PHILOSOPHY OF SHELLEY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1166, 17 June 1911, Page 9

PHILOSOPHY OF SHELLEY.

At the Manchester University recently before the branch ofthe English Association, the Rev. W. Lawrence Schroedcr gave a lecture on "The Philosophy of Shelley."

Mr. Schroedor first pointed to some of the influences which aroused iu Shelley the philosophic temper—his reading of Plato, Locke, Hume, and especially Berkeley. Next the lecturer showed how Shelley's philosophic ideas had their development modified by the predominating spirit of poetry. Shelley was, of course, primarily a pcet. ■ He never deluded himself into the belief that philosophy could solve the problems of our existence. To Shelley tho excellence of Plato consisted e.tpeeially in intuitions. 'His mind was not fashioned for the rigidities of a formal philosophy. Mr. Schroedcr dealt with a _ number of contemporary and later criticisms of Shelley's work. It seemed to him that only a perversion of criticism could deny tho distinctly ethical element in Shelley's poetry. It was a mistako to confound Shelley's ethical idea! with tho conventional standards of morality against which h-2 tilled. Oniy by denying thy validity of his ideal could the charge of non-morality bo sustained against him. Like all reformers, he challenged tha moral judgments of his day and genera tion, and to that degree he placed him self outside the sphere of conventional ethics. It was really Shelley's ethical itleal which drove readers and critics of his poetry into opposition. Ostensibly ha was" anti-religions, .sceptical, non-moral, even immoral; at heart, however, he iva* essentially a religious man. His Atheism was but a condemnation of tho superstition embodied in the orthodoxy or the day. He questioned not the reality of tho Supremo Being, but tho erroneous and degrading ideas which men had conceived of God. ■ His vehement opposition to certain phase.* of orthodox Christianity were not an attack upon real religion. In temper, and very largely in conduct, Shelley was a Christian. Dr. Herford, m some comments upon tht? lecture, (raid that whether Shelley had any thoughts of worth for us ethically and intellectually was pretty widely questioned. The difficulty arose, ho thought, from 'tho fact that Shelley, with his originality and strong individuality, was obliged to take from the systems wiiich he found in the England of his time what was nearest to his own thought, and what .was bound lo ho but a rude and inadequate symbol. Ke never to tlio end found completely satisfactory language for. his thought. His work, therefore, needed interpretation. Even in the ''Prometheus" it'clf (hero wore imperfect symbols which did not correspond with the poet's real meaning. He was glad that Mr. Schroeder had emphasised the ethical importance of Shelley. It was a point which had to be insisted upon that the influence of Shelley, rightly understood and apprehended, was an ethical influence.