William Godwin: his Friends and Contemporaries
Ch. XII. 1799
Sir James Mackintosh to William Godwin, 30 January 1799
“Serle Street, Lincoln’s Inn,
30th Jany. 1799.
“Dear Sir,—I read your very
candid and good-tempered letter with real pleasure. I owe you an honest answer.
I think I am disposed to make it a perfectly good-natured one. The strongest
expression you quote, ‘Savage Desolators,’ you will find on
reperusal to be a half-pleasantry directed against metaphysicians in general,
amongst whom I have sometimes the vanity to number myself. ‘Those who
disguise commonplace in the shape of paradox’ is most certainly
not an allusion to you. The thing is so common as an art of literary empiricism
that I rather think no particular writer was present to my mind when I wrote
the passage. Your opinions do not stand in need of any contrivances to make
them appear more singular than they are. As to Turgot, Rousseau, and Condorcet, I have the highest reverence for the first of these
writers. The second I have long considered as the most eloquent ![]()
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and delightful madman that
ever existed. The third I always thought a cold and obscure writer; I never
could think very highly of his talents, partly perhaps because I am no great
judge of his mathematical eminence, which is, I believe, the principal part of
his reputation. His conduct did not appear to me to have been that of a good
man. But in none of the phrases which you have selected have I even so much as
insinuated that he or any other mistaken speculator was influenced by bad
motives. A man may be ‘mischievous’ with the best
‘motives’ in the world. In all discussions of ‘Speculative
Principles’ it is always a most unfair act of controversy to load the
author whom we oppose with the ‘immoral consequences’ which we
suppose likely to flow from his opinion, not to mention that it is a sorry and
impertinent sophism to urge such consequences as an argument against the truth
of a speculative proposition. But the case is very different in moral and
practical disputes. There the consequences are everything, and must be
constantly appealed to, especially by those who, like you and myself, hold
utility to be the standard of morals. To apply this to the present subject.
With respect to you personally, I could never mean to say anything unkind or
disrespectful. I had always highly esteemed both your acuteness and
benevolence. You published opinions which you believed to be true and most
salutary, but which I had from the first thought mistakes of a most dangerous
tendency. You did your duty in making public your opinions. I do mine by
attempting to refute them; and one of my chief means of confutation is the
display of those bad consequences which I think likely to flow from them. I,
however, allow that I should have confined those epithets, which I apply to
denote pernicious consequences, merely to doctrines. Though these epithets,
when they are applied by men to me, are never intended to convey any aspersion
upon the moral or intellectual character of individuals, but merely to describe
them as the promulgators of opinions which I think false and pernicious, yet I
admit that I should not in any way have applied the epithets to men. I feel gratitude to you for having recalled my
attention to this great distinction which I shall observe in my proposed ![]()
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lectures, and in the work which may one day be the fruit
of them, with a caution which is prescribed equally by a regard to my own
character, and to the interests of science. I assure you that I never felt any
desire that our intercourse should be lessened; having never experienced
anything but pleasure from it. Distance, accident, occupation, and laziness
have contributed to make it less; inclination has had no share. I, on the
contrary, hope that we shall continue to exhibit the example, which is but too
rare, of men who are literary antagonists but personal friends.—I am, with
great regard, yours,
Jean-Antoine-Nicholas Condorcet (1749-1794)
French philosopher; author of
Esquisse d'un tableau historique des
progrès de l'esprit humain (1794). He died in prison under disputed
circumstances.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
Swiss-born man of letters; author of, among others,
Julie ou la
Nouvelle Heloïse (1761),
Émile (1762) and
Les Confessions (1782).
