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AN ESSAY ON THE
CHAP. XI.
Mr Godwin's conjecture concerning the future extinction of the passion between the sexes.—Little apparent grounds for such a conjecture.—Passion of love not inconsistent either with reason or virtue.
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 whichthey
