thrones 
 To hear a famished nations groans, 
 And hugged the wealth wrung from the woe 
 That makes its eyes and veins o'erflow, 
 
NOTES. 97 
 
 Those thrones, high built upon the heaps 
 Of bones where frenzied famine sleeps. 
 Where slavery wields her scourge of iron, 
 Red with mankind's unheeded gore, 
 And war's mad fiends the scene environ, 
 Mingling with shrieks a drunken roar, 
 There Vice and Falsehood took their stand, 
 High raised above the unhappy land. 
 
 FALSEHOOD. 
 
 Brother! arise from the dainty fare, 
 
 Which thousands have toiled and bled to bestow ; 
 
 A finer feast for thine hungry ear 
 
 Is the news that I bring of human woe. 
 
 VICE. 
 
 And, secret one, what hast thou done, 
 To compare, in thy tumid pride, with me? 
 I, whose career, through the blasted year, 
 Has been tracked by despair and agony. 
 
 FALSEHOOD. 
 
 What have I done! — I have torn the robe 
 From baby truth's unsheltered form, 
 And round the desolated globe 
 Borne safely the bewildering charm : 
 My tyrant-slaves to a dungeon-floor 
 Have bound the fearless innocent, 
 7 
 
98 NOTES. 
 
 And streams of fertilizing gore 
 Flow from her bosom's hideous rent, 
 
 Which this unfailing dagger gave 
 
 I dread that blood ! — no more — this day 
 Is ours, though her eternal ray 
 Must shine upon our grave. 
 Yet know, proud Vice, had I not given 
 To thee the robe I stole from heaven, 
 Thy shape of ugliness and fear 
 Had never gained admission here. 
 
 VICE. 
 
 And know, that had I disdained to toil, 
 But sate in my loathsome cave the while, 
 And ne'er to these hateful sons of heaven, 
 GOLD, MONARCHY, and MURDER given 
 Hadst thou with all thine art essayed 
 One of thy games then to have played, 
 With all thine overweening boast, 
 Falsehood ! I tell thee thou hadst lost ! — 
 Yet wherefore this dispute? — we tend, 
 Fraternal, to one common end ; 
 In this cold grave beneath my feet, 
 Will our hopes, our fears, and our labours meet. 
 
 FALSEHOOD. 
 
 I brought my daughter, RELIGION, on earth: 
 She smothered Reason's babes in their birth ; 
 But dreaded their mother's eye severe, — 
 So the crocodile slunk off slily in fear, 
 
NOTES, 99 
 
 And loosed her bloodhounds from the den..^.. 
 
 They started from dreams of slaughtered men, 
 
 And, by the light of her poison eye, 
 
 Did her work o'er the wide earth frightfully : 
 
 The dreadful stench of her torches flare, 
 
 Fed with human fat, polluted the air : 
 
 The curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries 
 
 Of the many-mingling miseries, 
 
 As on she trod, ascended high 
 
 And trumpeted my victory ! — 
 
 Brother, tell what thou hast done. 
 
 VICE. 
 
 I have extinguished the noon-day sun, 
 In the carnage-smoke of battles won : 
 Famine, murder, hell, and power, 
 Were glutted in that glorious hour 
 Which searchless fate had stamped for me 
 
 With the seal of her security 
 
 For the bloated wretch on yonder throne 
 
 Commanded the bloody fray to rise : 
 
 Like me he joyed at the stifled moan 
 
 Wrung from a nation's miseries ; 
 
 While the snakes, whose slime even him defiled, 
 
 In ecstasies of malice smiled : 
 
 They thought 'twas theirs, — but mine the deed ! 
 
 Theirs is the toil, but mine the meed — 
 
 Ten thousand victims madly bleed. 
 
 They dream that tyrants goad them there . 
 
 With poisonous war to taint the air : 
 
100 NOTES. 
 
 These tyrants, on their beds of thorn, 
 Swell with the thoughts of murderous fame, 
 And with their gains to lift my name. 
 Restless they plan from night to morn : 
 L — I do all ; without my aid 
 Thy daughter, that relentless maid, 
 Could never o'er a death-bed urge 
 The fury of her venomed scourge. 
 
 FALSEHOOD. 
 
 Brother, well : — the world is ours ; 
 
 And whether thou or I have won, 
 
 The pestilence expectant lowers 
 
 On all beneath yon blasted sun. 
 
 Our joys, our toils, our honours meet 
 
 In the milk-white and wormy winding-sheet : 
 
 A short-lived hope, unceasing care, 
 
 Some heartless scraps of godly prayer, 
 
 A moody curse, and a frenzied sleep 
 
 Ere gapes the graves unclosing deep, 
 
 A tyrant's dream, a coward's start, 
 
 The ice that clings to a priestly heart, 
 
 A judge's frown, a courtier's smile, 
 
 Make the great whole for which we toil ; 
 
 And, brother, whether thou or I 
 
 Have done the work of misery, 
 
 It little boots : thy toil and pain, 
 
 Without my aid were more than vain ; 
 
 And but for thee I ne'er had sate 
 
 The guardian of heaven's palace gate. f»3f- 
 
NOTES. 101 
 
 V. Page 42. 
 
 Thus do the generations of the earth 
 
 Go to the grave, and issue from the womb. 
 
 One generation passeth away and another genera- 
 tion cometh, but the earth abideth for ever. The sun 
 also ariseth and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to 
 his place where he arose. The wind goetb toward 
 the south and turneth about unto the north, it whirleth 
 about continually, and the wind returneth again, ac- 
 cording to his circuits. All the rivers run into the 
 sea, yet the sea is not full ; unto the place whence the 
 rivers come, thither shall they return again. 
 
 Ecclesiastes, chap. i. 
 
 V. Page 42. 
 
 Even as the leaves 
 Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year 
 Has scattered on the forest soil. 
 
 O'lri 7rep <pv\Xwv yeveri, TOirjSe ical avBpQv. 
 
 $uA\a ra fiev r' avEp,OQ ^a^ua^e X^ 61 ' <*^ a ^ Q'vXrj 
 
 TrjXEdoaxra (j>v£i, eapog ^ETriylyverai dipt]' 
 
 "He avhpwv ysi'Er), ?/ p.kv <J>vei >/^' awoXijyEi.^ 
 
 IAIAA. Z\ 1. 146. 
 
 a Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, 
 Now green in youth, now withering on the ground ; 
 Another race the following spring supplies ; 
 They fall successive, and successive rise : 
 So generations in their course decay ; 
 So flourish these, when those are past away. 
 
 Pope's Homer. 
 
102 NOTES. 
 
 V. Page 44. 
 
 The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings. 
 
 Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis 
 E terra magnum alter ius spectare laborem ; 
 Non quia vexari quemquam 'st jucunda voluptas, 
 Sed quibns ipse malis careas quia cernere suave 'st. 
 Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri, 
 Per campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli ; 
 Sed nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere 
 Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena; 
 Despicere unde queas alios, passim que videre 
 Errare atque viam palanteis quserere vitse ; 
 Certare ingenio ; contendere nobilitate ; 
 Nocteis atque dies niti prastante labore 
 Ad summas emergere opes, rerum que potiri. 
 O miseras hominum menteis! O pectora caeca 3 ! 
 
 Luc. lib. ii. 
 
 a When the wide ocean maddening whirlwinds sweep, 
 And heave the billows of the boiling deep, 
 Pleased we from land the reeling bark survey, 
 And rolling mountains of the watery way. 
 Not that we joy another's woes to see, 
 But to reflect that we ourselves are free. 
 So, the dread battle ranged in distant fields, 
 Ourselves secure, a secret pleasure yields. 
 But what more charming than to gain the height 
 Of true philosophy ? What pure delight 
 From Wisdom's citadel to view below, 
 Deluded mortals, as they wandering go 
 In quest of happiness ! ah, blindly weak ! 
 For fame, for vain nobility they seek ; 
 
NOTES. 103 
 
 V. Page 45. 
 
 And statesmen boast 
 Of wealth ! 
 
 There is no real wealth but the labour of man. 
 Were the mountains of gold, and the vallies of silver, 
 the world would uot be one grain of corn the richer ; 
 no one comfort would be added to the human race. 
 In consequence of our consideration for the precious 
 metals, one man is enabled to heap to himself luxuries 
 at the expence of the necessaries of his neighbour ; a 
 system admirably fitted to produce all the varieties of 
 disease and crime, which never fail to characterise the 
 two extremes of opulence and penury. A speculator 
 takes pride to himself as the promoter of his country's 
 prosperity, who employs a number of hands in the 
 manufacture of articles avowedly destitute of use, or 
 subservient only to the unhallowed cravings of luxury 
 and ostentation. The nobleman, who employs the 
 peasants of his neighbourhood in building his palaces, 
 until " jam pauca aratro jugera, regies moles relin- 
 quunt*" flatters himself that he has gained the title of 
 a patriot by yielding to the impulses of vanity. The 
 shew and pomp of courts adduces the same apology for 
 
 Labour for heapy treasures, night and day, 
 And pant for power and magisterial sway. 
 
 Oh, wretched mortals ! souls devoid of light, 
 Lost in the shades of intellectual night ! 
 
 Dr. Busby's Lucretius. 
 a These piles of royal structure, will soon leave but few acres for the 
 plough. 
 
1 01 NOTES. 
 
 its continuance; and many a fete has been given, 
 many a woman has eclipsed her beauty by her dress, 
 to benefit the labouring poor and to encourage trade. 
 Who does not see that this is a remedy which aggra- 
 vates, whilst it palliates the countless diseases of so- 
 ciety? The poor are set to labour, — for what? Not 
 the food for which they famish : not the blankets for 
 want of which their babes are frozen by the cold of 
 their miserable hovels : not those comfors of civiliza- 
 tion without which civilized man is far more miserable 
 than the meanest savage ; oppressed as he is by all its 
 insidious evils, within the daily and taunting prospect 
 of its innumerable benefits assiduously exhibited before 
 him: — no; for the pride of power, for the miserable 
 isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hun- 
 dredth part of society. No greater evidence is afforded 
 of the wide extended and radical mistakes of civilized 
 man than this fact : those arts which are essential to 
 his very being are held in the greatest contempt ; em- 
 ployments are lucrative in an inverse ratio to their 
 usefulness a : the jeweller, the toyman, the actor gains 
 fame and wealth by the exercise of his useless and 
 ridiculous art; whilst the cultivator of the earth, he 
 without whom society must cease to subsist, struggles 
 through contempt and penury, and perishes by that 
 famine which, but for his unceasing exertions, would 
 annihilate the rest of mankind. 
 
 I will not insult common sense by insisting on the 
 doctrine of the natural equality of man. The question 
 
 a See Rousseau, " De l'lnegalite parrai les Hommes," note 7. 
 
NOTES. 105 
 
 is not concerning its desirableness, but its practicabi- 
 lity : so far as it is practicable, it is desirable. That 
 state of human society which approaches nearer to an 
 equal partition of its benefits and evils should, cceteris 
 paribus*, be preferred: but so long as we conceive 
 that a wanton expenditure of human labour, not for 
 the necessities, not even for the luxuries of the ma?s of 
 society, but for the egotism and ostentation of a few 
 of its members, is defensible on the ground of public 
 justice, so long we neglect to approximate to the re- 
 demption of the human race. 
 
 Labour is required for physical, and leisure for mo- 
 ral improvement: from the former of these advantages 
 the rich, and from the latter the poor, by the inevitable 
 condition of their respective situations, are precluded. 
 A state which should combine the advantages of both, 
 would be subjected to the evils of neither. He that is 
 deficient in firm health, or vigorous intellect, is but half 
 a man : hence it follows, that, to subject the labouring 
 classes to unnecessary labour, is wantonly depriving 
 them of any opportunities of intellectual improvement; 
 and that the rich are heaping up for their own mischief 
 the disease, lassitude and ennui by which their exist- 
 ence is rendered an intolerable burthen. 
 
 English reformers exclaim against sinecures, — but 
 the true pension-list is the rent-roll of the landed pro- 
 prietors: wealth is a power usurped by the few, to 
 compel the many to labour for their benefit. The laws 
 which support this system derive their force from the 
 
 a Making allowances on both sides. 
 
106 NOTES. 
 
 ignorance and credulity of its victims: they are the 
 result of a conspiracy of the few against the many, 
 who are themselves obliged to purchase this pre-emi- 
 nence by the loss of all real comfort. $t3= 
 
 The commodities that substantially contribute to the 
 subsistence of the human species form a very short 
 catalogue : they demand from us but a slender portion 
 of industry. If these only were produced, and suffi- 
 ciently produced, the species of man would be conti- 
 nued. If the labour necessarily required to produce 
 them were equitably divided among the poor, and, 
 still more, if it were equitably divided among all, 
 each man's share of labour would be light, and his 
 portion of leisure would be ample. There was a time 
 when this leisure would have been of small compara- 
 tive value: it is to be hoped that the time will come, 
 when it will be applied to the most important pur- 
 poses. Those hours which are not required for the 
 production of the necessaries of life, may be devoted 
 to the cultivation of the understanding, the eularging 
 our stock of knowledge, the refining our taste, and 
 thus opening to us new and more exquisite sources of 
 enjoyment. 
 
 It was perhaps necessary that a period of monopoly 
 and oppression should subsist, before a period of cul- 
 tivated equality could subsist. Savages perhaps would 
 never have been excited to the discovery of truth and 
 the invention of art, but by the narrow motives which 
 such a period affords. But, surely, after the savage 
 
NOTES. 107 
 
 state has ceased, and men have set out in the glorious 
 career of discovery and invention, monopoly and op- 
 pression cannot be necessary to prevent them from 
 returning to a state of barbarism. — Godwin's En- 
 quirer, Essay II. See also Pol. Jus., Book VIII. 
 chap. 1 1 . 
 
 It is a calculation of this admirable author, that all 
 the conveniences of civilized life might be produced, 
 if society would divide the labour equally among its 
 members, by each individual being employed in labour 
 two hours during the day. 
 
 V. Page 46. 
 
 Or religion 
 Drives his wife raving mad, 
 
 I am acquainted with a lady of considerable accom- 
 plishments, and the mother of a numerous family, 
 whom the Christian religion has goaded to incurable 
 insanity. A parallel case is, I believe, within the ex- 
 perience of every physician. 
 
 Nam jam ssepe homines patriam, carosque parentes 
 Prodiderunt, vitare Acherusia templa petentes a . 
 
 Lucretius. ■ 
 
 a For some, the approach of Death and Hell to stay, 
 Their parents, friends, and country, will betray. 
 
 Dr. Busby's Lucretius. 
 
108 NOTES. 
 
 V. Page 48. 
 
 Even love is sold. 
 
 Not even the intercourse of the sexes is exempt 
 from the despotism of positive institution. Law pre- 
 tends even to govern the indisciplinable wanderings of 
 passion, to put fetters on the clearest deductions of 
 reason, and, by appeals to the will, to subdue the in- 
 voluntary affections of our nature. Love is inevitably 
 consequent upon the perception of loveliness. Love 
 withers under constraint: its very essence is liberty : 
 it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor 
 fear : it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited, 
 where its votaries live in confidence, equality, and un- 
 reserve. 
 
 How long then ought the sexual connection to last? 
 what law ought to specify the extent of the grievances 
 which should limit its duration? A husband and wife 
 ought to continue so long united as they love each 
 other : any law which should bind them to cohabita- 
 tion for one moment after the decay of their affection, 
 would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most 
 unworthy of toleration. How odious an usurpation 
 of the right of private judgment should that law be 
 considered, which should make the ties of friendship 
 indissoluble, in spite of the caprices, the inconstancy, 
 the fallibility, and capacity for improvement of the 
 human mind. And by so much would the fetters of 
 love be heavier and more unendurable than those of 
 friendship, as love is more vehement and capricious, 
 
NOTES. 109 
 
 more dependent on those delicate peculiarities of ima- 
 gination, and less capable of reduction to the ostensi- 
 ble merits of the object. 
 
