The other key word was movement. movement. Robert Adam had become fed up with the rigidly inflexible uniform facades of doctrinaire Palladianism and neocla.s.sicism. Movement in architecture meant "the rise and fall, the advance and recess, with other diversity of form, in the different parts of the building," as it stood before the viewer. To achieve it, Adam was ready to break another neocla.s.sical taboo by using decoration. He saw that the discreet use of decorative elements-statues, vases, trophies, rams" heads, twisting acanthus, grotesque faces and masks- could "add greatly to the picturesque of the composition." Adam was even willing to accept the occasional use of trefoil and quatrefoil leaf designs from the medieval Gothic, something that would make the average British Palladian faint dead away. Robert Adam had become fed up with the rigidly inflexible uniform facades of doctrinaire Palladianism and neocla.s.sicism. Movement in architecture meant "the rise and fall, the advance and recess, with other diversity of form, in the different parts of the building," as it stood before the viewer. To achieve it, Adam was ready to break another neocla.s.sical taboo by using decoration. He saw that the discreet use of decorative elements-statues, vases, trophies, rams" heads, twisting acanthus, grotesque faces and masks- could "add greatly to the picturesque of the composition." Adam was even willing to accept the occasional use of trefoil and quatrefoil leaf designs from the medieval Gothic, something that would make the average British Palladian faint dead away.
His brother James was even more emphatic on this. James was in many ways the real theorist of the pair, and in his diary from his Italian travels he jotted down the key ideas that he and Robert would publish, almost word for word, ten years later in their Works in Architecture. Works in Architecture. James Adam advocated the use of decorations because they "give such amazing magnificence and render an edifice so wonderfully interesting to every spectator. . . . This, then, is the great secret of beauty in architecture and what every artist who would please must study with the greatest attention." James Adam advocated the use of decorations because they "give such amazing magnificence and render an edifice so wonderfully interesting to every spectator. . . . This, then, is the great secret of beauty in architecture and what every artist who would please must study with the greatest attention."
James also advanced another notion, which has continued to influence architects down to our own day: form must follow function. " I am more persuaded than ever that architecture is capable of receiving any sort of character one pleases to give it, so that n.o.body would be at a loss to say to what purpose such a building was put."
This meant various things, but two stand out. First, obviously, was that a church or a temple should look like a church or a temple, a house like a house, and not vice versa. But the Adam brothers would also a.s.sert that an architectural style must be flexible enough to compose and decorate any type of building. Therefore any building could be made to be beautiful, not only a town house or a commercial building, but even a warehouse-or a factory.
If European architecture had been "servilely groaning" under the burden of a misleading neo-Palladian dogma "for three centuries past," then the time had come to set it free again. The place to do that was London. Robert Adam returned to Edinburgh in 1757, but stayed only long enough to gather up and organize his drawings and materials. He then set off for London to establish himself and begin scouting up the necessary connections that would enable him to launch his own architecture business.
Fortune, and friendship, worked to his advantage. He managed to arrange meetings with two of the most influential Scots living in London. One was Chief Justice Lord Mansfield, who promised to help Robert with "all his interest." Eventually, Robert would work on his country estate at Kenwood. The other Scot, even more important, was John Stuart, Lord Bute.
Bute was the nephew of the Duke of Argyll, a Scottish peer in his own right, and virtual monarch of the Isle of Bute. But he owed his real political prestige to the fact that he had been tutor to the new king, George III. The king made him his chief political adviser, and then, in 1761, First Lord of the Treasury. Bute was probably the worst prime minister of the century-given his compet.i.tion, no mean accomplishment. But he had sense enough to try to surround himself in a hostile England with talented and ambitious Scots, and his private secretary happened to be Adam"s old friend John Home. Home introduced the two.
The first meeting was not a success. Bute"s natural temper, according to one observer, was "dry, unconciliatory, and sullen." Afterwards, Robert stepped outside and "fell acursing and swearing. What! Had he been presented to all the princes of Italy and France and most graciously received, to come and be treated with such distance and pride by the youngest earl but one in all Scotland!" The second and subsequent meetings went better, though, and with Bute"s help, Robert Adam began to secure his first significant commissions. Whatever else history may say about Bute, he does deserve thanks for recognizing the talent and genius of Robert Adam, so much so that in November 1761 Bute secured for him the t.i.tle of Architect of the King"s Works-a t.i.tle Robert shared with William Chambers, who also happened to be a Scot.
Even with Bute"s help, it took nearly three years before Adam"s architectural business began to bring him substantial financial reward. Many of the buildings he built or decorated in the next ten years are familiar names to students of architecture and art history: Harewood, Compton Verney, Croome, Luton Hoo, Kedleston, Lansdowne House, and Syon House. Robert learned to supervise everything connected with his projects, not just the architecture and the construction inside and out, but what we today would call the interior decorating, including the furniture, rugs, doors, chimney pieces, and display porcelain. Everything had to reflect the neocla.s.sical vernacular he and James (who joined his brother in London after his Italian tour in 1763) were bent on creating, a language of design that would create a new visual lifestyle down to the last detail, even the window latches and candle snuffers.
Where did this Adam style come from? Part of it was inspired by the archaeological discoveries in southern Italy at Pompeii and Herculaneum, which showed Europeans for the first time what ancient domestic interiors really looked like. Part of it, too, came from a source of ancient building ideas that, it is astonishing to realize, had been almost unknown to previous architects: Athens in Greece. Neither Adam brother had been there but another Scottish artist, James Stuart, had. He and Nicholas Revett had lived in Athens from 1751 to 1755, and had brought back an inventory of drawings and etchings that they published in their multivolume Antiquities of Athens. Antiquities of Athens. It became as influential as Campbell"s It became as influential as Campbell"s Vitruvius Britannicus Vitruvius Britannicus in changing the visual taste of a generation. But its most immediate effect was to reinforce the insights of Robert Adam that the key to all ancient design was the projection not of weight and power, but of elegance and sophistication. Refinement, one might even say. So here were the elements for constructing a setting for the social morality of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, not to mention the new urban Scotland. in changing the visual taste of a generation. But its most immediate effect was to reinforce the insights of Robert Adam that the key to all ancient design was the projection not of weight and power, but of elegance and sophistication. Refinement, one might even say. So here were the elements for constructing a setting for the social morality of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, not to mention the new urban Scotland.
