Thoughts on Man

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THOUGHTS ON MAN
HIS NATURE, PRODUCTIONS AND DISCOVERIES
INTERSPERSED WITH SOME PARTICULARS
RESPECTING THE AUTHOR
by
WILLIAM GODWIN

Oh, the blood more stirs
To rouse a lion, than to start a hare!

SHAKESPEARE

LONDON:
EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE.
1831.

PREFACE

In the ensuing volume I have attempted to give a defined and
permanent form to a variety of thoughts, which have occurred to
my mind in the course of thirty-four years, it being so long
since I published a volume, entitled, the Enquirer,--thoughts,
which, if they have presented themselves to other men, have, at
least so far as I am aware, never been given to the public
through the medium of the press. During a part of this period I
had remained to a considerable degree unoccupied in my character
of an author, and had delivered little to the press that bore my
name.--And I beg the reader to believe, that, since I entered in
1791 upon that which may be considered as my vocation in life, I
have scarcely in any instance contributed a page to any
periodical miscellany.

My mind has been constitutionally meditative, and I should not
have felt satisfied, if I had not set in order for publication
these special fruits of my meditations. I had entered upon a
certain career; and I held it for my duty not to abandon it.

One thing further I feel prompted to say. I have always regarded
it as my office to address myself to plain men, and in clear and
unambiguous terms. It has been my lot to have occasional
intercourse with some of those who consider themselves as
profound, who deliver their oracles in obscure phraseology, and
who make it their boast that few men can understand them, and
those few only through a process of abstract reflection, and by
means of unwearied application.

To this class of the oracular I certainly did not belong. I felt
that I had nothing to say, that it should be very difficult to
understand. I resolved, if I could help it, not to "darken
counsel by words without knowledge." This was my principle in
the Enquiry concerning Political Justice. And I had my reward.
I had a numerous audience of all classes, of every age, and of
either sex. The young and the fair did not feel deterred from
consulting my pages.

It may be that that book was published in a propitious season. I
am told that nothing coming from the press will now be welcomed,
unless it presents itself in the express form of amusement. He
who shall propose to himself for his principal end, to draw aside
in one particular or another the veil from the majesty of
intellectual or moral truth, must lay his account in being
received with little attention.

I have not been willing to believe this: and I publish my
speculations accordingly. I have aimed at a popular, and (if I
could reach it) an interesting style; and, if I am thrust aside
and disregarded, I shall console myself with believing that I
have not neglected what it was in my power to achieve.

One characteristic of the present publication will not fail to
offer itself to the most superficial reader. I know many men who
are misanthropes, and profess to look down with disdain on their
species. My creed is of an opposite character. All that we
observe that is best and most excellent in the intellectual
world, is man: and it is easy to perceive in many cases, that
the believer in mysteries does little more, than dress up his
deity in the choicest of human attributes and qualifications. I
have lived among, and I feel an ardent interest in and love for,
my brethren of mankind. This sentiment, which I regard with
complacency in my own breast, I would gladly cherish in others.
In such a cause I am well pleased to enrol myself a missionary.

February 15, 1831.

The particulars respecting the author, referred to in the
title-page, will be found principally in Essays VII, IX, XIV, and
XVIII.

CONTENTS

Essay.
I. Of Body and Mind. The Prologue
II. Of the Distribution of Talents
III. Of Intellectual Abortion
IV. Of the Durability of Human Achievements and Productions
V. Of the Rebelliousness of Man
VI. Of Human Innocence
VII. Of the Duration of Human Life
VIII. Of Human Vegetation
IX. Of Leisure
X. Of Imitation and Invention
XI. Of Self-Love and Benevolence
XII. Of the Liberty of Human Actions
XIII. Of Belief
XIV. Of Youth and Age
XV. Of Love and Friendship
XVI. Of Frankness and Reserve
XVII. Of Ballot
XVIII. Of Diffidence
XIX. Of Self Complacence
XX. Of Phrenology
XXI. Of Astronomy
XXII. Of the Material Universe
XXIII. Of Human Virtue. The Epilogue

THOUGHTS, &c.

