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 with his predisposition--the
theory that all the good and beautiful things that we love on
earth are partial manifestations of an absolute beauty or
goodness, which exists eternal and unchanging, and from which
everything that becomes and perishes in time derives such
reality as it has. Hence our human life is good only in so far
as we participate in the eternal reality; and the communion is
effected whenever we adore beauty, whether in nature, or in
passionate love, or in the inspiration of poetry. We shall
have to say something presently about the effects of this
Platonic idealism on Shelley's conception of love; here we need
only notice that it inspired him to translate Plato's
'Symposium', a dialogue occupied almost entirely with theories
about love. He was not, however, well equipped for this task.
His version, or rather adaptation (for much is omitted and much
is paraphrased), is fluent, but he had not enough Greek to
reproduce the finer shades of the original, or, indeed, to
avoid gross mistakes.

A poet who is also a Platonist is likely to exalt his office;
it is his not merely to amuse or to please, but to lead mankind