 The state of society in which Ave exist is a mixture 
 of feudal savageness and imperfect civilization. The 
 narrow and unenlightened morality of the Christian 
 religion is an aggravation of these evils. It is not even 
 until lately that mankind have admitted that happiness 
 is the sole end of the science of ethics, as of all other 
 sciences; and that the fanatical idea of mortifying the 
 flesh for the love of God has been discarded. I have 
 heard, indeed, an ignorant collegian adduce, in favour 
 of Christianity, its hostility to every worldly feeling a ! 
 
 But if happiness be the object of morality, of all hu- 
 man unions and disunions ; if the worthiness of every 
 action is to be estimated by the quantity of pleasurable 
 sensation it is calculated to produce, then the connec- 
 tion of the sexes is so long sacred as it contributes to 
 the comfort of the parties, and is naturally dissolved 
 when its evils are greater than its benefits. There is 
 nothing immoral in this separation. Constancy has 
 nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure 
 it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of 
 
 a The first Christian emperor made a law by which seduction was 
 punished with death ; if the female pleaded her own consent, she also was 
 punished with death ; if the parents endeavoured to screen the criminals, 
 they were banished, and their estates were confiscated ; the slaves who 
 might be accessary were burned alive, or forced to swallow melted lead. 
 The very offspring of an illegal love were involved in the consequences 
 of the sentence. — Gibbon's Decline and Fall, &c. vol, ii. page 210. See 
 also, for the hatred of the primitive Christians to love, and even marriage, 
 page 269. 
 
110 NOTES. 
 
 vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral defects 
 of magnitude in the object of its indiscreet choice. 
 Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same 
 woman, is not less absurd than to promise to believe 
 the same creed : such a vow, in both cases, excludes 
 us from all enquiry. The language of the votarist is 
 this: The woman I now love may be infinitely inferior 
 to many others ; the creed I now profess may be a 
 mass of errors and absurdities ; but I exclude myself 
 from all future information as to the amiability of the 
 one, and the truth of the other, resolving blindly, and 
 in spite of conviction, to adhere to them. — Is this the 
 language of delicacy and reason ? Is the love of such 
 a frigid heart of more worth than its belief? 
 
 The present system of constraint does no more, in 
 the majority of instances, than make hypocrites or 
 open enemies. Persons of delicacy and virtue, unhap- 
 pily united to one whom they find it impossible to 
 love, spend the loveliest season of their life in unpro- 
 ductive efforts to appear otherwise than they are, for 
 the sake of the feelings of their partner or the welfare 
 of their mutual offspring : those of less generosity and 
 refinement openly avow their disappointment, and lin- 
 ger out the remnant of that union, which only death 
 can dissolve, in a state of incurable bickering and 
 hostility. The early education of their children takes 
 its colour from the squabbles of the parents ; they are 
 nursed in a systematic school of ill-humour, violence, 
 and falsehood. Had they been suffered to part at the 
 moment when indifference rendered their union irk- 
 some, they would have been spared many years of 
 
NOTES. 1 1 1 
 
 misery: they would have connected themselves more 
 suitably, and would have found that happiness in the 
 society of more congenial partners which is for ever 
 denied them by the despotism of marriage. They 
 w r ould have been separately useful and happy mem- 
 bers of society, who, whilst united, were miserable, 
 and rendered misanthropical by misery. The convic- 
 tion that wedlock is indissoluble holds out the strong- 
 est of all temptations to the perverse : they indulge 
 without restraint in acrimony, and all the little tyran- 
 nies of domestic life, when they know that their vic- 
 tim is without appeal. If this connection were put on 
 a rational basis, each would be assured that habitual 
 ill temper would terminate in separation, and would 
 check this vicious and dangerous propensity. 
 
 Prostitution is the legitimate offspring of marriage 
 and its accompanying errors. Women, for no other 
 crime than having followed the dictates of a natural 
 appetite, are driven with fury from the comforts and 
 sympathies of society. It is less venial than murder ; 
 and the punishment which is inflicted on her who de- 
 stroys her child to escape reproach, is lighter than the 
 life of agony and disease to which the prostitute is 
 irrecoverably doomed. Has a woman obeyed the im- 
 pulse of unerring nature ; — society declares war against 
 her, pityless and eternal war : she must be the tame 
 slave, she must make no reprisals; theirs is the right 
 of persecution, hers the duty of endurance. She lives 
 a life of infamy : the loud and bitter laugh of scorn 
 scares her from all return. She dies of long and lin- 
 gering disease : yet she is in fault, she is the criminal, 
 
112 NOTES. 
 
 she the froward and untameable child, — and society, 
 forsooth, the pure and virtuous matron, who casts her 
 as an abortion from her undefiled bosom ! Society 
 avenges herself on the criminals of her own creation; 
 she is employed in anathematizing the vice to-day, 
 which yesterday she was the most zealous to teach. 
 Thus is formed one-tenth of the population of London, 
 meanwhile the evil is twofold. Young men, excluded 
 by the fanatical idea of chastity from the society of 
 modest and accomplished women, associate with these 
 vicious and miserable beings, destroying thereby all 
 those exquisite and delicate sensibilities whose exist- 
 ence cold-hearted worldlings have denied ; annihilat- 
 ing all genuine passion, and debasing that to a selfish 
 feeling which is the excess of generosity and devoted- 
 ness. Their body and mind alike crumble into a 
 hideous wreck of humanity ; idiotcy and disease be- 
 come perpetuated in their miserable offspring, and 
 distant generations suffer for the bigotted morality of 
 their forefathers. Chastity is a monkish and evange- 
 lical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance 
 even than uninteliectual sensuality; it strikes at the 
 root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than 
 half of the human race to misery, that some few may 
 monopolize according to law. A system could not 
 well have been devised more studiously hostile to 
 human happiness than marriage. 
 
 I conceive that, from the abolition of marriage, the 
 fit and natural arrangement of sexual connection would 
 result. I by no means assert that the intercourse 
 would be promiscuous: on the contrary; it appears, 
 
NOTES. 113 
 
 from the relation of parent to child, that this union is 
 generally of long duration, and marked above al 
 others with generosity and self-devotion. But this i 
 a subject which it is perhaps premature to discuss. 
 That which will result from the abolition of marriage, 
 will be natural and right, because choice and change 
 will be exempted from restraint. 
 
 In fact, religion and morality, as they now stand, 
 compose a practical code of misery and servitude: 
 the genius of human happiness must tear every leaf 
 from the accursed book of God, ere man can read 
 the inscription on his heart. How would morality, 
 dressed up in stiff stays and finery, start from her own 
 disgusting image, should she look in the mirror of 
 nature ! 
 
 VI. Page 53. 
 
 To the red and baleful sun 
 That faintly twinkles there. 
 
 The north polar star, to which the axis of the earth, 
 in its present state of obliquity, points. It is exceed- 
 ingly probable, from many considerations, that this 
 obliquity will gradually diminish, until the equator 
 coincides with the ecliptic : the nights and days will 
 then become equal on the earth throughout the year, 
 and probably the seasons also. There is no great ex- 
 travagance in presuming that the progress of the per- 
 pendicularity of the poles may be as rapid as the pro- 
 gress of intellect; or that there should be a perfect 
 identity between the moral and physical improvement 
 
 8 
 
114 NOTES. 
 
 of the human species. It is certain that wisdom is not 
 compatible with disease, and that, in the present state 
 of the climates of the earth, health, in the true and 
 comprehensive sense of the word, is out of the reach 
 of civilized man. Astronomy teaches us that the earth 
 is now in its progress, and that the poles are every 
 year becoming more and more perpendicular to the 
 ecliptic. The strong evidence afforded by the history 
 of mythology, and geological researches, that some 
 event of this nature has taken place already, affords a 
 strong presumption that this progress is not merely an 
 oscillation, as has been surmised by some late astro- 
 nomers 3 . Bones of animals peculiar to the torrid zone 
 have been found in the north of Siberia, and on the 
 banks of the river Ohio. Plants have been found in 
 the fossil state in the interior of Germany, which de- 
 mand the present climate of Hindostan for their pro- 
 duction 1 '. The researches of M. Bailly c establish the 
 existence of a people who inhabit a tract of land in 
 Tartary, 49° north latitude, of greater antiquity than 
 either the Indians, the Chinese, or the Chaldeans, from 
 whom these nations derived their sciences and theo- 
 logy. We find, from the testimony of ancient writers, 
 that Britain, Germany, and France, were much colder 
 than at present, and that their great rivers were an- 
 nually frozen over. Astronomy teaches us also, that 
 since this period the obliquity of the earth's position 
 has been considerably diminished. gQh 
 
 a Laplace, Syst£me du Monde. 
 
 b Cabanis, Hapports du Physique et du Moral de l'Horome, vol. ii. p 406. 
 
 c Lettres sur les Sciences, a Voltaire. Bailly. 
 
NOTES. 115 
 
 VI. Page 57. 
 
 No atom of this turbulence fulfils 
 A vague and unnecessitated task, 
 Or acts but as it must and ought to act. 
 
 Deux exemples serviront a nous rendre plus sensible 
 le principe qui vient d'etre pose; nous emprunterons 
 l'une du physique et l'autre du moral. Dans un tour- 
 billon de poussiere qu'eleve un vent impetueux, quel- 
 que confus qu'il paroisse a nos yeux ; dans la plus 
 affreuse tempete excite par des vents opposes qui sou- 
 levent les flots, il n'y a pas une seule molecule de 
 poussiere ou d'eau qui soit place au hazard, qui n'ait 
 sa cause suffisante pour occuper le lieu ou elie se 
 trouve, et qui n'agisse rigoureussement de la maniere 
 dont elle doit agir. Une geometre qui connoitroit 
 exactement les differentes forces qui agissent dans ces 
 deux eas, et les proprietes des molecules qui sont mues, 
 demontreroit que d'apres des causes donnes, chaque 
 molecule agit precisement comme elle doit agir, et ne 
 peut agir autrement qu'elle ne fait. 
 
 Dans les convulsions terribles qui agitent quelque- 
 fois les soci^tes politiques, et qui produisent souvent le 
 renversement d'un empire, il n'y a pas une seule action, 
 une seule parole, une seule pensee, une seule volont6, 
 une seule passion dans les agens qui concourent a la 
 revolution comme destructeurs ou comme victimes, 
 qui ne soit necessaire, qui n'agisse comme elle doit 
 agir, qui n'opere infalliblement les effets qu'elle doit 
 operer, suivant la place qu'occupent ces agens dans ce 
 tourbillon moral. Cela paroitroit evident pour une 
 
116 NOTES. 
 
 intelligence qui sera en etat de saisir et d'appr^cier 
 toutes les actions et re-actions des esprits et des corps 
 de ceux qui contribuent a cette revolution a . 
 
 Systeme de la Nature, vol. i. p. 44. 
 
 VI. Page 58. 
 
 Necessity ! thou mother of the world ! 
 
 He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity, means 
 that, contemplating the events which compose the 
 moral and material universe, he beholds only an im- 
 mense and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects, 
 no one of which could occupy any other place than it 
 
 a Two instances will serve to render more sensible to us the principle 
 here laid down ; we will borrow one from natural the other from moral 
 philosophy. In a whirlwind of dust raised by an impetuous wind, how- 
 ever confused it may appear to our eyes ; in the most dreadful tempest 
 excited by opposing winds, which convulse the waves, there is not a 
 single particle of dust or of water that is placed by chance that has not 
 its sufficient cause for occupying the situation in which it is, and which 
 does not rigororously act in the mode it should act. A geometrician who 
 knew equally the different powers which operate in both cases, and the 
 properties of the particles which are propelled, would shew that according 
 to the given causes, each particle acts precisely as it should act, and can- 
 not act otherwise than it does. 
 
 In those terrible convulsions which sometimes agitate political societies, 
 and which frequently bring on the overthrow of an empire, there is not a 
 single action, a single word, a single thought, a single volition, a single 
 passion in the agents, which concur in the revolution as destroyers, or as 
 victims, which is not necessary, which does not act as it should act, which 
 does not infallibly produce the effects which it should produce, according 
 to the place occupied by these agents in the moral whirlwind. 
 
 This would appear evident to an intelligence which would be in a state 
 to seize and appreciate all the actions and re-actions of the minds and 
 bodies of those who contribute to this revolution. 
 
 System of Nature, vol. i. 
 
NOTES, 117 
 
 does occupy, or act in any other place than it does 
 act. The idea of necessity is obtained by our ex- 
 perience of the connection between objects, the uni- 
 formity of the operations of nature, the constant con- 
 junction of similar events, and the consequent inference 
 of one from the other. Mankind are therefore agreed 
 in the admission of necessity, if they admit that these 
 two circumstances take place in voluntary action. 
 Motive is, to voluntary action in the human mind, 
 what cause is to effect in the material universe. The 
 word liberty, as applied to mind, is analogous to the 
 word chance, as applied to matter: they spring from 
 an ignorance of the certainty of the conjunction of 
 antecedents and consequents. 
 
 Every human being is irresistibly impelled to act 
 precisely as he does act: in the eternity which preceded 
 his birth, a chain of causes was generated, which, ope- 
 rating under the name of motives, make it impossible 
 that any thought of his mind, or any action of his life, 
 should be otherwise than it is. Were the doctrine of 
 Necessity false, the human mind would no longer be 
 a legitimate object of science; from like causes it 
 would be in vain that we should expect like effects ; 
 the strongest motive would no longer be paramount 
 over the conduct; all knowledge would be vague and 
 undeterminate ; we could not predict with any cer- 
 tainty, that we might not meet as an enemy to-morrow, 
 him with whom we have parted in friendship to-night; 
 the most probable inducements and the clearest rea- 
 sonings would lose the invariable influence they pos- 
 sess. The contrary of this is demonstrably the fact. 
 
118 NOTES. 
 
 Similar circumstances produce the same unvariable 
 effects. The precise character and motives of any 
 man on any occasion being given, the moral philoso- 
 pher could predict his actions with as much certainty 
 as the natural philosopher could predict the effects of 
 the mixture of any particular chemical substances. 
 Why is the aged husbandman more experienced than 
 the young beginner? Because there is an uniform, un- 
 deniable necessity in the operations of the material 
 universe. Why is the old statesman more skilful than 
 the raw politician? Because, relying on the necessary 
 conjunction of motive and action, he proceeds to pro- 
 duce moral effects, by the application of those moral 
 causes which experience has shewn to be effectual. 
 Some actions may be found to which we can attach 
 no motives, but these are the effects of causes with 
 which we are unacquainted. Hence the relation which 
 motive bears to voluntary action is that of cause to 
 effect ; nor, placed in this point of view, is it, or ever 
 has it been the subject of popular or philosophical dis- 
 pute. None but the few fanatics who are engaged in 
 the Herculean task of reconciling the justice of their 
 God with the misery of man, will longer outrage 
 common sense by the supposition of an event without 
 a cause, a voluntary action without a motive. History, 
 politics, morals, criticism, all grounds of reasoning, all 
 principles of science, alike assume the truth of the 
 doctrine of Necessity. No farmer carrying his corn 
 to market doubts' the sale of it at the market price. 
 The master of a manufactory no more doubts that he 
 can purchase the human labour necessary for his pur- 
 
NOTES. 1 1 9 
 
 poses, than that his machinery will act as they have 
 been accustomed to act. 
 
 But, whilst none have scrupled to admit necessity 
 as influencing matter, many have disputed its domi- 
 nion over mind. Independently of its militating with 
 the received ideas of the justice of God, it is by no 
 means obvious io a superficial enquiry. When the 
 mind observes its own operations, it feels no connec- 
 tion of motive and action : but as we know " nothing 
 more of causation than the constant conjunction of 
 objects and the consequent inference of one from the 
 other, as we find that these two circumstances are uni- 
 versally allowed to have place in voluntary action, 
 we may be easily led to own that they are subjected 
 to the necessity common to all causes." The actions 
 of the will have a regular conjunction with circum- 
 stances and characters; motive is, to voluntary action, 
 what cause is to effect. But the only idea we can 
 form of causation is a constant conjunction of similar 
 objects, and the consequent inference of one from the 
 other: wherever this is the case necessity is clearly 
 established. 
 
