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English Pages [767] Year 2000
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD The Untold Story
of the
British Enlightenment
ROT PORTER
W. W. Norton
New
York
8c •
Company
London
To Natsu,
Copyright
the love of
©
life
2000 by Roy Porter
American
First
my
edition
2000
Originally published in England under the tide Enlightenment: Britain
and
the Creation
of the Modern World
All rights reserved
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CONTENTS LIST OF ILL US TRA TIONS
vii
A CKNO WLED GEMENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
2
xi xvii
A BLIND SPOT?
i
THE BIRTH OF AN IDEOLOGY
24
J CLEARING AWAY THE RUBBISH 4
.//>'
PRINT CULTURE
J2
J RATIONALIZING RELIC ION
96
6 THE CULTURE OF SCIENCE
IJO
7
ANATOMIZING HUMAN NATURE
8 THE SCIENCE OF POL I I ICS
/
///./
SECULARIZING
205
10
MODERNIZING
230
11
HAPPINESS
258
12
FROM GOOD SENSE TO SENSIBILITY
276
(j
J NATURE
295
I
14
DID THE MIND HA VE A SEX?
320
Ij
ED UCA TION: A PANA CEA ?
jjg
16
THE VULGAR
364
v
CONTENTS j
7
THE PURSUIT OF WEALTH
l8
REFORM
Kj
PROGRESS
20
THE REVOLUTIONARY
9
ERA-MODERN
PHILOSOPHY' 21
LASTING LIGHT?
NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
vi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (Photographic acknowledgements in brackets, where applicable)
1.
Giovanni Battista Pittoni the Younger, An Sir Isaac
(photo: 2.
c.
1725, in the Fitzwilliam
Monument
to
Museum, Cambridge
Bridgeman Art Library)
Title-page of Opticks, 1704, by Sir Isaac
& 3.
Newton,
Allegorical
Newton
(photo: Science
Society Picture Library)
Illustration
ofBidston lighthouse, showing an
signal reflectors,
from A
early
example of
Treatise on .Vara! Architecture,
1794,
by
William Hutchison (photo: Science & Society Picture Library) 4.
Paul
Sandby,
Lantern
Jlie
Slide
Show,
undated (photo: The
Fotomas Index) 5.
Francois Xavier Vispre, John Fan reading Horace's 70, in the
6.
Ashmolean Museum,
Francis Jukes and Helluones librorurn
(
)des,
c.
1765
heford
John Kirby Baldrey
( 'Bookworms'):
(
alter
Robert Chilton,
Astronomer Samuel Vince reading
in
his rooms at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, by the light of a shaded
lamp, his emaciated cat perusing
The Wellcome 7.
10.
c.
1784? (photo:
(Bible Reading at the Cottage Door),
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh
Valentine Green, An Abridgement of Mr. Pope's Essay on Illustrated with notes, critical
9.
Ladies' Diary,
London)
Alexander Carse, Sunday Morning in the
8.
Library,
The
and moral,
The Wellcome
authors,
1769 (photo:
Anon.,
A
(photo:
The Wellcome
Female Philosopher
in
Man,
extracted from other celebrated
Library,
London)
Extasy at Solving a Problem/, 1772
Library, London)
Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Frederick Hervey, Bishop ofDeny and Fourth Earl of Bristol, with his Grand- daughter Lady Caroline Crichton,
vii
in the
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Gardens of the
Villa Borghese,
The National 11.
Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
William Hogarth, The Cholmondley Family, tion (photo:
12.
Rome, 1790, reproduced by courtesy of
The Bridgeman Art
Library)
Arthur Devis, John Bacon and his Family, of the
1742-3, in the collection
c.
of Master
Federation
British
1732, in a private collec-
Printers
(photo:
The
Bridgeman Art Library) 13.
Johann Zoffany, The
Woodley Family,
1766, in the collection
c.
of the Kingston Lacy Estate, Dorset (photo: National Trust
Photographic Library /John 14.
Anon., English School,
Hammond)
detail of Dixton Harvesters,
c.
1725, in the
Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museums, Gloucestershire
The Bridgeman Art 15.
Library)
Title-page of pamphlet advertising William James's coach service
between London and 16.
(photo:
The Fotomas
Index)
Room of the Foundling Hospital, 1773, the Coram Foundation, London (photo: The Bridgeman Art
John Sanders, The in
Bristol, 1758 (photo:
Girls' Dining
Library) 17.
William Hogarth, The
18.
Anon., English School, Curds and Whey in the
19.
Museum
Idle 'Prentice Executed at Tyburn, 1747
Canaletto, Ranelagh Gardens: The
Thomas Rowlandson, National
21.
Museum
of the Rotunda,
Interior
The Bridgeman Art
London: Skaters on
1730,
c.
1751, in a
Library)
the Serpentine,
1784, in the
of Wales, Cardiff
Pieter Angillis, Covent Garden,
Art, Paul
c.
of London
private collection (photo: 20.
Seller in Cheapside,
c.
1726, in the
Yale Center for British
Mellon Collection, New Haven (photo: The Bridgeman
Art Library) 22.
Anon.,
A Masonic Anecdote,
description of the exposure of a fraud.
'Balsamo', at a lodge in London, 1786, in the British
London 23.
The Bridgeman Art
Henry Bunbury, Four Smoking,
24.
(photo:
c.
1794 (photo:
Gentlemen at
Transit of Venus,
Library)
their
The Wellcome
Anon., An Apparatus Adapted
Museum.
Club Seriously Engaged ml
Library,
to the Reflecting
London)
Telescope for Shewing tht\
undated (photo: The Wellcome Library, London I
viii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 25.
James Gillray, ^4fifo m
Walker, a Natural Philosopher, performing Scientific
Experiments, 1796 (photo: 26.
The Wellcome
British Library,
by
Party from
1780, in the National
Francis
Adam
London)
System of Familiar
Walker
(photo:
H.M.S.
Resolution Shooting Sea-Horses,
Maritime Museum, London
Chesham, 'The King of Dahomey's Levee',
from The
The
London)
John Webber, A c.
28.
A
Inigo Barlow, 'Electricity', illustration from Philosophy in Twelve Lectures, 1799,
27.
Library,
illustration
by Archibald Dalzel (photo:
History of Dahomey, 1793,
Corbis/ Historical Picture Archive) 29.
Inigo Barlow, Asiatic Devices Allusive
The Bridgeman Art 30. Allan
to the
Cosmogony,
c.
1790 (photo:
Library)
Ramsay, David I limit
in
,
the Scottish National Portrait
Gallery, Edinburgh 31.
Richard Samuel, Hie Nine Muses
the characters oj the
Anna
Letitia
Living
Muses
Temple
in the
of (ireat Britain: Portraits in
(Elizabeth Carter,
of Apollo
Barbauld, Angelica Kauffinan, Elizabeth
Hannah
Sheridan, Catharine Macaulay, Elizabeth Montagu,
More, Elizabeth Montagu and Charlotte Lennox), duced by courtesy of the National 32.
Benjamin West, A
Portrait
33.
Richard Cosway,
Portrait Gallery,
of Sir Joseph Banks,
collection (photo: Sotheby's
Lancelot 'Capability' Brown,
John Raphael Smith, Darwin, 1797 (photo:
35.
36.
after
London
1770, in a private
An
c.
1770
75, in a pri-
Librar)
Joseph Wright of Derby, Erasmus
The Wellcome
Henry Raeburn, James Portrait Gallery,
c.
1779, repro-
ture Library
Pic
vate collection (photo: The Bridgeman 34.
c.
Anne
Hutton,
c.
Library,
London)
1776, in the Scottish National
Edinburgh
Ellen Sharpies, Joseph
Priestley,
c.
1797, in
a private collection
(photo by courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London) 37.
John Kay, 'Lord Karnes, Hugo Arnott and Lord Monboddo', eighteenth-century caricature reproduced as an illustration in Kay's Edinburgh Portraits, Vol.
38.
George
Stubbs,
'The
1,
1885,
Human
by James Paterson
Skeleton:
Lateral
View
in
Crouching Posture', from the series^ Comparative Anatomical Expoix
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS of
sition
the Structure
of
the
Common Fowl, 1795- 1806,
Human Body in the
Yale Center for British Art, Paul
New Haven
Mellon Collection, Library) 39.
(photo: f
Johann Zoffany,
The Bridgeman Art T
Dr. William Hunter, Professor of Anatomy, Lecturing
Royal Academy,
at the
with that of a Tiger and a
c.
1772, in the
Royal College of Physicians,
after James
Dunthorpe, The Hypochondriac
London 40.
Thomas Rowlandson
Surrounded by Doleful Spectres, 1788 (photo:
The Wellcome
Library,
London) 41.
William Taylor,
manner
in
after
William Smellie, 'Representations of the
which the foetus
is
nourished in utero, also a view of
the membrana decidua discovered by the late Dr. Hunter', illustration
from the Royal
Encyclopedia,
The Wellcome
1791 (photo:
Library, London) 42.
Joshua Reynolds, Mrs. Richard Hoare Holding Her Son, in the
Museum
Henry,
c.
1763,
of Fine Arts, Boston. Charles H. Bayley Picture
and Painting Fund, 1982.138 43.
Robert Smirke, A Royal
Humane
Man Recuperating in Bed at a Receiving- House of the
Society, after resuscitation by
Coakley Lettsom from near-drowning,
William
Hawes and John
undated (photo: The Wellcome
Library, London) 44.
James Cranke,Jnr, Glassmaking at Warrington, c. 1780, in Warrington Museum and Art Gallery, Cheshire (photo: The Bridgeman Art Library)
45.
Johann Zoffany, John Cuff and an Assistant, 1772, in The Royal Collection, Windsor Castie © 2000, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth
46.
II
Trade card
for
Richard
Siddall, chemist at the
Golden Head
in
Panton Street, showing a pharmacist in his workshop surrounded by the paraphernalia of his trade, undated (photo: The Wellcome Library,
London)
A
CKNO WLEDGEMENTS
]\/[y interest in the Enlightenment stems from the time when, as a member of the proverbial class of '68, I had the great good fortune to be taught by Jack Plumb and Quentin Skinner at Christ's College,
Cambridge. Jack showed
me
that the eighteenth
century, far from being the stylized high political coined) of manners so
commonly
presented, was rather
.1
time of turbulence, indeed a
great watershed; Quentin lor his part whetted
challenges of intellectual history.
opened
my mind
How
would have wanned
m\
appetite for the
these marvellous teachers
the hearts of the protagonists
of this book.
Typed by candlelight
in 197.
my first ever lectures given
\
during the miners
to the
Cambridge
3
strike p< >wer cuts,
history faculty
the English Enlightenment - then, for sure (and
now,
still
were on suspect)
I
a topic which raised quizzical eyebrows. During the intervening quarter century,
my
have always meant
Over clarify
the years,
my thinking.
whose proposal
passion for the subject has never flagged,
to put
m\ views down on paper.
many
scholars have challenged
1
on 'The Enlightenment
in
pitifully parochial. Special
this subject
and a
we should
stage a seminar series
National Context'
made my
thinking
less
who
has
thanks also to Sylvana Tomaselli,
critic
helped
thank Mikulas Teich,
long been a devoted reader of everything
around
I
like to
should particularly
in the late 1970s thai
me and
and
I
have written on and
blessed with that candour so dear to
enlightened radicals. I
owe much
to the writings of many other scholars
who,
explicitly
or obliquely, have been addressing this topic. John Pocock, Margaret
Jacob, J. C. D. Clark and, for Scotland, Nicholas Phillipson must be singled out. In their contrasting
ways and with xi
their very disparate
WLEDGEMENTS
A CKJVO
opinions, each has insisted there
Over
the twelve
months
it
is
a problem to be addressed.
took to write, chapters and drafts of
book have been read by Hannah Augstein,
this
Bynum, Luke
Goldbloom, ftona MacDonald,
Brian Dolan, Alex
Davidson,
Bill
Michael Neve, Clare Spark, Christine Stevenson, Jane Walsh and
Andrew Wear. To them I am deeply grateful for a welter of invaluable comments, I
spent
criticisms, stimuli
and
friendly support.
many happy years at the Wellcome Institute for the History
of Medicine in London, recently disbanded by the Wellcome Trust. I
am
delighted to acknowledge the enormous support given to
by individual members of the
notably
staff,
Houser, research assistant Caroline Overy and
my
me
secretary Frieda
at the
Xerox machine
Andy Foley and Stuart Fricker. Additional exemplary research assistance has been provided by Sally Scovell and Sharon Messenger, and retyping of the seemingly endless drafts has been done by the Sheila Lawler, Jan Pinkerton Gill
tireless
and Tracey Wickham, with help from
Doyle and Joanna Kafouris. Jed Lawler has helped a computer
illiterate.
At Penguin,
I
am
very grateful to Sally Holloway, Cecilia
Mackay and Janet Dudley
for their expert copy-editing, picture-
researching and indexing respectively. the British
Academy
for
awarding
I
me
am
profoundly grateful to
a fellowship under their
research leave scheme for the academic year 1998-9, during which this
book, so long
Thanks
to
stalled,
has been completed.
my publisher, Simon Winder,
whose
faith in this
has taken the practical form of a flow of helpful comments. finally like to
pay
tribute to Gill Coleridge,
the last decade she has brought life,
in a
can
I
manner
that has simply
method
made
say?
Xll
all
my literary
to the
should
agent.
mess of
the difference.
I
my
book
Over
literary
What more
'It is it
a history-book, Sir, (which
may possibly recommend
to the world) of what passes in a
Laurence sterne, The Life and
man's own mind.'
Opinions of Tristram Shandy
(1759-67)
'I
to
am
a true Englishman, formed to discover nothing but
improve anything.
1
WILLIAM GODWIN,
'So convenient a thing it
enables one to find or
is it
to
make
riled in
Don
Lo( k(\
A
Fantasy of Reason (1980)
be a
reasonable creature, since
a reason for everything one
has a mind to do.'
benjamin franklin,
'Within
limits, the
Autobiography (1793)
Enlightenment was what one thinks
it
was.'
norman hampson, 'Distrust
is
The Enlightenment (1968)
a necessary qualification of a student in history.'
samuel johnson, 'Review of the Account of the Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough'
'Many of the books which now croud justiy suspected to
the world,
be written for the sake of some
(1742)
may
be
invisible
order of beings, for surely they are of no use to any of the corporeal inhabitants of the world.'
samuel johnson, 'A Review of Soamejenyns' xui
(1757)
'I'm sick of Portraits
Viol da I
and wish very much
Gamba and walk off to some
to take
and
my
sweet Village where
can paint Landskips and enjoy the fag End of
quietness
up
Life in
9
ease.'
thomas Gainsborough, letter to WilliamJackson (c. 'The Husbandman puts
&
Ground
his seed in the
1760)
the
& Wisdom of God have pledged themselves, that he shall have Bread, and Health, & Quietness in return for Industry, & Simplicity of Wants, & InnoGoodness, Power,
cence.
The author
and wasted Health,
scatters his seed
&
all
- with aching head,
the heart-leapings of Anxiety
-
& the Folly, the Vices, the Fickleness of Man promise him Printers' Bills & the Debtors Side of Newgate, as full & sufficient
Payment.'
samuel taylor coleridge,
letter to
(Tuesday, 13
'I
am now
Modern
trying
December
Poole 1796)
an Experiment very frequent among
Authors; which
Jonathan swift, A 'I
Thomas
to write
is,
Tale of a Tub, and Other Satires (1704)
wonder, however, that so
who might well have
upon Nothing.'
left it
many
people have written,
alone.'
samuel johnson, A Journey
to the
Western Islands of Scotland (1775)
'No expectation
is
more fallacious than that which authors
form of the reception which mankind. Scarcely any
their labours will find
man publishes
a book, whatever
be, without believing that he has caught the
the publick attention
is
vacant to his
disposed in a particular
manner
among
call,
it
moment when
and the world
to learn the art
is
which he
undertakes to teach.'
samuel johnson, Preface Dictionary of Trade
xiv
to
Richard Rolt,
and Commerce (1756)
'A
man may
doggedly to
write at any time,
if
he
will set
himself
it.'
samuel johnson The
xv
in James Boswell,
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
INTRODUCTION [T]he historiography of enlightenment in England remains that of a black hole. j.
few preliminaries w able.
For
starters,
unsatisfactory.
terms of
ill
make
this
w hich are
art,
Injohn Pocock's opinion,
following his
own example,
1
1
hook more approach-
as inescapable as they are tin*
phrase
"English Enlightenment" does not ring quite shall
POCOCK
a. A.
be using
1
"the" (or "an")
true'. it
Maybe;
2
the same.
all
admittedly an anachronistic term, but n captures,
I
but, It
is
believe, the
thinking and temper of a movement, one of whose leading lights
could declare, 'our enlighten
it'.
3
1
first
concern, as lovers of our country, must he to
have, however, avoided the term 'pre-Enlightenment',
since that confuses rather than clarifies status
quo ante or something
refer to the 'early' or the
more akin 'first'
LS
it
supposed
to a prelude?).
my
book.
I
is
middle of the century, or what
part of the book, that
is,
shall,
denote
a
however,
mainly covered
also write of the 'late
'second' Enlightenment, indicating in broad terms after the
I
to
Enlightenment, alluding roughly to
pre-1750 developments or, approximately, to w hat in the first eleven chapters of
4
may
1
or
what happened
be found in the
latter
the enlightened critique of Enlightenment.
'The long eighteenth century' sometimes serves as a shorthand for the entire span from Restoration to Regency,
markers,
like
and other chronological
'Georgian' and 'Hanoverian', are used equally elas-
tically.
Over
the years Pocock
and others have been urging
avoid making progressive voices sound too
XVll
much
like
that, to
a caucus or a
INTRODUCTION conspiracy,
we should drop
capital letter,
and maybe
also the
and speak not of 'The Enlightenment' but rather of
'enlightenment', or better typically
the definite article
still
'enlightenments'.
shrewd suggestion, which
is
I
particularly
fully
endorse
germane
this
to Britain
where there never emerged, as some think there did in France, un petit troupeau des philosophes - a little flock, a party of humanity. The British avant-garde
was not a network of persecuted
ground samizdat authors, destined
democracy
to
hand down
to
Kennedy's America or
rebels or under-
the torch of liberal
Blair's Britain.
They
are better
likened to the mixed clientele talking, talking, talking in a hot,
smoky and crowded and sympathies but
coffee house;
differing,
men
sharing broad convictions
and agreeing
to differ,
on matters dear
to their hearts.
Mention of 'men'
leads to the vexed issue of gendered language.
Like those coffee house politicians, the great majority of the thinkers discussed below are male.
'man of mode',
'the
they used - 'man of
The idiom
letters',
common man', etc. - was gendered through and
through, as were their assumptions:
when
thinkers like John Locke
spoke of 'man', there doubtiess lurked a generic
if tacit
notion of
'mankind' in general, but the people they actually envisaged as doing the teaching
and preaching, writing and
enlightening, were male.
They did not think much of women in such public contexts, and when they did, they singled them out
specifically.
This
silently
gendered
language reflected a man's world as defined by dominant male and, to catch the tones of the times,
I
elites;
largely follow their practice
here. 5
One
further note
on terms. The Act of Union
(1707)
united the
parliaments of England and Scotland, creating Great Britain. Scot-
land thereby accepted the Act of Settlement, enacted by Westminster in 1701,
which designated the Hanoverians
as
Queen Anne's
suc-
A second Act of Union of 180 incorporated Ireland into the 'United Kingdom'. My usage of national terms in the following pages
cessors.
will
be
less
1
technically constitutionalist.
I
often
employ
'English' as a
shorthand for 'English language', and the terms 'English' and 'British' somewhat interchangeably when referring to ideas and developments xviii
INTRODUCTION broadly shared by
elites living in
the British
Isles,
since practically
all
enlightened thinking was then actually coming out of English heads, especially during the
first
third of the eighteenth century.
and
to this 'lumping' habit, 'English'
when and
I
I
am
shall
'Scottish' will
much of chapter
10 to
eminence, but, except fleetingly
do not focus on controversies taking place
and Wales. Usage
seems confusing or reflects the realities
to people
In this give
is
clarified
galling to
of a time
born anywhere
book
much
taste,
be
will
far too
when our
in
modern
about Ireland
laxity
sometimes
nationalist sensibilities,
'English was
many themes
and
if this
5
Isles'.
example -
chapters 10 and 20,
in
commonly
it
applied
7
receive short incisure.
space to political debate, literature and the
I
do not
arts, to tides
of
the commercialization of culture or the forging of nationalism.
Apart from space constraints, the reasons are have appeared recently
sound foundations, of
Price, for
within
by context;
and
thinkers of Irish
Welsh extraction - John Toland and Richard also achieved
and themes,
developments characteristic
Numerous
of the Scottish Enlightenment. 6
I
be distinguished
specifically addressing regional traditions
devote
By contrast
my
tried to build
on the Spade work
fellow historians." Likewise, lew extended exegeses of
Once
philosophies are offered here. studies already exist,
9
and
in
books
these are. is and. rather than redigging
in all
have instead
I
plain: splendid
an) ease
the intricacies of, say, Hobbes, the interplay of activists, ideas
again,
my
many
in
and
instances, fine
chief concern
Hume, Hutton
major
lies less
with
or Hazlitt than with
society.
Historians of the Scottish Enlightenment
may
feel particularly
aggrieved: does not the north British contribution deserve greater attention? Don't the literati of Aberdeen, St
not to mention the 'Athens of the North'
warrant chapters
all
to themselves?
I
Andrews and Glasgow,
itself,
New Town and
would not scant the
all,
brilliance
of the Caledonian contribution but, once again, notable studies already exist
upon which
I
shall
more with meanings and impacts than with cavalierly,
a whole.
chosen to
my
draw; and since origins,
I
interest
is
have, perhaps
splice Scottish thinkers into the British story as
10
XIX
INTRODUCTION greatly regret that
I
influences
upon
Britain,
more
not said here about Continental
is
and the reciprocal uptake of British thinking
overseas. Insular history has
no
virtues,
and any claims staked below
about the Englishness of the English Enlightenment, or about 'English
exceptionalism V must rest on firmer foundations than Tog over 1
the Channel' obliviousness to developments elsewhere.
can only
I
plead that adequate discussion of such issues would have
made
long book lengthier
into the
literati
that
it
would require research
my competence.
the soul
and xheje
nesais qucd of the
self,
have an excuse for some of these omissions:
topics in
12
other issues cry out for greater attention - the contro-
which raged over mind and body, Heaven and
afterlife, I
and
of Milan, Mainz and Madrid far beyond
Numerous versies
still,
a
I
to
Hell, the
name just
a few.
plan to address such
my next book, which will examine the triangle of the moral,
the material
and the medical
Next, a word on where
I
in the
anglophone Enlightenment.
stand. Enlightenment historiography has
been distorted by hindsight, and remains unashamedly partijms. Progressives have long praised the philosophes for being the begetters
Man, or have traced a lineage from them to the American Republic - indeed, the distinguished American historian of the Rights of
Henry Commager once claimed that Europe dreamed the Enlightenment and America made that dream come true. 13 For their part, right-wing scholars, echoing Burke and the
blamed the Enlightenment
for
Abbe
Barruel, have
handing the Terror
its
ideological
ammunition, while Rousseau's doctrine of the general will supposedly begat 'totalitarian democracy', lethally sanctioning fascism, Nazism
and
Stalinism.
to paint the 'totalitarian'
14
it
has
Enlightenment black. After
became
gerial rationality life'
In some quarters
become almost de rigueur the Second World War,
the epithet for an Enlightenment
was alleged
which inexorably reduced
to
whose mana-
have imposed an 'administered
society to 'a universal concentration
camp'. 15 Echoing such readings, Michel Foucault held its
rhetoric, the true logic of the
and dominate rather than critical circles take
a no
Enlightenment was to control
to emancipate.
less
that, despite
16
Certain
modern
literary
jaundiced view. 'The "new" eighteenth XX
INTRODUCTION century to be found in postmodernist scholarship,' Terry Castle drily observes,
not so
'is
and
repression,
Hobsbawm
much an
age of reason, but one of paranoia,
incipient madness.'
'These days,' remarked Eric
17
in 1997, in a similar vein, 'the
Enlightenment can be
dismissed as anything from superficial and intellectually naive to a
conspiracy of dead white
men
in periwigs to provide the intellectual
18 foundation for Western imperialism'. Voltaire likened history to a
box of
tricks
objectivity
is
we
play on the dead, and none would gainsay that
a mirage; yet
I
and postmod-
believe these Foucauldian
ernist readings are wilfully lopsided,
and
I
shall
show how and why
below. I
find enlightened
feel
more
in
minds congenial:
I
savour their pithy prose, and
tune with those warm, witt\
say, the aggrieved Puritans
who
.
book
will
than with,
enthral ye! appal Christopher Mill
or with Peter Gay's earnestly erotic Victorians. this
men
clubbable
I
however, that
trust,
be read as a work of analysis rather than one of
advocacy or apology. The Enlightenment
is
not a
good thing or
a bad thing, to be cheered or jeered. Apart from anything
would be absurd, because,
heroes-and-villains judgementalism shall insist
project'.
ad nauseam, there never was
.1
was
ironic
1
monolithic 'Enlightenment
rather than
Enlightenment was not a crusade, observes 3
of voice, a
sensibility.'
19
dogmatic. 'The
Mark Goldie, 'but a tone
Tolerance was central, and protagonists
could shake hands on some matters while shaking
lists
on others. For
of his career, Joseph Priestley, that unflagging religio-political
liberal,
looked upon
Edmund Burke
as a sympathizer,
amity ended abruptly with the French Revolution. Priestley took issue with the infidel rise,
as
Enlightened thinkers were broad-minded, they espoused
pluralism, their register
much
else,
though
their
Then again, while
Edward Gibbon's account of its
they shared, in large measure, criticisms of the corruptions of
Christianity. Priestley
even
made
a point of publishing his polemical
exchanges with his co-Nonconformist Dr Richard Price, in the candid if quaint
Little
conviction that dissent should be seen as the spur to truth. 20
was
fixed,
debate came before doctrine, and culture wars went
on among the enlightened
as well as against their foes.
XXI
INTRODUCTION we must be
In short,
sensitive to chiaroscuro so as to descry the
Enlightenment's contours, attending to liberations, in recognition (as ever) that
its
limits
resist
being seduced by
self-evident.
its
truths
We
must
and neither hypostatize the
slogans,
its
than
less
what permitted some
be interrogated was that others remaine5
to
no
Enlightenment as the manifest destiny of humanity nor, conversely, diabolize
it
as a plot of dead white males: rather
a cluster of overlapping and interacting to
modernize.
Our social vantage on
nuanced, taking
in the
from the provinces less
elites
should be seen as
it
who
shared a mission
enlightened ideologues must be
view 'from below' as well as 'from above',
as well as the metropolis,
than male responses.
21
It
embracing female no
must be capacious enough
to disclose
how particular preferences led some (Jeremy Bentham, for instance) to proceed in the name of cost-efficient rationality, while others, like John Wilkes, played the liberty trump. To some (David Hume, for example) enlightenment was primarily a matter of emancipation
from
religious bigotry within the political status quo; for others, like
Dr Richard
Price,
by Providence.
it
Avoiding taking
moved light 'in
meant a pathway
to political liberty picked out
22
book
sides, this
strives to
make
sense of
what
progressive intellectuals by laying bare their thinking, in the
we must understand
of Locke's dictum that
the sense he uses them,
and not
man's particular philosophy, mind' of that author.
23
This
as they are appropriated,
by each
to conceptions that never entered the
is
a particularly important undertaking
because the world they were making that secular value system to
a thinker's terms,
is
the one
we have
inherited,
which most of us subscribe today which
upholds the unity of mankind and basic personal freedoms, and the
worth of tolerance, knowledge, education and opportunity. As the Enlightenment's children,
we should
try to
fathom our parents.
As ever, that is not straightforward. While in the eighteenth century progressive intellectuals backed many causes now typically approved, they also espoused others which today we find abhorrent. John Locke
championed the natural freedom of mankind, yet 'The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina', framed by him in 1669, granted free men XXll
INTRODUCTION in the
new colony
Bentham
24 absolute jurisdiction over their slaves.
deplored the criminalization of homosexuality, yet proposed castrat-
and tattooing convicts -
ing rapists
happiness principle.
25
Mary
on the
all
basis of the greatest
Wollstonecraft vindicated the rights of
women, but out-misogynized most women-haters. 'The age of enlightenment,' Ronald cisms.'
26
Knox once noted,
'was also an age of fanati-
Complexities, convolutions and contradictions leap out from
my pages. 'Reason, with most people, means their 27
the saturnine William Hazlitt.
own
opinion': thus wrote
Without succumbing wholly
to that
we must beware presentism
Hazlittian mulishness born of defeat,
and recognize
that every age, especially perhaps the age of reason,
rationalizes in
its
and
implicit.
freedom;
regime
it
own way and
To
was
spelt social control
caveat against simplistic
"all
enlightenments' readings.
do
is
to
meaning codes, spoken
n
would regulate
rational
abandoning 'Enlightenment'
dead
ow
only spell personal
also disciplinary, a tool in the forging
Benthamism thus
the
its
utilitarians, rationality did no(
which the
in
has
28
is,
of that
The
the rest.
as a historical category:
it
is
Nothing could be
into today's conceptual corsets.
understand them
all
the
than
sillier
draw
gratefully
hectoring
in the battle lor
upon
the best historians have rarely
the
letters, into
registers, I
and
a
to tightlace
the world will
in
done justice
to the
Grub
this
book
the mind. to fellow histori-
work of literary
afforded by literary investigations into
of
merely
The most we can hope to
While cheerfully acknowledging my massive debts also
for
lor the best in the best ol all possible
is
problematizes the progressives
I
fact that
however, no argument
not change them! Far from judging saints and sinners,
ans,
efficient
scholars.
Even
remarkable insights
Street
and the republic
authorship and readership, into genres, canons and
into fictionalizations of self and society. In
highlight the part played
by
poets, critics
and
what
follows
novelists in debates
over identity, individuality and subjectivity, and the role of the
imagination in the politics of the gendered the eighteenth century authors'.
was
truly, as
29
XXlll
self,
in the belief that
Johnson thought, an
'age of
INTRODUCTION Enlightened avant-gardes condemned the fossilized, prized novelty (while also mistrusting
and
self-celebration.
was materializing
in
it)
and thrived upon controversy,
Through
the
medium
of print, public opinion
a manner uncannily prefiguring the
tieth-century data revolution
twen-
late
and those contemporary expressions of
the electric information explosion, the Internet
Web. The
self-criticism
and the World Wide
progress of print was a development
upon which those
two mighty adversaries Samuel Johnson and David
Hume
for
once
found themselves of a mind. 'The mass of every people must be barbarous where there
is
no printing and consequently knowledge
not generally diffused,' ruled Johnson;
Hume,
'a
these last
sudden and sensible change fifty
years,
print revolution
30
there
is
had been, sensed
in the opinions of men within
by the progress of learning and
liberty'.
31
The
and the rise of the reading public brought new cadres
of knowledge-mongers into being, serving as society's eyes, ears, brains
and mouthpieces. 32
intelligentsia has
How
curious that this budding British
been ignored. This book aims
to
make a modest
contribution to changing that, rethinking Albion's Enlightenment
and shedding
light
on the
'black hole'.
have tried to give
full citations to
the quotations
(Note:
I
used.
have not, however, been scrupulously consistent
I
original punctuation
and
capitalization.)
xxiv
I
have
in following
I
BLIND SPOT?
A
The
eighteenth century sailed forward into an era of unparal-
leled stability
.
.
.
No
ferment of ideas or memories remained.
PERRY ANDERSON
The year 1783 brought the launching not can Republic but sellschaft
also,
more modestly, of
(Wednesday Club),
German
sprouting in
broached the question: 'What followed.
just
of the Ameri-
the Berliner
Mittwochge-
a debating society
cities. In a local
Three hundred and
is
1
i\
pica]
one
periodical,
of those then
ofits
members
enlightenment?' Strenuous debate
sixty miles to the east, in
Kdnigsberg,
a professor of philosophy offered his contribution. In his 'Answer to the Question:
What
Kant deemed
that
is
Enlightenment?'
'if it is
now asked whether we
enlightened age, the answer in
(1784), the great
is:
enlightened.
To
present
in
No', although he did add, 'we do
an age of enlightenment': Europe was 2
li\c at
Immanuel
in
an
live
the throes of becoming
How?
secure 'man's release from his self-incurred immaturity',
Kant
judged, people must think for themselves under the watchword sapere aude
Yet
it
- 'dare
was not
to
know' - a tag from the
so simple.
nevertheless,
in
primary duty
lies in
his
The
Roman
poet Horace. 3
thinker must indeed 'dare to
capacity as clergyman or serving his church
civil
and obeying
know
servant,
his prince
;
his
-
in
Kant's case, Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, an enlightened
monarch, no doubt, and a fan of Voltaire, but a militaristic
bound
and
autocratic. Subjects,
to swallow dissent
1
Machiavellian,
Kant concluded, were duty-
and uphold the royal
disorder.
man
will so as to
preclude
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD Kant's denial that his age was enlightened historians.
may
4
Yet, taken for historical fact,
well apply to his
on Russia's 1724
own
often endorsed by
it is
utterly misleading. It
university city, the
modern Kaliningrad,
where he had been born
Baltic coast, east of Poland,
and would
is
die eighty years later
-
in his entire
life
in
the philoso-
pher, while boldly voyaging in the mind, never ventured his gouty toes outside East Prussia. His daily constitutional as
was almost
he ever went - and such a regular was he that the
to set their watches
Not
all
many
that
hung over
by the
professorial tread.
Konigsbergers, one suspects, had
their beds.
And
Frederick's
officials
sapere aude
Kant's denial arguably applies more
manned by
whose forced labour sustained a haughty landed
cadre of tame
were said
5
broadly to Prussia at large, a feudal kingdom serfs
locals
as far
and a fearsome
own advanced postures and
the epithet 'enlightened' only in a
hereditary nobility, a
military machine. Despite
policies, Prussia qualifies for
somewhat Pickwickian
sense.
'A government, supported by an army of 180,000 men,' tersely
commented
Moore, 'may
the English traveller John
the criticisms of a few speculative politicians, satirist.'
safely disregard
and the pen of the
6
A faithful state functionary, Professor Kant's ideal of freedom was as timid as the
man
himself. Elsewhere in Europe, the question of
enlightenment had been raised and,
many were
sure, resolved,
decades before Berlin's Wednesday talking shop was even dreamed up.
However sublime
a philosopher, as a culture-watcher Kant was
fated to be a
man on the margins,
to the west,
where phrases
ten-a-penny. Thinker 17 1 8,
7
In England,
hardly aufait with political
like 'this
enlightened age' had long been
Ambrose
had adopted Horace's
realities
Philips's
'sapere aude' as its
magazine the
masthead
Free-
as early as
launching an assault on superstition; and in a nation in which
formal censorship had ceased back in 1695, such an assertion of free-thinking raised few eyebrows contrast, positively gave
its
-
the Mittwochgesellschaft, by
imprimatur
to press censorship.
8
Already, by Phillips's time, Englishmen prided themselves upon living in the light.
A
full
three-quarters of a century before Kant,
BLIND SPOT?
A
Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, had addressed a comrade in the Netherlands in far more spirited terms:
There
is
a mighty Light which spreads
Successes
advance the
turn;
and
we have
had,
Cause of Theisme it
than
Heaven sends
I
the Affairs of
Knowledge must
impossible but Letters and
it is
will lose
when
whom
us soon a peace suitable to the great
Proportion than ever ...
in greater
better for
if
over the world especially in
and Holland; on
those two free Nations of England
Europe now
self
its
anything by
fair
I
am
far
Dispute.
wish the Establishment of an
from thinking I
can never
.
.
.
that
wish
intire Philosophicall
Liberty. 9
As
this
book
Whig
will stress, the
Philosophicall Liberty' in a free
and progressive country was shared
How
by many of his contemporaries. have had so
little
to say
European Enlightenment
Complex was
revisionisms
slighted
about the as a
peer's elation at enjoying 'intire
w
peculiar, then, that historians
role of English thinkers in the
hole!
mark our
times. For long the
by Anglo-Ameriean scholars
as
l
been achieving decisive in the
Gay reinstated
More
recently,
recognition -
and oddballs
however, the Enlightenment has
sometimes notoriety
making of modernity.
10
as a
movement
The American historian Peter
the philosophes as dauntless critics, wrestling with prob-
lems of modern
life
which
still
tax us today. 11
And
since then, our
understanding of the Aujklarung has been further enriched.
now
see
it
3
an arid or pretentious
interlude, personified by know-alls such as Voltaire
such as Rousseau.
age of reason
as stretching far
beyond the
'little
We
can
flock of philosophes'
celebrated by Gay: today's cultural historians point to the ferment of
new
thinking amongst the reading public at large, stimulated
via
newspapers, novels, prints and even pornography - the Enlighten-
ment should be viewed not
as a
canon of
classics
but as a living
language, a revolution in mood, a blaze of slogans, delivering the
shock of the new.
It
decreed
new ways of seeing, advanced by a range
of protagonists, male and female, of various nationalities and discrete status, professional
and
interest groups.
3
12
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD This image of an engage Enlightenment, calling for practical
improvement on a broad
front, represents a
major advance upon the dated image of periwigged poseurs
on
in Parisian salons. In this
welcome
and
criticizing, cajoling
prattling
revisionist, however, the role
of Britain remains oddly neglected. That
is
nothing new. In
his
establishing of the Enlightenment pantheon, Ernst Cassirer's magisterial
and profoundly
translated
influential The Philosophy of the Enlightenment,
from the German
in 1951,
had not
so
much
as
mentioned
Bolingbroke and Bentham, Priestley, Price and Paine or Godwin
and Wollstonecraft
Enlightenment's premier husband-and-wife
(the
team), or that astonishing polymath Erasmus Darwin,
Anglo-Scottish political
preachers
like
economy - no Adam Smith!
Addison and
Steele.
