Thus, when looking about in this dark world, given over, as he thought, to antiquated prejudice embodied in cruel injustice, Shelley greeted the writings of Godwin as the lost traveller greets a beacon-fire on a stormy night. They seemed to contain a new gospel. When he discovered the author to be a real human being, not one of the fixed stars that have been already guiding us from the upper firmament, he threw himself at the philosopher's feet with the rapt fervour of a religious neophyte. In his first letters to Godwin he pours out his heart: 'Considering these feelings' (the feelings, namely, of reverence and admiration which he has entertained for the name of Godwin), 'you will not be surprised at the inconceivable emotions with which I learnt your existence and your dwelling. I had enrolled your name in the lists of the honourable dead. I had felt regret that the glory of your being had passed from this earth of ours. It is not so; you still live and, I firmly believe, are still planning the welfare of human kind.' A letter written soon afterwards from Dublin is still more significant. It begins with a kind of invocation, as to a saint. 'Guide thou and direct me,' exclaims the young gentleman; 'in all the weakness of my inconsistencies bear with me; ... when you reprove me, reason speaks; I acquiesce in her decisions.' He presently defends the impatience which Godwin has blamed by an argument which evidently struck even Godwin as having an absurd side. The 'Political Justice,' he says, was first published nearly twenty years before (or almost at the dawn of history!), but yet what has resulted from the general diffusion of its doctrines? 'Have men ceased to fight? Have woe and misery vanished from the earth?' Far from it! Obviously something must be done, and that at once. Do I not well to be impatient, he says, when such reasonable expectations have been so cruelly disappointed?
It must be a most delightful sensation to have so ardent a disciple; but it must also be a trifle provoking when the ardour is of a kind to justify some misgiving as to the sanity of the proselyte. Even the vanity of a philosopher could hardly blind him to the fact that such extravagance tended to throw ridicule upon its object. Godwin, however, kept his countenance—a little too easily perhaps—and gave very sensible advice to his proselyte. He pointed out in substance that it was not altogether amazing that vice and misery had survived the publication of his wonderful book, and still recommended patience and acceptance of the strange stupidity of mankind. We are aware that in later years Shelley's reverence lost a little of its warmth: he came to know Godwin personally. Moreover, among his other tenets, the calm philosopher held the comfortable doctrine that philosophers might and ought to receive pecuniary assistance from the rich without any loss of dignity. His practical application of this theory is described by Professor Dowden. It no doubt soon convinced Shelley that Godwin was not altogether free from earthly stains, and in fact not so indifferent as he ought to have been to the possible advantages of a connection with the heir to a baronetcy and a good estate.
For the present, however, Shelley sat humbly at Godwin's feet He declared that from the 'Political Justice' he had learnt 'all that was valuable in knowledge and virtue.' He mixed with the queer little clique of vegetarians and crotchet-mongers who shared his reverence for Godwin and excited the bitter contempt of Hogg. It is, therefore, not surprising that we find Shelley's doctrines to present a curiously close coincidence with Godwin's. Partly, no doubt, it was simply a coincidence. Shelley's temperament predisposed him to accept conclusions which were in the air of the time, and which were to be found more or less represented in many of his other authorities. But, at any rate, we may fairly assume not only that he, as he was eager to proclaim, learnt much from Godwin, but also that his whole course of thought was guided to a great degree by this living representative of his favourite theories. He studied the 'Political Justice,' pondered its words of wisdom, and examined its minutest details. One trifling indication may be mentioned. Amongst Shelley's fragmentary essays is one upon 'A System of Government by Juries'—a 'singular speculation,' as Mr. Rossetti naturally remarks. But the explanation is simply that Godwin's theory, worked out in the 'Political Justice,' sets forth government by these so-called juries as the ultimate or penultimate stage of human society. Shelley, like a faithful disciple, was writing an incipient commentary upon one of his teacher's texts. The fragmentary 'Essay on Christianity,' of about the same date (1815), is virtually an attempt to show that the valuable part of the Christian religion is its supposed anticipation of Godwin's characteristic tenets. But the coincidence does not consist in any minute points of external resemblance. Godwin's poetical writings seem to have been pretty well forgotten, though some interest in him is maintained by 'Caleb Williams' and by his relationship to Shelley. Hogg is evidently anxious to sink as much as possible the intellectual obligations of the disciple to so second-rate a teacher; and later writers upon Shelley are content to speak vaguely of Godwin as a man who had some philosophic reputation in his day, and some influence upon the poet. A full exposition of Godwin's theories would display the closeness of the mental affinity. That may be found elsewhere; but a brief indication of his main tendencies will be sufficient for the present purpose.
