An Uneasy Affair: William Godwin and English Radicalism, 1793-1797

Chapter 2: The Notion of Human Perfectibility and the Critique of Government

When Godwin set out to write the Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, his concern was not with the abstract rights of individuals, of which he felt rather too much had been made already, but with the moral basis and moral effects of different forms of government. He takes it as proven beyond question, by Locke and others, that there are no innate principles, that we are at birth neither virtuous nor vicious. It is our circumstances -- environment, experience, education -- that make us what we are. Chief amongst these are the political institutions through which governments seek to regulate our conduct. Godwin sought to discover which form of government will do most to encourage human progress and the eventual attainment of political justice. Hence, the keystone to an understanding and appreciation of Godwin's philosophic anarchism is to be found in his extreme assertion of human progress and man's potential for perfectibility.

Godwin knew that all governments counteract individual improvement. This was partly because the sheer inertia of institutions act as a brake on progress by giving permanence to man's errors. But this was also because any attempt by the government to interfere positively is bound to be self-defeating. If governments seek to encourage men to virtue by rewarding good conduct they simply change the nature of men's conduct. Men are in danger of doing what is right not because it is right and truthful, but because they stand to gain from it. For Godwin, such men act not from benevolence but from self-interest. Nor can governments promote progress by setting before men what is true and what is false. The appeal to authority, that the government has told men what is right and wrong, can never demonstrate to men that something is so -- truth can be ascertained only through the exercise of reason. Thus, for Godwin, human perfectibility depends upon the ability of every man to think for himself.

Intellectual candor, benevolence and sincerity, rational discourse, truth and enquiry are the essential features of human nature, according to Godwin. All men are endowed at birth with the faculty of reason, that is, the capacity to give order to the anarchy of sense impressions. Godwin followed the tradition of John Locke by rejecting the notion of innate ideas implicit in the philosophy of Descartes. All ideas are derived from experience -- there are no innate ideas of morality. The mind of man is simply and exclusively the product of sensations linked together by an association of ideas and Godwin, the faithful disciple of Locke, Hartley and Helvetius, reveals his intellectual debt to Locke's epistemology in the analysis of mind in Political Justice:

We know nothing of the substance or substratum of matter or of that which is the recipient of thought and perception. We do not even know that the idea annexed to the word substance is correct, or has any counterpart in the reality of existence. But, if there be any one thing that we know more certainly than another, it is the existence of our own thoughts, perceptions or sensations . . . and that they are ordinarily linked together, so as to produce the complex notion of unity or personal identity. Now it is this series of thoughts thus linked together, without considering whether they reside in any or what substratum that is most aptly expressed by the term mind.[1]

Godwin was ultimately concerned with the historical record of political society. Why was it, he asked himself, that the history of man was little more than the record of crime and war? To which he replies that the characters of men originate in their external circumstances.

The actions and dispositions of men are not the offspring of any original bias that they bring into the world in favour of one sentiment or character rather than another, but flow entirely from the operation of circumstances and events acting upon a faculty of receiving sensible impressions.[2]

All men are passive beings at birth, receiving an abundance of sensations from the external world of nature. The environment of man gives to him his outward expression. This assumption was by no means a novel idea, yet it permitted Godwin to assert that changing the environment would also modify human behavior. Thus, if English society in the 1790s was out of joint it was government which was responsible:

As long as parents and teachers in general shall fall under the established rule, it is clear that politics and modes of government will educate and infect us all. They poison our minds, before we can resist, or so much as suspect their malignity. Like the barbarous directors of the Eastern seraglios, they deprive us of our vitality, and fit us for their despicable employment from the cradle.[3]

Government, especially in the context of England in the 1790s, does not promote the improvement of mankind, rather, it dupes men to believe that all is well when the situation is quite the opposite. Only through the operation of the understanding can men improve their condition.