This fit nicely with the other great, but more unexpected, source of inspiration for the Adam style: the writings of Lord Kames. Kames"s theory of art, summarized in his Elements of Criticism, Elements of Criticism, was that beauty truly is (as the cliche has it) in the eye of the beholder. Human beings have an innate sense of beauty, which objects-paintings, houses, landscapes, a bar of music or a couplet of poetry-trigger in our consciousness. The job of the artist, Kames suggested, was to create and arrange those elements that would generate that response. was that beauty truly is (as the cliche has it) in the eye of the beholder. Human beings have an innate sense of beauty, which objects-paintings, houses, landscapes, a bar of music or a couplet of poetry-trigger in our consciousness. The job of the artist, Kames suggested, was to create and arrange those elements that would generate that response.18 This notion of beauty as a universal human response to certain objects had a huge impact on both brothers, and particularly James. But unlike Kames, they did not believe that there was a single objective formula for achieving it. Instead, the artist had to be willing to be flexible and adaptable, even to the point of breaking all the rules, in order to bring out what was, after all, a subjective response from his audience or patron. Robert Adam confessed in a letter to Kames that this approach "may do harm in the hands of rash innovators or mere retailers in the art, who have neither eyes nor judgement." But by knowing his material thoroughly, by supervising every nuance and detail, as Robert Adam did, and, of course, by drawing on his own sense of the "picturesque," the skilled artist or architect could bring it off.
Yet the ideas of Kames and the Scottish Enlightenment entered into the Adam brothers" program in a more subtle way. The point of turning to the ancient Romans, Greeks, Etruscans, and even Egyptians was not merely to copy their designs, but to translate their sense of refinement and beauty in a new, modern idiom. The new design style would provide a visual environment to remind moderns of the virtues of their ancient predecessors, but would also be suited to contemporary living. Progress was possible, in the arts just as in society. By drawing on the best of the past, by combining and recombining it with elements already at hand, the Adam brothers believed they could turn domestic architecture into a civilizing instrument. It could offer material comfort together with moral uplift: it would pa.s.s on to modern Britons the spiritual power of ancient Greece and Rome, while still providing the viewer with "great variety and amus.e.m.e.nt."
To our eyes, jaded by nearly a hundred years of modernist pseudo-Bauhaus starkness and streamlining, the result may seem frilly and fussy. Robert Adam"s Drawing Room from Lansdowne House (now housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art) and his "Etruscan Room" at Osterley Park, with their gilded stucco, blue and gold trophy panels, and liberal uses of pastel reds and greens, remind us painfully of another eighteenth-century domestic style, French rococo-a style the Adam brothers actively detested. We miss what contemporaries, who had grown tired of the cold, empty, and impersonal interiors the Adam style replaced, all recognized in the brothers" work: the promise of becoming "modern ancients," as it were, combining Stoic moral seriousness with a sense of individual freedom and comfort. The Adam brothers themselves were convinced they had revived an ancient standard of artistic perfection for a modern audience. "We flatter ourselves we have been able to seize, with some degree of success, the beautiful spirit of antiquity, and to transfuse it, with novelty and variety, through all our numerous works." Whether they had carried this off or not, "we shall leave to the impartial public."
Insofar as that impartial public consisted of wealthy patrons in both England and Scotland, the answer was resoundingly positive. In 1764 their bank account at Drummonds stood at 6,620 pounds. Seven years later, in 1771, it had grown to over 40,000 pounds. Robert Adam had become a man of substance. He owned a splendid house off St. James"s Park, where he entertained friends such as the famous actor David Garrick and visitors such as David Hume and James Boswell, and played golf in the park. He also sat as member of parliament for Kinross-shire. He employed the best craftsmen and artists he could find for his projects: Thomas Chippendale for furniture, Joseph Rose for plasterwork, Josiah Wedgewood for porcelain, Matthew Boulton for ironwork, and painters such as Angelica Kaufmann and her husband, Antonio Zucchi, for frescoes and painted friezes. According to a letter Hume wrote to Adam Smith, the Adam brothers employed more than three thousand craftsmen in their English workshops alone, while still maintaining an equally active business in Edinburgh.
Yet they almost destroyed it all with their one great failure, Adelphi Terrace. It was to be their crowning glory (the name Adelphi came from the Greek for "brothers") and the Adam version of the New Town: a magnificent residential apartment complex or "terrace" rising up from the mudflats along the Thames, at Durham Yard, north of Westminster. The plan combined elegant apartments above, with startling river views, and warehouses and commercial wharves underneath: as complete a fusion of politeness and commerce as one could expect.
Constructing it brought an epic battle with the London City Council that ultimately required an Act of Parliament to resolve. The Adam brothers managed to tie up most of their personal fortune in Adelphi Terrace. Finally, with great fanfare, it opened in 1771. Robert Adam himself took apartment number 4; David Garrick and his wife settled into number 6. Josiah Wedgewood agreed to open a pottery showroom in the galleries below. The British government also contracted to use the lower floors and wharf s.p.a.ce, which was supposed to defray costs. But in the end the government reneged. Robert and James Adam lost almost everything; only the ma.s.sive scale of their architecture business, with important commissions pouring in by the week, saved them from bankruptcy. David Hume, who had advised them against it, confessed "my wonder is how they could have gone on so long." It was in fact a pure ego play, akin to the real-estate-development mogul"s ego, with which we are today so familiar. As with Robert Foulis, the dream failed-but the terrace remained (until it was demolished in the 1930s), and the subterranean complex of galleries became the foundations, literally, for another great urban project: the London Embankment.
What Robert Adam had attempted at Adelphi Terrace-applying the Adam style to middle-cla.s.s urban living-he had a second chance to do with Charlotte Square in Edinburgh"s New Town. It marked his triumphant return to his native Scotland, after having conquered the wealthy and powerful in England. It was the last remaining piece of James Craig"s original plan-the city did not even own the land when Craig was drawing his final sketches-and the city fathers had decided that the natural candidate for completing it was Robert Adam. Work began in 1792, just as his health was failing, but Adam labored to give the project the pictorial harmony he believed all domestic architecture deserved.
The result still looks very much as it did when it was finally completed in 1820, almost thirty years after Robert Adam"s death. The three-story terraced houses, with their elegant Corinthian pilasters in the center topped by full-bodied sphinxes at each end, surround an open square on four sides, while streets enter at each corner. The facade of the north side reproduces exactly that of the south side, giving the square the sort of architectural unity the city fathers wanted for this west end of the New Town. Built in the pale yellow-gray sandstone that characterizes so much of the New Town, Charlotte Square still projects a serene, almost glowing effect.
