reckons that half an hour's toil from every man daily
will suffice to produce the necessities of life. He modified this
sanguine estimate in a later essay (_The Enquirer_) to two hours. He
dismisses all objections based on the sloth or selfishness of human
nature, by the simple answer that this happy state of things will not be
realised until human nature has been reformed. Need individuality
suffer? It need fear only the restraint imposed by candid public
opinion. That will not be irksome, because it will be frank. We shrink
from it to-day, only because it takes the form of clandestine scandal
and backbiting. Godwin contemplates no Spartan plan of common labour or
common meals. "Everything understood by the term co-operation is in some
sense an evil." To be sure, it may be indispensable in order to cut a
canal or navigate a ship. But mechanical invention will gradually make
it unnecessary. The Spartans used slaves. We shall make machines our
helots. Indeed, so odious is co-operation to a free mind, that Godwin
marvels that men can consent to play music in concert, or can demean
themselves to execute another man's compositions, while to act a part in
a play amounts almost to an offence against sincerity. Such
extravagances as this passage are amongst the most precious things in
_Political Justice_. Godwin was a fanatic of logic who warns us against
his individualist premises by pressing them to a fantastic conclusion.

The sketch of the ideal community concludes with a demolition of the
family. Cohabitation, he argued, is in itself an evil. It melts opinions
to a common mould, and destroys the fortitude of the individual. The
wishes of two people who live together can never wholly coincide. Hence
follow thwartings of the will, bickering and misery. No man is always
cheerful and kind. We manage to correct a stranger with urbanity and
good humour. Only when the intercourse is too close and unremitted do we
degenerate into surliness and invective. In an earlier chapter Godwin
had formulated a general objection to all promises, which reminds us of
Tolstoy's sermons from the same individualistic standpoint on the text,
"Swear not at all." Every conceivable mode of action has its tendency to
benefit or injure mankind. I am bound in duty to one course of action in
every emergency--the course most conducive to the general welfare. Why,
then, should I bind myself by a promise? If my promise contradicts my
duty it is immoral, if