tal punishment as excessive, since restraint can be
attained without it, and corporal chastisement as an offence against the
dignity of the human mind. Let there be nothing in the state of
transition worse than simple imprisonment. Godwin, however, dissents
vehemently from Howard's invention of solitary confinement, designed to
shield the prisoner from the contamination of his fellow criminals. Man
is a social animal and virtue depends on social relations. As a
preliminary to acquiring it is he to be shut out from the society of his
fellows? How shall he exercise benevolence or justice in his cell? Will
his heart become softened or expand who breathes the atmosphere of a
dungeon? Solitary confinement is the bitterest torment that human
ingenuity can inflict. The least objectionable method of depriving a
criminal of the power to harm society is banishment or transportation.
Expose him to the stimulus of necessity in an unsettled country. New
conditions make new minds. But the whole attempt to apply law breaks
down. You must heap edict on edict, and to make your laws fit your
cases, must either for ever wrest them or make new ones. Law does not
end uncertainty, and it debilitates the mind. So long as men are
habituated to look to foreign guidance and external rules for
direction, so long the vigour of their minds will sleep.

If Fenelon, saint and philosopher, with an incompleted masterpiece in
his pocket, and Fenelon's chambermaid, were both in danger of burning to
death in the archiepiscopal palace at Cambrai, and if I could save only
one of them, which ought I to save? It is a fascinating problem in
casuistry, and Godwin with his usual decision of mind, has no doubt
about the solution. He would save Fenelon as the more valuable life, and
above all Fenelon's manuscript, and the maid, he is quite sure, would
wish to give her life for his. Something (the modern reader will object)
might be urged on the other side. Just because he was a saint, it might
be argued that he was the fitter of the two to face the great adventure,
and one may be sure that he himself would have thought so. A philosopher
who gives his life for a kitten will have advanced the Kingdom of
Heaven. The chambermaid, moreover, may have in her a potentiality of
love and happiness which are worth many a masterpiece of French prose.
But Godwin has not yet exhausted his moral problem. How, if the maid
were my mother, wife or benefactress? Once more he gives hi