14: Godwin's five propositions respecting political truth
Malthus considers Godwin's propositions (EN: Likely another side-track, but I'll follow for a time):
- Sound reasoning and truth, when adequately communicated, will triumph
- Sound reasoning and truth are capable of being so communicated
- Truth is omnipotent
- The vice and moral weakness of man are not invincible
- Man is perfectible, and susceptible to perpetual improvement
The first three of these propositions are "a complete syllogism" that borders on a tautology. The last two are similar, in that they refute the common supposition that the vices and moral weaknesses of man can never be wholly overcome.
Godwin's notion is that man us shaped by his experience in the context of a society that discourages or rewards given behaviors, often in an indirect manner. A man who lives, and has always lived, in a virtuous society will be as virtuous as his peers; one who lives in a corrupt society will be corrupted; and if the ills of society can be mended, so will be the vices of the individuals who live within it.
Malthus considers this to be "entirely a false conception": independent of the political or social institutions, man is ever subject to evil temptation arising from want; and that even in a society where a man has everything he needs, he will find additional things to want, and some will be inclined to take the most expedient and least arduous method of gaining these things for themselves, with disregard to the way in which satisfying their own desires impact others within society. Repeated experience has assured us that men of great intellect and virtuous character will on occasion yield to the temptations of evil.
The notion that a man can be improved is sound, but so is its converse: that a man can be degraded, and likely with greater ease. There has never been an age of history in which man has achieved the acme of perfection, but there have been ages in which man has seemed better than he did in the former, or for that matter the era following. There is not continuous improvement, but constant fluctuation between improvement and degradation.
The lower classes of Europe may, at some future time, be better instructed than they are at present: they may be taught to use their spare time in better ways than at the ale-house, they may live under better laws than previously, they may be encouraged to those behaviors that result in their individual improvement and, by steps, society as a whole may be improved. But it is also likely that, in the following age, the converse will occur and society as a whole will again be degraded.
It is also doubtful whether perfection of man can be achieved on a societal level. Malthus turns to the analogy of a gardener who, in giving great attention to some of his plants, neglects the rest - which is accurate to a great number of laws that seek to benefit some members of society at the expense of others. The law that improves all at the expense of none is so rare as to be virtually unheard of.