The arguments of many atheists might be referred to, to illustrate the connexion between necessity and atheism. I shall here refer, however, to only one individual, remarkable both for his poetic genius and metaphysical acumen. I mean the late Piercy Bysshe Shelley. He openly and unblushingly professed atheism. In his Queen Mab we find this line: "There is no God." In a note upon this line, he remarks: "This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading spirit, co-eternal with the universe, remains unshaken." This last hypothesis is Pantheism. Pantheism is really the negation of a creative Deity,--the identity or at least necessary and eternal co-existence of God and the universe. Shelley has expressed this clearly in another passage: "Spirit of nature! all-sufficing power, Necessity! thou mother of the world!" In a note upon this passage, Shelley has argued the doctrine of the necessary determination of will by motive, with an acuteness and power scarcely inferior to Collins or Edwards. He makes, indeed, a different application of the doctrine, but a perfectly legitimate one. Collins and Edwards, and the whole race of necessitarian theologians, evidently toil under insurmountable difficulties, while attempting to base religion upon this doctrine, and effect their escape only under a fog of subtleties. But Shelley, in daring to be perfectly consistent, is perfectly clear. He fearlessly proceeds from necessity to pantheism, and thence to atheism and the destruction of all moral distinctions. "We are taught," he remarks, "by the doctrine of necessity, that there is neither good nor evil in the universe, otherwise than as the events to which we apply these epithets have relation to our own peculiar mode of being. Still less than with the hypothesis of a God, will the doctrine of necessity accord with the belief of a future state of punishment." I here close my deductions from this system. If these deductions be legitimate, as I myself cannot doubt they are, then, to the largest class of readers, the doctrine of necessity is overthrown: it is overthrown by its consequences, and my argument has the force of a _reductio ad absurdum_. If a self-determined will appear an absurdity, still it cannot be as absurd as the contrary doctrine, if this doctrine involve the consequences above given. At least, practical wisdom will claim that doctrine which leaves to the world a God, and to man a moral and responsible nature.