nce as to leave the most
ample room for intellectual attainments, it must undoubtedly add to the
sum of pleasurable sensations in life. Virtuous love, exalted by
friendship, seems to be that sort of mixture of sensual and
intellectual enjoyment particularly suited to the nature of man, and
most powerfully calculated to awaken the sympathies of the soul, and
produce the most exquisite gratifications.

Mr Godwin says, in order to shew the evident inferiority of the
pleasures of sense, 'Strip the commerce of the sexes of all its
attendant circumstances, and it would be generally despised' (Bk. I,
ch. 5; in the third edition, Vol. I, pp. 71-72). He might as well say
to a man who admired trees: strip them of their spreading branches and
lovely foliage, and what beauty can you see in a bare pole? But it was
the tree with the branches and foliage, and not without them, that
excited admiration. One feature of an object may be as distinct, and
excite as different emotions, from the aggregate as any two things the
most remote, as a beautiful woman, and a map of Madagascar. It is 'the
symmetry of person, the vivacity, the voluptuous softness of temper,
the affectionate kindness of feelings, the imagination and the wit' of
a woman that excite the passion of love, and not the mere distinction
of her being female. Urged by the passion of love, men have been driven
into acts highly prejudicial to the general interests of society, but
probably they would have found no difficulty in resisting the
temptation, had it appeared in the form of a woman with no other
attractions whatever but her sex. To strip sensual pleasures of all
their adjuncts, in order to prove their inferiority, is to deprive a
magnet of some of its most essential causes of attraction, and then to
say that it is weak and inefficient.

In the pursuit of every enjoyment, whether sensual or intellectual,
reason, that faculty which enables us to calculate consequences, is the
proper corrective and guide. It is probable therefore that improved
reason will always tend to prevent the abuse of sensual pleasures,
though it by no means follows that it will extinguish them.

I have endeavoured to expose the fallacy of that argument which infers
an unlimited progress from a partial improvement, the limits of which
cannot be exactly ascertained. It has appeared, I think, that there are
many instances in which a decided progress has been observed, where yet
it would be a gross abs