From
alone
let
or lay
-
his philosophical eyrie,
Cassirer patronized those few English thinkers he did deign to discuss:
'among
the leaders of this movement', he concluded of the Deists,
'there
no thinker of real depth and of truly
is
Cassirer's erudition
proved justifiably
original stamp'.
influential,
and
13
his neglect
of England characterized his successors. Leonard Marsak's anthology The Enlightenment presented no readings at
all
from English
writers,
while Lester Crocker's equivalent barely did better, with a token four
out of fifty. 14
The
pattern thus set a generation ago continues: James
Schmidt's recent What
Is Enlightenment?
contains thirty-four essays,
not one of which focuses on England. 15
A
survey of religion and
philosophy in Georgian Britain got by without using the term 'Enlightenment' at
all;
Christopher Hill likewise, deprecating the
mystifying rationality of 'Yahoo society'; and literary historians have often opted for the label 'Augustan', partly because 'age of reason' 16 has been thought to suggest a 'winter of the imagination'.
And
when not thus ignored, English achievements have been denied. Henry Steele Commager rated England 'a bit outside the Enlightenment', while a fellow American pronounced as recentiy as 1976, 'the
term "English Enlightenment" would be jarring and incongruous it
were ever heard'. 17 This book
will, I trust,
if
be a jarring experience.
Such scholarly disdain has deep roots. Unlike the self-styled lumieres or illuminati across the Channel, Georgian gentlemen did not in so 4
BLIND SPOT?
A
many words term
themselves 'enlighteners', nor did the phrase 'the
Enlightenment' enter English usage until the mid- Victorian era, even then being used to curl a
Voltaire
lip at
and the other
facile scoffers
of that 'age of reason' which the Romantics and Victorians so
abhorred. 18
The term
continues to carry pejorative
edition of The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary glosses
and pretentious
'shallow
authority
and
airs: it
intellectualism, unreasonable
tradition, etc., applied esp. to the spirit
the 1973
as denoting
contempt
for
and aims of the
French philosophers of the 18th c' - a definition proud
to perpetuate
not just English philistinism but Oxonian deference to 'authority and 19
tradition'. It
does not
come
'The English Enlightenment' or 'The nearest is
is
John Redwood's
at least subtitled
1750'.
'
British Enlightenment'; the
The Age of Enlightenment
chance, went on to become incapable of mounting a
it
(
which
England, 1660
who, hardly
b)
Sonservative Party politician
advances rational
trad)
in
Souls, Oxford,
All
a far right
and outspoken Eurosceptic,
.1
rum
decidedl)
critique of
case:
Throne and
enemies of the Establishment had instead, rather
stooped
caddishly,
exists called
Reason, Ridicule and Religion (1970),
Written by a fellow of
Altar, rationalist
no book
as a surprise, therefore, that
to
railler)
conservative historians like J. C. Souls, have in effect denied
and 1
).
(
ridicule.
Mark,
20
who
Subsequent also did time
neo.it
All
by silence an Anglo-Enlightenment,
holding that Hanoverian England remained a 'confessional state with Church and King beliefs supreme. For intelligence, Clark's reading political superstructure,
up
in society at large.
is
scholarship and
highly idiosyncratic: eyes glued on the
he overlooks the zest for change bubbling
Yet
his stress
High Church and Tory convictions it
all its
on the is
durability of
valuable in
highlights the intensity of ideological conflict,
that enlightened attitudes
its
hidebound
own way,
and
since
so reminds us
formed not some bland background music
to events but a partisan voice, expressive of sectional interests
divided
elites.
There
and
21
are, of course, distinguished exceptions to this
blind spot
9
- J. G. A. Pocock and Margaret Jacob, 5
academic
in particular,
have
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD made and
and what
a point of utilizing the term,
upon
gratefully
follows will
draw greatly
their pioneering scholarship. Nevertheless, there
has been no study of the 'British Enlightenment' as such, nor any
debate on 'English Enlightenment' comparable to those over the scientific
and
What makes
industrial revolutions. 22
all this
odd
so very
is
that the philosophes themselves
looked to England as the birthplace of the modern. Anglophiles in
Roman Empire
France, Italy and the Holy constitutional its
prosperity
celebrated Britain's
monarchy and freedom under the law, and
religious toleration.
its
open
society,
'The English are the only
people upon earth,' declared Voltaire in his significantly philosophiques ou Lettres anglaises (1733), the first
titled Lettres
grenade lobbed
at the
ancien regime,
who have been
able to prescribe limits to the
them; and who, by a
series
of struggles, have at
Government, where the Prince time
is
restrain'd
no
resisting
established that wise
last
powerful to do good, and at the same
evil;
Vassals;
government without confusion.
However
is all
from committing
insolence, tho' there are
power of Kings by
where the Nobles are great without
and where the People share
in the
23
idealized, Voltaire's
homage was
at least
first-hand experience. After a spat with the Chevalier de
based upon
Rohan, the
young writer had been roughed up by the nobleman's bully boys and thrown into the Bastille, and was released only on condition that he went
into exile. Resident in
England
for three years
from
1726,
he
enjoyed the companionship of poets and politicians and plunged into the works of English scientists, philosophers thinkers.
The
and
religious free-
24
Lettres
saluted England as a 'nation of philosophers'
cradle of liberty, tolerance
and
sense, using
it,
like
and the
Montesquieu later,
own patrie. Francis Bacon was the prophet of Isaac Newton had revealed the laws of the universe,
as a stick to beat his
modern
science,
and John Locke had demolished Descartes and on the bedrock of experience.
25
rebuilt philosophy
Together, their teachings beat a path
6
in
I
\
I
D SP01
?
between dogmatism and scepticism, opening up new views of nature, morals and society.
A
of a younger generation, Denis Diderot
philosophe
ardent. Reflecting
phy
is
cultivated',
on the 'two countries he drew a
in
Europe
telling distinction: 'In
phers are honoured, respected; they
rise to
no
felt
less
which philoso-
in
England, philoso-
public offices, they are
buried with the kings ... In France warrants are issued against them, they are persecuted, pelted with pastoral letters
England
is
any the worse
for
it?'
.
.
.
Do we
see that
26
France 'owes to England', the Journal encyclopedique was to acknowledge, 'the great revolution
which can contribute
more
flourishing'.
27
to render peoples
Progressives in Paris
fanclub, while a popular
who had
which has taken place
comedy of the
more happy and
States
formed an informal English
1760s guyed the
'Hogard' and 'HindeP on his
in everything
lips,
Anglomaniac
drank only
tea,
read
nothing but Shakespeare and Pope and declared: 'The teachers of
mankind have been born
in
London, and
it is
from them we must
28
There was even a touch of truth in that caricature, as Edward Gibbon - hardly a vulgar chauvinist - found when visiting
take lessons.'
Paris just after the inglorious
War: 'Our opinions, our
Bourbon
defeat in the Seven Years
fashions, even our games,
were adopted
in
France; a ray of national glory illuminated each individual, and every
Englishman was supposed
to
be born a patriot and a philosopher.' 29
Continentals lapped up English ideas. Take another Anglophile, the Piedmontese
nobleman Alberto Radicati
di Passerano.
'He
absorbed the more violent and polemical elements from English deism,' the great Italian historian Franco Venturi once observed:
He dreamed time,
of a world without property or authority, and, at the same
showed enthusiasm
for the
which he experienced during
mixed government of the
his difficult
the most diverse elements from the original
way
.
.
.
formed
in
exile.
commonwealthmen
He combined
in a curious
and
Every aspect of this example, both the ideological and the
political, reveals particularly well the
ideas
and troubled
British Isles,
England
at the turn
penetration on the continent of the
of the century. 30
7
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD Continental savants were galvanized by English innovations in politics
much
and
so that Diderot
was led
reason and philosophy would in France'.
and even
ethics, epistemology, aesthetics
31
belles lettres
-
so
to exclaim that 'without the English, still
be
most despicable infancy
in the
Religious critiques infiltrated France through the works
of Toland, Tindal, Collins, Wollaston, Woolston and those Deistical aristocrats Shaftesbury afield, via
and Bolingbroke, spreading even
Leibniz and the Electress Sophia to the
into Italy through
farther
German states, and
Giannone. 32
English moral benevolism also rippled to the Continent. Diderot's passion for philosophes
his translating Shaftesbury;
33
other
applauded Pope's An Essay on Man (1733-4), while Rousseau
found balm larly
was kindled by
vertue
in
Addison and
Steele, confessing,
my
pleased me, and improved
mind.'
34
'
The Spectator particu-
Later on, British
utili-
tarianism spurred legal reformers, a Spaniard declaring 'the grand
Baintham'
to
have been
- a Solon, a
ever produced
was exporting 'vortices'
and a Lope de Vega'. 35 Nor the natural sciences - with Newtonian
less brisk in
gravitation finally 36
most universal genius which the world
'the
- and
Plato,
weaning the French
off their beloved Cartesian
also in the practical arts: 'France
owes
to
England
the great revolution which has taken place in her literature,' gushed the Journal encyclopedique in 1758:
How many useful arts
excellent works
.
- upon agriculture
.
.
.
.
have appeared in recent years upon the .
upon commerce,
navigation and the colonies, in short to render peoples
The
more happy and
peerless Encyclopedic
itself,
d'Alembert and completed
scheme
to translate
appeared back
Even
British fiction
upon everything which can contribute
States
more
launched
flourishing. 37
in
1751
by Diderot and
in twenty-eight volumes, originated in a
Ephraim Chambers's
in 1728.
finance, manufactures,
Cyclopaedia,
which had
38
became
Germany by storm - by
fashionable. Robinson Crusoe (1726) took
1760 over forty sequels had appeared; so did
the verse of Ossian, the 'Scottish Homer', at a later date; while
sentimental
drama and
novels ravished Continental hearts:
8
'O
A
had been
Pamela, 'thou shalt be
oi'
French
so a
short,
SP01
\ I)
man unique
Richardson, Richardson, the author
BL1
critic
my
in
my
eyes,'
sang Diderot
oi
39
In
reading at
all
something of an English flavour about
Contemporary comment thus
our own: the
it'.
suggests
40
it
was an English sun which
up many of the Continental children of light. How,
do we explain modern verdicts accounted
French
level
Francophone,
-
41
that of historical tastes
By custom,
albeit
in that case,
R. R. Palmer's?
like
'The Enlightenment
for:
affair.'
letters
no longer welcomed or valued anything that had not
...
At a banal
times!'
confessed in 1768, once English
tasted, 'a revolution quickly took place in
Frenchman
lit
'
the
is
- the paradox
ordinarily thought of as a
movement
perhaps finding
easily
is
its
is
assumed
to
be
metaphysical apotheosis
among German philosophers. 'There were many philosophies,
'
ruled
Gay, 'but there was only one Enlightenment' - and that was Francecentred,
headed by that Voltairian party of humanity which cham-
pioned
the
materialism. ily
modern 42
trinity
of
atheism,
republicanism
and
Leonard Marsak dubbed the Enlightenment 'primar-
a French phenomenon';
it
was 'pre-eminently and focally French',
agreed Lester Crocker, while Robert Darnton has recently restated that
it
was
'in
ment took
off.
Paris in the early eighteenth century' that enlighten43
Such readings owe much
Edmund Burke and
the
to the
assumption current ever since
Abbe Barruel
that the Enlightenment's
climax - or nadir - lay in what Palmer styled 'democratic revolution', enshrined first in the American and then in the French Revolutions. 44
The
fact that there
Bull
proved the bulwark of counter-revolution, seems to lend support
was no English
to the idea that there
revolt to match, indeed that John
can have been no English Enlightenment
worthy of the name. Indeed, small surprise that historians should
opments
if
the Enlightenment's defining features are taken to be the
atheism, republicanism philosophes'
belittle British devel-
big guns
and materialism supposedly
fired
by the
and sparking the French Revolution. Hailed thus
as the authorized prophets of the
modern, 45 must not the avant-garde
9
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD have been
'radical' to the
very marrow?
like 'revolutionaries', 'skeptics',
Enlightenment
is
Gay freely bestows bouquets
'democrats' and*' atheists'; and
primarily to be read, following him, as the
modern paganism',
must make sense
it
if
the
'rise
of
to put into the foreground
Voltaire's ecrasez Vinfame, along with d'Holbach's atheistic materialism. 46
Hence, finding
panting to throttle the easy
England few pagans or
insurrectionists
last
king with the guts of the
last priest,
to conclude that the 'English Enlightenment'
is
it
in
misnomer or an oxymoron. Yet their
in sober truth
German,
materialists or atheists.
the loathing
Dutch
many
The
48
must be a
47
few French
Italian or
how
philosophes,
rhetoric of
some
and even
truly felt for cardinals
virtually
none of
were devoted democrats,
confreres,
shrill
and
be mistaken for practical plans to turn society
philosophes,
and
kings, should not
itself
upside-down.
Dazzling sloganizing made the French Enlightenment central to later radical mythologies
and reactionary demonologies alike, but the links
between the High Enlightenment and revolutionary anything but clear selves
cut.
49
Many philosophes,
activity
as revolutionaries
were
them-
complained, had feathered nests for themselves under the
ancien regime
Johnson.
50
- d'Alembert,
To what
after
extent,
all,
and
Dr
held four more sinecures than
when, would Voltaire or
until
had they lived to see the Revolution, have applauded its course - one which beheaded the chemist Lavoisier and drove
Diderot, actual
Condorcet
to suicide,
and was
criticized
Raynal and Marmontel? Looking tively
through modern
by
at the
latter-day philosophes like
Enlightenment retrospec-
political lenses creates
a
fatally distorting
teleology.
Anglophone developments have
also
been skipped over thanks
to
the intellectualist fallacy dear to academics who, echoing Cassirer's verdict thinkers
on the on an
Deists, prize 'profundity'
abstrusity scale.
Given
above
all
this scholarly
and
rate
dead
snobbery, such
seminal figures as the idiosyncratic Shaftesbury, the ironist Toland, the suave Steele or the populist Paine get low marks.
decision to call his
Even
the
book the philosophy of the Enlightenment perhaps
involved Cassirer in a distortion, a betrayal even, of its
10
spirit,
especi-
1
A ally insofar as lettre,
/>'/,/ \
D SPO
l
?
he imagined the philosopher stumblingly trying, avant
to write 77ie Critique oj Pure Reason. After
la
scholasticism was
all,
the last thing activists were trying to advance.
Anyone embracing Cassirer's
would
criteria
discourse pretty low grade, though they might Scottish academics like
certainly find English
award more points
Thomas Reid and Dugald
methodical manuals of methodology.
duced no Kant, but that
Stewart for their
Undoubtedly England pro-
51
not the point: there
is
to
is
no earthly reason
why systematic metaphysics should be taken as the acme of enlightenment. 52 Thinkers
Locke abhorred
like
the old scholastic cobwebs; the foolish
was
to
(and
and swept aside
be a system-monger, quipped Shaftesbury,
indigestible scholastic husks; they
men
de systeme
most ingenious way of becoming
ridicule the test of truth. England's
but
I'esprit
modernizers had no stomach for
were not ivory-towered academics
women) of letters who made
politan market place
who made
and courted the
their pitch in the
metro-
public, hoping, with
Joseph
who supported Cicero's praise of Socrates for bringing philosophy down from the heavens, to make it 'dwell in Clubs
Addison,
and Assemblies,
at
Tea-Tables and
in Coffee Houses'. 53 Selling
philosophy to urbanites, and uniting the the world, English thinkers practical If
and
made
it
man of letters to the man of
their business to
be palatable,
pleasing.
academics have misled themselves with monolithic and ana-
chronistic
models of what
things are changing.
'true enlightenment'
Recent scholarship has been
must have been, in a disaggregating
mood, replacing the old essentialist assumptions of a pure and unitary (for
which, read French)
movement with
a pluralism, appreciative of
a variety of blooms, from Dublin to Lublin, from York to
York, each with
its
own
seeds
and
soil,
problems, priorities and
programmes. In place of the old emphasis on enlightened circles are
now
which accommodate E.
P.
-
superstars, wider
being investigated from perspectives
Thompson's
'peculiarities
of the English'
alongside, of course, those of the Prussians, the Poles
Portuguese.
54
Today it seems
New
arbitrary
and anachronistic
and the
to rule that
only crusaders for atheism, republicanism and materialism deserve
1
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD the adjective 'enlightened'; the time
might surely have
is
ripe, as
said, to rescue the English
the 'enormous condescension of posterity'.
To
by
trace the part played
Thompson
himself
Enlightenment from
55
British thinkers in the
making of
modernity, better mappings are needed of the contacts and circuits
The
of literati and their listeners.
loops between London, Edinburgh
and Dublin, between the metropolis and the provinces, between cultures high all
and low,
religious
and
secular,
male and female, must
be traced. Appealing against guilty verdicts on the treason of the
- Perry Anderson's withering
intellectuals
'no ferment of ideas or
memories' - Thompson points to the formation of 'scores of intellectual enclaves, dispersed over
England, Wales and Scotland, which
made up for what they lost in cohesion by the multiplicity of initiatives afforded by these many bases'. 56 J. H. Plumb likewise has guided the bedazzled eye away from the 'peaks of culture': 'too much attention, it
seems to me,' he wrote,
'is
the intellectual giants, too
acquire
little
to their social acceptance. Ideas
dynamism when they become
happening
book
paid to the monopoly of ideas amongst
in England.'
takes up.
I
shall
57
now
and
this
was
These are some of the challenges
this
social attitudes
turn to the core problems of the British
Enlightenment, and signpost the key themes covered in the chapters to follow.
Britain experienced
profound transformations during the long
eight-
eenth century: the overthrow of absolutism, accelerating population growth, urbanization, a commercial revolution marked by rising disposable income, the origins of industrialization. Shifts in consciousness helped to bring these changes about, to level criticism at its
delights
and
make
sense of and
them, and to direct public attention to modernity,
its
discontents.
58
Striking changes were afoot in 'high culture'. Protestant scriptural-
ism - the belief that every word of the Bible had been dictated
by the Holy Ghost - was refined into a new rational faith, attended by more optimistic models of man's lot under the Supreme Being (see
chapter
5).
Basking in Newton's glory, the
12
new
science
was
HUM)
A
acclaimed and extended Scientific
methods,
SPOl
'
new, natural and soda!
to pastures
alike.
political arithmetic, probabilistic thinking, sys-
tematic observation, experiment and quantification and appeals to the yardstick of Nature
chapter
all
gained prestige and applicability
6).
new
Partly as a consequence of these capital
(see
was vested
in creating sciences of
beliefs, vast intellectual
man and
Hobbes,
society.
anatomized the mind and emotions, and recognizable precursors of today's social and human sciences Locke and
their successors
psychology, economics, anthropology, sociology and so forth - took
shape
(see
chapters
17).
3, 7,
Divine Right and other prescriptive
dogmas which had buttressed a assailed
by
critical
to utilitarian
static,
hierarchical social order were
thinking on power, leading to the
reformism and to the Rights of Man
calculus,
felicific
(see
chapters 8 and
18). I
shall
be scrutinizing these and
many
and
theological, psychological, social
tific,
other innovations in scienpolitical discourse,
focusing on such key figures as Newton, Locke, Bernard de
David Hartley, Erasmus Darwin,
ville,
Godwin and ideas
Wollstonecraft,
by Addison and
Much work has been done
remains fragmentary; the pieces have yet
it
be put together and the
Bentham,
Pope and Sterne and a host of
other poets, preachers and popularizers.
to
Mande-
and examining the publicizing of their
Steele, Defoe,
on such past masters, but
Priestley, Paine,
by
full
jigsaw revealed.
Big ideas must be contextualized in terms of broader transformations in casts of
and
mind, habits of thinking and shades of
their diffusion
among
sensibility,
the reading public must be addressed, so
that the practical consequences of enlightened ideologies can be
grasped.
Only then
outlooks
become
will the
fundamental revisions wrought
clear: biblicism
in public
and providentialism were being
challenged by naturalism; custom was elbowed aside by an itch for
change and
faith in the
new. In
self-identity, artistic taste,
to tradition
was spurned
boosters conjuring
many
fields
-
in
moral quandaries,
reading habits, leisure pursuits - deference as antiquated,
up brighter
backward or plebeian by
futures there for the taking. Central
13
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD to enlightened
modernizing were the
conveyed through
glittering prospects of progress
print.
In Britain, at least, the Enlightenment was thus not just a matter
of pure
breakthroughs;
epistemological
was primarily the
it
new mental and moral values, new canons of sociability and views of human nature. And these
expression of
of
styles
typically
assumed
taste,
embodiment: urban renewal; the establishment of
practical
and prisons; the acceleration of communi-
hospitals, schools, factories
cations; the spread of newspapers,
commercial
outlets
and consumer
behaviour; the marketing of new merchandise and cultural services. All such
developments repatterned the loom of life, with inevitable
repercussions for social prospects and agendas of personal fulfilment.
England's avant-garde enjoyed different prospects from those to
be expected elsewhere. Activists were not thwarted turn by monarchical State,
Church and
fiat,
lettres
society.
de cachet or
an
at every twist
ossified status quo in
Quite the reverse. After the Glorious
Revolution of 1688, the very statute book incorporated enlightened wish
list:
and
much
of the
freedom of the person under habeas corpus,
the rule of law, Parliament, religious toleration,
and so forth. Further-
more, unlike elsewhere, neither censorship, police ecclesiastical protocols
spies
nor petrified
stopped the articulate and ambitious from
pursuing their goals, be they experiments in free-thinking and
-living,
self-enrichment or the pursuit of pleasure. Promoters of enlightened rationality did not
need
to
within the system, giving
maxim: faber suae fortune').
ment's
Not
storm barricades, for doors swung open
some
plausibility to
quisquefortunae ('each
man
[is]
Bacon's oft-quoted
the
maker of his own
until late in the eighteenth century did the Enlighten-
new men
feel radically alienated
from the English Estab-
lishment.
Hardly
surprisingly, therefore,
one
trait
of enlightened England
was a buoyant pragmatism, underpinned by a Baconian philosophy of action.
The proof of 'pudding time'
enjoyment of well-being. Foreign
lay in the uses of freedom, the
visitors
marvelled at England's
thriving hive. 'The English are great in practical mechanics,' declared 59 while Pastor Moritz from the Swiss-American Louis Simond,
14
A
BLIND SPOT?
Prussia drgaled over English improvements,
of 'roasting "toast" \ sis
60
r
down
i^lit
of buttered bread before the
slices
Predictably, English piety
on works not words:
'religion in
the smallest villages,' envied the in hospitals for the sick,
to the
fire
.
.
.
knack called
was also esteemed for its emphaEngland,
Abbe
Prevost, 'finds
homes of refuge
and even
in towns,
for the
in
expression
its
poor and aged of
both sexes, schools for the education of the children'. 61
when on Grand Tour,
Conversely,
the enlightened British were
not slow to bridle at Continental benightedness, and were shocked
by the misery they met. Finding the peasantry of the Palatinate 'poor
and wretched', Elizabeth Montagu drew the hackneyed contrast between starving yokels and 'princes so magnificent'. 62 thinking they groan under oppression,'
lamenting the 'poverty, misery, and France'.
'I
cannot help
commented Tobias
dirt,
among
the
Smollett,
commonalty of
63
British
pragmatism was more than mere worldliness:
it
embodied
a philosophy of expediency, a dedication to the art, science
and duty
of living well in the here and now. Lord Chesterfield's commendation to his son of
hedonism and
'Our Business here
is
not to
savoir vivre finessed
know all things, but those which concern
our Conduct' - Pope's view that man'.
64
Locke's dictum that
Would it be fanciful to
'the
proper study of mankind
suggest that Prime Minister Walpole's
preferred self-presentation as 'no saint, no Spartan, no reformer'
an enlightened in
tint?
The displacement of Calvinism by a
set
opportunities,
and the
practical
scramble' of a market society,
saders
waved
this
about exploiting a commercial society pregnant with skills
needed
to drive
Modernizers faced pressing predicaments. Above
which would
had
confidence
cosmic benevolism blessed the pursuit of happiness, and to
end Britons
is
66
how could a stable
facilitate the pursuit
it.
all,
65
in the 'great
order be achieved
of happiness? Enlightened cru-
the liberty banner, legitimizing such claims through
Lockean liberalism and the moral and psychological formulae known as benevolism, sensationalism, associationism
not each
man
best
know how
and
utilitarianism.
best to pursue pleasure? 'Virtue
15
is
Did the
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD conformity to a rule of life,' explained the the actions of
Revdjohn Gay,
'directing
T
rational creatures with re spect to each other's
all
happiness.' 67 Glossing a
famous phrase from Pope's An Essay
on
Man,
another respected Anglican divine, the Revd William Paley, deemed that 'whatever
expedient
is
is
right'
- a breathtaking maxim
come
to
from the pen of a Cambridge tutor and member of the Church of England. 68 Sanctifying Priestley urged:
self-interest
most advisable
'it is
liberty to serve himself'.
69
bishop, doubted
we were
convinced that
will
to
it'.
70
And
it
egoism
and
Even
private judgement, Joseph
to leave every
at perfect
the sober Joseph Butler, later a
justified in
pursuing virtue,
be for our happiness, in practice
man
had a
or, at least,
'till
we
are
not contrary
pretty free run amidst the
trappings of what admittedly remained a confusing and cluttered hierarchy.
The endorsement from Locke to Smith of the
irryiolabjlity
of private property, and the assurance that 'the inconveniences which
have arisen to a nation from leaving trade quite open are
found expression ii
and
economic liberalism and
laissez-faire (see
71
chapters
17).
has furthermore been argued that
It
which brought, first
in
few',
at least
it
was enlightened England
amongst genteel and professional people, the
flowering of 'affective individualism' within the conjugal family:
greater exercise of choice as regards marriage partner,
some degree
of female emancipation from stern patriarchy, and for children from the parental rod (see chapters 12
and
15).
Over from France, Madame 'live in
much
Writers and
artists
du Boccage found that the daughters of the gentry less
young
constraint than
unwonted
similarly
basked
freedom
really
spinning
London concert
in
exclaimed
is!'
amongst
ladies
I
have
it
in
'How
opportunities.
Haydn
tours.
'I
sweet
this bit
of
in 1791,
on one of his money-
had a kind
prince, but sometimes
was I obliged to be dependent on base
and now
us'.
72
souls. I often
sighed for release,
some measure.' 73
This emancipation of the ego from hidebound tradition and the stern
judgementalism of
elders, family
and
peers, this rejection or
74 attenuation of the ancestral 'moral economy', was widely thought
worth the
risk
as
a feelgood factor
16
became programmed
into
BL1
A
enlightened expectations. cast off
D SP01
\
lonvictioil
(
from the old world and
set
?
grew
that the time
cape of
for a
sail
was
ipe to
r
Good Mope;
Moderns could and should outdo Ancients. The auguries were picious:
human
nature was not flawed by the
able, society improvable,
emerge from what All this
yet
dubbed man's
chimed with a new itself,
was
desir-
knowledge progressive and good would
Priestley
universe, like society
Fall; desire
aus-
'endless cravings'.
Nature
faith in
75
Newton's
at large:
was doubtless composed of myriad atoms,
ensemble comprised a harmonious and resplendent natural
its
which
order,
science
man had a right to
and the
explore and master through natural
practical arts (see chapter
6).
And
confidence also
grew about the Divine Order. God's benevolence resolved the theodicy problem: Satan was but a metaphor, evil at bottom mere error.
Providence - Smith's
'invisible
hand' - had bid
be the same in a programme of amelioration; fortunately, 'public benefits';
and
self-interest
ened. In Shaftesbury's sunny phrase: 'The
and
First
is
and Chief in nature, had made
private Interest
Good'
77
-
and Good of everyone,
or, in the less lofty
social
'private vices' were,
could also be enlight-
Wisdom it
and
to
of what rules,
be according to the
work towards the general
.
.
.
animates the world [and] gives
78
Thus heartened, Albion's their
self-love
sentiments of Frederick Eden, 'the
desire of bettering our condition
birth to every social virtue'.
to
76
polite
and commercial people
seized
chance to express themselves, to escape the iron cages of
Calvinism, custom and kinship - and even to indulge their 'whims'. 79 Acquisitiveness,
pleasure-seeking,
discovery, social climbing
emotional
and
erotic
self-
and the joys of fashion slipped the moral
and
religious straitjackets of guilt, sin
12).
Harshness towards children was relaxed, while philanthropy
kindled sympathy towards lunatics and disabled (see chapters 15
and
16).
80
and
retribution (see chapter
dumb
animals, the deaf and
Yet, enlightened elites
still
had
to
prove that self-emancipation and pleasure-seeking could actually be ventured without precipitating the moral ruin and social chaos widely feared.
Sodom and Gomorrah, Babylon and Rome -
lapsed; the pious bloodshed of the Civil
17
War and
all
had
col-
Interregnum had
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD deep
left
and the
scars;
salutary reminder of how
the bottle,
libertinism of the Cavalier
Court was a
hedonism not only destroyed
itself through
pox or pistol, but
also
meant
sinister alliances
Hobbes had hurled down a
tyranny.
incurably
more than Divine Right kingship or
Hobbism an option Hence
the
man was excesses? No
challenge: since
could not Leviathan alone curb his
selfish,
with Popish
the theocracy of saints
admissible to enlightened minds.
problem
lay in ensuring that private fulfilment did not
subvert public orderliness.
And any proposed
solution
had
into account certain singular features of English society. thing, tion,
having bid absolutism good riddance
enlightened
Rowdy
was
elites
at the Glorious
to take
For one Revolu-
were confronted with a truculent populace. 81
street politics,
mused
the Prussian
Johann Wilhelm von
Archenholz, was the price the nation paid for freedom: 'The idea of liberty,'
he wrote, 'and the consciousness of protection from the laws,
are the reasons
why the
their superiors.'
humoured.
we
82
people in general
Subjects
who
testify
could not be
but
little
respect for
hammered had
to
be
Madame du Boccage did not mince her words: 'In France
cringe to the great, in England the great cringe to the people.' 83
Furthermore, England's free market economy,
itself
fanned by
enlightened individualism, depended on consumerism permeating
down through
the social strata.
With
the renaissance of provincial
towns, the growth of communications and service industries and the
commercialization of news, information and
leisure,
an expanding
public hankered to participate in pleasures traditionally exclusive to the elite (see chapter n).
about England,
'that
'It is
evident,' observed
man, whatever he may
be,
Madame Roland is
here reckoned
84 something, and that a handful of rich does not constitute the nation.'
It
was under these circumstances, with plaudits
to
freedom pealing
out from Parliament, press and pulpit, that opinion-makers spelt out their strategies for fabric. ists
accommodating egoism within a
stable social
One choice lay in embracing inclusiveness. Whilst propagand-
spoke for propertied and privileged
which espoused universalism: attribute enjoyed
elites, theirs
was an ideology
potentially, at least, reason
by the whole nation, including 18
was an
women and
the
BLIND SP01
I
plebs. in
The
best bid for
accommodation and harmony would
assimilating the 'people' within the 'public'
qualified themselves for entry
by
that
all,
thus
lie
who
is,
their industry, civility, affluence or
manifest loyalty. Impossible to impose by the sword, order might
thereby be achieved through what
under the law, meritocratic expectations.
social mobility, the reduction of civil
The
and
allegiance
ized: religious fanatics,
game were
Qbdurate lawbreakers and the
would be subjected
to
who
be stigmat-
idle
to increasingly severe
and
rising
corollary of this was, of course, that those
could not or would not play the conformity serving poor
styled 'opinion', equality
and the manipulation of
religious disabilities 85
Hume
and unde-
measures of
disapproval and discipline. 86 But in a society dismissive of predestination
and doubtful about ancestral pedigree per se, few aspirant males
were automatically debarred by birth or blood. Enlightened opinion tried out various strategies for achieving inclusiveness.
One
involved philanthropy and 'paternalism'. 87
The
needy and the 'unfortunate' could be bought off by a humanitarianism realized in schools, hospitals, dispensaries, asylums, reformatories
and other charitable lay in fostering sensibility (see
outlets.
The beauty of such
amongst the
chapter
16).
bien pensants
enlightened largesse
the glow of a superior
88
Another assimilation strategy lay Foreigners were astonished to see
in displays of social openness.
how
the 'Quality' consented to
mingle with, rather than seclude themselves from, the nation at large.
The
hustings, sporting events, spas, pleasure gardens
parades -
all
encouraged
social concourse. It startled the Prussian
Carl Philip Moritz to find that in England
uniform but dress as
Park so
St James's
of people.'
London's
The French
resorts:
both sexes, and cricket?
civilians'.
special,
and urban
'officers
do not go
in
Having puzzled over what made
he concluded:
traveller P. J.
'It is
the astonishing medley
Grosley reacted similarly to
'The pleasures of Vauxhall and Ranelagh unite
all
ranks and conditions.'
'Everyone plays
it,'
common people and also men
And what was
it
about
Cesar de Saussure concluded, of rank.'
Why, responded Louis Simond,
it
And the
'the
English stagecoach?
contained 'passengers of all sexes,
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD and
ages,
conditions'. Likewise the coffee house: '[W]hat a lesson,'
remarked the Abbe Prevost, shoemaker, a
a lord, or two, a baronet, a
'to see
a wine-merchant, and a few others of the same
tailor,
stamp poring over the same newspapers. Truly the coffee houses are the seats of English liberty.'
.
.
.
89
While historians point to a widening gulf between elite and popular culture, 90 in
outrageous
England counter-currents were
hamming went on
dees, flouncing
around
at
also at work.
Vauxhall or
at the hustings,
social success to hopefuls like
modern
but
much
of
partiality for
and preening. Enlightened
display, fashion
doubt
in the public theatricals of the gran-
the population expected to participate in the
amusement,
No
fables sold
William Hogarth's 'industrious appren-
while improving books for children courted those
tice',
Who from a State And
of Rags and Care,
having Shoes but half a Pair;
Their Fortune and their
And
gallop in a
Fame would
Coach and
Six.
fix,
91
Carrots lured those bent on embourgeoisement: the Lord Mayor's coach, Archdeacon Paley noted, was not for society's entree
tain
-
into a
to fire the prentice boy's ambition.
his benefit,
Money
92
modern commercial dream world which
led
but for
offered
all
an
to enter-
hopes and allowed quite a few to realize them.
In
what seemed,
especially to foreigners, a society perilously short
of legal and regal subordination, integrative gestures also marked other enlightened strategies. As will strands were
woven
become
clear, reconciliatory
into enlightened discourse
-
confidence in the
money and gentility, self-love science and religion, even men and women. The tragic
compatibility of individual and society,
and conscience,
mind
set
of Stoicism and the otherworldly fixations of Christianity
yielded to a faith in man's temporal capacity to remould himself and, in the course of time,
surmount dichotomies. Whereas Christian
humanism gloried in arduous choice - witness Samson Agonistes or Rasselas - the enlightened always wanted, nay, expected to have their cake and eat
it.
20
BLIND SPOT?
A
Addressing nagging fears that individualism would dig grave,
it
has here been suggested that one bid for
and market
Another
forces.
were doubtless hurled
jumbo which - but
ation to
to
social roles
lay in putting confidence in a validating
framework of natural order and darts
own
harmony was
emerge from
vest faith in the equilibrium expected to
its
religio-ethical teachings. Critical
metaphysical
at the so-called
legitimized oppression
- be
it
mumbo-
Platonism or predestin-
there were very few utter cynics or sceptics determined
deny cosmic truth
altogether. 93
There was a
desire to destabilize
and dismantle, yet we must never scant the enlightened
desire to
replace exploded systems with a superior orderliness, the urge not just to
probe and puncture but to prove, preach and prescribe.
Obsolete teachings were rejected, partly for being untrue, but chiefly
had patently - witness
because, whilst promising godly order, they the
Wars of Religion -
To
failed to deliver.
enlightened minds, the past was a nightmare of barbarism and
bigotry: fanaticism
had precipitated bloody
of Charles Stuart, that
man
repudiated old militancy for
modern
civility.
had divided brother from brother, must England's
saw
and peaceful
'free
this
benefit of
could people
sword of the
saints
cease; rudeness
had
happening before
his
which
to yield
very eyes in
in London, a place
more venerable than
mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian all
profess'd the
same
religion,
and
give the
of Infidel to none but bankrupts. There the Presbyterian confides in
the Anabaptist, all
how
of justice, where the representatives of all nations meet for the
transact together as tho' they
name
But
assemblies':
Take a view of the Royal Exchange
many courts
the axing
of blood, in 1649. Enlightened opinion
adjust to each other? Sectarianism, that
to refinement. Voltaire
war and
civil
and the Churchman depends on the Quaker's word. And
are satisfied. 94
This passage squares with the enlightened belief that commerce
would unite those
men
content,
differ
- the
whom creeds set asunder.
and content
philosophe
to
be content -
Moreover, by depicting
differing,
but agreeing to
pointed towards a rethinking of the summum
21
THE CREATION
THE MODERN WORLD
OF,
bonum, a shift from God-fearingness to a selfhood ally oriented.
tion
The Enlightenment
'How can I be
thus translated the ultimate ques-
saved?' into the pragmatic
- thereby heralding a
new praxis
more psychologic-
T
f
'How can I be happy?'
of personal and social adjustment.
This accent on refinement was no footling obsession with petty punctilio;
was a desperate remedy meant
it
to heal the chronic social
and personal traumas stemming from
conflict
civil
and domestic
tyranny and topsy-turvy social values. Politeness could be taught by education - Locke and his successors stressed 'learning in the uses of the world'
James
- and perfected by
Boswell, 'of living easy
'The great
practice.
and happy
in society
is
art,'
preached
to study
proper
behaviour, and even with our most intimate friends, to observe politeness.'
Above
95
(That raucous drunk never learned.)
was to be a function of energetic sociability. Solitude 'one of the greatest obstacles to 96 pleasure and improvement' bred hypochondria: cooped up in his all,
the refinement of the self
study, the costive scholar
David Hartley, 'can
succumbed to
easily
spleen. '[NJothing,' deplored
exceed the Vain-glory, Self-conceit, Arro-
gance, Emulation, and Envy, that are found in the eminent Professors
of the Sciences.' 97 or, in
To be enlightened, a gentleman had to be sociable,
Johnson's coinage, 'clubbable' (and the Great Cham's
Literary
Club boasted the top minds of the
day).
