“I shall finish these prolegomena with an important remark. I have known a large number of good souls who offered up the most sincere wishes for the establishment of this doctrine of humaneness, who thought it just and true in all its aspects, who believed in all that it announces; but who, in spite of so praiseworthy a disposition, dared not be the first to give the example. They awaited this movement from minds stronger than their own. Doubtless they are the minds which give the impulse to the world; but is it necessary to await this movement when one is convinced of one’s self? Is it permissible to temporise in a question of life or death for innocent beings whose sole crime is _to have been born_, and is it in a case like this that strength of mind should fail justice? No! Well-doing is, happily, not so difficult. Ah! what is your excuse, besides, pusillanimous souls? I blush for you at the miserable pretexts which keep you back. It would be necessary, say you, to separate one’s self from the world; to renounce one’s friends and neighbours. I see no such necessity, and I think, on the contrary, that if you truly loved the world and your neighbours, you would hasten to give them an example which must have so powerful an influence upon their present happiness and upon their future destiny.”[231] We have reason once again to lament the perversity of literary or publishing enterprise which will produce and reproduce, _ad infinitum_, books of no real and permanent value to the world, and altogether neglect its true luminaries. This is, in an especial manner, the case with Gleïzès. The _Nouvelle Existence_ has never been republished, we believe, in the author’s own country; while it has never found a translator, perhaps scarcely a reader, in this country outside the Vegetarian ranks. Germany, as we have already noticed, alone has the honour of attempting to preserve from oblivion one of the few who have deserved immortality. XLI. SHELLEY. 1792-1822. That a principle of profound significance for the welfare of our own species in particular, and for the peaceful harmony of the world in general--that a true spiritualism, of which some of the most admirable of the poets of the pre-Christian ages proved themselves not unconscious, has been, for the most part, altogether overlooked or ignored by modern aspirants to poetic fame is matter for our gravest lament. Thomson, Pope, Shelley, Lamartine--to whom Milton, perhaps, may be added--these form the small band who almost alone represent, and have developed the earlier inspiration of a Hesiod, Ovid, or Virgil, the prophet-poets who, faithful to their proper calling,[232] have sought to _unbarbarise_ and elevate human life by arousing, in various degree, feelings of horror and aversion from the prevailing materialism of living.