6 2 word provisionally to signify the chain of thoughts which, when linked together, produce the complex notion of personal identity. He admits that we may receive a certain bias from 'antenatal impressions and original structure;' but argues that such influences are faint as compared with the various impressions made upon us by our subsequent environment. The differences between one man and another result almost entirely from education, using that word as equivalent to the totality of external influences. Compared with the empire of impression,' he says, 'the mere differences of animal structure are inexpressibly unimportant and powerless.' 4 Neither race nor physical constitution has any appreciable effect. If the skull of a wise man should be larger than that of a fool, it is because the ideas have enlarged the brain, not because the larger brain has generated more ideas. He borrows Hume's arguments against the influence of climate," with the view of showing that the mind is the same in all regions as in all races. The sheet of blank paper' must be proved to be of the same quality in all times and places. 'Man considered in himself,' as Godwin puts it, is merely a being capable of impressions, a recipient of perceptions." From this it follows that men's notions originate in their opinions ;—that is, that the senses and the passions are strictly subordinate to the intellect. Unfortunately, indeed, we do not always act from pure reason—a singular circumstance, which he explains by help of Hartley's analysis of the reciprocal action of the voluntary and involuntary actions. The mind approaches perfection in proportion as all our actions become voluntary, or, in other words, as each action is the result of a fresh train of reasoning. All our opinions should, therefore, be in a state of perpetual revision. And, far as we may be from the ideal consummation in which all formulas are obliterated, it is already true that the intellect is potentially supreme. Thus Godwin, though he has begun by attacking the old metaphysical theories, has prepared the way for a doctrine as absolute and independent of experience as the most audacious of metaphysicians could desire. He has abolished not 8 1 Godwin, i. 26. 2 Ib. i. 35. Ib. i. 45. • Ib. i. 40. 5 Ib. i. 38. 6 Ib. i. 100. 7 Ib. ii. p. 78. only innate ideas, but the mind which should contain them. Nothing is left, one may almost say, but a number of logical processes, of which it is convenient to assume that they take place in a vehicle called the mind, but which are everywhere unaffected by external conditions. The organism and the medium are equally abolished; and somehow the reason survives. Thus, in Godwin's hands, the scepticism of Hume is applied to construct a theory which at times reminds us in spirit of Descartes and Spinoza. 142. Godwin's political conclusions are, however, more interesting than his metaphysical speculation. He represents the tendency of the revolutionary school towards the deification of the pure intellect. Five fundamental propositions follow from the principles thus stated: sound reasoning and truth, when adequately communicated, must always be victorious over error; sound reasoning and truth are capable of being so communicated; truth is omnipotent; the vices and moral weaknesses of men are not invincible; man is perfectible, or, in other words, susceptible of perpetual improvement.'1 Men being mere reasoning machines, the right reasons must always prevail if poured in in an unceasing stream, until their minds are saturated with argument. The excellent Godwin had the natural predisposition of speculative minds to exaggerate the influence of logic as compared with emotion; and the simplicity of his faith is almost touching. Virtue and great abilities, according to him, are naturally allied; 2 as appears even from Milton's ideal hero, or from those political incarnations of evil, Alexander and Cæsar. 'What,' he asks, 'would not men have been long before this, if the proudest of us had no hope but in argument . . . if he were obliged to sharpen his faculties, and collect his powers as the only means of effecting his purposes!'3 The worst criminals might be reformed by reasoning. If conduct be wrong,' he says, a very simple statement, flowing from a clear and comprehensive view, will make it appear to be such; nor is it probable that there is any perverseness that would persist in vice in the face of all the recommendations with which it might be invested, and all the beauty in which it might be displayed.' Could Godwin have 1 Godwin, p. 86. 2 Ib. i. 318. 4 • Ib. ii. 341. 3 Ib. ii. 334. caught Pitt or George III., or Mrs. Brownrigg, and subjected them to a Socratic cross-examination, he could have restored them to the paths of virtue, as he would have corrected an error in a little boy's sums. Vice,' he says-and the statement may be regarded as his fundamental proposition in moral philosophy-'is unquestionably no more in the first instance than error of judgment.' The theory suggests some analogy with thinkers of a different order; but Godwin was here simply expressing the creed of the revolutionary school. The belief in the perfectibility of the race was a corollary from the rapid increase of scientific knowledge, and the indefinite vista of future improvement already perceptible. The intellect breaking its old fetters and rejoicing in the consciousness of its strength, looked forwards to the conquest of the whole physical and moral world. Franklin, as Godwin said, had anticipated a day when 'mind would become omnipotent over matter.' 