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THE INTELLECTUAL
DEVELOPMENT OF SCOTLAND
THE INTELLECTUAL
DEVELOPMENT OF SCOTLAND
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HECTOR. MACPHERSON
AUTHOR OF “A CENTURY OF INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT,”
“Books To READ AND How TO READ THEM,” “HERBERT SPENCER :
THE MAN AND HIS work,” ETC.
H OD DER AND STO U GHT ON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
RICHARD CLAY & SoNS, LIMITED,
BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.,
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
T(9
SIR WILLIAM ROBERTSON NICOLL
WHOSE UNTIRING DEVOTION TO THE HIGHER IDEALS OF SCOTTISH:
THOTJGHT AND LIFE THIROUGHOUT A. PUBLIC CAREER OF
CONSPICUOIJS STUCCESS HAS GAINED FOR HIM
THE ENDURING ADMIRATION of His
FELLOW-COUNTRY MEN
PREFACE
ABOUT the various phases of the intellectual
life of Scotland much has been written, but so
far as I know there has been no attempt to
deal with the subject as a connected whole.
In regard to the scientific side of the national
development, I have been greatly indebted to
the Principal of Edinburgh University, Sir
William Turner, who in his recent address to
the Royal Society of Edinburgh sketched in
masterly manner the rise and progress of
scientific study in Scotland. This department
of the national life has been somewhat over-
shadowed by our theological and ecclesiastical
controversies; and, judging from Sir William
Turner’s illuminating survey, an entire volume
is needed to do justice to the subject.
In my book I have not aimed at exhaustive-
ness of treatment; the aim has been the more
modest one of noting the salient points in the
vii .a.
267273
viii PREFACE
evolutionary process, and my reward will be
great if the reader is sent to study in detail the
subjects with which the volume deals.
Much of the material has appeared in vari-
ous public prints, the Glasgow Herald, T. P.’s
Weekly and the late Scottish Review, the editors
of which I cordially thank for their permission
to reproduce the articles.
II. M.
October 1911.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
THE STARTING-PoinT : THE REFORMATION
CHAPTER II
THE REACTION: MoDERATISM
CHAPTER III
THE CRISIS IN THEOLOGY
CHAPTER IV
THE RISE OF PHILOSOPHY .
PAGE
.23
37
57
ix
X CONTENTS
CHAPTER V
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER VI
THE SCIENTIFIC MovKMENT
CHAPTER VII
THE SCIENTIFIC MovKMENT (continued)
CHAPTER VIII
THE ECONOMIC MoVEMENT .
CHAPTER IX
THE LITERARY SPIRIT
CHAPTER, X
BURNS AND HIs EPoCH
PAGE
73
87
113
135
155
173
CONTENTS
ºxi
CHAPTER XI
THE GERMAN INFLUENCE
CHAPTER XII
THE EvoluTION of FICTION
INDEx.
PAGE
183
197
219
THE STARTING-POINT :
THE REFORMATION
CHAPTER I
THE STARTING-PoſNT : THE REFORMATION
IN dealing with a nation’s Intellectual De-
velopment the historian has two courses open
to him. As the present writer has elsewhere
remarked, an historical student may content
himself with splitting his subject into sec-
tions and dealing with each section in the
spirit of a narrator pure and simple. On
the other hand, he may essay the more difficult
task of seizing the dynamic principle of intel-
lectual development and tracing its working
through the various sections of thought and
life. The value of the latter method, if
successfully applied, is that history, instead
of being a chaos of unrelated facts, is seen
to be an intelligible and luminous evolution.
We discover the relations which exist between
the various factors in a nation’s history :
B 2 3
4 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
theology, philosophy, science, literature, by
means of the dynamic principle, are seen to
be bound together in organic unity.
What, then, is the dynamic principle of
historical evolution ? In the opening chapter
of the present writer’s Century of Intellectual
Development an answer was given to this im-
portant question—an answer which as being
applicable to the subject under consideration
may fitly be reproduced : “Taking a large
view of history it will be found that man’s
intellect is mainly occupied upon three great
problems—God, the universe, and man as an
individual and a social being. The controlling
factor in the process is man’s conception
of the Unseen Power upon which all things
rest, and of which nature and man are mani-
festations. If we conceive of the Unseen
Power as a supernatural Being, who by
revelations has made known his will to man,
then philosophy, science and literature will
be moulded by, and permeated with, that
conception. Even the social order will feel its
powerful influence. Society will be framed on
theocratic lines on the principle of authority.”
There comes a time when the principle of
OF SCOTLAND 5
authority—valuable at a certain stage in
civilization—weighs heavily on the social
Order, and by stereotyping ideas and institu-
tions results in intellectual and social stagna-
tion. In the sixteenth century, under the
sway of Romanism, the intellectual and social
life of Europe suffered what may be termed
arrested development. In the interest of
humanity it was necessary that the barriers
to progress should be thrown down. The
great liberating movement which changed the
current of European thought and activity is
known in history as the Reformation. From
it we date the beginning of Scotland’s intel-
lectual evolution.
There are those who contend that in Scot-
land the Reformation was detrimental to the
intellectual movement. It may be well, there-
fore, to deal with the oft-repeated charge that
the Reformation killed the germs of Humanism
which under James IV gave promise of brilliant
development. That reign has been described
as “the golden age of Scottish poetry.”
Why was the golden age so short-lived 2 The
answer of the anti-Reformation school is that
the golden age disappeared in the epidemic
6 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
of gloomy and intolerant fanaticism of the
religion of Knox and his successors. The
explanation is altogether wide of the mark.