Clubs
like
own
Mr
masonic lodges, taverns, coffee houses and friendly - miniature free republics of rational society - sprang up to
Spectator's, societies
promote fellowship and good feeling. 98 And the enlightened set about devising the arts
and
crafts
of pleasing.
Human nature was malleable;
people must cheerfully accommodate each other; good breeding, conversation and discreet
overcome
charm were
the lubricants which
social friction, contributing 'as
Ease and Happiness of Mankind'.
99
of amicable
collision.'
The
as possible to the
'We polish one another,' reflected
Shaftesbury, 'and rub off our corners 100
much
would
and rough
rational arts of ease,
sides
by a
sort
good humour,
sympathy, restraint and moderation, based upon acceptance of
human
nature -
all
marked
the
new
felicific
formulae. 101 This book
will stress these distinctively British enlightening strategies: the drive
22
A
BLIND SP01
not to subvert the system, hut to secure satisfaction
and
it
?
so as to achieve individual
collective stability, within the post-
1
688 framework.
Regardless of the fortunes of this or that ideology, a deeper trans-
formation was afoot: the
rise
and triumph of lay and secular public
opinion, the fourth estate, the information society, involving the birth, infancy sia.
102
Many
and troubled adolescence of the modern
features
mark
Britain's
doxical anti-intellectualism), which
men
of
make
intelligent-
letters (notably
a para-
when
seen in
sense only
terms of the unique circumstances of the Enlightenment's birth pangs. Enlightened opinion-makers gazed
upon
their navels,
pon-
dering their self-identity and their strategies for the seduction of society
by the printed word -
pricked their pretensions.
as did such satirists as Swift,
who
The pen is mightier than the sword, Bulwer
Lytton was soon to proclaim; that apergu would have sounded more curious
still
without the enlightenment experience. 103
23
2
,
r
THE BIRTH OF AN IDEOLOGY 'Tis well
And
an Old Age
is
out,
time to begin a New.
JOHN DRYDEN
I
am
1
here in a country which hardly resembles the rest of
Europe. This nation individual
is
is
passionately fond of liberty
.
.
every
.
independent.
MONTESQUIEU 2
The half-century after tions to British civil strife
power
politics
1660 brought decisive transforma-
and
its
clashing ideologies. Years of
led to the beheading of the Lord's anointed, Charles
30 January 1649,
me
on
I,
establishment of a republic, the abolition of the
House of Lords and
the
Bench of Bishops, and
to the rule of the
Major Generals and Cromwell's doomed Protectorate - events which drove the young John Locke to despair of land'.
3
During the Interregnum, England's
been bruised and battered, ravaged by
as
'this
great
Bedlam Enghad
traditional governors
God's own nation was redeemed or
New Model Army
pikemen,
chiliastic
preachers and
antinomian agitators advancing 'New Jerusalem' schemes which
ranged from the communism of the Diggers
Hence
to
free love.
the audible relief at the Restoration. 'Never so joyfull a day,'
John Evelyn recorded London:
'I
in his diary the
day Charles
stood in the Strand and beheld
it
travels; the old political nation
in the Cavalier
was bent on
Parliament
this
24
II
rode into
and blessed God.' 4
was not only the King who hoped never again
many
Ranter
to
have
to
go on
his
and
for
stabilization,
meant vengeance
It
against
and
HE SIR
7
repression of those
who had
doing so again.
-
tin
l
\
IDE OLOG
2
ned the world upside-down and, as
5
Measures were passed
eges.
01
II
Monarchist Rising showed, had every intention of
the [662 Fifth
Church was
I
to
restored, with
ram
its
the lid back on.
bishops, courts
The
Censorship was reimposed.
The Anglican
and most of its
so-called
privil-
Clarendon Code
the Corporation Act (1661), the Act of Uniformity (1662), the
Conventicle Act (1662), the Five Mile Act (1665) and the Test Acts ~~
(166 1, 1673)
harassed non- Anglicans, curbing their rights to preach,
teach and hold all
clergy
ity to
office.
The Act
of Uniformity, for example, required
and schoolmasters to subscribe
the Anglican liturgy
and
to a declaration of conform-
6 to forswear disloyal oaths.
The
next
decades saw the apogee of Divine Right preaching and of royal
Thomas Hobbes might be
thaumaturgical healing. nate, but
the Devil incar-
he was hardly alone in looking to a mighty sovereign to end
feuding and fanaticism. 7 In
some ways,
the Restoration worked. Building
recent conquests overseas, trade prospered.
on Cromwell's
The Court exuded
a
louche brilliance and the 'Merrie Monarch' a winning charm, at
who had
least for those
Culturally
and
loathed the Puritan Zeal-of-the-land-busies.
artistically,
work of Wren, Gibbons,
a dazzling half-century followed, with the
Lely, Kneller, Purcell,
and the dramas of
Dryden, Aphra Behn, Etheridge, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh
and Farquhar, 8 while the Royal to best the
world
in science.
Society, chartered in 1662,
promised
9
Restoring order, however, proved easier said than done. Interreg-
num England had grown fatally scores to settle. No realist could would now
flock
many
- an
and everyone had
expect that the entire kingdom
back into the Anglican
Catholicism, while sectarian roots
factionalized,
fold; the
Court dallied with
of the middling sort had put
identity given
down
permanence once the
sturdy
repressive
Clarendon Code alienated even mainstream Protestant dissent. icians locked
horns over law and
Polit-
liberty, the religious settlement,
Crown- Parliament relations and foreign alignments. As commercial policy began to count for more to what was becoming a 'trading 25
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD XIV's militarism grew more threatening, discord
nation', "and Louis
deepened and
parties formed. 10
Meanwhile, Charles was playing with
His Declaration of
fire.
Indulgence (1672) opportunistically suspended statutes against Nonconformists and Catholics - a measure he was soon forced to rescind,
but which inevitably deepened debates over the accommodation
A little before, he had
('comprehension') or the muzzling of dissent. 11
acted treacherously, in the secret clauses of the Treaty of Dover (1670),
by providing
for England's conversion to Catholicism in
Sun King's
return for the
gold, in a
move meant
independence from Parliament. Smelling a Whigs, led by the Earl of Shaftesbury,
fell
rat,
to secure
Crown
more extreme
the
to conspiracies, desperate
at all costs to stave off re-Catholicization.
This clove the
political
was
nation: the succession of Charles IFs Papist brother, James,
feared since
posed palpable threats
it
to Protestantism,
was whipped up by the fabricated 'Popish
Plot'.
and
hysteria
Radical Whigs
resorted to desperate measures in the Exclusion Crisis, backing the
succession of the
Duke of Monmouth,
at least Protestant, son.
Charles's illegitimate, but
Spying was met by counter-espionage,
12
accusation by counter-charge. Outmanoeuvred, Shaftesbury
and
his secretary, John
them, found refuge
Locke, joined him in
in the
Dutch
exile.
republic, that
fled,
Radicals who,
like
hotbed of dissidence,
conspired with emigres from France, especially after Louis' Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) created a Huguenot diaspora which fed pan-Protestant paranoia.
Contained
in the twilight years of Charles's reign, crisis erupted
after James IPs accession in 1685.
ously at
Sedgemoor but,
in the
Monmouth's
revolt
ended
wake of that debacle, the
inglori-
arbitrariness
of royal repression alienated top politicians and bishops, mighty aristocrats,
urban corporations and the
servatives temporarily in
universities.
Natural con-
found themselves bedfellows with hotheads
repudiating a regime contemptuous of legality and rights, one
increasingly ruling through prerogative
When James's
consort,
Mary
and smelling of Popery.
of Modena, belatedly gave birth to an
heir (spurious, according to the 'warming-pan legend'), events
26
were
7
HE
IU R
l
II
F
\
I
I
DEO LOG
I
triggered which led to an invitation to William of Orange, the
and
stadtholder, to invade
Yet James's 'abdication'
eject James Stuart.
Dutch
11
in the bloodless 'Glorious
Revolution' of
November 1688 sparked as many problems as it solved. The Bill of Rights, imposed upon William in the Revolutionary Settlement as a condition for his accession to the throne, guaranteed regular (triennial)
and property, broad
parliaments, security of person
for Protestants
and other freedoms. In
basic instincts, the political nation
contrary to
effect,
had been
toleration
driven, in the
own name of its
safeguarding rights and religion, to pass measures which, at the Restoration,
would
certainly have
been regarded
unsettling. Stuart folly, parliamentary factionalism
as dangerously
and the
fickleness
of fate had brought about what proved an irreversible liberalization of the constitution - one which most of the
elite
wanted
to
be
final.
14
Yet, the genie was out of the bottle once again, as during the
Interregnum; the demons raised by James could not be silenced.
Quite the reverse. office
was up
The
post- 1688 political
for grabs, allegiances
were
machinery was untried,
volatile
and the
principles
and policies of William and Mary's regime became matters of raging controversy. Radical arguments repudiating Divine Right
archalism
15
had been enunciated to
then the expulsion reign
and
rule?
of,
Had
nation? If so, did that
rationalize
James. But by what
first
title
and patri-
resistance to,
and
did William himself
such a right been conferred upon him by the
amount to popular sovereignty?
If a 'Protestant
wind' had blown him to Torbay in 1688, did Providence bless each
and every
victorious usurper?
Could
prelates
who had broken
their
sacred oaths of allegiance to James then in conscience swear fealty to
William?
Moreover, 1688 could nowise be a
final solution.
ter-coups long remained threatening.
16
Jacobite coun-
Orangism dragged England
into the 'world war' against France, that finale of the
Religion. William's strategic senters put the
Wars of
rapprochement with Protestant Dis-
Church of England under ever
greater strain,
religious tensions intensified with the arrival of some
not refugees, fanning anti-Catholic panic.
27
The
and
80,000 Hugue-
'pacification'
of
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD and the expansion
Ireland, the cost of William's 'grand alliance' wars
of the executive and standing
army
(serving,
T
many
averred,
rather than British interests) further deepened divisions.
cooled somewhat with the
If things
Queen Anne, her own
failure to
less
and on whose
controversial reign of
produce a surviving heir reopened
- who was
the succession sore. Questions of principle successor,
Dutch
17
the legitimate
- became inseparable from
say-so?
the
jockeyings of Whigs and Tories to gain and retain the ever fatter
of
spoils
18
office.
The
post-1688 years hence brought the 'rage of
party' in a 'divided nation' split over the fundamentals of
Church
King and Parliament, Whig and Tory, High and Low Church, subject and citizen - satirized by Swift in terms of Big
and
State,
and
Little
Enders.
momentous
And
all
these controversies were occurring
and economic change
institutional
foundation of the Bank of England (1694), the
at
home, with the
new money markets
and the Stock Exchange, and the mushrooming of the state'
19
-
all
amid
'fiscal
against a backdrop of a ravaged, war-torn
which the Protestant cause sometimes seemed
military
Europe
in
close to ruin at the
hands of the dreaded Sun King.
These times of crisis brought pamphlets,
ganda
galore,
emicists. It
the
1
from
was
all
sides
and
penned by
slants,
damning tyranny and
priestcraft in the
ate the will
momentous
be helpful
20
advanced
especially
by
21
intellectual
first
to
consequences of these developments,
examine the radicalization ofJohn Locke. 22
Restoration found Locke holding a 'studentship'
fellowship) at Christ
names of
who formed the 'Country' faction. To appreci-
those militant Whigs
Church, Oxford. Somerset-born
been ten years old when I
brilliant pol-
680s that formed the catalyst of enlightenment, unleashing
freedom, property, autonomy and reason,
The
and other propa-
crescendo of religio-political controversy from
this
volleys of polemics
it
prints
his father
and twenty-one when he thus
from Heav'n a finish'd hero the Interregnum turmoil,
fell.'
and
had taken up arms
(in effect,
in 1632,
a
he had
against Charles
saluted Oliver Cromwell: 'You, Sir, 23
Though of Puritan stock, he hated
his early thinking
28
took a conservative
I
turn, prizing order
Government'
HE
HI R
above
(written in
I
II
all,
OF AN I DEO LOG!
as
evident from his
is
'
Two
Tracts on
1660-61 but not published), which cham-
pioned passive obedience and upheld the magistrate's right to impose religious uniformity.
24
Declining to take holy orders, Locke became physician and secretary to
Lord Ashley
Trade during
(later Shaftesbury),
his master's chancellorship
Inescapably entangled in exclusionist Shaftesbury cook up the 'Popish
Rye House
Plot (1682), he
Plot'.
of the Exchequer in 1672.
politics,
Under
burned or buried
In Rotterdam he
liberal
helped
surveillance after the
papers and fled to
withdrawn on royal
in with conspiring
fell
and the Remonstrants, those
may have
he
his
the United Provinces, his studentship being
command.
on the Council of
serving
Whig
refugees
Dutch Nonconformists who
upheld a minimal religious creed; moving to Utrecht, he was again at the thick
the
of intrigues, probably advising Viscount Mordaunt on
Monmouth
when James
II
Rebellion,
and being ordered out of town
in 1686
sought his extradition along with other suspects.
Returning to England after the Glorious Revolution, Locke played a central role in Treatises
its
vindication, publishing
of Government (1690), a radical
anonymously the Two
work written
at the
time of
the Exclusion Crisis in order to legitimize rebellion in terms of
a contractual theory of government (see chapter
8).
25
He
exerted
considerable sway as adviser to the Junto Whigs, Somers, Halifax
and Mordaunt. As an Excise commissioner, he became growing
fiscal
bureaucracy; serving on the Board of Trade, he was
was
energetic in commercial policy; he the
active in the
Bank of England,
also
an original subscriber
while, together with Halifax
to
and Isaac Newton,
he presided over the 'great recoinage' of 1694-6. Enlightened thinkers liked to view philosophers as piloting the ship of state:
Locke
provided the perfect prototype.
Over the course of forty years, had undergone a profound
the habitually watchful philosopher
radicalization,
one indicative of how bold
minds were driven by darkening times into enlightened convictions.
Back
in the early 1660s, fearing religious turmoil,
champion of order and obedience
in
29
Church and
Locke had been a State.
Responding
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD he turned into the leading theorist of toleration:
to circumstances,
Locke unfolded antij nnatis t arguments'
in the Essay concerning
Understanding (1690) (see the discussion in chapter on Government spelt out theories of
the right of resistance;
became, almost
and
3);
Two
his
Human
Treatises
government accountability and
his religious
orthodoxy crumbled as he
certainly, a closet Unitarian (see chapter
5).
In short,
the Restoration conservative turned into a philosophical radical.
think that both Locke atheists as Spinoza,' sity
and
my
Lord Shaftesbury were
'I
as ^rrant
an informant told Dr Charlett, master of Univer-
damned as a man Oxford Tory Thomas Hearne. 26
College, Oxford, in 1706, while Locke was also
of Very bad principles' by the
Appraising these decisive decades, the distinguished American
his-
torian Margaret
first
found voice
Jacob has claimed
that enlightened thinking
in the contexts of these domestic politico-religious broils
and of the Sun King's imperial ambitions. Naming 1689 as its nativity, she has declared that 'the Enlightenment at large, in both
and
radical forms,
began
in
its
moderate
England' with the Glorious Revolution,
following hard on the heels of Isaac Newton's Principia (1687). 27 While finessing her formulations over the years, 28
situated the
and
movement's onset
intellectual revolution,
Jacob has
consistently
in that conjunction of political crisis
buoyed up by the stimulating
social
atmosphere provided by swarms of refugees, pamphlet wars, coffee houses and clubs, and the international
Luck and
logic
meant
that with
web
of the republic of letters.
George Ps succession
in 1714, the
subsequent botched Jacobite invasion and the resulting entrench-
ment of the Hanoverian Constitutional
and
dynasty, progressive ideologies triumphed.
politico-religious liberties
the personal powers of the
were vindicated, and
Crown and the pretensions
bishops were curbed in what proved an unshakeable
of High-flying
commitment
the quadruple alliance of freedom, Protestantism, patriotism prosperity.
29
to
and
This chain of events produced strange kinks, however:
progressive thinkers, hitherto automatically oppositional,
themselves brokers of power under the
new dynasty.
30
now found
No longer did
they have to fear constant harassment, for most opinions could be
30
7
HE
IU HI
OF
II
A V I
DEO LOG
)
published with impunity once the lapse of the Licensing Aei put an
end
to pre-publication censorship.
phemy, obscenity and
and
the situation
was
light years
Spain or almost anywhere
by Locke
in exile.
print wars
31
(
f
}
laws against blas-
remained on the
seditious libel
offensive publications could
Though
\^
statute book,
be presented before the courts,
still
away from
that obtaining in France,
else in ancien regime
Europe - or that faced
This exceptional freedom of expression sparked
which gave the
minds
battles for
and which led enlightened
their
enduring energies,
devour
activists ultimately to
their
own
parents.
In these circumstances, enlightened ideologies were to assume a
unique inflection in England: one quo than to vindicate
low.
it
concerned to lambast the
less
against adversaries
left
and
right,
Poachers were turning gamekeepers; implacable
status
high and critics
of
now became something more like apologists for them; those who had held that power corrupted now found themselves, with the advent of political stabilization, praising the Whig regime as the princes
bulwark of Protestant liberties. These are paradoxes which have been brilliantly teased
out by the historian John Pocock.
In a series of distinguished writings, Pocock has analysed the
advanced discourses which vindicated the post- 1688 and post- 17 14 settlements against the motley
senting enthusiasts
mix of Jacobites,
and 'Good Old Cause' republicans seemingly
threatening to drag Britain back into Sights trained
civil strife
and wars of
on the school of Peter Gay, he challenges
of Enlightenment as radical liberation which has
speak of an English Enlightenment at
were uniquely able
to enjoy
all'.
32
be crushed.
33
The
'the
made
it
faith.
paradigm so hard to
English, in his view,
an enlightenment without
precisely because, at least after 1714, there to
High-flyers, Dis-
philosophes
was no longer any
infame
Since a broadly liberalized regime was already in
power, what was chiefly required was
its
the ghosts of Laud, Strafford ('Black Hostility to religion as such
defence against diehards and
Tom
Tyrant')
and Cromwell.
would have been misplaced because,
the Act of Toleration (1689), faith functioned within the
what Locke memorably dubbed
'the reasonableness
after
framework of
of Christianity'.
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD There was no further need
to
contemplate regicide because Great
was already a mixed monarchy, with
Britain
inbuilt constitutional
checks on the royal
will;
nobility, since they
had abandoned feudalism
Pocock
nor would radicals howl to string up the for finance.
What
was thus a
tentatively calls the 'conservative enlightenment'
holding operation, rationalizing the post- 1688 settlement, pathologizing
its
and
enemies and dangling seductive prospects of future security
prosperity.
established
The Enlightenment became
became
enlightened.
established
and the
34
A seemingly paradoxical instance of an intellectual vanguard vindicating the status quo, the English Enlightenment derived
Pocock holds, from the reaction Stuart century;
it
identity,
to the traumatic experiences of the
was the ideology of a post-Puritan ruling order
which made England both the most modern and most counter-revolutionary tively,
its
state in
Europe.
(eventually) the
Or, more provoca-
35
being too modern to need an Enlightenment', England 'was c
already engaged
upon
the quarrel with modernity
itself.'
36
Especially
after 17 14, enlightened ideologues thus enlisted in defence of the
Whig
new
1 order, one perpetuating certain features of the ancien regime*
but notably unlike the other great monarchies.
Supplementing such views, Margaret Jacob has further shown
how the Newtonian
universe was recruited to bolster the
tutional order against
its
foes.
38
Repudiating
new consti-
alike the scandalous
materialism of Hobbes and Spinoza and also the outmoded occultism
of the sectaries, Newtonian cosmology afforded the perfect paradigm for a
modern,
caprice.
39
stable,
God and
harmonious Christian
polity ruled
by law, not
the Georges were the constitutional
respectively of the universe
and the
nation.
A
garden
monarchs laid out at
Richmond by George IPs consort, Queen Caroline, rooted these new teachings in busts of Newton, Samuel Clarke and Locke, planted there because 'they were the Glory of their Country,
Dignity on
Human Nature';
they would serve as expressions of faith
in the trinity of experimental science, rational religion
principles.
and stamp'd a
and Revolution
40
This realignment of enlightened propaganda so as to validate the
32
7
HE
HI R
l
II
OF AJ\ I DEO LOG
Georgian order naturally sparked thinkers.
41
Dissenting voices
'Good Old Cause'
fierce-
1714
enough
far
Ideological affinities ironically
who had been
the Tories,
by Walpole
'country' or 'true' Whigs,
alarmed and outraged
radicals
had not gone
among advanced
divisions
came from
growth of patronage, placemen and
and
\
politicking, in
at the pestiferous
adamant
muzzling throne and
emerged between such
Tory
altar.
agitators
so deftly outflanked after 17 14.
into long-term opposition,
that 1688
and
Cornered
wits sported a libertar-
ianism of their own: Jonathan Swift, otherwise the great scourge of the trendy
was
literati,
all his cry'.
42
could carve as his political epitaph: 'Fair liberty
Such a
pilfering of liberal clothes does not, of
course, turn the Tories into Enlightenment
the
quick-change
men,
it
merely reveals
masquerading of an age when enlightened
propagandists providentially found themselves, for once, calling the shots.
Rancorous
in the extreme, late Stuart
and
early
ideological enmities did not then just peter out: there
Hanoverian
was no 'end of
Throughout the century, self-styled progressives wage war - sometimes phoney - on darkness and
ideology' slumber.
continued to
despotism; indeed, there continued to be droves of dyed-in-the-wool
Non-Jurors, Jacobites, Tories, anti-Newtonians and anti-Lockeans, while Oxford remained a den of disaffection
were not ably
all
born
losers).
43
(its
classic lost causes
Moreover, enlightened
made new enemies - not just peppery wits,
publicists inevit-
congenital naysayers
and doomsters, but Methodists and Evangelicals convinced rational religion in a mechanical universe
was the
slippery slope
towards unbelief and anarchy. Meanwhile, enlightened tinued
down
critics
con-
the decades to target the citadels of power, as with
Jeremy Bentham's exposures of the arcana of the logic of rational religion did
law. For some, the
indeed inexorably lead to rejection of
Christianity, while the radical distrust of power authorized
and others might teach evil.
that
that
government
how
Later chapters will explore
continued to track
new
monsters. *
33
itself
by Locke
was an unnecessary
the sleuths of enlightenment
THE CREA TION
THE MODERN WORLD
OF,
As the new century dawned and the Act of Union was signed (1707), the Moderns could thus pride themselves upon living in the light, because Great Britain's constitutional and
seemed
framework
guarantee fundamental freedoms. There were other
to
grounds, too, for self-congratulation. just with
ecclesiastical
The times seemed pregnant not
change but with improvement, and halcyon days beckoned:
would not
and the new
trade, industry, enterprise
sparkling contrast to
all
that
was passe, vulgar or
science spell a
rustic?
The civilizations of Greece and Rome were still, of course, revered; nearer home, however, lay the conspicuous success story of the
Golden Age Dutch Sir
republic, acclaimed
William Temple;
44
by such respected
figures as
and, though progress was far from uniform,
many declared that England, too - if not yet Scotland - was enjoying rapid and remarkable commercial changes and bourgeois
developments driven by and especially
enrichment,
London, headquarters of print, pleasure and
London dominated city
is
now what
'the seat
Britain as
ancient
Rome
self-
visible
in
politeness.
no other European
capital: 'This
once was,' boasted the London
Guide;
of Liberty, the encourager of arts, and the admiration of the
whole world.' 45
And
not only was enlightenment overwhelmingly a
metropolitan bloom but, within the city
itself,
the axis of culture
was
itself shifting.
The
arts
had always been watered by
ecclesiastical, royal
and
noble patronage; the pre-Reformation Church had commissioned artworks,
and courtly
culture
had found expression
in lavish cere-
monial, in exquisite art collections and in splendid edifices Jones's Whitehall Banqueting House.
46
From
like
Inigo
the late seventeenth
century, however, the cultural centre of gravity was conspicuously
migrating away from Court into metropolitan spaces at large - into coffee houses, taverns, learned societies, salons, assembly rooms,
debating clubs, theatres, galleries and concert rooms; formerly the
minions of monarchy, the
arts
and letters were to become the consorts
47 of commerce and the citizenry.
Between the Restoration and George years later, culture
became one of the 34
Ill's
coronation a hundred
capital's
key growth
sectors.
THE BIRTH Swarms of promoters,
W
0/
IDE0L0G1
publishers, journalists
and middlemen looked
openings, employment and profit not only, and certainly no
for
longer primarily, to the King and his courtiers - the
Georges were either boorish or stingy - but
and
society clienteles. This shift
three
first
to chocolate house, club
from Court
to
Town
helped make
London
the metropolis ajajnqde. Visitors marvelled at the ceaseless
throb of
activity, the flutter
of news, personalities, fashion, talk and
diversion to be found from Cheapside to Chelsea.
They were
ished by the bustle of the rebuilt post-Fire City to the east, the
sumptuous display of the developing West End, by the
aston-
and by brilliant
shops around the Strand and Piccadilly, by theatres and exhibitions,
exchanges and markets, the river teeming with shipping and royal
The capital became a non-stop
parks shimmering with promenaders.
parade, bursting with
sites for
culture-watchers, a festival of the
senses offering convivial, culinary
pleasure gardens
be
made - and
right in
in
its
taverns,
and bagnios, places where fame and fortune could
lost.
Georgian
and sexual pleasures
48
art
London became a
and thought,
Here malice, rapine,
And now
Here
And
the
falling
fell
its
own
often cast in the villain's role:
accident, conspire,
a rabble rages,
Their ambush here
And here
if
lead character in
now
a
fire;
relentless ruffians lay,
attorney prowls for prey;
houses thunder on your head,
here a female atheist talks you dead. 49
As an addictive imaginary space, London was endlessly praised or pilloried
by
essayists like
Addison, Steele and Defoe, by Pope, Swift,
Gay, Fielding and other poets and
novelists,
and by
Hogarth: Londoners evidentiy could not get enough.
artists like
50
Seminal for news, novelty and gossip were the coffee houses.
That Restoration innovation spread rapidly, a 1739 survey finding a staggering tally of 551 - ten times more than in Vienna! - to say nothing of the 447 taverns and 207 inns also in the capital. they sprang up around the Royal Exchange and the in the City, serving as clearing
Initially
Custom House
houses for news, foreign and domestic.
35
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD Clients -of the East India institutions (including,
their deals
amid
Company and
financial
T
from 1694, the *Bank of England) clinched
the smoke. Lloyd's coffee house
become
Street in 1691 to
booming
other
moved to Lombard
the focus of marine insurance, while the
tragicomedy of the South Sea Bubble was played out in and around Jonathan's and Garraway's in Exchange Alley. 51 If business
became
provided the
initial rationale,
crucial to cultural networking.
the coffee house soon
Dryden held court at Will's
in
Covent Garden, where Pope was later an habitue; Addison patronized nearby Button's, and the Tory wits went to the Smyrna Mall.
The Bedford was popular
St Martin's
Lane became the
Edinburgh cronies gathered Cross.
52
with thespians; Old Slaughter's in
artists'
haunt; and,
had
its
when
at the British coffee house,
Newspapers and pamphlets were
coffee house even
own
in Pall
library
laid
- while
on -
critics
in
London,
by Charing
the Chapter
held forth and
debates raged on the latest opera, political squib, Court scandal or
news
heretical sermon. Taverns, too, functioned as
centres. 'Ask
any landlord why he takes the newspapers,' pronounced the young William Cobbett,
later in the century, 'he'll tell
you that
it
attracts
people to his house.' 53 All such institutions thus worked to put their clienteles in the
declared are
TTie
commercial
'What
Craftsman magazine; 'our Coffee-houses
of them.'
full
54
The happy conjunction
outlet tailor-made for
attracts
enormously
and other public 'all
know: 'We are become a Nation of Statesmen,'
and Taverns
of culture-seekers and a
them was
plain to foreigners.
in these coffee-houses are the gazettes
papers,' wrote the Swiss visitor Cesar de Saussure;
Englishmen are great newsmongers.
Workmen
habitually begin
55 the day by going to coffee-rooms in order to read the latest news.'
The
Irish
clergyman Dr Thomas Campbell noted
specimen of English freedom', when
some of his saws under glass of
his
arm, came
'a
Chapter
'a
whitesmith in his apron
&
in, sat
at the
down and
called for his
punch and the paper, both of which he used with
as
much
56 ease as a Lord'.
The
coffee house served as the prototype of the club,
which were modelled on the
fictional
36
many
of
specimen immortalized in the
7
Spectator.
(
HE BIR1
or
ii
\
IDE0L0G1
2,000 clubs and other societies said to exist in early
)f the
Georgian London, some were Beefsteaks at the Bedford), Society),
.1
and others
social (like the
some debating
Whig
Robin Hood
Club, whose gatherings at the Turk's
Head
Dr Johnson's
Edmund Burke,
Gerrard
in
The
men
grandees and
while pride of place later went to
included the politician
the
(like
the Society of Dilettanti). 57
artistic (like
Kit-Cat became the rendezvous for letters,
Sublime Society of
of
Literary
Street,
Soho,
the painter Joshua Reynolds,
the playwright Oliver Goldsmith, the naturalist Sir
the musicologist Charles Burney, the theatre
Joseph Banks,
men David
Garrick,
Richard Brinsley Sheridan and George Colman, the historian
Edward Gibbon,
Adam
Smith.
found?
58
Where
Clubs came
else
could such a galaxy of talent be habitually
in all guises: the Spitalfields
was a self-improvement club of
letters for
masonic lodge.
1731 'to institute a repub-
promoting the Arts and Sciences', was probably a
59
Convivial and political clubs abounded,
Sons of Freedom, or the Antigallicans,
ofjohn Wilkes.
Mathematical Society
for tradesmen; the 'Society for the
Encouragement of Learning', established in lic
and the economist
the orientalist Sir William Jones
like the
who campaigned on
behalf
Self-styled custodians of culture, clubs fulfilled certain
of the functions of the Paris salon or the university the capital then lacked: they established circuits of conversation. 60
Private in format like the club but public in British innovation freemasonry.
Commonwealth, with apprentices,
its
Modelled
members divided
as a
its
facade was that
microcosm of the
into the three estates of
journeymen and masters, the lodge promoted
enlight-
ened conduct: brotherhood, benevolence, conviviality, liberty, ation.
The
'Royal Art', proclaimed the movement's
been practised by the in the polite nations'.
'free
born
.
.
.
civiliz-
Constitutions,
had
from the beginning of the world,
61
Freemasonry achieved phenomenal lodges affiliated to form the
Grand Master. Within
success. In 17 17 the
Grand Lodge of England, with
eight years, there
were
London its
own
fifty-two lodges in
Great Britain alone, while by 1768 nearly 300 British lodges had been
:\7
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD founded, including eighty-seven in the metropolis.
The lodge created
a social milieu rejoicing in British constitutionalism and prosperity,
and dedicated to virtue and humanity under the Great Architect; 62 yet
masonry was
also riddled with typically British ideological tensions,
combining deference
to hierarchy with a
measure of egalitarianism,
acceptance of distinction with social exclusivity and commitment to rationality with a taste for mysteries
and
Overall, the proliferation of clubs, societies
the expansion of the press flourishing print-based
and Grub
and
Street to boost culture as a
4).
London supported numerous other ideas
and lodges joined with
communications enterprise serving a varied
public at large (see chapter
modern
63
ritual.
public platforms for staging
values, flaunting political
and
artistic allegiances
and promoting the new. The most prominent of these modernity was the theatre. Condemned as threats playhouses had been closed
down by
1660, the theatre initially took
its
staggering 3,611,
late
to godly order,
the Puritans. Re-established in
cue from royal and noble patronage,
but in time began to pitch for wider audiences and
grew ever larger -
tastes, as auditoria
eighteenth-century Drury Lane seated a
and even Norwich's
theatre held over a thousand.
Mingling sensation and instruction rather
like television today,
and regaling audiences with costume drama, great satire
lives, history,
and moral mazes, theatre broadened outlooks and
also serving as a
pulpits of
sounding board for opinion and
tastes while
politics.
Taken
as
a burlesque on Sir Robert Walpole, John Gay's Beggar's Opera (1728) thus proved phenomenally popular, being performed sixty-two times
and enjoyed by up
to 40,000 people in
its first
season alone.
in 1763 the aristocratic libertine the Earl of Sandwich
welshed on
drinking companion John Wilkes, he quickly became dubbed Twitcher', the thief
who
proved a sobriquet that
Complementing
new
art galleries.
where the
When his
Jemmy
betrayed Gay's hero, Macheath, and
stuck.
it
64
the theatre as fare for the fancy were London's
There was the Shakespeare Gallery
in Pall Mall,
art dealer John Boydell specialized in paintings of scenes
from the Bard; and the Poets' Gallery 38
in Fleet Street,
which featured
HE
I
HI R
works inspired by famous R( >yal
I
II
OF
A
\
I
DEO LOG!
lines ofBritish verse.
Founded
in 1709,
the
Aeademy held annual exhibitions whose appeal was enormous:
an amazing 1,680 in 1769 for the
Museums,
visitors
jammed
into
Somerset House one Friday
RA show! 65 were
too,
in 1753, the British
novelties.
Museum was
Founded by an the
first
public
act of parliament
museum
in
Europe
intended 'not only for the inspection and entertainment of the learned
and the
curious, but for the general use
Numerous beautiful,'
to Sir
benefit of the public'. 66
museums sprang up, too. 'The birds of humming birds, were I think among the most
private-venture
and the
paradise,
and
wrote Susan Burney, Fanny's
Ashton Lever's museum
sister,
returning from a
(or 'Holophusikon', in his hifalutin
phrase) in Leicester Square. 'There are several pelicans -
peacocks (one quite white) - a penguin.
hippopotamus
(sea-horse) of
an immense
from the Tower - a Greenland bear and three leopards.'
67
or magic lanterns, cashed in on novelty
London
Among
size, its
declared,
if
and
- flamingoes the beasts a
an elephant, a tyger
cub - a wolf - two or
Other commercial operations,
wonders of the world
visit
like 'eidophysicons'
sensation, bringing the
to the curious. In 1773 a listing of the sights of
with a touch of exaggeration, that there were
'Lions, Tygers, Elephants, &c. in every Street in
Town'. Cherokee
midgets and giants, stone-eaters and other freaks,
chiefs taking tea,
'philosophical fireworks', chess-playing automata, lectures
sexual rejuvenation or
mesmerism -
all
these,
besides, titivated the fancy, sparked controversy
and
on
health,
scores
more
and became part of
the cultural baggage of anyone wanting to pass as a somebody. 68
Such developments owed much
John Rich,
new breed
of entrepreneur.
the theatrical manager, decked playhouses out with
sophisticated stage ario J. J.
to a
machinery and
Heidegger staged
risque
lavish scenery; the
opera impres-
masquerades; Jonathan Tyers,
proprietor of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, patronized artists
composers.
modest ance,
69
The
cost, in
a
becoming
and
swelling metropolitan public could thus share, at
new and
refined world of art, letters
better informed, exercising taste
contemporary refinement:
'there
is
39
nothing
like
and perform-
and basking
in
a playhouse for fine
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD one playgoer reputedly exclaimed, \.
prospects',
and
trouble,
Not
to
one can see
all
Europe,
be outdone, provincial
.
without fatigue,
well lightedfor a shilling'. 10
part developed their
cities for their
own sites for news, events and culture. While mirroring the metropolis - 'we
.
.
.
imitate your fashions,
castle writer
- they
71
York, Exeter, activity
Bristol,
Norwich and elsewhere,
generated venues for
gathered for
evil',
proclaimed a New-
also forged distinctive regional identities. In
recitals, plays
elegant all-purpose assembly elites
good and
rooms
(still
and
political
cultural
concerts, notably the
highly
balls, charity fundraisers,
and
visible),
where
local
music-making and per-
formances. Comfortable coaching inns, shopping parades, parks and stylish
squares tempted the gentry to linger in town beyond the
calls
of business, in a show of urbanity. Meanwhile, Bath and other spas
boomed,
seductively
if implausibly
claiming to combine the recovery
of health with the pursuit of pleasure. 72
The enjoyments quickened and quenched by these new public amenities fed off economic growth at large. England was now a premier 'trading nation', ran the cliche,
being
'a polite
and commercial
ination of the slave trade
consumption 'a
kind of
at
74
home.
Emporium
whose
people'.
natives could take pride in
73
Colonization, British
and rapid overseas expansion fed whole Earth', a view extended
nation at large by Daniel Defoe's Tour Thro' Britain (1724-7), that national
mercial and industrial. the Atlantic
boom
rising
London, proclaimed Addison, had become
for the
75
dom-
anthem
the
Whole Island of Great
to progress, agricultural,
The Revd Alexander
to the
com-
Catcott, his parish in
port of Bristol, gloried in Britain's mercantile
ascendancy: 'Our island has put on quite a different face, since the increase of
commerce among
beries, trade
us.'
76
was held up as a source not just of profit but of civilization:
Commerce
gives Arts, as well as Gain;
By Commerce wafted
And
In defiance of traditional snob-
o'er the
Main
77 .
.
,
not only civilization: trade, so the boosters claimed, promoted
confidence,
harmony and unity,
fostering contacts
40
and gathering the
7
ends
of*
HE
HI Hi
ll
()/•
I
IDEOLOGl
\
the Million into a single circuit. Better post roads, turnpikes
and coaching
and distance.
services dramatically abridged time
1754 the Newcastle to
London
trip
had taken
six days;
In
within thirty
The four and a half days needed to get London at mid-century had been slashed to
years that had been halved.
from Manchester
to
twenty-eight hours by 1788. Improved roads boosted as socio-economic multipliers; the
fashion.
