Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World

by Roy Porter

  The rationalist view diagnosed myth as symptomatic of the infantile folly of fearful beings trapped in ignorance, that mother of superstition. Its fountainheads were Pierre Bayle, Bernard de Fontenelle, author of De l'origine des fables (1724), and David Hume, all of whom exposed myth as a symptom of primitive mentality. The savage mind involved a frenzied imagination compulsively fabulizing the world. And if at first glance it was just a pile of nonsense, mythology could actually be read as a coded record of primitive man's attempts to get to grips with the world – the primitive mentality was like a child's. In his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697), Bayle also pointedly derided the absurd and immoral tales of Greek and Roman mythology, so as to juxtapose them against parallel biblical episodes: Jupiter was an adulterer and – lo and behold! – so was King David. From Charles Blount onwards, such outlooks also proved influential in Britain.24

  The evaluation of myths grew less hostile. ‘It is absurd,’ insisted Adam Ferguson, in standard fashion, ‘to quote the fable of the Iliad or the Odyssey, the legends of Hercules, Theseus, or Oedipus, as authorities in matter of fact relating to the history of mankind.’ Yet that was not the whole story, for, he continued,

  they may, with great justice, be cited to ascertain what were the conceptions and sentiments of the age in which they were composed, or to characterize the genius of that people, with whose imaginations they were blended, and by whom they were fondly rehearsed and admired.25

  Ferguson's view, that where historical data were wanting myths afforded windows on to bygone mentalities, achieved wide acceptance, not least with Herder in Germany. Distinguishing between nations which had developed their own myths and those which had borrowed others’, Ferguson expressed his respect for Greek mythology: ‘the passions of the poet pervaded the minds of the people, and the conceptions of men of genius being communicated to the vulgar, became the incentives of a national spirit’.26 Like Vico, he recommended the comparative study of myths for the illumination it might afford into the mindsets of aboriginal and less sophisticated peoples.27 Others, however, were unimpressed. ‘The machinery of the Pagan is uninteresting to us,’ dogmatized the no-nonsense Samuel Johnson: ‘when a Goddess appears in Homer or Virgil, we grow weary.’28

  The desire to forge a natural, rather than a sacred, history also shows in contemporary investigations into language. That was a hot topic: Descartes signally ruled that it was speech which differentiated animals and humans;29 questions of the purity and pathology of language were, as already shown in chapter 3, crucial to enlightened understandings of the fortunes of truth; while the progress of language became widely accepted as an index of the rise (or fall) of civilization.30 Above all, the origin of speech became a field in which the authority of the Bible itself was necessarily at stake. Was language truly, as Genesis stated, God's gift? If so, how could it have become corrupted? And why were there so many different tongues? Once the Adamic origin of language had been challenged, however, would not the Old Testament version of human history itself, indeed the very truth status of Scripture, be threatened? No wonder debate flared.31

  Renaissance philology had built on the Bible. Speech, according to Genesis, went back to the garden of Eden, when God had mandated Adam to name all things. And key features of the scriptural account had become enshrined in philological orthodoxy: the first words were names. At God's instigation Adam had labelled the animals; his names indexed sounds to sights. In turn, the confusion of tongues, according to Genesis, stemmed from the Tower of Babel and man's sacrilegious attempt to ascend into Heaven. In short, sacred theories held that all mankind had originally spoken the same tongue, while later differentiation was thereafter divinely ordained, at Babel, to thwart man's pride.

  Herein lay a scheme granting words maximum significance. Since the Bible made Adam's namings prelapsarian, it was widely held by humanists that such pristine labels must have been ‘essential’; hence, to decipher the original language of mankind, as recorded in Hebrew, would, it was hoped, reveal long-occluded sacred truths about Creation, and etymology would illuminate the secrets of mind, both divine and human. Popular amongst grammarians, this view of language as originally transparent, definitive and true gave hope for the restoration of that purity, and thus bolstered the dreams of the likes of John Wilkins, bishop of Chester and fellow of the Royal Society, for a universal language which would reverse Babel and reunify speech. The possibility of a new and ‘perfected’ tongue later intrigued religious writers like William Worthington and John Gordon, who saw the globalization of a single language as a step towards the consummation of godly knowledge. A universal language, insisted Priestley, would be ‘one of the last and greatest achievements of human genius’.32