The outburst of literary genius at the time of
James IV was not the herald of a new day,
the early rays of the rising sun. Rather was
it the declining splendour of approaching
night, the fitful gleams of the setting sun.
The literature of the “golden age * had no
future, simply because in a time when society
was passing out of the feudal stage it gave
expression to sentiments and ideals which
beyond court circles had no hold upon men’s
hearts. Before there is a national literature
there must first be a nation, and to the making
of a nation there go three things—unity of
belief, unity of sentiment, and unity of feeling.
During the pre-Reformation period Scotland
was not a nation; it was a collection of warring
atoms. Unity of belief was absent, because
there was a revolt of the thinking section of
the people against the doctrines and practices
of the Romish Church. Unity of sentiment
and feeling there could not be in the absence
of unity of belief. Any literary movement
under these conditions was bound to be
OF SCOTLAND 7
evanescent. It lacked the fundamental element
of durability.
In his volume, The Transition Period, in the
European Literature series, Mr. Gregory Smith
has the following corroborative remarks—
“With the reign of James IV we enter on
the classic period of Scots poetry. In some re-
spects it illustrates a mere access of high spirits
in companionship with sudden violence and
social exuberance—a kind of carnival before
the Lenten fastings of the sixteenth century. . .
It does not even inspire any patriotic verse,
such as we find in the days of Queen Bess.
In Scotland, on the other hand, poetry was
the expression of the narrower life of the
court, and the influences which it felt were
specific and personal. Literature,” adds Mr.
Smith, “ was confined, almost to the exclu-
sion of everything else, in the directly alle-
gorical mood of a dying tradition.”
Rightly understood, there can be no dur-
able literature apart from a healthy national
life; and in the evolution of the Protestant
religion in Scotland the first clearly-marked
stage was the creation of a healthy national
life. In these days we have come to think
8 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
of religion as a thing solely between man and
his Maker. This is entirely a modern idea. At
the time of the Reformation, and till long
after, religion was a matter of State concern
as well as an individual affair. When the
Reformers denied the right of Rome to close
the approach of man to his Maker except
through priestly mediation, they brought to
the front the modern idea that man as man
has certain fundamental religious rights, with
which no Church on earth had the right to
tamper. But the Roman Catholic Church
claimed that right, and, what was more,
claimed to have the power of coercion, which
it did not scruple to exercise over nations as
well as individuals.
The question which confronted the Reform-
ers was this : If the people as such have the
right to worship God apart from priestly
mediation and Romanist practices generally,
what should be their attitude to Romanism,
which claimed the right to put down liberty
of conscience by despotic exercise of civil
and political power 2 The answer of Knox
was decisive—the attitude of a Protestant
people to the claim of Rome must be one of
OF SCOTLAND 9
resistance. Loyalty to God meant disloyalty
to the existing State, and in the struggle
which ensued it followed that the success of
the new religion was impossible except by
making the State Protestant instead of
Romanist. This is the key to the policy of
Knox, whose remark that he feared the cele-
bration of Mass by Mary at Holyrood more
than ten thousand armed men has been cited
by drawing-room critics of the kid-gloved
type as a specimen of the Reformer’s ferocious
intolerance. What Knox saw, and saw clearly,
was that the public recognition of Romanist
practices was calculated to increase the in-
fluence of the Romanist Church to the detri-
ment of Protestantism.
How was Rome to be fought 2 Not by
isolated individuals, but by the co-operation
of those who believed that not only religion,
but civil and political liberty were at stake.
The three great nation-making forces—unity
of belief, of feeling, and of sentiment, came
into play, and thus in the course of the evolu-
tion of the Protestant religion there also
evolved the Protestant State. It is a favourite
contention of a certain class of writers that
10 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
in substituting Protestantism for Romanism
Scotland simply substituted one form of des-
potism for another—the despotism of the
theocratic regime of Geneva for that of Rome.
Where is the difference, it is asked, between
an infallible Pope and an infallible book?
The answer is plain. The one crushes intel-
lectual vitality in the germ by insisting upon
abject acceptance of ecclesiastical and theo-
logical decrees, while the other, by making
a book the standard, sends the individual in
an interpretative mood to the standard, by
which he tests the dogmas of the Church and
the conduct of her leaders. Once the right of
private judgment is recognized it extends to
all departments, thereby greatly stimulating
the intellectual life of a people.
In Scotland the Reformation did its work
with great thoroughness. In this respect Scot-
land contrasts favourably with England and
Germany. In England the work of the Re-
formers was arrested long before the contro-
versy with Rome was logically finished; while
in Germany Lutheranism retained something
of the spirit and tendencies of Romanism.
Political conditions had much to do with the
OF SCOTLAND II.
different forms which the Reformed religion
assumed in the three countries; but the suc-
cess of Scotland is mainly to be attributed
to the fact that it confronted Romanism
with a life-system as comprehensive as its own.
It is sometimes claimed for Protestantism
in Scotland that the principal weapon with
which it fought and overthrew Romanism
was what is called the right of private judg-
ment. In the religious sphere that of course
meant that man as man had the right to
approach God apart from the mediatorship
of the Church of Rome, which not only arro-
gated to itself infallibility in the sphere of
doctrine, but also claimed a monopoly of
the conditions by which Divine blessings could
descend to man. True, the Reformers in
Scotland took their stand upon the principle
that religion was a personal matter between
man and his Maker; but had they not gone
beyond this contention, they would never
have shaken the entire fabric of Romanism
to its foundations. Lutheranism and Angli-
canism both failed in thoroughness. In Scot-
land alone was the victory over Romanism
complete. What is the explanation ? Simply
12 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
this, that Scotland confronted Romanism with
Calvinism.