As of
1740, only
serving
pace of life quickened and remote
areas were sucked into the national
and
traffic,
economy of consumption, news
one stagecoach a day had
rattled
its
way from Birmingham to London; by 1763 there were thirty. Arthur Young - like Defoe, a non-stop proselytizer - gushed at the idea of on the move:
the nation
The
exertions
- fresh activity to every branch of industry; people
good roads, who were never seen with bad ones, and and
industry,
provinces.
which flow with a
John Byng in .
.
But
I
.
.
.
all
residing
among
the animation
between the
all
were of that mind.
1790, 'to
'I
am just old
capital
.
.
and the
remember Turnpike roads
few,
and those bad
am of the very few, perhaps alone, who regret the times
you.'
79
to
lowed the
.
.
.
be play'd off
How impertinent the provinces had grown!
Better roads spelt better post. Traditionally the mail simply
ment of
.
enough,' groused
now, every abuse, and trickery of London are ready
upon
— new
78
However, not
.
full tide
ideas
new people - new
general impetus given to circulation;
fol-
axial post roads out of London, but thanks to the develop-
'cross-posts',
a veritable lattice of routes emerged.
By
1756
there were daily services
- Sundays excepted - from London west
Plymouth and
Swansea and Pembroke; the Holyhead post
to Bristol,
to
road had a weekday service, with services on to Ireland, while the
Great North
Road
also carried the mail daily.
By
contrast,
most
provincial cities in France were receiving the Paris mail only twice a
week. 80
Such improvements found house of London. 'The
their
new Penny
in 1794,
41
most extreme form Post Office,'
in the hot-
beamed The
Times
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD is
likely to
will
be
letters
prove such a very great accommodation, to the public
six deliveries
by nine
each day
morning
in the
same afternoon.
in all parts of the .
.
may
.
town
like the
mused George Colman, when
of the past thanks to 'the
amusements,
was a
their
from London the
coming of e-mail.
way
amendment of the and
vices,
'like
the cara-
had become a thing
that
all
Time
in consciousness.
had been
travel
van over the deserts of Arabia'; but
make
there
.
Persons putting in
.
receive answers
Such developments brought a revolution
fashions,
.
.
81
The impact must have been was,
.
.
roads
.
.
the manners,
.
now
of the metropolis,
follies
to the remotest corners of the land'.
The
82
result
'global village' effect, netting within the national culture
provincials
who
'scarce half a century
species, almost as different
natives of the
ago
.
.
.
were regarded
from those of the metropolis,
Cape of Good Hope'.
83
Now, exclaimed
as a
as the
the Swiss-
American visitor Louis Simond fifty years later, 'nobody is provincial in this country'. in a nation
84
much
And in
all this,
taken by
its
the best place o{ improvement,'
the school
London.'
we go
London remained the prime mover
own
energies.
'I
look upon your city as
remarked Dr South
to the university, but
in the 1690s; 'from
from the
universities to
85
Small wonder, then, that the British talked themselves up as a singularly free
and fortunate race - indeed, one uniquely enlightened.
86 was, of This 'enveloping haze of patriotic self-congratulation'
course, fostered
by propaganda. 'We enjoy
the Daily Courant
on
in
War, or
Hour,' declared
13 June 1734,
an uninterrupted Peace, while
engaged
at this
is
the rest of
all
on the very Brink of
it.
Europe
is
Our Trade
either actually is
at
Heighth than ever, while other Countries have scarce any, thro' Incapacity, or the Nature of their
Government.
our Properties are perfectly secure.
42
their
own
We are free from Religious
Disturbances, which distract almost every other Nation. 87
a greater
Our
liberties
and
SIR
ill
I
ll
I
0/
l
became
Set to verse, such sentiments
IDE0L0G
A
the
1
bombast of the Scot James
Thomson: The
nations, not so blest as thee,
Must
in their turn to tyrants fall;
While thou
shalt flourish great
The dread and envy
and
of them
free,
all.
'Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves.' 88
At the drop of a
hat,
it
seems, natives launched into
congratulation. 'Hail Britain, happiest of countries! climate,
fertility, situation,
and commerce; but
peculiar nature of thy laws
Oliver Goldsmith.
89
hit
selves
who
up
felt
happier in the
upon another
'Hail':
A glorious word,
In other countries scarcely heard
Rarely had Britons
90 .
.
.
so truculently triumphalist, or puffed
so chauvinistically
in thy
and government,' sang the Irish-born
Charles Churchill
Hail, liberty!
still
Happy
self-
-
them-
witness the engravings of Hogarth,
signed himself ironically 'Britophil'. Touring Italy in 1729, Lord
Hervey - Pope's 'Sporus' - came out Throughout
What
all
in couplets:
Italy beside,
does one find, but
Farces of Superstitious
Want and pride?
folly,
Decay, Distress, and Melancholy:
The Havock
of Despotick Power,
A Country rich, its owners poor It
had not been so very long previously,
that Italy
91 .
.
it is
.
worth remembering,
had been the very cynosu re of the English
(if also
considered
the sink of depravity).
A trip to Lisbon in 1775 similarly made Thomas
Pelham bubble:
what joy and gratitude must every Englishman
reflect
other'.
'with
on the happiness of
his
own
nation in comparison of any
92
The bullish
chorus, brilliantly satirized by the 'Britophil' Hogarth,
43
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD did not escape foreigners. visitor
de Saussure,
perfect
freedom
cups, Squire
The people will tell you, observed the
'that there
may be
Swiss
no country in the world where such
is
enjoyed as in England'. 93 Doubtless, in their
Booby and
his drinking
companions cursed mercenary
placemen and those damn'd dogs the Excise men
but, travelling
abroad, they pilloried or pitied the natives (while enjoying the paintings
and the painted
land 'great and
and plumed themselves upon
ladies)
living in a
Enlightenment and patriotism made a heady
free'.
brew.
Enlightenment was more than
more
light
around. 'Most of the
remarked de Saussure, new
however; there was quite
talk,
to
streets are
London,
wonderfully well lighted,'
'for in front
of each house
hangs a lantern or a large globe of glass, inside of which
lamp which burns
94
Some
literally
is
placed a
later, the
Prussian Archen-
holz marvelled: 'In Oxford-street alone there are
more lamps than
in all Paris.'
good
95
all night.'
time
Pastor Moritz, too, was 'astonished at the unusually
lighting of the streets,
pretty poor show'. 96
the bright lights
compared with which
had been got up
replaced by big sash windows;
and creamy
lamp made glass
all
makes a
A German princeling, the story ran, thought all specially to
Taste and technology each played
for pale
Berlin
tints;
98
its
part.
honour him. 97
Leaded casements were
interior design a la
and, from the 1780s, the
the difference indoors after dark.
Its
Adam
went
new Argand
in oil
tubular wick and
chimney produced a continuous bright and almost smoke- and
smell-free light far superior to candles.
had been
at
work on
Argand patented
Birmingham's Lunar Society
the idea in the 1770s,
his version,
and when the Swiss Louis
Matthew Boulton of Birmingham won
99 the exclusive manufacturing rights.
Nor was Murdoch,
gas far behind. Boulton's friend, the engineer William gas-lit his
own house
in 1792;
and ten years
later
he
illuminated Boulton and Watt's factory to celebrate the Peace of
Amiens - a 'luminous spouted an enthusiast.
spectacle ... as novel as
it
was astounding',
100
Light has always been a potent symbol.
44
Its
creation
was God's
first
THE BIRTH act {fiat lux: 'Let there ( lr
be
OF
A
\
IDE0L0G1
while the miracle of (he
light*),
final
cation was the light of human reason {lumen animae). Isaiah
that 'the in the
men who walked in
New
through a
'as
world'.
101
Dominus
illuminatio
man
that
'a
great
for
its
cometh
light',
tells
us
while,
'the true
into the world'. Sinners
but Jesus would be the
glass, darkly',
The Vulgate
Cambridge
had seen
Testament, St John speaks n eo-Platonically of
Light which lighteth every
saw
darkness'
day of
'light
of the
part calls the Lord 'my illumination' -
mea (the Oxford University Press's motto); while
Psalm
Platonists, following
20, spoke of reason as the
'candle of the Lord', an illumination divinely implanted in the soul. 102
Light bore secular meanings, too. If the metaphor was one to
which the Sun King laid claim, Albion later made of the conceit that
was an Englishman who had,
it
speaking, actually discovered light the peerless itself
Newton explained
-
that
is,
eludicate d
light
Light
itself,
all
refraction. 103
which every thing
Shone undiscover'd, Untwisted
principles: as
comprises a spectrum of the
and obeys the laws of reflection and Even
its
scientifically
in his Opticks (1704), light propagates
through particles and white
colours
her own, because
it
till
displays,
his brighter
mind
the shining robe of day
104 .
.
.
- though James Thomson's lines were plonking by contrast to Pope's sublime: Nature, and Nature's Laws lay hid in Night:
God It is,
said, Let Newton be!
Light.
105
of course, no accident that, after Newton, the chief light-struck
natural philosopher
was
that enlightened
author of The History and Present Light,
and All was
and Colours
(1772).
State
polymath Joseph
Priestley,
of Discoveries Relating
to
Light and enlightenment pervaded public consciousness. 'Light of Knowledge', claimed William universally breaking
Vision,
106
on the world';
107
Young
in 1722,
The
was 'now
sixty years on, Gilbert Stuart
spoke of 'this enlightened age of philosophy and reflexion'; 108 Abra-
ham Tucker popularized Locke in his 45
The Light ofNature Pursued (1768);
1
THE CREATION OF T#E MODERN WORLD Gibbon celebrated
Tree and enlightened country'; the Lunar
his
Society, that gathering of
monthly
at full
moon
make
(to
Spence praised the 'Sun of jubilant over
Tom
Midlands
- while Burke jeered
home easier); Thomas and Mary Wollstonecraft was
at
-
'this
enlightened age'. 109 As
'What we have
do
to
is
as clear as
110
As a marker of how
come
it,
met
journey
Liberty';
Paine so succinctly put
light.'
their
intellectual aristocracy,
to the fore,
connotations had
light's secular, practical
Samuel Johnson defined
'to
enlighten' as 'to
illuminate, to supply with light, to instruct, to furnish with increase
of knowledge, to cheer, to exhilarate, to gladden, to supply with to
quicken
in the faculty
to the natural order;
of vision'.
but
it
1 1
Assuredly, light was thus integral
could also be a
manmade
piercing the gloom, dispelling darkness. Light's spell
is
in the world, of contrivance except that of the
divine William Paley,
'it
an
intelligent Creator.'
112
dominant epistemology,
we draw from it, Above all, light was
Human
for a host of later texts
know was
sufficient to
obscura.
henceforth to
Lemuel Gulliver was English
hero.
114
113
No
literature's
newly
problem of knowsee.
John
was paradigmatic
which explained cognition through
that
light so
declared the
crucial to the
Understanding (1690)
metaphors, the mind as a camera
With
no example
as to the necessity of
as empiricism turned the
ing into a matter of seeing: to
Locke's Essay concerning
eye,'
would be alone
support the conclusion which
searchlight,
evident in the
intense interest taken in the science of sight. 'Were there
Cambridge
sight,
visual
accident, perhaps, first
bespectacled
supercharged, enlightenment became a rallying cry.
'Why are the nations of the world so patient under despotism?' demanded the Revd Richard Price. 'Is it not because they are kept and want knowledge? Enlighten them and you will them.' 115 Almost inevitably, Tom Paine - not just a political
in darkness,
elevate
radical but a designer of smokeless candles
-
also
milked that image
in his The Rights of Man (1792), claiming the transparency of truth: 'the
116 sun needs no inscription to distinguish him from darkness'.
Light, he held,
was God's
gift,
a natural asset - no wonder William
46
1
Pitt's
HE
HI R
window
notorious
tax
I
II
OF AJS I DEO LOG!
was so
branding the Prime Minister 'Mr All this resplendence
made
Billy Taxlight'.
light intoxicating,
among
excited sense of involvement in change sapere aude.
well.
came
superiority' its
mean facere
aude
Grumble though he might
innovation',
in
to
- not just
that
all
to
117
and there arose an a people for
know but
was 'running
whom
to act as
mad
after
Samuel Johnson could compliment 'his own age' for 'its over the Ancients - 'in every respect', that was, 'except
reverence for government'. 118 Indeed, Boswell records that
great cant hater protesting that
'I
am
always angry
ancient times praised at the expence of
we
squib
bitterly resented, a radical
live in
is
modern
a busy age in which knowledge
is
when
times.'
119
I
hear
'The age
rapidly advancing
towards perfection,' enthused the young Jeremy Bentham, launching a 6o-year career dedicated to reforming the house of the Hanoverians
according to the yardstick of utility. 'In the natural world, in particular,
every thing teems with discovery and with improvement.' 120
There were many Englands, but one was the stage of thrusting achievers, sold
on
science, dedicated to the diffusion of rational
knowledge and eager intellectual.
for innovation
They were men devoted
- be
it
to the
practical, artistic or
promotion of a new
material well-being and leisure; aspiring provincials, Dissenters, sceptics
in
and
political realists resentful at the traditional authority
Church and
State.
of the Enlightenment.
Such Moderns 121
47
it
imbued
was who were the fomenters
3
•
•
CLEARING AWAY THE RUBBISH Reason
the glory of human nature.
is
ISAAC WATTS
M
ore like a
communing of clubbable men than a
or a conspiracy, the Enlightenment derived largely
a language as a programme. Powerful 'this
or, as
as
as
much
we have
seen,
enlightened age'. Another keyword was emancipation:
societies crave the
custom,
clique
coherence in Britain
among these,
Moderns dramatized deliverance and
Some
studied escapology. 2
transcendence of the otherworldly; others revere
with Renaissance
The enlightened, by forge a new future.
age.
its
from a shared currency of images and idioms - it was
was light:
1
3
Italy,
contrast,
hanker
aimed
Emancipation might be portrayed
in
a previous golden
after
to
break the chains and
terms of a natural maturing
or coming of age, a growing out of swaddling bands. generally envisaged, however, was something
more
What was
violent
and
trau-
matic: snatching off a blindfold or bursting free from a straitjacket.
Bogged down acles',
4
in
semantic quicksands, fettered in 'mind-forg'd man-
or hoodwinked by sinister foes, enlightened
escape from the
murk of time
spirits
craved
or the mental maze. Narratives of
emancipation were not, of course, without precedent - folklore
abounds
in tales of captors
and
captives,
romances are travelogues
of the search, and the Christian master narrative
and redeemed'
tale
of Paradise
guishes the Enlightenment
is
lost
is
itself
a 'doomed
and regained. But what
the secularity of its
5
distin-
model of mankind
questing freedom through the Socratic 'know yourself and
modern
corollary, 'do
it
yourself.
48
its
CLEAR! VG
A
WA
I
THE RUBBISH
Escape scenarios gained their immediacy from two experiences,
one negative, the other
positive.
Firstly
malignant forces which had wreaked destruction still
was the threat of
there
in the past
and were
darkening the present. In Britain, as elsewhere, Protestantism
had never
secure against a Catholicism cast not merely as
felt
erroneous and corrupt, but as
evil incarnate, the
Whore
of Babylon,
the Beast of the Apocalypse. Partly thanks to the Council of Trent
(1545-63),
Rome had had
at
disposal the Index of Prohibited
its
Books, the Inquisition, the Society of Jesus and other battalions of the
Church
Militant,
which had then gone about
their
work with
fire
and faggot, leaving a gory toll of carnage and martyrs. The Protestant alliance
had been mauled
was renewing the
common
assault.
What
now
Years War;
in the Thirty
gave Britons such
Louis
XIV
sense of
fitful
cause and shared identity as they did possess was anti-
Catholicism, a visceral loathing of 'the insupportable
most Pompous and Tyrannical so long as Jacobitism
As chapter 5
was waiting
will detail,
The
fears
were readily fanned
it.
Rome was demonized
as
perverse apotheosis of self-abasement and
Popery
sanctified theological
tism, ritualized idolatry, drilled
windows
the post-Gutenberg duty of
believers to read
all
into
dogma-
men's souls and denied God's Book by the
7
Enlightened anti-Catholicism furthermore presumed association.
Mankind
enlightened minds inherited Protestant
slavish submission to tyranny,
candle of Reason.
the
in the wings.
anti-Catholicism and then rationalized the inveterate foe.
ever enslav'd
Policy that
under the name or shew of Religion'. 6 Such
Yoke of
guilt
by
Basing their creed on the Bible alone, Protestants
denounced the dependency of Romish dogma upon Eastern gnosticism, Hellenistic Platonism, neo-Aristotelianism
and other
non-Christian sources: key tenets of Catholicism such as transubstantiation
and purgatory had been shown
whatever,
Church
to possess
being fabricated entirely on
tradition
Platonism and
and Vatican
Thomism
ian empiricism,
it
decrees.
no
scriptural basis
scholastic
As the 'new
metaphysics,
science' assailed
with Cartesian systematic doubt or Bacon-
was inevitable
that the citadel of scholastic theology
49
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD would
also
be sapped, so dubious were
Welding Protestantism
its
metaphysical foundations.
to enlightened thinking,
Locke was
in his The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) that all that
to assert
was required
of a Christian was to profess that the Bible was the word of God and Jesus the Messiah. Such professions aside, theology (that
knowledge of God) was business.
essentially
is,
the
beyond man's needs, powers and
8
The academic heritage was trashed over and again by enlightened propagandists as a tragicomedy of errors - gazing up at the heavens,
pedants had stumbled into a ditch. Thus Plato, proceeding - according to Viscount Bolingbroke theologian', likewise
had
'diverted
-
'like
men from
mad
a bombast poet and a the pursuit of truth'.
9
Gibbon
lamented misguided learning. 'Several of these masters,' he
men
jeered at the neo-Platonists of late Antiquity, 'were
of profound
thought and intense application; but, by mistaking the true object of philosophy, their labours contributed
corrupt the
human
much
less to
improve than
understanding.' In the medieval period, further-
more, so prone to 'credulity and submission', monkish contracted 'the vices of a physics
to
slave',
had perpetuated a
and
sterile
for fifteen
casuists
had
hundred years meta-
obscurantism. 10
Once hitched to the papal propaganda machine, otherwise innocuous sophistries had turned positively dangerous. Rome commanded a fiendish indoctrination department in which iniquity trapped innocence, be evil
it
through devious dogma or gaudy images. The Antichrist's
empire was endlessly portrayed as a
lethal threat to the freeborn
Englishman's enjoyment of his God-given It
was not
just
faculties.
11
from Popery that post-Restoration
elites
were
seeking deliverance, however: collective memories had also been scarred by the Civil War.
had bred 'enthusiasm', conviction of personal
The
that
Calvinist
awesome,
infallibility (see
dogma
irresistible
chapter
5).
of predestination
and
unfalsifiable
Presbyterians, anti-
nomian 'mechanic preachers' spewing up prophecies as the spirit moved them, and other self-elected saints had loosed torrents of chiliastic still
bloodshed. Those experiences came back as nightmares:
in the 1780s the unflappable
Edward Gibbon could
50
descry in
CI E
Gordon
rioters
Roundhead
Fanatics
the
(1790).
12
II*
R
I
I
VC
A
WA
THE RUBBISH
)
rampaging through the
bogeymen soon
c
apital the ghosts of
recycled
in
Burke
s
Reflections
Popery was the epitome of despotism, imposed from
above, Puritanism was anarchy incarnate, breaking out from below.
Who could say which was the more pernicious? Luckily, light
devastation
was dawning, hinting that
and death might nearly be
this
over.
13
long reign of delusion,
Holy war was going out
of fashion: Europe-wide, princes and even prelates were becoming
more wary about was turning,
as
heretic-
is
and witch-burning, while the mental
tide
evident from the popularity of burlesques of the
bigots:
Such
The
as
do build
their faith
holy text of pike and gun
Decide
all
controversies
Infallible artillery
As
upon
if
religion
For nothing
In particular - this
was making headway
is
.
.
by
.
were intended else
but to be mended. 14
the positive development
science
as a solid platform for knowledge. Telescopes
and microscopes were revealing new worlds,
infinitely distant, infin-
anatomy was laying bodily
itely large
or small;
England's
own William Harvey had discovered the
blood. Observation
- natural
structures bare,
and
circulation of the
and experiment were revealing Nature's
laws,
while inventions like the airpump and, a bit later,
Newcomen's steam
engine were contributing to that 'effecting of
all
things possible'
trumpeted by Bacon; and meantime, brave new worlds were being discovered by circumnavigators. So stench, there
were
if
the Civil
books'.
left
an acrid
also harbingers of hope.
This intellectual watershed was signposted 15
War
The Renaissance had venerated
in
the 'batde of the
classical
achievements in
Hippocrates and Galen
philosophy, science, letters
and the
remained the medical
and humanists continued
bibles;
geocentric (earth-centred)
arts;
to
uphold the
and homocentric (man-centred) cosmos
51
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD espoused by Greek science, with
man
at the
hub and
as the
measure
of the divinely created system. Xenophon, Cicero, Livy, Virgil and other classical poets, philosophers, moralists, historians and states-
men
chaired the school of virtue in which students of culture should
enrol. Renaissance 'anticomania' set in stone, the
To come
was consoling: wisdom was already
custodian of civilization.
enlightened eyes, however, the humanist tenet that what had first
was best had been overtaken by time:
and Hobbes pointed
out,
it
Bacon
as
all,
was the Modern Age which was
produced a new optic on the
old. Historical scholarship
lenging the
after
truly
past, chal-
Renaissance identification with the Ancients and
accentuating the radical differences between the old world of Antiquity and the
new one marked by guns and printing. Authentic
new worlds had been discovered, above all America, disclosing scenes of exotic life unknown to Aristotle or Ptolemy. The seventeenth century moreover proved intellectually revolutionary.
The
dazzling
'new sciences' of astronomy, cosmology and physics pioneered by Kepler and Galileo challenged the cosy commonplaces of both Greek philosophy and the Bible. Heliocentric astronomy decentred the earth, reducing
dauntingly
it
to a tiny,
minor planet nowhere
infinite universe
newly glimpsed through the telescope,
whose immense spaces frightened not only astronomy' was complemented by a
which stripped Nature of
in particular in that
its
machine made up of material
Pascal.
And
new 'mechanical
purposive particles
vitality,
reducing
it
to a
governed by universal laws, If daunting
also full of promise.
Empirical discoveries fostered a authorities,
'new
philosophy',
whose motions could be given mathematical expression.
and dangerous, science was
this
new
spirit,
eager to question
even the Bible, a sceptical turn robustly expressed in the
Dictionnaire (1697)
16 of that unbiddable Huguenot Pierre Bayle.
Many
of Europe's greatest minds of Bayle's generation concluded that, in the search for truth, neither implicit faith in the Bible nor automatic reliance
on the Ancients would any longer
William Temple's Essay upon
the Ancient
suffice. If, as late as 1690,
and Modern Learning upheld the
superiority of the Ancients, William Wotton's Reflections upon Ancient
52
CLE \RING
WA
A
THE RUBBISH
/
and Modern Learning (1694) countered that,
in
had been wholly eclipsed by the Moderns.
It
the sciences
had been, or could
be, excelled:
they
remained hotly disputed,
however, whether Antiquity's achievements the fine arts
at least,
in poetry,
drama and
would the contemporary
Homer please step forward? But Moderns like Alexander Pope had their own solution to that problem: the classics could be translated, simplified
and modernized
Such confusions,
crises
meet the needs of modern audiences. 17
to
and controversies frame the key enlighten-
demand for a clear-out and clean-up of the lumber house of the mind, condemned as dark, dilapidated and dangerous, unfit for habitation: metaphysics was dismissed as moonment escape
and
shine
strategy, the
were ridiculed
traditional teachings
fantasies, fables or fallacies.
system-building were
Bigotry,
all
damned by Moderns
and
must be demolished, and knowledge
tions.
Enlightened publicists thus
wisdom: obsolete
set
rebuilt
on firm founda-
about cleansing, scouring,
winnowing the mental grain from the
injunctions of the
chaff,
echoing the
Words; Things, not Thinking
Operation, not meerly Speculation.'
Bulk of Mankind in
all
violently attached to the Opinions,
they have been used
to',
19
down
'folly'.
and strong Reasons.' It
became
days.
.
Ages, and in
all
Countries, are
Customs, and even Habits, which
when
'Sounds, Shews, Prejudices, vain and idle Ter.
.
.
operate
more upon them than
true
20
de rigueur to
denounce the bad old ways of the bad old
George Berkeley, philosopher, mathematician and later bishop,
prompted and
.
averred the free-thinker John Trenchard,
Phantoms, Delusions
rors,
.
Emancipation would not come
adopting the patronizing air favoured by enlightened authors putting
sift-
Helmontian chemist and doctor George Thomson
in the 1660s: 'Works, not
easily: 'the
folk
other houses of cards or castles of
all
error
back
equally eager to deride
shapes and sizes had to be swept away. Magic,
mysticism, scholasticism
ing, sieving,
as fictions, frauds,
dogmatism and overweening
and other hand-me-down
'old wives' tales'
orthodoxies in
18
himself:
recalling
'Mem.:
Men
to
to
be eternally banishing Metaphisics
Common 53
Sense.'
21
etc.
Locke's pupil, the 3rd
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD condemned f'all
Earl of Shaftesbury, similarly
Metaphysicks,
that pretended studdy'.
all
22
Dinn
that
Where then
inquiry? 'To philosophize, in a just Signification,
Good-Breeding a
step higher'
academic eunuchs
if
& Noise To
but
is
lay true
carry
- thinking could be rescued from
23
undertaken by gentlemen in a
of
the
liberal spirit.
Crucial to these truth strategies - impatience with obscurity and a prizing of clarification
and transparency - was
Royal Society's apologist Thomas Sprat dubbed
Taking over
from the 'new
their cue
verba)
words must not be
distrust of 'the cheat
what the
of words'.
science', enlightened thinkers set
reified, reality
must replace
res
rhetoric.
Sprat called for language to 'return back to primitive purity, and shortness,
when men
number of
words'.
Samuel Johnson, earth,
24
deliver'd so
He was
many
not so
'as to forget that
things, almost in
'lost in
an equal
lexicography',
words are the daughters of the
and that things are the sons of heaven'. 25 Since 'words are so apt
am resolved
to
impose on the understanding,' despaired Berkeley,
in
my inquiries to make as little use of them as possibly I can.' 26 Setting reality above verbality, the
unambiguous and trustworthy? superlative
Words and
Were not numbers,
at least,
'Instead of using only comparative
intellectual
Arguments,' explained Sir
William Petty, a founder fellow of the Royal Society, course ... to express myself in
'I
coming English empiricism also
looked favourably on quantification.
and
mused
Terms ofNumber,
'I
have taken the
Weight, or Measure.'
27
Eternal intellectual vigilance was essential, however, because inanity
was endemic and error
infectious.
Their feared triumph in a
cacophonous babel formed the nightmare vision of Alexander Pope's Dunciad (1728), the climax of which depicted the final eclipse of reason at the
hands of the Queen of Dulness: Lo! thy dread Empire, chaos!
is
restor'd;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:
Thy hand,
And
great Anarch!
lets
the curtain
Universal Darkness buries
All.
fall;
28
Pope's abhorrence of quack versification reflected the suspicion of fabling
and
fiction, as
expressed in the notorious put-down of poetry
54
CLEARING itself attributed to
the
ingenious nonsense'.
WA
A
Cambridge
Though
THE RUBBISH
I
professor Isaac Barrow:
hardly one of
its
'a
kind
front-men. Pope
shared the Enlightenment's hatred of a prion scholiasts, choppers, pedants, know-alls and other dunces: in
man
heed
to
couplets.
Man
his limits, his Essay on
its
logic-
warnings to
reads like Locke in heroic
29
anew on rock solid
Like natural science, philosophy had to be built foundations.
It
would have
to
be transparent, stripped of verbiage,
dead wood and ancestor- worship. in
of
must be
common
Nature and squaring with
clear thinking, plain words,
It
sense
self-critical,
and experience. Only
candour and modesty would end the
reign of error. Hopelessly clipped, counterfeited the debased intellectual coinage
currency.
grounded
had
to
and compromised,
be replaced by a sound
30
In the framing of such convictions, the printing press played a key, if double-edged, role.
The printed word was praised as the guarantor
of plain, stable fact - by contrast, for instance, to the imprecisions, instabilities
mouth
and exaggerations inherent
teachings. In that sense,
it
in
complemented the Baconian
science of hard, solid facts. But the printed
and authors
ized,
largely hinged truth.
ossified into authorities.
upon
handed-down word-ofbook was
The
'battle
the ambiguities of books as the repositories of
bid central to the identity of enlightening
was symbolically presided over by three intrepid earlier generations.
32
One^ was Descartes, who
Method (1637) coolly announced notably the
distinct
am.'
of the books'
31
The emancipatory
ing,
readily fetish-
commitment
first
principles:
'I
in think-
to clear
and
think, therefore
the senses were irreparably deceptive, reason
his Geometry (1637) trail-blazed
justify his
I
was
confidence,
co-ordinate geometry and algebra, and
his Principles of Philosophy (1644) set
God
in his Discourse on
doubt and
capable of establishing truth, and, almost to
which
intellectuals of
Copernican revolution
to universal
reasoning derived from
Though
his
elites
out a mechanical philosophy in
directed a mechanical universe sustained by 'cause
55
and
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD effect'
contact action and propelled through a ?wirl of vortices
{tour-
billons).
With -
its
cogito ergo
promise of a renovation of thinking on a rationalist footing sum - Descartes' philosophy enjoyed a vogue in England
around the Restoration, being taken up by, among bridge Platonists like
others,
Cam-
Henry More. By validating the immaterial soul,
Descartes particularly appealed to anti-Calvinists keen to reinstate the dignity of homo
The Frenchman's clockwork crypto-atheistic;
tures except
34
moreover,
humans
(did not animals
But
rationalis.
its
a priorism never convinced. 33
universe could easily be dismissed as
his denial of consciousness to
many English writers as both implausible
struck
have sense organs?) and
of Divine Benevolence.
any crea-
And
heartless, flying in the face
the physiological basis of Cartesian
dualism - body and soul fundamentally distinct and joined only the obscure isthmus of the pineal gland deep in the
makeshift.
Not
Gland jokes ran and
least,
via
brain - seemed
ran. 35
advances in natural philosophy subverted Descartes'
physics, especially his vortices
and plenum, and the mechanics of
billiard-ball contact action. Since English scientists led the field in
discrediting these views tional
astrophysics
vacuum it
a
Descartes' star
vacuum on
via
Newton's void space gravita-
and Boyle's airpump demonstrations of the
would leave the world find
- notably
waned
full
on
rapidly in Britain: a
Frenchman
quitting Paris, quipped Voltaire, but
arriving in
London. 36
Happily Descartes' reputation could be played off against that of native English thinkers, in particular Francis Bacon, apotheosized in
The
37 the Enlightenment.
gramme first
for the
philosophical Lord Chancellor's pro-
reform and revitalization of natural philosophy was
outlined in his Advancement of Learning (1605), where, to hold at
bay churchmen diplomatically
hostile to
prying into God's secrets, science was
demarcated
from
theology,
thereby
validating
unfettered investigation.
Bacon opened
his
reformation of knowledge by rejecting blind
worship of authorities
like Aristotle:
bad science buried
itself in
musty books instead of first-hand observation of the Book of Nature. 56
C
/
EAR1 G \
A
WA
I
RUBBISH
7 ///.
Repudiating syllogisms, which toyed with terms while ignoring
new
physical reality, he unfolded a faithful
records of natural
them 'aphorisms' up
Inquiry should start with
logic.
phenomena, proceeding
(system-free inferences);
into generalizations,
and use
to derive!
horn
would then gather these
it
'negative instances' to falsify faulty
ones.
While science had
the distortions, both individual
defining the four
Bacon warned of
to start with the senses,
and
'idols' (or illusions)
those of the cave, herd, theatre
inherent in perception,
social,
which warped sense experience:
and market
anti-idolatry of this kind clearly mirrored
its
place. (Philosophical
Protestant twin.) These
hazards could be overcome through a controlled ascent from fact to
moving on
theory, then
to the acid test of practice, in the generation
of discoveries and inventions beneficial to mankind. Science should
be a collective enterprise, best organized in research groups ('Solo-
mon's Temple'), and mental and material
up
prove immensely first
in the Civil
cumulative findings would pilot progress,
alike.
Synthesized in the to
its
Magna
Instauratio
era and then by the Royal Society in the
1660s,
which acknowledged the
as
inspiration. Voltaire eulogized the
its
hail as 'the greatest, the
Bacon's thinking was
His reformist blueprints were taken
influential.
War
(1620),
most
'father of experimental philosophy'
universal,
philosophers', underwriting as he did so
man
d'Alembert was to
and the most eloquent of
much
of the enlightened
agenda: the assault on bibliolatry; the iconoclastic rejection of tradition,
speculation
observation; serve
and
a priori systems; the
grounding of inquiry
and experiment and the conviction
that science
in
must
mankind. Indeed, the Baconian mapping of knowledge via the
three fundamental faculties of the
mind - memory, reason and
imagination - was embraced in the 'Preliminary Discourse' to the Encyclopedic.
With
his
adoption as the Royal Society's mascot, enlight-
ened Britain gained a big-name philosopher of her own - and one
who was Lord Chancellor to boot. The third modern philosopher
definitive
of enlightened
understanding was the most problematic - yet also propitious.
57
self-
It is
not
THE CREATION OF surprising that
MODERN WORLD
TtiE
Thomas Hobbes was bentjon
cleansing, since he
had been driven into
horrors pervaded his mature thinking. writings, root
politico-philosophical
exile in the Civil
38
War, whose
In Leviathan (1650) and other
and branch reform of language and logic were deemed and
indispensable to future peace
and he himself proposed
order,
a severe philosophical purge through a radical nominalism and
materialism targeted against spurious scholastic terms: 'For True
and
False are attributes of
and
false
dogmatism
Speech, not of
spelt chaos: 'For
Things.'
39
words are wise mens counters,
mony
they do but reckon by them; but they are the
Words must never be allowed
Woolly thinking
to take
on a
life
of
fooles.'
40
of their own; entities
must not unnecessarily be multiplied and all fictions must be banished - directives
whose
drastic implications included
Hobbes's denial of
the immaterial as utter nonsense: 'The universe ... is
body
to say,
Universe.'
no
.
And
no
spirit, It
41
.
.
and
that
that
was
which
The
that.
is
not Body,
is
corporeall, that
is
no part of the
implications were
momentous:
lords spiritual.
was with
this nominalist, materialist
Hobbes redrew human
nature.
and monist pencil
Man was a machine,
motion; thoughts and feelings were
that
mere matter
stirrings in the sense
in
organs
induced by external pressures and producing in turn those brain
waves called
ideas; imagination
persisted in the
memory was
after the original stimuli
had died away, and
their recollection. All such activities
ently of speech as well as
mind
was the consciousness of ideas which
and hence
{pace Descartes)
were
went on independ-
common
to animals
humans.
Men and
beasts were also of a piece in possessing 'passions',
disturbances in the internal organs matching images in the brain, incessantly reactivated ally
was not only the
that future needs
by external
and
that
would
to another'.
also
42
It
'a
be
gratified.
did,
were therefore
Hence
emotion-
but the assurance
felicity
could have
continuall progresse of the desire, from
however, have an absolute negation,
was death. Hedges against
self-defence,
What counted
satisfaction of present desires
nofinis ultimus, being rather one object
stimuli.
violent death, including ruthless
essential.
58
No man
being an island, a
CLEARING 'perpetual contention
lor
A
WA
T
THE RUBBISH
honour, riches, and authority
-
entailing the notorious nightmare of a state of Nature life
of man was
'solitary,
Hobbesian view of life after
poore, nasty, brutish and short'.
as 'a perpetuall
power, that ceaseth onely
-
secular Calvinism
providing the
first
in
and
his philosophical
resulted,
which the
43
While the
restlesse desire
Death' was thus dismal
of power a kind of
determinism was offered as
principles for a salutary politics of absolutism
obedience, and hence a recipe for order.
and
44
Hobbism might also rationalize a black power play - the 'Malmesbury monster', or
For Restoration
comedy of
in
1
wits,
egoistic
English Machiavelli, could serve as an alluring mentor for rakes like
Rochester
who endorsed
his kneejerk anti-clericalism. Critics,
however, were appalled by his corrosive denial of normative natural
law and the Christian Deity as traditionally understood. 45 Effectively dethroning, or at least defaming, God, Hobbes's mordant material-
ism seemed aimed not only at Vain philosophy, and fabulous tra-
-
demons and other 'abstract essences' bred by fevered imaginations - but against Christianity as such. 46 Hobbists ditions'
became
like angels,
targets: in 1668,
Christi College,
one Daniel
Scargill,
a fellow of Corpus
Cambridge, was expelled from the university
for
having 'asserted several Impious and Atheistical Tenets to the great dishonour of God', while in 1683 Oxford consigned Leviathan to the flames, together with his
For
all his
own
De
Cive (1642).
disclaimers,
tantamount to an
atheist.
47
Hobbes
That
is
thus
became execrated
what made him
as
so useful to
enlightened philosophers. So long as they piously disowned him, they could also quietly incorporate
many
aspects of his conceptual
rubbish-cleansing: tactical Hobbes-bashing allowed
more
them
to pass as
correct than they actually were.
This enlightened cleansing of 'the Rubbish of the Schools', was
brought to a rousing climax by David
When we
run over
must we make?
If
libraries,
we
persuaded of these principles, what havoc
take in our
metaphysics, for instance,
let
Hume:
hand any volume of
us ask, Does
59
it
divinity or school
contain any abstract reasoning
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD concerning quantity or number?'No. matters offact
and existencePNo.
nothing but sophistry and
The way forward and
facts
figures
strict limits to
given
illusion.