 The idea of liberty, applied metaphorically to the 
 will, has sprung from a misconception of the meaning 
 of the word power. What is power ? — id quod potest*, 
 that which can produce any given effect. To deny 
 power, is to say that nothing can or has the power to 
 be or act. In the only true sense of the word power, 
 it applies with equal force to the loadstone as to the 
 
 a That which can do any thing. 
 
120 NOTES. 
 
 human will. Do you think these motives, which I 
 shall present, are powerful enough to rouse him? is a 
 question just as common as, Do you think this lever 
 has the power of raising this weight? The advocates 
 of free-will assert that the will has the power of refus- 
 ing to be determined by the strongest motive: but the 
 strongest motive is that which, overcoming all others, 
 ultimately prevails ; this assertion therefore amounts 
 to a denial of the will being ultimately determined by 
 that motive which does determine it, which is absurd. 
 But it is equally certain that a man cannot resist the 
 strongest motive, as that he cannot overcome a physi- 
 cal impossibility. 
 
 The doctrine of Necessity tends to introduce a great 
 change into the established notions of morality, and 
 utterly to destroy religion. Reward and punishment 
 must be considered, by the Necessarian, merely as 
 motives which he would employ in order to procure 
 the adoption or abandonment of any given line of con- 
 duct. Desert, in the present sense of the word, would 
 no longer have any meaning; and he, who should 
 inflict pain upon another for no better reason than that 
 he deserved it, would only gratify his revenge under 
 pretence of satisfying justice. It is not enough, says 
 the advocate of free-will, that a criminal should be 
 prevented from a repetition of his crime: he should 
 feel pain, and his torments, when justly inflicted, ought 
 precisely to be proportioned to his fault. But utility 
 is morality; that which is incapable of producing hap- 
 piness is useless ; and though the crime of Damiens 
 must be condemned, yet the frightful torments which 
 
NOTES, 121 
 
 revenge, under the name of justice, inflicted on this 
 unhappy man, cannot be supposed to have augmented, 
 even at the long run, the stock of pleasurable sensation 
 in the world. At the same time the doctrine of Ne- 
 cessity does not in the least diminish our disapproba- 
 tion of vice. The conviction which all feel, that a 
 viper is a poisonous animal, and that a tyger is con- 
 strained, by the inevitable condition of his existence, 
 to devour men, does not induce us to avoid them less 
 sedulously, or, even more, to hesitate in destroying 
 them: but he would surely be of a hard heart, who, 
 meeting with a serpent on a desart island, or in a situ- 
 ation where it was incapable of injury, should wan- 
 tonly deprive it of existence. A Necessarian is in-> 
 consequent to his own principles, if he indulges in 
 hatred or contempt; the compassion which he feels 
 for the criminal is unmixed with a desire of injuring 
 him: he looks with an elevated and dreadless compo- 
 sure upon the links of the universal chain as they pass 
 before his eyes; whilst cowardice, curiosity and in- 
 consistency only assail him in proportion to the fee- 
 bleness and indistinctness with which he has perceived 
 and rejected the delusions of free-will. 
 
 Religion is the perception of the relation in which 
 we stand to the principle of the universe. But if the 
 principle of the universe be not an organic being, the 
 model and prototype of man, the relation between it 
 and human beings is absolutely none. Without some 
 insight into its will respecting our actions, religion is 
 nugatory and vain. But will is only a mode of ani- 
 mal mind ; moral qualities also are such as only a 
 
122 NOTES. 
 
 human being can possess; to attribute them to the 
 principle of the universe, is to annex to it properties 
 incompatible with any possible definition of its nature. 
 It is probable that the word God was originally only 
 an expression denoting the unknown cause of the 
 known events which men perceived in the universe. 
 By the vulgar mistake of a metaphor for a real being, 
 of a word for a thing, it became a man, endowed with 
 human qualities and governing the universe as an 
 earthly monarch governs his kingdom. Their ad- 
 dresses to this imaginary being, indeed, are much in 
 the same style as those of subjects to a king. They 
 acknowledge his benevolence, deprecate his anger, and 
 supplicate his favour. 
 
 But the doctrine of Necessity teaches us, that in no 
 case could any event have happened otherwise than it 
 did happen, and that, if God is the author of good, he 
 is also the author of evil ; that, if he is entitled to our 
 gratitude for the one, he is entitled to our hatred for 
 the other; that, admitting the existence of this hypo- 
 thetic being, he is also subjected to the dominion of 
 an immutable necessity. It is plain that the same 
 arguments which prove that God is the author of 
 food, light, and life, prove him also to be the author of 
 poison, darkness, and death. The wide-wasting earth- 
 quake, the storm, the battle, and the tyranny, are attri- 
 butable to this hypothetic being in the same degree as 
 the fairest forms of nature, sunshine, liberty, and peace. 
 
 But we are taught, by the doctrine of Necessity, 
 that there is neither good nor evil in the universe, 
 otherwise than as the events to which we apply these 
 
NOTES. 123 
 
 epithets have relation to our own peculiar mode of 
 being. Still less than with the hypothesis of a God, 
 will the doctrine of Necessity accord with the belief 
 of a future state of punishment. God made man such 
 as he is, and then damned him for being so: for to 
 say that God was the author of all good, and man the 
 author of all evil, is to say that one man made a 
 straight line and a crooked one, and another man 
 made the incongruity. gi3= 
 
 A Mahometan story, much to the present purpose, 
 is recorded, wherein Adam and Moses are introduced 
 disputing before God in the following manner. Thou, 
 says Moses, art Adam, whom God created, and ani- 
 mated with the breath of life, and caused to be wor- 
 shipped by the angels, and placed in Paradise, from 
 whence mankind have been expelled for thy fault. 
 Whereto Adam answered, Thou art Moses, whom 
 God chose for his apostle, and entrusted with his 
 word, by giving thee the tables of the law, and whom 
 he vouchsafed to admit to discourse with himself. 
 How many years dost thou find the law was written 
 before I was created? Says Moses, Forty. And dost 
 thou not find, replied Adam, these words therein, And 
 Adam rebelled against his Lord and transgressed? 
 Which Moses confessing, Dost thou therefore blame 
 me, continued he, for doing that which God wrote of 
 me that I should do, forty years before I was created, 
 nay, for what was decreed concerning me fifty thousand 
 years before the creation of heaven and earth? 
 
 Sales Prelim. Disc, to the Koran, p. 164. 
 
124 NOTES, 
 
 VII. Page 61. 
 
 There is no God ! 
 
 This negation must be understood solely to affect a 
 creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit 
 coeternal with the universe, remains UDshaken. 
 
 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 knowiedge of the exist- 
 ence 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 per- 
 ceives the agreement or disagreement of the ideas of 
 which it is composed. A perception of their agree- 
 ment is termed belief. Many obstacles frequently 
 prevent this perception from being immediate; these 
 the mind attempts to remove, in order that the percep- 
 tion may be distinct. The mind is active in the inves- 
 tigation, in order to perfect the state of perception of 
 the relation which the component ideas of the proposi- 
 tion 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 
 
NOTES. 125 
 
 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 de- 
 grees of excitement. 
 
 The degrees of excitement are three. 
 
 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. 
 
126 NOTES. 
 
 But the God of Theologians is incapable of local visi- 
 bility. 
 
 2d. Reason. It is urged that man knows that what- 
 ever is, must either have had a beginning, or have ex- 
 isted from all eternity: he also knows, that whatever 
 is not eternal must have had a cause. When this rea- 
 soning is applied to the universe, it is necessary to 
 prove that it was created: until that is clearly demon- 
 strated, we may reasonably suppose that it has endur- 
 ed 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 con- 
 junction of objects, and the consequent inference of one 
 from the other. In a case 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 con- 
 ceive 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 con- 
 stant conjunction of objects and the consequent! nfer- 
 ence of one from the other; and, reasoning experimen- 
 tally, we can only infer from effects, causes exactly 
 adequate to those effects. But there certainly is a 
 generative power which is effected by certain instru- 
 
NOTES. 127 
 
 ments: 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 ren- 
 ders it more incomprehensible. 
 
 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 mira- 
 cles, but that the Deity was irrational; for he com- 
 manded that he should be believed, he proposed the 
 highest rewards for faith, eternal punishments for dis- 
 belief. We can only command voluntary actions; 
 belief is not an act of volition ; the mind is even pas- 
 sive, or involuntarily active: from this it is evident that 
 we have no sufficient testimony, or rather that testi- 
 mony is insufficient to prove the being of a God. It 
 has been before shewn 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 evi- 
 dent, that, as belief is a passion of the mind, no degree 
 of criminality is attachable to disbelief; and that they 
 
128 NOTES. 
 
 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 jingo, quicquid 
 enim ex phcenomenis non deducitur, hypothesis vocan- 
 da est, et hypothesis vel metaphysiccB, Del physicce, vel 
 qualitatum occultarum, seu mechanicce, in philosophid 
 locum non habent b . To all proofs of the existence of a 
 creative God apply this valuable rule. We see a vari- 
 ety of bodies possessing a variety of powers : we merely 
 know their effects ; we are in a state of ignorance with 
 respect to their essences and caused. These Newton 
 calls the phenomena of things; but the pride of philo- 
 sophy is unwilling to admit its ignorance of their causes. 
 From the phenomena, which are the objects of our 
 senses, we attempt to infer a cause, which we call God, 
 and gratuitously endow it with all negative and con- 
 tradictory 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 con- 
 
 a The burthen of proof. 
 
 b I do not invent hypothesis ; for whatever is not deduced from phoeno- 
 mena, is to be called an hypothesis ; and hypotheses, either metaphysical 
 or physical, or grounded on occult qualities, should not be allowed any 
 room in philosophy. 
 
NOTES. 129 
 
 ceit, 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 effluvium 
 of Boyle and the crinities or nebulae of Herschel. God. 
 is represented as infinite, eternal, incomprehensible; 
 he is contained under every praedicate in non that the 
 logic of ignorance could fabricate. Even his worship- 
 pers allow that it is impossible to form any idea of 
 him: they exclaim with the French poet, 
 
 Pour dire ce quHl est, ilfaut etre lui-meme.* 
 
 Lord Bacon says, that " Atheism leaves a man to 
 sense, to philosophy, to natural piety, to laws, to repu- 
 tation: all which may be guides to an outward moral 
 virtue, though religion were not ; but superstition dis- 
 mounts all these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy 
 in the minds of men: therefore atheism did never 
 perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, 
 as looking no farther, and we seethe times inclined to 
 atheism (as the time of Augustus Caesar) were civil 
 times : but superstition hath been the confusion of 
 many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile, 
 that ravisheth all the spheres of government. 
 
 Bacon's Moral Essay on Superstition. 
 
 a To tell what he is, you must be himself. 
 
 9 
 
130 NOTES. 
 
 a La premiere theologie de l'homme lui fit d'abord 
 craindre et adorer les elemens meme, des objets mate- 
 riels et grossiers; il rendit ensuite ses hommages a des 
 agens presidens aux elemens, a des genies inferieurs, a 
 des heros, ou a des homraes doues de grands qualites. 
 A force de re'fleehir il crut simplifier les choses ensou- 
 mettant la nature entiere a un seul agent, a un esprit, 
 a une ame universelle, qui mettoit cette nature et ses 
 parties en mouvement. En remontant des causes en 
 causes, les mortels ont fini par ne rien voir ; et c'est 
 dans cette obscurite qu'ils ont place leur Dieu; c'est 
 dans cette abime tenebreux que leur imagination in- 
 quiete travaille toujours a se fabriquer des chimeres, 
 que les affligeront jusqu'a ce que la connoissance de la 
 nature less detrompe des phantomes qu'ils ont toujours 
 si vainement adores. 
 
 Si nous voulons nous rendre compte de nos idees sur 
 
 ■ The primary theology of man made him first fear and worship even the 
 elements gross and material objects, he then paid his adorations to the pre- 
 siding agents of the elements, to inferior genii, to heroes, or to men en- 
 dowed with great qualities. By continuing to reflect he thought to sim- 
 plify things, by submitting all nature to a single agent, to a spirit, to an 
 universal soul, which put this nature, and its parts into motion. In 
 ascending from cause, to cause, mankind have ended, by seeing nothing, 
 and it is in the midst of this obscurity, that they have placed their God; 
 it is in this dark abyss, that their restless imagination is always labouring 
 to form chimeras, which will afflict them, until a knowledge of nature shall 
 dissipate the phantoms which they have always so vainly adored. 
 
 If we wish to render an account to ourselves, of our ideas respecting the 
 Deity, we shall be obliged to confess that by the word God, men have 
 never been able to designate any thing else but the most hidden, the most 
 remote, the most unknown cause of the effects which they perceive; they 
 only make use of this word, when the springs of natural and known causes 
 cease to be visible to them ; the instant they lose the thread, or their un- 
 
NOTES. 131 
 
 la Divinite, nous serons obliges de convenir que, par 
 le mot Dieu, les hommes n'ont jamais pu designer que 
 la cause la plus cachee, la plus eloiguee, la plus incon- 
 nue des effets qu'ils voyoient: ils ne font usage de ce 
 mot, que lorsque le jeu des causes naturelles et con- 
 nues cesse d'etre visible pour eux; des qu'ils perdent 
 le fit de ces causes, ou des que leur esprit ne peut plus 
 en suivre la chaine, ils tranchent leur difficulty, et ter- 
 minent leur recherches en apellent Dieu la deraiere 
 des causes, c'est-a-dire celle qui est au-dela de toutes 
 les causes qu'ils connoisseut; ainsi ils ne font qu'assi- 
 gner une denomination vague a une cause ignoree, a 
 laquelle leur paresse ou les bornes de leurs connois- 
 sances les forcent de s'arreter. Toutes les fois qu'on 
 nous dit que Dieu est l'auteur de quelque phenomene, 
 cela signifie qu'on ignore comment un tel phenomene 
 a pu s'operer par le secours des forces ou des causes que 
 
 derstanding can no longer follow the chain of these causes, they cut the 
 knot of their difficulty and terminate their researches by calling God the 
 last of these causes, that is to say, that which is beyond all the causes' with 
 which they are acquainted. Thus they merely assign a vague denomina- 
 tion to an unknown cause, at which their indolence or the limits of their in- 
 formation compels them to stop. Whenever we are told, that God is the 
 author of any phenomenon, that signifies that we are ignorant how such a 
 phenomenon can be produced, with the assistance only of the natural pow- 
 ers or causes with which we are acquainted. It is thus that the generality 
 of mankind, whose lot is ignorance, attribute to the Deity, not only the 
 uncommon effects which strike them, but even the most simple events, 
 whose causes are the most easily discoverable, to all who have had the op- 
 portunity of reflecting on them. In a word man has always respected the 
 unknown causes of those surprising effects, which his ignorance prevented 
 him from unravelling. It was upon the ruins of nature that men first raised 
 the imaginary colossus of a Deity. 
 
132 NOTES. 
 
 nous connoissons dans la nature. C'est aiusi que le 
 commun des homines, dont Fignorance est la partage, 
 attribue a la Divinite non seulement les effets inusites 
 que les frappent, mais encore les evenemens les plus 
 simples, dont les causes sont les plus faciles a connoitre 
 pour quiconque a pu les mediter. En un mot, l'homme 
 a toujours respecte les causes inconnues des effets sur- 
 prenans, que son ignorance Fempechoit de demeler. 
 Ce fut sur les debris de la nature que les homines Re- 
 verent le colosse imaginaire de la Divinite. 
 
 Si Fignorance de la nature donna la naissance aux 
 dieux, la connoissance de la nature est faite pour les 
 detruire. A mesure que l'homme s'instruit, ses forces 
 et ses ressources augmentent avec ses lumieres ; les sci- 
 ences, les arts conservateurs, Findustrie, lui fournissent 
 des secours ; l'experience le rassure, ou lui procure des 
 moyens de resister aux efforts de bien des causes qui 
 
 If the ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, a knowledge of nature is 
 calculated to destroy them. 
 