Hasty students of theology are apt to iden-
tify Calvinism with certain doctrines—election,
reprobation, etc.—which are highly distaste-
ful to the modern mind. We never can come
to a real understanding of Calvinism till we
recognize that it stands for something much
wider than a theory of the Atonement with
special reference to the future condition of
the non-elect. Had Calvinism been purely
a theological theory, it would never have
conquered Romanism. Calvinism conquered
because it was presented in the form of an
all-embracing life-system, by means of which
it was able to combat the equally compre-
hensive life-system of Romanism.
Then, as now, Romanism aspired to be
more than a religion. It aspired to take all
phases of thought and life into its embrace;
it presented itself as the interpreter of the
great facts of existence—God, man, and the
world. Romanism took under its care not
only theology, but philosophy, science, and
politics. It professed to meet not only the
needs of man, but also of society. Mani-
OF SCOTLAND I 3
festly such a compact system could be effec-
tively dealt with only by another system
equally compact, and more fitted to deal
with the religious, theological, ecclesiastical,
and political needs of the new time. It is a
trite remark that in the sphere of Church
government and politics Calvinism carried
with it the germs of democracy; but its fun-
damental work at the Reformation lay in the
sphere of theology. By their theory of God
all religions stand or fall. The object of a
man’s worship, as Carlyle somewhere says,
determines the character of that man. Now,
the grave errors of Romanism took their rise
in a conception of God essentially pagan—
a conception which carried with it material-
ism in the shape of image-worship, supersti-
tion in the shape of belief in magical rites,
and a mechanical idea of morality which easily
degenerated into immorality as the result of
a grossly anthropomorphic conception of God
and the method of approach to Him.
If Romanism was to receive a mortal wound,
the first essential was to strike at its con-
ception of God. Calvinism did this by placing
in the forefront of its creed the doctrine of
I4 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
the sovereignty of God. Calvin and Knox
did for their day what the prophets did in the
days of Israel—they protested against idolatry,
against the dragging down of the Holy One
to the level of the pagan deities, with the
result of making religion a round of senseless
ceremonies, and salvation not a matter of
ethical purification, but of propitiation based
on commercial principles. In the eyes of
Calvinism image-worship and all idolatrous
practices were an insult and abomination to
God, who was viewed as the High and Lofty
One, the Sovereign over all, the Creator of the
world and of man, the stern opponent of sin,
the disposer of events. In a word, what
Calvinism as the first step in the Reformation
did was to overthrow the pagan conceptions
of God which Romanism had fostered, and to
bring the mind of Scotland back to the pure
and elevated notions of Deity which are to
be found in the Bible. And just as we find
the Jewish prophets insisting on the uprooting
of idolatry by the destruction of images, so
we find Knox laying special emphasis on the
removal from Scotland of all outward emblems
of what may be called Romanist paganism.
OF SCOTLAND 15
He saw, and saw rightly, that it was hopeless
to get into the minds of the people Biblical
conceptions of God so long as pagan emblems
and pagan influences were tolerated. At the
Reformation, then, the theological evolution
of Scotland had its root in an august concep-
tion which stands in the forefront of Protes-
tantism—the sovereignty of God, as against
the pagan ideas which the Roman Catholic
Church tolerated, if not encouraged.
A very important question arises here—
How does the Calvinistic conception of God
fare in these days of philosophy and science 2
Can the advanced thinkers of to-day afford
to look upon the Calvinistic conception of
God as good enough in past times as against
the corrupt views of Rome, but altogether
discredited by modern thought 2 -
It is a striking fact that the revolt against
Calvinism began not from the side of philo-
sophy and science, but from the side of the
Church. In the Scottish Church loud com-
plaints were made of the harshness of Calvin-
ism, in the extreme emphasis it lays upon
justice to the exclusion of the tenderer attri-
butes. The Fatherhood of God was substi-
16 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
tuted for the Sovereignty of God. It is an
equally striking fact that while a large section
of the clergy were repudiating Calvinism,
philosophers and scientists were paying to
it unconscious tributes. The strange fact has
to be recorded that the Calvinist conception
of the universe is more in harmony with
modern philosophic and scientific conceptions
than is the Broad Church view. It is now seen
that the old theologians of the Reforming
and Covenanting days grappled with marked
ability with the problems which occupy the
minds of the Hegels and the Spencers of our
own time. As I have said in my Century of
Intellectual Development—
“The conception of the universe reached
by those old Calvinists was in substance not
far removed from that reached by modern
German and British philosophers. The last
word of philosophy, German and British, is
determinism. Hegel, in the hands of Mr.
Bradley, a brilliant Oxford thinker, makes
short work of what is understood as free-will;
and thinkers of the scientific school of Huxley
are favourable to the view that man is an
automaton. Now what is philosophical and
OF SCOTLAND 17
scientific determinism but Calvinistic fore-
ordination in a new dress 2 The only differ-
ence is, that modern philosophers and scientists
attribute to Nature a universal necessity which
has deprived man of freedom, while the Cal-
vinists interpreted the necessity of Nature
as an ordination of God. In regard to the
ultimate nature of things those old Calvinists
reached a view which is being endorsed by the
latest philosophic and scientific interpreters.
Science brings us down to atoms. Philosophy
cannot rest in the atomic conception of the
Cosmos. It reduces the atoms to centres
of force and energy. Thus we come to the
view that matter is but the phenomenal
appearance of an Infinite Energy which,
though unseen, is the real basis of matter,
the source of life, the inspirer of law and order.