48
infallible oracles, laying
and creating a
human
men powers
lay the
Commit it then to the flames; for it can contain
lay not in 'school metaphysics' but intellectual
debunking
humility:
Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning
sound foundations
culture of criticism. If there were
knowledge, no matter, since
God had
sufficient to discharge their earthly offices.
the Rubbish, that
in clearing lies in
the
Ground a
little,
as 'an
and removing some of
way to Knowledge',
for the true 'master-builders'
surely
Herein
enormous appeal of Locke's image of the philosopher
Under-Labourer
in
so as to beat a path
- that is, such scientists as Robert Boyle,
Thomas Sydenham and Isaac Newton, who were actually raising the temple of truth. 49
Far and away the key philosopher in
was John Locke. From the
modern mould, however,
this
we have
1670s, as
politically radicalized, thereafter playing
seen, he
became
a decisive part in political
debate, economic policy, currency reform, and in promoting religious toleration. His Essay concerning
Human
Understanding (1690)
masterwork, presenting a persuasive vision of the
new
times,
in the
grounded upon an
In stark contrast to Descartes,
Hobbes and
the other rationalists,
To
Hobbes, reason could range omnipotent;
from the empirical
minefields.
no scope
mind
50
Locke's truth claims were models of modesty. idolizing
his
for the
analysis of the workings of the
making of true knowledge.
straying
new man
was
straight
the Galileo-
for Locke,
and narrow led
any
into mental
While Hobbes proposed proofs modo geometrico, Locke saw
for Euclidian certainty.
reason just sufficient for distrust of pure reason
Man
human purposes.
were backed by the
was a limited being, and 51
His
anti-h,t.ys ••(A?\ wrth
thu baubU/hUju th.n itfrre
111 tin'/ hi fteens.
.hi
hotufiMmu du
tufhlefi
wrrk
frith
it fer.
for*
fore
Mufinitrd
imJ h'fri jxwr pit*
tf(hd The k\oui thai
fluids I's
u /itzne
.'
briclgment ofArPopR'.t Efsay oiiMan•. ,md Monti, rjctnirtnl/rvm oUur irlfbmtnl .hithvrs.bv KG.ijtui.
Xotrs. Morning.
I Wtdmefdmy J Arrives at the
Three Cups,
in
Bread
C Friday E/ery < Saturday
from the T11 nee Cera, iuBread-
Set
Morning.
\waatji*t 3
Ifmfih
And Returns
Every
London,
f Salwday Every < Mmday
Noon. to
B1
Tlfurfiay, Friday,
1 1
ro
l,
and Monday Noon.
For the greater Convenience, Goods and Passengers arc put down and taken up at the Black and White Bean, and White Herfe Cellar in Piccm+Ulfy* Thrfe are the not Expeditious WAGGONS that go from Bristol to London, being only four Nights on the Road. They are likewife made very commodious and warm for Passengers, who will meet with the heft of Usaci. All Gentlemen, Merchants, and Others, may depend upon the ntmofl Care being taWeo of all Goods, tfc that may be intruded with me, and their Favours thankfully acknowledged,
%•
By
For further Pa of Tuo. Cox or
Richard
their
ulars enquire of
or l
m»Jt tbediiut
Wm.
John Goli.ick,
and
obliged
bumble Servant,
WILLIAM JAMES.
James, at his Hwfc in the Old-Market, or theWarehoufe in St. Peter -jJreet, Brifiet\
at
ards, at the Three Cafs in Bread./reett load**.
[i8]
Leisure The Mndci
ns
aimed
to get the
[.9]
mix
liked 10 ihink of themselves as not
poor
rm,
from the
activists
its
for
*
7
Promoting
1780 to
in
1
pump
lonstitutional Information
(
out propaganda for political
including Rational Dissenters and such prominent
reformers asjohnjebb, the ubiquitous
Thomas Day and Major John
Cartwright. Four years earlier, in his Take Tour Choice, Cartwright
programme of annual
had drafted the
radical
male
the ballot, equal representation
suffrage,
members;
Hampden Club
SPCI endorsed
1782 the
found the Friends of the
for reform, helping to
People in 1792 and the
the Radical
and payment of
and pamphlets, he then
for half a century, in speeches
campaigned
tirelessly
parliaments, universal
in 1812.
Growing
steadily,
by
programme of parliamentary
reform favoured by yet another Radical caucus, the Westminster
whose members included
Association,
Tooke, both graced
The
philologists.
radical
Sir
William Jones and
Whig
the
Home
Duke of Richmond
dinner in 1782, drinking toasts to 'Magna Carta', 'The
its
Majesty of the People' and 'America in our arms, Despotism our
feet'.
Too
radical to
however, after the
command
failure of Pitt's
widespread support,
Parliamentary Reform
but the French Revolution revitalized generation.
The a Scot
its
it
at
faltered,
Bill in 1785,
efforts to enlighten the rising
38
archetypal enlightened radical of this era was James Burgh,
who
settled in
of reformist idealism.
London
39
in the 1740s
and began a long career
Urging a thorough reformation of 'sentiments
and manners', he looked
in his early writings to a
grand national
association of upright aristocrats, proceeding to spend the early 1760s instructing the stables of
lon
3
how
politicized, proposing, in the
of the 1770s, a
'(
to cleanse the
in
more
Augean in
Baby-
populist atmosphere
rrand National Association for Restoring the Consti-
Written In the
Disquisitions
authors
III as to
Westminster and unify the people. The 'moralist
became
tution'.
young George
(1774
5)
spirit
of a true Independent Whig",
resurrected
support of public
liberty
the ,
403
canonical
his Political
commonwealth
targeting the peerage, lamenting
THE CREA TION OF THE MODERN WORLD national degeneracy
and urging constitutional checks on tyranny and T
corruption. His early cridques of the enerVating effects of luxury
turned into portents of national disaster: 'Ten millions of people are not to
sit still
and
see a villainous junta overthrow their liberties.' 40
Burgh's rhetoric derived from the Bible. 41 'Assert thy supreme
dominion over those who impiously pretend
upon
to
be thy vicegerents
he charged the Lord of Hosts: 'Arise
earth,'
nings enlighten the world.'
42
His
politics,
expressed the values and idiom of the
new
.
.
.
Let thy
light-
however, increasingly
liberalism. Just as
Smith
damned monopolies and aristocratic prodigality, and Priestley sought 'free scope to abilities', so Burgh began to demand for all 'an equal chance
and equal opportunities became
to rise to honours'. Fairness
among
men
start
from
equal situations and with equal advantages, as horses do on the
turf,'
the swelling refrain
such
circles. 'All
should
declared the Dissenting minister David Williams, an admirer of Priestley
and Franklin: 'afterwards everything is 43
and
merit.'
lei
us start
Godwin
all
the advantages
institutions accessible to every
exertions'.
Political
44
ability
man
and honours of
life:
social
in proportion to his talents
and
Liberalism was a child of the late Enlightenment.
reformers
made common
enlargement of religious terian Dissenters
can
depend on
likewise looked to a meritocratic race of
render
fair,
to
liberties.
cause with those pressing for the
While the trend among Presby-
was towards Socinianism or Unitarianism, 45 Angli-
rationalists expressed
growing
hostility to the
Thirty-nine Articles. Their inspiration was
tyranny of the
Edmund Law,
master of
Peterhouse and presiding genius of the liberal turn in Cambridge divinity.
His pupil Francis Blackburne, rector of Richmond in York-
shire, allegedly
owed
who
'Young man,
told him:
his convictions to a let
the
first
bridge be "Locke
upon Government".'
and
Blackburne held
religion alike,
the Bible,
and the Bible
alone,
46
'worthy old lay gentleman'
book thou readest
at
Cam-
A stalwart liberal in politics
in The Confessional (17'66) that since
was the
religion of Protestants,
no
church had the right to demand subscription beyond an avowal of the Scriptures as the
word of God. 404
In any case, the Articles were
RE FORM theologically suspect
and compulsory subscription hied
,
spiritual
dishonesty.
A campaign was mounted
for the abolition
of subscription and the
modification of the Articles, headed by Socinian-leaning Anglicans like
Feathers Tavern in the
A
Theophilus Lindsey, the vicar of Catterick.
House of
London
Commons
meeting
at the
led to the presentation of a petition to
in 1772,
embodying Blackburne's proposal
to replace subscription with a profession of belief in the Scriptures.
On its rejection,
Lindsey
John Disney. Shortly
left
the Church, followed by his son-in-law,
afterwards, with the support of the Earl of
Shelburne, the
Duke of Grafton and other grandees, Lindsey opened
England's
designated Unitarian church, in Essex Street off the
first
Strand. Blessed with such superior patrons, Unitarianism force in the land;
Amongst
became a
by 1800 nearly 200 chapels had sprung up. 47
Lindsey's
allies
had been John Jebb, another protege of
Law at Peterhouse, where he lectured in mathematics and the Greek Testament. Jebb campaigned for the reform of the Cambridge
tripos,
proposing annual examinations. Developing Unitarian leanings, he too participated in the Feathers Tavern Petition, resigning his living
and taking up medicine.
48
'It is
subsequently
now well
known',
he asserted, that a majority of the thinking clergy are disposed to
embrace the hypothesis
of Arius or Socinus, with regard to the person ofjesus.
And that the opinion
of Athanasius, though sanctified by the acts of uniformity,
by almost every reader of the
Bible.
Wishful thinking, doubtless, but none the these
Paralleling
liberal
altogether weightier in
its
is
now exploded
49
tendencies
a sign of the times.
less
within
Anglicanism,
but
consequences, was the radicalization of
Nonconformity. Under William and Mary, Dissent had achieved
freedom of worship but not brought for
civil
many Nonconformists
searching to a
more
their muscles with a
existence depends
rational
and
equality.
a
shift
Subsequent decades
from theological
political stance:
growing sense of
and they
historical destiny.
soul-
flexed
"Your ver\
on your changing the reason of your dissent which 405
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD used to be an opinion of superior orthodoxy and superior purity of faith
and w orship,' David Williams apprised fellow Nonconformists
in 1777*
another which
for
is
the only rational
and universal
inalienable
and justifiable reason of dissent - the
right of private
judgement, and the necessity of
an unrestrained enquiry and freedom of debate and discussion on
and
subjects of knowledge, morality,
religion.
This
may be
all
called Intellectual
This should be the general reason of dissent. 50
Liberty.
Exercising 'Intellectual Liberty' in those 'shaking times', Rational Dissent gravitated towards Unitarianism, the enlightened excellence
twenty-six volumes,
proofs
52
-
Priestley
and he
died,
51
priest
almost inevitably, correcting
championed freedom of inquiry more than any
other as the rationale of a rational Christian 'Train our youth to the
new
bursting out in favour of the
Hackney Academy let
of
was Joseph Priestley. polymath born with a perpetual-motion pen - his works fill
Protestantism par
A
whose high
mode
every young
which
civil rights
is
of endless progress.
now
almost everywhere
of men,' he called upon the
and
in 1791,
mind expand
light
life
itself,
catch the rising gale, and partake of the
glorious enthusiasm, the great objects of which are the flourishing state of science, arts, manufactures,
calamities incident to distinctions,
and commerce, the extinction of wars, with the
mankind
for
them, the abolishing of
which were an offspring of a barbarous
age.
all
useless
53
Largely ignored by most historians of the Enlightenment, Priestley
is
central to the distinctive arc of British developments.
Born
in 1733 the
son of a poor Yorkshire cloth-dresser, on his
mother's early death Priestley was adopted by a well-to-do aunt, a Presbyterian but no bigot,
who
kept open house for the local Dis-
senting ministers, even ones 'obnoxious ...
if
she thought
As a
new
on account of
their heresy
them honest and good men'. 54
lad, Priestley felt the full Calvinist horrors: 'Believing that a
birth,
produced by the immediate agency of the
was necessary
to salvation,'
he was to 406
recall,
Spirit of
God,
'and not being able to
FORM
RE myself that
satisfy
I
had experienced anything
occasionally such distress describe.'
of*
mind
as
not
is
it
the kind,
of in
my power
all,
the heretics taking tea at his aunt's
good men' could legitimately think 1
showed
for themselves.
56
'a
for,
and
that 'honest
57
)estined for the Presbyterian ministry, Priestley
grammar
to
These brushes with Calvinist 'darkness' drove him to
55
peculiar sense of the value of rational principles of religion' after
frit
I
was educated
way
school until he was sixteen, later reading his
at
into
Chaldean, Syriac and Arabic, as well as modern languages, mathematics, physics
Academy, a
and philosophy. At nineteen he entered the Daventry he always cherished. 'While your
liberal institution
Universities resemble pools of stagnant water,' he told William Pitt in a public letter in 1787, 'ours
the Nonconformist academies]
[i.e.,
are like rivers, which, taking their natural course, fertilize a whole country.' 58 Unlike
hidebound Oxbridge,
who
inquiry, claimed Priestley,
became a
fierce controversialist.
pupils, 'that
At Daventry, (1749),
made
to
Priestley hit
methods fostered
'I
do not
recollect,' stated
least displeasure at the strongest
what he
delivered.'
59
on David Hartley's
Observations on
won him
over.
The
no mystifying
and
everything,
effects.
their
Moreover, Hartley implied that education was
through learning, associationism
education and progress.
60
Not
Hartley,
I
consider
and a Christian
Mr Hume
justified faith in
to
both
the pious Hartley's rejection of
least,
and mind-body dualism convinced
determinist, a materialist
Dr
and
and the prospects of progress boundless. By pointing
perfectibility
free will
'the laws
Lockean bent:
or 'innate instincts', only ideas
'faculties'
Man
transparent simplicity of
Hartley's philosophy gratified Priestley's no-nonsense
causes
one of his
which account of the workings of the mind by
of association' quite
and
rejoiced in free interchange
he ever showed the
objections that were
their very
Priestley
all at
once: 'compared with
even a
as not
he could be a
child'.
61
Hume's
conservative politics, in any case, were as distasteful to Priestley as his flippant unbelief. trast,
were
concerning
after his
Human
62
Hartley's earnest morality
own
Liberty
heart.
and
Anthony
Necessity
4°7
171
and
faith,
by con-
Collins's Philosophical Inquiry ]
\
had already sapped
his
THE 1
(
relief in free will,
He proved
REATION OF THE MODERN WORLD and Hartley now provided him with an
a lifelong disciple: in 1775 he ^bridged the Observations as
Human Mind
Hartley's TJieory of the
Philosophical Inquiry.
on the Principle of the Association of
producing a new edition of Collins's
Ideas (1775), fifteen years later 63
In 1755, aged twenty- two, Priestley gained his
Needham Market,
at
and
his
becoming
academy
he
in Cheshire,
ments, including an in 1761
at
criticism,
set
up a
'electrical
first
congregation,
not a success - he stammered, his flock.
Moving
to
school, buying scientific instru-
machine' and an airpump, before
'Tutor of the languages' to the Nonconformist
Warrington, soon to become the most
There he gave the world
Dissenters' universities.
New
He was
Suffolk.
Arian theological unorthodoxies galled
Nantwich
alternative.
grammar,
and
history
illustrious
of the
his reflections
law, his Chart of Biography (1765)
Chart of History (1769) proving popular teaching texts.
polymath was never daunted: he was the
self-taught lawyer
64
on
and
The
whose A
Few Remarks on Blackstone's Commentaries (1769) bearded England's most erudite jurist,
and the
stutterer
Oratory and Criticism (1777).
On
London,
visits to
65
who
published a Course of Lectures on
Specialization
Priestley
made
was arcane and
friends with scientists
philosophers, notably Benjamin Franklin
Nonconformist divine, actuary and former led to The History and Experiments (1767), the
on a
first
subject to the
is
67
His
electrical inquiries,
same laws
scientific
Price, the
Contacts with the
he proudly reported,
that 'the attraction of electricity
as that of gravitation,
the square of the distances'.
on
statistician.
66
Present State of Electricity, with Original
show experimentally
to
and Richard
and
work which put the understanding of electricity
scientific footing.
were the
suspect.
68
method. While
That work at heart a
and
is
therefore as
also contained his thoughts
Baconian
fact-collector, the
free-thinking controversialist did not dismiss theory, only dogmatism.
'A philosopher .
.
.
will not,
who
has been long attached to a favourite hypothesis
sometimes, be convinced of
its falsity
by the plainest
evidence of fact.' 69 In 1767 Priestley accepted an invitation to address the people of Mill Hill, Leeds, a congregation which found his religious stance
408
RE OR M /•
He had
congenial.
long abandoned hoth orthodox
and the Atonement. 70
Now
the enlightened
and simple moved from Arianism that Christ
was
he was divine
as
The Messiah was just
all.
initar
i
champion
ianism
of the plain
Socinianism, denying not only
same substance'
'of the
at
to
I
God the Father but that 'a man like ourselves', 'a
man approved by God', neither unerring nor unblemished - 'as much a creature of God as a loaf of bread'. His bold Socinianism rejected Christ worship as 'idolatrous' - while Trinitarianism,
ation.
71
he
railed,
was
just as
Priestley's Theological Repository, set
magazine avowedly dedicated
of Christianity (1782)
and
Christ (1786),
were devoted
the Gospels.
73
up
bad
levelling indeed! as transubstanti-
in 1769,
to free religious inquiry.
Priestiey's later theological writings, tions
- theological
was the
first
72
notably An History of the Corrup-
his History ofEarly Opinions Concerning Jesus
to
proving that Socinianism squared with
Yet he was doomed, he lamented,
to pleasing none:
philosophical acquaintance ridicule
my
attachment to Christianity, and yet the generality of Christians
will
'The greater part of not allow
Gibbon
me
told
improvements ill
belong to them
to
him
my
at
all.'
74
Indeed: the unbeliever
to stick to 'those sciences in
can
be made',
75
which
real
and
useful
while, for their part, Christians
disposed to embrace a materialist and a determinist
Original Sin, the Trinity and the Atonement.
who
were
rejected
He was 'one of the most
dangerous enemies of Christianity', judged John Wesley; detesting
anonymous Appeal
'enthusiasm', Priestley retaliated in an fessors of Christianity (1770),
tian love in a
76
to the
Pro-
while the Methodists paraded their Chris-
hymn: Stretch out thy hands, thou Triune God:
Attacks
left
The
Unitarian fiend expel
And
chase his doctrine back to Hell. 77
Priestley quite
hand of Providence explained
at
undaunted, however, as he saw the
work everywhere. 'Even
71ie Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated (1777), 'are
only
and advancing them
to a
God were
thus
giving the precedence to the persecuted,
much
the persecutors.*
higher degree of perfection.'
409
78
'The ways of
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD
On
progressive.
younger son*s early death
his
in 1795,
he expressed
the belief that he 'had the foundation of somethkig in his character,
on which a good superstructure
dead were destined Priestley's
to
may be
raised hereafter'. 79
Even
the
improve.
Leeds years were not wholly given over to the demystifi-
cation of theology, however. In 1772 he published a history of optics, 80
before plunging into chemistry - with a characteristic utilitarian bent,
chemical publication taught
his first
how
to substitute artificial soda
w ater for imported spa waters. Addressing the problem of 'different kinds of
or the composition of the atmosphere, his Experiments
air',
and Observations on
what he Science
-
called 'dephlogisticated air'
never approved the
won
name
as
today's oxygen, although he
or the Lavoisierian theory behind
Priestley national fame,
proposed him
observer'
'scientific
and
was scuppered. The next
Shelburne made him 'librarian and held until 1780,
when he moved
to
(Jommonsense,
Dr Beattie's Essay
Dr Oswald's Appeal as (
it
was
at
Hume,
lommon Sense
tur.
82
to
Common
it.
81
Joseph Banks Pacific
notorious,
and
year, however, the Earl of
literary
companion', a post he
Birmingham.
into the
appeared
Human Mind
in
An
1774:
on the Principles of
on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, and Sense on Behalf of Religion. Piously
the thinking of Reid
philosophers might have
But he was a loyal
1771
had grown
Priestley's first philosophical publication
Examination of Dr Reid's Inquiry
in
on Cook's second
expedition. But his theological heterodoxy
the design
augmented knowledge of
ofAir (1774)
Different Kinds
and
won
aimed
his fellow Scottish
Priestley's
imprima-
disciple of Hartley and, via Hartley, of
Locke's 'way of ideas', over which the Scots had qualms, spying therein the root of
all
Humean
evil.
Reid's Inquiry was but 'an
ingenious piece of sophistry', Priestley judged, and, turning to the Presbyterian minister and philosopher
'unaccountable
.
.
.
James Oswald, he found
that such a performance should ever have excited
any other sentiments than those of contempt, been
in
any person who had
initiated into the elements of this kind of
Locke'.
83
In replacing Locke's
mind with
'such a
it
and Hartley's
number of independent, 410
knowledge by
Mr
scientific theories
of
arbitrary, instinctive
REFORM principles, that the very ('numeration of
them
Common
deemed,
Sense
'Common
sense'
philosophy
was
in truth
he
was,
euphemism
hut a
example,
in
obscurantist." 4 mystification, a
lor
'instinctive' truths -
roadblock to further inquiry. All their so-called belief, for
really tiresome',
is
an 'external world' - could be derived from
experience by means of a single crystal-clear principle: association. In his edition of Hartley, Priestley is
made up
perception
proposed that
'the
man
whole
of some uniform composition, and that the property of is
the brain'. 85
the result ... of such an organical structure as that of
Such materialism predictably created a furore:
newspapers,' protested Priestley, in revelation,
and no
'I
better than
was represented an
Atheist.'
as
an unbeliever
He was
86
'In all the
resolved,
however, to show that that charge was unwarranted, both religiously
and
philosophically.
Theologically, conceded his Disquisitions Relating
materialism had been
(1777) ,
was
deemed
not, however, 'naturally'
God had
at
Matter and
Spirit
odds with immortality.
Man
immortal
at all
to
but only so because
chosen to resurrect him. That was primarily a resurrection
of the body - and of the
mind only as a result of its being incorporated.
Philosophical anti-materialism was based tions of matter as inert, impenetrable
upon
and
solid.
discredited concep-
Hence
87
there
was
no incompatibility between matter and mental powers, but there were sound reasons
for rejecting the traditional doctrine of
opposed substances, mind and matter, with Popery) could never explain
fied
for
two
dualism (which he identi-
how
the twain could possibly
interact.
In 1777 again, in his Doctrine ofPhilosophical Necessity ley
drew heavily on
free will.
dence;
88
it
It
Collins
and Hartley
as
A
and
it
was
precluded Proviit
made
ethically objectionable, because
proved a worthy antagonist,
tussles, his old
their
it
action
left
moral
comrade Richard
correspondence published
Free Discussion of the Doctrines ofMaterialism
(1778) )
it
was metaphysical moonshine, because
choice arbitrary. In such doctrinal Price
to clinch his case against
was theologically erroneous, because
unintelligible;
Illustrated, Priest-
and Philosophical
.
Vecessity
being held up as a model of candour. Price argued that
411
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD C
preached the
Ihristianity
free will" which alone
responsibility; Priestley rejected
Providential: 'we have
can
move
himself, that
a stone can
terms
like
move
it
as arbitrary, irrational
no more reason
and counter-
God
alone had that power. 89 For Priestley,
base or blameworthy should be scrapped: rather
be said that individuals had acted from motives good or social happiness
ad ion. Adroit
would be increased or diminished by
social
man
... to conclude that a
that he can will without motives, than that
is,
itself:
would ground moral
ill
it
should
and
that
or that
this
manipulation of 'rewards and punishments'
would promote morality and law-abidingness. 90
Such
ethical utilitarianism also
He
thinking.
any
party';
cared
watermarked
Priestley's political
for high politics, disdaining the 'language of
little
what concerned him was freedom. But here
ences as a Dissenter radicalized him, as he became
less
his experi-
inclined to
accept that liberty could thrive in the prevailing socio-political
soil.
Priestley's early Essay on the First Principles of Government (1768) distin-
between two
ct ii shed
consisted in the
sorts
of liberty,
civil liberty, 'that
members of
power over
must not
that
voting and office-holding. 92
)(
by
contrast,
>wer? 'The
of the
which
and which
their
'the right to magistracy'
Of the
two,
it
was
-
civil liberty
two great freedoms upon which he
(the
were pragmatic - who was
state,'
which everything related reading
this, 93
least corruptible
good and happiness of the members,
members of any
Eureka').
actions,
being religion and education). Questions of political leader-
insisted
I
was
infringe'; the latter
which was fundamental ship,
own
their
the state reserve to themselves,
officers is,
and political. 91 The former
civil
Bentham
he wrote,
to that state
'is
that
must finally be determined' (on
'cried out, as
its
the majority
the great standard by
it
were
in
an inward ecstasy
Government should no longer intervene
customarily taken for
is,
by
in
many
matters
province, and resistance was sanctioned,
if
the existing order were destructive of the greatest happiness or of civil liberties.
On
toleration, Priestley far
out-Locked Locke, favouring
'unbounded liberty in matters of religion' - 'full toleration' for Roman Catholics and atheists no
Up
less
than Dissenters. 94
to the 1760s, while defending minorities,
412
however, Priestley
RE FORM was
content with the constitution; and,
fairly
still
established
Church
if
disdaining the
an alliance of 'worldly minded men,
as
temporal emolument', he had not urged
its
disestablishment.
the years, however, his pamphlets in defence of Dissenters strident. tins
95
In 1785, in his Reflections on
the Present State
Over
grew more
of Free Inquiry
in
he spoke of Dissenters as 'laying gunpowder, grain by
(Country,
grain,
under the old building of error and
spark
may
which a
superstition,
single
hereafter inflame so as to produce an instantaneous
explosion' - hence the
nickname 'Gunpowder Joe'. 96
up residence
In 1780 Priestley took
Lunar
lor their
new
Society. Living in the
warmly sympathetic towards the
He
industrialists.
below that of any of the
on
brutes'.
man .
.
.
.
defeated the purposes of
reduced him
bottom
it
to a condition
While he warned against
97
proved
confinement and meagre
solitary
at
.
.
social discipline Priestley
effective utilitarian deterrents;
punishment,
of the Midlands
then criticized the Poor Laws, which in his view
Providence with respect to him, and
punishment,
he grew
industrial heartlands,
laissez-faire attitudes
had 'debased the very nature of
ing legislation,
Birmingham, joining the
in
and
was better
stern. Capital
diets
since prevention
centraliz-
could
all
be
was the point of
that the innocent suffer than the
guilty escape.
Crucial to his later politics was the French Revolution: as British
opinion hardened, Priestley grew more radical. As Letters to
Edmund Burke
France (1791) Principles
and
his
is
clear
anonymous A same
Political Dialogue on the General
year, 98 he
had ceased
to think of
the British as the best of constitutions, while the Anglican
a 'fungus upon the noble plant of Christianity'.
doning the view that sovereignty lay in the balance of king,
and Lords, ment'. fall
'a
100
'our only proper sovereign', he
Hereditary
titles
before the 'prevailing
Unitarian
in religion
as a Unitarian in both:
ought
to
be but one
his
Occasioned by His Reflections on the Revolution in
of Government of the
now seemed
from
now
held,
and kingship were feudal spirit
relics
in every
will',
Aban-
Commons the Parlia-
which must
of industry and Knnmerce'. 101 Long
but a Trinitarian in polities', he
102
'is
Church 99
anc
state as in l
that
413
now paraded
every single person there
was the
people's: reform the
HE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD
1
I
louse of Commons
any
and
difficulty whatever'.
Prime Minister's
'every other reform could be 103
Denouncing
failure to relieve the
infhis Letter
made without (1787) the
to Pitt
Nonconformists by abolishing
who
the Test Acts, Priestley scorned his
kowtowing
were recorded
most jealous, the most timorous,
in all histories, as the
to the bishops,
and of course the most vindictive of all men'. 104 Such inflammatory statements
On
1
made enemies
aplenty.
4 July 1 79 1 a dinner was organized
Birmingham -
in
was not himself present - by 'Friends of the Revolution' orate the storming of the Bastille. ities,
a
mob
chanting
'Damn
With
local Dissenting chapels, before turning
him with a his
commem-
the connivance of the author-
Priestley'
destroying his library and laboratory.
to
Priestley
stormed and burned the
on
Priestley's
The French
own
house,
duly honoured
enhanced
seat in the National Assembly, but this hardly
popularity back home, especially after France's declaration of
war
in 1793.
And
so, in 1794, Priestley sailed for
Northumberland, Pennsylvania. Though he
America,
settling in
failed to gain a
perman-
ent congregation - Unitarianism was also regarded as suspect in
America - he did Discourses Relating
by the
deliver a series of Socinian lectures, published in
to the
Evidence ofRevealed Religion (1794-9).
political intolerance
he encountered in the
and finding good servants hard
to
come
habitual candour, told his hosts that there
knowledge
in the
105
New World as well
by), Priestley,
was
'less
Alarmed with his
virtue as well as less
United States than in most European countries'. 106
Before Priestley went west, he had explicated the 'second coming': '
The Present State of Europe Compared with Antient Prophecies'
(1794) expressed his persuasion 'that the calamitous times foretold in
the Scriptures are at hand'.
Study of the prophecies of the Book of
Daniel led him to anticipate Christ's return within twenty years: take ten
it
that the ten horns of the great beast in revelations,
crowned heads of Europe,' he explained, 'and
of the king of France Nelson's victories
is
the falling off of the
fulfilled Isaiah's
Newton, such immersion anachronism.
first
prophecies.
in the prophetic
107
414
mean
'I
the
that the execution
of those horns', while
Normal
in the age of
books was becoming an
R
Bold, energetic
I
I
and plain-speaking,
mate plain man's Enlightenment
commitment
OR a Priestley
truth
embodied
was simple, open
to natural rights jibed with his utilitarianism,
the
to
ulti-
all.
His
and both
served the overriding goal of improvement. His liberalism, which
preached freedom from
state tyranny, priests
with an endorsement of
- meant
hospitals
new
to instruct
institutions
and
this
would
went
factories, gaols, schools,
promised a future
deliver happiness to the people.
108
which
in
Paramount
in all
was mental autonomy: 'should free inquiry lead to the destruction
of Christianity it
superstition,
discipline. In the fight against the
mystifications of power, materialism
science
-
and
itself,'
he reflected,
ought not, on that account, to be discontinued; for we can only wish for
the prevalence of Christianity fall its
on the supposition of its being
before the influence of free inquiry,
not being true.
can only do so
it
in
true;
and
if it
consequence of
109
Such statements epitomized the Dissenting politics of candour and impartiality: truth
would
prevail given fair opportunities, liberty
would bring enlightenment, and enlightenment abet mankind. 110
The
was
Providentialist in Priestley
also confident that out of discord
would ultimately emerge: 'The consequence of free
unity
discussion,'
he wrote in 1787, 'would in time, produce a rational and permanent uniformity. For truth, contest.'
The
we need
not doubt, will finally prevail in every
111
call for
idioms and
reform came
priorities,
in
though
many all
different guises, with different
had much
most systematically radical of the
late
in
common. Perhaps
Enlightenment reformers was
Jeremy Bentham, whose exceptionally lengthy mindedly devoted 'all is
to the reform, first
the
life
was
single-
and foremost of the law (where
darkness') but also of the State, according to the criterion of
utility.
112
The son of a Tory lawyer, Bentham went up to Oxford as graduating,
lie
after attending
Westminster school
a 12-year-okl stripling in 1760.
Upon
enrolled at Lincoln's Inn, briefly returning, however.
3
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD to his alma mater to hear the lectures of the celebrated professor of
law William Blackstone. Published
Bentham's
1776,
jurist's
law.
1
1
first
anonymously in that annus mirabilis
work, the Fragment on Government, debunked the
complacent paeans
to the British constitution
and common
While attracting only passing interest, the pithy, witty Fragment
was fundamental ciple of utility
to
Bentham's
which drove
project, since
all his later
formulated the prin-
it
theorizing:
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain
and
pleasure. It
well as to right
is
for
them alone
determine what
we
to point out
shall do.
On
what we ought
the one
hand
and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and
to their throne.
every effort
They govern
we can make
demonstrate and confirm
us in
we
do, in
man may
In words a
empire: but in reality he will remain subject to of utility
recognizes this subjection, and assumes
system, the object of which
is
we
all
are fastened
say, in all
we
will serve
think:
but to
pretend to abjure their
it all it
the standard of
effects,
throw off our subjection,
to it.
all
to do, as
the while.
The principle
for the foundation of that
to rear the fabric of felicity
reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question
by the hands of
it,
deal in sounds
114 instead of senses, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.
While Bentham elaborated these archetypal enlightened views over the course of the next half century, training his searchlight into the
shadowy
recesses of
power and the
law, his basic principles never
wavered.
The proper goal of society was the happiness of its members, and it
was the
legislator's
job to aid that end. 115 Well-being consisted in
maximizing individual pleasure and minimizing pain. Government should ensure the welfare of all, each person counting equally, be he patrician or pleb.
number was
to
The
securing of the happiness of the greatest
be achieved through a proper mixture of personal
freedom and administrative measures. Fundamental
to state policy
were security of the person and property. Also important was parity of treatment and of fortunes. Other things being equal, equality
maximized public happiness, because to experience pleasure
and
all
had a comparable capacity
pain; with inequality, each additional
416
RE
brought diminishing returns* Absolute
unit ol wealth
unnatural, however, on
ac
count of differentials
owing to the pain
felt
in talents,
nor was confiscation the way to maximize
etc.
if
FORM
utility
by losers and the alarm spread
was
industry,
or pleasure,
in the
community
property were rendered precarious. Attacks on security were, after
all,
attacks
on expectation,
that imaginative chain
which bound the
present to the future. Security was thus a primary goal, although gross inequalities could be whittled
Government, which was parent and accountable. against misrule.
away over
time.
to serve the people,
needed
to
be trans-
The glare of publicity would protect subjects
Government must create a system which harmonized
using the law to ensure the coalescence of interest and duty.
interests,
Laws must engage with motives - hence 'springs of action'
it
was
be thoroughly analysed and
crucial that those
classified in the cre-
ation of a 'logic of the will'. Sanctions - sources of pleasure or pain inducing men to act in certain ways - came in five sorts: physical, 116
moral
political,
(or popular), religious
political sanction
also
had
at
its
was
and sympathetic. Only the
directly in the sovereign's hands, but the State
disposal indirect
means of persuasion,
like
public
opinion. It
was up
to
government, manipulating the system of sanctions,
to
provide a framework of laws and punishment which would expedite
optimal individual action. But though everyone potentially
own
interest, the
their noses,
uneducated,
like children,
would grab opportunities
knew
his
seeing no further than
to steal or
squander without
regard to the future. Education, discipline and the law were therefore necessary. Primarily
an engine of social control, the law must be both
knowable and known; detected
A
all
must understand that
infractions
would be
and punished.
true child of the Enlightenment,
Bentham
believed
power had
ensconced itself by mystification. Monarchy, the Church, the peerage
and the professions -
all
had cooked up
self-serving mythologies:
Divine Right, the ancient constitution, theology,
precedent.
was the lawyer's worship of the tyrann) oi 'Ah! when will the yoke of custom - custom, the blind
Especially obnoxious tradition:
ritual,
4i7
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD make
tyrant of which other tyrants
misery-perpetuating yoke be shaken off? seated on her Throne?'
-
their slave
-
when
ah!
Whfn
will
will that
Reason be
117
The pleasure-pain nexus was real, however, because it was grounded in human nature. The greatest happiness of the greatest number was the only scientific Power must be
scrutinized, fictions exposed.
measure of right and wrong. All other honour, divine
on
variants
man were
will,
and
criteria (convention, contract,
down
so forth) either ultimately boiled
to
or were mendacious blather: even the rights of
utility
a kind of nonsense. 118 Every social arrangement had to be
appraised in terms of
consequences -
its
its
happiness-producing
tendency. Hence, in drawing up laws, the statesman had to take dispositions
This
is
and
intentions into account. 119
why Bentham believed the analysis of motives so important.
At bottom,
all
sanctions were reducible to the physical, that
expectations of calculable pleasures
and
fears of tangible pains.
is,
The
cash value of a pleasure or a pain would vary according to its intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity
(its
likelihood of being
followed by sensations of the same kind) and purity (the probability of not being followed sive
by sensations of the
knowledge of what moved
opposite type).
men would
120
A comprehen-
be the grounding of a
science of the law.
Bentham revered Bacon:
'fiat lux,'
cried
Fiat experimentum,
made'.
121
all
the canonical Enlightenment heroes, notably
Bentham, 'were the words of the Almighty: -
were the words of the brightest genius he ever
Locke was another of his
of the laws tage before
is
Locke and Helvetius had 122
And
embodied key enlightened ,ike
digest
both had exposed
his philosophical radicalism patently
Home Tooke, Bentham abhorred loose
language, creating, to rectify
however,
written', for
values.
others from Locke to
Ironically,
was Helvetius: 'A
a work that could not have been executed with advan-
the witchery of words.
I
idols, as
this,
a
new
lexicon of law
his quest for precision involved
and
obscure neolo-
gisms and linguistic solipsism, leading Hazlitt to quip that
ought to be translated into English. 123 418
politics.
Bentham
RE FORM He was
furthermore an unabashed materialist, denying
ority of the so-called spiritual
over the physical
pleasure being equal, pushpin
as
is
good
supei
i-
'quantities of
and betraying
as poetry'
none of the Christian humanist aversion
the.
hedonism. 124
to sensory
A
cash value could be put on everything. Bentham's materialism shows in his attitude issue.
125
towards the disposal of
Early in
dissected
'if I
life
Bentham had
own body
his
- a contention-
directed that his corpse should be
should chance to die of any such disease' whose study
would advance
'the art of
Surgery or science of Physic'. Later, he
conducted investigations into embalming techniques, leading Auto-icon;
or,
Farther Uses of the
Dead
to the
show
as edification
statues.
men
should be put on
and the process would be cheaper than carving
126
Bentham was a staunch vidual's aim; everyone
and,
form of
Living (1831). In the
the 'auto-icon', the stuffed bodies of great
to his
ceteris
possible.
paribus,
Happiness was the
individualist.
knew
best
government or
He thus endorsed the
where
his
own
happiness
society should interfere as
laissez-faire
indilay;
little
as
economics of Adam Smith,
trusting to a natural market-place identification of interests. Whilst
suspicious of natural rights theories ('nonsense
on
stilts'),
he reach
conclusions similar to Priestley as to the paramountcy of individual liberty,
and, as already discussed, he sought a liberalization of the
laws regulating sexuality. 127
Loathing privilege, Bentham detested the Christianity of the churches. Organized religion was despotism and theology was bunk.