Like so many of Robert Adam"s later designs, exteriors at Charlotte Square stayed simple while the interiors became more ornate. At number 1, which has the best original interior, and number 7, the so-called Georgian House, we can still get a sense of how he adopted his unique stylistic idiom to the environment of the Edinburgh upper middle cla.s.s (Charlotte Square attracted lots of lawyers and doctors). But the real revolution he introduced was in the floor plans, adding a new feature he had experimented with in town houses he had built in London"s Portman Square. This involved installing separate back staircases for servants and domestics, away from the main hall. This not only added to the family"s privacy, along with separate "tradesmen"s entrances," but also marked a major social change. In the new design for middle-cla.s.s living, servants, like children, were to be seen and not heard. The logistics of domestic life were made as un.o.btrusive as possible, much as they are now. The focus of the middle-cla.s.s home, like that of the n.o.ble"s country house, becomes "presentation of self": polite, refined, and highly individual in character.
Robert Adam died in 1792. At the time of his death, he was working on eight public buildings and twenty-five private ones, most of them in Scotland. William Robertson, by then Princ.i.p.al of the University of Edinburgh, said of his cousin, "I have lived long and much with many of the most distinguished men in my own times, but for genius, for worth, and for agreeable manners, I know none whom I should rank above the friend we have lost." Coming from a man who had been the intimate friend of David Hume and Adam Smith, it was the highest possible compliment.
At his funeral, the pallbearers included the Duke of Buccleuch, the Earl of Coventry, the Earl of Lauderdale, Lord Frederick Campbell, and William Pulteney, whose house at Bathwick was one of Robert"s last completed commissions. The t.i.tled and powerful bore his coffin to Westminster Abbey, where he was interred-ironically enough, next to his fellow Scotsman and old rival, Sir William Chambers.
Together they had revolutionized the artistic scene in Britain. Chambers had persuaded George III to create the Royal Academy, and acted as its first treasurer. Thanks to Chambers, Robert Foulis"s dream of a public inst.i.tution devoted exclusively to the training of artists, painters, and sculptors had come to life in the very heart of the British capital. Chambers also trained the man who would become the most important neocla.s.sical architect of the nineteenth century and a great admirer of the Adam style, the Englishman Sir John Soane.
Robert Adam, meanwhile, had carried out the sort of cultural conquest every Scottish Whig dreamed of: he had gone south and made the taste of Englishmen bend to the will and imagination of a Scot. In fact, his impact reached out beyond Britain and across the Atlantic. The Adam brothers" manifesto of their new design idiom, Works in Works in Architecture, Architecture, became a fixture in the library of every American interested in art and taste. As early as 1775, George Washington was borrowing elements for the building of Mount Vernon. Charles Bulfinch studied with Adam in London, and brought the full "Adam style" with him back to America, where it became the foundation for both the Federal style and Greek Revival. Bulfinch"s designs for the United States Capitol and his Ma.s.sachusetts House of Delegates make Robert Adam the spiritual father of American public building. Thomas Jefferson even bought lengths of prefabricated ornamentation in the Adam style from London, for chimney pieces and panels at his private mansion at Monticello. became a fixture in the library of every American interested in art and taste. As early as 1775, George Washington was borrowing elements for the building of Mount Vernon. Charles Bulfinch studied with Adam in London, and brought the full "Adam style" with him back to America, where it became the foundation for both the Federal style and Greek Revival. Bulfinch"s designs for the United States Capitol and his Ma.s.sachusetts House of Delegates make Robert Adam the spiritual father of American public building. Thomas Jefferson even bought lengths of prefabricated ornamentation in the Adam style from London, for chimney pieces and panels at his private mansion at Monticello.
Another Scottish Adam disciple, Charles Cameron, made an even more amazing cultural journey. An exhibit of his architectural drawings attracted the admiration of Catherine the Great, who invited him to come to Russia to work on her various private palaces. Cameron left for St. Petersburg in 1774 and proceeded to shake up the jaded and worn-out Russian architectural establishment. He extensively rebuilt Catherine"s Great Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, and designed the facade and various rooms for her son"s palace in Pavlovsk. Cameron"s Green Dining Room at Tsarskoe Selo (now Pushkino) and Grecian Hall at Pavlovsk are brilliant adaptations of the Adam style, and they made neocla.s.sicism the architectural idiom of imperial Russia.
Through Cameron, Robert Adam"s artistic vision reached out toward the Urals; through Bulfinch and Jefferson, to the foothills of the Appalachians. Adam"s neocla.s.sicism was the first truly international style in the modern West, much in the same way that Scottish-style commercial society was about to become the paradigm for modern capitalism.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
A Select Society: Adam Smith and His Friends
I.
The post coach left Glasgow for Edinburgh at eight o"clock every morning, except Sundays. Loaded with mail and pa.s.sengers, it made the winding trip through the farms and villages of Lanarkshire and West Lothian, with an overnight stop halfway. It was one of only two coach lines in Scotland, and in 1760 the trip took a day and a half. But it allowed a traveler such as Adam Smith to reach Edinburgh by noon, spend the afternoon and evening there with friends and colleagues, and then return to Glasgow by dinner the next day. Nor was Smith the only commuter. The chemist Joseph Black, political scholar John Millar, and other Glasgow intellectuals regularly made the same trip. In fact, for more than forty years the post coach was the linchpin, one could almost say the lifeline, connecting the twin halves of the Scottish Enlightenment, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Scotland offered a third center of civilizing and modernizing activity, namely Aberdeen. It would play its crucial role in the making of the modern world, too, as we will see. But in the years after the Forty-five, Glasgow and Edinburgh were truly the "twin cities" of enlightenment and change. In a crucial way, they complemented each other. Glasgow was more innovative and practical; it knew how things were made and how to get things done. Older att.i.tudes, including a deep-rooted Calvinism, were stronger there, but thanks to its commercial success, it was also more freewheeling. James Watt, engineer and self-taught philosopher, was a natural in Glasgow. He would have seemed a fish out of water in Edinburgh.
Edinburgh was more artistic and literary, more intellectual in the abstract sense. It still is. In the eighteenth century it was home to writers, poets, and painters, rather than engineers and experimental scientists. But we should not overdraw the contrasts. What really made Edinburgh different, and what attracted outsiders as diverse as Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, and the young Robert Burns was its close-knit community of scholars and thinkers, who were willing to take up new ideas while putting old ones to the test of discussion and criticism. Edinburgh was, as contemporaries said, "a hotbed of genius." It sharpened minds, inspired originality, and intensified that sense of purposeful activity that every thinker, writer, or artist needs to be truly productive and creative.