This is so because the understanding can calculate certain actions as productive or non-productive of happiness or pleasure: 

Actions therefore which are preceded by a judgment 'this is good,' or 'this is desirable,' originate in the state of judgment or opinion upon that subject. It may happen that the opinion may be exceedingly fugitive; it may have been preceded by adversion and followed by remorse; but it was unquestionably the opinion of the mind the instant in which the action commenced.[4]

It follows, then, that error in outward action is nothing more than a mistake on the part of an individual in consideration of his or her own interests. Virtue, for Godwin, consists of the constant and truthful calculation of individual interests in relation to self and society. For only truth will expose vice, error and falsehood, and it is truth which shall supply the means to attain the end of social and political progress. Thus, "the proper method for hastening the decline of error, and producing uniformity of judgment, is not by brute force, by laws, or by imitation; but, on the contrary, by exciting every man to think for himself."[5] All men would see and judge rightly if it were not for the ignorance or the particular passions and interests that blind their judgments, these faults being the result of a poor education or the influence of vested interests alien to man. Everyone is capable of discovering the truth if it is only presented in the correct manner. It is truth which ought to be the touchstone of human existence, not the "political superintendence of opinion" which is so characteristic of political society.

Sound reasoning and truth, when adequately communicated, must always be victorious over error: Sound reasoning and truth are capable of being so communicated: Truth is omnipotent: The vices and moral weakness of man are not invincible: Man is perfectible, or in other words capable of perpetual improvement.[6]

It is this notion of the indefinite perfectibility of man which has received the most abuse from Godwin's critics. In "deifying the pure intellect" Godwin was over-stepping the bounds of human possibility.[7] But his theory of human perfectibility was concerned with those universal principles of human nature and not with the real conditions of English society in the 1790s. For Godwin, there is little room for skepticism regarding the ultimate omnipotence of truth -- perfectibility depends upon faith and the will to believe that man can become the master of his life. "Truth is the pebble in the lake; and, however slowly, in the present case, the circles will succeed each other, they will infallibly go on, till they overspread the surface."[8] In his Sketch for an Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, published in 1793, the French philosopher Condorcet also shared Godwin's faith in the potential perfectibility of man. But, writes J. B. Bury, Condorcet had "at least sought to connect his picture of the future with a reasoned survey of the past, and to find a chain of connection, but the perfectibility of Godwin hung in the air, supported only by an abstract theory of the nature of man."[9] But Godwin avoided discussion of natural man in the state of nature and was unwilling to follow social contract theorists like Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Rousseau because the social contract "seeks to disguise the destruction of individual autonomy and self-determination in the form of an assertion of consent as the foundation of government."[10] The notion of an ahistorical man entering society by consent was for Godwin directly opposed to his belief in the utility of private judgment. What Godwin wished to demonstrate in his account of human nature was that the human will was sovereign while men were simultaneously creatures of necessity, the products of conditions external to them. Because man can control his life through his opinions, change is eternal, all is in flux, and man is constantly perfecting his moral and intellectual capacities. Leslie Stephen, one of Godwin's most hostile nineteenth century critics, wrote that:

in his haste to make man a reasonable creature, [Godwin] assumes that he is potentially omniscient, and therefore, capable, like the Divine Being, of acting without reference for those immediate maxims which necessarily imply some admixture of error. He thus quietly passes over, as an unimportant exception, what is really a vital condition of the problem -- namely, the limited capacity of man. A perfect being could dispense with rules, for to a perfect being every remote consequence in an indefinite chain would be intuitively evident; therefore, a perfectible being may dispense with rules.[11]

Godwin had indeed carried his assumptions to an extreme, but the notion that the voluntary acts of men originate in their opinions gave him cause for possibility of hope in the human condition. It was this conclusion which allowed him to develop the idea of the inherent imposture and fallacy of all government. Truth derived through the freedom of opinion required not merely the right to the freedom of speech, but the specific duty of all men to express the truth about themselves, society and government. Godwin might wonder whether the expression of truth will occur at too costly a price, but he finally concludes that the benefits produced will ensure man's moral and intellectual progress.

