Part 3 (1/2)

In point of fact, G.o.dwin argues, sheer sensuality has a smaller empire over us than we commonly suppose. Strip the feast of its social pleasures, and the commerce of the s.e.xes of all its intellectual and emotional allurements, and who would be overcome?

One need not follow G.o.dwin minutely in his handling of what is after all a commonplace of academic philosophy. He was concerned to insist that men's voluntary actions originate in opinion, that he might secure a fulcrum for the leverage of argument and persuasion. Vice is error, and error can always be corrected. ”Show me in the clearest and most unambiguous manner that a certain mode of proceeding is most reasonable in itself, or most conducive to my interest, and I shall infallibly pursue that mode, so long as the views you suggested to me continue present to my mind.” The practical problem is therefore to make ourselves and our fellows perfectly conscious of our motives, and always prepared to render a reason for our actions. The perfection of human character is to approach as nearly as possible to the absolutely voluntary state, to act always, in other words, from a clear and comprehensive survey of the consequences which we desire to produce.

The incautious reader may be invited to pause at this point, for in this premise lies already the whole of philosophic anarchism. You have admitted that voluntary action is rational. You have conceded that all action _ought_ to be voluntary. The silent a.s.sumption is that by education and effort it _can_ be made so. One may doubt whether in the sense required by G.o.dwin's argument any human action ever is or can be absolutely ”voluntary,” rational or self-conscious. To attain it, we should have to reason naked in a desert with algebraic symbols. To use words is to think in step, and to beg our question. But G.o.dwin is well aware that most men rarely reason. He is here framing an ideal, without realising its remoteness. The mischief of his faith in logic as a force, was that it led him to ignore the aesthetic and emotional influences, by which the ma.s.s of men can best be led to a virtuous ideal. Sh.e.l.ley, who was a thorough Platonist, supplements, as we shall see (p. 234), this characteristic defect in his master's teaching. The main conclusions follow rapidly. Sound reasoning and truth when adequately communicated must always be victorious over error. Truth, then, is omnipotent, and the vices and moral weaknesses of man are not invincible. Man, in short, is perfectible, or in other words, susceptible of perpetual improvement.

These sentiments have to the modern ear a plat.i.tudinous ring. So far from being plat.i.tudes, they are explosives capable of destroying the whole fabric of government. For if truth is omnipotent, why trust to laws? If men will obey argument, why use constraint?

But let us move slowly towards this extreme conclusion. If reason appears to-day to play but a feeble part in society, and exerts only a limited empire over the actions of men, it is because unlettered ignorance, social habits and the positive inst.i.tutions of government stand in the way. Where the ma.s.ses of mankind are sunk in brutal ignorance, one need not wonder that argument and persuasion have but a small influence with them. Truth indeed is rarely recondite or difficult to communicate. G.o.dwin might have quoted Helvetius: ”It is with genius as with an astronomer; he sees a new star and forthwith all can see it.”

Nor need we fear the objection that by introducing an intellectual element into virtue, we have removed it beyond the reach of simple men.

A virtuous action, indeed, must be good both in intention and in tendency. G.o.dwin was like Helvetius and Priestley, a Utilitarian in ethics, and defined duty as that mode of action on the part of the individual which const.i.tutes the best possible application of his capacity to the general benefit, in every situation that presents itself. One may be mistaken as to what will contribute to the general benefit, as Sir Everard Digby was, for example, when he thought it his duty to blow up King James and the Parliament. But the simple man need be at no loss. An earnest desire will in some degree generate capacity.

There G.o.dwin opened a profoundly interesting and stimulating line of thought. The mind is formed not by its innate powers, but by its governing desires. As love brings eloquence to the suitor, so if I do but ardently desire to serve my kind, I shall find out a way, and while I study a plan shall find that my faculties have been exercised and increased. Moreover, in the struggle after virtue I am not alone.