Only London and Paris could compete with Edinburgh as an intellectual center. But unlike those two world capitals, Edinburgh"s cultural life was not dominated by state inst.i.tutions or aristocratic salons and patrons. It depended instead on a circle of tough-minded, self-directed intellectuals and men of letters, or "literati," as they called themselves. By the standards of 1760, it was remarkably democratic. It was a place where all ideas were created equal, where brains rather than social rank took pride of place, and where serious issues could be debated with, in the words of Lord Shaftesbury, "that sort of freedom which is taken amongst Gentlemen and Friends, who know each other well."
This was in part because everybody was the neighbor of everyone else. Pa.s.sing down from the High Street, each turn of any given close offered the house or lodging of another writer or intellectual. Allan Ramsay, Lord Kames, David Hume, William Robertson, William Fergusson, John Home-all lived virtually within shouting distance of one another. Edinburgh was like a giant think tank or artists" colony, except that unlike most modern think tanks, this one was not cut off from everyday life. It was in the thick of it.
Edinburgh"s intellectuals fully entered into the Old Town"s traditions of boisterous and informal society. Given the close and intimate quarters, social barriers went by the board. An English visitor was amazed to discover that the "shrine of festivities" for Edinburgh"s best families was a local oyster house, with huge tables piled high with oysters, over which men and women stood swigging flagons of porter, and then leaping onto the dance floor for a series of high-stepping reels and flings. Edinburgh people, he noted, are "exceedingly fond of jovial company," and it was true of the city"s literati, as well.
Some, like David Hume, grew up a.s.sociating good food and drink with intellectual discussion at Lord Kames"s dinner table. Others simply liked good food and drink, especially drink. The closes and wynds of Edinburgh flowed with alcohol. Drinking, according to one contemporary, "engrossed the leisure hours of all professional men, scarcely excepting even the most stern and dignified." Half the bench of the Court of Session, he reckoned, were well-oiled before they met in the morning: which may have had something to do with the shrewd, raucous, and often hilarious comments by judges such as Kames and Lord Braxfield.
"When St. Giles bells played out half-past eleven in the morning," writes one historian, "each citizen went to get a gill of ale, which was known as his "meridian," although before breakfast he had paid a similar visit." People did business deals, signed legal doc.u.ments and wills, organized their university lectures, or planned a father"s funeral with the help of a gla.s.s or a dram. Many of the city"s most important intellectual movements began with a gathering in a tavern. Discussion of a pressing political or theological issue without bottles on the table and loud gusts of laughter was inconceivable. In vino veritas, In vino veritas, "in wine, the truth," as the ancient Romans said-and the people of Edinburgh, who were great admirers of the Romans, did their best to live up to the maxim. "in wine, the truth," as the ancient Romans said-and the people of Edinburgh, who were great admirers of the Romans, did their best to live up to the maxim.
The drink of choice was not whisky (still considered crude and provincial) or beer, but claret. Plentiful supplies of Bordeaux wine were the legacy of Scotland"s medieval ties to France, "the auld alliance," and every Scottish gentlemen was a connoisseur, with his own preferred vintages and his private cellar. After 1707, as the English taste for port or sherry began to seep northwards, continuing to drink claret became almost a patriotic act. John Home even composed a short verse about it: Clear-eyed and proud the n.o.ble Caledonian stood, His claret old and his mutton good.
"Let him drink port," the Saxon cried, He drank the poison, and the spirit died.
A gentleman or writer would be routinely identified as a "two-" or "three-bottle man," depending on how much claret he consumed at a meal or single sitting.
But, unlike the modern writer, he did not consume his alcohol as part of a solitary purgatory. He did his drinking surrounded by charming and lively company, and usually under the auspices of one of Edinburgh"s numerous social clubs. There was the Tuesday Club, the Poker Club (named after not the card game but the fire poker, for stirring things up), the Oyster Club (of which Adam Smith was a regular member), the Mirror Club, and many others. Most mixed serious intellectual business with imbibing and socializing. The Mirror Club, which met at a tavern in Parliament Square, promoted papers and discussion on the cultural improvement of Scotland"s landowning cla.s.s. The Rankenian Club tackled philosophical topics in its tavern, and kept up a regular correspondence with the philosopher George Berkeley (Berkeley admitted that its members were among the few critics who really understood his theories).
The most important of these clubs was the Select Society. It was founded in 1754 with the help of Allan Ramsay the painter, son of the old bookseller and poet. As its name implied, it saw itself as a gathering place for Edinburgh"s elite-except this was an intellectual, not a social or political, elite. The original thirty-two members included William Robertson, John Home, David Hume, Adam Smith, Kames"s erudite colleague Lord Monboddo, Alexander Carlyle, and Hugh Blair. Later members included Adam Ferguson, who joined in the spring of 1756, and Lord Kames himself. As with Monboddo and Kames, most of its t.i.tled members took their peerages with their service on the judicial bench. The rest owed their prominence to their pens, or to their status in one of the middle-cla.s.s professions.
For ten years it was the central forum of Edinburgh"s republic of letters. A paper or talk presented there received a fairer and more rigorous hearing than it could from any academic or university audience. As one partic.i.p.ant put it, the informal proceedings made "the Literati Literati of Edinburgh Less Captious and Pedantick then they were elsewhere." The astonishing diversity of the views and experience of its members made it particularly valuable. By 1760, writes historian Richard Sher, the Select Society included "virtually every . . . prominent man of letters and taste in the Edinburgh vicinity, as well as a host of physicians, architects, military officers, merchants, magistrates, and above all lawyers." of Edinburgh Less Captious and Pedantick then they were elsewhere." The astonishing diversity of the views and experience of its members made it particularly valuable. By 1760, writes historian Richard Sher, the Select Society included "virtually every . . . prominent man of letters and taste in the Edinburgh vicinity, as well as a host of physicians, architects, military officers, merchants, magistrates, and above all lawyers."