ESSAY I.
OF BODY AND MIND.

THE PROLOGUE.

There is no subject that more frequently occupies the attention
of the contemplative than man: yet there are many circumstances
concerning him that we shall hardly admit to have been
sufficiently considered.

Familiarity breeds contempt. That which we see every day and
every hour, it is difficult for us to regard with admiration. To
almost every one of our stronger emotions novelty is a necessary
ingredient. The simple appetites of our nature may perhaps form
an exception. The appetite for food is perpetually renewed in a
healthy subject with scarcely any diminution and love, even the
most refined, being combined with one of our original impulses,
will sometimes for that reason withstand a thousand trials, and
perpetuate itself for years. In all other cases it is required,
that a fresh impulse should be given, that attention should anew
be excited, or we cannot admire. Things often seen pass feebly
before our senses, and scarcely awake the languid soul.

"Man is the most excellent and noble creature of the world, the
principal and mighty work of God, the wonder of nature, the
marvel of marvels[1]."

[1] Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 1.

Let us have regard to his corporeal structure. There is a
simplicity in it, that at first perhaps we slightly consider.
But how exactly is it fashioned for strength and agility! It is
in no way incumbered. It is like the marble when it comes out of
the hand of the consummate sculptor; every thing unnecessary is
carefully chiseled away; and the joints, the muscles, the
articulations, and the veins come out, clean and finished. It
has long ago been observed, that beauty, as well as virtue, is
the middle between all extremes: that nose which is neither
specially long, nor short, nor thick, nor thin, is the perfect
nose; and so of the rest. In like manner, when I speak of man
generally, I do not regard any aberrations of form, obesity, a
thick calf, a thin calf; I take the middle between all extremes;
and this is emphatically man.

Man cannot keep pace with a starting horse: but he can
persevere, and beats him in the end.

What an infinite variety of works is man by his corporeal form
enabled to accomplish! In this respect he casts the whole
creation behind him.

What a machine is the human hand! When we analyse its parts and
its uses, it appears to be the most consummate of our members.
And yet there are other parts, that may maintain no mean
rivalship against it.

What a sublimity is to be attributed to his upright form! He is
not fashioned, veluti pecora, quae natura prona atque ventri
obedientia finxit. He is made coeli convexa tueri. The looks
that are given him in his original structure, are "looks
commercing with the skies."

How surpassingly beautiful are the features of his countenance;
the eyes, the nose, the mouth! How noble do they appear in a
state of repose! With what never-ending variety and emphasis do
they express the emotions of his mind! In the visage of man,
uncorrupted and undebased, we read the frankness and
ingenuousness of his soul, the clearness of his reflections, the
penetration of his spirit. What a volume of understanding is
unrolled in his broad, expanded, lofty brow! In his countenance
we see expressed at one time sedate confidence and awful
intrepidity, and at another godlike condescension and the most
melting tenderness. Who can behold the human eye, suddenly
suffused with moisture, or gushing with tears unbid, and the
quivering lip, without unspeakable emotion? Shakespear talks of
an eye, "whose bend could awe the world."

What a miraculous thing is the human complexion! We are sent
into the world naked, that all the variations of the blood might
be made visible. However trite, I cannot avoid quoting here the
lines of the most deep-thinking and philosophical of our poets:

We understood
Her by her sight: her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought,
That one might almost say her body thought.

What a curious phenomenon is that of blushing! It is impossible
to witness this phenomenon without interest and sympathy. It
comes at once, unanticipated by the person in whom we behold it.
It comes from the soul, and expresses with equal certainty shame,
modesty, and vivid, uncontrollable affection. It spreads, as it
were in so many stages, over the cheeks, the brow, and the neck,
of him or her in whom the sentiment that gives birth to it is
working.

Thus far I have not mentioned speech, not perhaps the most
inestimable of human gifts, but, if it is not that, it is at
least the endowment, which makes man social, by which principally
we impart our sentiments to each other, and which changes us from
solitary individuals, and bestows on us a duplicate and
multipliable existence. Beside which it incalculably increases
the perfection of one. The man who does not speak, is an
unfledged thinker; and the man that does not write, is but half
an investigator.

