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From Savage to Scotsman: Conjectural History in the Scottish Enlightenment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2014

H. M. Höpfl
H. M. Höpfl*
Affiliation:
University of Lancaster
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Extract

“He (Adam Smith) wanted to show how from being a savage, (man) rose to be a Scotchman.” (Walter Bagehot)

The Rev. Dr. Folliott:

“Pray, Mr. MacQuedy, how is it that all gentlemen of your nation begin everything they write with the ‘infancy of society?’”

(Thomas Love Peacock, Crotchet Castle)

The purpose of this essay is to consider an intellectual method which enjoyed a considerable vogue among the philosophes of Scotland. This method, ‘conjectural history,’ appears to be the direct or indirect source of many of the schemes of social evolution so popular in the nineteenth century, but it has itself been little investigated, and often misunderstood by assimilation to its progeny.

I. The Nature of Conjectural History

‘Conjectural history’ was, it seems, first distinguished from the more conventional narrative form of history by Dugald Stewart. He remarked on its use in the writings of Adam Smith, but the sort of inquiry to which we find Stewart referring is a method for understanding social phenomena which was characteristic of a whole group of Scottish writers, and we may take what he tells us about Smith as preliminary identification of the method.

Stewart explained conjectural history as arising out of comparisons between “our intellectual acquirements, our opinions, manners and institutions, [and] those which prevail among rude tribes” (whether of the past or the present). Such comparisons, he claimed, cannot fail to raise the question “by what gradual steps the transition has been made from the first simple efforts of uncultivated nature, to a state of things so wonderfully artificial and complicated.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , Spring 1978 , pp. 19 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1978

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References

1. Stewart, D., “An Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith”, prefixed to Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (reprint; New York, 1966), pp. xli–xliiGoogle Scholar (my italics). This may be an unconscious echo of Rousseau, J. J., Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, ed. Cole, G. D. H. (London and New York, 1913, 1966), p. 161Google Scholar, where Rousseau describes his account as “mere conditional or hypothetical reasonings, rather calculated to explain the nature of things, than to ascertain their actual origins.”

2. Ibid., (my italics).

3. Ibid., (my italics).

4. Robertson, W., The History of the Discovery and Settlement of America (hereafter, America), in Works, ed. Stewart, D. (Edinburgh, 1829), II, 60, 93, 101, 105, 106Google Scholar, etc. Robertson was Principal of the University of Edinburgh, a leading liberal churchman of his time, and Historiographer Royal for Scotland. He was a life-long friend of David Hume, and highly regarded by many philosophes and Edward Gibbon.

5. In the eighteenth century this term encompassed the whole range of meanings from what is done (mores) to what ought to be done (morals). The French term moeurs had the same range.

6. Hume, D., Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, in MacIntyre, A. (ed.), Hume's Ethical Writings (London, 1965), p. 25Google Scholar.

7. Bentham's definition of “A Principle: What” in The Principles of Morals and Legislation, (Ch. I, note 2), sums up the typical confusions of this term in the eighteenth century.

8. Voltaire, , Essai sur les Moeurs et l'Esprit des Nations (Paris, 1963), 2 volsGoogle Scholar.

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10. Robertson, , America, pp. 60, 86, 101Google Scholar.

11. See D. Forbes's Preface to his edition of Ferguson, A., An Essay on the History of Civil Society (hereafter, Civil Society), (Edinburgh, 1966), p. xivGoogle Scholar.

12. See, for example, Hume, D., Essays (London, 1903)Google Scholar, Part I, Essay XIV, “Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences”: “Curiosity, or the love of knowledge, has a very limited influence …” See also note 41. And in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part VII, Section III, Smith, having described something as “a mere matter of philosophical curiosity,” proceeds to examine it.

13. Smith, A., “A Letter to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review” (1755), in Lindgren, J. R. (ed.), The Early Writings of Adam Smith (New York, 1967), pp. 23–28Google Scholar, was specifically designed inter alia to make a wider public aware of this work.

14. Ferguson's technical distinction, drawn from Montesquieu, between ‘savages’ and ‘barbarians’ did not, I think, attain currency. Robertson used the terms interchangeably. See America, pp. 55, 57, 86, 91.

15. As was the case in Scotland. The Highland/Lowland, Scotland/England antithesis was often in Smith's mind. See his An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London, n.d.), pp. 58, 70, 314, 549, 757Google Scholar.

16. See, for example, Colden, Cadwallader, History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada (3rd edn.; London, 1755Google Scholar): “We are fond of searching into remote antiquity, to know the Manners of our earliest Progenitors; and if I am not mistaken, the Indians are living Images of them.” See also Ferguson, , Civil Society, p. 79Google Scholar, J. Millar, (infra), Ch. I, section I, and Robertson, , America, pp. 85–86Google Scholar.

17. Ibid.

18. For this reason Scottish conjectural history is to be distinguished from the grandiose schemes of ‘historical evolution’ of the nineteenth century. An assimilation between these distinct kinds of writing is strongly implied in Meek, R., “Adam Smith, Turgot and the Four Stages Theory,” Journal of the History of Political Economy, III (Spring, 1971)Google Scholar, and in Swingewood, A., “The Origins of Sociology,” British Journal of Sociology, XXI, (2) (1970)Google Scholar.