Is this the genuine state of man? Is this a condition so desirable, that we should be anxious to entail it upon posterity forever? Is it high treason to enquire whether it may be meliorated? Are we sure, that every change from such a situation of things, is severely to be deprecated? Is it not worth while, to suffer that experiment, which shall consist in a gradual, and almost insensible, abolition of such mischievous institutions?[12]

It was government and its institutions which had created the bias and prejudice so characteristic of all men in civilized society. Above all, Godwin saw in the mass of people of his own day a life characterized by human indifference, intolerance and egoism. Men no longer recognized their fellows as individuals with their own opinions and talents. Rather, they saw them in terms of broad generalities -- as tenant, laborer or landowning aristocrat. Men ought to deal with one another according to the principles of disinterested benevolence. Instead, "every man eyes his neighbor, as if he expected to receive from him a secret wound."[13] Men have unfortunately become skillful in eluding the truth about others, and even themselves. Sadly, the basis for human existence has become one of fallacy and imposture. Indeed, Godwin discerned the alienation of man imminent in the society of his own day as did Rousseau before him. It was Godwin's task to rescue the individual from social conformity in order to produce, according to Michael Scrivener, the "transparency between self and others and what [Godwin] called 'self-approbation' or in psychological terms, becoming one's own father and authority."[14]

From his heritage of Rational Dissent, Godwin assimilated the belief that all problems could and must be solved through intellectual candor. It is his assumption that man's "prospects of melioration depend upon the progress of enquiry and the general advancement of knowledge."[15] Reason is not a passive thing inherent in the human mind. Rather, "every man should be urged to the performance of his duty, as much as possible, by the instigation of reason alone."[16] Reason, isolated from rational discourse, produces little social change. All men, according to Godwin, have the innate capacity to promote disinterested benevolence. If men would only treat each other according to the rubrics of justice and benevolence, moral and intellectual progress ought inevitably to follow. Contemplation and rational discourse imbued with the quality of benevolence are the twin features of human progress. "Truth dwells with contemplation. We can seldom make much progress in the business of disentangling error and delusion but in the sequestered privacy, or in the tranquil interchange of sentiments that takes place between two persons."[17] For Godwin, benevolence is ultimately productive of happiness and virtue. The more men are taught to practice benevolence in their relations with others, the more the general good is fostered -- men will take notice of the supreme intellectual and moral rewards of benevolent action and as a result will be "filled with harmony within; and the state of [their] thoughts [will be] uncommonly favourable to what we may venture to style the sublime emotions of tranquility."[18]

Human perfectibility depends upon the actions of men to promote benevolence. But because there is such a diversity in the conditions of human life, each individual must endeavor to aid in the improvement of all. For Godwin, ". . . everything may be trusted to the tranquil and wholesome progress of knowledge, and . . . the office of the enlightened friend of political justice, for the most part, consists in this only, a vigilant and perpetual endeavor to assist the progress."[19] This, Godwin assumes, will signal the "true equalization of mankind." It is benevolence which produces the genuine propensity of man to venerate knowledge among all men. For Godwin, it is non-coercive communication which will improve the growth of knowledge. Thus the reformers of society ought to follow the propensities of mankind toward benevolence, to communicate to man all genuine pleasures, to elevate men to true wisdom, and to absolve him, in the words of William Hazlitt, "from the gross and narrow ties of sense, custom, authority, private and local attachments, in order that he may devote himself to the boundless pursuit of universal benevolence."[20]

When Godwin considered the history of mankind and reviewed the course of civilization, he was immediately struck by the disturbing contrast between man's progressive achievements in science, art and philosophy and the miserable record of his moral life. Man's magnificent success in one sphere filled him with admiration and wonder -- inglorious failure in the other filled him with grief. Contemplating the contrast, Godwin asked himself whether such a disparity was inevitable. Fully imbued with an innate optimism characteristic of the Enlightenment tradition, Godwin emphasizes that "there is no science that is not capable of additions; there is no art that may not be carried to a still higher perfection. If this be true of all other sciences," he continues, "why not of morals? If this be true of all other arts, why not of social institutions?"[21] Since law and government were the brutal manipulators of the outward actions of men, it was government, Godwin emphatically claimed, which had to be annihilated in order to make moral and intellectual progress at all possible.

