Wrong, of its very essence, must be in
unstable equilibrium. The conflict between what such a man feels ought
to exist and what he finds actually existing must, he will feel sure,
end by a speedy revolution in things, and by the removal of all
scandals; that it should end by the speedy removal of his own person,
or by such a revolution in his demands as might reconcile him to
existence, will never occur to him; or, if the thought occurs to him,
it will seem too horrible to be true.
Such a creature cannot adapt himself to things by education, and
consequently he cannot adapt things to himself by industry. His choice
lies absolutely between victory and martyrdom. But at the very moment
of martyrdom, martyrs, as is well known, usually feel assured of
victory. The _a priori_ spirit will therefore be always a prophet of
victory, so long as it subsists at all. The vision of a better world
at hand absorbed the Israelites in exile, St. John the Baptist in the
desert, and Christ on the cross. The martyred spirit always says to
the world it leaves, "This day thou shall be with me in paradise."
In just this way, Shelley believed in perfectibility. In his latest
poems--in _Hellas_, in _Adonais_--he was perhaps a little inclined to
remove the scene of perfectibility to a metaphysical region, as the
Christian church soon removed it to the other world.
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