Godwin appeared to many youthful contemporaries—as may be seen from the brilliant sketch in Hazlitt's 'Spirit of the Age'—as a very incarnation of philosophy. 'No work in our time,' says Hazlitt, 'gave such a blow to the philosophical mind of the country as the celebrated "Enquiry concerning Political Justice." Tom Paine was considered for the time a Tom fool to him, Paley an old woman, Edmund Burke a flashy sophist. Truth, moral truth, it was supposed, had here taken up its abode, and these were the oracles of thought.' Hazlitt is not given to measuring his words, and he was probably wishing to please the decaying old gentleman. But doubtless there is some truth in the statement. Godwin was admirably fitted to be an apostle of reason, so far as a man can be fitted for that high post, by the negative qualifications of a placid temper and singular frigidity of disposition. He works out the most startling and subversive conclusions with all the calmness of a mathematician manipulating a set of algebraical symbols. He lays down doctrines which shock not only the religious reverence, but the ordinary conscience of mankind, as quietly as if he were stating a proposition of Euclid. An entire absence of even a rudimentary sense of humour is of course implied in this placid enunciation of paradoxes without the slightest perception of their apparent enormity. But then a sense of humour is just the quality which we do not desiderate in a revered philosopher.
It admits of more doubt whether Godwin possessed in any marked degree the positive qualification of high reasoning power. What is called 'remorseless logic'—the ruthless sweeping aside of every consideration that conflicts with our deductions from certain assumptions—is as often a proof of weakness as of strength. Nothing is so easy as to be perfectly symmetrical and consistent, if you will calmly accept every paradox that flows from your principles and call it a plain conclusion instead of a reductio ad absurdum. A man who is quite ready to say that black is white whenever the whiteness of black is convenient for his argument, may easily pass with some people for a great reasoner. Godwin, however, was beyond question a man of considerable power, though neither vigorous enough nor sufficiently familiar with the wider philosophical conceptions to produce results of much permanent value. Crude thinkers habitually mistake the blunders into which they, like their fathers before them, have fallen for genuine discoveries. They have once more made the old mistakes, and do not know that the mistakes have been exposed.
Godwin was familiar with the recent school of French materialists, and with the writings of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. He worked out by their help a system which curiously combines opposite modes of thought. He was, in one sense, a thoroughgoing sceptic. Nobody could set aside more completely the whole body of theological speculation. He assumes that all the old religions are exploded superstitions. He did not argue against Theism, like Shelley; and, indeed, arguments that might lead him into personal difficulty were not much to his taste. But he virtually ignores all such doctrine as undeniably effete. So far he, of course, sympathises with the French materialists, and with them he abolishes at one blow all the traditional and prescriptive beliefs of mankind. The fact that a doctrine has been generally accepted is a presumption rather against it than in its favour. He will believe nothing, nor even temporarily accept any practical precept which is not capable of direct scientific proof. But, in the next place, Godwin did not in any sense accept the materialism of the French writers. He, like other English thinkers, had been profoundly impressed by the idealism of Berkeley. But then he extends Berkeley by the aid of Hume. He abolishes not only matter but mind. It may be still convenient to use the word mind, but in fact there is nothing, so far as we know, but a chain of 'ideas' which somehow link themselves together so as to produce the complex idea we generally know by that name. Of any substratum, any internal power which causes the coherence of these ideas or of the universe in general, we know and can know absolutely nothing.
When a man has got so far, he not unfrequently begins to feel himself a little bewildered. Nothing is left—to quote from a philosopher of whom neither Godwin nor Shelley apparently ever heard—but 'ceaseless change.' 'I know of no being, not even of my own. Pictures are—they are the only things which exist, and they know of themselves after the fashion of pictures; pictures which float past without there being anything past which they float, which by means of like pictures are connected with each other; pictures without anything which is pictured in them, without significance and without aim. I myself am one of these pictures—nay, I am not even this, but merely a confused picture of the pictures. All reality is transformed into a strange dream, without a life which is dreamed of, and without a mind which dreams it; with a dream which is woven together in a dream of itself. Perception is the dream; thought is the dream of that dream.'
