We Need Their Voices Today! (6) William Godwin
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 31 Jul 2017
John Scales Avery – TRANSCEND Media Service
Introduction
This is a collection of biographical sketches showing people whose wise voices from the past can help to guide us today. All of the women and men, brief glimpses of whose lives and ideas are portrayed here, gave a high place to compassion. None of them was a slave to greed. We need their voices today!
[Note from TMS editor: It will be posted one biographical sketch per week]
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William Godwin in a painting by James Northcote (Wikipedia).
Political Justice
In 1793 the English novelist and philosopher William Godwin published an enormously optimistic book, “Political Justice”. As the eighteenth century neared its end, this book became the focus of hopes for political reform and the center of the debate on human progress. Godwin was lifted briefly to enormous heights of fame and adulation, from which he plunged, a few years later, into relative obscurity.
In “Political Justice”, Godwin predicted a future society where scientific progress would liberate humans from material want. Godwin predicted that in the future, with the institution of war abolished, with a more equal distribution of property, and with the help of scientific improvements in agriculture and industry, much less labour would be needed to support life. Luxuries are at present used to maintain artificial distinctions between the classes of society, Godwin wrote, but in the future values will change; humans will live more simply, and their efforts will be devoted to self-fulfillment and to intellectual and moral improvement, rather than to material possessions. With the help of automated agriculture, the citizens of a future society will need only a few hours a day to earn their bread.
Godwin went on to say, “The spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility and the spirit of fraud – these are the immediate growth of the established administration of property. They are alike hostile to intellectual improvement. The other vices of envy, malice, and revenge are their inseparable companions. In a state of society where men lived in the midst of plenty, and where all shared alike the bounties of nature, these sentiments would inevitably expire. The narrow principle of selfishness would vanish. No man being obliged to guard his little store, or provide with anxiety and pain for his restless wants, each would lose his own individual existence in the thought of the general good. No man would be the enemy of his neighbor, for they would have nothing to contend; and of consequence philanthropy would resume the empire which reason assigns her. Mind would be delivered from her perpetual anxiety about corporal support, and free to expatiate in the field of thought which is congenial to her. Each man would assist the inquiries of all.”
Godwin insisted that there is an indissoluble link between politics, ethics and knowledge.
”Political Justice” is an enthusiastic vision of what humans could be like at some future period when the trend towards moral and intellectual improvement has lifted men and women above their their present state of ignorance and vice. Much of the savage structure of the penal system would then be unnecessary, Godwin believed. (At the time when he was writing, there were more than a hundred capital offenses in England, and this number had soon increased to almost two hundred. The theft of any object of greater value than ten shillings was punishable by hanging.)
In its present state, Godwin wrote, society decrees that the majority of its citizens “should be kept in abject penury, rendered stupid with ignorance and disgustful with vice, perpetuated in nakedness and hunger, goaded to the commission of crimes, and made victims to the merciless laws which the rich have instituted to oppress them”.
But human behavior is produced by environment and education, Godwin pointed out. If the conditions of upbringing were improved, behavior would also improve. In fact, Godwin believed that men and women are subject to natural laws no less than the planets of Newton’s solar system. “In the life of every human”, Godwin wrote, “there is a chain of causes, generated in that eternity which preceded his birth, and going on in regular procession through the whole period of his existence, in consequence of which it was impossible for him to act in any instance otherwise than he has acted.”
The chain of causality in human affairs implies that vice and crime should be regarded with the same attitude with which we regard disease. The causes of poverty, ignorance, vice and crime should be removed. Human failings should be cured rather than punished. With this in mind, Godwin wrote, “our disapprobation of vice will be of the same nature as our disapprobation of an infectious distemper.”
With improved environment and education, humans will reach a higher moral level. But what is morality? Here Godwin draws heavily on his Christian background, especially on the moral principles of the Dissenting community. The Parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates the central principle of Christian ethics: We must love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves; but our neighbor is not necessarily a member of our immediate circle. He or she may be distant from us, in culture, in ethnic background or in geographical distance. Nevertheless, that person is still our neighbor, a member of the human family, and our duty to him or her is no less than our duty to those who are closest to us. It follows that narrow loyalties must be replaced or supplemented by loyalty to the interests of humanity as a whole.