With what delight must every individual friend of mankind look forward to the auspicious period, the dissolution of political government, of that brute engine which has been the only perennial cause of the vices of mankind, and which . . . has mischiefs of various sorts incorporated with its substance, and not otherwise removable than by its utter annihilation.[22]

But if Godwin's ultimate conclusion would seem to embody a desire to overthrow the existing state, this would have been entirely at odds with both his notion of human perfectibility and his thoughts upon the nature of radical politics.

As vice is considered to be an error of the understanding, so virtue is a true judgment of the understanding, and true judgment may be approached in no other way than by the exercise of reason, by a careful weighing of evidence and by an internal conviction dictated by rational discourse. Furthermore, "the improvement of mankind rests upon nothing so essential as upon the habitual practice of candour, frankness, and sincerity."[23] Without this inward, personal disposition, a virtuous action is a hollow form without substance, while the habit of consulting authority rather than one's own understanding debilitates those faculties of mind upon which the exercise virtue depends. Even if it were wholly impossible for government to mistake error for truth, their publication and advocacy of what was felt to be true, unsupported by arguments and evidence, would be of little use. Merely telling people what was right was hardly conducive to moral and intellectual perfection. But far worse, it is also the function of government to compel the individual to abide by these principles through a system of laws. Coercion not only fails to produce virtue, it tends to destroy it. It corrupts the motive of the actions which it compels and debases human character. Yet, this sadly deficient view of human virtue under authority of a foreign power is also a sign of hope. "It incites us," writes Godwin, "to look for moral improvement of the species, not in the multiplying of regulations, but in their repeal. It teaches us, that truth and virtue, like commerce, will then flourish most, when least subjected to the mistaken guardianship of authority and laws."[24]

Even the best form of government is evil, for it systematically interferes with and reduces the propensities of human reason. It is in the nature of the free human mind perpetually to advance and to modify its early moral and intellectual conceptions in the light of later knowledge. But it is in the nature of government to crystallize the conceptions which it embodies, to maintain the existing order of things by coercion and propaganda, and to successfully hinder the moral and intellectual progress of the human race. A man is not morally improved, in Godwin's scheme, when, solely in order to avoid judicial penalties, he is coerced into preferring the interests of the community to his own interests. He acts morally only when he is intellectually convinced that, other things being equal, he must prefer the welfare of twenty men, to the welfare of one man, it being wholly irrelevant that the "one man" is himself. For Godwin

To express ourselves to all men with honesty and unreserve, and to administer justice without partiality, are principles which, when once thoroughly adopted, are in the highest degree prolific. They enlighten the understanding, give decision to the judgment, and strip misrepresentation of its speciousness.[25]

All forms of government are rejected by Godwin because their very existence is entirely at odds with human perfectibility. Aristocracy, monarchy and democracy are based upon fallacy and imposture. It makes no difference if they were the creation of the divine right of kings or the vested interests of property owners, or inspired by the vague belief in a primitive state of nature and the equally vague natural rights of man. Democracy was the political system most favored by Godwin. Yet it embodied principles which with political associations, factions and all cooperation in general were directly opposed to his conception of political justice. "The pretense of 'collective wisdom," which is at the base of political associations and factions, writes Godwin, "is among the most palpable of all imposture."[26]