Not to enter into all the mysteries of articulate speech and the
irresistible power of eloquence, whether addressed to a single
hearer, or instilled into the ears of many,--a topic that belongs
perhaps less to the chapter of body than mind,--let us for a
moment fix our thoughts steadily upon that little implement, the
human voice. Of what unnumbered modulations is it susceptible!
What terror may it inspire! How may it electrify the soul, and
suspend all its functions! How infinite is its melody! How
instantly it subdues the hearer to pity or to love! How does the
listener hang upon every note praying that it may last for ever,

----that even silence
Was took ere she was ware, and wished she might
Deny her nature, and be never more,
Still to be so displaced.

It is here especially that we are presented with the triumphs of
civilisation. How immeasurable is the distance between the voice
of the clown, who never thought of the power that dwells in this
faculty, who delivers himself in a rude, discordant and
unmodulated accent, and is accustomed to confer with his fellow
at the distance of two fields, and the man who understands his
instrument as Handel understood the organ, and who, whether he
thinks of it or no, sways those that hear him as implicitly as
Orpheus is said to have subdued the brute creation!

From the countenance of man let us proceed to his figure. Every
limb is capable of speaking, and telling its own tale. What can
equal the magnificence of the neck, the column upon which the
head reposes! The ample chest may denote an almost infinite
strength and power. Let us call to mind the Apollo Belvidere,
and the Venus de Medicis, whose very "bends are adornings." What
loftiness and awe have I seen expressed in the step of an
actress, not yet deceased, when first she advanced, and came down
towards the audience! I was ravished, and with difficulty kept
my seat! Pass we to the mazes of the dance, the inimitable
charms and picturesque beauty that may be given to the figure
while still unmoved, and the ravishing grace that dwells in it
during its endless changes and evolutions.

The upright figure of man produces, incidentally as it were, and
by the bye, another memorable effect. Hence we derive the power
of meeting in halls, and congregations, and crowded assemblies.
We are found "at large, though without number," at solemn
commemorations and on festive occasions. We touch each other, as
the members of a gay party are accustomed to do, when they wait
the stroke of an electrical machine, and the spark spreads along
from man to man. It is thus that we have our feelings in common
at a theatrical representation and at a public dinner, that
indignation is communicated, and patriotism become irrepressible.

One man can convey his sentiments in articulate speech to a
thousand; and this is the nursing mother of oratory, of public
morality, of public religion, and the drama. The privilege we
thus possess, we are indeed too apt to abuse; but man is scarcely
ever so magnificent and so awful, as when hundreds of human heads
are assembled together, hundreds of faces lifted up to
contemplate one object, and hundreds of voices uttered in the
expression of one common sentiment.

But, notwithstanding the infinite beauty, the magazine of
excellencies and perfections, that appertains to the human body,
the mind claims, and justly claims, an undoubted superiority. I
am not going into an enumeration of the various faculties and
endowments of the mind of man, as I have done of his body. The
latter was necessary for my purpose. Before I proceeded to
consider the ascendancy of mind, the dominion and loftiness it is
accustomed to assert, it appeared but just to recollect what was
the nature and value of its subject and its slave.

By the mind we understand that within us which feels and thinks,
the seat of sensation and reason. Where it resides we cannot
tell, nor can authoritatively pronounce, as the apostle says,
relatively to a particular phenomenon, "whether it is in the
body, or out of the body." Be it however where or what it may,
it is this which constitutes the great essence of, and gives
value to, our existence; and all the wonders of our microcosm
would without it be a form only, destined immediately to perish,
and of no greater account than as a clod of the valley.

It was an important remark, suggested to me many years ago by an
eminent physiologer and anatomist, that, when I find my attention
called to any particular part or member of my body, I may be
morally sure that there is something amiss in the processes of
that part or member. As long as the whole economy of the frame
goes on well and without interruption, our attention is not
called to it. The intellectual man is like a disembodied spirit.