Godwin predicted that in a future society, with the institution of war abolished, with a more equal distribution of property, and with the help of scientific improvements in agriculture and industry, much less labour would be needed to support life. Luxuries were used to maintain artificial distinctions between the classes of society but in the future, Godwin said, values would change; humans would live more simply, and their efforts would be devoted to self-fulfillment and to intellectual and moral improvement, rather than to securing material possessions.
Judging the benevolence of our actions is the responsibility of each individual conscience, Godwin says, not the responsibility of the State, and the individual must follow his or her conscience even if it conflicts with the dictates of the State. Each individual case should be judged by itself. If our institutions and laws meet the criteria of benevolence, justice and truth, we should give them our enthusiastic support; if not, we should struggle to change them. In giving personal judgement such a dominant role, Godwin anticipates the ideas of Thoreau, Tolstoy and Gandhi.
The exercise of individual judgment requires great honesty and objectivity. In order for the power of truth and reason to overcome prejudice and error, Godwin says, it is necessary for each person always to speak and act with complete sincerity. Even the degree of insincerity necessary for elegant manners is wrong in Godwin’s opinion.
Regarding the right to dispose of private property as one chooses, Godwin says:
“To whom does any article, suppose a loaf of bread, justly belong? I have an hundred loaves in my possession, and in the next street there is a poor man expiring with hunger, to whom one of these loaves would be a means of preserving his life. If I withhold this loaf from him, am I not unjust? If I impart it, am I not complying with what justice demands?”
In other words, according to Godwin, our duty to act for the benefit of humanity implies a sacrifice of our private rights as individuals. Private property is not really our own, to be used as we wish; it is held in trust, to be used where it will do the greatest amount of good for humanity as a whole.
Godwin also denies that several commonly admired virtues really are virtues. Keeping promises, he says, is not a virtue because at any given moment we have a duty to do the greatest possible good through our actions. If an act is good, we should do it because we believe it to be good, not because we have promised to do it; and a promise should not force us to perform an act which we believe to be bad. A virtuous person therefore does not make promises. Similarly, Godwin maintains that gratitude is a vice since it distorts our judgement of the benevolence of our actions. When he heard of Godwin’s doctrine on gratitude, Edmund Burke remarked “I would save him from that vice by not doing him any service!”
Godwin saw the system of promises, loyalty, and gratitude as a means by which individual judgement can be suspended and tyranny maintained. People can be forced to act against their consciences because of promises which they have made or services which they have received. An example of this is the suspension of private ethical judgement which follows a soldier’s induction into an army. We should perform an act, Godwin maintains, not because of fear of punishment or hope of reward or in return for money or favors that we have received, but rather because we believe the act to be of the highest benefit to humanity as a whole.
Many of our political institutions may be needed now, Godwin said, because of mankind’s present faults; but in the future, when humanity has reached a higher level of perfection, they will be needed less and less. The system of nation states might then be replaced by a loose federation of small communities, within each of which problems could be resolved by face-to-face discussion. Regarding this future ideal system, Godwin writes:
“It is earnestly to be desired that each man was wise enough to govern himself without the interference of any compulsory restraint; and since government in its best state is an evil, the object principally to be aimed at is, that we should have as little of it as the general peace of human society will permit.”
“Political Justice” is a vision or prophesy of what human life might be like, not in the world as it is but in an ideal world of the future. As Godwin’s disciple, Percy Bysshe Shelley, later expressed it in his verse-drama “Prometheus Unbound”:
“The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains\
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man\
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself; just, gentle, wise…
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself; just, gentle, wise…”
Enormous Instant Fame -The New Philosophy
The quarto edition of Political Justice was a best seller and the book was soon republished in a less expensive octavo edition which sold equally well. It was pirated in Ireland, Scotland, and America and hundreds of groups of workers who could not a_ord to buy the book individually bought joint copies, which then circulated among the subscribers or were read aloud to groups.
The doctrines advocated in Political Justice were soon being called the `New Philosophy’.
