Mr Godwin considers man too much in the light of a being merely intellectual.  This error, at least such I conceive it to be, pervades his whole work and mixes itself with all his reasonings.  The voluntary actions of men may originate in their opinions, but these opinions will be very differently modified in creatures compounded of a rational faculty and corporal propensities from what they would be in beings wholly intellectual.  Mr Godwin, in proving that sound reasoning and truth are capable of being adequately communicated, examines the proposition first practically, and then adds, ’Such is the appearance which this proposition assumes, when examined in a loose and practical view.  In strict consideration it will not admit of debate.  Man is a rational being, etc.’ (Bk.  I, ch. 5; in the third edition Vol.  I, p. 88).  So far from calling this a strict consideration of the subject, I own I should call it the loosest, and most erroneous, way possible, of considering it.  It is the calculating the velocity of a falling body in vacuo, and persisting in it, that it would be the same through whatever resisting mediums it might fall.  This was not Newton’s mode of philosophizing.  Very few general propositions are just in application to a particular subject.  The moon is not kept in her orbit round the earth, nor the earth in her orbit round the sun, by a force that varies merely in the inverse ratio of the squares of the distances.  To make the general theory just in application to the revolutions of these bodies, it was necessary to calculate accurately the disturbing force of the sun upon the moon, and of the moon upon the earth; and till these disturbing forces were properly estimated, actual observations on the motions of these bodies would have proved that the theory was not accurately true.

I am willing to allow that every voluntary act is preceded by a decision of the mind, but it is strangely opposite to what I should conceive to be the just theory upon the subject, and a palpable contradiction to all experience, to say that the corporal propensities of man do not act very powerfully, as disturbing forces, in these decisions.  The question, therefore, does not merely depend upon whether a man may be made to understand a distinct proposition or be convinced by an unanswerable argument.  A truth may be brought home to his conviction as a rational being, though he may determine to act contrary to it, as a compound being.  The cravings of hunger, the love of liquor, the desire of possessing a beautiful woman, will urge men to actions, of the fatal consequences of which, to the general interests of society, they are perfectly well convinced, even at the very time they commit them.  Remove their bodily cravings, and they would not hesitate a moment in determining against such actions.  Ask them their opinion of the same conduct in another person, and they would immediately reprobate it.  But in their own case, and under all the circumstances of their situation with these bodily cravings, the decision of the compound being is different from the conviction of the rational being.