It a certain series of co-existing phenomena; but let it be supposed that this principle is a certain substance which escapes the observation of the chemist and anatomist. certainly may be; though it is sufficiently unphilosophical to allege the possibility of an opinion as a proof of its truth. Does it see, hear, feel, before its combination with those organs on which sensation depends? Does it reason, imagine, apprehend, without those ideas which sensation alone can communicate? If we have not existed before birth; if, at the period when the parts of our nature on which thought and life depend, seem to be woven together, they are woven together; if there are no reasons to suppose that we have existed before that period at which our existence apparently commences, then there are no grounds for supposition that we shall continue to exist after our existence has apparently ceased. So far as thought and life is concerned, the same will take place with regard to us, individually considered, after death, as had place before our birth. It is said that it is possible that we should continue to exist in some mode totally inconceivable to us at present. This is a most unreasonable presumption. It casts on the adherents of annihilation the burthen of proving the negative of a question, the affirmative of which is not supported by a single argument, and which, by its very nature, lies beyond the experience of the human understanding. It is sufficiently easy, indeed, to form any proposition, concerning which we are ignorant, just not so absurd as not to be contradictory in itself, and defy refutation. The possibility of whatever enters into the wildest imagination to conceive is thus triumphantly vindicated. But it is enough that such assertions should be either contradictory to the known laws of nature, or exceed the limits of our experience, that their fallacy or irrelevancy to our consideration should be demonstrated. They persuade, indeed, only those who desire to be persuaded. This desire to be for ever as we are; the reluctance to a violent and unexperienced change, which is common to all the animated and inanimate combinations of the universe, is, indeed, the secret persuasion which has given birth to the opinions of a future state.' 'An extract from a MS. Journal of Shelley's is given in the Preface to the Essays, Letters &c. (1840), pp. xiv and xv, and bears upon this subject: 66 "I had time in that moment to reflect and even to reason on death; it was rather a thing of discomfort and disappointment than terror to We should never be separated; but in death we might not know and feel our union as now. I hope-but my hopes are not unmixed with fear for what will befal this inestimable spirit when we appear to die." me. Unfortunately it does not appear at what date Shelley wrote this passage. A knowledge of the date would enhance the value of the passage when compared with a similar utterance at p. 177 of the present volume. uous. [The greater part of this fragment was published by Mrs. Shelley in the Essays, Letters &c., 1840; but I have been enabled to add considerably to it from a MS. placed at my disposal by Mr. Townshend Mayer, the philosophical fragment referred to in the foot-note at page 248, Vol. IV, of the Poetical Works, as being written on the same paper with the Sonnet of Guido Cavalcanti to Dante Alighieri there printed. The MS., which unfortunately begins in the middle of a sentence, is apparently contin It is written generally about half-way down the page to admit of annotation; but Shelley has only inserted one note, the Latin quotation at page 290. In the paragraphs which Mrs. Shelley printed with the heading "I.—WHAT METAPHYSICS ARE. ERRORS IN THE USUAL METHODS OF CONSIDERING THEM," Occurs a different version of some of the sentences in this MS. : indeed the MS. seems to me to be, mainly, a more complete version of that particular section than Mrs. Shelley printed from, though it is possible that the MS. used in 1840 consisted of fragments of a later version. I have given the whole of both versions, either as text or as notes. Mrs. Shelley assigns the fragment printed by her to the year 1815.-H. B. F.] SPECULATIONS ON METAPHYSICS. I. THE MIND. I. IT is an axiom in mental philosophy, that we can think of nothing which we have not perceived. When I say that we can think of nothing, I mean, we can imagine nothing, we can reason of nothing, we can remember nothing, we can foresee nothing. The most astonishing combinations of poetry, the subtlest deductions of logic and mathematics, are no other than combinations which the intellect makes of sensations according to its own laws. A catalogue of all the thoughts of the mind, and of all their possible modifications, is a cyclopedic history of the universe. But, it will be objected, the inhabitants of the various planets of this and other solar systems; and the existence of a Power bearing the same relation to all that we perceive and are, as what we call a cause does to what we call effect, were never subjects of sensation, and yet the laws of mind almost universally suggest, according to the |