e. As a husband and a father he revised his creed, and devoted
no small part of his later literary activity to the work of preaching
the claims of those "private affections" which he had scouted as an
elderly youth of forty. The re-adjustment in his theory was so simple,
that only a great philosopher could have failed to make it sooner.
Justice requires me to use all my powers to contribute to the sum of
human benefit. But as regards opportunity, I am not equally situated
towards all my fellows. By devoting myself more particularly to wife or
child with an exclusive affection which is not in the abstract
altogether reasonable, I may do more for the general good than I could
achieve by a severely impartial benevolence.

He developed this view first in his _Memoir of Mary Wollstonecraft_,
then in the preface to _St. Leon_, and finally in the pamphlet which
answered Mackintosh and Dr. Parr. The man who would be "the best moral
economist of his time" will use much of it to seek "the advantage and
content of those with whom he has most frequent intercourse," and this
not merely from calculation, but from affection. "I ought not only in
ordinary cases to provide for my wife and children, my brothers and
relations before I provide for strangers, but it would be well that my
doing so should arise from the operation of those private and domestic
affections by which through all ages of the world the conduct of mankind
has been excited and directed."

The recantation is sufficiently frank. The family, dissipated in
_Political Justice_ by the explosive charities of "universal
benevolence," is now happily re-united. Godwin maintains, however, that
his moral theory and his political superstructure stands intact, and the
claim is not unreasonable. He retains his criterion of justice and
utility, though he has seen better how to apply it. The duty of
universal benevolence is still paramount; the end of contributing to the
general good still sovereign, and a reasoned virtue is still to be
recommended in preference to instinctive goodness, even where their
results are commonly the same. "The crown of a virtuous character
consists in a very frequent and very energetic recollection of the
criterion by which all his actions are to be tried.... The person who
has been well instructed and accomplished in the great schools of human
experience has passions and affections like other men. But he is aware
that all these affections tend to excess,