It will be seen that, whatever Shelley may from time to time have said about the immortality of the soul, he was no materialist, and no believer in the extinction of the spiritual element by death.  Yet he was too wise to dogmatize upon a problem which by its very nature admits of no solution in this world.  “I hope,” he said, “but my hopes are not unmixed with fear for what will befall this inestimable spirit when we appear to die.”  On another occasion he told Trelawny, “I am content to see no farther into futurity than Plato and Bacon.  My mind is tranquil; I have no fears and some hopes.  In our present gross material state our faculties are clouded; when Death removes our clay coverings, the mystery will be solved.”  How constantly the thought of death as the revealer was present to his mind, may be gathered from an incident related by Trelawny.  They were bathing in the Arno, when Shelley, who could not swim, plunged into deep water, and “lay stretched out at the bottom like a conger eel, not making the least effort or struggle to save himself.”  Trelawny fished him out, and when he had taken breath he said:  “I always find the bottom of the well, and they say Truth lies there.  In another minute I should have found it, and you would have found an empty shell.  Death is the veil which those who live call life; they sleep, and it is lifted.”  Yet being pressed by his friend, he refused to acknowledge a formal and precise belief in the imperishability of the human soul.  “We know nothing; we have no evidence; we cannot express our inmost thoughts.  They are incomprehensible even to ourselves.”  The clear insight into the conditions of the question conveyed by the last sentence is very characteristic of Shelley.  It makes us regret the non-completion of his essay on a “Future Life”, which would certainly have stated the problem with rare lucidity and candour, and would have illuminated the abyss of doubt with a sense of spiritual realities not often found in combination with wise suspension of judgment.  What he clung to amid all perplexities was the absolute and indestructible existence of the universal as perceived by us in love, beauty, and delight.  Though the destiny of the personal self be obscure, these things cannot fail.  The conclusion of the “Sensitive Plant” might be cited as conveying the quintessence of his hope upon this most intangible of riddles.

    Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that
    Which within its boughs like a spirit sat,
    Ere its outward form had known decay,
    Now felt this change, I cannot say.

    I dare not guess; but in this life
    Of error, ignorance, and strife,
    Where nothing is, but all things seem,
    And we the shadows of the dream: 

    It is a modest creed, and yet
    Pleasant, if one considers it,
    To own that death itself must be,
    Like all the rest, a mockery.

    That garden sweet, that lady fair,
    And all sweet shapes and odours there,
    In truth have never passed away: 
    ’Tis we, ’tis ours, are changed; not they.