Burke made the first of the virtues prudence. G.o.dwin would have given sincerity that place. To him and his circle the chief business of social converse was by argument and exhortation to strengthen the habit of virtue. There was something to be said for the practice of auricular confession; but how much better would it be if every man were to make the world his confessional and the human species the keeper of his conscience. The practice of sincerity would give to our conversation a Roman boldness and fervour. The frank distribution of praise and blame is the most potent incentive to virtue. Were we but bold and impartial in our judgments, vice would be universally deserted and virtue everywhere practised. Our cowardice in censure and correction is the chief reason of the perpetuation of abuses. If every man would tell all the truth he knew, it is impossible to predict how short would be the reign of usurpation and folly. Let our motive be philanthropy, and we need not fear ruggedness or brutality, disdain or superiority, since we aim at the interest of him we correct, and not at the triumph of the corrector. In an aside G.o.dwin demands the abolition of social conventions which offend sincerity. If I must deny myself to a visitor, I should scorn the polite lie that I am ”not at home.”

It is a consequence also of this doctrine, that there should be no prosecutions for libel, even in private matters. Truth depends on the free shock of opinions, and the unrestrained discussion of private character is almost as important as freedom in speculative enquiry. ”If the truth were universally told of men's dispositions and actions, gibbets and wheels might be dismissed from the face of the earth. The knave unmasked would be obliged to turn honest in his own defence. Nay, no man would have time to turn a knave. Truth would follow him in his first irresolute essays, and public disapprobation arrest him in the commencement of his career.” It is shameful for a good man to retort on a slander, ”I will have recourse to the only means that are congenial to guilt: I will compel you to be silent.” Freedom in this matter, as in all others, will engender activity and fort.i.tude; positive inst.i.tution (G.o.dwin's term for law and constraint) makes the mind torpid and lethargic. It is hardly necessary to reproduce G.o.dwin's vigorous arguments for unfettered freedom in political and speculative discussion, against censors.h.i.+ps and prosecutions for religious and political opinions. Even were we secure from the possibility of mistake, mischief and not good would accrue from the attempt to impose our infallible opinions upon our neighbours. Men deserve approbation only in so far as they are independent in their opinions and free in their actions.

Equally clear is it that the establishment of religion and all systems of tests must be abolished. They make for hypocrisy, check advance in speculation, and teach us to estimate a disinterested sincerity at a cheap rate. We need not fear disorder as a consequence of complete liberty of speech. ”Arguments alone will not have the power, una.s.sisted by the sense or the recollection of oppression or treachery to hurry the people into excesses. Excesses are never the offspring of speculative reason, are never the offspring of misrepresentation only, but of power endeavouring to stifle reason, and to traverse the commonsense of mankind.”

A more original deduction from G.o.dwin's demand for the unlimited freedom of opinion, was that he objected vehemently to any system of national education. Condorcet had drawn up a marvellously complete project for universal compulsory education, with full liberty indeed for the teachers, whose technical competence alone the State would guarantee, and with a scheme of free scholars.h.i.+ps, an educational ”ladder” more generous than anything which has yet been realised in fact. G.o.dwin objects that State-regulated inst.i.tutions will stereotype knowledge and make for an undesirable permanence and uniformity in opinion. They diffuse what is known and forget what remains to be known. They erect a system of authority and separate a tenet from the evidence on which it rests, so that beliefs cease to be perceptions and become prejudices. No Government is to be trusted with the dangerous power to create and regulate opinions through its schools. Such a power is, indeed, more dangerous than that of an Established Church, and would be used to strengthen tyranny and perpetuate faulty inst.i.tutions.

