This idealising habit was rooted in the very grain and texture of Shelley’s mind; and though it may be open to a Mechanical Age to scoff at the same, yet there remains a seed of prophecy in it and a promise of deliverance from that double nightmare which continually oppresses us, and from which we so hardly discern the means of escape. I mean the Nightmare of Gold and the Nightmare of Blood.[2] For to-day the delusion of monetary gain is indeed a nightmare; it clouds all free and spontaneous activity of the human spirit, and its paralysing influence derives from the false though ingrained belief that only by sacrificing our lives in the pursuit of riches shall we be able (each one of us) to escape into _freedom_; while the delusion of Redemption by the spilling of Blood (which from the beginning of the world has been accepted as the orthodox means of Salvation) is now confirmed by our failure to perceive that whoever seeks to gain advantage for himself by sacrificing others is really tightening the chains of his _own_ captivity. Shelley, being free from either of these delusions, may be counted the prophet of a new era for mankind. Yet, at the time in question, Shelley himself was constantly “in love”; and either on the one hand exalting the objects of his adorations into an ideal sphere, or on the other hand claiming perfect liberty and license of action and expression for them. How are we to reconcile these varying attitudes and moods--or is it not necessary to reconcile them?... Perhaps this last suggestion is the best. Like most predominantly emotional people, though liable to kaleidoscopic variations of outlook, any sustained effort to harmonise these and render them _consistent_ with each other was painful and irksome to him. Yet it is this very variability (but with nucleus of iron determination and persistence) which is largely the key and explanation of Shelley’s character. It gave him his wide sympathy with and understanding of different and almost opposing types of humanity, and gave him at the same time his strong determination to get at the root of things--with the result that he ultimately combined in himself a great range of qualities, both masculine and feminine. If he had had a longer and more effective experience of the actual world (so we sometimes think) it might have been possible for him to bring into line or give even more definite form and expression to these two sides of his nature. Familiarity with the work-a-day world of practical life would, we think, have made it difficult for him to linger much longer among the abstract beauties of Nature--the “mountains and fountains” of his youthful dreams; and would have compelled him into another region where he would have found an abundance of quite solid building material ready to his hand.