Political associations take away each man's individuality and resolve his own unique understanding into one common mass. The molding of opinions which is to be found in the political party or faction does not produce the necessary diversity of opinion upon which the tenets of political justice depend for their existence. The entire progress of the human species which rests upon nothing less than the diversity of opinion produced through the unhindered use of reason is thus obstructed. What is even worse, the publications created by political associations are

perused, not to see whether what they contain is true or false, but that the reader may learn from them how he is to think upon the subjects which they treat. A sect is generated, and upon grounds not less irrational then those of the worst superstition that ever infested mankind.[27]

The vote in the democratic or parliamentary scheme of government also falls under Godwin's scrutiny and is equally to blame for the imposture of government. Debate and discussion lose their vitality in the vote -- it is an instance of forming words, based upon the preconceived notions of the participants which are then adapted to the multitude of men. So inconsistent is this "weighing of particles and adjusting commas," with Godwin's scheme, that falsehood is sure to follow. A piece of legislation is not assented to upon the grounds of political justice, but rather, "the whole is then wound up, with that flagrant insult upon all reason and justice, the deciding upon truth by the casting up of numbers."[28]

Political associations embodying the mere repetition of other men's ideas are void of intellectual proof and lack inner conviction. They do not produce enlightenment, but stagnation. When men associate to form a political faction their opinions congeal in a uniform mass because they fear being singled out by the rest for any individuality of opinion. For Godwin, nothing could be more absurd or injurious than this. Opinion is mistrusted, and the mainspring upon which political justice depends is cast into confusion. What is created is a group of bickering and insensitive individuals who cannot, therefore, arrive at an adequate solution to any problem.

All formal repetition of other men's ideas seems to be a scheme for imprisoning, for so long a time, the operations of our own mind. It borders perhaps, in this respect, upon a breach of sincerity, which requires that we should give immediate utterance to every useful and valuable idea that occurs.[29]

The thing most necessary to effect the improvement of morals in society was simply to speak the truth, to live according to the rules of political justice, of candor and sincerity. The chief obstacles to this improvement were, as has been shown, an authoritarian government and a genuine misconception of specifically human attributes. According to Godwin,

The thing most necessary is to remove all those restraints which prevent the human mind from attaining its genuine strength. Implicit faith, blind submission to authority, timid fear, a distrust of our powers, an inattention to our own importance and the good purposes we are able to effect, these are the chief obstacles to human improvement.[30]

The human mind must be roused to speak and act the truth. In order to effect this program of improvement, it is government and law which must be annihilated. Godwin is confident that this auspicious moment will indeed occur although mankind must understand it as liberation and not as anarchy.

The true supporters of government are the weak and uninformed, and not the wise. In proportion as weakness and ignorance shall diminish, the basis of government will also decay. This however is an event which ought not to be contemplated with alarm. A catastrophe of this description, would be the true euthanasia of government. If the annihilation of blind confidence and implicit opinion can at any time be effected, there will necessarily succeed in their place, an unforced concurrence of all in promoting the general welfare.[31]

But the "true euthanasia of government" was not to be dependent upon the efforts of political radicals such as John Thelwall of the London Corresponding Society. His biting rhetoric had done nothing to promote benevolence among the people. In fact, his emotional outbursts and clandestine activities had a negative effect. Instead of succeeding in the movement for parliamentary reform, the London Corresponding Society became illegal by the Combination Act of 1799. The change in society is to arrive slowly, as the public becomes more imbued with the lofty sentiments of benevolence.

Human perfectibility is to be attained by the parallel movements of the liberation of social institutions and the enlightenment of the human mind. A little more enlightenment and men will begin to liberate themselves from their irrational institutions. That degree of liberation will in turn make man more rational. The process continues indefinitely until an earthly paradise is achieved. By such a process of gradual, rational improvement, inspired by an enlightened few, men can finally become godlike, not only fearless and courageous, truthful, honest and intellectually advanced, but immortal. For Godwin, the old ambition to be God has re-established itself, for men are to become truly godlike beings.

