laws would be unnecessary. It must be observed here that Godwin could
not then take into consideration the laws of heredity, now better
understood; how the criminal has not only the weight of bad education
and surroundings against him, but also how the very formation of the
head is in certain cases an almost insuperable evil. He considered
many of the laws relating to property, marriage, &c., unnecessary, as
people guided by reason would not, for instance, wish for wealth at
the expense of starving brethren. Far in the distance as the
realisation of this doctrine may seem, it should still be remembered
that, as with each physical discovery, the man of genius must foresee.
As Columbus imagined land where he found America; as a planet is fixed
by the astronomer before the telescope has revealed it to his mortal
eye; so in the world of psychology and morals it is necessary to point
out the aim to be attained before human nature has reached those
divine qualifications which are only shadowed forth here and there by
more than usually elevated natures. In fact Godwin, who sympathised
entirely with the theories of the French Revolution, and even
surpassed French ideas on most subjects, disapproved of the immediate
carrying out of these ideas and views; he wished for preaching and
reasoning till people should gradually become convinced of the truth,
and the rich should be as ready to give as the poor to receive. Even
in the matter of marriage, though strongly opposed to it personally
(on philosophical grounds, not from the ordinary trite reasoning
against it), he yielded his opinion to the claim of individual justice
towards the woman whom he came to love with an undying affection, and
for whom, fortunately for his theories, he needed not to set aside the
impulse of affection for that of justice; and these remarks bring us
again to the happy time in the lives of Godwin and Mary
Wollstonecraft, when friendship melted into love, and they were
married shortly afterwards, in March 1797, at old St. Pancras Church,