"The Necessity of Atheism" is an essay on atheism by the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, printed in 1811 by Charles and William Phillips in Worthing while Shelley was a student at University College, Oxford. A signed copy was sent to all the heads of Oxford colleges at the University. At that time most lecturers at Oxford were ordained by the Church of England (not till later in the century would this change) and were acquainted with the concept of blasphemy. While England did not consider Atheism itself to be illegal at the time, promotion of the idea of Atheism was. English law prohibiting blasphemy was not repealed until 2008. The content provided ample grounds for authorities to effect his being rusticated for contumacy along with his refusing to deny authorship, together with his friend and fellow student, Thomas Jefferson Hogg. A revised and expanded version of the text was included as one of the notes to Shelley's poem Queen Mab in 1813, and some reprints with the title The Necessity of Atheism are based on this rather than the 1811 pamphlet.

Synopsis

The tract starts with the following rationale of the author's goals: Shelley made a number of claims in Necessity, including that one's beliefs are involuntary, and, therefore, that atheists do not choose to be so and should not be persecuted. Towards the end of the pamphlet he writes: "the mind cannot believe in the existence of a God." Shelley signed the pamphlet, Thro' deficiency of proof, AN ATHEIST, which gives an idea of the empiricist nature of Shelley's beliefs. According to Berman, Shelley also believed himself to have "refuted all the possible types of arguments for God's existence," but Shelley himself encouraged readers to offer proofs if they possess them. Opinion is divided upon the characterisation of Shelley's beliefs, at the time of the writing of Necessity. At the very beginning of his note on the line "There is no God" in Canto VII of Queen Mab, published just two years later and based on Necessity, Shelley qualifies his definition of atheism: Shelley also quotes the Dutch pantheist Baruch Spinoza later in the Note, but there is no explicit statement of pantheistic views. Shelley scholar Carlos Baker states that "the title of his college pamphlet should have been The Necessity of Agnosticism rather than The Necessity of Atheism," while historian David Berman argues that Shelley was an atheist, both because he characterised himself as such, and because "he denies the existence of God in both published works and private letters" during the same period.

Authorship

Although The Necessity of Atheism is often attributed solely to Shelley, historian of atheism David Berman says that Shelley "was probably assisted by his friend T.J. Hogg".

Format

The original pamphlet was described by Percy Vaughan as "a single foolscap sheet folded in octavo, consisting of half-title (with blank reverse), title page... (with blank reverse), Advertisement (with blank reverse), and text occupying pages 7–13. At the foot of page 13 is the imprint, "Phillips, Printers, Worthing," and the reverse of the page is blank. A blank leaf completes the sheet."

Publication history

The pamphlet was first published on 13 or 14 February 1811. Very few copies of the original 16-page 1811 pamphlet survive, as most were destroyed after publication. Only six are known to exist in libraries today (Nicolas Walter knew of five in 1998; a sixth was discovered at Edinburgh University in 2015 ):

Reprints

The first reprint of the 1811 pamphlet appeared in a collection of Shelley's work and used the copy now in the Bodleian Library: The second reprint used the copy now in the British Library: Subsequent reprints include: