CHAPTER 15

Models too perfect may sometimes rather impede than promote improvement—­Mr Godwin’s essay on ’Avarice and Profusion’—­ Impossibility of dividing the necessary labour of a society amicably among all—­Invectives against labour may produce present evil, with little or no chance of producing future good—­An accession to the mass of agricultural labour must always be an advantage to the labourer.

Mr Godwin in the preface to his Enquirer, drops a few expressions which seem to hint at some change in his opinions since he wrote the Political Justice; and as this is a work now of some years standing, I should certainly think that I had been arguing against opinions which the author had himself seen reason to alter, but that in some of the essays of the Enquirer, Mr Godwin’s peculiar mode of thinking appears in as striking a light as ever.

It has been frequently observed that though we cannot hope to reach perfection in any thing, yet that it must always be advantageous to us to place before our eyes the most perfect models.  This observation has a plausible appearance, but is very far from being generally true.  I even doubt its truth in one of the most obvious exemplifications that would occur.  I doubt whether a very young painter would receive so much benefit, from an attempt to copy a highly finished and perfect picture, as from copying one where the outlines were more strongly marked and the manner of laying on the colours was more easily discoverable.  But in cases where the perfection of the model is a perfection of a different and superior nature from that towards which we should naturally advance, we shall not always fail in making any progress towards it, but we shall in all probability impede the progress which we might have expected to make had we not fixed our eyes upon so perfect a model.  A highly intellectual being, exempt from the infirm calls of hunger or sleep, is undoubtedly a much more perfect existence than man, but were man to attempt to copy such a model, he would not only fail in making any advances towards it; but by unwisely straining to imitate what was inimitable, he would probably destroy the little intellect which he was endeavouring to improve.

The form and structure of society which Mr Godwin describes is as essentially distinct from any forms of society which have hitherto prevailed in the world as a being that can live without food or sleep is from a man.  By improving society in its present form, we are making no more advances towards such a state of things as he pictures than we should make approaches towards a line, with regard to which we were walking parallel.  The question, therefore, is whether, by looking to such a form of society as our polar star, we are likely to advance or retard the improvement of the human species?  Mr Godwin appears to me to have decided this question against himself in his essay on ’Avarice and Profusion’ in the Enquirer.