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Shelley and Cabanis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Israel James Kapstein
Israel James Kapstein*
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Extract

Although the influence of such philosophers as Holbach, Condorcet, and Godwin on Shelley's theory of the perfectibility of man has been noted, that of Pierre Jean George Cabanis, the French materialistic physician of the eighteenth century, has been overlooked. Yet Cabanis's ideas as put forward in his most considerable work, Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme, cited in the notes to “Queen Mab,” on the important relation between man's physical well-being and his intellectual and moral health appear to have contributed a striking feature to the poet's exposition of his views in “Queen Mab” and even in “Prometheus Unbound.” If it be remembered that Shelley already, by virtue of his vegetarianism, considered that man cannot become morally perfect unless he be physically perfect, it is not surprising that Cabanis's emphasis on the same idea from another angle, namely, the necessity of a mild and equable climate for the best development of intellect and morality, impressed the poet to such an extent that he incorporated the physician's belief in his theory of perfectibility. His ready acceptance of Cabanis's ideas is the less surprising when it is remarked that Cabanis was also a perfectibilian, believing that man “est indéfinement perfectible, et qu'il devient en quelque sort, capable de tout.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , March 1937 , pp. 238 - 243
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1937

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References

page 238 note 1 Paris, 1802.

page 238 note 2 T. Hutchinson, B. F. Kurtz, The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1933), p. 809; Shelley refers specifically to vol. ii, p. 406, of Cabanis's work.

page 238 note 3 Op. cit., supra, ii, 8; this, and subsequent quotations, from the fourth edition, Paris, 1824.

page 238 note 4 Op. cit., p. 832.—Shelley's note on vegetarianism, printed separately in 1813 as A Vindication of Natural Diet, is, as is well known, chiefly an abstract of J. F. Newton's book, The Return to Nature; or, A Defence of the Vegetable Regimen (London, 1811). While Newton is mainly concerned with the benefits of vegetarianism to the health of the individual, Shelley insists also on the social and moral benefits to mankind from adoption of such a diet, arguing from the basis of Newton's statement that “man, in quitting the nutriment on which alone nature has destined him to enjoy a state of perfect health, has debased his physical, and consequently his moral and intellectual faculties, to a degree almost inconceivable,” The Return to Nature, reprinted in vv. xix and xx of a periodical entitled The Pamphleteer (London, 1821) from which this quotation is taken, xix, 527. It is likely that Shelley first learned of Cabanis's work from Newton, who refers to it in xx, 423.

page 240 note 5 Op. cit., ii, 131.

page 240 note 6 Ibid., ii, 172.—The idea of the effect of climate on morality was not original with Cabanis, nor was it uncommon in the eighteenth century. Cabanis himself quotes Hippocrates at length on the subject and credits Montesquieu with the same belief. It is very likely also that Shelley encountered it in his study of Holbach, who says, “Les hommes varient dans les différens climats pour la couleur, pour la taille, pour la conformation, pour la force, pour l'industrie, pour le courage, pour les facultés de l'esprit,” Le Système de la Nature (London, 1770), i, 84, and also in a work which Shelley refers to in the notes to “Queen Mab” entitled Lettres sur l'Origine des Sciences, et sur Celle des Peuples de l'Asie (Paris, 1777) by Jean Sylvain Bailly, who states: “Il faut à la constitution parfaite de l'homme un degré chaleur moyen, à peu près égal, peut-être à celui que nous éprouvons dans nos climats, lesquels, par cette raison, ont été nommés tempérés,” p. 114.

page 240 note 7 Op. cit., ii, 173.

page 242 note 8 Op. cit., 808.

page 242 note 9 Ibid., 826; cf. The Return to Nature, xix, 506.

page 242 note 10 London, 1684, pp. 67–68, 186–196.

page 242 note 11 Bk. x, ll. 668 ff.

page 242 note 12 Ll. 300 ff.

page 242 note 13 Op. cit. xix, 506

page 243 note 14 Ibid.