 In proportion as man becomes informed, his powers and resources in- 
 crease with his knowledge, the sciences, the conservative arts, and industry 
 furnish him with assistance, experience inspires him with confidence, or 
 procures him the means of resisting the efforts of many causes, which cease 
 to alarm him, as soon as he becomes acquainted with them. In a word, his 
 terrors are dissipated in the same proportion as his mind is enlightened. 
 A well informed man ceases to be superstitious. 
 
 It is never but on trust, that whole nations worship the God of their fa- 
 thers, and their priests ; authority, confidence, submission, and custom, to 
 them supply the place of proofs and conviction ; they prostrate themselves 
 and pray, because their fathers have taught them to prostrate themselves 
 and pray, but wherefore did the latter kneel ? Because in remote periods, 
 their guides and regulators, taught them it was a duty. " Worship and 
 believe," said they " gods which you cannot comprehend, rely on our pro- 
 found wisdom, we know more than you concerning the Deity." " But why 
 
NOTES. 1 33 
 
 cessent de l'alarmer des qu'il les a connues. En un 
 mot, ses terreurs se dissipent dans la meme proportion 
 que son esprit s'eclaire. L'homme instruit cesse d'etre 
 superstitieux. 
 
 Ce n'est jamais que sur parole que dps peu pies en- 
 tiers adorent le Dieu de leurs peres et de leurs pretres: 
 l'autorite, la confiance, la soumission, et l'habitude, 
 leur tiennent lieu de conviction et de preuves; ils se 
 prosternent et prient, parce que leurs peres leur ont ap- 
 pris a se prosterner et prier: mais pourquoi ceux-ci se 
 sont-ils mis a genoux? C'est que dans les temps eloi- 
 gnes leurs legislateurs et leurs guides leur en ont fait un 
 devoir. " Adorez et croyez," ont-ils dit, " des dieux 
 que vous ne pouvez comprendre; rapportez-vous en a 
 notre sagesse profonde; nous en savons plus que vous 
 sur la Divinite." " Mais pourquoi m'en rapporterois-je 
 a vous?" " C'est que Dieu le veut ainsi, c'est que Dieu 
 vous punira si vous osez resister." " Mais ce Dieu n'est- 
 il done pas la chose en question?" Cependant les hom- 
 
 should I rely on you ?" " Because it is the will of God, because he will pun- 
 ish you if you dare to resist." " But is not this God the thing in question?" 
 Thus men have always been satisfied with this vicious circle, the indolence 
 of their minds led them to believe the shorter mode was to rely upon the 
 opinions of others. All religious notions, are founded upon authority 
 alone, all the religions of the world forbid investigation, and will not permit 
 reasoning ; it is authority which requires us to believe in God, this God 
 himself is only founded upon the authority of some men, who pretend 
 to know him, and to be sent by him to announce him to the world. A 
 God made by men has doubtless need of men to make him known to men. 
 Is it then only, for the priests of the inspired, for metaphysicians, that a 
 conviction of the existence of a God is reserved, and which is nevertheless 
 said to be necessary to all mankind. But do we find a harmony of theo- 
 logical opinion among the inspired, or the reflective, in the different parts 
 
134 NOTES, 
 
 mes se sont toujours payees de ce cercle vicieux ; la 
 paresse de leur esprit leur fit trouver plus court de s'en 
 rapporter au jugement des autres. Toutes les notions 
 religieuses sont fondees uniquement sur l'autorite; 
 toutca les religions du monde defendent l'exaraen et ne 
 veulent pas que Ton raisonne ; c'est l'autorite que veut 
 qu'ou crut en Dieu; ce Dieu n'est lui-meme fonde que 
 sur l'autorite de quelques hommes qui pretendent le 
 connoitre, et venir de sa part pour l'annoncer a la terre. 
 Un Dieu fait par les hommes, a sans doute besoin des 
 hommes pour se faire connoitre aux hommes. 
 
 Ne seroit-ce done que pour des pretres des inspires, 
 des metaphysiciens que seroit reservee la conviction 
 de l'existence d'un Dieu, que 1'on dit neanmoins si 
 necessaire a tout le genre-humain ? Mais trouvons- 
 nous de I'hannonie entre les opinions theologiques des 
 differens inspires, ou des penseurs repandus sur la terre? 
 Ceux meme que font profession d'adorer le meme Dieu, 
 sont-ils d'accord sur son compte? Sont-ils contents 
 
 of the world ? Are those even who profess to worship the same God agreed 
 respecting him? Are they satisfied with the proofs of his existence which 
 their colleagues bring forward ? Do they unanimously subscribe to the ideas 
 which they adduce respecting his nature, his conduct, and the mode of 
 understanding his pretended oracles ? Is there a country, throughout the 
 earth in which the knowledge of God is really perfected. Has it assumed 
 in any quarter the consistency, and uniformity, which we perceive human 
 knowledge to have assumed, in the most trifling arts, in trades the most 
 despised, The words spirit, immateriality, creation, predestination, grace, 
 this croud of subtile distinctions with which theology, in some countries, 
 is universally filled, these ingenious inventions, imagined by the successive 
 reasoners of ages, have, alas ! only embroiled the question, and never has the 
 science, the most important to mankind, been able to acquire the least 
 stability, for thousands of years, have these idle dreamers transmitted to 
 
NOTES. 135 
 
 des preuves que leurs collegues apportent de son exis- 
 tence? Souscrivent-ils unanimement aux idees qu'ils 
 presentent sur sa nature, sur sa conduite, sur la facon 
 d'entendre ses pretendus oracles? Est-il une contree 
 sur la terre, ou la science de Dieu se soit reellement 
 perfectionn6 ? A-t-elle pris quelque part la consistence 
 et l'uniformite que nous voyons prendre aux connois- 
 sances humaines, aux arts les plus futiles, aus metiers 
 les plus meprises? des mots d'esprits, dHmmaterialite, 
 de creation, de predestination, de grace; cette foule 
 de distinctions subtiles dont la theologie s'est partout 
 remplie dans quelques pays, ces inventions si ingeni- 
 euses, imaginees par des penseurs que se sont succedes 
 depuis tant de siecles, n'ont fait, helas! qu'embrouilles 
 les choses, et jamais le science le plus necessaire aux 
 hommes n'a jusqu'ici pu acquerir la moindre fixite. 
 Depuis des milliers d'annees, ces reveurs oisifs se sont 
 perpetuellement relayes pour mediter la Divinite, pour 
 deviner ses voies cachees, pour inventer des hypotheses 
 
 each other, the task of meditating on the Deity, of discovering his secret 
 paths, of inventing hypotheses calculated to solve this important enigma. 
 The little success they have met with, has not discouraged theological va- 
 nity. God has always been talked of, mankind have cut each others throats 
 for him, and this great being still continues, to be the most unknown, and 
 the most sought after. 
 
 Fortunate would it have been for mankind if confining themselves to the 
 visible objects in which they are interested, they had employed in per- 
 fecting true science, laws, morals, and education, half the exertions they 
 have made in their researches after a Deity. They would have been still 
 wiser and more fortunate, could they have resolved to leave their blind 
 guides to quarrel among themselves and to sound the depths calculated 
 only to turn their brains without meddling with their senseless disputes. 
 But it is the very essence of ignorance to attach importance to w hat it 
 
136 NOTES. 
 
 propres a developper cette enigme importante. Leur 
 peu de succes n'a point decourage la vanity theologique ; 
 toujours on a parle de Dieu: on s'est egorg6 pour lui, 
 et cet etre sublime demeure toujours le plus ignore et le 
 plus discut6. 
 
 Les hommes auroient et6 trop heureux, si, se bornant 
 aux objets visibles qui les interessent, lis eussent em- 
 ploye a perfectionner leurs sciences reelles, leurs loix, 
 leur morale, leur education, la moiti6 des efforts qu'ils 
 ont mis dans leurs recherches sur la Divinite. lis 
 auroient ete bien plus sages encore, et plus fortunes 
 s'ils eussent pu conseutir a laisser leurs guides desoeu- 
 xr6s se quereller entre eux, et sonder des profondeurs 
 capables de les etourdir, sans se meslerde leurs disputes 
 insensees. Mais il est de l'essence de l'ignorance d'at- 
 tacher de l'importance a ce qu'elle ne comprend pas. 
 La vanite humaine fait que l'esprit se roidit eontre les 
 difficultes. Plus un objet se derobe a nos yeux, plus 
 nous faisons d'efforts pour le saisir, parce que des-lors 
 
 does not understand. Human vanity is such that the mind became irri- 
 tated by difficulty. In proportion as an object fades from our sight do we 
 exert ourselves to seize it, because it then stimulates our pride, it excites 
 our curiosity and becomes interesting. In contending for his God every 
 one in fact is only contending for the interests of his own vanity, which of 
 all the passions, produced by the mal-organization of society, is the most 
 prompt to take alarm, and the most calculated to give birth, to great ab- 
 surdities. 
 
 If laying aside for a moment the gloomy ideas which theology gives us 
 of a capricious God, whose partial and despotic decrees decide the fates 
 of men, we fix our eyes upon the pretended goodness which all men, even 
 whilst trembling before this God, agree in giving to him, if we suppose 
 him to be actuated by the project which is attributed to him, of having 
 only laboured for his own glory, of exacting the adoration of intelligent 
 
NOTES. 137 
 
 il aiguillone notre orgueil, il excite notre curiosite, il 
 nous paroit interessant. En combattant pour son Dieu, 
 chacun ne combattit en effet que pour les interetsdesa 
 propre vanite, qui de toutes les passious produits par la 
 mal organization de la societe, est la plus prompte a 
 s'allarmer, et la plus propre a produire des tres grands 
 folies. 
 
 Si ecartant pour un moment les idees facbeuses que 
 la theologie nous donne d'un Dieu capricieux, dont les 
 decrets parteaux et despotiques decident du sort des 
 bumains, nous ne voulons fixer nos yeux que sur la 
 bonte pretendue, que tous les hommes, meme en trem- 
 blant devant ce Dieu, s'accordant a lui donner; si nous 
 lui supposons le projet qu'on lui prete, de n'avoir tra- 
 vaille que pour sa propre gloire, d'exiger les hommages 
 des etres intelligens ; de ne chercher dans ses ceuvres 
 que le bien-etre du genre humain; comment concilier 
 ses vues et ses dispositions avec l'ignorance vraiment 
 invincible dans lequelle ce Dieu, si glorieux et si bon, 
 
 beings, of seeking onry in his works, the welfare of the human race ; how 
 can we reconcile his views and dispositions with the truly invincible igno- 
 rance in which this God so good and glorious leaves the greater part of 
 mankind respecting himself ? If God wishes to be known, beloved, and 
 praised, why does he not reveal himself under some favourable features, 
 to all those intelligent beings by whom he wishes to be loved and wor- 
 shipped ! Why does he not manifest to all the earth in an unequivocal 
 manner, much more calculated to convince us, than by these particular 
 revelations which seem to accuse the Deity of an unjust partiality for 
 some of his creatures. Would not the Omnipotent possess more con- 
 vincing means of revealing himself to mankind than these ridiculous meta- 
 morphoses, these pretended incarnations, which are attested to us by 
 writers who so little agree among themselves in the recitals they give of 
 them ? Instead of so many miracles invented to prove the divine mission 
 
138 NOTES. 
 
 laisse la plupart des hommes sur son compte? Si Dieu 
 veut etre connu, cheri, remercie, que ne se montre-t-il 
 sous des traits favorables a tous ces etres intelligens dont 
 il veut etre aime et adore? Pourquoi ne point se mani- 
 fester a toute la terre d'une facon non equivoque, bieu 
 plus capable de nous convaincre, que ces revelations 
 particuliers qui semblent accuser la Divinite d'une par- 
 tiality facheuse pour quelqu'uns de ses creatures? Le 
 tout-puissant n'auroit-il done pas des moyens plus con- 
 vinquans de se montrer aux borames que ces metamor- 
 phoses ridicules, ces incarnations pretendues, qui nous 
 sont attestees par des ecrivains si peu d'accord entre 
 eux dans les recits qu'ils en font? Au lieu de tant de 
 miracles, invent6s pour prouver la mission divine de 
 tant de legislateurs, reveres par les differens peuples 
 du monde, le souverain des esprits ne pouvoit-il pas 
 convaincre tout d'un coup Fesprit humain des cboses 
 qu'il a voulu lui faire conuoitre? Au lieu de suspendre 
 un soleil dans la voute du firmament ; au lieu de re- 
 pandre sans ordre les 6toiles, et les constellations qui 
 
 of so many legislators revered by the different nations of the world, could 
 not the Supreme Being convince in an instant the human mind of the 
 things which he chose to make known to it? Instead of suspending the 
 sun in the vault of the firmament, instead of dispersing the stars and the 
 constellations, which occupy space without order, would it not have been 
 more conformable to the views of a God so jealous of his glory, and so 
 well disposed to man, to write in a mode not liable to be disputed, his 
 name, his attributes, and his unchangeable will, in everlasting characters, 
 equally legible to all the inhabitants of the earth ? No one could then have 
 doubted the existence of a God, his manifest will, his visible intentions. 
 Under the eye of this terrible Deity, no one would have had the audacity 
 to violate his ordinances, no mortal would have dared to place himself 
 in the situation of drawing down his wrath; and, lastly, no man would 
 
NOTES. 139 
 
 remplissent l'espace, n'eut-il pas ete plus conforme aux 
 vues d'un Dieu si jaloux de sa gloire et si bien inten- 
 tionne pour l'homnie; d'ecrire d'une fac,ou uon sujette 
 a dispute, son nom, ses attributs, ses volontes perma- 
 nentes, en caracteres ineffacubles, et lisibles egalement 
 pour tous les habitants de la terre? Personne alors 
 n'auroit pu douter de l'existence d'un Dieu, de ses 
 volontes claires, de ses intentions visibles. Sous les 
 yeux de ce Dieu si terrible, personne n'auroit eu l'au- 
 dace de violer ses ordonnances; nul mortel n'eut ose 
 se mettre dans le cas d'attirer sa colere: enfin nul 
 homme n'eut eu le front d'en imposer en son nom, ou 
 d'interpreter ses volontes suivant ses propres phan- 
 tasies. 
 
 En effet, quand meime on admetteroit l'existence du 
 Dieu theologique, et la realite des attributs si discordaus 
 qu'on lui donne, Ton ne peut en rien conclure, pour 
 autoriser la conduite ou les cultes qu'on present de lui 
 rendre. La tbe^ologie est vraiment le tonneau des Da- 
 naides. A force de qualities contradictoires et d'as-. 
 
 have had the effrontery to impose on his fellow creatures, in the name of 
 the Deity, or to interpret his will according to his own fancy. 
 
