symmetry, or harmony of colouring.

Were it of consequence to improve pinks and carnations,
though we could have no hope of raising them as large as
cabbages, we might undoubtedly expect, by successive efforts, to
obtain more beautiful specimens than we at present possess. No
person can deny the importance of improving the happiness of the
human species. Every the least advance in this respect is highly
valuable. But an experiment with the human race is not like an
experiment upon inanimate objects. The bursting of a flower may
be a trifle. Another will soon succeed it. But the bursting of
the bonds of society is such a separation of parts as cannot take
place without giving the most acute pain to thousands: and a long
time may elapse, and much misery may be endured, before the wound
grows up again.

As the five propositions which I have been examining may be
considered as the corner stones of Mr Godwin's fanciful
structure, and, indeed, as expressing the aim and bent of his
whole work, however excellent much of his detached reasoning may
be, he must be considered as having failed in the great object of
his undertaking. Besides the difficulties arising from the
compound nature of man, which he has by no means sufficiently
smoothed, the principal argument against the perfectibility of
man and society remains whole and unimpaired from any thing that
he has advanced. And as far as I can trust my own judgement, this
argument appears to be conclusive, not only against the
perfectibility of man, in the enlarged sense in which Mr Godwin
understands the term, but against any very marked and striking
change for the better, in the form and structure of general