ages had agreed in giving
the preference, very greatly, to the pleasures of intellect; and that
my own experience completely confirmed the truth of their decisions;
that I had found sensual pleasures vain, transient, and continually
attended with tedium and disgust; but that intellectual pleasures
appeared to me ever fresh and young, filled up all my hours
satisfactorily, gave a new zest to life, and diffused a lasting
serenity over my mind. If he believe me, it can only be from respect
and veneration for my authority. It is credulity, and not conviction. I
have not said any thing, nor can any thing be said, of a nature to
produce real conviction. The affair is not an affair of reasoning, but
of experience. He would probably observe in reply, what you say may be
very true with regard to yourself and many other good men, but for my
own part I feel very differently upon the subject. I have very
frequently taken up a book and almost as frequently gone to sleep over
it; but when I pass an evening with a gay party, or a pretty woman, I
feel alive, and in spirits, and truly enjoy my existence.

Under such circumstances, reasoning and arguments are not instruments
from which success can be expected. At some future time perhaps, real
satiety of sensual pleasures, or some accidental impressions that
awakened the energies of his mind, might effect that, in a month, which
the most patient and able expostulations might be incapable of
effecting in forty years.

CHAPTER 14

Mr Godwin's five propositions respecting political truth, on which his
whole work hinges, not established--Reasons we have for supposing, from
the distress occasioned by the principle of population, that the vices
and moral weakness of man can never be wholly
eradicated--Perfectibility, in the sense in which Mr Godwin uses the
term, not applicable to man--Nature of the real perfectibility of man
illustrated.

If the reasonings of the preceding chapter are just, the corollaries
respecting political truth, which Mr Godwin draws from the proposition,
that the voluntary actions of men originate in their opinions, will not
appear to be clearly established. These corollaries are, "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 weakness of
man are not invincible: Man is perfectible, or in other words,
susc