Repetition: William Godwin and Mary Wolstonecraft (1793-97)
Channel: Craig Campbell
Date: 02/05/2014

In 1785 Godwin came up to London, dropped the title of Reverend, betook himself to journalism and miscellaneous literature, and threw himself into the life of the time. Then came the great event which found him an unbeliever rapidly developing into an atheist they are his own terms in religion, and a republican in politics. 

In his diary, 1789, he writes : 

This was the year of the French Revolution. My heart beat 
high with great swelling sentiments of Liberty. I had been for 
nine years, in principles, a republican. I had read with great 
satisfaction the writings of Rousseau, Helvetius, and others the 
most popular authors in France. I observed in them a system 
more general and simply philosophical than in the majority of 
English writers on political subjects, and I could not refrain from 
conceiving sanguine hopes of a revolution of which such writings 
had been the precursors. Yet I was far from approving all that 
I saw even in the commencement of the revolution. ... I never 
for a moment ceased to disapprove of mob government and the 
impulses which men, collected together in multitudes, produce 
on each other. I desired such political changes only as should 
flow purely from the clear light of the understanding and the 
erect and generous feelings of the heart.

From Political Justice
"the imbecility of the human mind is such as to make it 
unadvisable that man should be trusted with himself: that his 
genuine condition is that of perpetual pupillage: that he is 
regulated by passions and partial views and cannot be governed 
by pure reason and undiluted truth: that it is the business of a 
wise man not to subvert either in himself or in others delusions 
which are useful and prejudices which are salutary: and that he 
is the worst enemy of his species who attempts in whatever mode 
to introduce a form of society where no advantage is taken to 
restrain us from vices by illusion from which we cannot be 
restrained by reason."

Wollstonecraft's "remarks on education are very sensible, and in her scheme for combining what was best in public and what was best in private education, contending that it should be under- 
taken by Government, she anticipated what is with some modification our present national school system, just as in her scheme for the education of young children she anticipated the Froebel system. In a word, she would have training directed to fitting a woman for the severe duties of life let their constitution be braced by athletics and such pursuits as gardening, their minds by the study of experimental philosophy and serious literature, their character by free intercourse with the world. Let such professions be opened to them as they are fitted to fill, especially medicine, surgery, and the care of the sick."