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Jesus Christ opposed with earnest eloquence the panic fears and hateful superstitions which have enslaved mankind for ages. Nations had risen against nations, employing the subtlest devices of mechanism and mind to waste, and excruciate, and overthrow. The great community of mankind had been subdivided into ten thousand communities, each organized for the ruin of the other. Wheel within wheel, the vast machine was instinct with the restless spirit of desolation.

Percy Bysshe Shelley#190

SocietyWarFearSuperstition

About this quote

What does it mean?
Jesus opposed fears and superstitions that enslaved humanity. Nations divided and destroyed each other with machines and minds, creating a system of desolation.
In plain terms
Jesus fought the fears and superstitions that enslaved people, while nations destroyed each other with organized systems.
What can you take from it?
Fear and division drive conflict and destruction.

Where it applies

  • social commentary
  • political analysis
  • conflict resolution

Putting it to work

  • identifying superstition in society
  • critiquing national divisions

Questions to consider

  • How do superstitions enslave society?
  • What divides nations against each other?

Another view

The description of nations as machines is a metaphor that simplifies complex politics.

More from Percy Bysshe Shelley

  1. We die, says Jesus Christ; and, when we awaken from the languor of disease, the glories and the happiness of Paradise are around us. All evil and pain have cea…

    Permalink to quote #189
  2. If all the thought which had been expended on the construction of engines of agony and death - the modes of aggression and defence, the raising of armies, and …

    Permalink to quote #191
  3. This is Heaven, when pain and evil cease, and when the Benignant Principle, untrammelled and uncontrolled, visits in the fulness of its power the universal fra…

    Permalink to quote #188

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