This account of Godwin's notion of human perfectibility and his critique of government has necessarily been speculative. This is perhaps indicative of a thinker who at times is isolated from the mainstream of radical politics. Nonetheless it should also be seen within the wider parameters of late eighteenth century British liberalism. Godwin's certainty over man's imminent perfection has its place within the confines of the most progressive sector of the rising industrial bourgeoisie. This is not to suggest, however, that Godwin was a bourgeois ideologue. Rather, his notion of human perfectibility and critique of government were consistent with the aims of a class of men who saw the English government as too deficient to allow for the free development of man's talents. There were too many obstacles placed in the path of improvement, and it was these obstacles which most certainly had to be annihilated. Likewise, Godwin and his circle of intellectual comrades, condemned government and external authority, as opposed to the inner authority of self, as the enemy of intellectual and economic growth. According to H. N. Brailsford, no events could shake Godwin's faith in human perfectibility:

but it was the work of experience to reinforce all the native individualism of his confident and self-reliant temper, to harden into an extreme dogma that general belief in 'laissez-faire' which was the common property of most of the English progressives of his day, and to beget in him not merely a doubt in the efficacy of violent revolutions, but a dislike of all concerted political effort and the whole collective work of political associations.[32]

But this must not be construed to mean that Godwin wished solely to pursue a line of economic individualism in the face of government interference in the market place. Godwin, in his belief that nothing is beyond the power of man to control, took the ideology of "laissez-faire" to its extreme conclusion. For Godwin, this was to permit the creation of a social order which would be made increasingly simple rather than complex.

Godwin's economic and political liberalism is best expressed in the section on property in Political Justice. His theory of property is basically an amalgam of principles inherited from both Sandemanian Dissent and John Locke. It was also influenced by French Jacobin principles of property. What was inevitably produced was a theory of property which is extremely complex. For if we find an acceptance of the principles of private property, we simultaneously encounter a rigorous attack upon accumulation as productive of vice. Godwin, as to be expected from the preceding discussion, locates the evil of acquisition and accumulation in the nature of government itself. Yet before an examination of Godwin's theory of property can be undertaken, it is necessary to inquire into the relation between his notion of human perfectibility and his isolation from popular radicalism. For it is Godwin's distinctive rejection of popular politics which caused him to stand apart from the movement for parliamentary reform in the 1790s. 

[1] Godwin, Political Justice, 1:25-6.

[2] Ibid., 1:26-7.

[3] Ibid., 1:49-50.

[4] Ibid., 1:58.

[5] Ibid., 2:501.

[6] Ibid., 1:86.

[7] Leslie Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols. (New York, 1962), 2:228.

[8] Godwin, Political Justice, 2:78.

[9] J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress; An Inquiry Into its Growth and Origin (New York, 1955), p. 227.

[10] Clark, Philosophical Anarchism of Godwin, p. 157.

[11] Stephen, English Thought, 2:231.

[12] Godwin, Political Justice, 2:139.

[13] Ibid., 1:33.

[14] Scrivener, "Godwin's Philosophy Revaluated," p. 625.

[15] Godwin, Political Justice, 1:54.

[16] Ibid., 2:439.

[17] Ibid., 1:290.

[18] Ibid., 1:430.

[19] Ibid., 1:361-2.

[20] William Hazlitt, The Spirit of the Age or, Contemporary Portraits. 4th ed. (London, 1886), p. 27.

[21] Godwin, Political Justice, 1:118-9.

[22] Ibid., 2:212. A few pages earlier Godwin writes once annihilate the quackery of government, and the most homebred understanding might be strong enough to detect the artifices of the state juggler that would mislead him." Ibid., 2:208.

[23] Ibid., 1:204.

[24] Ibid., 2:232.

[25] Ibid., 2:120.

[26] Ibid., 2:206.

[27] Ibid., 2:288.

[28] Ibid., 2:204-5.

[29] Ibid., 2:504.

[30] Ibid., 2:119.

[31] Ibid., 1:238.

[32] Henry N. Brailsford, Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle (London, 1949), p. 49.