Thomas Malthus：An Essay on the Principle of Population, Excerpt 107

Mr Godwin considers marriage as a fraud and a monopoly. Let us suppose the commerce of the sexes established upon principles of the most perfect freedom. Mr Godwin does not think himself that this freedom would lead to a promiscuous intercourse, and in this I perfectly agree with him. The love of variety is a vicious, corrupt, and unnatural taste and could not prevail in any great degree in a simple and virtuous state of society. Each man would probably select himself a partner, to whom he would adhere as long as that adherence continued to be the choice of both parties. It would be of little consequence, according to Mr Godwin, how many children a woman had or to whom they belonged. Provisions and assistance would spontaneously flow from the quarter in which they abounded, to the quarter that was deficient. (See Bk VIII, ch. 8; in the third edition, Vol II, p. 512) And every man would be ready to furnish instruction to the rising generation according to his capacity.

Source： https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4239
Locator：Excerpt 107 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

公版作品；原文逐字取自 Project Gutenberg，仅摘录段落并附全书链接。

This text is in the public domain. The edition and source link are above. Copyright

← Back to the library