Chapter 11

We have supported Mr Godwin’s system of society once com­pletely established. But it is supposing an impossibility. The same causes in nature which would destroy it so rapidly, were it once es­tablished, would prevent the possibility of its establishment. And upon what grounds we can presume a change in these natural causes, I am utterly at a loss to conjecture. No move towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes has taken place in the five or six thousand years that the world has existed. Men in the decline of life have in all ages declaimed against a passion which they have ceased to feel, but with as little reason as success. Those who from coldness of constitutional temperament have never felt what love is, will surely be allowed to be very incompetent judges with regard to the power of this passion to contribute to the sum of pleasurable sensations in life. Those who have spent their youth in criminal excesses and have prepared for themselves, as the com­forts of their age, corporeal debility and mental remorse may well inveigh against such pleasures as vain and futile, and unproduc­tive of lasting satisfaction. But the pleasures of pure love will bear the contemplation of the most improved reason, and the most ex­alted virtue. Perhaps there is scarcely a man who has once experi­enced the genuine delight of virtuous love, however great his intel­lectual pleasure may have been, that does not look back to the pe­riod as the sunny spot in his whole life, where his imagination loves to bask, which he recollects and contemplates with the fond­est regrets, and which he would most wish to live over again. The superiority of intellectual to sensual pleasures consists rather in their filling up more time, in their having a larger range, and in their being less liable to satiety, than in their being more real and essential.

Intemperance in every enjoyment defeats its own purpose. A walk in the finest day through the most beautiful country, if pur­sued too far, ends in pain and fatigue. The most wholesome and in­vigorating food, eaten with an unrestrained appetite, produces weakness instead of strength. Even intellectual pleasures, though certainly less liable than others to satiety, pursued with too little intermission, debilitate the body, and impair the vigour of the mind. To argue against the reality of these pleasures from their abuse seems to be hardly just. Morality, according to Mr Godwin, is a calculation of consequences, or, as Archdeacon Paley very justly expresses it, the will of God, as collected from general expediency. According to either of these definitions, a sensual pleasure not at­tended with the probability of unhappy consequences does not of­fend against the laws of morality, and if it be pursued with such a degree of temperance as to leave the most ample room for intellec­tual attainments, it must undoubtedly add to the sum of pleasur­able sensations in life. Virtuous love, exalted by friendship, seems to be that sort of mixture of sensual and intellectual enjoyment particularly suited to the nature of man, and most powerfully cal­culated to awaken the sympathies of the soul, and produce the most exquisite gratifications.

Mr Godwin says, in order to shew the evident inferiority of the pleasures of sense, ‘Strip the commerce of the sexes of all its attendant circumstances, and it would be generally despised’ (Bk. I, ch. 5; in the third edition, Vol. I, pp. 71-72). He might as well say to a man who admired trees: strip them of their spreading branches and lovely foliage, and what beauty can you see in a bare pole? But it was the tree with the branches and foliage, and not without them, that excited admiration. One feature of an object may be as distinct, and excite as different emotions, from the ag­gregate as any two things the most remote, as a beautiful woman, and a map of Madagascar. It is ‘the symmetry of person, the vivac­ity, the voluptuous softness of temper, the affectionate kind­ness of feelings, the imagination and the wit’ of a woman that ex­cite the passion of love, and not the mere distinction of her being female. Urged by the passion of love, men have been driven into acts highly prejudicial to the general interests of society, but proba­bly they would have found no difficulty in resisting the temp­tation, had it appeared in the form of a woman with no other at­tractions whatever but her sex. To strip sensual pleasures of all their adjuncts, in order to prove their inferiority, is to deprive a magnet of some of its most essential causes of attraction, and then to say that it is weak and inefficient.

In the pursuit of every enjoyment, whether sensual or intel­lectual, reason, that faculty which enables us to calculate conse­quences, is the proper corrective and guide. It is probable therefore that improved reason will always tend to prevent the abuse of sen­sual pleasures, though it by no means follows that it will extin­guish them.

I have endeavoured to expose the fallacy of that argument which infers an unlimited progress from a partial improvement, the limits of which cannot be exactly ascertained. It has appeared, I think, that there are many instances in which a decided progress has been observed, where yet it would be a gross absurdity to sup­pose that progress indefinite. But towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes, no observable progress whatever has hitherto been made. To suppose such an extinction, therefore, is merely to offer an unfounded conjecture, unsupported by any philosophical probabilities.

It is a truth, which history I am afraid makes too clear, that some men of the highest mental powers have been addicted not only to a moderate, but even to an immoderate indulgence in the pleasures of sensual love. But allowing, as I should be inclined to do, notwithstanding numerous instances to the contrary, that great intellectual exertions tend to diminish the empire of this passion over man, it is evident that the mass of mankind must be improved more highly than the brightest ornaments of the species at present before any difference can take place sufficient sensibly to affect population. I would by no means suppose that the mass of mankind has reached its term of improvement, but the principal argument of this essay tends to place in a strong point of view the improbability that the lower classes of people in any country should ever be sufficiently free from want and labour to obtain any high degree of intellectual improvement.