A Puzzle From Scotlands Past

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The Royal Society of Edinburgh

A Puzzle from Scot lands Past: Why did the Scot tish Enl ightenment happen?

Professor Tom Devine OBE HonMRIA FBA FRSE, University of Edinburgh

Thursday 25 April 2013, Lockerbie Academy, Lockerbie

Report by Kate Kennedy

The Scottish Enlightenment is widely regarded as the nations most important and influentialcontribution to the intellectual and cultural life of humanity. From science to philosophy,history to medicine, economics to geology and beyond to numerous other subjects, Scottishthinkers of the 18th Century helped create a new understanding of the contours of existence.Why this happened in Scotland is a conundrum; Scotland seemed a most unlikely seedbed

for such an intellectual revolution. In the decades before the great creative transformation, itwas regarded as a desperately poor country on the outer fringes of the great centres ofEuropean civilisation in the grip of a Taleban-type culture of unyielding religious orthodoxyfundamentally opposed to innovative thought. This lecture considered this challengingquestion and sought to resolve one of Scottish historys most enduring mysteries.

In the mid 18th Century, in the midst of the European Enlightenment, the renowned Frenchphilosopher, Voltaire, wrote we look towards Scotland for all our standards of civilisation.However, the Scottish Enlightenment was not formally articulated until 1901. ProfessorDevine described how the concept then slumbered for many years; indeed Professor

Trevor-Roper suggested in the 1960s that there was a distinct disinterest in the ScottishEnlightenment. Within the past generation, however, the concept has become flavour of the

month. Professor Devine stated that, it is truly remarkable that a small country of just over1.1 million people had such an extraordinary impact on the thought of western civilisation.

There can be no doubt that what we mean by the Scottish Enlightenment and all it entailed isScotlands greatest ever gift to humanity. It is scarcely believable that that particular gift willever be reproduced, given its scale, range and quality.

The Scottish Enlightenment was part of a larger movement which occurred in certainhotspots throughout Europe, including some German states, France, parts of Italy, and theLow Countries. Professor Devine described the essence of the European Enlightenment asthreefold. First, it implies, by the terminology itself, a dawn after darkness and many of theliterati who were involved regarded themselves as having come out of the darkness into anage where the Sun started to shine in an intellectual context. Secondly, it comprised astudious and committed opposition to accepting authority for its own sake. The attitude of themen of the Enlightenment period in Europe was that the critical intellect plus evidence shouldbe used against authority in order to find out the truth and establish how far one could go toknown knowledge. It was noted that this aspect of the Enlightenment ushered in a period ofmassive discussion and robust dialogue, including the forensic analysis of old issues thathad long been accepted but for which there might be new perspectives and insights. Finally,a theme running throughout the entire continental experience of this intellectual revolutionwas the notion of toleration. Professor Devine described this as truly revolutionary because,only a century before, Europe had experienced the absolute horrors of the Thirty Years War.

This was a conflict which was based on religious confrontation; on the most virulent form ofsectarianism. However, the Enlightenment attitude was one of toleration, namely that human

beings, especially those who were willing to consider these critical issues, should be able todo it in freedom, without the possibility of either State intervention, State punishment, orhostility or punishment resulting from a religious organisation.


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In an attempt to solve the puzzle of the Scottish Enlightenment, Professor Devine askedwas pre-Union Scotland really as dark and nightmarish a country as a previous generationof historians assumed and argued? The answer is emphatically no! As with most societies, itis complex, there are hues of light, dark and grey. He noted that there has been anhistoriographical revolution in our understanding of pre-Union Scotland. This is because theconventional wisdom from the end of J acobitism in the 1750s through to the 1960s was oneof emphatic Unionism and inevitably there was a set of assumptions that the Union was thesine qua non of Scottish advancement and development and that pre-Union Scotland wasinadequate by comparison. Added to this was the fact that the literati of the ScottishEnlightenment were emphatically Unionist; seeing themselves as global thinkers andassuming in their writings that the horrors of pre-1707 Scotland, and especially the horrors offanaticism and intolerance, had at least been diluted and finally banished by the civilisingforce of a relationship with a more advanced society south of the Border. Professor Devinecommented that this particular set of assumptions has been substantially diluted byresearchers over the past thirty years. The main results of this research dynamic are thatwhilst there were undoubtedly disasters in the 1690s, these were untypical and did not

especially represent the last twenty years of Scotland prior to Unionism. Secondly, Scottishmercantile activity was dynamic in this period. Earlier historians have focused on thedifficulties of the Darien scheme, but have neglected the fact that Scottish entrepreneurswere active throughout the English Imperial Empire before 1707. Furthermore, there was arevolution happening within the Scottish universities and, below the surface, universitieswere moving towards new thoughts and teaching ideologies. Finally, the elites of the societyin Scotland, despite the terrorism of the Kirk, were in fact steadily moving in a more seculardirection. Material improvement was very much on the agenda; Scottish connections withEurope were dying and new connections with the USA being forged, even before 1707. Inconclusion, the differences, therefore, between post-Union Scotland and pre-Union Scotlandhave now been modulated. There is a consensus between historians that there is morecontinuity, which lessens the reality of the puzzle.