  Enlightened theorists dissented from some or all of the old philological tenets. While few British writers contradicted the Adamic theory head on – Mandeville was one – critics elaborated alternative naturalistic explanations of glottogenesis, treating language as a human invention or a natural acquisition, much like the other arts. In a Hobbist, nominalist manner, Locke stressed that the signification of words was ‘perfectly arbitrary’.33

  Once the question of the divine donation had been raised it became: How could speech actually have been developed? Some held that language had arisen from ‘natural’ correspondences between particular utterances and the properties of the objects designated, which had supposedly triggered particular sound sequences in the mind. Advocates made much of natural onomatopoeia (‘bang’, ‘hiss’, etc.) and man's instinctive eloquence. There were, after all, other ‘natural’ communications, such as gestures, which did not even need to be voiced. ‘In the first ages of the world,’ observed William Warburton, ‘mutual converse was upheld by a mixed discourse of words and actions… this practice subsisted long after the necessity was over; especially amongst the eastern people’ (naturally given to wild gesticulations).34 Man had thus a natural gift for bodily expression, but crucial were the gestures produced with the voice, the ‘cris naturels’ or interjections, venting some inward passion – desire, want, hunger, fear. Repetition would lead to memorization and for the reproduction of sounds for mutual information. Use of simple vocal signs extended the scope of mental operations, which in turn improved the signs, increased their number and made them more familiar.35 Language, it was thus commonly argued, had arisen from necessity, and then gone hand in glove with mental and social progress.

  In his Of the Origin and Progress of Language (1773–92), Lord Monboddo accepted Locke's view that etymology clarified epistemology, for ‘the origin of language’ could not be grasped ‘without inquiring into the origin of ideas’.36 Hence, he argued, ‘from the study of language, if it be properly conducted, the history of the human mind is best learned’, especially, he thought, ‘in the first steps of its progress, of which it is impossible there can be any other record than what is preserved in language’.37

  The Scottish judge proposed a wholly naturalistic and evolutionary theory of glottogenesis all his own.38 On anatomical and other grounds, he had convinced himself that the orang-utan was an as-yet speechless variety of the human species.39 Meaningful articulation was so demanding that only man had managed to acquire it. Speech was not innate, for ‘not only solitary savages, but a whole nation’ – that is, the great apes – ‘have been found without the use of speech’:

  They are exactly of the human form; walking erect, not upon all-four, like the savages that have been found in Europe; they use sticks for weapons; they live in society; they make huts of branches of trees, and they carry off negroe girls, of whom they make slaves.40

  Cartesians had claimed, noted Monboddo, that ‘language is natural to man; and that therefore whatever animal does not speak; is not a man’.41 But that begged the question, since the orang-utan's want of speech was purely fortuitous, thus scotching the assumption that language radically distinguished man from the animals. Rather than man being unique, Nature here, as everywhere else, showed continuity: orang-u
tans were humans who until now lacked speech. The history of language was thus a chapter in the wider bio-social evolution of homo sapiens.42

  In mythology, philology and other fields such as racial origins and diversification, or the physical development of the Earth itself, scriptural narratives were being refuted, rationalized or metaphorized by naturalistic accounts highlighting development over time.43 While few thinkers in Britain dismissed the historicity of the Bible root and branch, many sidelined or ignored it, substituting natural for divine causes, gradual developments for miraculous interventions and, explicitly or not, a longer timescale than the Pentateuch allowed.44

  The histories of human society and culture had, moreover, traditionally been read as sagas of corruption, a declension from Eden or the Golden Age.45 In the ‘Ancients versus Moderns’ debate and elsewhere, such pessimistic readings were being challenged, however, by a growing belief in improvement. Nowhere was this more evident than where change was most wanted, needed and dramatic: on the periphery.46

  The eighteenth century brought conflicts of allegiances for intellectuals, torn between cosmopolitan leanings and local loyalties. Being a ‘citizen of the world’ was attractive for those steeped in Graeco-Roman values and disgusted by sectarian and chauvinistic bigotry. Yet there was a growing clamour, too, for national identity: enlightened libertarianism, after all, demanded independence from oppressors, while a new fascination with roots and race, with the vernacular, customs and history was fostering feelings of nationhood which transcended dynastic fealties.47