Spencer’s Infinite Energy, what is it but the
Calvinistic essence of God, which is every-
where, directly and immediately energetic 2
Hegel and Spencer can go no farther in their
researches and definitions than the words of
the Shorter Catechism : “God is a Spirit,
infinite, eternal, and unchangeable.’”
If the Church of to-day is to regain its
influence, it will need to infuse into its teach-
ing something of the spirit of Calvinism.
C
18 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Without losing its hold on the tender side of
religion, the Church will require to impart
to its theology something of the awe which
filled the hearts of the old Hebrews and the
Calvinists, and which fills the minds also of
reverent philosophers and scientists in presence
of the Infinite, the Eternal, the All-Embracing.
In the words of the author of Natural Religion :
“If men can add once more the Christian
confidence to the Hebraic (and I might add
the Calvinistic) awe, the Christianity that will
result will be of a higher kind than that which
passes too often for Christianity now, which,
so far from being love added to fear, and cast-
ing out fear, is a presumptuous and effeminate
love that never knew fear.” -
From the anthropological point of view it
is quite correct to speak of the Reformation
as destroying the whole system of sacerdotal
mediatorship, and bringing man as man face
to face with God. From the theological stand-
point it is also correct to say that in Scotland,
under the influence of Calvinism, the Reforma-
tion also elevated and purified the idea of
God, which under Romanism had been lowered
and degraded. Just as Luther brought religion
OF SCOTLAND 19
back to the Biblical idea by reviving the doctrine
of Justification by Faith, so Calvin brought
religion back to the Biblical idea by reviving
in men’s minds the idea of the glory, the
majesty, and the holiness of the Creator.
Not that this idea was absent from the
writings of Luther and other Reformers. What
is meant is that with Calvinism the doctrine
of God stands in the forefront : it is made,
so to speak, the starting-point of the religious
life, and of a comprehensive system of thought.
Luther’s primary concern was with the salva-
tion of man; Calvin’s primary concern was
with the glory of God. In this Calvin was
strictly following in the track of the Biblical
writers. What is the dominating conception
of God in the Bible 2 Is it not that of a
Being in presence of whose infinite and awful
majesty the human mind instinctively bends
in adoration—a Being whose favour is better
than life, and in awe-stricken communion
with whom is the highest bliss of which the
soul of man is capable 2 How are we to think
of this Being 2 We know what Romanism
thought. In our day thinkers have been busy
with speculations, but none of them have
C 2
20 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
succeeded in presenting the modern mind with
such a full view as that of Calvinism. The
problem is to find room in a satisfying con-
ception of God for personality. Personality,
we are told, is a human attribute, and cannot
be predicated of the infinite and eternal
ground of the Universe. From Spinoza and
Hegel to Spencer philosophy has been baffled
in the attempt to frame a conception which,
while doing justice to the ideas of infinity
and eternity, yet finds a place for the element
of personality, without which we get no
farther than a dead Universe, pursuing its
purposeless way to a purposeless end.
The value of Calvinism is that, while purify-
ing the idea of God from the errors of Roman-
ism, it also saves it from the blank despair
of an agnostic materialism, and an equally
agnostic idealism. The God of Calvinism is
a God whose greatness no mind can measure,
but whose personality is manifested in His
all-embracing purpose in nature and in history.
All thinkers agree that there is Unity at the
heart of things, and the latest thinkers of
eminence, like Lotze, are coming round to
the Calvinistic view, that to this Unity must
OF SCOTLAND 21
be attributed personality and purpose, and
that in the great world-drama there is trace-
able a providential ordering of events. In
the theological evolution of Scotland, Cal-
vinism not only played an important part
at the time of the Reformation, but it
may safely be said that it embraced in its
idea of God conceptions which will hold a
permanent place in the theology of the imme-
diate future. Along with the permanent ele-
ments, Calvinism contained notions which
must be discarded. It aspired to a familiar
reading of the Divine will, an intimacy with
the Divine purpose in regard to the future
of the race, which has done much to bring it
into discredit, and undoubtedly did much to
provoke a reaction.
THE REACTION: MODERATISM
CHAPTER II
THE REACTION : MODERATISM
THE reaction against Calvinism took the
form of Deism, which in Scotland became
known as Moderatism. The reaction was
partly due to the fact that the Reformed
Church under Calvinism took much too narrow
a view of its functions. Modelled on the
pattern of Geneva, the Kirk was animated
by the theocratic spirit. Its ideal State was
more Judaic than Christian. The clergy
desired to inaugurate in Scotland a reign of
saints. Their ideal was a Commonwealth,
the laws of which were to be formed not by
secular methods, but by study of the Bible.
At a time when Scotland was beginning to
enter on its great industrial career, when
literature and philosophy were making their
influence felt, the exacting supernaturalism of
the Kirk came into collision with the secular
25
26 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
development of the nation, with the result
that an attempt was made to so modify the-
ology as to make it harmonize with the new
intellectual and social conditions. The re-
action showed itself in the Kirk early in the
eighteenth century. John Simson, Professor
of Divinity at Glasgow, has been well described
as the first notable heretic in the Scottish
Church. His name is associated with two
departures from Calvinism—the one in the
direction of Arminianism, and the other in
the direction of Unitarianism, or, as it was
then called, Arianism.