 In fact, even should the existence of the theological God be admitted, 
 and the reality of the discordant attributes which are given to him, nothing 
 could be inferred from it, to authorise the conduct or the modes of worship, 
 which we are told to observe towards him. Theology is truly the tub of 
 the Danaides. By dint of contradictory qualities and rash assertions, it 
 has so trammelled, as it were, its God, that it has made it impossible for 
 him to act. If he is infinitely good, what reason have we to fear him ? If 
 he is infinitely wise, why should we be uneasy for our future state ? If he 
 knows all, why inform him of our wants, and tease him with our prayers ? 
 If he is omnipresent, why raise temples to him ? If he is master of all, why 
 sacrifice and make offerings to him ? If he is just, how can we believe that 
 
HO NOTES. 
 
 sertions hazardees, elle a, pour ainsi dire, teUement 
 garote son Dieu qu'elle a mis dans I'impossibilite d'agir. 
 S'il est infiuiment bon quelle raison aurions-nous de le 
 craindre? S'il est innnimerjt sage, dequoi nous inquie- 
 ter sur notre sort? S'il sait tout, pourquoir l'avertir de 
 nos besoins, et le fatiguer de nos prieres? S'il est par- 
 tout, pourquoi lui elever des temples? S'il est maitre 
 de tout, pourquoi lui faire des sacrifices et des offrandes ? 
 S'il est juste, comment croire qu'il punisse des creatures 
 qu'il a rempli des foiblesses? Si la grace fait tout en 
 elles, quelle raison auroit-il de les recompenser ? S'il 
 est tout-puissant, comment l'offenser, comment lui re- 
 sister? S'il est raisonnable, comment se mettroit-il en 
 colere contre des aveugles, a qui il a laisse la liberty 
 de deraisonner? S'il est immuable, de quel droit pre- 
 tend rions-nous faire changer ses decrets? S'il est 
 inconcevable, pourquoi nous en occuper? , S'IL A 
 PARLE', POURQUOI L'UNIVERS N'EST-IL 
 PAS CONVAINCU? Si la connoissance d'un Dieu 
 est la plus necessaire, pourquoi n'esfcelle pas la plus 
 evidente, et la plus claire. 
 
 Sysleme de la Nature, London, 1781. 
 
 he punishes creatures -whom he has afflicted with weaknesses? If grace 
 does all in them, for what reason should he reward them ? If he is omni- 
 potent how can we offend, how resist him ?- If he is reasonable, how could 
 he be incensed against his blind creatures, to whom he has only left the 
 liberty of falling into error ? If he is immutable, by what right do we pre- 
 tend to make him change his decrees ? If he is incomprehensible, why do 
 we busy ourselves in endeavouring to understand him ? If HE HAS 
 SPOKEN, WHY IS NOT THE UNIVERSE CONVINCED ? If the 
 knowledge of a God is the most necessary, why is not the clearest and 
 most evident? — System of Nature, London, 1781. 
 
NOTES. 141 
 
 The enlightened and benevolent Pliny thus publicly 
 professes himself an, atheist : — Quapropter effigiem Dei, 
 formamque quaerere, imbeciilitatis humanae reor. Quis- 
 quis estDeus (si raodo est alius) et quacunque in parte, 
 totus est sensus, totus est visus, totus auditus, totus 
 animae, totus animi, totus sui. * * * * * 
 Imperfecta vera in nomine naturse praecipua solatia 
 ne deum quidem posse omnia. Namque nee si bi po- 
 test mortem consciscere, si velit, quod homini dedit 
 optimum in tantis vitee poenis : nee mortales eeternitate 
 donare, aut revocare defunctos ; nee facere ut qui vixit 
 non vixerit, qui honores gessit non gesserit, nullumque 
 habere in prseteritum jus, praeterquam oblivionis, atque 
 (ut facetis quoque argumentis societas haec cum deo 
 copuletur) ut bis dena viginta non sint, et multa simi- 
 liter efiicere non posse. — Per quae, declarator haud 
 dubie, naturae potentiam id quoque esse, quod Deum 
 vocamus a . — Plin. Nat. His. cap. de Deo. 
 
 a For which reason, I consider that the inquiry after the form and figure 
 of the Deity, must be attributed to human weakness. Whatever God may 
 be (if indeed there be one) and wherever he may exist, he must be all . 
 sense, all sight, all hearing, all life, all mind, self-existent. * * * * 
 But it is a great consolation to man with all his infirmities to reflect that 
 God himself cannot do all things : for he cannot inflict on himself death, 
 even if he should wish to die, that best of gifts to man amidst the cares 
 and sufferings of life ; neither can he make men eternal, nor raise the 
 dead, nor prevent those who have lived from living, nor those who have 
 borne honours from wearing them ; he has no power over the past, except 
 that of oblivion, and (to relax our gravity awhile and indulge in a joke) 
 he cannot prevent twice ten from being twenty, and many other things of 
 a similar nature. From these observations it is clearly apparent that the 
 powers of nature are what we call God. 
 
 Plin. Nat. Hist. 
 
142 NOTES. 
 
 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 con- 
 sistent 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 sceptic, and 
 the toleration of the philosopher. fj3r» 
 
 Omnia enim per Dei potentiam facta sunt : imo, 
 quia natura potentia nulla est nisi ipsa Dei potentia, 
 autem est nos eatenus Dei potentiam non intelligere, 
 quatenus causas naturales ignoramus; adeoque stulte 
 ad eandem Dei potentiam recurritur, quando rei alicu- 
 jus, causam naturalem, sive est, ipsam Dei potentiam 
 ignoramus. 
 
 Spinosa, Tract. Theologico-Pol. chap. i. p. 14. 
 
 a All things are made by the power of God, yet, doubtless, because the 
 power of nature is the power of God : besides we are unable to understand 
 the power of God, so far as we are ignorant of natural causes; therefore 
 we foolishly recur to the power of God whenever we are unacquainted 
 with the natural cause of any thing, or in other words, with the power of 
 God — Spinosa, Tract. Theologici. Pol. chap. i. p. 14. 
 
NOTES. 143 
 
 VII. Page 63. 
 
 Ahasuerus, rise ! 
 
 Ahasuerus the Jew crept forth from the dark cave 
 of Mount Carmel. Near two thousand years have 
 elapsed since he was first goaded by never-ending 
 restlessness, to rove the globe from pole to pole. When 
 our Lord was wearied with the burthen of his ponde- 
 rous cross, and wanted to rest before the door of 
 Ahasuerus, the unfeeling wretch drove him away with 
 brutality. The Saviour of mankind staggered, sinking 
 under the heavy load, but uttered no complaint. An 
 angel of death appeared before Ahasuerus, and ex- 
 claimed indignantly, " Barbarian! thou hast denied 
 rest to the Son of Man : be it denied thee also, until 
 he comes to judge the world." 
 
 A black demon, let loose from hell upon Ahasuerus, 
 goads him now from country to country ; he is denied 
 the consolation which death affords, and precluded 
 from the rest of the peaceful grave. 
 
 Ahasuerus crept forth from the dark cave of Mount 
 Carmel — he shook the dust from his beard — and taking 
 up one of the sculls heaped there, hurled it down the 
 eminence : it rebounded from the earth in shivered 
 atoms. This was my father! roared Ahasuerus. Seven 
 more sculls rolled down from rock to rock ; while the 
 infuriate Jew, following them with ghastly looks ex- 
 claimed — And these were my wives! He still conti- 
 nued to burl down scull after scull, roaring in dreadful 
 accents — And these, and these, and these were my 
 
144 NOTES 
 
 children! They could die; but, I! reprobate wretch, 
 alas! I cannot die! Dreadful beyond conception is 
 the judgment that hangs over me. Jerusalem fell — I 
 crushed the sucking babe, and precipitated myself 
 into the destructive flames. I cursed the Romans — 
 but, alas ! alas ! the restless curse held me by the hair* 
 — and I could not die ! 
 
 Rome the giantess fell — I placed myself before the 
 falling statue — she fell, and did not crush me. Nations 
 sprung up and disappeared before me; — but I remain- 
 ed and did not die. From cloud-encircled cliffs did I 
 precipitate myself into the ocean ; but the foaming 
 billows cast me upon the shore, and the burning arrow 
 of existence pierced my cold heart again. I leaped 
 into Etna's flaming abyss, and roared with the giants 
 for teu long months, polluting with my groans the 
 Mount's sulphureous mouth — ah ! ten long months. 
 The volcano fermented, and in a fiery stream of lava 
 cast me up. I lay torn by the torture snakes of hell 
 amid the glowing cinders, and yet continued to exist. 
 A forest was on fire: I darted on wings of fury and 
 despair into the crackling wood. Fire dropped upon 
 me from the trees, bat the flames only singed my 
 limbs; alas! it could not consume them. — 1 now mixed 
 with the butchers of mankind, and plunged in the 
 tempest of the raging battle. I roared defiance to the 
 infuriate Gaul, defiance to the victorious German; but 
 arrows and spears rebounded in shivers from my body. 
 The Saracen's flaming sword broke upon my scull: 
 balls in vain hissed upon me: the lightnings of battle 
 glared harmless around my loins : in vain did the ele- 
 
NOTES. 145 
 
 phant trample on me, in vain the iron hoof of the 
 wrathful steed ! The mine, big with destructive power, 
 burst upon me, and hurled me high in the air — I fell 
 on heaps of smoking limbs, but was only singed. The 
 giant's steel club rebounded from my body ; the exe- 
 cutioner's hand could not strangle me; the tyger's 
 tooth could not pierce me, nor would the hungry lion 
 in the circus devour me. I cohabited with poisonous 
 snakes, and pinched the red crest of the dragon. The 
 serpent stung, but could not destroy me ; — the dragon 
 tormented, but dared not to devour me. I now pro- 
 voked the fury of tyrants: I said to Nero, Thou art a 
 bloodhound! I said to Christiern, Thou art a blood- 
 hound ! I said to Muley Ismail, Thou art a blood- 
 hound ! — The tyrants invented cruel torments, but did 
 
 not kill me. Ha ! not to be able to die — not 
 
 to be able to die — not to be permitted to rest after 
 the toils of life — to be doomed to be imprisoned for 
 ever in the clay -formed dungeon — to be for ever 
 clogged with this worthless body, its load of diseases 
 and infirmities — to be condemned to hold for milen- 
 niums that yawning monster Sameness and Time, that 
 hungry hyena, ever bearing children, and ever de- 
 vouring again her offspring! — Ha! not to be permitted 
 to die! Awful avenger in heaven, hast thou in thine 
 armoury of wrath a punishment more dreadful? then 
 let it thunder upon me, command a hurricane to 
 sweep me down to the foot of Carmel, that I there 
 may lie extended; may pant, and writhe, and die! 
 This fragment is the translation of part of some Ger- 
 10 
 
146 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 man work, whose title I have vainly endeavoured to 
 discover. I picked it up, dirty and torn, some years 
 ago, in Lincoln's-Inn Fields. 
 
 VII. Page 66. 
 
 I will beget a Son, and he shall bear 
 The sins of all the world. 
 
 A book is put into our hands when children, called 
 the Bible, the purport of whose history is briefly this: 
 That God made the earth in six days, and there plant- 
 ed a delightful garden, in which he placed the first 
 pair of human beings. In the midst of the garden he 
 planted a tree, whose fruit, although within their 
 reach, they were forbidden to touch. That the Devil, 
 in the shape of a snake, persuaded them to eat of this 
 fruit ; in consequence of which God condemned both 
 them and their posterity yet unborn to satisfy his jus- 
 tice by their eternal misery. That, four thousand 
 years after these events, (the human race in the mean 
 while having gone unredeemed to perdition,) God en- 
 gendered with the betrothed wife of a carpenter in 
 Judea (whose virginity was nevertheless uninjured), 
 and begat a Son, whose name was Jesus Christ; and 
 who was crucified and died, in order that no more 
 men might be devoted to hell-fire, he bearing the bur- 
 then of his Father's displeasure by proxy. The book 
 states, in addition, that the soul of whoever disbelieves 
 this sacrifice will be burned with everlasting fire. 
 
 During many ages of misery and darkness this story 
 
NOTES. 147 
 
 gained implicit belief; but at length men arose who 
 suspected that it was a fable and imposture, and that 
 Jesus Christ, so far from being a God, was only a man 
 like themselves. But a numerous set of men, who de- 
 rived and still derive immense emoluments from this 
 opinion, in the shape of a popular belief, told the vul- 
 gar, that, if they did not believe in the Bible, they 
 would be damned to all eternity ; and burned, impri- 
 soned, and poisoned all the unbiassed and unconnected 
 enquirers who occasionally arose. They still oppress 
 them, so far as the people, now become more enlight- 
 ened, will allow. 
 
 The belief in all that the Bible contains, is called 
 Christianity. A Roman Governor of Judea, at the 
 instance of a priest-led mob, crucified a man called 
 Jesus eighteen centuries ago. He was a man of pure 
 life, who desired to rescue his countrymen from the 
 tyranny of their barbarous and degrading supersti- 
 tions. The common fate of all who desire to benefit 
 mankind awaited him. > The rabble, at the instigation 
 of the priests, demanded his death, although his very 
 judge made public acknowledgment of his innocence. 
 Jesus was sacrificed to the honour of that God with 
 whom he was afterwards confounded. It is of impor- 
 tance, therefore to distinguish between the pretended 
 character of this being, as the Son of God and the 
 Saviour of the world, and his real character as a man, 
 who, for a vain attempt to reform the world, paid the 
 forfeit of his life to that overbearing tyranny which 
 has since so long desolated the universe in his name. 
 Whilst the one is a hypocritical demon, who announces 
 
148 NOTES. • 
 
 himself as the God of compassion and peace, even 
 whilst he stretches forth his blood-red hand with the 
 sword of discord to waste the earth, having confessedly 
 devised this scheme of desolation from eternity; the 
 other stands in the foremost list of those true heroes, 
 who have died in the glorious martyrdom of liberty, 
 and have braved torture, contempt, and poverty, in 
 the cause of suffering humanity a . 
 
 The vulgar, ever in extremes, became persuaded 
 that the crucifixion of Jesus was a supernatural event. 
 Testimonies of miracles, so frequent in unenlightened 
 ages, were not wanting to prove that he was something 
 divine. This belief, rolling through the lapse of ages, 
 met with the reveries of Plato and the reasonings of 
 Aristotle, and acquired force and extent, until the 
 divinity of Jesus became a dogma, which to dispute 
 was death, which to doubt was infamy. 
 
 Christianity is now the established religion: he who 
 attempts to impugn it, must be contented to behold 
 murderers and traitors take precedence of him in pub- 
 lic opinion; though, if his genius be equal to his cou- 
 rage, and assisted by a peculiar coalition of circum- 
 stances, future ages may exalt him to a divinity, and 
 persecute others in his name, as he was persecuted in 
 the name of his predecessor in the homage of the 
 world. 
 
 The same means that have supported every other 
 popular belief, have supported Christianity. War, 
 
 * Since writing this note I have seen reason to suspect, that Jesus was 
 n ambitious man, who aspired to the throne of Judea. 
 
, NOTES. 149 
 
 imprisonment, assassination, and falsehood; deeds of 
 unexampled and incomparable atrocity have made it 
 what it is. The blood shed by the votaries of the God 
 of mercy and peace, since the establishment of his re- 
 ligion, would probably suffice to drown all other sec- 
 taries 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, whilst 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. Eut it is ever 
 a proof that the falsehood of a proposition is felt by 
 those who use coercion, not reasoning, to procure its 
 admission; and a dispassionate observer would feel 
 himself more powerfully interested in favour of a man, 
 who, depending on the truth of his opinions, simply 
 stated his reasons for entertaining them, than in that 
 of his aggressor, who, daringly avowing his unwil- 
 lingness or incapacity to answer them by argument, 
 proceeded to repress the energies and break the spirit 
 of their promulgator by that torture and imprisonment 
 whose infliction he could command. 
 
 Analogy seems to favour the opinion, that as, like 
 other systems, Christianity has arisen and augmented, 
 so like them it will decay and perish; that, as vio- 
 lence, darkness, and deceit, not reasoning and persua- 
 sion, have procured its admission among mankind, so, 
 when enthusiasm has subsided, and time, that infalli- 
 ble controverter of false opinions, has involved its pre- 
 
150 NOTES. 
 
 tended evidences in the darkness of antiquity, it will 
 become obsolete ; that Milton's poem alone will give 
 permanency to the remembrance of its absurdities ; 
 and that men will laugh as heartily at grace, faith, re- 
 demption, and original sin, as they now do at the 
 metamorphoses of Jupiter, the miracles of Romish 
 saints, the efficacy of witchcraft, and the appearance 
 of departed spirits. 
 
