Mary Shelley's Warning

I'm editing my book The Frankenstein Factor and just came across this passage. I'm using two of Mary Shelley's novels for frameworks of insight to read great cautionary literature through history. One is of course Frankenstein. The other is her 1826 book about a pandemic in the twenty-first century that kills everyone. While telling the story of that prescient novel, I make reference to a minor character in her tale who sounds like a major force in our lives now (Lionel is the narrator, who will be the last living human), mentioning:

<<...a man referred to as a false prophet who later comes into the story when the plague begins to kill vast numbers of people worldwide. After describing the man a bit earlier, Lionel writes this passage about the immoral, devious, power-hungry prophet and his followers, people that he and his few remaining friends have been encountering while they sheltered in a small French town not far from Versailles, and yet remote from the current ravages of the pestilence:

The principal circumstances that disturbed our tranquility during this interval originated in the vicinity of the imposter-prophet and his followers. They continued to reside in Paris; but missionaries from among them often visited Versailles—and such was the power of assertions, however false, yet vehemently iterated, over the ready credulity of the ignorant and fearful, that they seldom failed in drawing over to their party some from among our numbers.

And these ending characterizations are of course words that echo loudly in our own time, while our own false prophets have arisen with bold lies repeated as often and as loudly and passionately as possible to snare the gullible into their schemes of grandiose ambition for power. Lionel characterizes this utterly amoral man in his day as instigated and motivated by nothing but a raw ambition to rule over others, to be deemed great, and to gain a form of fame that will last. We clearly have here an important and recurrent theme for Shelley, as it has been for much of world literature. Grandiose, self-focused ambition comes in many forms. And it rarely accomplishes anything that’s of unmixed good for the world. In fact, its deleterious consequences seem to come in many versions. Shelley’s narrator then goes on beyond this matter of motives to make a powerful statement about the callously ambitious false prophet’s means and methods, along with their strange, regrettable effectiveness, contrasting them with those of anyone who is sincerely concerned for the good of humanity, like his friend Adrian. He writes of these two types of men a stark reflection in contrast, pointing out the ultimate and tragic irony that:

It is a strange fact, but incontestable, that the philanthropist, who ardent in his desire to do good, who patient, reasonable and gentle, yet disdains to use other argument than the truth, has less influence over men’s minds, than he who, grasping and selfish, refuses not to adopt any means, nor awaken any passion, nor diffuse any falsehood, for the advancement of his cause.

Sadly, some things never change. From the many passages we’ve already examined across Shelley’s two most important novels, we can see how often the topic of ambition comes up throughout her work, and in a wide variety of ways. Some characters have a noble ambition to be of use and aid to their fellow creatures. Others have a driving need to do big things, indeed great things, but more for their personal honor and glory than for any humane results. And still others have a seemingly sociopathic lust of strong ambition for power and fame as goals in themselves, a craving and felt need that knows no boundaries, and that will apparently condone any means and methods, good or evil, that might push forward these ends. Shelley seems overall to be keenly suspicious and wary of any unduly large form of ambition, especially when it focuses on the ascendance of an individual ego. Grandiosity and ego-focus joined together concern her. And any measure of ambition out of control deeply worries her, as it should us.>>