prefers to advance by degrees; it would not do to abolish
aristocracy and monarchy at one stroke, and to put power into
the hands of men rendered brutal and torpid by ages of slavery;
and he proposes that the payment of a small sum in direct taxes
should be the qualification for the parliamentary franchise.
The idea, of course, was not in the sphere of practical
politics at the time, but its sobriety shows how far Shelley
was from being a vulgar theory-ridden crank to whom the years
bring no wisdom.

Meanwhile it had been revealed to him that "intolerance" was
the cause of all evil, and, in the same flash, that it could be
destroyed by clear and simple reasoning. Apply the acid of
enlightened argument, and religious beliefs will melt away, and
with them the whole rotten fabric which they support--crowns
and churches, lust and cruelty, war and crime, the inequality
of women to men, and the inequality of one man to another.
With Shelley, to embrace the dazzling vision was to act upon it
at once. The first thing, since religion is at the bottom of
all force and fraud, was to proclaim that there is no reason
for believing in Christianity. This was easy enough, and a
number of impatient argumentative pamphlets were dashed off.
One of these, 'The Necessity of Atheism', caused, as we saw, a
revolution in his life. But, while Christian dogma was the
heart of the enemy's position, there were out-works which might
also be usefully attacked:--there were alcohol and meat, the
causes of all disease and devastating passion; there were
despotism and plutocracy, based on commercial greed; and there
was marriage, which irrationally tyrannising over sexual
relations, produces unnatural celibacy and prostitution. These