The first extract
comes from his fragment _On Life_, which may have been written (but this
is quite uncertain) towards 1815; the second from his fragment _On a
Future State_, for which some similar date is suggested; the third from
the notes to his drama of _Hellas_, written in 1821, later than
_Adonais_.
(1) 'The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of Life
which, though startling to the apprehension, is in fact that which the
habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It
strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I
confess that I am one of those who am unable to refuse my assent[17] to
the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but
as it is perceived. It is a decision against which all our persuasions
struggle--and we must be long convicted before we can be convinced that
the solid universe of external things is "such stuff as dreams are made
of." The shocking absurdities of the popular philosophy of mind and
matter, its fatal consequences in morals, and their [? the] violent
dogmatism concerning the source of all things, had early conducted me to
Materialism.
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