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