My intention is not to detail the history of
the various heresies in the Kirk, but rather
to show the intellectual and social conditions
which gave them birth. The new line of anti-
Calvinistic thought is undoubtedly traceable
to Francis Hutcheson, who influentially repre-
sented the reaction from what was described
as the bigoted creed of the Covenanters and
their fanatical enthusiasm for principles which
seemed to be subversive of a well-regulated
social Order. Tired of the turmoil of the
seventeenth century, men like Hutcheson
yearned for a social state which would be
OF SCOTLAND 27
favourable to the cultivation of learning and
good-fellowship.
Deism in the subtle form of Moderatism was
indeed a formidable foe to Calvinism. In
opposition to Calvinism, with its doctrine of
election, the Hutcheson school, after the style
of Shaftesbury, postulated the existence of a
God whose ruling desire was the happiness of
all His creatures; and in opposition to Calvin-
ism, with its doctrine of human depravity, the
need for spiritual regeneration as a preliminary
to obedience to the Divine will and communion
with God, the Hutcheson school viewed man
as, on the whole, a self-reliant being, who
was supplied by two guides, reason and con-
science, in obedience to which he was enabled
to fulfil the purpose of his being. The Moder-
ates looked askance at enthusiasm, and greeted
the ecstatic utterances of the Covenanters and
their spiritual outpourings with contempt and
derision. The Moderates stripped theology of
all its mystical qualities; they kept to the
broad-beaten paths of morality. Theological
literature, like that associated with the names
of Boston, Rutherford, and the field preachers
—literature which dealt with the soul’s direct
28 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
communion with God—was dismissed as un-
worthy of the consideration of rational thinkers.
And here we reach a vital point in the
controversy between Calvinism and Deism,
between Evangelical Protestantism and Moder-
atism. Calvinism with its doctrine of God,
as I have shown, has stood the test of modern
thought. Can its doctrine of the relation
between man and God also stand the test ?
The deistic conception of life which underlay
Moderatism seemed to make impossible the
kinship of man with God, implied in such a
phrase as the “mystical union.” God was
viewed as existing outside of His universe, as
external to it as an engineer is to an engine,
or a watchmaker to a watch. God was a
lawgiver, and the relation of man to Him
was that of a subject to a sovereign. Now
the Calvinists held that God is a universal
presence, the life of nature, and the inspirer
of human souls. He is not only our lawgiver,
but our life—in Him we live and move and have
our being. What has modern thought to say
to this 2 The point to be noted here is that the
idea which underlies the “mystical union *
is an idea towards which philosophy for some
OF SCOTLAND - 29
time has been tending. When Spencer broke
away from the empiricism of Hume and Mill,
and made the fundamental basis of his philo-
sophy to rest not on a bare knowledge of finite
details, but in recognition of an Eternal Energy,
from which all things proceed, he unconsciously
entered on the path which leads to mysticism,
though it was of the old type, which consisted,
as the late Master of Balliol well remarks, in
conceiving of the Absolute in its most abstract
form. Still, the mystical element is present,
even as a germ, whenever, as in Spencer and in
Hegel, man is viewed as part of a universal
process or life. -
Sooner or later the question arises, Is it
possible for man, either by thought or feeling,
to come into conscious union with the Source
of this universal life 2 Hegel declared it was
possible, but by mixing up the universal and
the particular, the human and the divine, he sub-
stituted a pantheistic for a theistic conception
of the Universe. Under the inspiration of Lotze
a school of thinkers sprang up who conceived
the Absolute as a universal life, which, as
“immanent in our finite and dependent life,
30 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
renders us capable at once of philosophical
thought, of religious aspiration and devotion,
of ethical self-renunciation, and of that highest
love which is more fundamental than all indi-
vidual differences, and as it takes possession
of the soul, absorbs, and so annihilates, all
private egoistic claims.”
According to this philosophic conception, in
the words of Professor Upton in his Bases of
Religious Belief—
“the Supreme Object of religious belief is
never entirely an inferred reality, but is even
more directly apprehended in the soul’s higher
life than the external world of Nature is directly
apprehended in our sentient and perceptional
experience. With this immediate conscious-
ness of the Universal and Absolute is indivisibly
blended the consciousness of our dependence
on, and our intrinsic relationship to, this eternal
Reason, this source of categorical Imperatives,
this immanent presence of an all-embracing, all-
unifying Love.”
Or, as Emerson puts it : “The rapture of
the Moravian and the Quietist, the revival
of the Calvinistic Churches, the experiences
of the Methodists, are varying forms of the
OF SCOTLAND 31
shudder of awe and delight with which the indi-
vidual soul always mingles with the universal
soul.” Translate this into theological language,
and you are not far from the mysticism of
Calvinism, and you have a key to the mys-
tical union which holds such a prominent place
in the Reformed Theology.
Moderatism, with its deistical outlook and
its tendency to minimize the supernatural,
found a congenial environment in Scotland
at the Union. With the decay of theological,
ecclesiastical and political strife, the national
mind woke up to the necessity of cultivating
the intellectual and industrial side of life.
