ion from the depths of sub-consciousness, he does not seem
ever to have taken that sort of interest in the problems of the universe
which is distinctive of the philosopher; in so far as he speculated
on the nature and destiny of the world or the soul, it was not from
curiosity about the truth, but rather because correct views on these
matters seemed to him especially in early years, an infallible method of
regenerating society. As his expectation of heaven on earth became less
confident, so the speculative impulse waned. Not long before his death
he told Trelawny that he was not inquisitive about the system of the
universe, that his mind was tranquil on these high questions. He seems,
for instance, to have oscillated vaguely between belief and disbelief in
personal life after death, and on the whole to have concluded that there
was no evidence for it.

At the same time, it is essential to a just appreciation of him, either
as man or poet, to see how all his opinions and feelings were shaped
by philosophy, and by the influence of one particular doctrine. This
doctrine was Platonism. He first went through a stage of devotion to
what he calls "the sceptical philosophy," when his writings were full
of schoolboy echoes of Locke and Hume. At this time he avowed himself
a materialist. Then he succumbed to Bishop Berkeley, who convinced him
that the nature of everything that exists is spiritual. We find him
saying, with charming pompousness, "I confess that I am one of those
who are unable to refuse their assent to the conclusions of those
philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived."
This "intellectual system," he rightly sees, leads to the view that
nothing whatever exists except a single mind; and that is the view which
he found, or thought that he found, in the dialogues of Plato, and which
gave to his whole being a bent it was never to lose. He liked to call
himself an atheist; and, if pantheism is atheism, an atheist no doubt he
was. But, whatever the correct label, he was eminently religious. In
the notes to 'Queen Mab' he announces his belief in "a pervading Spirit
co-eternal with the universe," and religion meant for him a "perception
of the relation in which we stand to the principle of the universe"--a
perception which, in his case, was accompanied by intense emotion.
Having thus grasped the notion that the whole universe is one spirit,
he absorbed from Plato a theory which accorded perfectly wi