Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions, and Discoveries
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~140,000 words · 680 passages
Cite this work
- APAWilliam Godwin. (n.d.). Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions, and Discoveries. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/william-godwin/thoughts-on-man-his-nature-productions-and-discoveries
- MLAWilliam Godwin. Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions, and Discoveries. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/william-godwin/thoughts-on-man-his-nature-productions-and-discoveries.
- ChicagoWilliam Godwin. Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions, and Discoveries. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/william-godwin/thoughts-on-man-his-nature-productions-and-discoveries.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The book of essays Godwin published in 1831, at seventy-five: the same man who had written 'Political Justice' forty years before, looking back.
Context and history
There is no system here. It is some twenty-odd essays on particular things — the education of children, health and low spirits, dreams, astronomy, posthumous fame, what books do to those who read them, the difference between youth and age — written with a calm his young work did not have. His radical rationalism has been tempered: the Godwin of 1793 held that reason should suffice for everything, and this one concedes far more to feeling, to habit and to chance. It repays reading after 'Political Justice', to see what time did to one of the most consistent intelligences of his century.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
But fortunately, as I have said, man is a ^^ stran-* get at home." Were it not for this, how incompre- hensible 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 beat* ing, 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 tempo- rary obUvion we are enabled to throw over the re-* fuse of the body, it is thus we arrive at the majesty 14 OF BODY AND MIND. [esSAY of man. That sublimity of conception which ren- ders the poet^ and the mzn of great literary and original endowments '^in apprehension like a God^'* we conld not have, if we were not privileged occa- sionally to cast away the slough and exuvuE of the body from incumbering and dishonouring us^ even M 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 day that contains me^ the gross flesh and blood of which my frame is composed^ and wonder at a lodgings poorly fitted to entertain so divine a guest !