'A
man who
after reading the scriptures
can bring himself to fancy
the doctrines of the Athanasian Creed,' he declared in 1777, 'state
of prepared imbecility'.
128
was
in a
In time-honoured Deist fashion, Not
Paul but Jesus, published over forty-five years later, proved the apostle
an
impostor, 129
denounced
while,
around the same time, Bentham
also
'cold, selfish, priest-ridden, lawyer-ridden, lord-ridden,
squire-ridden, soldier-ridden England'. 130
Benthamism was a philosophy of action par excellence', alongside Poor Laws (see chapter 16 above), the chief crusade
to
the
which Bentham
devoted himself was prison reform, by then a major cause for concern.
I")
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD As noted
in
chapter
for criticism: there
was a prime
the British" penal system
9,
was
little
rationality
in^he
statute book, in the
sentences of the Bench, or in punishments like the pillory
was a whimsical mix of brutality and mercy. The code was counter-productive, especially
and gaols were 'schools of vice'.
131
in
target
- justice
severity of the penal
view of its arbitrariness,
Confusion, reformers argued, must
be replaced by consistency, and physical punishments reinforced by psychological sanctions. In response to such critiques, late in the century the
began
to
be devised,
its
modern prison
advocates, like those of workhouses
lunatic asylums, displaying
an ardent
faith in salvation
and
by bricks
and mortar. With the old lock-ups denounced as dens of depravity and disease, new model prisons - efficient, disciplined, accountable, economical - were touted as the solution to the problems of crimin-
Long-term prison sentences, reformers taught, would
ality.
deliver authentic punishment, because they took
of the rights of man:
liberty.
away
finally
that sweetest
For that same reason, they would
And most important of all, they would rehabilitate. Whereas the traditional menu of corporal and capital punishments was brutalizing, the carefully calibrated regime of the new purpose-built and scientifically administered penitentiary would mould men anew,
deter.
replacing caprice, cruelty and corruption by the application of 'a just
measure of pain'. 132
Some
reformers, notably religious Evangelicals like Jonas
and John Howard, pinned
their
Hanway
hopes on the 'separate system',
securing prisoners in solitary confinement, enforcing silent segregation. Traditional prisoner subcultures
criminality
would cease
to
would thereby be crushed,
be contagious and solitude would work a
change of heart.
Bentham shared many, but not
own
via
all,
such views, setting out his
the architectural jewel of the Panopticon, 'a
obtaining power of example'.
The
mind over mind,
in
new mode
of
a quantity hitherto without
basic structure of this building
was
to
be circular or
around the circumference. At the core would be a central inspection area of galleries and lodge, from which
polygonal, with
cells
420
RE FORM authority could exercise constant surveillance while remaining invisible. pillars,
for
ii
I
arches, staircases
was
more
lighter,
stone or brick. Also, lilt
methods would make
ligh-tech building
-resistant.
(
ilass
and
were
galleries
flexible, less
to
be
was
be used extensively,
to
The
this possible.
made
of cast iron,
bulky and perhaps cheaper than
would not harbour putrid
it
itself
and was
infection
in skylights,
and there
would be two large windows for each cell. The penitentiary's distinctive design, with
its
central conning-station (the spider in the web) ensuring
the complete visibility of all prisoners, each in his
own
aimed
cell,
achieve absolute control and regularity through total surveillance.
No
less
to
133
important was the programme of management. Convicts
would be worked extremely hard - by way of punishment, the costs of their crime,
and
work fourteen hours a day
An
to instil discipline.
at sedentary
to
meet
inmate would
labour and spend one and a
and an hour for dinner: no 'particle' of time would be unaccounted for and convicts would be under constant surveillance. The scheme - a half hours eating his two meals a day, half an hour for breakfast
'mill for
grinding rogues honest' 134 - embodied utilitarian simplicity:
'Morals reformed - health preserved - industry invigorated - instruc-
- public burthens lightened - economy seated as it were upon a rock - the gordian knot of the Poor Laws not cut but untied - all by simple Idea in Architecture!' 135 tion diffused
Bentham submitted
three utilitarian criteria for prison adminis-
tration: leniency (a convict dicial to health or
be more
eligible
reservations,
to suffer bodily in
severity (the prisoner's condition
ways prejuought not to
than that of paupers); and economy (saving those
economy must
were thus meant
Bentham
life);
ought not
to
go hand
prevail).
in
hand.
136
Humanity and
efficiency
137
power of
entertained a godlike vision of the
his
new
B. the most ambitious of the ambitious,' he mused: 'His 'J. empire the empire he aspires to - extending to, and comprehendin g,
science:
the whole
human
a lifelong fantasy
race, in
all
places ... at
all
future time.' 138 His w as
of mastery, to serve the cause of maximizing
if it were possible
to find a
which might happen
utility,
method ofbecoming master of everything
to a certain
number of men, he '
421
thus pondered:
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD dispose of everything around therrrso as to produce
to
impression, to the
c
irc
make
umstances of their
oppose the desired w
t
on them the desired
and of all
certain of their actions, of their connections,
effect,
so that nothing could escape, nor could
lives,
it
cannot be doubted that a method of this kind
be a very powerful and a very useful instrument which governments
>ukl
might apply to various objects of the utmost importance. 139
Bentham did not merely dream of playing God, he turned tarianism into a secular religion.
founder of a
dreamt
it
was
the British Enlightenment, he legal reforms, notably the
141
-
his secretary
disciples:
statutes,
were
(and St Paul), James Mill, aristocratic corruption,
democratic direction; 142
Bentham, a
like
- helped usher
through the press.
eddying stream of
reduce capital
political thinking in a
the artisan Francis Place
his master's
violent atheist
and a
Not Paul but Jesus (1823)
143
however, was no Benthamite monopoly -
had emerged from various
itself
to
consumed with hatred of
developed Benthamite
Utility,
in the
had dependable and devoted
campaign
pursued by Samuel Romilly;
birth-controller
was a
I
called the sect of the Utilitarians.' 140 In this,
he was spot-on. Unlike most other figures
a low-born Scot
t'other night that
he wrote: 'of course a personage of great sanctity
sect',
and importance:
'I
utili-
after
sources, including the
Gay, Francis Hutcheson and Joseph
Of
Priestley.
high priest was William Paley.
144
all,
the idea
Revdjohn
the theological first
book, The
IMnciples of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), destined to
become a
utilitarians, the
Cambridge
set text, reveals the striking theological radicalism
the pre- 1 789 era. Slavery
property was an rich
man
the truth
and
'it is
a mistake to suppose that the
maintains his servants, tradesmen, tenants and labourers: is,
they maintain him'. There should be, he argued, a all
dissenters
from the established church',
w hile the Oath of Allegiance 'permits resistance ill
behaviour or imbecility
to the
of
was 'abominable tyranny'; inequality of
evil per se;
'complete toleration of
his
His
community'. Not
least
is
such, as to
make
to the king,
when
resistance beneficial
he related the parable of the pigeons,
which ridiculed the 'paradoxical and unnatural'
422
distribution of
R E FORM property, ninety-nine out of a hundred birds fathering into a
heap and keeping 1
pigeon of the
flock'.
146
for 'one,
it
Strong
stuff'
all
they go
I
and the weakest, perhaps worst from a Cambridge divine, and
small surprise thai in 1802 the Anti-Jacobin Review 'hesitated not to affirm' that in
it
'the
tion of his principles,
The
most determined Jacobin might
and a sanction
find a justifica-
for his conduct'.
146
'second Enlightenment' decisively underwrote earlier commit-
ments
to
freedom, toleration and constitutionality.
Its thrust,
how-
ever, lay in stressing the shortcomings rather than the success of the
and
British socio-political order,
commitments
half-fulfilled.
The
it
pressed for the completion of
and demands of
aspirations
summed up by
'Enlightenment within the Enlightenment' were well the
this
Manchester cotton manufacturer, Dissenter and political
activist,
Thomas Walker: [We do not insisted .
.
.
an equality of wealth and possessions
on by the
friends of
that every person
of society;
make any
seek]
may
the laws
talents
he
.
may
Reform
is
.
The
equality
be equally entitled to the protection and benefit
equally have a voice in the election of those persons .
.
may
Commonplace
who
and may have a fair opportunity of exerting to advantage
Race of life'.
possess.
The
rule
is
not
'let all
it.
But
mankind be perpetually
'let all
mankind
start fair
147
in the 1770s
across a broad spectrum. writing, they
.
AN EQUALITY OF RIGHTS
equal' - God and nature have forbidden in the
.
and
By
1780s, these views
1794,
however, the time Walker was
had become contentious.
423
found wellwishers
PROGRESS Nature revolves, but
man
advances.
EDWARD YOUNG All well written books, that discuss the actions of reality so
many
men, are
1
in
histories of the progress of mind.
THOMAS HOLCROFT 2 [W]e
live
but to improve.
ANNIE WATT 3
No Man can pretend to set Bounds to the be
made
more
in
Agriculture and Manufacture ...
natural
and reasonable
the Beginning only,
we
Progress that is
we
to suppose, that
it
may yet
not
much
are rather at
and just got within the Threshold, than
that
arc arrived at the ne plus ultra of useful Discoveries?
JOSIAH TUCKER 4
[I)|rink success to Philosophy
and Trade.
ERASMUS DARWIN 5
I
Iistory
is
progressive, proclaimed enlightened activists in
an ever-swelling chorus,
improvement. originally,'
that
all is
6
on the future
in
'Rousseau exerts himself to prove that
commented Mary
now
wave
as they crested the
c
Wollstonecraft,
an age of
all
was right
a crowd of authors
right: and I, that all will be right.' Sights became fixed - though not the Apocalypse of Christian eschatology 7
but one end-on with the here and now. Indeed, the Enlightenment
424
PROGRESS brought the birth
Samuel Madden \s Memoirs of the or the
anonymous and none
of George Vf icjoo
and the futurologk
of science fiction
Twentieth Century (1733J, for instance,
too chronologically inaccurate The Reign
1925 (1763).
8
The Anglican Edmund Law
The scent of progress was pervasive. professed his faith in the 'continual
Improvement of
general' while the Scot John Millar taught of j
remarkable differences between that wonderful capacity for the
even
at the
novel
al
man and
how
World
the
in
'one of the most
other animals consists in
improvement of his
faculties'.
'Who
9
beginning of this century,' asked Richard Price, fired by
rational Dissent,
would have thought,
a few years, mankind would acquire the power
that, in
of subjecting to their wills the dreadful force of lightning, and of flying in aerostatic .
.
.
and
machines?
it
may
.
.
.
Many similar discoveries may remain
not be too extravagant to expect that (should
ments throw no obstacles cease
till it
that Paradisiacal state which, according to the
evils,
set ofThis
intellectual glory, celebrating 'the great
not
and restored
Mosaic History, preceded
demographic gloom against
and unlooked
for discoveries
that have taken place of late years in natural philosophy
ardent and unshackled
spirit
of inquiry that prevails'.
self-improvement became a keynote. In his Son (1796), John Aikin stressed
11
In
.
.
.
the
all this,
Letters from a Father to his
how man was
'an improvable being',
(glaring daggers at Burke) countered 'Declamations against
improvement' and the 'Sneering manner of opposing' by
how
will
10
Even 'Population' Malthus
and
made
govern-
civil
way) the progress of improvement
in the
has excluded from the earth most of its worst
the present state.
be
to
'Perfection'
was
'attainable in civil institutions'.
stressing
12
Late Enlightenment belief in progress was, to be sure, a secular theodicy - progress was the of religiose myth-making, precisely the
optimism. yet rather
same way
The it
opium of enlightenment - but
'all
will
be
right'
as a piece
was not complacent
as earlier Leibnizian
'all
is
in
for the best'
world, as Wollstonecraft explained, was not perfect
was man's duty
to perfect
4*5
it,
through criticism, reform.
HE CREA TION OF THE MODERN WORLD
1
The
education, knowledge, science, industry and sheer energy.
stunning information revolution then in train wpuld
make
difference: the temporal 'second cause' of advancement,
David Hartley, was orders of men, to
accelerated velocity'.
dropping of ancestral
fears
Priestley, that
developments, 14
Darwin,
peoples', a
about 'forbidden knowledge', was buoyed
in the thinking of the likes of Hartley, Price
Providence - the
or, as
ranks and
now be stopped, but proceeds ever with an And all this optimism about the future, this
13
up by the conviction,
the
proclaimed
all
and
nations, kindred, tongues,
all
progress which 'cannot
and
of knowledge to
'the diffusion
all
'first
cause'
- guaranteed such
suggested in the model of the Deist Erasmus
social progress
was underwritten by biological evolution
at
large.
Progress was the universalization of 'improvement', that ultimate
Georgian buzzword. The public got hooked on novelty. Landscapes, gardens, manufactures, manners, taste, art and literature constantly talked 'latest' in sartorial
commerce, and all
were sold on
and
sake
up
all
were
as 'improving', while advertisers puffed the
or culinary elegance or the 'modern method' in
literary classics it
-
- Swiftian
were modernized
satirists
for the masses.
ridiculed novelty for novelty's
for that very reason the public
had
to
be endlessly
reassured that change was truly educative, morally edifying socially
advantageous.
and allayed by Gibbon, a man
(
Would
lestroyed
and the present were addressed
constitutionally sceptical of facile
not, as civic humanists feared, the calamities that
ency of improvement. From savagery
command to
had
Rome recur in 'this enlightened age'? No: the great 'source
of comforl and hope', soothed the Decline and
and
and
15
Traditional doubts about the past
credos.
Not
Fall,
man had
was the perman-
'gradually arisen to
the animals, to fertilize the earth, to traverse the ocean,
measure the heavens'. Such betterment had no doubt been
'irregular',
with 'vicissitudes of light and darkness', yet the 'experience
of four thousand years should enlarge our hopes' - since technical skills
could never be
lost,
no people would
barbarism'. At bottom, therefore,
'relapse into their original
mankind could
426
'acquiesce in the
PROGR ESS pleasing conclusion that every age of the world has increased, and
and
increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge,
still
perhaps the virtue,
ol the
human
made, gains were
foreseeable limits, for, once
on the
tions
Fall
rounded off the (iothic
'
of the Empire
first
Moreover, progress had no
race'.
'Observa-
irreversible.
the West', the long essay which
in
half of Gibbon's history, explained that any
invaders could succeed only by
assimilating
first
new
modern
achievements, not least military technology: 'before they can conquer they must cease to be barbarians'. 16 In short, by 1800, progress was the big idea, set to turn into the great panacea, or
Whiggery
up by
in
of
ignis fatuus,
Macaulay's 'march of mind' - and as such to be sent
Thomas Love
that enlightened tailender
As already highlighted
in chapter 6, science
Peacock. 17
and
positive
knowledge
were mighty generators of optimism. Over time, the culture of science
down through
spread more widely and rapidly, percolating
and rippling out
into the provinces.
remained the nation's senior
added
was set up in in
In
1785.
and its
The Royal
reformism joined forces
in the
Royal Irish Academy,
Dissent and political
Lunar Society of Birmingham, and
similar organizations in Manchester, Newcastle
and
cial
industrializing centres. Science
not just to
utility
in
and other commer-
was acclaimed
as integral
but to the civilizing process. Launching a literary
and philosophical minister William practical value:
(1788)
Society of Edinburgh
Irish counterpart, the
English regions science,
the
bodies were
Linnean Society of London
Institution (1799).
1783,
While the Royal Society
scientific society, further
in the capital, notably the
and the Royal
18
society
society in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the Unitarian
Turner underscored
would not such similarly
cultural
no
less
than
19
The
its
and
societies 'increase the pleasures
advantage of social intercourse'?
Thomas Henry,
its
leading light in Manchester,
pronounced the pursuit of natural
philosophy preferable to 'the tavern, the gaming table, or the brothel'. 20
Literary in
1
To
realize this vision of science as rational culture,
and Philosophical Society of Manchester had been
78 1, including
among
its
set
early promoters local physicians
427
tin-
up
and
THE CREA TIOA OF THE MODERN WORLD among its honorary members Erasmus Darwin, T and Josiah Wedgwood
manufacturers, and
Joseph
Priestley
The most
r
.
embodying enlightened
energetic of such gatherings
faith in science
was the Lunar
which brought together
Society,
likeminded luminaries from the West Midlands. Though, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, Birmingham was
market town, rapid expansion followed; by 1760, considerably, to 30,000 inhabitants, factory
it
and
it
Matthew Boulton's Soho
in
gained a machine-tool works of international repute. Wilcity,
Birmingham an ethos he had not encountered elsewhere:
been among dreamers, but now
From about tists,
I
in science
men
saw
home, once a month
awake.'
- leading
1765 a group of friends
educators, Dissenting ministers
at Boulton's
moon,
and technology and the new
their activities,' their
it
'I
had
industrialists, scien-
and physicians - began
at full
found
21
to
meet
to discuss innovations
industrial order they
instrumental in creating. 'The association of Lunar
were
members and
has been claimed, 'shows a conscious shaping of
world and a deliberate application to solve the problems of
industrializing
England that
as characteristic
fits ill
is,
somehow,
nation of Newtons and Lockes
Watts'.
the picture of classic
harmony and
same time also regarded of eighteenth-century England' - or, more pithily,
Augustan balance which
'a
a small
had already grown
liam Hutton, later the author of a patriotic history of the in
still
at the
became a nation of Boultons and
22
'Improvement' was a label also often applied serving as a
codeword
The improving
to the use of the land,
for capitalist farming, notably enclosure.
discussed in chapter
spirit in agriculture,
13,
was
increasingly associated with science. In the introduction to his 600-
page
Phytologia (1800),
Erasmus Darwin,
regrets that 'Agriculture
consisting of
and Gardening
numerous detached
a true theory to connect them'.
would
truly progress only
23
facts
.
for instance, expressed his .
.
continue to be only Arts,
and vague opinions, without
This had to change. Those domains
when made
fully rational
and
businesslike,
thanks to the teachings of political economy. 'Pasturage cannot exist
428
S
PROG RES without property both
the soil
in
and the herds which
nurtures,'
it
he insisted,
and
for the invention of ai
ture,
some must
think,
and production of
ts,
of society must succeed.
With
as the efforts of some will
and others labour; and
crowned with greater success than
tools necessary to agriculDe-
an inequality of the ranks
that of others,
24
capitalist agriculture
being thus cast as rational, farming
became managed as a form of manufacturing, with Robert Bakewell's fat
sheep serving, rather
ment.
and
25
The
like
Newton's prism,
as icons of enlighten-
Leicestershire stockrearer explicitly bred sheep, cattle
pigs as meat-producing engines, selected so as to
maximize
expensive cuts and minimize bones and waste: animals were thus
turned into machines. 26
As
this
example
hints, if agriculture
Arthur Young's phrase, as
'the greatest
another branch of progress which
now
was celebrated - indeed, of all manufactures'
27
in
- it was
received the warmest praise:
manufacturing. Progressives had long expressed their fascination with industry in the traditional meaning of skilled work, promoting the image of homo faber:
These are thy
Whom labour
blessings, Industry, still
attends,
rough power!
and sweat, and
Yet the kind source of every gentle
And
all
pain;
art
the soft civility of life:
Raiser of human kind! 28
sangjames Thomson
Overcome with ment:
'I
in 1744.
despair,
was wet, had no
Robinson Crusoe surveyed
clothes to shift
eat or drink, to comfort me; neither did
his predica-
me, nor anything either I
see
to
any prospect before
me, but that of perishing with hunger, or being devoured by wild 1
beasts. Salvation
came, however,
for Defoe's
hero
in the
implements
and weapons he fished out from the shipwreck: knives and forks,
a
spade and pickaxe, needles and thread, muskets, gunpowder and shot.
Implements formed the
basis of civilization reborn:
429
I
had never
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD handled a tool
my
in
and contrivance
I
life*;
found
have made, especially
if I
and
yet, in time,
at last tfyat I
had the
by labour, application,
panted nothing but
tools.'
I
could
29
Innovation was advancing on a broad front. Water-wheel technol-
ogy became a model of experimental
John Smeaton perfected
efficiency,
and the engineer
lighthouse design. In 1758 the 'Improved
Birmingham Coach' had blazoned on
side
its
'friction annihil-
ated', and by 1801 Richard Trevithick had a perfected steam carriage.
Above
all,
textile
technology was transformed and the steam
engine revolutionized power. Industrialization gathered pace and
production grew rapidly: averaging about
£9
million a year in 1780,
exports had rocketed to -£22 million by the century's close. Iron
and
shipments, running at 16,770 tons in 1765-74, had almost
steel
doubled by 1800. Over the same period, cottons exports rose from!
£236,000
to a staggering
^S?
1
*
000
30 -
At the dawn of this stunning transformation, John Dalton's Descriptive
Poem
(1755) carried a telling preface.
It
opened with a paean
to
agriculture:
When we behold rich improvements of a wild and uncultivated soil, in their state
of maturity, without having observed their
struck with
wonder and astonishment,
rise
and
progress,
to see the face of
Nature
we
are
totally
changed.
But then
it
significantly
changed
tack:
may be,
But
how
still
surpassed by that arising from the extraordinary increase of a trading
great
and
Town, and new the author after
rational soever the pleasure of such a sight
plantations of Houses
felt at
and Men. Such was the
the appearance of the
an absence of somewhat
less
and
artists
town and harbour of Whitehaven.!
31 than thirty years.
encultured nascent industrialization.
shire painter Joseph
emblems of
is.
satisfaction!
Admiringly recording technological progress with pen or writers
it
Wright portrayed
The Derby-
local industrial worthies with-
their enterprise: the geologist
John Whitehurst with
stratigraphical section, the lead-mining squire Francis
430
paints,
2
Hart witr
j
PROGRESS a
chunk of galena and
while Arkwrighfs cotton mills
model spinning frame also caught his eye.
Steam also
Cromford
at
The people
in
minds was many-
to enlightened
Technology became headline news
novelty.
a
12
The appeal of manufacturing sided.
ow ner Richard Arkwright with
the factory
edge of
as the cutting
London, Manchester and Birmingham are
mad,' Matthew Boulton assured James Watt. 33 Industry
mill
formed a prime instance of disciplined
mentalist in his
own
right,
Josiah
'make such machines of Men
as
among
to ensure punctuality
the progress visible across the
rationality.
Wedgwood
cannot
the potter
experi-
aimed
to
introducing clocking-on
err',
his workforce.
An
34
In 1783 he applauded
West Midlands:
Industry and the machine have been the parent of this happy change. well directed
and long continued
series
of industrious exertions, has so
changed, for the better, the face of our country,
and the manners and deportment of its Business, in other words,
A
its
buildings, lands, roads
inhabitants, too. 35
promoted not
just wealth but well-being
too.
Manufacturing was producing, boosters claimed, a new breed of heroes, principally the 'captain of industry', retailed as the self-made
man, back
raising capital for factories, forges profits,
and
foundries, ploughing
organizing productive capacity, recruiting, training and
deploying the workforce and calculating market trends and opportunities.
Long
before Samuel Smiles, the industrialist was vaunted as
a national hero.
One
improving Evenings
of the children's tales in
Home: Or
at
the Juvenile
celebrates Richard Arkwright's rise to
what manufacturers can
do,'
reator,
and
like the
work and say
fame and
Papa explains
it
is
great Creator, he
good/ Showing what inn
fictional father insists to a cultivated
diversion',
;
mind
in
it
his
may
to his children, in
man
is
is
an
a kind of
please himself
there
is
seeing a pin made, than
431
fortune. 'This
w ith
his
youngsters round a factory, the
all is:
"
Barbauld's
Budget Opened (1794-8)
enlightened idiom approaching profanity: 'here c
Anna
"more entertainment in
many
a
fashionable
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD The entrepreneur was shall
'I
never forget
Boswell of a \\
at
(
visit to
>rld desires to
work
...
hailed as the exemplar of modern energy.
Mr
Boulton's expression to me,' recalled James
the
Soho works:
have,
'
"I
sell
what
here, Sir,
all
the
- Power." He had about seven hundred people
he seemed to be a father to
this tribe.'
37
In a motif
congenial to minds analysing the transition from feudal to commerindustry was
cial society,
commended
as the
means
war with peaceful
into ploughshares, supplanting
to beat
rivalry.
swords
'Do you
really think
we can make
Wedgwood
inquired in 1771 about market prospects - the very
a compleat conquest of France?' Josiah
made his 'blood move quicker'. 38 Wedgwood, like Boulton, was one of a remarkable new breed
thought
of
men conspicuous for pursuing business through enlightened thinking. Though of meagre formal faith in reason,
education, he displayed a
and a passion
recording and experimenting:
would, he maintained,
for measuring, weighing, observing, all
problems
in politics
- he was
hostile to slavery,
American
colonists
and
'I
shall
partner,
in ceramics
'yield to experiment'.
extended beyond business to Unitarianism
big:
consummate
later of the
39
manufacture
His rational outlook
in religion
and radicalism
and a warm supporter of the
French Revolution.
He
thought
Astonish the World All at Once,' he declared to his
Thomas Bentley,
'for I
hate piddling you know.' 40
Becoming
'vase-maker general to the universe', he died worth half a million. the businessman might thus figure as Britain's answer to the
If
enlightened absolutist, Robert preneurs, a
consummate
Owen was the Sun King among entre-
illustration
ideas to the empire of industry. first
employment
as
the century,
Born
in
mid- Wales,
Owen
got his
an errand boy; then he moved into drapery,
rising to take a partnership in a of
of the application of enlightened
Manchester
firm, before, at the turn
becoming partner and manager of the
New
Lanark
on Clydeside. For the next two decades he combined entrepreneurship with social reform. In his A New View of Society (18 13) - in Mills
today's jargon
it
would be
called his 'mission statement'
-
Owen
urged rational social rebuilding on the basis of universal education.
Manufacturing would provide the foundation
432
for happiness, but only
PROGRESS once divested of the arbitrariness of the market and reorganized ording
ac
a
1
1
moment, except ignorance,
that obstacle, a school, a
such a
museum, a music
hall
and a
room had been built, Southey noted, reflecting the entrepreneur's
desire to increase the happiness of his (
to prevent
of society from becoming universal.
To overcome I
at this
little, if
Hven was thus a logical
terminus
work people a hundredfold.
ad quern of enlightened thought,
imagining and realizing comprehensive benevolent control within a
scheme of
industrialization,
with education
and
and displaying
discipline over his
Helvetius-like concern
'human machines'. 46
Uniting science and imagination, poetry and social theory,
penned anthems
James
improvement, from the Poet Laureate Henry
Pye's Progress of Refinement (1783) to Shelley's The Triumph ofLife,
uncompleted natura,
to
many
at his
death in 1822. 47 Modelled on Lucretius's De rerum
Richard Payne Knight's The
divided into
six
Progress of Civil Society (1796)
was
books whose very titles - 'Of Hunting', 'Of Pasturage',
'Of Agriculture', 'Of
Arts,
Manufactures, and Commerce', 'Of
434
PROGR ESS (
Ilimate
that he
Soil
was
setting enlightened speculative
1
and
Government and Conquest' - clearly show
and
)f(
(
giving a poetic rendition of the lessons of
anthropology
Adam
to verse,
Smith's stages of
society:
Each found
the produce of his
own demands,
His
Whence each
exceed
toil
of luxury or need;
the superfluity resign'd,
More
useful objects in return to find:
Each
freely
gave what each too
In equal plenty to enjoy the
The most
much
rest.
possess'd,
48
notable and prominent poetic prophet of progress,
however, was Erasmus Darwin. Born near Nottingham
Darwin was
49
1731,
and industrious' lawyer with a taste
the son of an 'honest
for antiquities.
in
In 1750 the lad went
up
to St
John's College,
Cambridge, then crossed the Tweed (like so many others) to complete his
He then set up in medical practice
medical training in Edinburgh.
in Lichfield,
Though,
which proved like Priestley,
his
circle
which developed
'learned insane'.
its
Matthew Boulton, Darwin was
becoming noted
talker,
conventions and Christianity.
he became familiar with the Society, with
at that
flirting
for twenty-five years.
a stammerer, the energetic and ebullient
Darwin was a domineering raillery directed against
home
time
still
His
earliest
for his wit
From the into the
close
and
1760s
Lunar
friend
was
primarily a buckle manufacturer.
with the idea of building a
'fiery chariot';
though
Boulton was not convinced of the practicality of such a steam carriage,
way
Darwin's enthusiasm drew him to steam and thus paved the
for his partnership with James
'favourite friend'
America with a
late 1760s
Darwin's
was Dr William Small, who had arrived from
letter
of recommendation from Benjamin Franklin,
but he also grew close to Josiah
had opened
Watt. In the
in 17(H).
(
)n
Wedgwood, w hose
promoting the
first
pottery works
major English canal, the
Trent and Mersey, the energetic W'edgwood found a staunch in
Darwin,
who
helped by writing pamphlets and
influential support tor the costly
investment
435
ally
drumming up
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD The
who
next addition to Darwin's set was Richard Lovell Edgeworth,
shared with him a desire to design a carriage which would not
- Darwin's
overturn. Both were also keen educationalists
interest
being partly stimulated by an acquaintance with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, then living in exile in Derbyshire; Edgeworth's Practical Education (1798) (see chapter 15) less
proved
progressive, Plan for
the
far
more
substantial than Darwin's
Conduct of Female Education (1797).
no
50
The Glasgow-based James Watt had pioneered the separate condenser as an improvement to the steam engine. Coming to England 1767 with his invention
in
still
undeveloped, he visited Darwin,
already a steam enthusiast, and disclosed the blueprint of his invention.
Darwin and Watt became
fast friends,
and over the years Watt
looked to him for encouragement, ideas and medical counsel. In the
same year Darwin's old Edinburgh chum, James Keir, the
army
to live at
West Bromwich, where
at his
he succeeded in making caustic soda from
salt
Tipton
on a
retired alkali
from
works
large scale
and
thus helped launch industrial chemistry.
From the late 1760s this group of friends - Boulton, Darwin, Small, Wedgwood, Edgeworth, Watt and Keir - with later additions notably Joseph Priestley, who settled in Birmingham in 1780) would occasionally meet up. The gatherings grew more regular, held monthly at full moon, to help light them home - hence Lunar Society at the very hub of the modern technological world.
A
years, arid its
and foremost, Darwin practised for some forty ^ponomia (1794-6) - his 1,400-page magnum opus which in
physician
first
third edition ran to 2,000 pages
theory,
heavily
physiology.
51
energies into
influenced
- was
by
essentially a
Hartleyan
work of medical
materialist
neuro-
Despite his busy practice, Darwin poured his boundless
many
other channels. In 1771 he was dabbling with a
speaking machine or mechanical voicebox; 52 in the next year he had long discussions with
Wedgwood and
the engineer James Brindley
about extending the Grand Trunk Canal; with
Boothby he founded the Lichfield Botanic site
Brooke
which
in time
Society,
brought out translations of Linnaeus. His botanic
somed on a
his friend
interests also blos-
west of Lichfield, where in 1778 he established a
436
PROGRESS botanic garden,
name.
the
inspiration
of
his
later
poem
of the same
53
Uniting arts and sciences, medicine, physics and technology, the corpulent Darwin was not only a the very
man
embodiment of enlightened
of the broadest interests but
values. 'All those
who knew him
allow that sympathy and benevolence were the most striking
will
features,'
wrote Keir. 'He despised the monkish abstinences and the
hypocritical pretensions
which so often impose on the world. The
communication of happiness and the
relief
held as the only standard of moral merit.'
of misery were by him
54
Darwin's was a benevolence independent of - indeed, hostile to Christian values
and motives. From
had
early years, he
rejected
Christianity in favour of Deism. 'That there exists a superior
Entium, which formed these wonderful creatures,
is
Ens
a mathematical
demonstration,' he proclaimed, but reason gave no warrant for believing that that First things
Cause was a Jehovah: 'That
by a particular providence,
is
not so evident
He .
.
.
influences
The
of Nature affords us not a single argument for a future
state.'
Indeed, he found the Christian Almighty quite repellent:
could a truly loving Father children?
56
visit
terrible diseases
55
how
upon innocent
Darwin regarded the notion of a jealous Lord
perverse; he loathed the Church's fixation
light
as quite
upon punishment,
guilt
and suffering; and his ^ponomia pathologized religious enthusiasm and superstition, diagnosing such religiosity as
Like
many
symptomatic of madness. 57
other enlightened scoffers, Darwin had a taste for the
blasphemous:
his
speaking machine, for example, was meant to recite
'the Lord's prayer, the creed,
and ten Commandments
in the vulgar
tongue'. 58
Championing
Hartley's philosophy,
Darwin was a
through and through. 'Dr Darwin often used to the
say,'
materialist
remembered
pious Quaker Mrs Schimmelpenninck,
Man
is
an eating animal, a drinking animal, and a sleeping animal, and
one placed
in a
can
He
desire.
material world, which alone furnishes
is
gifted besides with
knowing
437
all
the
human animal
faculties, practically to
explore
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD and
to. apply the resources
All else
of
world
this
T
nothing; conscience and sentifnent a re
is
These are
to his use.
realities.
mere figments of the
imagination. 59
(One suspects other than
that, in front
of his male cronies, Darwin used a phrase
sleeping animal'.)
'a
Anti-Christian materialism shaped Darwin's humanitarianism: bigots loved blaming, but ize.
Hearing of an
letter to his
men of reason would inquire and sympath-
infanticidal mother,
he wrote a commiserating
correspondent:
The Women
that have
committed
this
most unnatural Grime, are
Objects of our greatest Pity; their education has produced in them so
Modesty, or Sense of Shame, that Instincts of Nature!
agonies!
.
Hence
.
this artificial
in their
Cause of this most horrid Crime
the
is
an excess of what
Nature!
is
is
really
the Condition of
60
Darwin was a dyed-in-the-wool
liberal.
His books and
echo with condemnations of bloodshed (T hate
ism and slavery. Josiah
Minds, what
.
Politically letters
much
Passion overturns the very
- what Struggles must there be
a Virtue, of the Sense of Shame, or Modesty. Such
human
real
61
Wedgwood,
T have just
heard,' he raged
'that there are
war'), despot-
on one occasion
muzzles or gags
made
to
Birming-
at
ham for the slaves in our island. If this be true, and such an instrument could be exhibited by a speaker in the House of Commons,
have a great
effect.'
62
From
R evolution, and after the him
thing
minds
useful,
in all ages
outset he supported the French
its
Birmingham riots he wrote to Priestley by fanatics - while also courteously advis-
to quit his theological
more
might
1791
deploring his victimization ing
it
namely
maunderings and get on with some-
scientific
of the world,
experiments. 'Almost
who have endeavoured
mankind, have been persecuted by them,' he wrote
to him,
all
great
to benefit
on behalf
of the Derby Philosophical Society: Galileo for his philosophical discoveries was imprisoned by the inquisition;
and Socrates found a cup of hemlock
his
438
reward
for teaching 'there
is
one
PR OG R E SS God'. Your enemies, unable
had recourse
Darwin's
to violence/'
politics
to
conquer your arguments by reason, have
1
were, however, never revolutionary. Law, order
and property were
essential
components of the
social progress
which
would be achieved within the framework of free-market capitalism
and
industrialization.
Articulating his myriad ideas first
comprehensive theory of biological evolution: 'would
bold to imagine, that
one
and outlooks, Darwin developed the
living filament,
mality?'
64
Though
warm-blooded animals have
all
which The Great
different
First
it
be too
arisen
from
Cause endued with
ani-
from the now generally accepted theory
of his grandson, Charles, Erasmus Darwin's speculations were well
grounded
of his day and gave voice to philosophical
in the science
tenets central to the Enlightenment. 65 Nature, he contended,
everywhere
motion: the butterfly emerged from the caterpillar,
in
and creatures adapted themselves
and partridges of the
latitudes
to their
from generation
to
Through
to generation, as in the
Man's capacity
seemed
'the hares
'artificial
or accidental
moreover, beings underwent 'great changes' transmitted
cultivation',
dogs.
environment -
which are long buried in snow, become
white during the winter months'. 66
67
was
to
produce
breeding ofpedigree cats and
artificial
breeds via domestication
be transforming the very face of Nature: 'Many of these
enormities of shape are propagated, and continued as a variety at least, if
not as a
new
species of animal.' 68
Nature thus changed and, standing
its
dynamics lay
for
Darwin, the starting point for under-
in the inherent motility possessed
ized matter: 'In every contraction of the fibre there
of the sensorial power, or
spirit
of animation.'
69
is
an expenditure
Living beings were
those entities which did not react solely in a mechanical
environmental inputs, but possessed their
own:
70
manner
to
an inherent responsiveness of
living bodies, in short, were those with the capacity to
interact with their
fibres
by organ-
environment. 71
had the power
to contract,
producing
led to 'sensation'; while, in their turn, pleasure
439
'irritation'; irritation
and pain generated
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD ieelings.of desire
and
aversion, creating the superior plane of bodily
operation, volition, which constituted a'creatifre's capacity to act in
response to pleasure and pain sensations. Volition should not, however,
be confused (he explained, drawing on Hartley and
with the discredited theological conception of free
will,
Priestley)
which was no
an arbitrary act of the mind or understanding. 72
better than
Probing the functions of the mind, Darwin addressed the
between
volition
and
habit.
Frequent repetition of an action
up patterns of behaviour; once performance demanded piano thus had to give
less
habits
the
it
conscious play of mind.
it
The
tyro at the
concentration, whereas the expert
all his
merely pitched
built
were established, subsequent
pianist could attend to other things as well. volition,
links
on
Habit did not supersede
to a higher plane, better
adapted to
complex needs of beings simultaneously performing a multiplicity
of actions. 73
The power
of the will to advance from isolated acts to behaviour
model for the understanding of change. Animals - humans included - were not born inherently
patterns supplied a comprehensive
endowed with a and
skills.
repertoire of dispositions, capacities, propensities
Schooled
in Locke,
Common
their Scottish
Darwin rubbished innate
ideas
and
Sense variant. Rather, he noted, on the
repetition of particular actions, habits formed,
74
which, undergoing
modification over time, tailored behaviour to environmental pressures, opportunities
and
niches.
