Godwin is troubled by no misgiving as to the power of reason when all reality seems to have been abolished. He quietly takes for granted that reason is the sole and sufficient force by which men are or may be guided, and that it is adequate for any conceivable task. Not only can it transform society at large, but it is potentially capable of regenerating any given individual. The worst scoundrel could be made into a saint if only you could expose him to a continuous discharge of satisfactory syllogisms. Reason, as he calmly observes, is 'omnipotent.' Therefore, he infers, when a man's conduct is wrong, a very simple statement will not only show it to be wrong—just as it is easy to show that two sides of a triangle are greater than the third—but make him good. No perverseness, he thinks, would resist a sufficiently intelligible statement of the advantages of virtue. From this agreeable postulate, which he regards as pretty nearly self-evident, Godwin draws conclusions from some of which, great as was his courage in accepting absurdities, he afterwards found it expedient to withdraw. Thus, for example, morality, according to him, means simply the right calculation of consequences—I must always act so as to produce the greatest sum of happiness. The accidental ties, the associations formed by contingent circumstances, are no more to override this principle than a proposition of Euclid is to vary when applied to different parts of space. Three angles of a triangle are as much equal to two right angles in England as in France. Similarly the happiness of an Englishman is just as valuable as the happiness of a Frenchman, and the happiness of a stranger as the happiness of my relations. Hence—so runs his logic—friendship, gratitude, and conjugal fidelity are simply mistakes. If my father is a worse man than a stranger, I should rather save the stranger's life than my father's, for I shall be contributing more to human happiness. If my wife and I are tired of each other, we had better form new connections, for it is unreasonable to sacrifice happiness to any accidental ties. Any particular rule, indeed, is so far a mistake; for to act upon such a rule is to disregard the general principles of reason. In every action and in every relation of life, I should hold myself absolutely free to act simply and solely with reference to the greatest happiness. Habits are bad, for habits imply disregard of reason, and all promises are immoral, for to keep a promise is to pay a blind obedience to the past. To punish is unreasonable; for, in pure reason, we have no more right to hate a villain than a viper or a cup of poison. The only legitimate end of punishment is reform, and reform should be produced by argument instead of imprisonment. All coercion is clearly bad, for coercion is not argument; and, since all government implies coercion, all government is immoral. Society, in short, must be reduced to an