Lawyers, yes, but also Presbyterian ministers. Membership in the Select Society overlapped with all the other important intellectual a.s.sociations in Edinburgh, including the Poker Club, founded in 1762, and the Edinburgh Society for Encouraging Arts, Sciences, Manufactures, and Agriculture in Scotland, which became the Select Society"s successor when the original club dissolved in 1763. It also provided the editorial board for the very first Edinburgh Review, Edinburgh Review, which included the distinguished professor of moral philosophy from Glasgow, Adam Smith. And at the core of each we find the same list of names, all of them prominent clergymen: William Robertson, John Home, Hugh Blair, Alexander Carlyle, John Jardine, and, slightly later, Adam Ferguson. We met most of them before, as Edinburgh volunteers in the Forty-five, and exponents of the Whig cause. Now, twenty years later, they dominated the discussion of ideas and issues. They were in fact the great movers and shakers of the city"s cultural life. which included the distinguished professor of moral philosophy from Glasgow, Adam Smith. And at the core of each we find the same list of names, all of them prominent clergymen: William Robertson, John Home, Hugh Blair, Alexander Carlyle, John Jardine, and, slightly later, Adam Ferguson. We met most of them before, as Edinburgh volunteers in the Forty-five, and exponents of the Whig cause. Now, twenty years later, they dominated the discussion of ideas and issues. They were in fact the great movers and shakers of the city"s cultural life.
This, too, made the Scottish Enlightenment unique. At its core was a group of erudite and believing clergymen (unlike the various abbes abbes of the French Enlightenment, who were by and large skeptics, and clerics only as a matter of convenience and income). They resolutely believed that a free and open sophisticated culture was compatible with, even predicated on, a solid moral and religious foundation. of the French Enlightenment, who were by and large skeptics, and clerics only as a matter of convenience and income). They resolutely believed that a free and open sophisticated culture was compatible with, even predicated on, a solid moral and religious foundation.
Robertson and the rest saw the doctrines of Christianity as the very heart of what it meant to be modern. Robertson said, "Christianity not only sanctifies our souls, but refines our manners." As Hugh Blair put it, religion "civilizes mankind." Refinement and civility now meant much more than just polite manners and fine taste in clothes and music. They referred to a historical process in which the entire cultural frame of society-the political and the moral, as well as the literary and artistic-comes to reflect the same stimulating and liberating power of social interaction. Through the complex connections of commercial society "the mind acquires new vigour [and] enlarges its powers and faculties" and "industry, knowledge, and and humanity humanity are linked together by an indissoluble chain." It makes men free, and enlarges their power to do good. Virtue and enlightenment move together step by step. are linked together by an indissoluble chain." It makes men free, and enlarges their power to do good. Virtue and enlightenment move together step by step.
To the enlightened Edinburgh clerics, Christianity both epitomized this cultural process and described its final goal. The moral teachings of Christianity were in effect a shortcut to refinement, but only if the Church itself reflected that refinement. Beginning in 1751, Robertson, Blair, Home, and their friends took on the task of bringing the Kirk into the modern world, even in the teeth of bitter opposition from Presbyterian hard-liners.
The battle raged back and forth in the General a.s.sembly and in a series of public controversies. The old conservatives, the so-called Evangelicals, had the advantage of numbers and the backing of rural congregations, which were by and large satisfied with the old fire-and-brimstone style. The Robertson group had the advantage of organization and unity of purpose, plus the support of educated laymen in places such as the Select Society, the landed n.o.bility, and the press-the voice of "enlightened public opinion." They called themselves the Moderate Party, to set them apart from both the religious extremism of a Kirk that still officially approved the execution of Thomas Aikenhead, and the religious skepticism of men such as the English deists-or their friend David Hume. Their hero was Francis Hutcheson, and they offered a compa.s.sionate, enlightened Presbyterianism that they believed would be in step with modern commercial society.
The Moderates boasted champions such as Robertson, by then the most famous historian in Britain, and John Home, author of the enormously successful historical drama Douglas. Douglas. The best the Evangelicals could offer was a minister from East Lothian named John Witherspoon, who published a devastating anti-Moderate satire called The best the Evangelicals could offer was a minister from East Lothian named John Witherspoon, who published a devastating anti-Moderate satire called Ecclesiastical Ecclesiastical Characteristics, Characteristics,19 which was so well written and funny that even the Moderates admired it and bought copies. In one pa.s.sage, Witherspoon offered this mock advice to the aspiring enlightened clergyman on how to write his Sunday sermon: which was so well written and funny that even the Moderates admired it and bought copies. In one pa.s.sage, Witherspoon offered this mock advice to the aspiring enlightened clergyman on how to write his Sunday sermon: 1. All his subjects must be confined to social duties- as opposed to religious doctrines.
2. There must be no reference to an afterlife.
3. His authorities must be drawn from pagan writers, and none, or as few as possible, from Holy Scripture.
4. He must be very unacceptable to the common people.
Very telling, especially the last point, which reminded people how Robertson and his friends from groups such as the Select Society represented a new kind of cultural elitism. Yet the very fact that the Moderates" most formidable opponent had to resort to a secular literary genre, the satire, to score his points showed who was really winning, and who was losing, the overall battle.
In 1756 the Moderates managed to prevent an official censure of David Hume by the General a.s.sembly. In December of that year the pillar of the old orthodoxy, Reverend George Anderson, died. Hugh Blair was already minister at St. Giles, Edinburgh"s biggest church. Five years later William Robertson was named Princ.i.p.al of the University of Edinburgh, and Blair became its Professor of Rhetoric. Reading the handwriting on the wall, Witherspoon accepted an offer from the American colonies he had declined before: to become president of the College of New Jersey in Princeton. In that guise he will reappear in the next chapter, playing a very different role from that of Moderate-basher and defender of the old-time religion. But in 1768, his departure for America marked the final triumph of the Moderates and their vision of an enlightened Church of Scotland.
We have mentioned that one of the Moderates" heroes was Francis Hutcheson. Another, at least by 1759, was Hutcheson"s former pupil Adam Smith. His early lectures given in Edinburgh at the behest of Lord Kames heavily influenced their notion of poetry and literature, or belles belles lettres, lettres, as a cultural bellwether, and of clear, elegant English as the best vehicle for modern literary communication (the model Smith himself had proposed was Jonathan Swift). They were also impressed by his as a cultural bellwether, and of clear, elegant English as the best vehicle for modern literary communication (the model Smith himself had proposed was Jonathan Swift). They were also impressed by his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Theory of Moral Sentiments, which reworked Hutcheson"s theory of an innate moral sense. William Robertson used Smith"s lectures on natural law and the four-stage theory of civil society for his own history of Europe-so much so that Smith privately accused him of plagiarism! which reworked Hutcheson"s theory of an innate moral sense. William Robertson used Smith"s lectures on natural law and the four-stage theory of civil society for his own history of Europe-so much so that Smith privately accused him of plagiarism!