2 A similar omnipotence might be displayed in the social order, as old errors dispersed and society was remoulded in obedience to the teaching of theory. The only obstacle was the existence of human passions; but as every anti-social passion ought to be regarded as implying, and, therefore, as consisting in an erroneous conception of human wants, it followed that, as errors were dispersed, the passions would fall into their right places. The fetters forged for their restraint by the priests and kings of old days were based upon doctrines which would not bear the test of reason. But reason, once allowed to have full play, would supply a discipline of its own, and men would act rightly for the same reason that a learned arithmetician would add up a column of figures accurately. 143. Godwin's moral philosophy follows easily, and has at least the merit of simplicity. Since all innate principles have been abolished, he holds with Locke that pleasure must be the supreme good; or that 'good is a general name, including pleasure and the means by which pleasure is produced.'" Morality, again, is 'nothing else but that system which teaches us to contribute on all occasions, to the extent of our power, to the well-being and happiness of every intellectual and sensitive existence.'4 Now as every action in our lives has 3 Ib. i. 440. • Ib. i. 159. 1 Godwin, ii. 197. 2 Ib. ii 503. some bearing upon happiness, it follows that at every instant one action must be right; that, namely, which will produce the maximum of happiness. Our duty, therefore, depends upon what Godwin often calls a 'moral arithmetic.' 'Morality,' he says, 'is nothing else but a calculation of consequences,'' and it is, therefore, a contradiction in terms to tell us to do our duty without regard to consequences. As the course of a ship at sea should be at every instant directed along that line which will bring it most quickly to its destination, so our course in life should be steadily aimed at producing the maximum of happiness. Various conclusions follow which might startle any man capable of being startled. 'Virtue,' says Godwin, must be placed in a conformity to truth, not to error; '3 or, on his interpretation, we must always act from an impartial estimate of consequences, without allowing our purely rational view to be clouded by personal prejudices. There is, therefore, no place for such virtues as gratitude and friendship. I ought, for example, to have saved the life of Fénelon, when he was about to write ' Télémaque,' rather than Fénelon's valet; for by saving Fénelon I should be conferring a benefit upon thousands. If I were the valet, I ought still to prefer my own death to my master's. If, again, the valet had been my brother, my father, my benefactor,' the reason would have been the same, and therefore my course should not have been altered." You say that I should be grateful to my father for his care of my infancy. So far as that care proves him to have been a good man, it furnishes a reason for preserving one who will probably be useful to others. But the fact of my personal interest is irrelevant in the eyes of pure reason, and should therefore be discarded. This doctrine, which appears in the first three editions of the Political Justice,' became afterwards unsatisfactory to its author, and he withdraws it in the preface to the novel of 'St. Leon.' 144. Godwin, however, does not shrink from other conclusions almost equally startling to the common sense of mankind. If you urged that filial instincts were necessary for the welfare of society, he would reply that instincts had no real existence, and that every mind should be filled with 1 Godwin, i. 173. 2 Ib. i. 342. • Ib. i. 133. 4 Ib. i. 127. 5 Ib. i. 128. arguments founded upon general reasoning. You would urge, again, that, as man's intelligence is finite, it is of the very essence of morality that general rules should be observed, though they may produce injury in given cases. The difficulty meets Godwin when he is endeavouring to establish the universal obligation of truthfulness. Why not lie, when a lie contributes to the general happiness? Godwin is forced to condescend to the obvious reply that we cannot work out sums in moral arithmetic so as to arrive within a limited period at the correct result, and he therefore admits that we must have 'resting places for the mind,' ' deductions already stored in the memory, and prepared for application as circumstances demand.' But he is more anxious to point out that general rules on morality may be fallacious than to insist upon the importance of observing them. Necessity may compel us, or indolence induce us, to be content with general rules; but the true dignity of human nature is, as much as we are able, to go beyond them, to have our faculties in act upon every occasion that occurs, and to conduct ourselves accordingly.' Rules are chiefly useful to remind us of the remoter consequences which we might otherwise overlook. Ordinary moralists exhort us to cultivate habits of virtue. In Godwin's opinion we are unreasonable so far as we are creatures of habit; and our aim should therefore be to discourage the formation of habits as much as possible. Godwin, in his haste to make man a reasonable creature, assumes that he is potentially omniscient, and therefore capable, like the Divine Being, of acting without reference to those intermediate maxims which necessarily imply some admixture of error. He thus quietly passes over, as an unimportant exception, what is really a vital condition of the problem-namely, the limited capacity of man. A perfect being could dispense with rules, for to a perfect being every remote consequence in an infinite chain would be intuitively evident; therefore, a perfectible being may dispense with rules. 145. From Hume and Hartley Godwin had learnt to deny the selfish theory. Man, as an embodiment of reason, may therefore place himself at that abstract point of view in which his personal interests disappear. From the doctrine of neces |