How great was the intellectual leeway that had
to be made up is seen from the following utter-
ance of Carlyle : “For a long time after Scot-
land had become British we had no literature;
at the date when Addison and Steele were
writing their Spectator our own good Thomas
Boston was writing with noblest intent, but
alike in defiance of grammar and philosophy,
his Fourfold State of Man. Then came the
schisms in our national Church, and the fiercer
schisms in our body politic. Theologic ink,
with gall enough in both cases, seemed to have
32 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
blotted out the intellect of the country. Lord
Kames made nearly the first attempt at writing
English, and ere long Hume, Robertson, Smith
and a whole host of followers attracted hither
the eyes of all Europe.” To the Moderates
largely belongs the credit of the intellectual
revival, whatever their defects—and they were
many—in the sphere of religion. The latter
half of the eighteenth century, during which
Moderatism lent the weight of its influence to
raising the intellectual status of Scotland, was
characterized by extraordinary brilliancy. As
has been well said, nowhere but in France was
there so rich and varied an efflorescence of
genius. As Mr. Mathieson in his really admir-
able work The Awakening of Scotland remarks :
“The England of that day produced no such
philosopher as Hume; no such opponent of his
scepticism as Campbell; no such historians—
to adopt the contemporary verdict—as Hume
and Robertson, no such biographer as Boswell;
no such preacher as Blair; no such economist
as Adam Smith; no such physician as Cullen;
no such chemist as Black; no such engineer as
Watt; and it was within this period that
Robert Burns, the finest and fullest embodi-
OF SCOTLAND - 33
ment of his country’s genius, lived and died.”
It is not for a moment to be supposed that the
Moderates had a monopoly of intellectual
power; but they had, what the Evangelicals
lacked, the genius of literary expression. The
late Dr. John Watson (Ian Maclaren) puts the
matter in a nutshell in his comment upon the
oblivion that has overtaken the learned pro-
ductions of the leading Evangelicals of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: “Those
theologians of the Kirk have passed into
oblivion because their theology was divorced
from letters. If they could have written like
Hooker or Bunyan they would have lived,
because they could have spoken to us in our
own tongue at its best; because they wrote in
a local style they have died.”
In so far as the Moderates emphasized the
great value of learning and literature, which
the Evangelicals unduly depreciated, their
influence was beneficial ; but their gospel of
culture, resting as it did on a superficial esti-
mate of human nature, was bound, sooner
or later, to prove its insufficiency when con-
fronted with the grim realities of life. The
French Revolution dealt Moderatism in Scot-
D
34 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
land—as it did Deism in England—a staggering
blow. In presence of that great eruption of
evil, the theory of the natural goodness of man
and the all-sufficiency of reason seemed the
product of a poetic imagination. Was there
not in that terrible convulsion striking con-
firmation of the Calvinistic theory of the
depravity of man 2 Moderatism in Scotland,
which at best was confined to a small section
of the clergy and laity, could not withstand
the spiritual reaction caused by the French
Revolution. The reaction took the form of
an Evangelical revival, which had for one of
its important results the bringing to the front
the question of patronage, thereby leading to
the Disruption.
It is significant that the leaders of the
Disruption were also leaders in the Evangelical
revival. The Moderates were greatly weak-
ened when Chalmers left them, and to him
and Dr. Andrew Thomson is largely due the
rise of Evangelicalism in power and popularity.
Nor must we forget Dr. Thomas M'Crie, who,
by his intellectual penetration and his wide
culture, showed that there was no necessary
antagonism between Calvinism and literature.
OF SCOTLAND 35
Hugh Miller's contributions to the Witness
further showed that it was possible to combine
hearty acceptance of the Evangelical doctrines
with a vivid interest in science and literature.
Moreover, by his marvellous wealth of sym-
pathy, Chalmers showed that the old Evan-
gelicalism, which had been denounced for its
narrowness, was wide enough to embrace all
phases of intellectual activity, from theology
to sociology. Unhappily, the controversial
atmosphere of the Disruption period was not
favourable to the high conception which Dr.
Chalmers and Hugh Miller formed of Evan-
gelicalism. Gradually the theological and the
ecclesiastical spirit dominated the Church,
the result being the divorce between religion
and life, between theology, science, and
literature.
How far the gulf had widened between
theology and literature was seen in the un-
couth form in which the Evangelical leaders
presented their doctrines. In his day William
Cunningham was a leading champion in the
theological and ecclesiastical field. His intel-
lectual massiveness is apparent on every page
of his writings ; but the reader will search in
D 2
36 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
vain for anything approaching sweetness and
light. Men like Cunningham were so absorbed
in the work of defining the relations between
Church and State, and in defending and
expounding the Reformed theology, that
they had no time to cultivate the graces of
style.
THE CRISIS IN THEOLOGY
CHAPTER III
THE CRISIS IN THEOLOGY
WITH the dying down of ecclesiastical strife
the Free Church settled to the work of con-
solidation and organization. In addition to its
championship of Spiritual Independence it
prided itself on being the defender of orthodoxy
as against the heretical tendencies of the new
Moderate party which had grown up within
the Establishment. In the training of the
ministry it certainly did not neglect the intel-
lectual life. Germany attracted many of the
abler students, who, overleaping provincial
limitations, returned with their minds broad-
ened by European culture. At this period in
the Free Church were to be found distinguished
students who combined the fervour of the
Evangelicals with the intellectualism of the
Moderates. In their contest with the Estab-
lishment the leaders of the Free Church, in
39
40 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
the rôle of defenders of the Reformed
theology, took their stand upon the Confes-
sion of Faith. In this they were supported
by the Churches of the Secession. Sooner or
later there was bound to be collision between
the old dogmatic statement of the Reforma-
tion Church and the newer views made in
Germany.
The orthodox party were assailed from two
opposite directions. Inside the two Evan-
gelical Churches—the United Presbyterian and
the Free—were men who did not breathe freely
in the theological atmosphere. In the United
Secession Church the doctrine of the Atone-
ment, in so far as its benefits were limited to
the elect, was assailed by a young minister, the
Rev. James Morison, who, on being expelled
from the Church, started a new sect known as
the Evangelical Union. Expulsion was no
remedy. The new spirit could not be exorcized
by ecclesiastical measures. At a later period
the spirit of revolt in the United Presbyterian
Church found a representative in the Rev.