The
sures and pains - enabled organisms
sanctions of the senses to learn and,
-
plea-
through learning,
to progress. Sense responses translated, via habit, into the volition
which gave
all
creatures the capacity to change
What enabled association. classic
progressive. 75
such adaptive behaviour to assume truly complex
forms, especially in humans, was a further 76
and be
power of the organism:
This associative capacity - Darwin had in mind the
conception of the association of ideas as spelt out by Locke,
Hartley and
Hume
- was
like gravitational attraction,
77
and
it
was
the key to the exceptionally subtle interactivity of organic behaviour as a whole.
For Darwin, the expression of emotion - anger,
fear,
laughter - comprised the learnt product of chains of responses,
440
PROGRESS transmitted from parents to offspring, over the generations, by the
power of imitation. Association was crucial to Darwin's concept of progress, and thus
Through that mechanism, behaviour attained
to his evolutionism.
ever
more complex
expression, generating, for instance, the sense of
beauty and feelings of sympathy which created mutual affection
among mankind and the brain in turn
other sociable animals.
Through imagination
became the storehouse of experience. 78 And the imagination
played a crucial role in reproduction.
Controversy had long raged over the mechanics of generation and heredity.
among
Darwin repudiated the
the
amounted
to
early little
'preformationist' theory, popular
mechanical philosophers, that foetal growth
more than
the mechanistic enlargement of micro-
scopic parts 'given' from the beginning: offspring did not remain
carbon copies down the generations, he retorted. 79 Most importantly, he was convinced that the mind had a part to play in hereditary transmission to the offspring. Views of that kind were not for folklore
uncommon,
and certain medical theorists alike credited to the mother's
imagination the power to impress
conception - 'monstrous'
births
its
contents
upon
had been explained
the
embryo
in that
at
way. 80
That view was rejected by Darwin, but he did propose an analogous (and equally
sexist) doctrine,
which impressed
itself
upon
the idea that
it
the conceptus.
was the male imagination
81
A mechanism was thus
provided whereby 'improvements', the products of experience, could
be passed on to offspring: as with
his
contemporary Lamarck, Eras-
mus Darwin's evolutionary theory built
in the idea of the inheritance
of acquired characteristics.
Darwin held sexual reproduction optimal for the future of a species: simpler, pre-sexual forms of reproduction - for example, that of plant
bulbs
led to deterioration over the generations. 82 In
coupling provided the opportunity for
'joy',
and
it
any case, sexual
carried a further
advantage: by supplying the means whereby the 'ideas' of the mind or imagination could be conveyed to the next generation, sexual
breeding could be evolutionarily progressive, the adaptations of one generation being passed
down
to the next.
44'
89
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD Analysis ofliving beings for repeated, continued,
own
their
showed
that
life
contained the capacity
gradual modifications
'in
part produced by
and
exertions in consequence of their desires
and
their pleasures
aversions, of
their pains, or of irritations, or of associations;
and many of these acquired forms or propensities are transmitted their posterity'.
84
Hence
to
the argument for evolution was predicated
upon, and clinched by, the general animation of life, leading Darwin to hail the evolutionary process as a whole:
would arisen
be too bold to imagine that ...
it
from one
living filament,
animality, with the
by
and thus possessing the
which The Great
First
Cause endued with
parts, attended with
and
irritations, sensations, volitions,
faculty of continuing to
improve by its own inherent to
its
world without end? 85 radical alternative to Genesis, evolution
was
social implications
were further
spelt out in his
The Temple of Nature, posthumously published in 1803.
panorama of change was of nebulae up to Irritation
was the
potentialities
modern initial
first
estab-
human didactic poem
lished in largely biomedical terms in Darwin's ^oonomia.
and
new
associations;
and of delivering down those improvements by generation
posterity,
As a
warm-blooded animals have
power of acquiring new
propensities, directed
activity,
all
Its
A
sublime
there unfolded, from the coagulation society,
from mushrooms
trigger of the
life
forces,
to
monarchs.
unlocking the
of animated powers, leading to the awakening of
feelings:
Next the long nerves unite
their silver train,
And young sensation permeates Through each new
the brain;
sense the keen emotions dart,
86 Flush the young cheek, and swell the throbbing heart.
Sensation in turn quickened the perceptions of pleasure and pain
and triggered
From
volition:
pain and pleasure quick volitions
Lift the
rise,
87 strong arm, or point the inquiring eyes.
442
PROGRESS These (hen produced association and the awakening of mind: Last in thick
Thoughts
Whence
swarms ASSOCIATIONS
join to thoughts, to
in
spring,
motions motions
cling;
long trains of catenation flow
Imagined joy, and voluntary woe. 88
And
came
with the association of ideas
habit, imitation, imagination
and the higher mental powers, which
generated lan-
in their turn
guage, the arts and sciences, the love of beauty and the moral and social
powers engendered by sympathy. Through such evolutionary
processes
man had become
the lord of creation
-
his
preeminence
did not stem from a divine mission or from any innate Cartesian
endowments, but because of basic physical
facts:
highly sensitive
hands, for instance, had permitted the development of superior
powers of volition and understanding. 89 'All
nature exists in a state of perpetual improvement', and so
possessed the potential for unlimited improvement.
90
The
endless
mutual competition of burgeoning organic forms within the raqueous globe
also
resulted
in
death,
destruction
life
ter-
and even
extinction:
From Hunger's arm
And one
the shafts of Death are hurl'd,
great Slaughter-house the warring world! 91
Nevertheless, rather as for
Adam
Smith, in Darwin's view the law of
competition brought about net improvement, and the aggregate
rise
of population spelt not Malthusian misery but an augmentation of
happiness on a cosmic
felicific
calculus:
Shout round the globe, how Reproduction
With vanquished Death - and Happiness
How
strives
survives;
Life increasing peoples every clime,
And young
renascent Nature conquers Time. 92
Darwin's evolutionism provided the British Enlightenment's most sublime theory of boundless improvement. 93
443
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD Contrast the epic of human progress, implicit or explicit in most
late
Enlightenment opinion and given tangible form by Darwin, to such earlier visions as Paradise Lost
and the Essay
Man. For Milton, what
on
God and man command - and man's
was fundamental was the relationship between
Adam's destiny
offence lay in his violation of God's
was couched
presented a view of the
ordained
human
for his part
condition as fixed on a divinely
scale:
Plac'd
on
this
isthmus of a middle
state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great With a
Pope
in a transcendental revelation.
94 .
.
,
'Chain of Being' in mind, 95 Pope viewed beings as
static
suspended between the divine and the animal, a predicament
at
once
laughable and lamentable, Created half to
rise,
and half to
fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey
to
all.
96
Darwin, by contrast, painted a wholly optimistic, this-worldly picture,
(
\i
ended
and
Human capacities were
grounded on evolution.
the products of biological
naturalistic
and physiological development which
to 'the progress of the Mind'.
97
Not only was
there
no
Mil tonic Lucifer and Fall, neither was there any Popean conflict (
ountenanced between mind and body,
man and
Nature. Viewing
humanity from Nature's perspective, not God's, Darwin granted a f
ar
more elevated
position to mankind:
man alone had consciousness
of the natural order. Whereas Pope scorned pride as hubristic, for I
);ir
win, as for
Hume
before him, pride and
legitimate basis in Nature.
its
triumphs had their
The mankind Pope
satirized,
Darwin
celebrated.
Darwin's vision of evolution had potent ideological implications. His writings amount to an early and society, rationalized
as part of the natural order. love,
vindication of industrial
through a social biology. 98 In
theodicy, struggle, sexual selection
were
full
and competition were presented
Yet no
less
sympathy and co-operation 444
his naturalistic
prominent
his
in his vision
poems and
letters give
PR OGRESS abundant testimony
and empire.
99
to his
Nor was
he was concerned to
his
rescue
other than a machine.
He
enduring hatred of violence, cruelty, war a merely mechanical view of man; indeed,
man from
the aspersion of being nothing
man's inner energies and
stressed
drives,
both the capacity and the need to learn, the inventiveness and adaptiveness of homo faber, the offered a vision of
man
for the
man who makes
himself.
Darwin
machine age, but not of man the
machine. Progress proved the ultimate Enlightenment gospel.
It
kindled
optimism and pointed to a programme: the promise of a better future
would expose and highlight whatever remained wrong in the present. It
was a vision of hope, a doctrine of change.
mankind's
tale in
terms of disobedience, sin and punishment - and
perhaps redemption - so as to if
the Essay on
even
if in
If Paradise Lost told
Man
justify the
ways of God
offered an enigmatic view of
principle at least capable of
knowledge, Darwin and
his peers
man
to
man; and
as a riddle,
improvement through
self-
presented a man-centred view of
man making himself - a Promethean vision of infinite possibilities. God had become a distant cause of causes; what counted was man acting in Nature. secularized.
The
theodicy, the master narrative,
100
445
had become
20
,
THE REVOLUTIONARY ERA: 'MODERN PHILOSOPHY' The Voluntary Actions
of Men Originate in their Opinions.
WILLIAM GODWIN
[S]uch
is
the irresistible nature of truth, that
wants,
is
the liberty of appearing.
him from
to distinguish
all it asks,
The sun needs no
and
1
all it
inscription
darkness.
THOMAS PAINE 2
The English national memory gloried in the Glorious Revolution.
Recording centennial junketings
Chronicle
reported on
The Revolution British annals liberties I.k
tures
.
is
.
.
i
November
Britain has
arts
equalled (
)\
cr a
Maid's
illustrious
been
.
.
.
and happy aera
in the
the grand bulwark of the
of Europe and of the Protestant religion. Hence agriculture, manu-
and commerce have
risen to a height
mm reased the wealth of the community. tlx
Norwich, the Norfolk
1788:
undoubtedly the most
Hence
in
of social in
life
Hence
have been improved
any part of universal
history.
in a
science, polite literature
manner
that
.
.
.
and
cannot be
3
hundred gentlemen had supped
Head with
which has surprisingly
at the city centre tavern the
a Dissenter in the chair. 'The immortal
memory
of King William' produced three cheers; 'The Bishop of the Diocese'
was
feted, as
were
There were more 'freedom to
'the
Lord Lieutenant' and
'the City
Members'.
radical toasts too: 'the Majesty of the People'
slaves'.
Nearer home, the diners had a whipround
4 the miserable debtors languishing in the city's gaols.
The
and for
event
captures the true flavour of the English Enlightenment, progressive
446
HE REVOLUTIONARY ERAi 'MODERN PHILOSOPHY*
I
but not incendiary, broad church toasts to prelates
and people
and confident enough
to include
embrace Anglic ans and
alike, to
Dis-
extend sympathy to unfortunates. Such relaxed,
senters,
and
tolerant
optimism did not long survive the outbreak of the French
to
Revolution. Initially,
much
John
applauded the storming of the
Bull
the greatest event that has ever
proclaimed the
Whig
leader Charles James Fox;
universal liberty', cheered
Wedgwood
'rejoiced' in the 'glorious revolution'
bonnets rouges
reaction in later).
Europe
and
salutations as
with
'the
dawn of
crony Josiah
telling phrase.
5
much gadding around
'citoyeri'
(comparable with the
to the destruction of the Berlin
Wall two centuries
Wordsworth's I
see, I see!
glad Liberty succeed
With every caught the mood. the
festive,
his
- a
'How
in the world,'
was
it
Erasmus Darwin, while
For a while the atmosphere was
wearing
happened
Bastille.
Channel
patriot virtue in her train! 6
To share in the exhilaration, young William crossed
in 1790, landingjust before the anniversary of 'that great
federal day', 14 July. Writing later in the Prelude (although
the salad days radical
Europe
had changed
at that time
his tune)
was
thrilled
by then
he recalled:
with joy,
France standing on the top of golden hours,
And human
nature seeming born again. 7
Dancing around the bonfire of the
ancien regime
was
easy, but the
Revolution also had to be understood within the great pageant of history.
This was what was in
Richard Price rose
1789,
mind when, on 4 November an address to commemorate the
his
to deliver
Glorious Revolution. 8 That had gone
down
dom
insisted constitutionalists,
as a conservative event: James
in reality 'abdicated'
II,
in British political wis-
and the great chain of legality had never been
snapped. Daringly, the reverend doctor, taking link
it
1688.
with current events in
What
Britain
had
it
upon himself
to
France, challenged such a reading of
had begun, France was completing: now
447
the
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD tocsin
had sounded
had a
truly radical ring.
thundered the
What an
frail
is this! I
could almost say, Lord, now
undermined
'Tremble
lettest
have lived
have
-
idea of it.
lost the
am
his peroration
oppressors of the world!'
1
thankful that
I
have lived
to
it;
and
I
thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have
to see a diffusion of
and error -
superstition
better understood than ever; to
all yer
old Dissenter:
eventful period
seen thy salvation. I
Hence
for the rights of the people.
have lived
I
knowledge, which has
to see the rights of
men
and nations panting for liberty, which seemed have lived to see thirty millions of people,
indignant and resolute, spurning at slavery, and demanding liberty with an voice
irresistible
been spared
Wagging
to
.
.
.
After sharing in the benefits of one Revolution,
his finger at the 'oppressors', Price
You cannot now hold increasing light
And
and
liberality.
he challenged
ciples
warned: no longer against
the world in darkness. Struggle
Restore to mankind their
rights;
and you are destroyed
correction of abuses, before they
to the
have
I
be a witness of two other Revolutions, both glorious. 9
his compatriots: if they
of 1688 and were true believers in
and consent together. 10
supported the real prin-
liberty,
they must embrace
the French Revolution.
was
It
Edmund Burke who
the Revolution in
took up the gauntlet. His
France (1790) never
astonishing that has hitherto
doubted
magnitude:
cause besides,
rebels
back
.
.
damned the
completely pulled
down
to the
ground
and
revolutionaries ('the
edifice laboriously erected over the centuries: .
most
in the 1770s
ablest architects of ruin') as 'cannibal philosophers' set
an
'the
happened in the world'. But the veteran
Whig, who had defended the American
many another liberal
its
Reflections on
on destroying
'The French have
their
monarchy,
their
church, their nobility, their law, their revenue, their army, their navy, their
commerce,
their arts
and
their manufactures.' Theirs
wrecking rage: 'The age of chivalry sophisters, economists
and
is
was a
gone,' wrote Burke, 'that of
calculators has succeeded.
The
glory of
extinguished for ever.' Evidently politics should not be
Europe
is
reduced
to a science.
11
Burke never scanted reform -
448
'a state
without
77/ E R E the
VOLU TI ONA R 1 ERA: 'MODERA PHILOSOPHY*
means of some change
but,
without the means
is
come
he insisted, change must
ol
its
(
onservation'
gradually and
'
1
must be
it
consensual.
Not even Burke's
rhetoric could stem the tide. Political societies
sprang up, comprising radical craftsmen and the petty bourgeoisie,
headed by
journalists, intellectuals
clamour was renewed
and
for constitutional reform.
are already free,' declared the
be
word of enlightenment,' ran one
the next year. 14
so.'
13
Society in
'For God's sake, send
letter the Society
Demanding parliamentary
Friends of the People, also founded in 1792,
The
'Frenchmen, you
London Corresponding
1792, 'but the Britons are preparing to
us the
disaffected gentlemen.
received
reform, the Society of
deemed
Britain not a
paradise of liberty but a prison of oligarchy: only one Englishman in eight possessed the franchise,
elected
by just over 11,000
and a numerical majority of MPs were
voters.
15
Many returned Burke's fire - the Reflections drew at least thirty-eight replies,
including
Mary Wollstonecraft's
(1790),
which reproved
above
all
Tom
Paine
his 'mortal antipathy to reason'.
who pleaded
corrupt Establishment and installed
by a
Vindication of the Rights ofMen
its
16
But
it
was
the people's cause against a
hirelings.
Attacking a regime
first
'banditti of ruffians', the Rights of Man (1791-2) spoke
directly to the cobblers, printers,
weavers and carpenters
who were
and the torchbearers of plebeian enlightenment. Alarmed by Paine 'our peasantry,' whinged T.J. Mathias, the soul of urban radicalism
'now read the
Rights of Man
way side' - in May 17
writings'. title
on mountains, and moors, and by the
1792 Pitt issued a proclamation against 'seditious
Paine prudently
fled,
but
left his
inspiration behind.
The
of his The Age ofReason, which appeared the next year and carried
the attack to the churches,
became
the radical catchphrase.
Were
they prepared to remain the 'footballs and shuttlecocks of tyrants'?
demanded
the
Nore mutineers of
at last revolved.'
Some hoped,
1797: 'No.
The age of reason
has
18
others feared, that the revolutionary blaze would
leap the Channel. Jacobin doctrines were inflammatory enough, and the tinder of discontent everywhere: soaring inflation, agrarian riots
449
THE
C
TION OF THE
R EA
(notably over enclosures) ii(
it.
and
MODERN WORLD
unsettling industrialization. Insurrec-
m was in the air, old paternalism was crumbling, and deference with Awarding
versifier
On
ancestral vengefulness a
warned Swill
new weapon, an anonymous
the Quality:
and Grains you wish the poor
And underneath
the Gullintine
w hile a notice nailed
to a
to
be fed
we could wish
to see
your heads.
church door expressed new sentiments:
Downe with your Constitucion Arect a republick': 19 no longer 'ours', now the constitution was 'yours'. This new 'them and us' mood was captured by Thomas Walker. The people had grown aware, noted k
the Manchester manufacturer, 'how the few have permanently contrived to live in affluence
and luxurious indulgence, while the many
drag on an existence laborious and miserable, in ignorance and in
pain and poverty!'
Yet the old order was not decisively war, radicals at alienated
and
many
home found
Once France declared a cleft stick. The Terror
tested.
themselves in
erstwhile supporters; 21 the propertied closed ranks,
patriotic support,
spontaneous or staged, swelled in 'Church and
King' demonstrations against foreign enemies and domestic like Priestley.
vice,
20
The proclamation
'traitors'
against 'Seditious Writings' (1792)
made mention of Tom Paine dangerous, and he was hanged in effigy. 22 The Scottish
trials
of 1793-4, with radical leaders sentenced to
transportation for attending an alternative parliament, served warning to militants elsewhere. In England, meanwhile, Pitt
had
set
up
spy networks, believing, or professing to believe, that the radical societies
modern
threatened a 'whole system of insurrection doctrine of the rights of man'.
was suspended, and
in the next
23
their
martyrdom would have
was bent on tyranny.
The
.
laid in the
treason prosecution
radicals, including
Tooke, John Thelwall and Thomas Hardy. their acquittal later in the year
.
In April 1794 habeas corpus
month a high
was launched against leading London
.
24
Home
For the government,
proved a blessing
in disguise, since
lent credence to the charges that Pitt
25
radical surge subsided,
and
after 1794
45°
it
was economic misery
THE REVOIJ! 1 1().\AR) ERA MODERh PHILOSOPHY* When
that kept opposition alive.
seized the opportunity to batten the
'Two
Oc tober 1795
a year ol sky-
stones were thrown at the King's coach, Pitt
rocketing wheat prices
means of
in
The
Acts'.
assemblies of more than
down
the hatches
further by
still
Seditious Meetings Act prohibited
people without aJP's permission, while
fifty
the Treasonable Practices Act extended the sedition laws. Charles
James Fox, leader of
the opposition
Whig rump,
parliamentary reformers were, technically at transportation, while
retorted that
least,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
now
still
all
liable to
in his radical
phase, prophesied that 'the cadaverous tranquillity of despotism will
succeed the generous order
muzzled by
and
1795,
.
.
.
of freedom'. 26 Opposition had been
at crisis point public
opinion
into line
fell
behind the government, judging that Britain's priority was national salvation.
Things were different
discontent alliance
came
however, where
political
an
to a boil in the revolutionary nineties, with
and Jacobin ideology through of Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen movement -
between native
the inspiration
in Ireland,
Irish resistance
defeated in the end by internal dissensions and ferocious repression. 27 If,
however, the threat of revolution receded, commentators sensed
that the old order
turmoil,
now no
was disappearing,
too. English society
longer based on a rural order
still
to
was
in
be found
throughout most of the Continent. Labourers were leaving the land
- or rather being turfed
off it
by enclosure and the other innovations
brought by agrarian capitalism. 'Two causes, and only two,
will
rouse
a peasantry to rebellion,' opined Robert Southey, a radical turned
Tory: 'intolerable oppression, or religious
zeal.'
But that moderately
comforting scenario no longer applied: 'A manufacturing poor
more they
easily instigated to revolt: they
know enough of what
themselves politicians.'
28
is
have no
local
England's rulers must pay heed:
must come, and
Friends of enlightenment
London Corresponding
.
.
.
passing in the political world to think
manufacturing system continues to be extended, tion inevitably
attachments
is
in
its
became
most
I
'If
the
believe that revolu-
fearful shape.'
29
friends of the .Revolution.
The
Society set about disseminating political
45 1
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD Revolution in the Minds of
kiK >w lrdge, so as to effect 'a .
.
.
An
enlightened nation immediately become^
free.'
was Thomas Paine.
oracle of enlightened philosophy
Born a Quaker, Paine had had a chequered career
[the] 30
Nation
The
chief
31
as a staymaker,
schoolmaster and excise officer before migrating to America and vindicating the rebellion in his to
Europe
book Common
insurrectionary flames in Britain. in
hoped, to keep
it
Returning
outbreak of the French Revolution, he fanned
after the
was published
Sense (1776).
March
The
1791 at 3s.
first
part of his Rights of Man
- dear enough, the government
out of the hands of the swinish multitude. Within a
few weeks, however, aided by the London Constitutional Society,
which distributed Paine to
make
later,
a cheap reprint of the
were allegedly
'When,
was issued first.
34
in circulation
of that number.
sold.
available in cheaper format,
it
appearing a year
50,000 copies had been
it,
By
32
33
Upon
appeals to
the second part,
accompanied by
in a 6d. edition,
1793, a staggering 200,000 copies
- Burke's
Reflections sold
only a seventh
35
in countries that are called civilized,'
declaimed Paine,
painting a sombre picture of oppression, 'we see age going to the
workhouse and youth
to the gallows,
the system of government.' privilege: 'the idea
hereditary author'.
is
What was
to
in
blame? In Paine's view,
of hereditary legislators 36
as
is
.
.
.
absurd as an
Power came from the people and must ever
dwell in them: 'The vanity the grave,
something must be wrong
and presumption of governing beyond
the most ridiculous
and
37 insolent of all tyrannies.'
Paine jeered at the very words prince and peer which, depending as they did
upon
the nonsense of hereditariness, were insults to
reason: 'mankind are not
now
to
be told they
shall
not think or
they shall not read'. Arbitrary power that squandered millions on pensions, patronage
government by
and warfare, must end, and be replaced by
'election
and representation'
against the abuse of power lay in universal
:
the only safeguard
manhood
suffrage.
Paine was bold in his predictions - monarchy and aristocracy
would not 'continue seven years longer in any of the enlightened countries of Europe' - but, true to his Quaker colours, he did not preach 452
THE REVOLUTIONARt ERA: MOD ERA 1
bloodshed. Nor did he envisage is
as level as water
certain',
1 ,
equality.
strict
I'll 1
SO I* II Y
1.
'
'The floor of freedom
but that "that property will ever be unequal
on account of differentials in
and
talents
industry.
is
88
Paine's quarrel with Burke concerned the stranglehold of history.
Burke had contended that the Revolutionary Settlement bound posthus denying the people's right to choose or cashier their
terity,
governors. But the parliament of 1688 that, asserted Paine,
to act for
had
actually
done precisely
and 'every age and generation must be
itself, in all cases,
as the ages
own
as free
and generations which preceded
'Governing beyond the grave' was arrant tyranny, and Burke's
it'.
lament for the 'age of chivalry' quite absurd: he but forgets the dying bird'.
The
'pities
origin of the rights of
the Creation. All histories,
man
and
lay in the origin of
particularly the
born equal, and with equal natural
were grounded, which existed
civil society,
because not
all
himself:
establishing
'in
mean that ... all men are 40 rights'. Upon these rights civil
one point, the unity of man, by which
did
man
Mosaic - 'whether
taken as divine authority or merely historical' — agreed
rights
the plumage,
39
I
for the
same Lockean reason
as
natural rights could be safeguarded
by the individual alone. Some, such
as
untouched
such as the right to judge and
in civil society; others,
own
act in one's
case,
freedom of religion, remained
were relinquished
in
exchange for
justice.
Legitimate government rested upon popular sovereignty. Part
Two
of the Rights of Man took as
American Revolution,
since the
in the political world,
where the
could begin'.
compelled a cooperation.
The
spirit
its
departure point the
New World had been
principles of universal reformation
diversity of its settlers with their
of compromise, and
Whereas
the
'the only spot
tilling
myriad
faiths
had
the wilderness required
American regime promoted
Europe was awash with 'hordes of miserable poor', while
prosperity, 'the
greedy
hand of government' invaded 'every corner and crevice of industry'. 41 There was a seeming contradiction out of his populism.
and the
State, set
to supply the
He embraced
up by
contract,
in Paine's position
liberalism:
was 'no
which arose
man was
born
free,
farther necessary than
few cases to which society and
civilization are not
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD conveniently competent'. In other words, 'government, even in best state,
is
but a necessary
evil',
a 'badge of last innocence'.
42
its
Yet
concluding chapters of Part Two, he painted a picture of an
in the
energetic State meeting the needs of the people: relief for a quarter
of a million poor families, universal elementary education, family
allowances for children under fourteen, old age pensions, maternity
workshops
benefits, funeral allowances,
works for London's poor.
To pay
and a graduated income
cuts
which could
say:
tax.
for this Paine looked to military
The
'my poor are happy'.
civilized society
the
elitist
idiom. cruel
44
Brimming with indignation
and
arbitrary
be good.'
45
'I
God,
it
and
text, translating
prelates into a populist
Old Testament's
ridiculed the 'riddles' of the Scriptures,
believe,'
is
good that teaches man
ran Paine's anti-creed,
professed by the Jewish Church, by the ( 1
follow-up, The Age
against the
religion: 'Every religion
do not
Its
an Enlightenment
less
Deist critique of theologians
and praised natural (o
was no
was the one
43
The Rights of Man became the radical bible. of Reason (1794-96),
and public
for youngsters
Roman
'in
the creed
Church, by the
reek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church,
nor by any church that
I
know of.
My own mind my own church.' 46 is
Established religion insulted reason, the Bible was packed with obscenities, bishops set
up
profit'.
'to terrify
As soon
were the toadies of tyrants and churches were
and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and
as the destruction of priestcraft put
an end
to mystery-
tnongering, 'the present age will hereafter merit to be called the
Age
embraced enlightened cosmopolitanism - 'My he insisted, 'is the world' - and he looked forward to when
of Reason'. 47 Paine country,'
the present generation will
new in
world'.
48
appear to the future
Hugely popular
as the
as the voice of hope,
a profane anthem:
GOD save great Thomas Paine, His 'Rights of Man' explain
To every soul. He makes the blind
454
to see
Adam
of a
he was hymned
I
HE
l
ned
permanent
faith in
the great principles of government, nor
Moreover, the Re\
made no
VVe know that we have
think that no discoveries are to he
in
liberty,
k
philosophes to
British radicalism to the
to
118
French Revolution,
rank illuminism, was the Edinburgh professor
John Robison, author of Proofs and Governments of Europe (1798),
of a Conspiracy against All
who urged
the
Moderns
the Religions
abandon
to
the 'bloodstained road': 'Illumination, he pronounced, 'turns out to 5
be worse than darkness.' 119 Most reactionaries, however, were more
homespun. The lawyer John Reeves issued prospectus of an association against republicans
and
in
November
protecting Liberty
'for
and Property
Believing liberty's fate
levellers'.
defence of property, Reeves dubbed the Radicals
1792 the
hung on
'levellers'.
120
the
Others
too harped on this potent fear, hitherto deployed by enlightened activists against religious enthusiasts.
be a
leveller,' insisted
politics,
'The true Christian
Arthur Young,
or to French philosophy.'
to the Anti Jacobin Review,
caricatures of sans 1
Who
.1
Ready
which rejoiced
heart) Jacobin,
ow
ns
to
no God, and dreads no Sin,
dash through thick and thin
For Freedom
.
.
listen to
French
enlightened ideas was meat
crackpots:
calotte
am
never
never
121
The lunacy seemingly pumping up and drink
'will
will
.'"
in Gillrayan
THE CREATION OF THE MODERN WORLD and reduced the agenda of enlightenment
to Dun(jiad-\ike twaddle:
Reason, Philosophy, 'fiddledum, diddledum' Peace and Fraternity, higgledy, piggledy Higgledy piggledy, 'fiddledy, diddledum'. 123
A
print in the
magazine
for
August 1798 shows the apostles of reason
New
turned devout, worshipping at the altar of 'The
Godwin, a jackass, braying aloud from
Political Justice:
Morality':
Paine, a croco-
dile in stays; Holcroft, an 'acquitted felon', in leg irons; while from
a 'Cornucopia of Ignorance' pour the Wrongs of Woman and Godwin's
Memoirs of
Mary
Wollstonecraft. 124 Significantly, the Review pin-
pointed the root of
modern
all
'We have long considered
evils:
the
establishment of newspapers in this country as a misfortune to be regretted.'
125
Yet, by
mere
its
masthead beloved of the (
treat
Truth and
radicals:
will Prevail').
print power; indeed,
Magna
Ijoves
of
the Plants (1789),
it
shared the
est Veritas et Praevalebit
126
'The Loves of the Triangles', a
In
The
is
the Anti-Jacobin tacitly
existence,
embraced the same philosophy -
skit
on Erasmus Darwin's
Godwinian
the Anti-Jacobin parodied
perfectibilist pretensions:
We i
contend, that
if,
abbages of the field to
f
existence, by U
folly,
as
demonstrable,
is
we have
our present comparatively
tlx-
risen
from a
intelligent
mere exertion of our own
energies',
and
we
level
with the
dignified state
should,
if
these
were not repressed and subdued by the operation of prejudice, and
1
by KINO-CRAFT and priest-craft
ourselves: [raising]
Man
of his
endowments and
were,
all
mind
Other
.
.
.
from
his present
.
.
.
continue to exert and expand
biped
state, to
aspirations; to a rank in
and never
die,
but by
his
own
a rank more worthy
which he would be,
consent.
as
it
127
satires chortled at similar rationalist tripe. In
her
Letters
of a
Hindoo Rajah (1796), Elizabeth Hamilton presented philosophers with
names
like
Mr Vapour
ism, solemnly training
and characterized by quirks
young sparrows
to
swarm
Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800) burlesqued
like
bees.
vegetarian-
128
Her
Mary Hays
later
in the
guise of Bridgetina Botherim, planning to settle in primal felicity
466
)
THE REVOLT among
the Hottentots.
were
pcrfcctibilisni
i
ist it
Tom
and
Tom
equality'.
dost look so like a
tom: (looking on
his book.)
had the good luck
jack:
A
good
to
looking into a hook for
TOM: Matter?
Why
jack:
What
I
I'll
meet with
iberty!
it.
want
I
I
Send 1
I
find here that I'm very
book.
this
O
'tis
I
known
if I
had
a precious book!
unhappy without
find out you're
the matter?
Come man, cheer
Thou
little
art
too
an honest fellow
much
at the
in the
main, tho'
Rose and Crown.
constitution.
thought thou hadst been a desperate healthy fellow.
for the doctor then.
mm: I'm not
jack:
want a new
Why
jack: Indeed!
I
has one fetched a warrant for thee?
thou dost tipple and prate a no,
new
liberty.
be bound for thee. -
tom: No,
is
Why
should never have
I
you can't
What
'a
'What book art reading?' Jack asks
Cause enough.
sign tho'; that
and who wants
Paine,
hang dog?'
unhappy, and very miserable; which
up,
Better than
Hod, a mason, who has been seduced
namesake,
his
ntion, liberty
Tom, 'Why
not
Half a Loaf is
or,
Bread (1795), takes the form of a dialogue between Jack Anvil, an
honest blacksmith, and
(1963), p. 457.
Alvin
would involve a travesty of the open and
23 Cited
Rrmrdy
I h,
Johnson (1934 -50), vol.
ring-fence the Enlightenment in Britain
pluralist character
Starobinski,
eds.
Locke or Hume, but
denounce progressives
To
Jem
29 W.J.
Swift, lor instance, ridiculed ol>fus< .itory
metaphysic
;
Jonathan
ism.
riti
Society,
The
Understanding (1748).
p. 402;
Government and
the
Europe
C. B. A. Behrens,
Enlightenment (1985).
7 For examples, see chapter 2 below and
book. Prussians
Portable Enlightenment Reader (1995), pp. 1-7.
elsewhere in
Another eminent contributor was Moses
Moritz and Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz
Mendelssohn: James Schmidt, 'The Question
were scared
of Enlightenment (1989). 9
see
On
such
Richard van Dulmen, The
societies,
Society
of the
3
'(
>ur age,'
Kant maintained,
(I'd.),
Emmanuel
'is,
and
everything must submit': see
Smith
to find so
in especial
to criticism
Norman Kemp
Kant's Critique of Pure
much
like
Pastor
liberty in
England; Kant might possibly have had the
same reaction had he ever gone
comments do
Enlightenment (1992), pp. 52f.
degree, the age of criticism,
this
not, of course,
west.
My
impugn Kant's
philosophical genius, for which see Ernst Cassirer, Kant
s Life
Schneewind, The
8 For censorship,
and Tfiought (1982); J. B.
Invention ofAutonomy (1998).
see Eckhart Hellmuth.
Reason (1963), p. 9; R. Koselleck, Critique and
'Enlightenment and the Freedom of the
Crisis (1988), p. 191,
Press' (1998); Black (ed.), Eighteenth Centur,
4 See Dorinda Outram, Thi Enlightenment (•995)^ PP-
«*
5 Kant broadened
Europe ijoo-ij8(), p. 404. For Phillips, see
George his
outlook by reading,
being famously awakened from
his
"dogmatical slumbers' by reading
Hume's
S.
Marr, The
Periodical Essayists of the
Eighteenth Century (1971), p. 57.
9 Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, to Jean Le Clerc (1706), quoted
487
VOTES in B.
Rand. The
Life,
Unpublished Letters and
Shaftesbury (1900). p. 353.
Enlightenment (1969).
Shaftesbury began
The Age of
(ed.),
kobert Anchor's The
Enlightenment Tradition (1967), a general survey,
Concerning Enthusiasm" by
his 'Letter
G. Crocker
(1972); L.
Philosophical Regimen ofAnthony, Earl of
discusses only
one Briton more than
Hume
Among
observing that modern Britons were
passingly:
fortunate to live in a culture of criticism:
the nineteen Enlightenment protagonists she
1688
made
all
the difference:
England since the Revolution, .
.
.
than Old England by
to
be better
includes just two Britons, Locke
degree':
unaccountably omitting
many a
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of
and Smith:
Shaftesbury, Characteristicks ofMen, Manners,
15 James Schmidt
Opinions, Times (1999 [171
(1996).
Any
10
1]),
vol.
p. 10.
i,
naive belief in an 'age of reason' was
doiroyed
In Carl Becker's waspish The
is
Modernity (1998),
been stated
who
Enlightenment, modernity
has
associated with
vol.
Int. initiation,
(1967), vol.
ii:
12 Influential
Darnton, 1971
'In
and
i:
The in
I
(ed.),
Enlightenment'
An
earlier Alfred
Enlightenment historiography.
Emu
Stuart Mill's verdict that
Bentham and
14
L
Bentham 'was not a (ed.),
Mill on
Coleridge (1962), p. 48.
M. Marsak
(ed.),
(1976), p. 608.
Cobban deemed
and
Mind in
Some
years
the term in
),
the Nineteenth Century (1975);
2nd
ed.
under 'Enlightenment'. For
'illuminati' etc., see Society
19 The
7.
Secularization of the
see the Oxford English Dictionary,
(1989-
The
The
Richard van Diilmen,
of the Enlightenment (1992), p. 105.
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on
Historical Principles (1973),
Compare John
great philosopher': F. R. Leavis
Robert R. Palmer,
quoted by Arthur
Wilson, 'The Enlightenment
Casnrer, The Philosophy of the
Enlightenment (1951), p. 174.
Commager, The Empire of
4;
W. O. Chadwick,
European
The Darnton Debate (1998). Outram, The
Enlightenment, offers a succinct survey of
13
18
The High Enlightenment and the Pre-Revolutionary
and
English': In Search of Humanity (i960), p.
revisionism was Robert
Haydn T. Mason
Science
ijgo-ig^o
Enlightenment 'hardly naturalized
Search of the Enlightenment'
in
in the
'Turgot: Paragon of the Continental
The Rise of Modern Paganism
ranee' (1982); see also
Harris, Reason and Nature
17 Henry Steele
Science of Ereedom (1970).
Low-Life of Literature
W.
Reason (1977), p.
urbanisation and rationalisation.' Enlightenment,
R.
Kenneth Clark, quoted
(1967), ch. 3.
apitalism, industrialism, secularisation,
'////
A. R. Humphreys,
English Poetry, a Historical Sketch
eomplishments are associated with
Cay.
(1978);
Hill, Reformation to Industrial
judgements, see Douglas Bush,
emergence
innovation and change. All of these
11 Petri
is
The Portable
Eighteenth Century (1968), p. 234; for similar
of civil society, with political equality, with
of the People J.
io/
Trevor May, An
Economic and Social History of Britain, 1760-1970
(1987);
(1987); John Rule, Albion's People (1992J,
18-19.
The
has
Vital Century (1992); Jeremy
1688-1793
backgrounds.
Roy
(1996);
Century (1990). (ed.),
Progress in Eighteenth Century Britain (1990),
England (1968), p. 47.
60 R.
Enlightenment had anything
England
was located not
it
a British
in
England
but in Scodand.'