Godwin became famous overnight: “I was nowhere a stranger”, he wrote later, “..I was everywhere received with curiosity and kindness. If temporary fame ever was an object worthy to be coveted by the human mind, I certainly obtained it in a degree that has seldom been exceeded.”
Godwin’s friend, the essayist William Hazlitt, described this sudden burst of fame in the following words:
“… he blazed as a sun in the firmament of reputation; no-one was more talked of, more looked up to, more sought after, and wherever liberty, truth, justice was the theme, his name was not far off”
William Wordsworth read “Political Justice” in 1794 and was greatly influenced by it. Between February and August 1795, Wordsworth met Godwin seven times for long private discussions. Much of Wordsworth’s writing from the Great Decade shows the mark of Godwin’s ideas, as can be seen, for example in the following lines from “The Prelude”:
“How glorious! in self-knowledge and self-rule,
To look through all the frailties of the world,
And, with a resolute mastery shaking off
Infirmities of nature, time and place,
Build social upon personal Liberty,
Which, to the blind restraints of general laws
Superior, magisterially adopts
One guide, the light of circumstances, flashed\
Upon an independent intellect,”
Things as They Are
On 26 May 1794, Godwin added to his already great reputation by publishing a powerful and original psychological novel, “Things as They Are”, later renamed “Caleb Williams”. Godwin’s purpose in writing this novel was to illustrate some of the themes of “Political Justice” and to bring his ideas to readers who might not be directly interested in philosophy.
In “Caleb Williams”, Godwin makes several literary innovations which were to influence such writers as Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Balzac, and Victor Hugo. “Caleb Williams” is, in fact, the ancestor of the modern thriller and detective story.
A Few Hangings Needed to Cast a Chill over Discussion
Godwin had written a Preface to “Caleb Williams” in which he said: “The question now afloat in the world respecting THINGS AS THEY ARE, is the most interesting which can be presented to the human mind. While one party pleads for reformation and change, the other extols in the warmest terms the existing constitution of society… It is now known to philosophers that the spirit and character of a government intrudes itself into every rank of society. But this is a truth highly worthy to be communicated to persons whom books of philosophy and science are never likely to reach. Accordingly it was proposed in the invention of the following work, to comprehend, as far as the progressive nature of a single story would allow, a general review of the modes of domestic and unrecorded tyranny.”
This Preface was never printed, because Godwin’s publisher, Crosby, was afraid of prosecution. In fact, the publication of “Caleb Williams” coincided with a decision by Pitt’s government that a few hangings were needed in order to cast a chill on public discussion of political reform. On the day of publication, orders went out for the arrest of Godwin’s friends in the reform movement, Hardy, Thelwall, and Horne Tooke. Although the radical leaders were arrested in May, habeas corpus was suspended, and it was not until 2 October 1794 that a charge was brought against them. A few days later, on a trip to Warwickshire, Godwin heard that his closest friend, Thomas Holcroft, also had been arrested.
Godwin hurried back to London and locked himself in his home, studying the charges that had been brought by Lord Chief Justice Eyre against Holcroft and the others. The charge was high treason and the law under which Eyre brought this charge had been passed in the fourteenth century, during the reign of Edward III. It defined high treason as `any act which could ‘compass or imagine the Death of a King’. The penalty for this offense was to be hanged by the neck, to be cut down while still living, to be disembowelled, to have one’s bowels burnt before one’s eyes, and then to be beheaded and quartered. It was rumored that as soon as the 12 prisoners were convicted, 800 further arrest warrants were ready to go out and Godwin’s own name might well have been among them.
Godwin soon saw that Eyre’s argument involved an unprecedented broadening of the definition of high treason. Essentially Eyre was arguing that the actions of the accused might cause events in England to follow the same course as in France, where Louis XVI had recently been executed. On 21 October Godwin published an anonymous article in the Morning Chronicle entitled “Cursory Strictures on the Charge Delivered by Lord Chief Justice Eyre”. It was a carefully written legal argument, completely different in style from anything that Godwin had written previously. In this article, he argued that in broadening the interpretation of high treason without precedent, Eyre was in effect creating a new law and judging the prisoners ex post facto. It was especially necessary for high treason to have a narrow definition, Godwin pointed out, since a broad definition could lead to the abridgement of all English civil liberties.