David Macrae, who, for his emphatic dissent
against the severe Calvinism of the Confession
of Faith, was also expelled. The outcome of
OF SCOTLAND 41
the agitation was the framing of a Declaratory
Act, the object of which was to give prominence
to aspects of the gospel message which had not
been sufficiently, if at all, emphasized in the
Confession of Faith.
Meanwhile the Church of the Disruption
stood firm in the paths of orthodoxy. In the
Established Church were present the elements
of reaction against the Evangelicalism of the
Disruption period. At first the elements were
not very pronounced. How reluctant that
Church was to move away from the old land-
marks was seen in the prosecution and expul-
sion of M*Leod Campbell for heretical views
on the Atonement. The tendency of the
Establishment, however, was towards a kind
of theology which was more in sympathy with
the Broad Church party in England than with
Calvinism. This doctrinal movement found
able exponents in men like Tulloch and Story,
and, above all, in the late Dr. Caird, who, by
introducing the spirit of the Hegelian philo-
sophy into Scottish theology, managed to give
a new setting to the doctrines of the Confession.
The distinctive note of the Broad Church
party was opposition to the somewhat narrow
42 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Free and United Presbyterian creed of the
Churches, whose leaders had, like the old
Evangelicals, drawn too sharp a distinction
between the sacred and the secular, thereby
making religion more a method of escape
from the City of Destruction than a means
of mental, moral, and spiritual equipment,
with the natural outcome — a regenerated
society.
So far the changes which took place in the
theological evolution of Scotland were due to
changes of emphasis on particular doctrines.
While strongly dissenting from the ultra-
Calvinism of the Disruption Church and the
Secession Church, and while pleading for a
wider conception of the religious life, the
leaders in the Establishment did not question
the fundamental belief upon which Scottish
theology rested—namely, the absolute author-
ity of the Bible as a Divine revelation. Here
and there advanced preachers might talk of
the human side of the Bible, and throw out
hints about new views of inspiration which
left room for mistakes; but when, as in the
case of the once famous Scotch Sermons, such
views were put forward in dogmatic shape,
OF SCOTLAND 43
they were repudiated by the Church. In the
Establishment the Broad Church spirit was
a permeating influence; but it was not strong
enough to overthrow the traditional view of
the Bible, the authority of which, as both the
conservative and the progressive party saw,
was fundamental, if the theology of the Reform-
ation in any intelligible sense was to remain
secure against attack. With an inspired and
infallible Bible, differences of theological inter-
pretation were possible; but it was felt that
a blow at the authority of the Bible was a
blow at the whole system of Protestantism.
With all their differences, the Churches of
Scotland were practically agreed in the high
position which they assigned to the Bible.
Individual ministers, no doubt, were familiar
with certain views which were current in
Germany, but they kept them pretty much
to themselves. Absorbed with defining their
relations to the State and in building up their
Church, the men of the Disruption paid little
heed to the grave problem of Biblical criticism.
Occupied with controversies over the Atone-
ment, the United Presbyterians had enough on
hand without discussing questions which would
44 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
still further unsettle the minds of the people;
and the leaders of the Established Church had
practical and speculative problems which left
no time for the consideration of questions which
were sure to provoke the spirit of heresy-
hunting. Such was the theological situation
in Scotland when, like a bolt from the blue,
came Robertson Smith’s famous utterances on
the Higher Criticism.
Amid all their controversies the clergy and
laity of Scotland up till the time of Robertson
Smith had rested comfortably on the famous
saying of Chillingworth : “The Bible, and
the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants.”
To the Bible all sects appealed as the ultimate
authority. With the Bible in his hand Knox
overthrew Romanism. In the long conflict
with Episcopacy, from the days of Andrew
Melville till Renwick, the last of the martyrs
who perished on the scaffold, the Covenanters
drew the inspiration for their heroic fight
from the pages of the Bible. In their contest
with the Moderates the Evangelicals always
made their appeal to the Bible; and at the
Disruption both parties drew arguments from
the Bible in support of their respective theories
OF SCOTLAND 45
of Church and State. And now came Robert-
son Smith with a startling theory which
seemed to strike at the very foundations of
Protestantism.
So long as the Bible was viewed as the in-
fallible record of a supernatural revelation from
God, the duty of the Scottish theologian was
plain. His attitude to the Bible was that
of the scientist to Nature—namely, to gather
into a system and present in logical order the
scattered truths which were disclosed to the
humble inquirer. This was the method
followed by Calvin in his day, and by Hodge.
in our day. To those who had been trained
in the old school the views to which Robertson
Smith gave utterance seemed to give the
death-blow to Protestant theology as a science.
To tell the theologian that the Bible was not
trustworthy was like telling the scientist that
the laws of Nature were not reliable. In
both cases, in the absence of certainty, a
science of divine things and of Nature is
impossible. Is it to be wondered al Ullal
the views of Robertson Smith came upon
the Free Church like an earthquake shock 2
Not since the Reformation had theological
46 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Scotland been confronted with such grave
issues. -
What, then, was the precise nature of the
Higher Criticism which Robertson Smith im-
ported from Germany ? In the hands of its
extreme exponents, like Wellhausen and
Kuenen, the Higher Criticism was an attempt
to account for the Bible not by revelation,
but by evolution. In their view the Bible is
not an infallible record of supernatural occur-
rences: it is not even an authoritative record
of the history of the Hebrews. The Bible,
it was said, has grown up like other literature.