 Had the Christian religion commenced and conti- 
 nued by the mere force of reasoning and persuasion, 
 the preceding analogy would be inadmissible. We 
 should never speculate on the future obsoleteness of a 
 system perfectly conformable to nature and reason: 
 it would endure so long as they endured ; it would be 
 a truth as indisputable as the light of the sun, the cri- 
 minality of murder, and other facts, whose evidence, 
 depending on our organization and relative situations, 
 must remain acknowledged as satisfactory, so long as 
 man is man. It is an incontrovertible fact, the consi- 
 deration of which ought to repress the hasty conclu- 
 sions of credulity, or moderate its obstinacy in main- 
 taining them, that, had the Jews not been a fanatical 
 race of men, had even the resolution of Pontius Pilate 
 been equal to his candour, the Christian religion never 
 could have prevailed, it could not even have existed: 
 on so feeble a thread hangs the most cherished opinion 
 of a sixth of the human race! When will the vulgar 
 learn humility? When will the pride of ignorance 
 blush at having believed before it could comprehend ? 
 
 Either the Christian religion is true, or it is false: 
 if true, it comes from God, and its authenticity can 
 
NOTES 151 
 
 admit of doubt and dispute no further than its omni- 
 potent author is willing to allow. Either the power 
 or the goodness of God is called in question, if be 
 leaves those doctrines most essential to the well being 
 of man in doubt and dispute ; the only ones which, 
 since their promulgation have been the subject of un- 
 ceasing cavil, the cause of irreconcileable hatred. 
 If God has spoken, why is the universe not con- 
 vinced ? 
 
 There is this passage in the Christian Scriptures : 
 " Those who obey not God, and believe not the Gos- 
 pel of his Son, shall be punished with everlasting 
 destruction." This is the pivot upon which all reli- 
 gions turn : they all assume that it is in our power to 
 believe or not to believe ; whereas the mind can only 
 believe that which it thinks true. A human being 
 can only be supposed accountable for those actions 
 which are influenced by his will. But belief is utterly 
 distinct from and unconnected with volition : it is the 
 apprehension of the agreement or disagreement of the 
 ideas that compose any proposition. Belief is a pas- 
 sion, or involuntary operation of the mind, and, like 
 other passions, its intensity is precisely proportionate 
 to the degrees of excitement. Volition is essential to 
 merit or demerit. But the Christian religion attaches 
 the highest possible degrees of merit and demerit to 
 that which is worthy of neither, and which is totally 
 unconnected with the peculiar faculty of the mind, 
 whose presence is essential to their being. 
 
 Christianity was intended to reform the world; had 
 
152 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 an all-wise Being planned it, nothing is more impro- 
 bable than that it should have failed: omniscience 
 would infallibly have foreseen the inutility of a scheme 
 which experience demonstrates, to this age, to have 
 been utterly unsuccessful. 
 
 Christianity inculcates the necessity of supplicating 
 the Deity. Prayer may be considered under two points 
 of view ; as an endeavour to change the intentions of 
 God, or as a formal testimony of our obedience. But 
 the former case supposes that the caprices of a limited 
 intelligence can occasionally instruct the Creator of 
 the world how to regulate the universe ; and the latter, 
 a certain degree of servility analogous to the loyalty 
 demanded by earthly tyrants. Obedience indeed is 
 only the pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who 
 thinks that he can do something better than reason. 
 
 Christianity, like all other religions, rests upon mira- 
 cles, prophesies, and martyrdoms. No religion ever 
 existed, which had not its prophets, its attested mira- 
 cles, and, above all, crowds of devotees who would 
 bear patiently the most horrible tortures to prove its 
 authenticity. It should appear that in no case can a 
 discriminating mind subscribe to the genuineness of a 
 miracle. A miracle is an infraction of nature's law, 
 by a supernatural cause ; by a cause acting beyond 
 that eternal circle within which all things are included. 
 God breaks through the law of nature, that he may 
 convince mankind of the truth of that revelation which, 
 in spite of his precautions, has been, since its introduc- 
 tion, the subject of unceasing schism and cavil. 
 
NOTES. 153 
 
 Miracles resolve themselves into the following ques- 
 tions — Whether it is more probable the laws of na- 
 ture, hitherto so immutably harmonious, should have 
 undergone violation, or that a man should have told a 
 lie? Whether it is more probable that we are ignorant 
 of the natural cause of an event, or that we know the 
 supernatural one? That, in old times, when the powers 
 of nature were less known than at present, a certain 
 set of men were themselves deceived, or had some 
 hidden motive for deceiving others; or that God begat 
 a son, who, in his legislation, measuring merit by- 
 belief, evidenced himself to be totally ignorant of the 
 powers of the human mind — of what is voluntary, and 
 what is the contrary ? 
 
 We have many instances of men telling lies; — none 
 of an infraction of nature's laws, those laws of whose 
 government alone we have any knowledge or experi- 
 ence. The records of all nations afford innumerable 
 instances of men deceiving others either from vanity or 
 interest, or themselves being deceived by the limited- 
 ness of their views and their ignorance of natural causes: 
 but where is the accredited case of God having come 
 Upon earth, to give the lie to his own creations? There 
 would be something truly wonderful in the appearance 
 of a ghost; but the assertion of a child that he saw one 
 as he passed through the church-yard, is universally 
 admitted to be less miraculous. 
 
 But even supposing that a man should raise a dead 
 body to life before our eyes, and on this fact rest his 
 
 * See Hume's Essay, vol. ii. page 121. 
 
154 NOTES 
 
 claim to being considered the son of God; — the Hu- 
 mane Society restores drowned persons, and because 
 it makes no mystery of the method it employs, its mem- 
 bers are not mistaken for the sons of God. All that we 
 have a right to infer from our ignorance of the cause 
 of any event is that we do not know it: had the Mexi- 
 cans attended to this simple rule when they heard the 
 cannon of the Spaniards, they would not have consi- 
 dered them as gods: the experiments of modern chemis- 
 try would have defied the wisest philosophers of an- 
 cient Greece and Rome to have accounted for- them on 
 natural principles. An author of strong common 
 sense has observed, that " a miracle is no miracle at 
 second-hand;" he might have added, that a miracle is 
 no miracle in any case; for until we are acquainted 
 with all natural causes, we have no reason to imagine 
 others. 
 v There remains to be considered another proof of 
 Christianity — Prophecy. A book is written before a 
 certain event, in which this event is foretold; how 
 could the prophet have foreknown it without inspira- 
 tion? how could he have been inspired without God? 
 The greatest stress is laid on the prophecies of Moses 
 and Hosea on the dispersion of the Jew^s, and that of 
 Isaiah concerning the coming of the Messiah. The 
 prophecy of Moses is a collection of every possible 
 cursing and blessing ; and it is so far from being mar- 
 vellous that the one of dispersion should have been ful- 
 filled, that it would have been more surprising if, out 
 of all these, none should have taken effect. In Deuter- 
 onomy, chap, xxviii. ver. 64, where Moses explicitly 
 
NOTES. 155 
 
 foretells the dispersion, he states that they shall there 
 serve gods of wood and stone: " And the Lord shall 
 scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the 
 earth even to the other, and there thou shalt serve 
 other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have 
 known, even gods of wood and stone." The Jews are 
 at this day remarkably tenacious of their religion. 
 Moses also declares that they shall be subjected to 
 these causes for disobedience to his ritual: " And it 
 shall come to pass, if thou will not hearken unto the 
 voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all the 
 commandments and statutes which I command you this 
 day, that all these curses shall come upon thee and 
 overtake thee." Is this the real reason? The third, 
 fourth and fifth chapters of Hosea are a piece of immo- 
 dest confession. The indelicate type might apply in 
 a hundred senses to a hundred thiugs. The fifty-third 
 chapter of Isaiah is more explicit, yet it does not 
 exceed in clearness the oracles of Deiphos. The histo- 
 rical proof, that Moses, Isaiah and Hosea did write 
 when they are said to have written, is far from being 
 clear and circumstantial. 
 
 But prophecy, requires proof in its character as a 
 miracle; we have no right to suppose that a man fore- 
 knew future events from God, until it is demonstrated 
 that he neither could know them b} 7 his own exertions, 
 nor that the writings w r hich contain the prediction could 
 possibly have been fabricated after the event pretended 
 to be foretold. It is more probable that writings, pre- 
 tending to divine inspiration, should have been fabri- 
 cated after the fulfilment of their pretended prediction, 
 
156 NOTES, 
 
 than that they should have really been divinely inspir- 
 ed ; when we consider that the latter supposition makes 
 God at once the creator of the human mind and igno- 
 rant of its primary powers, particularly as we have 
 numberless instances of false religions, and forged pro- 
 phesies of things long past, and no accredited case of 
 God having conversed with men directly or indirectly. 
 It is also possible that the description of an event 
 might have foregone its occurrence; but this is far 
 from being a legitimate proof of a divine revelation, as 
 many men, not pretending to the character of a prophet, 
 have nevertheless, in this sense, prophesied. 
 
 Lord Chesterfield was never yet taken for a prophet, 
 even by a bishop, yet he uttered this remarkable predic- 
 tion: " The despotic government of France is screwed 
 up to the highest pitch ; a revolution is fast approaching ; 
 that revolution, I am convinced, will be radical and 
 sanguinary." This appeared in the letters of the pro- 
 phet long before the accomplishment of this wonderful 
 prediction. Now, have these particulars come to pass, 
 or have they not? If they have, how could the Earl 
 have foreknown them without inspiration? If we 
 admit the truth of the Christian religion on testimony 
 such as this, we must admit, on the same strength of 
 evidence, that God has affixed the highest rewards to 
 belief, and the eternal tortures of the never-dying worm 
 to disbelief ; both of which have been demonstrated to 
 be involuntary. 
 
 The last proof of the Christian religion depends on 
 the influence of the Holy Ghost. Theologians divide 
 the influence of the Holy Ghost into its ordinary and 
 
NOTES. , 157 
 
 extraordinary modes of operation. The latter is sup- 
 posed to be that which inspired the Prophets and 
 Apostles ; and the former to be the grace of God, which 
 summarily makes known the truth of his revelation, to 
 those whose mind is fitted for its reception by a sub- 
 missive perusal of his word. Persons convinced in this 
 manner, can do any thing but account for their convic- 
 tion, describe the time at which it happened, or the 
 manner in which it came upon them. It is supposed 
 to enter the mind by other channels than those of the 
 senses, and therefore professes to be superior to reason 
 founded on their experience. 
 
 Admitting, however, the usefulness or possibility of 
 a divine revelation, unless we demolish the foundations 
 of all human knowledge, it is requisite that our reason 
 should previously demonstrate its genuineness; for, 
 before we extinguish the steady ray of reason and com- 
 mon sense, it is fit that we should discover whether we 
 cannot do without their assistance, whether or no there 
 be any other which may suffice to guide us through the 
 labyrinth of life a : for, if a man is to be inspired upon 
 all occasions, if he is to be sure of a thing because he is 
 sure, if the ordinary operations of the spirit are not to 
 be considered very extraordinary modes of demonstra- 
 tion, if enthusiasm is to usurp the place of proof, and 
 madness that of sanity, all reasoning is superfluous. 
 The Mahometan dies fighting for his prophet, the Indian 
 immolates himself at the chariot-wheels of Brahma, the 
 
 a See Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, book iv. chap, xix., 
 on Enthusiasm. 
 
158 NOTES. 
 
 Hottentot worships an insect, the Negro a bunch of 
 feathers, the Mexican sacrifices human victims! Their 
 degree of conviction must certainly be very strong: it 
 cannot arise from conviction, it must from feelings, the 
 reward of their prayers. If each of these should affirm, 
 in opposition to the strongest possible arguments, that 
 inspiration carried internal evidence, I fear their in- 
 spired brethren, the orthodox Missionaries, would be 
 so uncharitable as to pronounce them obstinate. 
 
 Miracles cannot be received as testimonies of a dis- 
 puted fact, because, all human testimony has ever been 
 insufficient to establish the possibility of miracles. 
 That which is incapable of proof itself, is no proof of 
 any thing else. Prophecy has also been rejected by 
 the test of reason. Those, then, who have been ac- 
 tually inspired, are the only true believers in the Chris- 
 tian religion. 
 
 Mox numine viso 
 Virginei tumuere sinus, innuptaque mater 
 Arcano stupuit compleri viscera partu 
 Auctorum paritura suum. Mortalia corda 
 Artificem texere poli, latuitque sub uno 
 Pec to re, qui totura late complectitur orbem. 
 
 Claudian, Carmen Paschale. a 
 
 a Upon seeing the Divinity, the Virgin's womb soon swelled, and the 
 unmarried mother was amazed to find herself filled with a mysterious pro- 
 geny, and that she was to bring forth to the world her own Creator. A 
 mortal frame veiled the Framer of the Heavens, and he who embraces the 
 wide surrounding circle of the world, lay himself concealed in the recesses 
 of the womb. 
 
NOTES. 159 
 
 Does not so monstrous and disgusting an absurdity 
 carry its own infamy and refutation with itself? 
 
 VIII. Page 79. 
 
 Him, (still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing, 
 Which, from the exhaustless lore of human weal 
 Dawns on the virtuous mind,) the thoughts that rise 
 In time-destroying infiniteness, gift 
 With self-enshrined eternity, &c. 
 
 Time is our consciousness of the succession of ideas 
 in our mind. • Vivid sensation, of either pain or plea- 
 sure, makes the time seem long, as the common phrase 
 is, because it renders us more acutely conscious of our 
 ideas. If a mind be conscious of an hundred ideas 
 during one minute, by the clock, and of two hundred 
 during another, the latter of these spaces would actu- 
 ally occupy so much greater extent in the mind as two 
 exceed one in quantity. If, therefore, the human mind, 
 by any future improvement of its sensibility, should 
 become conscious of an infinite number of ideas in a 
 minute, that minute would be eternity. I do not 
 hence infer that the actual space between the birth 
 and death of a man will ever be prolonged ; but that 
 bis sensibility is perfectible, and that the number of 
 ideas which his mind is capable of receiving is indefinite. 
 One man is stretched on the rack during twelve hours; 
 another sleeps soundly in his bed : the difference of time 
 perceived by these two persons is immense ; one hardly 
 will believe that half an hour has elapsed, the other 
 could credit that centuries had flown during his agony. 
 
160 NOTES. 
 
 Thus, the life of a man of virtue and talent, who should 
 die in his thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own 
 feelings, longer than that of a miserable priest-ridden 
 slave, who dreams out a century of dulness. The one 
 has perpetually cultivated his mental faculties, has ren- 
 dered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and 
 generalize amid the lethargy of every-day business; — 
 the other can slumber over the brightest moments of 
 his being, and is unable to remember the happiest hour 
 of his life. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys 
 a longer life than the tortoise. 
 
 Dark flood of time ! 
 Roll as it listeth thee — I measure not 
 By months or moments thy ambiguous course. 
 Another may stand by me on the brink 
 And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken 
 That pauses at my feet. The sense of love, 
 The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought 
 Prolong my being: if I wake no more, 
 My life more actual living will contain 
 Than some grey veterans' of the world's cold school. 
 Whose listless hours unprofitably roll, • 
 By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed. 
 
 See Godwin's Pol. Jus. vol. i. page 411; — 
 and Condorcet, Esquisse dlun Tableau 
 Historique des Progres de V Esprit Uu- 
 main, Epoque ix. 
 
NOTES 161 
 
 VIII. Page 79. 
 
 No longer now 
 He slays the lamb that looks him in the face. 
 
 I hold that the depravity of the physical and moral 
 nature of man originated in his unnatural habits of life. 
 The origin of man, like that of the universe of which 
 he is a part, is enveloped in impenetrable mystery. 
 His generations either had a beginning, or they had 
 not. The weight of evidence in favour of each of these 
 suppositions seems tolerably equal; and it is perfectly 
 unimportant to the present argument which is assumed. 
 The language spoken, however, by the mythology of 
 nearly all religions seems to prove, that at some distant 
 period man forsook the path of nature, and sacrificed 
 the purity and happiness of his being to unnatural 
 appetites. The date of this event seems to have also 
 been that of some great change in the climates of the 
 earth, with which it has an obvious correspondence. 
 The allegory of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of 
 evil, and entailing upon their posterity the wrath of 
 God, and the loss of everlasting life admits of no other 
 explanation than the disease and crime that have flowed 
 from unnatural diet. Milton was so well aware of this, 
 that he makes Raphael thus exhibit to Adam the con- 
 sequence of his disobedience. 
 