19. See comments by Nisbet, R., Social Change and History (Oxford, 1969), p. 208Google Scholar.

20. A remark which so delighted Hume that he reproduced it without attribution, no doubt expecting the reference to be recognized.

21. Civil Society, p. 3.

22. See Formigari, L., “Language and Society in the Later Eighteenth Century,” Journal of the History of Ideas, XXXV (1974)Google Scholar, passim, and C. Berry, “Adam Smith's Considerations of Language,” in the same volume.

23. This is stated most clearly by Hutcheson, F., the doven of the school, in his Introduction to Moral Philosophy (Glasgow, 1747)Google Scholar, Book I, Ch. I.

24. “Ungesellige Geselligkeit”, I. Kant, , Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, in Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin, 1912), VIIIGoogle Scholar.

25. America, pp. 93, 102-03, 116.

26. Civil Society, p. 105.

27. Ibid., p. 6.

28. Ibid., p. 92.

29. America, p. 92.

30. Hume's antipathy to Ferguson's Essay—“It is needless to enter into a Detail, where almost everything appears objectionable,” Letter 303 in Greig, J. (ed.), Hume's Letters, (Vol. II)Google Scholar—has not been explained. E. Mossner's assertion that “… what he [Hume] found alien and untenable was surely the insistence upon the inevitability of progress, the principle of perfection,” [The Life of David Hume (London, 1954), p. 543Google Scholar], is absurd.

31. Cıvil Society, p. 124. On this whole subject, Forbes, D., “Scientific Whiggism: Adam Smith and John Millar,” Cambridge Journal, VII (1954)Google Scholar, may be consulted with profit.

32. Ibid., 22.

33. Contrast, for example, Rousseau's lapse into this kind of talk when ‘explaining’ the ‘origin’ of government as the result of a “most profound plan” and a “design” (Discourse, pp. 204-05), and Voltaire's habitual talk about great men; see Essai sur les Moeurs, I, 251, 392, 495Google Scholar; and his assertion that it is “le génie et la fermeté d'un seul homme qui lutte contre les préjugés de la multitude,” cited by R. Pomeau in his Preface to Essai, ibid., xliv.

34. So much, of course, is clear from Stewart's comments quoted earlier.

35. Robertson, , in his History of the Reign of Charles V (London, 1857), p. 339Google Scholar, thus regarded the time of Luther, and so did Hume that of Shakespeare, , in his History of Great Britain, ed. Forbes, D. (London, 1970), p. 247Google Scholar.

36. Burrow, J., Evolution and Society (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar, comments ably on James Mill.

37. Evidence for this may be found in Lehman, W., John Millar of Glasgow (Cambridge, 1960)Google Scholar, Introduction.

38. J. J. Rousseau, Du Contrat Social, Book III, Ch. 15.

39. Hume, , Essays, Part I, Essay XIV, p. 113Google Scholar.

40. This view is most charmingly stated in R. Meek's article cited in note 18 above.

41. Hume, D., Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. (Oxford, 1902)Google Scholar, Section 65.

42. Smith, A., The Wealth of Nations, Book I, Ch. I, p. 11Google Scholar.

43. See Lamb, R. B., “Adam Smith's System: Sympathy not Self-Interest,” Journal of the History of Ideas, XXXV (1974)Google Scholar, passim.

44. The phrase seems to be Burke's, but the thought is the Scots'. But see Voltaire, , Essai sur les Moeurs, I, 315Google Scholar: “L'opinion, qui gouverne le monde ….”

45. Robertson, W., “The Situation of the World at the Time of Christ's Appearance” (a sermon, published in 1755) in Works, I, lxxxiiGoogle Scholar.

46. The closest approximation to such a view is Robertson's somewhat extravagant assertion: “In every inquiry concerning the operations of men when united together in society, the first object of attention should be their mode of subsistence. Accordingly as that varies their laws and policy must be different.” Ibid., II, 104. The context of these remarks was however the ‘savage’ peoples of America; they were not programmatic.

47. Giarrizzo, G., David Hume Politico e Storico (Turin, 1962)Google Scholar, passim. See esp. Part I, Section III.

48. America, p. 9.

49. Giarrizzo, Hume.

50. Heilbroner, R., “The Paradox of Progress: Decline and Decay in the ‘Wealth of Nations,’” Journal of the History of Ideas, XXXV (1973)Google Scholar.

51. Robertson, , America, p. 82Google Scholar.

52. See, for example, the extreme reservations expressed by Hume to Turgot about the latter's “agreeable and laudable, if not too sanguine” progressivism. Greig, , Letters, II, Letter 417Google Scholar.

53. See Robertson, , America, p. 90Google Scholar, where he casually refers to man's “progress through the different stages of society, as he gradually advances from the infant state of civil life towards its maturity and decline.” (my italics).

54. Human Understanding, section 65.

55. “Essays on Philosophical Subjects”, Early Writings; see esp. pp. 32–52Google Scholar.

56. Montesquieu, Preface to De l'Esprit Des Lois in Oeuvres Completes (Pleiade Edition), II, 229Google Scholar.

57. See the “manifesto of the Empirical Method,“ (Forbes); Ferguson, , Civil Society, pp. 2–3Google Scholar.

58. R. Nisbet, Social Change and History.