'3 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.'1 '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; '' 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 irrevalent in the eyes 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.' of 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 'Godwin, i. 173. 2 Ib. i. 342. s Ib. i. 133. 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 problemnamely, 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. 2 145. From Hume and Hartley, Godwin had learned 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 2 sity, again, taught by the same thinkers, he infers that argument must be omnipotent. The will is not an inscrutable faculty, but simply an act of the judgment, determined by logical impressions. And a conclusion is calmly accepted which has been indignantly repudiated by most necessitarians. A man, like a knife, is set in motion from without; the knife is moved by material impulse;' the man by inducement and persuasion.' To hate a murderer, then, is as unreasonable as to hate his weapon. We may disapprove, indeed, more strongly because he is more dangerous, or more likely to repeat his evil deed; but the degree, not the kind, of feeling should differ. Our disapprobation of vice will be of the same kind as our disapprobation of an infectious distemper.' Such a view will tend, as Godwin says, to generate a placid temper. He who regards all things-past, present, and to come-as links of an indissoluble chain, will, as often as he recollects this comprehensive view, find himself assisted to surmount the tumult of passion; and be enabled to reflect upon the moral concerns of mankind, with the same clearness of perception, the same firmness of judgment, and the same constancy of temper, as he is accustomed to do upon the truths of geometry.' Godwin is unconsciously teaching a doctrine resembling that of a very different school. Though a sceptic in metaphysics, and an ultra-utilitarian in morality, his intellectual temperament was congenial to the philosophy which would resolve all reality into pure reason, and which would naturally find the highest good in the attainment of an absolute intellectual calm. 3 146. Godwin, however, in the name of pure reason, thus reached a tolerably destructive conclusion. He has abolished family affections and moral disapprobation, and all but abolished all moral laws, except the one law which promotes the cultivation of happiness. His method as applied to politics is equally sweeping. The omnipotence of reason involves the abolition of all political institutions as well as of moral laws. To one difficulty which besets this part of his writings 1 Godwin, i. 388. · * Ib. i. 392. Ib. i. 396. Godwin, in later years, was rather frightened by his own logic in this as in some other cases (see the Essay on Liberty in Thoughts of Man,' 1831). he is curiously blind. If, as he seems to assume, man is but a passive receptacle for logic, and if, as he infers, truth necessarily prevails, how are we to account for the prevalence of error? Why is the perfectible being so far from perfection? As theologians explain the existence of evil by assuming an evil principle more or less subordinate to the infinite goodness and omnipotence, so Godwin sets up a dark power of imposture which fights, and has hitherto fought, with singular success against the power of truth. The fact-if Godwin cared for facts-would seem to be in singular opposition to theory. The same strange contradiction appears in the writings of Condorcet, though he endeavoured to place himself at an historical point of view. In both writers, kings and priests represent the incarnation of evil. Hume remarks, with his usual acuteness, upon the absurdity of Bolingbroke's doctrine that our constitution was perfect but our actual degeneracy due to the wickedness of our rulers. A constitution, as he said, which allowed one bad man to ruin a country might suit angels, but could not be good for human beings. The same fallacy, however, on a far larger scale, pervades the whole logic of Godwin and Condorcet. The world, according to them, is inhabited by a set of beings quite ready for the millennium, if only they could shake off this monstrous incubus; but no explanation is suggested of the unnatural slavery. Such a doctrine could maintain itself only amongst minds blinded by fierce hatred of the existing order, or in that radically unhistorical stage in which the only alternative to a belief in the divine origin of religious creeds was the belief that they were conscious impostures. 147. Godwin, however, untroubled by the shadow of a doubt, makes short work of all existing institutions. It is, as he calmly observes, a 'first principle that monarchy is founded on imposture;'1 and he involves in his censure not merely virtuous despots, but elective kings, the mixed 'monarchies' which, indeed, were specially offensive as an embodiment of force and corruption, and even the presidential system of the United States. Aristocracy, 'like monarchy, is founded on falsehood-the offspring of art, foreign to the real nature of things-and must, therefore, like 'Godwin, ii. 48. VOL. II. 2 Ib. ii. 80. T '1 monarchy, be supported by artifice and false pretence.' Indeed, it involves a still greater sin against the primitive law of the equality of men. For men, according to Godwin, should not only be equal before the law, but may almost be said to be equal in capacity. Man, the mere recipient of logical impressions, has been stripped of all differences to which a plea for inequality could attach itself; and Godwin apparently regards all inequalities as in some sense a result of the general system of imposture, though here and there he admits a qualifying phrase. Monarchy and aristocracy could in his view be only justified on the theory which divides men from their birth into the saddled and bridled, and the booted and spurred. As he holds the contrary view, that they are simple units, differing only numerically, the saddles and the spurs are artificial additions, and therefore to be summarily abolished. The doctrine of equality was susceptible of an interpretation which would allow the aggregate mass of similar units to exercise a very vigorous pressure upon the constituent atoms. But Godwin proceeds a step further by help of his moral theory. Hume had taught him the fallacy of the socialcontract theory, which, with Rousseau and others, supplied the binding force of government. Man, being a purely reasoning animal, and as such under an obligation always to follow the course most conducive to the general happiness, could not pledge himself to obedience; and, indeed, all promises absolutely considered' are an evil, as hampering the free action of reason. All coercion is thus essentially wrong. That any men or body of men should impose their sense upon persons of a different opinion is, absolutely speaking, wrong and deeply to be regretted,' though it may occasionally be necessary. Now as government is nothing but 'regulated force,' all government implies evil, and Godwin characteristically jumps to the conclusion that all government should be abolished. With the utmost calmness he sweeps away one restraint after another. The army and the church, of course, vanish at once; but even national assemblies involve that 'flagrant insult upon all truth and justice, the deciding upon 1 Godwin, ii. 103. 2 Ib. i. 143, book ii. ch. iii. 6 |