Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 2).djvu/405

Rh capable of being topographically ascertained. No one likes to mention the torments of everlasting fire and the poisonous gnawing of the worm that liveth for ever and ever. It is all explained away into the regrets and the reproaches of an evil conscience, and, in this respect, I think that the most presumptuous among us may safely say—

On the other hand. Heaven is supposed to have some settled locality, and the joys of the elect are to be something very positive. This way of talking about a personage whose office in the mythological scheme is so important, must lead to disbelief. It is, in fact, a proof of approaching extinction in any religion, when its teachers and its adherents, instead of proudly and dogmatically insisting upon the most knotty or unintelligible articles of their creed, begin to palliate and explain away the doctrines in which their more believing ancestors had shewn a reverential acquiescence, and an audacious exultation of confidence. It is less the opinion of the person himself than that of those by whom he is surrounded, which gives that air of confidence by which the most absurd tenets have been transmitted from generation to generation. A man may, in truth, never have considered whether there is or is not a Devil; he may be totally indifferent to the question; yet it may occur to him to state his positive opinion on one side or the other. The air of confidence with which he does this, is manifestly determined by the disposition with which he