After the publication of “Cursory Strictures” it became clear to everyone that Eyre’s charge lay outside the boundary of the law and that it would probably not be upheld. Nevertheless, the atmosphere in the courtroom was tense as the jury returned its verdicts. As soon as Holcroft was acquitted, he left the dock and went to sit beside Godwin. The artist, Sir Thomas Lawrence, made a sketch of the two friends sitting side-by-side and waiting for the verdict on the other prisoners, Godwin’s bending and contemplative figure contrasting with Holcroft’s upright and defiant stance. In the end, all charges were dropped.
William and Mary
Soon after these dramatic events, William Godwin met Mary Wollstonecraft for a second time. On 8 January 1796, Mary Hayes, a friend and admirer of Mary Wollstonecraft, invited her to tea together with William Godwin and Thomas Holcroft. The tea was a success, and Godwin found Mary Wollstonecraft very much changed from the carelessly dressed and irritating woman who had dominated the conversation at Johnson’s dinner when he had wanted to hear Thomas Paine. Now, several years later, she had become much more attractive. Mary’s beauty and her charming, intelligent conversation won Godwin’s heart. He also greatly admired her recently published book,
“Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark”.
On 13 February, Godwin called on Mary Wollstonecraft, but she was not at home. On 14 April, she broke the social rules of the time and returned his call. During the next few months they often appeared together at literary and artistic dinners in London. They had many friends in common and both of them had many admirers of the opposite sex. Godwin was not a tall man and his nose was rather large. On the other hand, he had fine eyes and a high, impressive brow; his manners had become more gallant and fame is a powerful aphrodisiac. A number of attractive intellectual women fluttered around him. Mary’s admirers included the poet Robert Southey, the distinguished artist John Opie, and Godwin’s closest friend, Thomas Holcroft.
Gradually, during the spring and summer of 1796, the friendship between Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin deepened into love. Outwardly, nothing was changed. Both partners were hard at work, Godwin preparing a new edition of {\em Political Justice} and Mary writing a novel, “The Wrongs of Woman”. Like “Caleb Williams”, Mary’s novel was designed to illustrate the themes of the New Philosophy. They kept their relationship a secret, continued to live separately, and continued to meet their friends as before, but they had become lovers. For Godwin, this was the first real love affair of his life and he was at first very awkward, afraid of the strong emotions he was experiencing. Mary tenderly and good-humouredly guided him through his difficulties.
As winter approached, a crisis occurred: Johnson, Mary’s publisher, insisted that she should settle her debts and refused to give her more credit. At the same time, Mary realized that she was pregnant. She experienced some of the harsh penalties with which English society of that time punished unwed mothers. Many of her former friends had dropped away. Her remaining friends called her Mrs Imlay, maintaining the fiction that she had been legally married; but with the new baby no such cover would be possible. Johnson offered a solution: He knew of a rich but somewhat elderly admirer who was willing to solve all of Mary’s problems, both financial and social, by marrying her. Mary felt insulted and would not hear of this solution. In her books she had often denounced marriage for the sake of property as `legalized prostitution’. Instead, she asked Godwin to marry her. He did this in spite of his own disapproval of the institution of marriage as practised at that time in Europe, an institution which he had called `the most odious of all monopolies’.
Godwin and Mary were in fact extremely happy together. They were not at all alike: He relied on reason, while she placed more trust in her emotions. These differences meant that each revealed a new world for the other. For Godwin, Mary opened a world of strong feelings; and he acquired from her a taste for the writings of Rousseau, whom she called `the Prometheus of Sentiment’. Godwin was never the same again. All his later novels and books of philosophy were to stress the importance of domestic affections and sensitivity to the force of emotion.