He is almost in the state of the dervise in the Arabian Nights,
who had the power of darting his soul into the unanimated body of
another, human or brute, while he left his own body in the
condition of an insensible carcase, till it should be revivified
by the same or some other spirit. When I am, as it is vulgarly
understood, in a state of motion, I use my limbs as the
implements of my will. When, in a quiescent state of the body, I
continue to think, to reflect and to reason, I use, it may be,
the substance of the brain as the implement of my thinking,
reflecting and reasoning; though of this in fact we know nothing.

We have every reason to believe that the mind cannot subsist
without the body; at least we must be very different creatures
from what we are at present, when that shall take place. For a
man to think, agreeably and with serenity, he must be in some
degree of health. The corpus sanum is no less indispensible than
the mens sana. We must eat, and drink, and sleep. We must have
a reasonably good appetite and digestion, and a fitting
temperature, neither too hot nor cold. It is desirable that we
should have air and exercise. But this is instrumental merely.
All these things are negatives, conditions without which we
cannot think to the best purpose, but which lend no active
assistance to our thinking.

Man is a godlike being. We launch ourselves in conceit into
illimitable space, and take up our rest beyond the fixed stars.
We proceed without impediment from country to country, and from
century to century, through all the ages of the past, and through
the vast creation of the imaginable future. We spurn at the
bounds of time and space; nor would the thought be less futile
that imagines to imprison the mind within the limits of the body,
than the attempt of the booby clown who is said within a thick
hedge to have plotted to shut in the flight of an eagle.

We never find our attention called to any particular part or
member of the body, except when there is somewhat amiss in that
part or member. And, in like manner as we do not think of any
one part or member in particular, so neither do we consider our
entire microcosm and frame. The body is apprehended as no more
important and of intimate connection to a man engaged in a train
of reflections, than the house or apartment in which he dwells.
The mind may aptly be described under the denomination of the
"stranger at home." On set occasions and at appropriate times we
examine our stores, and ascertain the various commodities we
have, laid up in our presses and our coffers. Like the governor
of a fort in time of peace, which was erected to keep out a
foreign assailant, we occasionally visit our armoury, and take
account of the muskets, the swords, and other implements of war
it contains, but for the most part are engaged in the occupations
of peace, and do not call the means of warfare in any sort to our
recollection.

The mind may aptly be described under the denomination of the
"stranger at home." With their bodies most men are little
acquainted. We are "like unto a man beholding his natural face
in a glass, who beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and
straightway forgetteth what manner of man he is." In the
ruminations of the inner man, and the dissecting our thoughts and
desires, we employ our intellectual arithmetic, we add, and
subtract, and multiply, and divide, without asking the aid,
without adverting to the existence, of our joints and members.
Even as to the more corporeal part of our avocations, we behold
the external world, and proceed straight to the object of our
desires, without almost ever thinking of this medium, our own
material frame, unaided by which none of these things could be
accomplished. In this sense we may properly be said to be
spiritual existences, however imperfect may be the idea we are
enabled to affix to the term spirit.

Hence arises the notion, which has been entertained ever since
the birth of reflection and logical discourse in the world, and
which in some faint and confused degree exists probably even
among savages, that the body is the prison of the mind. It is in
this sense that Waller, after completing fourscore years of age,
expresses himself in these affecting and interesting couplets.

When we for age could neither read nor write,
The subject made us able to indite.
The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light by chinks that time hath made:
Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become,
As they draw near to their eternal home.

Thus it is common with persons of elevated soul to talk of
neglecting, overlooking, and taking small account of the body.
It is in this spirit that the story is recorded of Anaxarchus,
who, we are told, was ordered by Nicocreon, tyrant of Salamis, to
be pounded in a mortar, and who, in contempt of his mortal
sufferings, exclaimed, "Beat on, tyrant! thou dost but strike
upon the case of Anaxarchus; thou canst not touch the man
himself." And it is in something of the same light that we must
regard what is related of the North American savages. Beings,
who scoff at their tortures, must have an idea of something that
lies beyond the reach of their assailants.