This description of the thoroughgoing sceptical position might pass (to anticipate for a moment) for a description of the state of mind produced by some of Shelley's poetry. It is, at any rate, a state of mind from which a reasoner is generally anxious to provide some escape, lest all ground for reasoning should be cut away. How can knowledge be possible if the mind is merely a stream of baseless impressions, cohering or separating according to radically unknowable laws? Godwin, however, goes on calmly, without any attempt to solve our difficulties, and proceeds to build up his scheme of perfectibility. Upon this shifting quicksand of utter scepticism he lays the foundations of his ideal temple of reason. For, as he argues, since a man is nothing but an aggregate of 'ideas' he is capable of indefinite modification. Education or the influences of climate or race can have no ineradicable power upon this radically arbitrary combination of flitting phantasms. Anything may be the cause of anything; for cause means nothing but the temporary coherence of two sets of unsubstantial images. And hence, we may easily abolish all the traditional ties by which people have hitherto been bound together, and rearrange the whole structure of human society on principles of mathematical and infallible perfection. The force which is to weave ropes of sand, or rather to arrange the separate independent unsubstantial atoms in a perfect mathematical sphere, rounded, complete and eternal, is the force of reason.
Godwin is troubled by no misgiving as to the power of reason when all reality seems to have been abolished. He quietly takes for granted that reason is the sole and sufficient force by which men are or may be guided, and that it is adequate for any conceivable task. Not only can it transform society at large, but it is potentially capable of regenerating any given individual. The worst scoundrel could be made into a saint if only you could expose him to a continuous discharge of satisfactory syllogisms. Reason, as he calmly observes, is 'omnipotent.' Therefore, he infers, when a man's conduct is wrong, a very simple statement will not only show it to be wrong—just as it is easy to show that two sides of a triangle are greater than the third—but make him good. No perverseness, he thinks, would resist a sufficiently intelligible statement of the advantages of virtue. From this agreeable postulate, which he regards as pretty nearly self-evident, Godwin draws conclusions from some of which, great as was his courage in accepting absurdities, he afterwards found it expedient to withdraw. Thus, for example, morality, according to him, means simply the right calculation of consequences—I must always act so as to produce the greatest sum of happiness. The accidental ties, the associations formed by contingent circumstances, are no more to override this principle than a proposition of Euclid is to vary when applied to different parts of space. Three angles of a triangle are as much equal to two right angles in England as in France. Similarly the happiness of an Englishman is just as valuable as the happiness of a Frenchman, and the happiness of a stranger as the happiness of my relations. Hence—so runs his logic—friendship, gratitude, and conjugal fidelity are simply mistakes. If my father is a worse man than a stranger, I should rather save the stranger's life than my father's, for I shall be contributing more to human happiness. If my wife and I are tired of each other, we had better form new connections, for it is unreasonable to sacrifice happiness to any accidental ties. Any particular rule, indeed, is so far a mistake; for to act upon such a rule is to disregard the general principles of reason. In every action and in every relation of life, I should hold myself absolutely free to act simply and solely with reference to the greatest happiness. Habits are bad, for habits imply disregard of reason, and all promises are immoral, for to keep a promise is to pay a blind obedience to the past. To punish is unreasonable; for, in pure reason, we have no more right to hate a villain than a viper or a cup of poison. The only legitimate end of punishment is reform, and reform should be produced by argument instead of imprisonment. All coercion is clearly bad, for coercion is not argument; and, since all government implies coercion, all government is immoral. Society, in short, must be reduced to an aggregate of independent atoms, free from all conventions, from all prescriptive rights and privileges, without the slightest respect for any traditional institutions, and acting at every moment in obedience to the pure dictates of reason.
When these principles have forced their way, and the omnipotence of reason shows their triumph to be only a question of time, we shall reach the millennium. Mind will then be omnipotent over matter (though it is rather hard to say what either of those two entities may be); kings, priests, laws, and family associations will disappear; and every man will live in perfect peace and happiness in the light of reason. One difficulty, indeed, suggests itself. Why, if reason be thus omnipotent, has it done so little in the past? Whence this persistence of inequality and injustice, this enormous power of sheer obstinate, unreasoning prejudice in a set of beings who are to be so completely regenerated by the power of pure reason? Monarchy, he declares summarily, is founded on imposture. How, if reason be the one force, has imposture been so successful, and, if successful for so long, why should it not be successful hereafter?