Compare P. B. Shelley's long note to a line in his radical poem, Queen Mab (Reiman and Powers, p. 50, VI.198), "Necessity! thou mother of the world!":

"He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity means that, contemplating the events which compose the moral and material universe, he beholds only an immense and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects, no one of which could occupy any other place than it does occupy . . . . The doctrine of Necessity tends to introduce a great change into the established notions of morality, and utterly to destroy religion. . . ."

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Romantic Circles / Electronic Editions / The Last Man / Note: Necessity

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