Requirest no prayers or praises, the caprice
Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee
Than do the changeful passions of his breast
To thy unvarying harmony."

And by this doctrine of necessity here apostrophised our philosopher
instructs us in a lengthy statement of great clearness:

"We are taught that there is neither good nor evil in the
universe, otherwise than as the events to which we apply
these epithets have relation to our own peculiar mode of
being. Still less than with the hypothesis of a personal
God, will the doctrine of necessity accord with the belief
of a future state of punishment. God made man such as he is,
and then damned him for being so; for to say that God was
the author of all good, and man the author of all evil, is
to say that one man made a straight line and a crooked one,
and another man made the incongruity."

For you to better understand the exact position in which Shelley
placed himself, it is elsewhere thus admirably expressed:

"The thoughts which the word 'God' suggest to the human mind
are susceptible of as many variations as human minds
themselves. The Stoic, the Platonist, and the Epicurean, the
Polytheist, the Dualist, and the Trinitarian, differ entirely
in their conceptions of its meaning. They agree only in
considering it the most awful and most venerable of names,
as a common term to express all of mystery, or majesty, or
power, which the invisible world contains. And not only has