Were we not aware of
far keener distress which he afterwards endured from yet greater
injustice, we might suppose that the sufferings he had to bear from
placing himself in opposition to the custom of the school, by refusing
to fag, had made him morbidly sensitive on the point of liberty. At a
time, however, when freedom of speech, as indicating freedom of thought,
was especially obnoxious to established authorities; when no allowance
could be made on the score of youth, still less on that of individual
peculiarity, Shelley became a student at Oxford. He was then eighteen.
Devoted to metaphysical speculation, and especially fond of logical
discussion, he, in his first year, printed and distributed among the
authorities and members of his college a pamphlet, if that can be called
a pamphlet which consisted only of two pages, in which he opposed the
usual arguments for the existence of a Deity; arguments which, perhaps,
the most ardent believers have equally considered inconclusive. Whether
Shelley wrote this pamphlet as an embodiment of his own opinions, or
merely as a logical confutation of certain arguments, the mode of
procedure adopted with him was certainly not one which necessarily
resulted from the position of those to whose care the education of his
opinions was entrusted.
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