  The myths singling out and occasionally cementing the English have been central to this book, above all pride in Anglo-Saxon political liberties, and the entente cordiale between liberal Protestantism, rational religion, commercial success and the civilizing process. Notionally at least, it was not only the English who were included within such enlightened formulae – ‘Britons never never never shall be slaves,’ sang the Scot Thomson in a masque called Alfred.48 But sentiments among the non-English were not always so clear cut: the Scots, Welsh and Irish – to say nothing of Britons overseas, as in the Thirteen Colonies – were liable to feel split. Doubtless it would be wrong to antedate or exaggerate ‘Celtic nationalisms’ among the intellectuals, and non-English Britons had little compunction about calling themselves ‘English’ when it suited49 – a mark, surely, of the fact that so many prominent ‘Celtic’ luminaries had gladly quit their native heath to seek fame and fortune in the Great Wen. The traffic of Scots along the high road south was notorious;50 and those Welsh-and Irish-born who might be fielded in any Enlightenment first team – for instance, Richard Price, Sir William Jones and Robert Owen, Richard Steele, John Toland, Sir Hans Sloane, the Sheridans, Laurence Sterne, Oliver Goldsmith and Edmund Burke – chose not to pass their adult lives in their mother country. Those who stayed at home and passed as patriots might sound none too enamoured. ‘I reckon no man is thoroughly miserable,’ commented Jonathan Swift, dean of St Patrick's cathedral in Dublin, ‘unless he be condemned to live in Ireland’, alias ‘this isle of slaves’. His solution to the Hibernian problem was proffered, of course, in A Modest Proposal (1729), which suggested that Irish babies would make delicious eating, ‘whether Stewed, Roasted, Baked, or Boiled; and I make no doubt, that it will equally serve in a Fricasie, or a Ragoust’.51

  Georgian Wales remained rural and sparsely populated; it boasted no polite city or university, and some bishops never even saw their see. The Welsh gentry had no reputation for learning – and well into the nineteenth century Thomas Peacock expected to wring a laugh, in his novel Headlong Hall (1816), out of the idea of a Welsh squire, his Harry Headlong, actually owning some books.52

  There were some lights, however. Edward Morgan, who hailed from the Vale of Glamorgan and passed as Iolo Morganyg, was a Unitarian and a devotee of Voltaire and other philosophes, sharing their hatred of priestcraft. He launched the cult of Madoc, the medieval Welshman who, so it was told, had sailed west and discovered America, planting his compatriots amid the Great Plains. With Welsh emigration to the New World rising, the itch to unearth that long-lost intrepid tribe naturally grew – an interest fed by Dr John Williams, a learned divine resident in Sydenham, south of London, with his An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition Concerning the Discovery of America by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd about AD 1170 (1791).53 Especially with the revolt of the Thirteen Colonies, the Madocians could be hailed as frontiersmen of liberty, the very first people to fling off the English yoke. His nationalist libertarian rhetoric was later reinforced by Jacobinism.54

  Morganyg was also fascinated by philology (he deduced affinities between Welsh and pristine Hebrew), and by Druidic myth, literature and history (the Druids were presented as prototype Jacobins).55 Aiming to revive bardic traditions, he fancied the Eisteddfod as a kind of national cultural academy: back in the days of Aneirin and Taliesin, Arthur and his knights had been Welsh poetry's sponsors. Familiarizing himself with the Gorsedd, an ancient open-air bardic gathering, Morganyg conjured up its reincarnation, complete with robes, ranks and rituals. The first revived Gorsedd was staged by the London Welsh on Primrose Hill in 1792, contributing to the ‘invention of tradition’. Cambro-Briton revivalism was, at this time, largely metropolitan, backed by the Gwyneddigon, the energetic London Welsh society.

  Ireland was different: a cauldron of conflict, with rival populations sundered by language, land, ethnicity, faith, wealth and the savage anti-Catholic penal code; and the Protestant ascendancy was bitterly resented. In Dublin, Cork and a few other cities, Ireland also boasted seats of civilization – in Dublin's case, a parliament, an ancient university and a fringe of professional corporations.

