[kdqak] SHELLEY'S DEBT TO XVIIL CENTURY THOUGHT 197 



or misguided enthusiast will produee llieir irresistîïïle effect. There 

 is BO such thing, oi course, as relative reason. An opinion or action 

 is right or it is not right. Let us apply these theories to a concrete 

 instance. A missionary is convinced that it is right for him 

 to go into the savage wilderness and spend his own life and a 

 great deal of other people's money to gain perhaps one unstable con- 

 vert. Now, the reasonable man, in Godwin's view, has of course 

 rejected Christianity with the other exploded superstitions of the world. 

 He is conscious that the missionary's point of view is unreasonable, not 

 to say ridiculous or even vicious. Would Godwin undertake to convince 

 the missionary of this in a day, a week or a year of irrefragable argu- 

 ment? He might convince a murderer Of the unreasonableness of 

 his action, and free him from the gallows to act more sensibly in future. 

 Even then he might lapse again into intellectual carelessness, and the 

 sage would require to have another argument" with him. But I don't 

 think that he would convince the missionary. 



The world of wise men is now agreed that social convention is 

 nothing if it is not the expression of the reasonable convictions of man- 

 kind, consciously or unconsciously moulded through the centuries. It 

 is in a sort the accumulated wisdom of the ages as affecting the sphere 

 of conduct. But to Godwin's stern and unbending individualism con- 

 vention is a cowardly compromise with truth. My reason — so might 

 his pupil in all loyalty argue — rejects the spurious claims of convention 

 upon my obedience; and if my own calm judgment and my personal 

 happiness command me to run away with your daughter, leaving my 

 wife most carefully provided for, as the great philosopher God- 

 win, you will most reasonably acquiesce in my action. Godwin, to 

 Shelley's surprise and distress, was far from displaying the appropriate 

 philosophical calm upon this occasion, but we must do him the justice 

 of stating that he continued to borrow from his self-imposed son-in-law 

 the largest sums consistent with a reasonable view of the situation. 



Until man becomes what he never will be, an isolated abstraction, 

 it is folly to speak of abolishing all the traditional ties by which people 

 have hitherto been bound together. By a clean sweep of custom, con- 

 vention and tradition Godwdn, and Shelley in his footsteps, was con- 

 vinced that human society could be renrranged with the logical precision 

 of a syllogism. He scarcely could have reflected to what state of moral 

 anarchy the uncompromising individualism of his philosophy would 

 inevitably lead. Until reason is absolute, until we see truth in its un- 

 imagined essence, convention must be the world's compromise with per- 

 fection. There is no danger that the man of genius will ever become 

 its slave. 