52 In any
Nettel in
(ed.),
F. Prevost,
de qualite (1927 [1728-31]), p. 136.
63 Tobias
171
1);
March
Literature
Century'
and The
(1972),
Leisure 1973);
in the
Eighteenth
6, p. 46.
55
Essay concerning
in
political
National Context. See
on Englishness
Thompson hoped
in
on
Man,
in J.
economy is
Butt
(ed.),
chapter
(see
66 The phrase
to 'rescue the
para.
The Poems of
17
is
Adam
-
below).
Smith's: Lectures on
Jurisprudence (1982 [1762-3]), vol.
iv, p.
163.
67 [John Gay], 'A Dissertation Concerning the
Fundamental Principle and Immediate
Criterion of Virtue*, in the Origin oj Evil (1721),
condescension of posterity': Ihe Making of the
68 W.
W.
King, An Essay on
pp. xvii
xviii.
Paley, The Principles of Moral and
Political Philosophy (1785), p. 61.
orking Class (1968), p. 13. '
1,
the blueprint for a capitalist
Joanna Southcott, from the enormous
W
Human
ch.
economy.
Nikolaus
and even the deluded follower of
56 Thompson,
I,
See also J. L. Axtell, The Educational
Utilitarianism
"obsolete" hand-loom weaver, the "Utopian"
English
bk
>
poor stockinger, the Euddite cropper, the
artisan,
1698-
65 For example, the development of a
Peculiarities of the
Pevsner, The Englishness of English Art (1976). E. P.
Traveller in France,
Alexander Pope (1965 [1733-4])* P- 5 l6 1 2
Hie Enlightenment
the reflections
pp. 197-8. See also C.
Works ofJohn Locke (1968); Alexander Pope,
An Essay
Street (1972).
Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich
English', p. 42; (eds.),
ii,
Understanding (1975 [1690]),
See chapter 4 below.
54 Thompson, 'The
(ed.), Bluestocking
Smollett, Travels through France and
64 John Locke, An
and
Commercialization of
Pat Rogers, Grub
aventures d'un
Frontiers (1999).
H. Plumb, 'The Public,
and the Arts
et
1815 (1932); Brian Dolan, Exploring European
For pioneering studies of
the social production of knowledge
Memoires
Maxwell, The English
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations (1927),
letters, see J.
in
61 A.
Italy (1766), vol.
V.iv.io, pp. 434-5.
Journeys of a German
Letters (1926), p. 90.
Steele, The
no. 10, p. 44 (12
Regency
homme
53 Joseph Addison and Richard i,
in
1782 (1965), p. 33.
gargantuan codification of the law.
Spectator (1965), vol.
An American
62 R. Brimley Johnson
case, certain systematic writings
were indeed produced, notably Bentham's
and
An
Porter, English Society
in the Eighteenth
pp. 10- 11: 'to the extent that the French
Black,
of Eighteenth- Century Britain,
Illustrated History
59 C. Hibbert
counterpart,
.
Modern England
the lives even
like
n
A. Sharpe. Earl)
51 According to D. Spadafora, The Idea of
titled
Kathleen
as 'a
of most of d'Holbach's circle - as one might expect from their
2.
in
'In
Coterie (1976),
shown how conventional were
|>p.
.
Wilson, Ihe Sense
High Enlightenment
pretty mild affiur', see
\sn,
David Dabydcen,
hesent
Statt
(1759). PP- >83
86
L. P.
England' 11989),
,
in
may
so call
life
it.
catch
not logic, and
p. 2t>.
497
Polite
learning in Europe
4.
Commerce and
198;,
I
Thompson, (juoted
'Radical Patriotism
,
most advanced
as they rise, study
'Eighteenth-century English Literature on Slavery'
is
have the world as correspondents': Enquiry
\Ciiny.
Manhandi.y
Regency England
where the members of
manners
ice
in
Oliver Goldsmith's
this large university, if
lonourahleness of the
and
Language of Learning (1986),
Compare
that 'Learning
populous
Polite
Robert DeMaria Jr, Johnson's
in
and
modernized by Bishop (Jibson, and Edward
\
A
117.
William Camden's Britannia (1695), edited and
he Antiquity
1794).
in St James's Chronicle (6
Langford,
Commercial People, p.
84
books pulling Kngland included
'I
British Post Office
1761).
pp. 132-3.
Ingliae. \otitia
'I
misses.'
82 George Colman
Steele, The Spectator (1965),
.
he groused:
Spaces ofModernity, p. 203;
81 The Times (28 February
75 Addison and
76 Alexander Cateott,
up,'
Maxine
Dictionary
lhambcrlayne's
all
224-5, 2 49' Daniel Roche, France
85 Quoted
C
wish with
Enlightenment (1998), p. 234.
Consumers and
no. 69, p. 293 (Saturday, 19
'I
meet milkmaids on the road, with the dress
The
VVeatherill, Consumer Behaviour and
Pre- Industrial
p. 149:
kingdom were plough'd
World of Goods (1993);
the
The Torrington
(ed.),
ii,
that half the turnpike roads of the
England and America (1990).
)ther
3,
Homer
astonishing Revolution accomplished [in
(1968), p. 59.
(
clergyman,
claimed that there had never been a 'more
Shammas, Tie
i,
Homer, An
Means of Preserving and Improving
A Warwickshire
Material Culture, 1660-1760 (1988); Carole
vol.
>,\
Roads of Tils Kingdom C17G7;, pp.
the Publick
in the
74 Neil McKendrick,
Lorna
into the
p.
.
Spaces of Modernity,
(1948), pp. 99f.; John Rule, The Vital Century
The Middling Sort of
(eds),
People (1994).
.
On
Enquiry
Howard Robinson,
and Commercial
Barry and
People (1989); Jonathan
Christopher Brooks
eds
\
Ogborn.
in
80 Ogborn,
1360-1815 (1990).
73 Paul Langfbrd, A
Birth of a
and Shiver
e
p. 202.
my heart
Favvcett, The Rise of English
of the Promenade' (1986), and Tie English
English Spa
1790
)abydeen,
I
Thing wears the Face of Dispatch". Clark and
in P.
in Transition,
72 Trevor
in
Country, than has been within the Compass
(1994), p. 172.
Towns
.
transportation] in the internal System of any
Selling Art in Georgian
London (1983).
Quoted
1
lommen
6, 8.
28; Pears, The Discovery of Painting, pp. 77-87;
71
p.
ii,
'Eighteenth-century Lnglish Literature on
Altick, 7fo £Aoatf
'masque the
/-'
77 Edwsitl
Roy
in
A Showman
(•993-4)' PP- 21
68
;/
S01 iety
usscd
.iikI dis< «
1
1
pp.
in
in
Linda Collev.
Eighteenth-century
p. 183.
NO 87 Jeremy Black Walpole
(i
(ed.), Britain in the .Age
984), p.
Roger Lonsdale
The New
(ed.),
Freedom created a
Allen, Tides (1958), vol.
still
Shall to thy
Blest Isle! with matchless
And manly
99 Robert
beauty crowned,
(ed.),
)liver
p. 146
E. Schofield, The Lunar Society of
(
letters to
oil-lamps);
Benjamin Rumford, 'Of the Management of
Many
Light in Illumination' (1970 [1812]).
Lunar Society luminaries were painted by
(1760), p. 286.
For the secularization of the Protestant
that painter of light, Joseph Wright; see
notion of the chosen nation into a kind of
Benedict Nicolson, Joseph Wright ofDerby
manifest destiny, see Christopher Hill, The
(1968); see also
World Turned Upside
90
(
Down
[1764]),
(1972), p. 248.
100 Quoted
and
the
101 Isaiah
Grand
Tour (1985), p. 174. See also Black's 'Ideology, 1
li
it)
story,
Xenophobia and
the
World of Print
Fightecnth-century England'
Touring
Italy,
Gibbon abhorred
Padua a 'dying
Memoirs of My
92
Corinthians
Black, The British and the Grand Tour (1985),
4:16; John 1:9;
Compare
Rosalie L.
set in
The
Handel's
Foreign View of England in
trans.),
pp. 23f.
one
Cambridge
light did
Platonists
not extinguish
another. For an exclusively Christian view of
Charles Wesley's 'Morning
Hymn'
(1740):
7725-25(1995), p. in.
and
13:12.
Platonists (1971),
light see
p. 180.
(ed.
Never Done (1982), p. 33.
Matthew
Colie, Light and Enlightenment (1957).
insisted that
94 Madame Van Muyden
A
102 FrederickJ. Powicke, The Cambridge
Gibbon,
Life, p. 135.
93 C. de Saussure, A
Davidson,
Messiah.
the
taper':
I
is
9:2;
passage from Isaiah was
(1991).
oppression, and found the once-famous university of
in Caroline A.
Woman's Work
P 5«British
Michael Baxandall, Shadows
and Enlightenment (1995).
Charles Churchill, The Duellist (1984
91 Jeremy Black, The
11.
of Erasmus Darwin (1981),
Letters
Darwin wrote eleven
Wedgwood, mainly about
Goldsmith, 'The Comparative
View of Races and Nations'
The
fair!
Britons never will be slaves.'
(
Note the new use of
For further information, see D. King-Hele
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves,
89
p. 73.
Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night (1988), p.
repair;
hearts to guard the
English Taste (16ig- 1800)
in
ii,
Birmingham (1963), pp. 196, 347; Wolfgang
with freedom found,
happy coast
excessively
'modernized'.
flourishing
commerce, the consequence of which was: The muses,
Lumley Casde,
had been
it
'modernized by sash-windows': B. Sprague
ofAlfred
Oxford Book of Eighteenth -century Verse (1984), p. 192.
visiting
complained
88 James Thomson, The Masque (1740), in
Montagu,
of
1.
Christ,
A
whose glory
fills
the skies,
Christ, the true, the only light
.
.
.
Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I
& George II (1902), p. 67.
Anthologized
95 Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz, A
Book of Eighteenth- century
Picture of England (1791), p. 85.
103 Isaac Newton,
96
(
^arl
Philip Moritz, Journeys of a German in
England (1982 [1783]), P- 3 6
98
In 1752
Dr
City
Opticks, or
A
a
New
335. Treatise
George Berkeley, An Essay
Theory of Vision,
2nd edn
of the
& Colours of (1709);
towards
G. N.
Cantor, 'The History of "Georgian" Optics'
Lyttelton observed in
(1978);
Cornwall that there were very few cottages without sash windows. Six years later
The New Oxford
Verse, p.
Reflections, Refractions, Inflections
Light (1704);
-
97 Joachim Senior, Nights in the Big (1998); Porter, 'Visiting London'.
in Lonsdale,
Mrs
Marjorie
Demands
the
Muse
Hope
Nicolson, Newton
(1946).
104 James Thomson, 'Ode
498
to the
Memory
to (>p.
of Sir
Newton'
Isaac
\rw Oxford Hook
1
ndury
two related
/he
(1727J, in I>>nsdale,
of l-.i^httnith
42 7 to
10 the invisible.
Verse,
pro eption I
dismissed perception of the invisible
p. l(,o.
105 Alexander Pope, 'Epitaph: Intended Sir Isaac
Newton
in
spe< tres,
lor
Westminster Abbey'
(1730), in John Butt fed.), I he
106 Joseph
Poems of
to light,
112 William Paley, Natural Theology
from superstition
p. 81,
to
sound knowledge': Memoirs of Dr Joseph Priestley, Written
work of a diseased
imagination.
Priestley spoke ol the 'change
from darkness
phantoms, supernatural ghosts,
miracles, dreams] as the
Alexander Pope (1965), p. 808.
quoted
in
Searby,
A
University of Cambridge, vol.
iii,
113 See the discussions
Robert A.
in
p. 299.
1820 (1997), p. 28; Leigh Schmidt, Hearing
107 Jeremy Black
(ed.), Eighteenth
Things (2000), ch.
Century
1;
and chapter
3 below.
Europe ijoo-iy8g (1990), p. 186.
Locke viewed human psychology
108 Gilbert
'the
Stuart, The History of the
114 Rogers,
109 Gibbon, Memoirs ofMy
Thomas
The
186;
Wollstonecraft,
ofMen with
Woman
Edmund
A
(1995 [1790
Burke,
A
Our Country
The Burkean
course, reinstated darkness:
Burke,
Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the
Sublime and
the Beautiful (1757).
110 Thomas Paine, 'American 83), in
Crisis' (1776—
The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine
(1945), vol.
i,
(ed.),
(1978), p. 64.
118 George Birkbeck
Hill,
Johnson (1934-50), vol.
iii,
BosweWs
Hill,
vision into four
1.
Sight; the faculty of seeing.
The
'I
& Present', in
appearance; a spectre; a
iii,
p. 3,
sincerely think,' the
'that this
age
is
better
in a
dream.
to a sleeping, a vision
A dream
is
M.
The Hypochondriack (January 1782),
Bailey
(ed.),
BosweWs Column
(1951),
no. 52, p. 267.
phantom. something shown
do
than ancient times': James Boswell, "On Past
act of seeing.
waking man.
Life ofJohnson, vol.
biographer opined,
2.
to a
BosweWs Life of
p. 3; see the
Progress in Eighteenth- century Britain (1990),
vol. iv, p. 217.
happen
The Long
discussion in D. Spadafora, The Idea of
119
dream happens
Rights ofMan (1984
117 Quoted in Theo Barker
and
A dream;
Love of
March of Everyman ij$o-ig6o
(1755), Johnson divided categories -
4.
the
p. 40.
p. 125.
A supernatural
A Discourse on
(1789), pp. 15-16.
Ell In his Dictionary of the English Language
3.
poor.
[1791]), p. 159.
sublime, of
Edmund
is
1.
him
equivocal: the glasses help
116 Thomas Paine, The
1792]), p. 112;
Reflections on the Revolution in
France (1790), p. 207.
Eighteenth Century Encounters, p.
is
115 Richard Price,
Vindication of
Vindication of the Rights
and
device
see but confirm that his vision
Spence, The Meridian Sun of Liberty
Mary
the Rights
Life, p.
terms of
in
Bounds between the enlightened and
dark Parts of Things'.
Establishment of the Reformation of Religion in Scotland (1780), p. 206.
of
fi8o2),
History of the
Ferguson, The American Enlightenment 1750-
on Himself (1904 [1795]),
p. 156.
(1796);
two
of the visible
he \/n kean tradition
A
may supposed
natural, a vision miraculous; hut they are
120 Jeremy Bentham, A Fragment Government (1988 [1776]), p.
121 Clark, English
My passage
confounded.
499
is
Society,
on
3.
1688-1832,
a precis of Clark.
p. 42.
NOTES 3 1
CLEARING AWAY THE RUBBISH and Fall of the Roman Empire (1994
Isaac Watts. Logick (1724), introduction.
2 Basil Willcy. The Eighteenth Century Background (1962), p.
1:
vol.
Willey stressed escape
11
no
less
i,
On
important was escape sought.
was
5.
figures
including Pierre Bayle,
James
Bender, Imagining
it
Not a few Enlightenment
so seductive.
themes of imprisonment and deliverance to the fore: John
below, chapter
'priestcraft', see
Throughout the long eighteenth century, the remained
[1776]),
pp. 398-9.
Catholicism was doubly dangerous since
achieved ('One meets everywhere a sense of relief);
T
f
underwent temporary conversion,
Boswell: Colin
Edward Gibbon and
Haydon,
Anti-
the Penitentiary (1987).
Catholicism in Eighteenth- century England, c.1714—
3 Peter Burke. Hie Renaissance Sense of the Past
80
(i97o).
12 J. E. Norton
4 For Blake's phrase, see G. Keynes
Gibbon (1956), vol.
(ed.),
(1993). (ed.), ii,
The
Letters
of Edward
commented on
p. 245;
The Complete Writings of William Blake (1957),
by Iain McCalman: 'Mad Lord George and
p. 170.
Madame La Motte'
5 See
W.
B.
Carnochan,
Confinement and Flight
(1977); for the
theme
Warner, From
the Beast to the
in folklore, see
Marina
Turbulent, Seditious
and The
Christopher
A
Hill,
and Factious People (1989),
'Be Sober
Intellectual Consequences
and Reasonable': The
Enthusiasm
Revolution (1993).
in the Seventeenth
Centuries (1995); in
Some
of the English Revolution (1980); Michael Heyd,
English Bible and the Seventeenth- century
6 John Toland, quoted
Virtue,
13 For the trauma of the wars of religion, see
Blonde (1994). For
Christian tellings, see Christopher Hill,
Pocock,
(1996);
Commerce, and History, p. 155.
Stephen H.
Critique of
and Early Eighteenth
R. A. Knox, Enthusiasm
(i950)-
Daniel, John Toland: His Methods, Manners, and
14 Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part I and II and
Mind (1984),
Selected Other Writings (1973 [1663]),
p. 6;
Linda Colley,
Britons (1992);
John Lucas, England and Englishness
part, canto
(1990).
In
istopher Hill, Antichrist
8
Almond's Heaven and Hell
!.
p. 7,
11.
M.
16 See Elisabeth Labrousse, Bayle
in
(1983).
17 Well discussed in Jonathan Brody
Rational Protestant rejection of the Greek
Kramnick, Making
metaphysics colouring Christian theology;
18 Bcntham's favourite term: Jeremy
G. A. Pocock,
History (1985), p. 143.
113, 132,
Virtue,
Priestley,
season of Fiction
An
History of
of Christianity (1871 [1721]), pp. 9,
where he was
tarred with the brush
of 'oriental philosophy'. See chapter 5 below.
9
1
Icnry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke,
Essays on
Human
Knowledge, in The Works of
Imd Bolingbroke (1969 vol.
iii,
[reprint of 1841 edn]),
p. 294.
10 Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline
the
English Canon (1999).
Bentham, The Book of Fallacies
Commerce, and
For Plato as
mystagogue, see Joseph the Corruptions
193-5.
Levine, The Battle of the
Enlightenment England (1994) illuminates the
see also J.
First
Books (1992).
(1971).
(
(1936); Joseph
in Seventeenth-century
England P.
The
15 See R. F.Jones, Ancients and Moderns
7 For an analysis of such prejudices, see (
1,
'The Argument',
pronounced
is
in his
A
Fragment on Government
(1988 [1776]), p.
53 - Mary
that 'as early as
A
denounced "the Fiction"
':
1748-179 2
P.
Mack
notes
Fragment on Government he
pestilential breath of
Jeremy Bentham,
An
Odyssey of Ideas,
(!9 6 2), P- 76.
19 Jones, Ancients and Moderns,
Thomson's words make contrasting old
500
'The
(1824);
now over,' he
p. 261.
As
evident, rhetorics
and new,
fiction
and
fact,
to
won
from on tunvc
t.u
i
pp.
///
S(ieme\, id.fj
iii
on
hum
Don't
words what the book
in three
A history!
a history.
yourself -
in a
recommended, should be
It is
of who? what? where? when? It is
'indulge their, children in
a history-book, Sir,
which may possibly recommend
what passes
-
is.
man's own mind.
Sterne. 7 mtram Shandy, vol.
into
Earl of Chesterfield
p. 107.
102 Mary Hays, Memoirs of Emma
1
1
Alexander Pope. Butt
Tin
Dunaad
1
17*28).
1.
9 Richard D.
in
I,
3 W.J. Bate, J.
A
11 A. Beljame,
M.
(1963), no. 115, p.
457
Johnson (1934), vol.
(11
Hill, iii,
p.
and
Idler
L. F.
Powell
December BoswelVs
Pre Revolutionary Prance (1996),
Work of Writing
1778).
Best-Sellers
and The
'What
is
Adrian Johns,
was then repeated
his
Journal (18
March
1754):
Benjamin Collins and
Trade
degree
of theatrical
(1998).
A Foucauldian might
{\^\
(1977); see the
Roger Chartier, The
Order of
p. 29.
Law,
in the Salisbury
C. Y. Ferdinand,
to the
Theory of Religion (1745), p. 25.
14 George Davie, The Democratic
A
(1961), p. 66;
censorship was
introduced by the Licensing Act
Edmund
Considerations on the State of the World, with
Regard
Newspaper
Century (1997), p. 155.
the
Scheme and Conduct, Procedure and Extent ofMan's
I he Nature
'
Redemption (sn, 1743), pp. 155-6;
the Provincial
in the Eighteenth
Pleasures of the
13 William Worthington, An Essay on
(1991).
of the Book (1998), pp. iHjL I
(1927), p. 21.
an Author?'
Books
7
English
the 'author function': Michel Foucault,
of
Business
the impact of the book, see Frnest Gellner,
in
the
1660-1744
modify Pope and write of the appearance of
discussion in
ussion
(1937), p. 68.
Imagination (1997), p. 428; Clifford Siskin, The
Life of
of Enlightenment (1979). For a metahistory of
dis(
ofMan
Common
of Letters and
12 See John Brewer, The
1753).
293 (16 April
Robert Darnton, The Forbidden
of the i,
(1948), p. 309; A. S. Collins, Authorship in the
Days ofJohnson
and Adventurer
5 For censorship on the Continent, see
Sword and Book
Men
Public in the Eighteenth Century,
Bullitt,
4 George Birkbeck
6 See
Perfectibility
10 James Sutherland, Defoe Dictionary of the English
Samuel Johnson: The
Plough,
(1932), vol.
Altick, The English
Reader {1957), p. 49.
Language (l755)j preface.
(eds.),
Letters
PRINT CULTURE
(1965), P- 349-
2 Samuel Johnson,
The
(ed.),
His Son
Sources of the Self p. 174.
Poems ofAlexander Pope
(ed.), 77ie
please'.
05 John Passmore, The
106 Taylor,
p. 330, letter 90. Parents, she
4
John
like
may be moulded
(1970), pp. 171-212.
103 Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1883-4 iii,
to
and
when,
p. 292, letter 168.
Courtney
('996 [1796]), p. 23.
[1740]), vol.
what shape they
104 Charles Strachey
ch. 2,
ii,
habits,
their head, at a time
wax, their tender minds
to the world) of
it
them
give
careful not to
bad
Scottish People,
T. C. Smout,
1560-1830
A
Intellect
History of the
(1969), p. 478;
R. A.
Houston, 'Scottish Education and Literacy,
(1737).
8 James Raven, Naomi Tadmorc and Helen
1600- 1800'
Small
15 According to a parliamentary survey, in
(eds),
Reading
The
in Britain
Practice
and Representation of
1500-Kjoo
and A
18 1 9 there
(1996), pp. 4fT.;
John Feather, 'The Power of Print'
(1997),
were 4,167 'endowed' schools
England, including
grammar
165,433 pupils; 14,282
History of British Publishing (1988);
Marjorie Plant, The English Book Trade (1965).
(1989).
from 'dame schools'
506
in
schools, with
unendowed
schools,
to Dissenting academies,
tO
with 178,84(1 pupils; and the pool |>upils. .1
,
Sunday
",,i*>^'
hools with
Sec John Liwson and Harold
Social lliston of Education in
pp. 22t>
(1994), p.
;
1*22;
Johnson put Jenyns
improperly bestowed, but lest
I
1824', in J.
appearance of salutary
I
the
should be
'
(1757), in B.
Bronson
17
edn
Selected Prose
254-5.
Common Reader
Roy McKeen
36fF.;
Two
Wiles,
in Provincial
Centuries Ago' (1976), pp. 85-
"5Altick, The English
1800-igoo, p.
57.
Common Reader
Apprenticed to a cobbler,
(1993). Professor
(eds.),
On
to
his first
London,
London
but bought instead a copy of Edward
Forte;
Money is
Young's Aight Thoughts (1742-5). Becoming a
engaged on a biography of Cannon. 19 G. D. H. and Margaret Cole
as a cobbler.
Christmas he went to get Christmas dinner -
in the
Market-Place, or "Caesar Adsum Jam
buy books. In 1774 he moved
working
Pleasures of the Imagination,
set
about educating himself, going without food to
'
First
Lackington became a Methodist and ofMy Life (1966
Money, 'Teaching
Pompey Aderat"
and Popular Culture
of the Life ofJames Lackington, 7th
(1794), pp.
25 See
(ed.),
[1796]), p. 36.
p. 187; John
The Prose
24 Lackington, Memoirs of the First Forty-five
England
(1971), p. 224.
Edward Gibbon, Memoirs
18 Brewer, The
(eds.),
Bread, Knowledge and Freedom (1982;.
1800- igoo, pp.
Free Inquiry into the Nature and
Samuel Johnson, Rasselas, Poems and
3rd edn
and
Literacy
257; see Altick, The English
in seeing others
Samuel Johnson, 'A Review of Soame
"A
A. Tibbie
'The Relish for Reading
Origin of Evil"
but
silent
Tears of the Life ofJames Lackington, pp. 232,
depressed.
Jenyns'
W. and
Forty-five Tears
indulging the lust of dominion, and that
malevolence which delights
'My
23 James Lackington, Memoirs of the
persuade myself that
restraints,
Popular
>>)
more of the
desiring
i,
Clare (1951), p. 14.
(1989),
always fear to
maxims of policy; and under
inn formation
1 991), pp. 31, 90:
22 David Vincent,
be
should be yielding to the I
I
vol.
21 John Clare, 'The Autobiography, 1793
ofJohn
may sometimes shall
I
suggestions of pride, while
following the
49-50.
in his place:
privileges of educ ation
withhold them,
Free Inquiry into
(1757), pp.
(
\^q>,
Anderson. 7 he
ia
exciting conversation with books.
I he Enlightenment's Fable
Soamejenyns,
llo
iygo-1860
Culture
.
mind was ever
the Nature and Origin of Evil
am
Printed Image an//
Silver,
England 197
9; rrpr.
\'
[
7'*-l
1
critics that
I
Cobbett
(Jobbett,
qualified:
look to are the public
Lindsay, William Blake: His Life and Work
88 For
(1978), p. 3.
is
83 Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination,
People more absolutely necessary than a
84 "Madam, as It
town
a circulating library in a
an evergreen
tree of diabolical
March
knowledge!
blossoms through the year! - and depend
upon
it,
Mrs Malaprop,
that they
fond of handling the leaves, fruit at last':
libraries see
from
the
scene
Industrial
Towns'
(1996), p. 175
M.
and adjusting
phenomena
[
A
l
75°-5 2 ]), vol
no. 10, p. 54.
i,
p. xxviii.
Steele, The Spectator, vol.
ofMen, Manners,
Shaftesbury,
expunged from the published
Opinions, Times (1999 [1711]);
text: as society
naturally
becomes,
employment, the
like
sole
.
Characteristic/is
Klein, Shaftesbury and
.
every other
(1994);
occupation of a
Lawrence
the Culture
1671-1713 (1984).
particular class of citizens': Ad. mi Smith,
94
'Early Draft of Part of Tht Wealth ofNations'
Manners, Opinions, Times, vol.
(1762), in lectures on Jurisprudence (1982),
95 David Hume, 'Of Essay Writing'
Outram, The
in
Enlightenment, p. 14; see also
Adam Smith, An
Inquiry into the Nature
and Causes ofthe
Nations (uyjb [1776]), bk
86 Jonathan
Swift,
'On
I,
ch.
1,
\ \
ealth
11.
Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men. ii,
p. 207. (1741), in
Selected Essays (1993), p. 2.
96 David Hume,.-! 2nd edn (1978
of
Treatise
f
oj
Human Natun
40]), p. 269;
[17311
t,
Ernest
Campbell Mossner, The Uje of David Hume
para. 9.
Poetry' (1733),
E.
of Politeness
Robert Voitle, The Third Earl of
Shaftesbury:
pp. 570-74. See discussion
i,
93 Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of
344-5, from the draft for
the Wealth ofNations, written in 1769 but
.
its
Joseph Addison's Sociable Animal (1971).
Smith as Student and
progressed, 'philosophy, or speculation
to
90 Donoghue, The Fame Machine. 91 Edward A. Bloom and Lilian D. Bloom, 92 Addison and
Professor (1937), pp.
itself is
corrective, revising
89 Samuel Johnson, The Rambler (1969
85 W. R.
Adam
and
particular
Governess in the Age ofJane Austen (1988), p. 67.
Scott,
appeal to standards of
implacable model of discourse'.
'library
(ed.),
its
typically conservative
(1985); James
Martin
11
Function of
Eagleton, the
absolutism, the critical gesture
Great houses might even contain
servants' libraries: Joanna
The Tatler
(ed.),
universal reason signifies a resistance to
to Proscription'
- Raven proclaims a
Bond
Terry Eagleton, The
fact that 'while
33-7.
1773-1784 (i960);
Raven, 'From Promotion
revolution'.
long for the
ii, 11.
1710).
F.
no. 144, p. 318 (Saturday,
ii,
Criticism (1984), pp. 31, 4: for
'The Enlightened Reader and
Flavell,
New
I,
Donald
irony of Enlightenment criticism lay in the
are so
Paul Kaufman, Borrowings
the Bristol Library,
Kay
will
who
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The
Rivals (1961 [1775]), act
On
hardly a Person in the whole Mass of the
(1987), vol.
is
."
Nation of Liberty, there
Steele: 'In a
Censor':
p. .78.
j
85.
The Opinions of William
p. 42. Characteristically
in
asa
e
Ialeofa 7 uh
I
of
'a sort
and
Paul Fussell, Ihe Rhetorical World
p. 1V2; see also
Pat Rogers, The Augustan Vision (1974),
up with
Swift,
p. T>7-
p. 8; John
at
presented as
Critic/? is
k, set
rade,
Jonathan
Reader, p. 54; Olivia Smith,
ofhinguage tJOJ
go
;
Smolletl and
Alti< k,
| P- 19-
7 Quoted in
extremely selective, chiefly
essentially omits the
John Beresford
6 John Walsh, Colin Haydon and Stephen
dealing with the question of religious
discussions taking place
1);
Taylor
Ejghteenth Century Pulpit (1969).
This chapter
(1966
Quakers were those who abandoned
171
Remval and Religion
Life
huntsmen' was a
coinage of the poet George Crabbe. 'Gay'
and Ireland (1996); Jane Garnett and Colin (eds.),
'
'
3 For historiography, see Sheridan Gilley, For background, see Gerald R. Cragg, From
W.
Young, "The Soul-sleeping System" (1994);
Tfie Periodical Essayists
and
Enlightenment England (1994); B.
in
4 Edward Gibbon, Memoirs ofMy
ihristianity
of the
304-7, in
11.
Eighteenth Century (1971), p. 144.
(
Pit:
and unhononr"d
125 Gibbon, Memoirs ofMy
Sprat, The History of the Royal Society
Marr,
Hiram Caton, The
ftogress (1988), p. 207;
heated
Politics
Religious Liberalism in Eighteenth -century
on particular
(1954), p. 2.
of
Roland N. Stromberg.
For High Church
men
England
see
doctrines, for instance questions of the soul
George Every,
and of Heaven and Hell and the
afterlife; sec,
77/5(1956).
Many
'The
'atheists' as
mete bogeymen, but David
however, the account
of the
would
Butt, The Poems ofAlexander Pope, p. 646.
(1983);
London (1667), p. 374.
S.
Mam
to mortify a Wit,
Second Book of Horace'
Benedict
oj
George
pi.
RA TIONALIZING RELIGION
5 Thomas
remains
still
Alexander Pope, 'The
Anne
Lorraine Daston, 'The Ideal and Reality of
1
1
crowd;
Who
Enlightenment Thought (1977), p. 3; see the English
p.
.
sense-less, worth-less,
(1779-80).
Thomas
Sc hlereth, The Cosmopolitan Ideal in
Kramnick, Making
\~
The many-headed Monster
A
Goldsmith's:
the
arraign the public:
P- 332-
123 The phrase
in
i
124 Anthony Puquin [pteud.], Memoirs
Porter,
Manners and
Johnson, vol.
122 Henry Mackenzie, The
u
A
(1967), p. 326; Peter
History of the University of Cambridge
v °l-
iii,
P- 281,
who
brings out Clarke's
51 Quoted in David Brown, 'Butler and
Deism'
limits.
(1992), p. 9.
52 Samuel Clarke, The
Collins
continued: 'And even these he justly observes, are of less
pp. 10^0-4; J. P. Ferguson,
friendship with the Arian William Whiston.
by
readily exploited
(
be
positions, as will
drove their logic to the
this
i,
Gay, The Enlightenment
and
Locke: Resistance, Religion
Responsibility, p. 454.
44 Quoted
vof
Eighteenth Century Heretic (1976), pp. 23f.; Peter
Trinity (1712); John
than any of
and Religion (1976), ch.
own Happiness of human
Scripture-doctrine
Redwood,
Compare M.
7.
of the
Reason, Ridicule
Greig,
those parts of religion which in their
'The Reasonableness of Christianity?'
nature tend to the
Isaac Watts too sweated over the Trinity for
(1993).
Society': Discourse of Freethinking (sn, 1713),
twenty years, until he had to admit that he
p. 136.
had only 'learned more of my own
45
Most
John Tillotson, The Works of the
Reverend I)r John Tillotson (1820), vol. Tillotson, The
46
John
Tillotson, vol.
Norman
i,
i,
p.
468. For analysis, see
Sykes, Church and State
England
in
The Eighteenth Century Pulpit, pp. 10,
PP- 152
47
Our
i.
sermon
6,
Life of Jesus Christ
Tom
6, p. 71.
i,
sermon
Paine later styled Jesus
and an amiable man', a
'a
Enquiries concerning
and concerning
I 'rider standing
England, idfm
( >rrat
Religion, p. 28.
1712).
55 Quoted in Nigel Smith, 'The Charge of Atheism and the Language of Radical Speculation, 1640-1660' (1992), p.
Deist
A
Israel
of
W. M. the
Debate on Miracles
The
Scribner
131.
( 1
(eds.),
From
W. K.Jordan,
Persecution
1
'Religious Toleration' (1974);
)
to
England
(1965 [1932-40]); Elisabeth Labrousse,
98
I.
The
Development of Religious Toleration
in
Henry Kamen,
The Rise of Toleration (1967); John Christian
Layman's
Anthony
and N. Tyacke
O.
in the
P. Grell, J.
M.
Laursen and CaryJ. Nederman
Collins
the Persecuting Society (1998);
and Roy Porter
(eds.),
and O.
Beyond
P. Grell
(eds.), Toleration in the
Enlightenment (2000).
Treethinking, p. 171.
Attributes
and Intolerance
Church of
man 'whom all English own as their head': Discourse of
50 Samuel Clarke, A
(eds.), Tolerance
Toleration (1991);
the
freethinkers
and
Steele, The Spectator, vol. iv,
European Reformation (1996);
1700 (1993), p. 60; R.
49 Quinlan, Samuel Johnson: him
Physico-Theology (1713),
no. 465, pp. 141 -5 (Saturday, 23 August
David
in
the Principles
Spellman, The Latitudmarians and
ailed
art a threefold
Religious Liberalism in
p. 467.
Human
Morals (1966 [1751]), pp. iogf;
(
Stromberg,
56 For a conspectus, see O. P. Grell and B.
48 David Hume, 'Of Miracles',
Burnt, The
God
ought to know the
Eighteenth- century England, p. 36.
'virtuous
reformer'.
Hume.
such a
in
worship, whether he be one pure
53 William Derham,
Consider'd as
Tillotson, vol.
I
finally driven to chide
him
and simple or whether thou deity':
Example', Tillotson, The Works of the
Most Reverend Drjohn
virtuous
I
54 Addison and
73-
The
'
Tillotson, vol.
Most
and he was
for leaving
quandary: 'Surely
See
15.
Maker
whom
in
Downey,
see also
also John Tillotson, The Works of the
nmd l)r John
p. 475.
Works of the Most Reverend Dr
the Eighteenth Century (1934);
R>,
ignorance', his
Demonstration of the Being
of God (1705), quoted
in
Stephen,
57 See John Dunn, 'The Claim of Conscience' (1991);
516
to
Freedom
Henry Kamen, The
,
ft
Rtu
I
l
LockuA
'fnim
yoHon,
John 58
nlemtmn I967), pp. lUi)[
especially p.
1
He
11:
then
pp.
1,
1
Boswell
,
thought, was not jocular
when he heard
that
concluded he was a
known some
a
that the
when he
man was
rascal,
Sec thr Reform
fa
154
religious,
ussion in Strvvart, Opinion and
dis
.(
7V0 29
(
)n the state of nature, see
Meek.
Social Science
and
Ronald
the Ignoble
TES
L.
Philosophical Dialogue in the British Enlightenment
Savage (1975);
(1996), p. 35-
Robert \ Voider. 'Anthropology and
38 Hutcheson undertook
Conjectural History in the Enlightenment'
Principles of the late Earl of Shaftesbury'
(1995)-
to
30
On
Locke's anthropology, see G. A.J.
Mind'
the errors of 'the
in
Hume's
39
(1993).
Political Philosophy (1992), p. 76.
Francis Hutcheson,
An
Inquiry into the
31 See William Knight, Lord Monboddo and
Original of Our Ideas concerning Beauty, Order,
Some of His Contemporaries (1900); discussion of
Harmony, Design (1973
an
'original' state
amounted
Darling, 'The
to a recasting of
Hutcheson'
original sin.
32 Adam Ferguson, An
CM
Society
Essay on
(1995 [1767]), p.
33 Francis Hutcheson, A
the History
Mind
Short Introduction
(1747), p. 2;
Moral Philosophy
(1755), vol.
cf. i,
his
A
...
is
[1725]), p. 2; John
Moral Teaching of Francis
(1989); J.
Arcadian Vision'
of
14.
Moral Philosophy
and
Author of the Fable
of the Bees': John B. Stewart, Opinion and Reform
Rogers, 'Locke, Anthropology and Models of the
show
to explain 'the
Mordaunt Crook, 'The
(1988), pp.
48-9. 'The
and has not Power
passive,
directly to prevent the perception of Ideas':
to
Hutcheson, An
System of
pp. 1-2;
Inquiry into the Original of Our
Ideas concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design,
Vincent Hope,
Virtue by Consensus (1989);
p. 2.
Gladys Bryson,
Man
40 David Hume, 'Of the Standard of Taste'
The
and
Society (1968), p. 19.
son of an Ulster Dissenting minister,