Since the 13th Century, Scotland has experienced very high levels of out migration. Focusingon the intellectual connections through Diaspora, Professor Devine commented that althoughScotland had three pre-Reformation universities, it still continued to send many graduatesabroad for further training. There were Scottish intellectual enclaves throughout Europe andone of the forces driving the Scottish Enlightenment was their movement into the intellectualcrossroads of the Continent, the Low Countries, in the later 17th Century, when the whole tideof the intellectual migration moved from the Catholic countries to the Low Countries. The LowCountries were considered the crossroads because, in the 1690s, the Huguenot Protestantsexpelled from France flooded into the region. The Huguenots were totally committed totoleration and also to foundational developments in universities. The foundational reforms ofthe Scottish university system flowed from the Continent and especially from the catalytic

developments in the Low Countries.

Professor Devine returned his thoughts to Calvinism stating, ...of all the forces relevant tothe Scottish Enlightenment, this is at the heart of the matter. Previous analysts haveregarded Calvinism as the emphatic constraint on Enlightenment because of its coreintolerance and hatred of diversity and innovation of ideas. Professor Devine arguesotherwise and suggested that if you cannot put Scottish Calvinism at the core of theanalysis, then you have left the centrepiece out. He commented that the obvious reason forthis is the extraordinary effect of the Calvinist revolution of the 16th Century on Scottishschooling. By the 1670s, it was the normal thing for a Lowland parish to have a school. Thiswas not intended to be an intellectual development, but was a religious development by theFathers of the Kirk to ensure the Bible could be read and that lay persons could becometrained Elders of the Kirk. This is important, because it meant that by the 18th Century, interms of elementary schooling, it was an advancement compared to the majority of Europe. Italso showed that a poor country is not necessarily backward. The level of schooling above


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the parish schools was also powerfully influenced by the Calvinist Revolution; the so-calledGrammar Schools were established for a talented elite of boys aged 9 to 13. These wereextremely well educated boys, a trained cerebral elite who may have then gone on to gainentry to the University system. Professor Devine considers this to be a factor in why therewas such a Scottish disproportionality in the careers of Empire in the 18th and early 19thCenturies. The heart of the Calvinist explanation of Enlightenment comes from J ohn Miller,who argued that because of its continued hatred for the arts, the Calvinist tradition ofScotland had moved the national psyche, especially at elite level, in the direction ofphilosophy, science and formality of language. It is a fascinating conclusion, if you look at thehistory of 18th and 19th Century Scotland, that although there were poets, artists, dramatistsand writers of literature, the whole dynamic of the Scottish Enlightenment is emphaticallyphilosophical, scientific and historical.

In addition to Calvinism, the Scottish University system of the 18th Century also contributed tothe Scottish Enlightenment. Leading University academics were only paid a modest stipend;their main source of income came from the size of their classes, which meant they had toteach and teach well in order to attract custom. Additionally, the Scottish universities

reshaped themselves from the late 17th

Century onwards, teaching in English rather thanLatin and, above all, dictation by rote gave way to discursive teaching and tutorials wereintroduced. Furthermore, this period saw the foundation of intellectual clubs, which werehighly convivial and open to intellectual discussion.

Professor Devine considered that none of this could have happened if it hadnt been for thecontextual revolution that took place in Scotland in the first half of the 18th Century. Thismeant that in terms of the governance of the church, there was a movement towardsModeratism; a movement towards the acceptance of a degree of diversity of opinion. Thereasons for this were many, partly to do with the new material emphasis of Scottish societyas the economy improved and partly to do with the Patronage Act that meant that landowners often had the final say in the selection of ministers, often selecting those who were

more compatible with their ideals. Furthermore, during the 1740s and 1750s, manyhardliners within the Kirk left the established church, leaving a harmonious form ofgovernance within the Church of Scotland which allowed the latent Enlightenment ofCalvinism to flourish. Moreover, following the final destruction of the J acobite threat atCulloden, Scottish politics became boring and this meant the intellectuals didnt have to takesides; instead they could indulge in a greater freedom of argumentative intercourse knowingthey would not be nailed by some hostile establishments. So the environment changed and,with this change, these forces, the continuation of a form of intellectualism from the late 17thCentury, the force of the Calvinist tradition, and a force for the cerebral and educativemechanisms, were allowed to flourish in Scotland and to have an influence because of thewider political, social, economic and religious changes of the period between 1700 and the1770s.

A Vote of Thanks was offered by Mr Gerald Wilson FRSE.

Opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the RSE, nor of its Fellows

The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotlands National Academy, is Scottish Charity No. SC000470

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A Puzzle From Scotlands Past