G.o.dwin, needless to say, takes, as did Condorcet, the side of frankness in the controversy which was a test of democratic faith in this generation--whether ”political imposture” is allowable, and whether a statesman should encourage the diffusion of ”salutary prejudices” among the unlearned, the poor and women. This was indeed the main eighteenth century defence for monarchy and aristocracy. Kings and governors are not wiser than other men, but it is useful that they should be thought so. Such imposture, G.o.dwin argued, is as futile as the parallel use by religion of the pains and penalties of the afterworld. It is the sober who are demoralised by it, and not the lawless who are deterred. To terrify men is a strange way of rendering them judicious, fearless and happy. It is to leave men indolent and unbraced by truth. He objects even to the trappings and ceremonies which are used to render magistrates outwardly venerable and awe-inspiring, so that they may impress the irrational imagination. These means may be used as easily to support injustice as to render justice acceptable. They divide men into two cla.s.ses; those who may reason, and those who must take everything on trust. This is to degrade them both. The ma.s.ses are kept in perpetual vibration between rebellious discontent and infatuated credulity. And can we suppose that the practice of concealment and hypocrisy will make no breaches in the character of the governing cla.s.s?

The general effect of any meddling of authority with opinion is that the mind is robbed of its genuine employment. Such a system produces beings wanting in independence, and in that intrepid perseverance and calm self-approbation which grow from independence. Such beings are the mere dwarfs and mockeries of men.

G.o.dwin was at issue here as much with Rousseau as with Burke, but his trust in the people, it should be explained, was based rather on faith in what they might become, than on admiration for what they were.

That all government is an evil, though doubtless a necessary evil, was the typical opinion of the individualistic eighteenth century. It would not long have survived such proposals as Paine's scheme of old age pensions and Condorcet's project of national education. When men have perceived that an evil can be turned to good account, they are already on the road which will lead them to discard their premises. But G.o.dwin was quite unaffected by this new Liberalism. No positive good was to be hoped from government, and much positive evil would flow from it at the best. In his absolute individualism he went further. The whole idea of government was radically wrong. For him the individual was tightly enclosed in his own skin, and any constraint was an infringement of his personality. He would have poured scorn on the half-mystical conception of a social organism. Nor did it occur to him that a man might voluntarily subject himself to government, losing none of his own autonomy in the act, from a persuasion that government is on the whole a benefit, and that submission, even when his own views are thwarted, is a free man's duty within certain limits, accepted gladly for the sake of preserving an inst.i.tution which commonly works well. He did not see the inst.i.tution working well; he did not believe in the benefits; he was convinced that more than all the advantages of the best of governments could be obtained from the free operation of opinion in an unorganised community.

His main point is lucidly simple. It was an application of the Whig and Protestant doctrine of the right of private judgment. ”If in any instance I am made the mechanical instrument of absolute violence, in that instance I fall under a pure state of external slavery.” Nor is the case much better, if instead of waiting for the actual application of coercion, I act in obedience to authority from the hope and fear of the State's rewards and punishments. For virtue has ceased, and I am acting from self-interest. It is a triviality to distinguish, as Whig thinkers do, between matters of conscience (in which the State should not meddle) and my conduct in the civil concerns of daily life (which the State should regulate). What sort of moralist can he be, who makes no conscience of what he does in his daily intercourse with other men? ”I have deeply reflected upon the nature of virtue, and am convinced that a certain proceeding is inc.u.mbent on me. But the hangman supported by an Act of Parliament a.s.sures me that I am mistaken. If I yield my opinion to his dictum, my action becomes modified, and my character also....

Countries exposed to the perpetual interference of decrees instead of arguments, exhibit within their boundaries the mere phantoms of men.”

The root of the whole matter is that brute force is an offence against reason, and an unnecessary offence, if in fact men are guided by opinion and will yield to argument. ”The case of punishment is the case of you and me differing in opinion, and your telling me that you must be right since you have a more brawny arm.”

If I must obey, it is better and less demoralising to yield an external submission so as to escape penalty or constraint, than to yield to authority from a general confidence which enslaves the mind. Comply but criticise. Obey but beware of reverence. If I surrender my conscience to another man's keeping, I annihilate my individuality as a man, and become the ready tool of him among my neighbours who shall excel in imposture and artifice. I put an end moreover to the happy collision of understandings upon which the hopes of human improvement depend.

Governments depend upon the unlimited confidence of their subjects, and confidence rests upon ignorance.