All this shows that long before he published his Inquiry into the Nature Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith was a prominent and influential figure in Edinburgh circles. He attended the meetings of the Select Society and the Poker Club, and went to the dinner parties of even nonintellectual citizens. As a guest he could be trying. He rarely spoke, but when he did, it was usually at great length. Alexander Carlyle remembered Adam Smith as "the most absent man in Company that I ever saw, Moving his Lips and talking to himself, and Smiling, in the midst of large Company"s." Once, when he had started on a long harangue criticizing a leading Scottish politician, someone discreetly pointed out that the man"s closest relative was also sitting at the table. "Deil care, deil care," Smith muttered, "it"s all true." Adam Smith was a prominent and influential figure in Edinburgh circles. He attended the meetings of the Select Society and the Poker Club, and went to the dinner parties of even nonintellectual citizens. As a guest he could be trying. He rarely spoke, but when he did, it was usually at great length. Alexander Carlyle remembered Adam Smith as "the most absent man in Company that I ever saw, Moving his Lips and talking to himself, and Smiling, in the midst of large Company"s." Once, when he had started on a long harangue criticizing a leading Scottish politician, someone discreetly pointed out that the man"s closest relative was also sitting at the table. "Deil care, deil care," Smith muttered, "it"s all true."
II.
Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, just across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh, in 1723. His father, Adam Smith, Sr., was trained in the law, and served as a customs inspector in Kirkcaldy. It was not a cushy job. One of the unforeseen results of the Treaty of Union had been a huge increase in smuggling along Scotland"s coasts. His father"s frustrations in trying to intercept the operations of local smugglers, most of whom were otherwise law-abiding citizens and merchants, were an early lesson for the younger Adam Smith in how human ingenuity will find a way to defy government rules and regulations, such as customs tariffs, when they fly in the face of self-interest. Here is how Smith would put it in his Wealth of Nations, Wealth of Nations, almost fifty years later: "The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition . . . is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any a.s.sistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often inc.u.mbers its operations." almost fifty years later: "The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition . . . is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any a.s.sistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often inc.u.mbers its operations."
Words that have made every socialist, and every liberal of an altruistic Hutcheson mold, gnash his teeth! But the truth is that it was Adam Smith who s.n.a.t.c.hed Hutcheson from the burning embers to which the skeptic David Hume had consigned him, and who tried to find a way to keep the idea that human beings have an inborn moral sense, and natural regard for others, alive as a basic principle of human nature. We usually think of Adam Smith as an economist, and the founder of the study of political economy, or "the dismal science"-and there certainly are pages of Wealth of Nations Wealth of Nations that are dismal. But Adam Smith thought of himself primarily as a moral philosopher, and almost all his studies came down to answering the basic questions Hutcheson had raised. Why are human beings on average good rather than bad? Why do they choose (on the whole) to lead constructive lives, getting up in the morning to go to work and raise a family and build relationships with other human beings, instead of (on the whole) murdering and plundering them? that are dismal. But Adam Smith thought of himself primarily as a moral philosopher, and almost all his studies came down to answering the basic questions Hutcheson had raised. Why are human beings on average good rather than bad? Why do they choose (on the whole) to lead constructive lives, getting up in the morning to go to work and raise a family and build relationships with other human beings, instead of (on the whole) murdering and plundering them?
The answers Smith came with up were different from Hutcheson"s, because by now he had to confront the challenge of Lord Kames"s cynical realism and that of his disciple, David Hume. In many ways Smith is the fusion of the two sides of the Enlightenment, the "soft" side represented by Hutcheson-with its belief in man"s innate goodness, its faith in the power of education to enlighten and liberate, and its appeal to nature-and the "hard" side represented by Kames and Hume, with its cool, skeptical distrust of human intentions and motives. A fusion, but also a tension runs all through Smith"s work, a tension that is never fully resolved. It is the tension that runs through all of modern life and culture, in fact-a tension between what human beings ought to be, and occasionally are, and what they really are, and generally remain. Smith"s great achievement was to have the courage to confront that tension head-on, to describe it and a.n.a.lyze it, and then leave it to others in the future to understand it in their own way. It is this, not his role as the supposed high priest of capitalism, that has made him one of the great modern thinkers, and makes him still important to us today.
Adam Smith was a man of thought and contemplation rather than action. He almost became a minister, although he was never ordained. He should have been a lawyer, like his father, but when he went to the University of Glasgow in 1737, he fell instead under the spell of Francis Hutcheson. At Glasgow, Smith absorbed the twin traditions of Scottish learning, the study of natural and civil law, and afterwards wrote brilliant and influential lectures on both. In every respect his education was Scottish; all the leading influences on his thought were entirely Scottish-based. Although he did go to England to study at Oxford for seven years, he found nothing of value there. He summed up his experience there in his description of the average university as a "sanctuary in which exploded systems and obsolete prejudices find shelter and protection, after they have been hunted out of every other corner of the world."
Yet Smith did not hesitate to use Scottish universities as a base for his work and activities. His public lectures in Edinburgh in 1750 and 1751 earned him enough of a reputation to bring him back to Glasgow as professor of logic, and then as Hutcheson"s successor to the Chair of Moral Philosophy. At first Smith tried to emulate the informal, animated lecture style of his great teacher, but he soon gave up and resigned himself to reading his notes aloud from his desk. What drew students was not Smith"s style, but the substance of his lectures, which were nothing less than an attempt to fulfill the great project Hutcheson had envisioned decades before, of creating a science of human behavior as coherent and irrefutable as the physical science of Isaac Newton. It would begin with a "natural history of man as a political agent" and end with "the general principles of munic.i.p.al law, political oeconomy, and the law of nations." This would have been a daunting task in any case, but by 1755 it was even more so, because now Smith, like everyone else, had to work under the shadow of David Hume.
If Adam Smith is the first great modern economist, then David Hume is modernity"s first great philosopher. His literally unorthodox views made him a legend in his own time. One day, after he had bought his house in Edinburgh"s New Town, he was going home by taking a shortcut across the deep bog left by the draining of the North Loch. As he walked along the treacherous and narrow path, he slipped and fell into the bog. Unable to extricate himself, he began calling for help as darkness started to fall. An old woman, an Edinburgh fishwife, stopped, but when she looked down and recognized him as "David Hume the Atheist," she refused to help him out. Hume pleaded with her and asked her if her religion did not teach her to do good, even to her enemies. "That may well be," she replied, "but ye shall na get out o" that, till ye become a Christian yoursell: and repeat the Lord"s Prayer and the Belief [i.e., the Apostolic Creed]." To her amazement, Hume proceeded to do just that, whereupon, true to her word, the old lady reached down and pulled him out.