It is just however to observe, that some of the particulars here
related, belong not less to the brute creation than to man. If
men are imperfectly acquainted with their external figure and
appearance, this may well be conceived to be still more
predicable of the inferior animals. It is true that all of them
seem to be aware of the part in their structure, where lie their
main strength and means of hostility. Thus the bull attacks with
his horns, and the horse with his heels, the beast of prey with
his claws, the bird with his beak, and insects and other venomous
creatures with their sting. We know not by what impulse they are
prompted to the use of the various means which are so intimately
connected with their preservation and welfare; and we call it
instinct. We may be certain it does not arise from a careful
survey of their parts and members, and a methodised selection of
the means which shall be found most effectual for the
accomplishment of their ends. There is no premeditation; and,
without anatomical knowledge, or any distinct acquaintance with
their image and likeness, they proceed straight to their purpose.

Hence, even as men, they are more familiar with the figures and
appearance of their fellows, their allies, or their enemies, than
with their own.

Man is a creature of mingled substance. I am many times a day
compelled to acknowledge what a low, mean and contemptible being
I am. Philip of Macedon had no need to give it in charge to a
page, to repair to him every morning, and repeat, "Remember, sir,
you are a man." A variety of circumstances occur to us, while we
eat, and drink, and submit to the humiliating necessities of
nature, that may well inculcate into us this salutary lesson.
The wonder rather is, that man, who has so many things to put him
in mind to be humble and despise himself, should ever have been
susceptible of pride and disdain. Nebuchadnezzar must indeed
have been the most besotted of mortals, if it were necessary that
he should be driven from among men, and made to eat grass like an
ox, to convince him that he was not the equal of the power that
made him.

But fortunately, as I have said, man is a "stranger at home."
Were it not for this, how incomprehensible would be

The ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
The monarch's crown, and the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, and the judge's robe!

How ludicrous would be the long procession and the caparisoned
horse, the gilded chariot and the flowing train, the colours
flying, the drums beating, and the sound of trumpets rending the
air, which after all only introduce to us an ordinary man, no
otherwise perhaps distinguished from the vilest of the ragged
spectators, than by the accident of his birth!

But what is of more importance in the temporary oblivion we are
enabled to throw over the refuse of the body, it is thus we
arrive at the majesty of man. That sublimity of conception which
renders the poet, and the man of great literary and original
endowments "in apprehension like a God," we could not have, if we
were not privileged occasionally to cast away the slough and
exuviae of the body from incumbering and dishonouring us, even as
Ulysses passed over his threshold, stripped of the rags that had
obscured him, while Minerva enlarged his frame, and gave
loftiness to his stature, added a youthful beauty and grace to
his motions, and caused his eyes to flash with more than mortal
fire. With what disdain, when I have been rapt in the loftiest
moods of mind, do I look down upon my limbs, the house of clay
that contains me, the gross flesh and blood of which my frame is
composed, and wonder at a lodging, poorly fitted to entertain so
divine a guest!

A still more important chapter in the history of the human mind
has its origin in these considerations. Hence it is that
unenlightened man, in almost all ages and countries, has been
induced, independently of divine revelation, to regard death, the
most awful event to which we are subject, as not being the
termination of his existence. We see the body of our friend
become insensible, and remain without motion, or any external
indication of what we call life. We can shut it up in an
apartment, and visit it from day to day. If we had perseverance
enough, and could so far conquer the repugnance and humiliating
feeling with which the experiment would be attended, we might
follow step by step the process of decomposition and
putrefaction, and observe by what degrees the "dust returned unto
earth as it was." But, in spite of this demonstration of the
senses, man still believes that there is something in him that
lives after death. The mind is so infinitely superior in
character to this case of flesh that incloses it, that he cannot
persuade himself that it and the body perish together.

There are two considerations, the force of which made man a
religious animal. The first is, his proneness to ascribe
hostility or benevolent intention to every thing of a memorable
sort that occurs to him in the order of nature. The second is
that of which I have just treated, the superior dignity of mind
over body. This, we persuade ourselves, shall subsist uninjured
by the mutations of our corporeal frame, and undestroyed by the
wreck of the material universe.

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