I have meant to do.

CHAPTER 13

Error of Mr Godwin is considering man too much in the light of a being
merely rational--In the compound being, man, the passions will always
act as disturbing forces in the decisions of the
understanding--Reasonings of Mr Godwin on the subject of coercion--Some
truths of a nature not to be communicated from one man to another.

In the chapter which I have been examining, Mr Godwin professes to
consider the objection to his system of equality from the principle of
population. It has appeared, I think clearly, that he is greatly
erroneous in his statement of the distance of this difficulty, and that
instead of myriads of centuries, it is really not thirty years, or even
thirty days, distant from us. The supposition of the approach of man to
immortality on earth is certainly not of a kind to soften the
difficulty. The only argument, therefore, in the chapter which has any
tendency to remove the objection is the conjecture concerning the
extinction of the passion between the sexes, but as this is a mere
conjecture, unsupported by the smallest shadow of proof, the force of
the objection may be fairly said to remain unimpaired, and it is
undoubtedly of sufficient weight of itself completely to overturn Mr
Godwin's whole system of equality. I will, however, make one or two
observations on a few of the prominent parts of Mr Godwin's reasonings
which will contribute to place in a still clearer point of view the
little hope that we can reasonably entertain of those vast improvements
in the nature of man and of society which he holds up to our admiring
gaze in his Political Justice.

Mr Godwin considers man too much in the light of a being merely
intellectual. This error, at least such I conceive it to be, pervades
his whole work and mixes itself with all his reasonings. The voluntary
actions of men may originate in their opinions, but these opinions will
be very differently modified in creatures compounded of a rational
faculty and corporal propensities from what they would be in beings
wholly intellectual. Mr Godwin, in proving that sound reasoning and
truth are capable of being adequately communicated, examines the
proposition first practically, and then adds, 'Such is the appearance
which this proposition assumes, when examined in a loose and practical
view. In strict consideration it will not admit of debate. Man is a
rational being, etc.' (Bk. I, ch. 5; in the third edition Vol. I