The story reveals a great deal about Hume the man: his self-deprecating sense of humor (the story comes out of one of Hume"s letters); his keen awareness of the clash of cultures in the meeting between the philosopher and the fishwife; but above all his awareness, even relish, of his status as an outsider, even within his own country and city. It was not just Hume"s religious views that made him the outsider and renegade, however. For more than two thousand years Western philosophers had praised the primacy of reason as the guide to all human action and virtue. Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Hobbes, and even Hutcheson could all agree with that great time-honored consensus, that the job of reason was to master our emotions and appet.i.tes. With one earth-shaking book, his first, Hume reversed this. "Reason is," he wrote, "and ought to be, the slave of the pa.s.sions."
That "ought to be" stood two thousand years of philosophy on its head. Hume quietly pointed out that human beings are not, and never have been, governed by their rational capacities. Reason"s role is purely instrumental: it teaches us how to get what we want. What we want is determined by our emotions, our pa.s.sions-anger, l.u.s.t, fear, grief, envy, but also joy, love of fame, love of contentedness, and, paradoxically, our desire to live according to rational principles-or in the last case, to recognize the dictates of necessity and act accordingly. It is not reason, however, that teaches us this, but habit, a frame of mind that a.s.sociates certain effects with certain causes or actions. We are, in the end, creatures of habit, and of the physical and social environment within which our emotions and pa.s.sions must operate. We learn to avoid the pa.s.sions that destroy, and pursue the ones that succeed-in order to get what we consider our just desserts, and gratify our self-interest.
A Treatise of Human Nature appeared in 1734, when Hume was only twenty-six. Yet it contained the seeds of almost everything he would write for the next forty years, and the seeds of a new philosophic outlook for the West. Other thinkers, of course, had recognized the importance of self-interest in human affairs. Lord Kames, as founder of the civil society school, had stressed its paramount role in the creation and formation of all social ties. But Hume carried this to a new level. appeared in 1734, when Hume was only twenty-six. Yet it contained the seeds of almost everything he would write for the next forty years, and the seeds of a new philosophic outlook for the West. Other thinkers, of course, had recognized the importance of self-interest in human affairs. Lord Kames, as founder of the civil society school, had stressed its paramount role in the creation and formation of all social ties. But Hume carried this to a new level.
For Hume, self-interest is all all there is. The overriding guiding force in all our actions is not our reason, or our sense of obligation toward others, or any innate moral sense-all these are simply formed out of habit and experience-but the most basic human pa.s.sion of all, the desire for self-gratification. It is the one thing human beings have in common. It is also the necessary starting point of any system of morality, and of any system of government. there is. The overriding guiding force in all our actions is not our reason, or our sense of obligation toward others, or any innate moral sense-all these are simply formed out of habit and experience-but the most basic human pa.s.sion of all, the desire for self-gratification. It is the one thing human beings have in common. It is also the necessary starting point of any system of morality, and of any system of government.
If Hume had made a dog"s breakfast of Hutcheson"s moral theories (Hutcheson was horrified when he first read the Treatise, Treatise, and did what he could to prevent Hume from getting a university appointment), he gave a similar disturbing twist to the question Lord Kames had started out with: Why does society exist? He agreed with his mentor that it was there to protect property. But Hume also pointed out that we are surrounded by a seething, crawling cesspool of pa.s.sions, our own as well as those of others. Left to ourselves, with no external constraints, the result would be a murderous chaos-Hume certainly saw Hobbes"s view of man"s natural depraved state as more realistic than Hutcheson"s more exalted vision. Yet no society, even the best organized, can possibly police each and every outbreak of self-gratification at the expense of others. There aren"t enough minutes in the day. Any appeal to reason is hopeless, since "reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the pa.s.sions": and the pa.s.sions are the root of the problem. and did what he could to prevent Hume from getting a university appointment), he gave a similar disturbing twist to the question Lord Kames had started out with: Why does society exist? He agreed with his mentor that it was there to protect property. But Hume also pointed out that we are surrounded by a seething, crawling cesspool of pa.s.sions, our own as well as those of others. Left to ourselves, with no external constraints, the result would be a murderous chaos-Hume certainly saw Hobbes"s view of man"s natural depraved state as more realistic than Hutcheson"s more exalted vision. Yet no society, even the best organized, can possibly police each and every outbreak of self-gratification at the expense of others. There aren"t enough minutes in the day. Any appeal to reason is hopeless, since "reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the pa.s.sions": and the pa.s.sions are the root of the problem.
So, in order to survive, Hume concluded, society has to devise strategies to channel our pa.s.sions in constructive directions. Through social rules and conventions and customs, internalized by its members and made into regular habits, it turns what might be socially destructive impulses into socially useful ones. The pa.s.sion of l.u.s.t becomes licit within the confines of marriage-which not only prevents social discord, but actually helps to propagate the society"s members. Anger and bloodl.u.s.t are rightly condemned as socially disruptive-that is, unless they are unleashed on the battlefield against society"s enemies.
The pa.s.sion of avidity could, if left without limits, destroy all social bonds, as each member of society robs and plunders his neighbors, and is plundered in turn. However, ca.n.a.lizing that desire and pushing it in a constructive direction makes it work to the benefit of society. Instead of robbing a bank, why not open one? One can make more money with less work and stress, and help his neighbors at the same time. In short, the pa.s.sion of avidity becomes socialized-"refined" as William Robertson might say-and generates a sense of property. We can have what we want, when we want it, society tells us, just as long as we do not take it at the expense of the rights of others.
"There is no pa.s.sion, therefore," Hume concluded, "capable of controlling the interested affection but the very affection itself, by an alteration of its direction." And he went further: "Men are not able radically to cure either in themselves or others that narrowness of soul which makes them prefer the present to the remote," or, in other words, the short-term to the long-term. Men cannot change their nature. All they can do is create social and political arrangements that "render the observation of justice the immediate interest of some particular person, and its violation their more remote." Hence the origin of government, and hence the best possible social framework within which human beings can operate, based on a secular Golden Rule: I won"t disturb your self-interest, if you don"t disturb mine.