 — : Immediately a place 
 
 Before his eyes appeared: sad, noisome, dark: 
 A lazar-house it seem'd; wherein were laid 
 11 
 
162 NOTES. 
 
 Numbers of all diseased: all maladies 
 Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms 
 Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, 
 Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, 
 Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic pangs, 
 Dsemoniac frenzy, moping melancholy, 
 And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, 
 Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence, 
 Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums. 
 
 And how many thousands more might not be added 
 to this frightful catalogue! 
 
 The story of Prometheus is one likewise which, al- 
 though universally admitted to be allegorical, has never 
 been satisfactorily explained. Prometheus stole fire 
 from heaven, and was chained for this crime to mount 
 Caucasus, where a vulture continually devoured his 
 liver, that grew to meet its hunger. Hesiod says, that, 
 before the time of Prometheus, mankind were exempt 
 from suffering; that they enjoyed a vigorous youth, 
 and that death, when at length it came, approached like 
 sleep, and gently closed their eyes. Again, so general 
 was this opinion, that Horace, a poet of the Augustan 
 age, writes — 
 
 Audax omnia perpeti, 
 Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas; 
 
 Audax Iapeti genus 
 Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit: 
 
 Post ignem aetheria domo 
 
NOTES, 163 
 
 Subductum, macieset nova febrium 
 
 Terris incubuit cohors, 
 Seraotique prius tarda necessitas 
 
 Lethi corripuit gradum a . 
 
 How plain a language is spoken by all this. Prome- 
 theus (who represents the human race) effected some 
 great change in the condition of his nature, and applied 
 fire to culinary purposes ; thus inventing an expedient 
 for screening from his disgust the horrors of the sham- 
 bles. From this moment his vitals were devoured by 
 the vulture of disease. It consumed his being in every 
 shape of its loathsome and infinite variety, inducing the 
 soul-quelling sinkings of premature and violent death. 
 All vice arose from the ruin of healthful innocence. 
 Tyranny, superstition, commerce, and inequality, were 
 then first known, when reason vainly attempted to 
 guide the wanderings of exacerbated passion. I con- 
 clude this part of the subject with an extract from Mr. 
 Newton's Defence of Vegetable Regimen, from whom 
 I have borrowed this interpretation of the fable of Pro- 
 metheus. 
 
 " Making allowance for such transposition of the 
 
 a Thus, from the sun's ethereal beam 
 When bold Prometheus stole th' enlivening flame, 
 
 Of fevers dire a ghastly brood, 
 Till then unknown, th' unhappy fraud pursu'd ; 
 
 On earth their horrors baleful spread, 
 And the pale monarch of the dead, 
 
 Till then slow-moving to his prey, 
 Precipitately rapid sv/ept his way. 
 
 Francis's Horace, Book i. Ode 3.- 
 
164 NOTES. 
 
 events of the allegory as time might produce after the 
 important truths were forgotten, which this portion of 
 the ancient mythology was intended to transmit, the 
 drift of the fable seems to be this: — Man at his creation 
 was endowed with the gift of perpetual youth ; that is, 
 he was not formed to be a sickly suffering creature as 
 we now see him, but to enjoy health, and to sink by 
 slow degrees into the bosom of his parent earth with- 
 out disease or pain. Prometheus first taught the use 
 of animal food (primus bovem occidit Prometheus 3 ) 
 and of fire, with which to render it more digestible and 
 pleasing to the taste. Jupiter, and the rest of the gods, 
 foreseeing the consequences of these inventions, were 
 amused or irritated at the short-sighted devices of the 
 newly-formed creature, and left him to experience the 
 sad effects of them. Thirst, the necessary concomitant 
 of a flesh diet," (perhaps of all diet vitiated by culina- 
 ry preparation,) ensued; water was resorted to, and 
 man forfeited the inestimable gift of health which he 
 had received from heaven: he became diseased, the 
 partaker of a precarious existence, and no longer de- 
 scended slowly to his grave V 
 
 But just disease to luxury succeeds, 
 And every death its own avenger breeds; 
 The fury passions from that blood began, 
 And turned on man a fiercer savage— man. 
 
 Man, and the animals whom he has infected with his 
 
 » Prometheus first killed an ox. Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. y'd. sect. 57. 
 b Return to nature. Cadell, 1811. 
 
NOTES. 165 
 
 society, or depraved by his dominion, are alone diseas- 
 ed. The wild hog, the mouflon, the bison, and the wolf, 
 are perfectly exempt from malady, and invariably die 
 either from external violence, or natural old age. But 
 the domestic hog, the sheep, the cow, and the dog are, 
 subject to an incredible variety of distempers; and, like 
 the corrupters of their nature, have physicians who 
 thrive upon their miseries. The supereminence of man 
 is like Satan's, a supereminence of pain; and the ma- 
 jority of his species, doomed to penury, disease and 
 crime, have reason to curse the untoward event, that 
 by enabling him to communicate his sensations, raised, 
 him above the level of his fellow animals. But the 
 steps that have been taken are irrevocable. The whole 
 of human science is comprised in one question:-— How 
 can the advantages of intellect and civilization be re- 
 conciled with the liberty and pure pleasures of natural 
 life? How can we take the benefits, and reject the evils 
 of the system, which is now interwoven with all the 
 fibres of our being ? — I believe that abstinence from 
 animal food and spirituous liquors would in a great 
 measure capacitate us for the solution of this important 
 question. 
 
 It is true, that mental and bodily derangement is at- 
 tributable in part to other deviations from rectitude and 
 nature than those which concern diet. The mistakes 
 cherished by society respecting the connection of the 
 sexes, whence the misery and diseases of unsatisfied 
 celibacy, unenjoying prostitution, and the premature 
 arrival of puberty necessarily spring; the putrid atmo- 
 sphere of crowded cities; the exhalations of chemical 
 
166 NOTES. 
 
 processes; the muffling of our bodies in superfluous 
 apparel; the absurd treatment of infants:— all these, 
 and innumerable other causes, contribute their mite to 
 the mass of human evil. 
 
 Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles 
 frugivorous animals in every thing, and carnivorous in 
 nothing ; he has neither claws wherewith to seize his 
 prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living 
 fibre. A Mandarin of the first class, with nails two 
 inches long, would probably find them alone, ineffi- 
 cient to hold even a hare, After every subterfuge of 
 gluttony, the bull must be degraded into the ox, and 
 the ram into the wether, by an unnatural and inhuman 
 operation, that the flaccid fibre may offer a fainter 
 resistance to rebellious nature. It is only by softening 
 and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation, that 
 it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion ; 
 and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror 
 does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust. Let 
 the advocate of animal food force himself to a decisive 
 experiment on its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, 
 tear a living lamb with his teeth, and plunging his 
 head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the steaming 
 blood ; when fresh from the deed of horror, let him 
 revert to the irresistible instincts of nature that would 
 rise in judgment against it, and say, Nature formed 
 me for such work as this. Then, and then only, 
 would he be consistent. 
 
 Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is 
 no exception, unless man be one, to the rule of herbi- 
 vorous animals having cellulated colons. 
 
NOTES. 1#7 
 
 The orang-outang perfectly resembles man both in 
 the order and number of his teeth. The orang-outang 
 is the most anthropomorphous of the ape tribe, all of 
 which are strictly frugivorous. There is no other 
 species of animals, which live on different food, in 
 which this analogy exists a . In many frugivorous 
 animals, the canine teeth are more pointed and distinct 
 than those of man. The resemblance also of the 
 human stomach to that of the orang-outang, is greater 
 than to that of any other animal. 
 
 The intestines are also identical with those of herbi- 
 vorous animals, which present a larger surface for 
 absorption and have ample and cellulated colons. 
 The coecum also, though short, is larger than that of 
 carnivorous animals ; and even here the orang-outang 
 retains its accustomed similarity. 
 
 The structure of the human frame then is that of 
 one fitted to a pure vegetable diet, in every essential 
 particular. It is true, that the reluctance to abstain 
 from animal food, in those who have been long accus- 
 tomed to its stimulus, is so great in some persons of 
 weak minds, as to be scarcely overcome ; but this is 
 far from bringing any argument in its favour. A 
 lamb, which was fed for some time on flesh by a ship's 
 r" crew, refused its natural diet at the end of the voyage. 
 There are numerous instances of horses, sheep, oxen, 
 and even wood-pigeons, having been taught to live 
 upon flesh, until they have loathed their natural ali- 
 
 a Cuvier, Lecons d' Anat. Comp. torn. iii. pages 169, 373, 448, 465, 
 480. Rees's Cyclopaedia, article Man. 
 
168 NOTES. 
 
 merit. Young children evidently prefer pastry, oranges, 
 apples, and other fruit, to the flesh of animals, until, 
 by the gradual depravation of the digestive organs, the 
 free use of vegetables has for a time produced serious 
 inconveniences ; for a time, I say, since there never 
 was an instance wherein a change from spirituous 
 liquors and animal food to vegetables and pure water, 
 has failed ultimately to invigorate the body, by ren- 
 dering its juices bland and consentaneous, and to re- 
 store to the mind that cheerfulness and elasticity, which 
 not one in fifty possesses on the present system. A 
 love of strong liquors is also with difficulty taught to 
 infants. Almost every one remembers the wry faces 
 which the first glass of port produced. Unsophisti- 
 cated instinct is invariably unerring ; but to decide on 
 the fitness of animal food, from the perverted appetites 
 which its constrained adoption produces, is to make 
 the criminal a judge in his own cause: it is even 
 worse, it is appealing to the infatuated drunkard in a 
 question of the salubrity of brandy. 
 
 What is the cause of morbid action in the animal 
 system? Not the air we breathe, for our fellow deni- 
 zens of nature breathe the same uninjured;, not the 
 water we drink, (if remote from the pollutions of man 
 and his inventions' 1 ,) for the animals drink it too ; not% 
 the earth we tread upon ; not the unobscured sight of 
 
 a The necessity of resorting to some means' of purifying water, and the 
 disease which arises from its adulteration in civilized countries, is suffi- 
 ciently apparent. — See Dr. Lambe's Reports on Cancer. I do not assert 
 that the use of water is in itself unnatural, but that the unperverted palate 
 would swallow no liquid capable of occasioning disease. 
 
NOTES. 169 
 
 glorious nature, in the wood, the field, or the expanse 
 of sky and ocean; nothing that we are or do in com- 
 mon with the undiseased inhabitants of the forest. 
 Something then wherein we differ from them : our 
 habit of altering our food by fire, so that our appetite 
 is no longer a just criterion for the fitness of its grati- 
 fication. Except in children there remain no traces 
 of that instinct which determines, in all other animals, 
 what aliment is natural or otherwise ; and so perfectly 
 obliterated are they in the reasoning adults of our 
 species, that it has become necessary to urge conside- 
 rations drawn from comparative anatomy, to prove 
 that we are naturally frugivorous. 
 
 Crime is madness. Madness is disease. Whenever 
 the cause of disease shall be discovered, the root, from 
 which all vice and misery have so long overshadowed 
 the globe, will lie bare to the axe. All the exertions 
 of man, from that moment, may be considered as 
 tending to the clear profit of his species. No sane 
 mind in a sane body resolves upon a real crime. It 
 is a man of violent passions, blood-shot eyes, and 
 swollen veins, that alone can grasp the knife of mur- 
 der. The system of a simple diet promises no Uto- 
 pian advantages. It is no mere reform of legislation,, 
 whilst the furious passions and evil propensities of the 
 human heart, in which it had its origin, are still un- 
 assuaged. It strikes at the root of all evil, and is an 
 experiment which may be tried with success, not 
 alone by nations, but by small societies, families, and. 
 even individuals. In no cases has a return to vegeta- 
 ble diet produced the slightest injury; in most it has 
 
170 NOTES. 
 
 been attended with changes undeniably beneficial. 
 Should ever a physician be born with the genius of 
 Locke, I am persuaded that he might trace all bodily 
 and mental derangements to our unnatural habits, as 
 clearly as that philosopher has traced all knowledge 
 to sensation. What prolific sources of disease are not 
 those mineral and vegetable poisons that have been 
 introduced for its extirpation! How many thousands 
 have become murderers and robbers, bigots and do- 
 mestic tyrants, dissolute and abandoned adventurers, 
 from the use of fermented liquors; who had they 
 slaked their thirst only with pure water, would have 
 lived but to diffuse the happiness of their own unper- 
 verted feelings. How many groundless opinions and 
 absurd institutions have not received a general sanc- 
 tion from the sottishness and intemperance of indivi- 
 duals! Who will assert that, had the populace of 
 Paris satisfied their hunger at the ever-furnished table 
 of vegetable nature, they would have lent their brutal 
 suffrage to the proscription-list of Robespierre? Could 
 a set of men, whose passions were not perverted by 
 unnatural stimuli, look with coolness on an auto da 
 ft? Is it to be believed that a being of gentle feelings, 
 .rising from his meal of roots, would take delight in 
 sports of blood ? Was Nero a man of temperate life? 
 Could you read calm health in his cheek, flushed with 
 ungovernable propensities of hatred for the human 
 race? Did Muley Tsmael's pulse beat evenly, was 
 his skin transparent, did his eyes beam with healthful- 
 ness, and its invariable concomitants, cheerfulness and 
 benignity? Though history has decided none of these 
 
NOTES. 171 
 
 questions, a child could not hesitate to answer in the 
 negative. Surely the bile-suffused cheek of Buona- 
 parte, his wrinkled brow, and yellow eye, the cease- 
 less inquietude of his nervous system, speak no less 
 plainly the character of his unresting ambition than his 
 murders and his victories. It is impossible, had Buo- 
 naparte descended from a race of vegetable feeders, 
 that he could have had either the inclination or the 
 power to ascend the throne of the Bourbons. The 
 desire of tyranny could scarcely be excited in the indi- 
 vidual, the power to tyrannize would certainly not be 
 delegated by a society neither frenzied by inebriation, 
 nor rendered impotent and irrational by disease. 
 Pregnant indeed with inexhaustible calamity is the 
 renunciation of instinct, as it concerns our physical 
 nature ; arithmetic cannot enumerate, nor reason per- 
 haps suspect, the multitudinous sources, of disease in 
 civilized life. Even common water, that apparently 
 innoxious pabulum, when corrupted by the fillh of 
 populous cities, is a deadly and insidious destroyer*. 
 Who can wonder that all the inducements held out by 
 God himself in the Bible to virtue should have been 
 vainer than a nurse's tale ; and that those dogmas, by 
 which he has there excited and justified the most fero- 
 cious propensities, should have alone been deemed 
 essential ; whilst Christians are in the daily practice 
 .of all those habits which have infected with disease 
 and crime, not only the reprobate sons, but these fa- 
 voured children of the common Father's love. Omnit 
 
 a Lanibe's Reports on Cancer. 
 
172 NOTES. 
 
 potence itself could not save them from the conse- 
 quences of this original and universal sin. 
 