Mary’s Tragic Death in Childbirth
Mary’s baby was due at the end of August 1797. She insisted that no doctor was needed, only a midwife. After a long labour, she gave birth to a baby girl at 11 p.m. and Godwin was overjoyed that all had gone well. However, at 2 a.m. the midwife warned Godwin that his wife was still in danger, since the afterbirth had not yet appeared. A doctor was sent for; and following the accepted medical practice of the time, he removed the afterbirth surgically. Mary at first seemed to be recovering well; but in a few days it became clear that she was fatally ill with an infection, very likely the result of the operation to remove the afterbirth. On 10 September she died, brave and affectionate to the end. In her last words, she spoke of Godwin as “the kindest, best man in the world”.
Godwin was left heartbroken by Mary’s death. In a letter to Holcroft he wrote:
“My wife is now dead. I firmly believe that there does not exist her equal in the world. I know from experience that we were formed to make each other happy. I have not the least expectation that I can now ever know happiness again”. In his sorrow, he sat rereading Mary’s books and letters, seeming to hear her voice again through the words that she had written.
Soon Godwin found consolation for his grief by editing the unpublished works of his dead wife and by writing her biography. Believing strongly in the principle of absolute honesty, he tried to describe her life and work as simply and as accurately as he could, not hiding her human weaknesses, but at the same time doing full justice to her stature as a great pioneer of woman’s rights. He included her letters to Imlay, and a description of an affair between Mary and the Swiss artist Fuseli, which had taken place before her departure for France.
On 29 January 1798, Johnson published Godwin’s “Memoirs of the Author of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman”, together with four small volumes of Mary’s posthumous works, including her unfinished novel, “The Wrongs of Woman”.
The Wave of Hope Crashes Down
Godwin’s moving and honest portrait of his wife is one of his most enduring and readable books but its honesty made him vulnerable to attacks of a new kind. The European Magazine, for example, said that it would be read “with disgust by every female who has any pretensions to delicacy; with detestation by everyone attached to the interests of religion and morality; and with indignation by any one who might feel any regard for the unhappy woman, whose frailties should have been buried in oblivion”.
This reaction against the “Memoirs” was part of a much more general reaction against all liberal ideas. In 1798, Napoleon’s armies were victorious on the continent, and the French were massing their forces for an invasion of England. Napoleon believed that the ordinary people of England would welcome him as a liberator and, in fact, the English government was facing a mutiny in its own navy, massive riots, and rebellion in Ireland. The Establishment was fighting for its life and was not in the mood to make fine distinctions about whether the blows that it struck were above or below the belt. Pitt and Grenville had already introduced the `Gagging Acts’, which effectively put an end to freedom of speech and assembly. The government now sponsored, by means of a secret subsidy, the “Anti-Jacobin Review”, a periodical which savagely attacked all of the leading liberals in turn, including both William and Mary.
Godwin had been carried to great heights by the wave of hope which accompanied the French Revolution; and as the wave crashed he was carried down with it. Despite the abuse and ridicule which were increasingly heaped upon him, he maintained a philosophical attitude, confident that he had already made a permanent contribution to the idea of human progress. His ideas, and those of his pioneering wife Mary Wollstonecraft, can speak to our present dangerous situation.
William Godwin, believer in liberty, individual judgement, absolute honesty and unselfish service to humanity as a whole, we need your voice today!
Together
Contents:
1 Saint Francis of Assisi
2 William Blake
3 Thomas Paine
4 Thomas Jefferson
5 Mary Wollstonecraft
6 William Godwin
7 The Marquis de Condorcet
8 Thomas Robert Malthus
9 Percy Bysshe Shelley
10 Robert Owen
11 John Stuart Mill
12 Henry David Thoreau
13 Count Leo Tolstoy
14 Mahatma Gandhi
15 Martin Luther King
16 Wilfred Owen
17 Albert Einstein
18 Edna St. Vincent Millay
19 Bertha von Suttner
20 George Orwell
21 Helen Keller
22 We need their voices, and yours!
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John Scales Avery, Ph.D., who was part of a group that shared the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for their work in organizing the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and Associate Professor Emeritus at the H.C. Ørsted Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is chairman of both the Danish National Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy and received his training in theoretical physics and theoretical chemistry at M.I.T., the University of Chicago and the University of London. He is the author of numerous books and articles both on scientific topics and on broader social questions. His most recent books are Information Theory and Evolution and Civilization’s Crisis in the 21st Century (pdf).
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 31 Jul 2017.
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