veiled perhaps, under some beautiful myth, is a straining after the
pure and the good, and, as Shelley puts it:

"All original religions are allegorical, or susceptible of
allegory, and, like Janus, have a double face of false and
true."

It should also be considered, that it is better not to interfere with
the faith of the ignorant, but let them remain in an exoteric
condition, until they are properly developed by sufficient education
and consequent intelligence. It is just as much the duty of advanced
thinkers not to tamper with the beliefs of men who are in an early
stage of progress, as it is not to put a flaming torch in the
possession of a lunatic, or a razor in the hands of a child.

Shelley, in his philosophy, accepted all this, with the full
consciousness that in the end truth would prevail--he yearned for the
time when priest-led slaves would

"Cease to proclaim that man
Inherits vice and misery, when force
And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe,
Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good,"

and for that epoch when "the Mohammedan, the Jew, the Christian, the
Deist, and the Atheist will live together in one community, equally
sharing the benefits which arise from its associations, and united in
the bonds of charity and brotherly love."

With Shelley we can turn with delight to the gospels of the future, as