Government (has not Burke said so?) is the perpetual enemy of change, and prompts us to seek the public welfare not in alteration and improvement, but in a timid reverence for the decisions of our ancestors, as if it were the nature of the human mind always to degenerate and never to advance. G.o.dwin thought with John Bright, ”We stand on the shoulders of our forefathers--and see further.”

In proportion as weakness and ignorance shall diminish, the basis of government will also decay. That will be its true euthanasia.

There is indeed nothing to be said for government save that for a time, and within jealously drawn limits, it may be a fatal and indispensable necessity. A just government cannot be founded on force: for force has no affinity with justice. It cannot be based upon the will of G.o.d; we have no revelation that recommends one form of government rather than another. As little can it be based upon contract. Who were the parties to the pretended social contract? For whom did they consent, for themselves or for their descendants, and to how great a variety of propositions? Have I a.s.sented or my ancestors for me, to the laws of England in fifty volumes folio, and to all that shall hereafter be added to them? In a few contemptuous pages G.o.dwin buries the social contract.

Men when they digest the articles of a contract are not empowered to create rights, but only to declare what was previously right. But the doctrine of the natural rights of man fares no better at his hands.

There is no such thing as a positive right to do as we list. One way of acting in every emergency is reasonable, and the other is not. One way will benefit mankind, and the other will not. It is a pestilent doctrine and a denial of all virtue, to say that we have a right to do what we will with our own. Everything we possess has a destination prescribed to it by the immutable voice of reason and justice.

Duties and rights are correlative. As it cannot be the duty of men or societies to do anything to the detriment of human happiness, so it appears with equal evidence that they cannot have the right to do so.

There cannot be a more absurd proposition than that which affirms the right of doing wrong. The voice of the people is not the voice of G.o.d, nor does universal consent or a majority vote convert wrong into right.

It is absurd to say that any set of people has a right to set up any form of government it chooses, or any sect to establish any superst.i.tion however detestable. All this would have delighted Burke, but G.o.dwin stands firmly in his path by a.s.serting what he calls the one negative right of man. It is in a word, the right to exercise virtue, the right to a region of choice, a sphere of discretion, which his neighbours must not infringe save by censure and remonstrance. When I am constrained, I cease to be a person, and become a thing. ”I ought to exercise my talents for the benefit of others, but the exercise must be the fruit of my own conviction; no man must attempt to press me into the service.”

Government is an evil, and the business of human advancement is to dispense with it as rapidly as may be. In the period of transition G.o.dwin had but a secondary interest, and his sketch of it is slight. He dismisses in turn despotism, aristocracy, the ”mixed monarchy” of the Whigs, and the president with kingly powers of some American thinkers.

His pages on these subjects are vigorous, well-reasoned, and pointed in their satire. It required much courage to write them, but they do not contain his original contribution to political theory. What is most characteristic in his line of argument is his insistence on the moral corruption that monarchy and aristocracy involve. The whole standard of moral values is subverted. To achieve ostentation becomes the first object of desire. Disinterested virtue is first suspected and then viewed with incredulity. Luxury meanwhile distorts our whole att.i.tude to our fellows, and in every effort to excel and s.h.i.+ne we wrong the labouring millions. Aristocracy involves general degradation, and can survive only amid general ignorance. ”To make men serfs and villeins it is indispensably necessary to make them brutes.... A servant who has been taught to write and read, ceases to be any longer a pa.s.sive machine.”

From the abolition of monarchy and aristocracy G.o.dwin, and indeed the whole revolutionary school, expected the cessation of war. War and conquest elevate the few at the expense of the rest, and cannot benefit the whole community. Democracies have no business with war save to repel an invasion of their territory. He thought of patriotism and love of country much as did Dr. Price. They are (as Herve has argued in our own day) specious illusions invented to render the mult.i.tude the blind instruments of crooked designs. We must not be lured into pursuing the general wealth, prosperity or glory of the society to which we belong.