Imagination is
indeed at work in them, and makes them capable of sacrificing
themselves for any idea that appeals to them, for their children,
perhaps, or for their religion. But they are not more capable of
sacrificing themselves to what does not interest them than the
cancer-microbes are of sacrificing themselves to men.
When Shelley marvels at the perversity of the world, he shows his
ignorance of the world. The illusion he suffers from is
constitutional, and such as larks and sensitive plants are possibly
subject to in their way: what he is marvelling at is really that
anything should exist at all not a creature of his own moral
disposition. Consequently the more he misunderstands the world and
bids it change its nature, the more he expresses his own nature: so
that all is not vanity in his illusion, nor night in his blindness.
The poet sees most clearly what his ideal is; he suffers no illusion
in the expression of his own soul. His political utopias, his belief
in the power of love, and his cryingly subjective and inconstant way
of judging people are one side of the picture; the other is his
lyrical power, wealth, and ecstasy. If he had understood universal
nature, he would not have so glorified in his own. And his own nature
was worth glorifying; it was, I think, the purest, tenderest,
richest, most rational nature ever poured forth in verse.
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