This is the best we can hope for, in a world in which men are governed by self-interest, and "even when they extend their concern beyond themselves, it is not to any great distance"; in which morality is largely a matter of convention and ingrained habit; in which the laws of nature offer nothing to help, and appeals to reason fall on deaf ears; and with an empty sky above, devoid of divine guidance or even a supernatural presence. This world offers a form of liberty-the freedom to pursue one"s own self-interest-and a form of authority: the power of the magistrate "to punish transgressors, to correct fraud and violence, and to oblige men, however reluctant, to consult their own real and permanent [long-term] interests." But, Hume had to conclude, there is nothing particularly exalted, or inspiring, about the nature of civil society.
What did his contemporaries make of all this? A large part of the response to Hume was, very understandably, negative. It comes as no great surprise that Hutcheson was horrified, or that the Kirk"s General a.s.sembly tried to have him censured, or that he failed to get a university appointment not once but twice. But much of the response was respectful, and at times slightly celebratory, even among those, such as Edinburgh"s literati, who were deeply disturbed by the implications of Hume"s philosophy. This was not explained merely by his affable personality, which made him a popular guest at dinner parties and club meetings, or his elegant command of written English (although he always spoke it with a heavy Scottish burr). It arose from his own confidence in the future of civil society, which seems strange given its less-than-n.o.ble origins, and from his optimism about modern commercial society in particular.
The work that made him a major figure in British letters was his collection of Political Discourses, Political Discourses, which Andrew Millar published in London in 1752, followed by other collections and reissues of earlier essays over the next half-decade. In them, Hume pointed out what seemed to him obvious: society"s effort to ca.n.a.lize human being"s pa.s.sions into constructive channels which Andrew Millar published in London in 1752, followed by other collections and reissues of earlier essays over the next half-decade. In them, Hume pointed out what seemed to him obvious: society"s effort to ca.n.a.lize human being"s pa.s.sions into constructive channels does does work; we do learn from past failures and manage over time to improve how government works and how it administers justice and protects civil rights. The whole growth of the British const.i.tution from feudal despotism to modern liberty was proof of this. History revealed to Hume a growth of human industry and cooperation over time, as well as a growth of personal liberty of the sort Hutcheson and others celebrated. And central to it was the role of commerce, as the great engine of change: work; we do learn from past failures and manage over time to improve how government works and how it administers justice and protects civil rights. The whole growth of the British const.i.tution from feudal despotism to modern liberty was proof of this. History revealed to Hume a growth of human industry and cooperation over time, as well as a growth of personal liberty of the sort Hutcheson and others celebrated. And central to it was the role of commerce, as the great engine of change: It rouses men from their indolence; and presenting the gayer and more opulent part of the nation with objects of luxury, which they never have dreamed of, raises in them a desire of a more splendid way of life than what their ancestors enjoyed. . . . Imitation soon diffuses all these arts; while domestic manufactures emulate the foreign in their improvements. . . . Their own steel and iron, in such laborious hands, become the equal to the gold and rubies of the INDIES.
Commerce and liberty; liberty and refinement; refinement and the progress of the human spirit were all interrelated. And every Scottish Whig could applaud Hume"s statement that "it is impossible for the arts and sciences to arise, at first, among any people unless that people enjoy the blessing of a free government."
But Hume also threw out a warning. Liberty was a fine thing, but it required a counterbalancing principle-something to remind us that human beings are creatures of their pa.s.sions and that, left entirely to themselves, they become their pa.s.sions" slaves. Jacobites and Tories had had a point: no society can survive without some stable center of authority. The power of government is needed to redirect those potentially destructive pa.s.sions, to "punish transgressors," and ultimately to preserve the conditions under which liberty can be enjoyed. "In all governments," Hume wrote, "there is a perpetual intestine struggle, open or secret, between Authority and Liberty, and neither of them can ever neither of them can ever absolutely prevail in the contest. absolutely prevail in the contest."
Politics in modern society, then, must involve a tension between two conflicting, but complementary principles: liberty, which preserves individuals, and authority, which preserves society. Authority that is absolute and uncontrolled ends by destroying society itself; Hume foresaw what the history of totalitarianism would teach the rest of us. But he also realized that even in the freest society, "a great sacrifice of liberty" has to be made to authority, which, he wrote, "must be acknowledged essential to its very existence."
How much of a sacrifice is, of course, the key question, for eighteenth-century Britons as well as for us. Hume never quite answered it, although he did, in his essays and his History of England, History of England, explore the conditions under which the question can be posed. However, it may be that Hume thought there was no real answer. He may have simply decided that the struggle is perpetual, and that we only realize we have gone too far when it is already too late. explore the conditions under which the question can be posed. However, it may be that Hume thought there was no real answer. He may have simply decided that the struggle is perpetual, and that we only realize we have gone too far when it is already too late.
As a philosopher and as a friend, Hume made a huge impact on Adam Smith. Smith read and understood him more thoroughly, perhaps, than any other contemporary. His own writings would be inconceivable without Hume"s peculiar take on the "progress" of civil society, and on what an imperfect, trial-and-error process it really is.
Hume swept away all that was pretentious and sanctimonious from the Scottish intellectual scene. Even his most telling opponent, Aberdeen"s Thomas Reid, acknowledged him to be one of the great philosophers of the age. Smith himself probably would have endorsed the German philosopher Immanuel Kant"s remark on first reading Hume, that it awakened his mind from its "dogmatic slumbers." Hume had certainly cleared the air of illusions and made it free from cant. But there was still the question of what to build afterwards, and this is what Smith now undertook.
III.
His starting point brought him back to where Hutcheson and Hume had first diverged. What makes us good? Is morality inborn, as Hutcheson insisted, a gift from G.o.d and nature? Or is it something that has to be imposed from outside, as Hume suggested, a system of punishments and rewards that mold us into creatures fit for society?
As he shuttled back and forth between Edinburgh and Glasgow in the 1750s, lecturing to students at one end and listening to papers at the Select Society at the other, Smith was thinking of ways to resuscitate Hutcheson"s original notion of an innate moral sense. But if Hutcheson had been right in one sense, that morality is something we carry inside us from birth, he had forgotten about the need for what Smith would call the "awful virtues": discipline, self-restraint, moral rect.i.tude, and righteous anger at wrongdoers. The virtues of the ancient Stoics and of the Calvinist Kirk were just as necessary to life in society as were civility and compa.s.sion, because they policed the sometimes volatile frontiers of our dealings with others. How ironic it must have seemed, that the clergyman Hutcheson should overlook their importance, and that the skeptical agnostic Hume should understand how they contained and channeled our most explosive impulses!
In fact, Smith was trying to build a notion of an inborn moral sense that was more basic and instinctual, and less abstract, than his former teacher"s notion. He eventually found it in what he called "fellow feeling," a natural