Percy Bysshe Shelley

Existence would I barter

For a dream so dear as thine,

And smile to die a martyr

See yon opening flower

Spreads its fragrance to the blast;

It fades within an hour,

Its decay is pale—is fast.

5

Paler is yon maiden;

Faster is her heart’s decay;

Deep with sorrow laden,

She sinks in death away.

For day with me was time of woe

When even tears refused to flow;

It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven

More perfectly will give those nameless joys

Which throb within the pulses of the blood

And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth

5

It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven

More perfectly will give those nameless joys

Which throb within the pulses of the blood

And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth

Design must be proved before a designer can be inferred. The matter in controversy is the existence of design in the Universe, and it is not permitted to assume the contested premises and thence infer the matter in dispute.

The belief of an infinity of creative and created Gods, each more eminently requiring an intelligent author of his being than the foregoing, is a direct consequence of the premises, which you have stated. The assumption that the Universe is a design, leads to a conclusion that there are infinity of creative and created Gods, which is absurd

To suppose some existence beyond, or above them, is to invent a second and superfluous hypothesis to account for what has already been accounted for by the laws of motion and the properties of matter. I admit that the nature of these laws is incomprehensible, but the hypothesis of a Deity adds a gratuitous difficulty, which so far from alleviating those that it is adduced to explain, requires new hypotheses for the elucidation of its own inherent contradictions

. The criteria of order and disorder are as various as those beings from whose opinions and feelings they result.

It is manifest that we cannot reason with respect to the universal system from that which only exists in relation to our own perceptions.