Godwin, William, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness (1793)

Godwin, William. Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness (1793). Rpt. at least five times, including F. E. L. Priestly, ed. 3 vols. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1946.[1]

WG, father of Mary Shelley, "discusses 'The Mechanism of the Human Mind'" in this work, describing 'the workings of the mind as 'a system of mechanism' in which a specific antecedent determines every consequent thought (ECPJ 2: 398-420). WG here is in the tradition of the "associationism" psychology of John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1700), and Locke's popularizer David Harley: Observations of Man (1749). Discussed in Jonathan C. Glance's "'Beyond the Usual Bounds of Reverie?'[:] Another Look at the Dreams in Frankenstein." JFA 7.4 (#28, Special Issue: Dream and Narrative Space [1996]): here, 33-34—source for this citation, and quoted.