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AN ESSAY ON
CHAP. XIII.
Error of Mr. Godwin in considering man too much in the light of a being merely rational.—In the compound being, man, the passions will always act as disturbing forces in the decisions of the understanding.—Reasonings of Mr. Godwin on the subject of coercion.—Some truths of a nature not to be communicated from one man to another.
In the chapter which I have been examining, Mr. Godwin professes to consider the objection to his system of equality from the principle of population. It has appeared I think clearly, that he is greatly erroneous in his statement of the distance of this difficulty; and that instead of myriads of centuries, it is really not thirty years, or even thirty days, distant from us. The supposition of the approach of man to immortality on earth, is certainly not of a kind to soften the difficulty. The only ar-
gument,