 There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adop- 
 tion of vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly 
 mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly 
 tried. Debility is gradually converted into strength, 
 disease into healthfulness ; madness, in all its hideous 
 variety, from the ravings of the fettered maniac, to the 
 unaccountable irrationalities of ill temper, that make 
 a hell of domestic life, into a calm and considerate 
 evenness of temper, that alone might offer a certain 
 pledge of the future moral reformation of society. On 
 a natural system of diet, old age would be our last 
 and our only malady ; the term of our existence would 
 be protracted; we should enjoy life, and no longer 
 preclude others from the enjoyment of it ; all sensa- 
 tional delights would be infinitely more exquisite and 
 perfect; the very sense of being would then be a con- 
 tinued pleasure, such as we now feel it in some few 
 and favoured moments of our youth. By all that is 
 sacred in our hopes for the human race, I coojure 
 those who love happiness and truth, to give a fair trial 
 to the vegetable system. Reasoning is surely super- 
 fluous on a subject whose merits an experience of six 
 months would set for ever at rest. But it is only 
 among the enlightened and benevolent that so great a 
 sacrifice of appetite and prejudice can be expected, 
 even though its ultimate excellence should not admit 
 of dispute. It is found easier, by the short-sighted 
 victims of disease, to palliate their torments by medi- 
 cine, than to prevent them by regimen. The vulgar 
 
NOTES. 1 73 
 
 of all ranks are invariably sensual and indocile ; yet 
 I cannot but feel myself persuaded, that when the be- 
 nefits of vegetable diet are mathematically proved ; 
 when it is as clear, that those who live naturally are 
 exempt from premature death, as that nine is not one, 
 the most sottish of mankind will feel a preference to- 
 wards a long and tranquil, contrasted with a short and 
 painful life. On the average, out of sixty persons, 
 four die in three years, Hopes are entertained that in 
 April 1814, a statement will be given that sixty per- 
 sons, all having lived more than three years on vege- 
 tables and pure water, are then in perfect health. 
 More than two years have now elapsed ; not one of 
 them has died; no such example will be found in any 
 sixty persons taken at random. Seventeen persons of 
 all ages (the families of Dr. Lambe and Mr. Newton) 
 have lived for seven years on this diet without a death, 
 and almost without the slightest illness. Surely, when 
 we consider that some of these were infants, and one 
 a martyr to asthma now nearly subdued, we may 
 challenge any seventeen persons taken at random in 
 this city to exhibit a parallel case. Those who may 
 have been excited to question the rectitude of estab- 
 lished habits of diet, by these loose remarks, should 
 consult Mr. Newton's luminous and eloquent essay 3 . 
 
 When these proofs come fairly before the world, and 
 are clearly seen by all who understand arithmetic, it 
 is scarcely possible that abstinence from aliments de- 
 monstrably pernicious should not become universal. 
 
 a Return to Nature, or Defence of Vegetable Regimen. Cadell, 1811. 
 
174 NOTES. 
 
 In proportion to the number of proselytes, so will be 
 the weight of evidence ; and when a thousand persons 
 can be produced, living on vegetables and distilled 
 water, who have to dread no disease but old age, the 
 world will be compelled to regard animal flesh and 
 fermented liquors as slow but certain poisons. The 
 change which would be produced by simpler habits 
 on political economy, is sufficiently remarkable. The 
 monopolizing eater of animal flesh would no longer 
 destroy his constitution by devouring an acre at a 
 meal, and many loaves of bread would cease to con- 
 tribute to gout, madness, and apoplexy, in the shape 
 of a pint of porter, or a dram of gin, when appeasing 
 the long-protracted famine of the hard-working pea- 
 sant's hungry babes. The quantity of nutritious vege- 
 table matter, consumed in fattening the carcase of an 
 ox, would afford ten times the sustenance, undepraving 
 indeed, and incapable of generating disease, if gather- 
 ed immediately from the bosom of the earth. The 
 most fertile districts of the habitable globe are now 
 actually cultivated by men for animals, at a delay and 
 waste of aliment absolutely incapable of calculation. 
 It is only the wealthy that can, to any great degree, 
 even now, indulge the unnatural craving for dead 
 flesh, and they pay for the greater licence of the privi- 
 lege, by subjection to supernumerary diseases. Again, 
 the spirit of the nation that should take the lead in this 
 great reform, would insensibly become agricultural; 
 commerce, with all its vice, selfishness, and corrup- 
 tion, would gradually decline ; more natural habits 
 would produce gentler manners, and the excessive 
 
NOTES. 175 
 
 complication of political relations would be so far 
 simplified, that every individual might feel and under- 
 stand why he loved his country, and took a personal 
 interest in its welfare. How would England, for ex- 
 ample, depend on the caprices of foreign rulers, if she 
 contained within herself all the necessaries, and des- 
 pised whatever they possessed of the luxuries of life? 
 How could they starve her into compliance with their 
 views? Of what consequence would it be that they 
 refused to take her woollen manufactures, when large 
 and fertile tracts of the island ceased to be allotted to 
 the waste of pasturage? On a natural system of diet, 
 we should require no spices from India; no wines. 
 from Portugal, Spain, France, or Madeira ; none of 
 those multitudinous articles of luxury, for which every 
 corner of the globe is rifled, and which are the causes 
 of so much individual rivalship, such calamitous and. 
 sanguinary national disputes. In the history of mo- 
 dem times, the avarice of commercial monopoly, no 
 less than the ambition of weak and wicked chiefs, 
 seems to have fomented the universal discord, to have 
 added stubbornness to the mistakes of cabinets, and- 
 indocility to the infatuation of the people. Let it ever 
 be remembered, that it is the direct influence of com- 
 merce to make the interval between the richest and 
 the poorest man, wider and more unconquerable. Let 
 it be remembered, that it is a foe to every thing of real 
 worth and excellence in the human character. The 
 odious and disgusting aristocracy of wealth, is built 
 upon the ruins of all that is good in chivalry or repub- 
 licanism ; and luxury is the forerunner of a barbarism 
 
176 NOTES. 
 
 scarce capable of cure. Is it impossible to realize a 
 state of society, where all the energies of man shall be 
 directed to the production of his solid happiness? 
 Certainly, if this advantage (the object of all political 
 speculation) be in any degree attainable, it is attain- 
 able only by a community, which holds out no facti- 
 tious incentives to the avarice and ambition of the 
 few, and which is internally organized for the liberty, 
 security, and comfort of the many. None must be 
 entrusted with power (and money is the completest 
 species of power) who do not stand pledged to use it 
 exclusively for the general benefit. But the use of 
 animal flesh and fermented liquors, directly militates 
 with this equality of the rights of man. The peasant 
 cannot gratify these fashionable cravings without leav- 
 ing his family to starve. Without disease and war, 
 those sweeping curtailers of population, pasturage 
 would include a waste too great to be afforded. The 
 labour requisite to support a family is far lighter 3 than 
 is usually supposed. The peasantry work, not only 
 for themselves, but for the aristocracy, the army, and 
 the manufacturers. 
 
 The advantage of a reform in diet is obviously 
 greater than that of any other. It strikes at the root 
 of the evil. To remedy the abuses of legislation, be- 
 
 a It has come under the author's experience, that some of the workmen 
 on an embankment in North Wales, who, in consequence of the inability 
 of the proprietor to pay them, seldom received their wages, have support- 
 ed large families by cultivating small spots of sterile ground by moonlight. 
 In the notes to Pratt's Poem, u Bread, or the Poor," is an account of an 
 industrious labourer, who, by working in a small garden, before and after 
 his day's task, attained to an enviable state of independence. 
 
NOTES. 177 
 
 fore we annihilate the propensities by which they are 
 produced, is to suppose, that by taking away the effect, 
 the cause will cease to operate. But the efficacy of 
 this system depends entirely on the proselytism of 
 individuals, and grounds its merits, as a benefit to the 
 community, upon the total change of the dietetic habits 
 in its members. It proceeds securely from a number 
 of particular cases to one that is universal, and has 
 this advantage over the contrary mode, that one error 
 does not invalidate all that has gone before. 
 
 Let hot too much, however, be expected from this 
 system. The healthiest among us is not exempt from 
 hereditary disease. The most symmetrical, athletic, 
 and long-lived, is a being inexpressibly inferior to 
 what he would have been, had not the unnatural habits 
 of his ancestors accumulated for him a certain portion 
 of malady and deformity. In the most perfect speci- 
 men of civilized man, something is still found wanting 
 by the physiological critic. Can a return to nature, 
 then, instantaneously eradicate predispositions that 
 have been slowly taking root in the silence of innume- 
 rable ages? — Indubitably not. All that I contend for 
 is, that from the moment of the relinquishing all unna- 
 tural habits, no new disease is generated ; and that the 
 predisposition to hereditary maladies gradually pe- 
 rishes, for want of its accustomed supply. In cases 
 of consumption, cancer, gout, asthma, and scrofula, 
 such is the invariable tendency of a diet of vegetables 
 and pure water. 
 
 Thosa who may be induced by these remarks to 
 give the vegetable system a fair trial, should in the 
 
 12 
 
178 • NOTES. 
 
 first place, date the commencement of their practice, 
 from the moment of their conviction. All depends 
 upon breaking through a pernicious habit resolutely, 
 and at once. Dr. Trotter" asserts, that no drunkard 
 was ever reformed by gradually relinquishing his 
 dram. Animal flesh, in its effects on the human sto- 
 mach, is analagous to a dram. It is similar to the 
 kind, though differing in the degree, of its operation. 
 The proselyte to a pure diet must be warned to 
 expect a temporary diminution bf muscular strength. 
 The subtraction of a powerful stimulus will suffice to 
 account for this event. But it is only temporary, 
 and is succeeded by an equable capability for exer- 
 tion, far surpassing his former various and fluctuat- 
 ing strength. Above all, he will acquire an easiness 
 of breathing, by which such exertion is performed, 
 with a remarkable exemption from that painful and 
 difficult panting now felt by almost every one, after 
 hastily climbing an ordinary mountain. He will be 
 equally capable of bodily exertion, or mental appli- 
 cation, after as before his simple meal. He will feel 
 none of the narcotic effects of ordinary diet. Irrita- 
 bility, the direct consequence of exhausting stimuli, 
 would yield to the power of natural and tranquil im- 
 pulses. He will no longer pine under the lethargy of 
 ennui, that unconquerable weariness of life, more to 
 be dreaded than death itself. He will escape the epi- 
 demic madness, which broods over # its own injurious 
 
 a See Trotter on the Nervous Temperament, 
 
NOTES. 17!) 
 
 notions of the Deity, and " realizes the hell that priests 
 and beldams feign." Every man forms as it were his 
 god from his own character ; to the divinity of one of 
 simple habits, no offering would be more acceptable 
 than the happiness of his creatures. He would be in- 
 capable of hating or persecuting others for the love of 
 God. He will find, moreover, a system of simple diet 
 to be a system of perfect epicurism. He will no lon- 
 ger be incessantly occupied in blunting and destroying 
 those organs from which he expects his gratification. 
 The pleasures of taste to be derived from a dinner of 
 potatoes, beans, peas, turnips, lettuces, with a dessert 
 of apples, gooseberries, strawberries, currants, rasp- 
 berries, and, in winter, oranges, apples, and. pears, is 
 far greater than is supposed. Those who wait until 
 they can eat this plain fare with the sauce of appetite 
 will scarcely join with the hypocrital sensualist at a 
 lord-mayor's feast, who declaims against the pleasures 
 of the table. Solomon kept a thousand concubines, 
 and owned in despair that all was vanity. The man 
 whose happiness is constituted by the society of one 
 amiable woman, would find some difficulty in sympa- 
 pathiziug with the disappointment of this venerable 
 debauchee. 
 
 I address myself not only to the young enthusiast, 
 the ardent devotee of truth and virtue, the pure and 
 passionate moralist, yet unvitiated by the contagion of 
 the world. He will embrace a pure system, from 
 its abstract truth, its beauty, its simplicity, and its 
 promise of wide-extended benefit; unless custom has 
 turned poison into food, he will hate the brutal plea- 
 
180 NOTES. 
 
 sures of the chase by instinct ; it will be a contempla- 
 tion full of horror and disappointment to his mind, 
 that beings capable of the gentlest and most admirable 
 sympathies, should take delight in the death-pangs 
 and last convulsions of dying animals. The elderly 
 man, whose youth has been poisoned by intemperance, 
 or who has lived with apparent moderation, and is 
 afflicted with a variety of painful maladies, would 
 find his account in a beneficial change, produced with- 
 out the risk of poisonous medicines. The mother, to 
 whom the perpetual restlessness of disease, and unac- 
 countable deaths incident to her children, are the causes 
 of incurable unhappiness, would on this diet expe- 
 rience the satisfaction of beholding their perpetual 
 health and natural playfulness 3 . 
 
 The most valuable lives are daily destroyed by dis- 
 eases, that it is dangerous to palliate and impossible to 
 cure by medicine. How much longer will man con- 
 tinue to pimp for the gluttony of death, his most insi- 
 dious, implacable, and eternal foe ? 
 
 a See Mr- Newton's book. His children are the most beautiful and 
 healthy creatures it is possible to conceive ; the girls are perfect models 
 for a sculptor; their dispositions are also the most gentle and conciliating ; 
 the judicious treatment which they experience in other points, may be a 
 correlative cause of this. In the first five years of their life, of 18,000 
 children that are born, 7,500 die of various diseases ; and how many more 
 of those that survive are rendered miserable by maladies not immediately 
 mortal ? The quality and quantity of a woman's milk are materially in- 
 jured by the use of dead flesh. In an island, near Iceland, where no 
 vegetables are to be got, the children invariably die of tetanus, before they 
 are three weeks old, and the population is supplied from the main land. — 
 Sir G. Mackenzie's Hist, of Iceland. See also Emile, chap. i. p. 53, 54, 56. 
 
NOTES. 181 
 
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 a You apply the term wild to lions, panthers, and serpents, yet in your 
 
182 NOTES. 
 
 own savage slaughters, you far surpass them in ferocity, for the blood 
 shed by them is a matter of necessity, and requisite for their subsistence, 
 
 * * * * ' * * * 
 
 That man is not by nature destined So devour animal food, is evident 
 from the construction of the human frame, which bears no resemblance to 
 wild beasts, or birds of prey. Man is not provided with claws or talons, 
 with sharpness of fang, or tusk, so well adapted to tear and lacerate ; nor 
 is his stomach so well braced and muscular, nor his animal spirits so warm 
 as to enable him to digest this solid mass of animal flesh. On the con- 
 trary, nature has made his teeth smooth, his mouth narrow, and his tongue 
 soft; and has contrived, by the slowness of his digestion, to divert him 
 from devouring a species of food so ill adapted to his frame and consti- 
 tution. But if you still maintain, that such is your natural mode of sub- 
 sistence, then follow nature in your mode of killing your prey, and em- 
 ploy neither knife, hammer, or hatchet, but like wolves, bears, and lions, 
 seize an ox with your teeth, grasp a boar round the body, or tear asunder 
 a Iamb or a hare, and like the savage tribe, devour them still panting in 
 the agonies of death. 
 
 ******* 
 
 We carry our luxury still farther, by the variety of sauces and season- 
 ings which we add to our beastly banquets, mixing together oil, wine, 
 honey, pickles, vinegar, and Syrian and Arabian ointments and perfumes, 
 as if we intended to bury and embalm the carcases on which we feed. 
 The difficulty of digesting such a mass of matter reduced in our stomachs 
 to a state of liquefaction and putrefaction, is the source of endless disor- 
 ders iu the human frame. 
 
 First of all, the wild mischievous animals were selected for food, and 
 then the birds and fishes were dragged to slaughter ; next the human appe- 
 tite directed itself against the laborious ox, the useful and fleece-bearing 
 sheep, and the cock, the guardian of the house. At last, by this prepara- 
 tory discipline, man became matured for human massacres, slaughters, 
 and wars. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Printed and Published by W. Clark, 201, Strand, 
 
TO 
 
 HARRIET ***** 
 
 Whose is the love that gleaming through the 
 
 world, 
 Wards off the poisonous arrow of its scorn ? 
 
 Whose is the warm and partial praise, 
 
 Virtue's most sweet reward ? 
 
 Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul 
 Ripen in truth and virtuous daring grow ? 
 
 Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on, 
 
 And loved mankind the more ? 
 
 Harriet! on thine: — thou wast my purer 
 
 mind ; 
 Thou wast the inspiration of my song ; 
 
 Thine are these early winding flowers, 
 
 Though garlanded by me. 
 
TO HARRIET. 
 
 Then press unto thy breast this pledge of love, 
 And know, though time may change, and years 
 may roll, 
 
 Each floweret gathered in my heart 
 
 It consecrates to thine. 
 
Date Due 
 
 
 
 
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