it agrees with it, it teaches me to do that from
a precarious and temporary motive which ought to be done from its
intrinsic recommendations. By promising we bind ourselves to learn
nothing from time, to make no use of knowledge to be acquired. Promises
depose us from a full use of our understanding, and are to be tolerated
only in the trivial engagements of our day-to-day existence. It follows
that marriage is an evil, for it is at once the closest form of
cohabitation, and the rashest of all promises. Two thoughtless and
romantic people, met in youth under circumstances full of delusion, have
bound themselves, not by reason but by contract, to make the best, when
they discover their deception, of an irretrievable mistake. Its maxim
is, "If you have made a mistake, cherish it." So long as this
institution survives, "philanthropy will be crossed in a thousand ways,
and the still augmenting stream of abuse continue to flow."

Godwin has little fear of lust or license. Men will, on the whole,
continue to prefer one partner, and friendship will refine the grossness
of sense. There are worse evils than open and avowed inconstancy--the
loathsome combination of deceitful intrigue with the selfish monopoly
of property. That a child should know its father is no great matter, for
I ought not in reason to prefer one human being to another because he is
"mine." The mother will care for the child with the spontaneous help of
her neighbours. As to the business of supplying children with food and
clothing, "these would easily find their true level and spontaneously
flow from the quarter in which they abounded to the quarter that was
deficient." There must be no barter or exchange, but only giving from
pure benevolence without the prospect of reciprocal advantage.

The picture of this easy-going Utopia, in which something will always
turn up for nobody's child, concludes with two sections which exhibit in
nice juxtaposition the extravagance and the prudence of Godwin. We may
look forward to great physical changes. We shall acquire an empire over
our bodies, and may succeed in making even our reflex notions conscious.
We must get rid of sleep, one of the most conspicuous infirmities of the
human frame. Life can be prolonged by intellect. We are sick and we die
because in a certain sense we consent to suffer these accidents. When
the limit of population is reached, men will refuse to propagate
themselves further. Society will be a peopl