The picture of this easy-going Utopia, in which something will always turn up for nobody's child, concludes with two sections which exhibit in nice juxtaposition the extravagance and the prudence of Godwin. We may look forward to great physical changes. We shall acquire an empire over our bodies, and may succeed in making even our reflex notions conscious. We must get rid of sleep, one of the most conspicuous infirmities of the human frame. Life can be prolonged by intellect. We are sick and we die because in a certain sense we consent to suffer these accidents. When the limit of population is reached, men will refuse to propagate themselves further. Society will be a people of men, and not of children, adult, veteran, experienced; and truth will no longer have to recommence her career at the end of thirty years. Meanwhile let the friends of justice avoid violence, eschew massacres, and remember that prudent handling will win even rich men for the cause of human perfection.
So ends _Political Justice_, the strangest amalgam in our literature of caution with enthusiasm, of visions with experience, of French logic with English tactlessness, a book which only genius could have made so foolish and so wise.
_Political Justice_ brought its author instant fame. Society was for a moment intimidated by the boldness of the attack. The world was in a generous mood, and men did not yet resent Godwin's flattering suggestion that they were demigods who disguised their own greatness. He had assailed all the accepted dogmas and venerable institutions of contemporary civilisation, from monarchy to marriage, but it was only after several years that society recovered its breath, and turned to rend him. He became an oracle in an ever-widening circle of friends, and was naïvely pleased to find, when he went into the country, that even in remote villages his name was known. He was everywhere received as a sage, and some years passed before he discovered how much of this deference was a polite disguise for the vulgar curiosity that attends a sudden celebrity. Prosperity was a wholesome stimulus. He was "exalted in spirits," and became for a time (he tells us) "more of a talker than I was before, or have been since."