  Georgian Ireland spawned institutions dedicated to modernizing, in particular the Dublin Society. Founded in 1731 for ‘the improvement of Husbandry, Manufactures and other useful Arts’, its members were primarily Protestant gentlemen of the landowning classes, with a sprinkling of bishops, judges, barristers, doctors and the military. It was practical in its orientation: agricultural treatises were circulated, new implements tried, experiments performed and premiums offered to those producing the top crops. Visiting in 1770, Arthur Young, while none too impressed overall by Irish agronomy, met many an improving landlord. Dublin also boasted theatres and assembly rooms for polite culture – Handel visited in 1741 to conduct The Messiah – while the Irish Parliament and courts upheld proud traditions of oratory; Trinity College, where Berkeley taught early in his career, sported famous debating societies; and to stir up science, the Royal Irish Academy was founded in 1785.56

  From Swift through to Burke's denunciations of the Test Acts, controversies raged over Irish rights. It was not, however, until the 1790s that grievances were voiced in an idiom directly coloured by enlightened (by then, also revolutionary) claims.57

  *

  Scotland was different again.58 Unlike Wales, it was a populous country with big cities; unlike Ireland, it was overwhelmingly Protestant and not quasi-colonial. Cultivating distinguished traditions of humanist learning and, thanks to its Calvinism, a deep commitment to schooling, Scotland retained its own Kirk, legal and educational system, enduring sources of cultural prestige even after it lost its parliament upon the Act of Union (1707). The university cities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and, to a lesser degree, Aberdeen and St Andrews possessed high concentrations of divines, lawyers, doctors and leisured gentlemen, many doubling as men of letters. There were thus deep-seated cultural practices, rooted in the professions, landowning classes and the universities.59

  If the nation was also in turmoil – riven, beyond the mid-century, by the conflicts of loyalty, interest and ideology centred on Jacobitism – opportunities were beckoning for the rapid economic and social development of a people who, before the Union, had been desperately backward and impoverished. For some, the surrender of political sovereignty in 1707 was a national humiliation; for others, the tangible cultural, intellectual and social advances – the progress of ‘civil society�
�� – made that loss mainly a matter for the nostalgic.60 What is significant, however, is that no Scottish thinker could avoid an acute awareness of change, actual and anticipated; many hence felt obliged to theorize the transformations the nation was, or should be, undergoing.

  How far the Scottish Enlightenment was homegrown remains highly contested.61 Many believed the torch came from outside, specifically from metropolitan polite culture. ‘The appearance of Tatlers, Spectators, and Guardians in the reign of Queen Anne’, thought Ramsay of Ochtertyre, had anglicized the philistine Scot into ‘a polite scholar’.62 ‘The constant flux of information and of liberality from abroad,’ agreed Dugald Stewart, ‘may help to account for the sudden burst of genius, which to a foreigner must seem to have sprung up in this country by a sort of enchantment, soon after the Rebellion of 1745.’63

  London, for its part, certainly lured the literati. ‘Scotland is but a narrow place,’ lamented the architect Robert Adam in 1755, explaining his need for ‘a greater, a more extensive, and more honourable scene, I mean an English Life’, and bantering to his sister in Edinburgh that it was a ‘pity’ that ‘such a genius’ as himself ‘should be thrown away upon Scotland’.64 Meanwhile, David Hume, bent on deleting his Scotticisms, styled London ‘the Capital of my own Country’ and declared to his crony Adam Smith: ‘Scotland is too narrow a place for me.’65 Hume was no rabid patriot: pre-Union Scotland had lagged; the Scots had not then even amounted to a civil society, having been ‘the rudest, perhaps, of all European Nations; the most necessitous, the most turbulent, and the most unsettled’;66 while her kings had never managed to uphold order. Yet he could equally growl about the ‘Barbarians who inhabit the Banks of the Thames’,67 deny that significant intellectual work was coming out of England and crow over Caledonia's triumphs. ‘Is it not strange,’ he propositioned Gilbert Elliot in 1757,