William Godwin, the seventh child of thirteen, was the son of a Dissenting minister, and was born March 3, 1756, at [Wisbeach], Cambridgeshire. He came on both sides of respectable middle-class families. His father’s father and brother had both been clergymen, the one a Methodist preacher, the other a Dissenter. His father was a man of but little learning, whose strongest feeling was disapprobation of the Church of England, and whose “creed was so puritanical that he considered the fondling of a cat a profanation of the Lord’s day.” Mrs. Godwin in her earlier years was gay, too much so for the wife of a minister, some people thought, but after her husband’s death she joined a Methodistical sect, and her piety in the end grew into fanaticism. A Miss Godwin, a cousin, who lived with the family, had perhaps the greatest influence over William Godwin when he was a mere child. She was not without literary culture, and through her he learnt something of books. But her religious principles were severely Calvinistic, and these she impressed upon him at the same time.
His first school-mistress was an old woman, who was concerned chiefly with his soul, and who gave him, before he had completed his eighth year, an intimate knowledge of the Bible. The inevitable consequence of this training was that religion became his first thought. Thanks to his cousin, however, and to his natural cleverness and ambition, he was saved from bigotry by his interest in wider subjects, though they were for many years secondary considerations. From an early age he had, as he says of himself, developed an insatiable curiosity and love of distinction. One of his later tutors was Mr. Samuel Newton, an Independent minister and a follower of Sandeman, “a celebrated north country apostle, who, after Calvin had damned ninety-nine in a hundred of mankind, has contrived a scheme for damning ninety-nine in a hundred of the followers of Calvin.” Godwin remained some years with him, and was so far influenced by his doctrines, that when, later, he sought admission into Homerton Academy, a Dissenting institution, he was refused, because he seemed to the authorities to show signs of Sandemanianism. But he had no difficulty in entering Hoxton College; and here, in his twenty-third year, he finished his religious and secular education. During these years his leading inspiration had been a thirst after knowledge and truth.
This was in 1778. Upon leaving college he began his career as minister, but he was never very successful, and before long his religious views were much modified. His search for truth led him in a direction in which he had least expected to go. In 1781, when he was fulfilling the duties of his profession at Stowmarket, he began to read the French philosophers, and by them his faith in Christianity was seriously shaken. 1783 was the last year in which he appeared in the pulpit. He gave up the office and went to London, where he supported himself by writing. In the course of a short time he dropped the title of Reverend and emancipated himself entirely from his old religious associations.
His first literary work was the “Life of Lord Chatham,” and this was followed by a defence of the coalition of 1783. He then obtained regular employment on the “English Review,” published by Murray in Fleet Street, wrote several novels, and became a contributor to the “Political Herald.” He was entirely dependent upon his writings, which fact accounts for the variety displayed in them. His chief interest was, however, in politics. He was a Liberal of the most pronounced type, and his articles soon attracted the attention of the Whigs. His services to that party were considered so valuable that when the above-mentioned paper perished, Fox, through Sheridan, proposed to Godwin that he should edit it, the whole expense to be paid from a fund set aside for just such purposes. But Godwin declined. By accepting he would have sacrificed his independence and have become their mouthpiece, and he was not willing to sell himself. He seems at one time to have been ambitious to be a Member of Parliament, and records with evident satisfaction Sheridan’s remark to him: “You ought to be in Parliament.” But his integrity again proved a stumbling-block. He could not reconcile himself to the subterfuges which Whigs as well as Tories silently countenanced. Honesty was his besetting quality quite as much as it was Mary’s. He was unfit to take an active part in politics; his sphere of work was speculative.
He was the foremost among the devoted adherents in England of Rousseau, Helvetius, and the other Frenchmen of their school. He was one of the “French Revolutionists,” so called because of their sympathy with the French apostles of liberty and equality; and at their meetings he met such men as Price, Holcroft, Earl Stanhope, Horne Tooke, Geddes, all of whom considered themselves fortunate in having his co-operation. Thomas Paine was one of his intimate acquaintances; and the “Rights of Man” was submitted to him, to receive his somewhat qualified praise, before it was published. He was one of the leading spirits in developing the radicalism of his time, and thus in preparing the way for that of the present day; and the influence of his writings over men of his and the next generation was enormous. Indeed, it can hardly now be measured, since much which he wrote, being unsigned and published in papers and periodicals, has been lost.
He was always on the alert in political matters, ready to seize every opportunity to do good and to promote the cause of freedom. He was, in a word, one of that large army of pilgrims whose ambition is to “make whole flawed hearts, and bowed necks straight.” In 1791 he wrote an anonymous letter to Fox, in which he advanced the sentiments to which he later gave expression in his “Political Justice,” his principal work. In his autobiographical notes he explains:—
“Mr. Fox, in the debate on the bill for giving a new constitution to Canada, had said that he would not be the man to propose the abolition of a House of Lords in a country where such a power was already established; but as little would he be the man to recommend the introduction of such a power where it was not. This was by no means the only public indication he had shown how deeply he had drank of the spirit of the French Revolution. The object of the above-mentioned letters [that is, his own to Fox, and one written by Holcroft to Sheridan] was to excite these two illustrious men to persevere gravely and inflexibly in the career on which they had entered. I was strongly impressed with the sentiment that in the then existing circumstances of England and of Europe, great and happy improvements might be achieved under such auspices without anarchy and confusion. I believed that important changes must arise, and I was inexpressibly anxious that such changes should be effected under the conduct of the best and most competent leaders.”
