the different parts of the whole; so that rather than a pantheist he might be called a panpsychist; especially as he did not subordinate morally the individual to the cosmos.  He did not surrender the authority of moral ideals in the face of physical necessity, which is properly the essence of pantheism.  He did the exact opposite; so much so that the chief characteristic of his philosophy is its Promethean spirit.  He maintained that the basis of moral authority was internal, diffused among all individuals; that it was the natural love of the beautiful and the good wherever it might spring, and however fate might oppose it.

    “To suffer ... 
     To forgive ... 
     To defy Power ... 
     To love and bear; to hope, till hope creates
     From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
     Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
     This ... is to be
     Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free.”

Shelley was also removed from any ordinary atheism by his truly speculative sense for eternity.  He was a thorough Platonist All metaphysics perhaps is poetry, but Platonic metaphysics is good poetry, and to this class Shelley’s belongs.  For instance: 

         “The pure spirit shall flow
    Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
    A portion of the eternal, which must glow
    Through time and change, unquenchably the same. 
    Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep! 
    He hath awakened from the dream of life. 
    ’Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep
    With phantoms an unprofitable strife.

“He is made one with Nature.  There is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird.

    “He is a portion of the loveliness
    Which once he made more lovely.

“The splendours of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not:  Like stars to their appointed height they climb, And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil.  When lofty thought Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, ... the dead live there.”

Atheism or pantheism of this stamp cannot be taxed with being gross or materialistic; the trouble is rather that it is too hazy in its sublimity.  The poet has not perceived the natural relation between facts and ideals so clearly or correctly as he has felt the moral relation between them.  But his allegiance to the intuition which defies, for the sake of felt excellence, every form of idolatry or cowardice wearing the mask of religion—­this allegiance is itself the purest religion; and it is capable of inspiring the sweetest and most absolute poetry.  In daring to lay bare the truths of fate, the poet creates for himself the subtlest and most heroic harmonies; and he is comforted for the illusions he has lost by being made incapable of desiring them.