¹ In another letter to Miss Hitchener, dated June 25, 1811, and in still another to her, dated Aug. 18, 1811, he repeats these references to Locke's arguments against innate ideas.

² Letter to Miss Hitchener, Jan. 2, 1812.

³ Letter to Miss Hitchener, June 20, 1811.

⁴ It is clear that Godwin attached very great importance to these views, a point which Shelley could not have overlooked. In the introductory statements in the chapters on Free Will and Necessity, Godwin remarks: “It will be found upon maturer reflection that this doctrine of moral necessity includes in it consequences of the highest moment, and leads to a bold and comprehensive view of man and society, which cannot possibly be entertained by him who has embraced the opposite opinion.” He also asserts that all his reasoning is based on this doctrine as a postulate.

⁵ Shelley's account of how this superstition arose is given in The Revolt of Islam (1818) :

⁶ In an article, Platonism in Shelley, in Essays and Studies (vol. iv, 1913), L. Winstanley presents some striking similarities between passages from Plato and from Shelley. However, many of the Shelley passages, some of which are quoted in the present essay, are in substance less like Plato than Godwin. It is also obvious that Shelley was especially enamoured by the more fantastic parts of Plato, as, for instance, the idea of pre-existence, a preceding Golden Age, alternate periods of order and disorder, etc. Miss Winstanley's oft-repeated statement, in its various forms, “Shelley has embodied all these conceptions in his poetry,” seems a little absurd. For Plato, “first among the preparatory preceptors of Christianity,” lays special stress on intellectual discipline, travail, and growth necessary to attain the Beautiful and the Good, which is foreign to Shelley. Much of the mist hovering about Shelley's youthful ideas of the Good is dispelled, for example, by a single sentence from Plato's Republic: “Whether I am right or not God only knows; but, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort.”

⁷ Compare the following from A Refutation of Deism: “Mind cannot create, it can only perceive. Mind is the recipient of impressions made on the organs of sense, and without the action of external objects we should not only be deprived of the existence of mind, but totally incapable of the knowledge of anything. It is evident therefore that mind deserves to be considered as the effect, rather than the cause of motion.”

⁸ See also Prometheus Unbound, Act I, lines 546–563, and a note to the, last Chorus in Hellas, in the passage beginning with,—“The sublime human character of Jesus Christ—” etc.

⁹ Prometheus Unbound is primarily lyrical, and as a lyric falls into two distinct parts, with two emotional centers. The division occurs between Scenes i and ii of Act III. The first part represents the Mind of Man (Prometheus) as bound and enslaved; the second as absolutely free. There are no intermediary emotional stages. In the second part the poet achieves an extraordinarily intense and sustained lyricism.

¹⁰ That Shelley was aware of this tendency is shown in a note from the essay On the Punishment of Death, where he makes an unsuccessful attempt to distinguish between Necessity and Fatalism: “The savage and the illiterate are but faintly aware of the distinction between the future and the past; they make actions belonging to periods so distinct, the subjects of similar feelings; they live only in the present, or in the past, as it is present. It is in this that the philosopher excels one of the many; it is this which distinguishes the doctrine of philosophical necessity from fatalism.” But this makes no real or fundamental distinction. It simply makes Necesisty a dignified Fatalism.

¹¹ Three of the most striking examples are as follows:

From Julian and Maddalo (1818) :

From A Philosophical Review of Reform (1818): “We derive tranquillity and courage and grandeur of soul from contemplating an object which is because we will it, and may be, because we hope and desire it, and must be if succeeding generations of the enlightened sincerely and earnestly desire it.”

From Prometheus Unbound (1818). Prometheus to Jupiter:

These passages seem numerous around the year 1818. It may be that at this time Shelley was groping his way toward a real sense of will and personality. But the philosophy of his youth was too strong for him to succeed.