circle of existing things."[120] But did he not write _The Necessity of Atheism_ for which he was expelled from Oxford? Even if he did, this does not prove that he was an atheist. We saw already that he loved to advance objections and propound difficulties to people who thought they knew everything that can be known about a subject. Many stoutly maintained that a valid _a priori_ proof (usually called the ontological) can be advanced for the existence of God and it was against these that Shelley directed his artillery. "Why," Trelawny asked him once, "do you call yourself an atheist?" "It is a word of abuse," Shelley replied, "to stop discussion; a painted devil to frighten the foolish; a threat to intimidate the wise and good. I used it to express my abhorrence of superstition. I took up the word as a knight took up a gauntlet in defiance of injustice."[121] Leigh Hunt said that Shelley "did himself injustice with the public in using the popular name of the Supreme Being inconsiderately. He identified it solely with the most vulgar and tyrannical notions of a God made after the worst human fashion." Southey told him also that he ought not to call himself an athiest, since in reality he believed that the universe is God.[122] "I love to doubt and to discuss," Shelley writes, and it is for this reason that he adopted the arguments of Locke, Hume, and Holbach. He does not doubt the existence of God; he simply doubts that it is capable of proof. In January 12, 1811, it seemed to him that he had hit upon the long-sought-for-proof. In a letter to Hogg he writes: "Stay, I have an idea. I think I can prove the existence of a Deity--a First Cause. I will ask a materialist, how came this universe at first? He will answer by chance. What chance? I will answer in the words of Spinoza: 'An infinite number of atoms had been floating from all eternity in space, till at last one of them fortuitously diverged from its track, which dragging with it another, formed the principle of gravitation and in consequence the universe.' What cause produced this change, this chance. For where do we know that causes arise without their corresponding effects; at least we must here, on so abstract a subject, reason analogically. Was not this then a cause; was it not a first cause? Was not this first cause a Deity? Now nothing remains but to prove that this Deity has a care or rather that its only employment consists in regulating the present and future happiness of its creation.... Oh that this Deity were the soul of the universe, the spirit of universal, imperishable love! Indeed, I believe it is." "The Deity must be judged by us from attributes analogical to our situation." In a letter of June 11, 1811, he says God is "the existing power of existence." It is another word for the essence of the universe. True he makes use of expressions which would seem to contradict the above, but it seems to me that these should always be interpreted in the light of