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other . It is their arena of intellectual combat , the Indus literarius of their unrefined university . It is here they learn to think . Their minds are awakened from the sleep of ignorance ; and their attention is turned into a thousand channels of improvement . They study the art of speaking , of question , allegation , and rejoinder . They fix their thought steadily on the statement that is made , acknowledge its force , or detect its insufficiency . They examine the most interesting topics , and form opinions the result of
that examination . They learn maxims of life , and become politicians . They canvas the civil and criminal laws of their country , and learn the value of political liberty . They talk over measures of state , judge of the intentions , sagacity , and sincerity of public men , and are likely in time to become in no contemptible degree capable of estimating what modes of conducting national affairs , whether for the preservation of the rights of all , or for the vindication and assertion of justice between man and man , may be expected to be crowned with the greatest success : in a word , they thus become , in the best sense of the word , citizens . "—Pp . 177—179 .
This approbation of ale-house meetings is , we repeat , only applicable in the absence of better associations . They will be no longer needed and much less frequented when the new institutions which have sprung up among us shall have been so far modified by the wants of their members as to supply to them the aid which the higher classes derive from their appropriate resources- With the growing intelligence of the people will approach the time when the ends of existence shall be better understood and more
extensively attainable—those aims which at present enter so little into the thought of the great majority of the most advanced nations . A very large proportion of every civilized people is occupied in preparing the tools by which the animal necessities are to be provided for ; another large proportion is employed in raising food and circulating and preparing it for consumption . This is a very proper business for them , if it were pursued as a means of subsistence merely , and if the subsistence were a certain reward of
a moderate quantity of labour . But it is not so . Men think it the purpose of their life to saw , to carry bricks , or to sow and reap ; and no wonder they think so , when their utmost labour will do no more than support life . When all this is done , and the body is actually nourished with this food , we have only fulfilled the necessary conditions , and not attained the ends of our life . All that is yet done is only preliminary , not only to some highly-favoured classes , but to every individual . Bodily strength and ease , and the pleasures which result from moderate labour , are the means by which the mind is to be formed and nourished ; and though , among the labouring
classes , the process , does go on insensibly to the individual , he does not receive what is due to him from society till this progress is proposed to him as an aim , and till he is allowed opportunity to attain it . When , by the conscious employment of his means , the individual feels himself fulfilling the purposes of his being , his progress is continually accelerated j for the power of exertion and the pleasure arising from it act reciprocally as cause and effect . Their action is compatible with the humblest occupations , and through it will the labourer realize what our author describes when he says , " he vests a certain portion of ingenuity in the work he turns out . He incorporates his mind with the labour of his hands . *
When the time arrives which is reasonably anticipated by philanthropists whose sobriety of judgment is unquestionable , when every man shall have that labour appointed him which he is best fitted to perform , and when that labour shall be pursued in reference to an ulterior and unseen object , human virtue ( on which our author writes eloquently ) will be widely different from
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Godwin * Thoughts on Man 439
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1831, page 439, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2599/page/7/
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