This brief note explains at once the two leading doctrines of his philosophy: the necessity of change, and the equal importance of moderation in effecting it. His political creed was, paradoxical as this may seem, the outcome of his religious education. He had long since given up the actual faith in which he was born and trained; after going through successive stages of Sandemanianism, Deism, and Socinianism, he had, in 1787, become a “complete unbeliever;” but he never entirely outlived its influence. This was of a twofold nature. It taught him to question the sanctity of established institutions, and it crushed in him, even if it did not wholly eradicate, strong passion and emotional demonstration. No man in England was as thorough a radical as he. Paine’s or Holcroft’s conceptions of human freedom were like forms of slavery compared to his broad, exhaustive theories. But, on the other hand, there never was a more earnest advocate of moderation. Burke and the French royalists could not have been more eloquent opponents of violent measures of reform than he was. Towards the end of the last century it was easier for a Dissenter, who had already overthrown one barrier, than for the orthodox, to rebel against existing social and political laws and customs. From the belief that freedom from the authority of the Church of England was necessary to true piety, it was but a step to the larger faith that freedom from the restraints of government and society was indispensable to virtue. Godwin, after he ceased to be a religious, became a political and social Dissenter. In his zeal for the liberty of humanity, he contended for nothing less than the destruction of all human laws. French Republicans demanded the simplest possible form of government. But Godwin, outstripping them, declared there should be none whatsoever. “It may seem strange,” Mrs. Shelley writes, “that any one should, in the sincerity of his heart, believe that no vice could exist with perfect freedom, but my father did; it was the very basis of his system, the very keystone of the arch of justice, by which he desired to knit together the whole human family.”
His ultra-radicalism led him to some wise and reasonable, and other strange and startling conclusions, and these he set before the public in his “Political Justice,” the first book he published under his own name. It appeared in 1793, and immediately created a great sensation. It must be ranked as one of the principal factors in the development of English thought. A short explanation of the doctrines embodied in it will throw important light on his subsequent relations to Mary, as well as on his own character. The foundation of the arguments he advances in this book is his belief in the efficacy of reason in the individual as a guide to conduct. He thought that, if each human being were free to act as he chose, he would be sure to act for the best; for, according to him, instincts do not exist. He makes no allowance for the influence of the past in forming the present, ignoring the laws of heredity. A man’s character is formed by the nature of his surroundings. Virtue and vice are the result not of innate tendencies, but of external circumstances. When these are perfected, evil will necessarily disappear from the world. He had so successfully subordinated his own emotions, that in his philosophical system he calmly ignores passion as a mainspring of human activity. This is exemplified by the rule he lays down for the regulation of a man’s conduct to his fellow-beings. He must always measure their respective worth, and not the strength of his affection for them, even if the individuals concerned be his near relations. Supposing, for example, he had to choose between saving the life of a Fénelon and that of a chambermaid, he must select the former because of his superior talents, even though the latter should be his mother or his wife. Affections are to be forgotten in the calculations of reason. Godwin’s faith in the supremacy of the intellect was not lessened because he was forced to admit that men often do not act reasonably. This is, he explains, because they are without knowledge of the absolute truth. Show them what is true or right, and all, even the most abandoned criminal, will give up what is false or wrong. Logic is the means by which the regeneration of mankind is to be effected. Reason is the dynamite by which the monopoly of rank is to be shattered. “Could Godwin,” Leslie Stephen very cleverly says, “have caught Pitt, or George III., or Mrs. Brownrigg, and subjected them to a Socratic cross-examination, he could have restored them to the paths of virtue, as he would have corrected an error in a little boy’s sums.”
Men, Godwin taught, can never know the truth so long as human laws exist; because when subject to any control, good, bad, or indifferent, they are not free to reason, and hence their actions are deprived of their only legitimate inspiration. Arguing from these premises, his belief in the necessity of the abolition of all forms of government, political and social, and his discouragement of the acquirement of habits, were perfectly logical. Had he confined himself to general terms in expressing his convictions, his conclusions would not have been so startling. Englishmen were becoming accustomed to theories of reform. But always just and uncompromising, he unhesitatingly defined particular instances by which he illustrated the truth of his teaching, thus making the ends he hoped to achieve clearer to his readers. He boldly advanced the substitution of an appeal to reason for punishment in the treatment of criminals, and this at a time when such a doctrine was considered treason. He declared that any article of property justly belongs to those who most want it, “or to whom the possession of it will be most beneficial.” But his objection to the marriage law seemed the most glaringly immoral part of his philosophy. He assailed theoretically an institution for which Mary Wollstonecraft had practically shown her disapprobation. His reasoning in this regard is curious, and reveals the little importance he attached to passion. He disapproved of the marriage tie because he thought that two people who are bound together by it are not at liberty to follow the dictates of their own minds, and hence are not acting in accordance with pure reason. Free love or a system of voluntary divorce would be less immoral, because in either of these cases men and women would be self-ruled, and therefore could be relied upon to do what is right. Besides, according to his ideal of justice in the matter of property, a man or a woman belongs to whomsoever most needs him or her, irrespective of any relations already formed. It follows naturally that the children born in a community where these ideas are adopted are to be educated by the state, and must not be subjected to rules or discipline, but taught from the beginning to regulate their conduct by the light of reason. Godwin, like so many other philosophers of his times, based his arguments upon abstract principles, and failed to seek concrete proofs. He built up a structure beautiful in theory, but impossible in real life until man develops into a very much higher order of being. An enthusiast, despite his calmness, he looked forward to the time when death would be an evil of the past, and when no new men would be born into the world. He believed that the day would come when “there will be no war, no crimes, no administration of justice, as it is called, and no government.” There will be “neither disease, anguish, melancholy, nor resentment. Every man will seek with ineffable ardor the good of all.” Human optimism could go no farther.