The various portions do not necessarily belong
to the time in which they are said to have been
written. Further, like other primitive peoples,
the Hebrews had no conception of history in
the modern sense. In the most confusing way
they mixed up legend, myth, and history.
The story of the Creation necd not be taken
as scientifically correct; the Fall is classed as
legendary ; the personality of Abraham is
doubtful; the details of the Exodus and the
narrative of the wilderness journey must be
taken with considerable pinches of salt. As
to the Pentateuch, the Germans held that
OF SCOTLAND 47
Moses was not the author. It was really a
compilation by ecclesiastics of the Exile period
who traded upon the name and reputation of
Moses in order to give historic prestige to their
large schemes of reform. Robertson Smith
did not go so far as Wellhausen and Kuenen.
His view was that, though the Bible failed as
history when tested by modern canons, it still
was a revelation from God to man. Intensely
religious by nature and evangelical by training,
Robertson Smith thought he had found a middle
way whereby he could do justice at one and the
same time to the old evangelical and the new
critical view. The main charges brought
against him were that he denied that the
Aaronic priesthood was instituted in the
wilderness; that he alleged that the legis-
lative parts of Deuteronomy were a pro-
phetic recasting of the Mosaic law, not older
than the seventh century B.C.; and that he
denied the verbal infallibility of the Books of
Chronicles.
Robertson Smith's friends—even those who
did not share his views—pleaded earnestly
on his behalf, but in vain. I need not dwell
on the details of the prosecution. In the
48 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Assembly of 1881 he was deprived of his
professoriate on the ground that his views
were a disturbing element in the Church.
The late Principal Rainy incurred no little
unpopularity in depriving the Church of the
services of the professor, not because he had
been found guilty of heresy, but because he
was a disturber of the ecclesiastical peace.
What else could Principal Rainy have done 2
The Church had dealt very leniently with
Robertson Smith, who had only himself to
blame if the case was re-opened. The re-
opening of the case changed the whole
situation. It was no longer a question of the
professor's views, but of the peace of the
Church, which is not a debating society.
The leaders of the Church had to consider
the effect of the new views on the people at
large. * -
Upon the people the effects of the now views
were far-reaching. They could not appreciate
the subtle distinction made by Robertson
Smith of a revelation through literature largely
unhistorical. Plain men and women, whose
spiritual lives were bound up with the old
views, found themselves like sailors who were
OF SCOTLAND 49
suddenly shipwrecked and were left clinging
to a raft. Their views of the Bible and the
plan of salvation were thrown into con-
fusion. In their simple fashion they felt
that if the narrative of the Fall is treated
as unhistorical the key-stone of Protestant
theology is removed. Take away the first
Adam and the Fall, and in the view of
the laity the reasoning of Paul about the
second Adam becomes meaningless. More-
over, if the supernatural details of the wilder-
ness journey and the Divine injunctions about
sacrifices in the Pentateuch are traceable to .
the imaginative editing of ecclesiastics of the
Exile, what becomes of the parallel in the
Epistle to the Hebrews between the Mosaic
sacrifices and the sacrifice on Calvary 7 For
large numbers of the clergy the situation was
also serious. If the new views were correct
they would have to dismiss to the moles and
the bats the most of what they learned in the
theological hall. There, for instance, was the
lcarnca and czhaustive work by a man once
held in great esteem in the Free Church,
Professor Fairbairn, on the Typology of Scrip-
ture. Clearly that work would need to be
|E
50 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
relegated to the Museum of Theological Anti-
quities if the new views of the Bible were to
rule the future.
The ejection of Robertson Smith from his
chair could not, of course, stop the career of
the Higher Criticism, which some years later
found an able advocate in Professor George
Adam Smith, who also came under the notice
of the Assembly. He was found not guilty, but
was told not to do it again. That the Church
was not disposed to capitulate to the Higher
Criticism was shown in its attitude towards
some utterances of the late Principal Marcus
Dods and the late Professor Bruce. Dr. Dods
was thought to be unsound on the Atonement
and on the inspiration of Scripture, and Bruce
was taken to task for his free handling of the
gospel records. In both cases, after satis-
factory explanations, the heresy prosecutions
were abandoned. It is a singular fact that the
Established Church, which used to be very
tolerant of theological laxity, has of late years
taken up a conservative attitude. This was
seen in what was known as the Kilmun heresy
case, where the offending minister had to leave
his charge for holding views which in earlier
OF SCOTLAND 51
days would scarcely have attracted atten-
tion. - -
At the same time the fact has to be faced
that in both the Established and United Free
Churches there is, especially among the younger
clergy, great intellectual unrest, very largely
Owing to the Higher Criticism. The Bible
does not hold the authoritative place it once
did. The seriousness of this is strongly in
evidence in connection with the movement
for Creed revision. There is widespread dis-
satisfaction with the Confession of Faith. The
theological standpoint of the men who framed
the Confession. A new Confession, in harmony
with the ideas of to-day, is felt to be an urgent
necessity. Why not make a new one 7 Why
the timid attempt to get out of the difficulty
by vague formulas, such as “the substance of
the faith,” etc. : The answer is to be found
in the serious fact that in consequence of the
lessened authority of the Bible there is now no
ultimate court of appeal on theological ques-
tions. The Westminster divines who drew up
the Confession were on solid ground. They
could appeal to the Bible as an infallible
E 2
52 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
depository of revealed truth. Take away, as
the Higher Criticism has done, the element of
infallibility, and nothing is left as a court of
appeal but the voice of the Church. But that
is a step backward to Romanism, which
subordinates the Bible to the Church. With
the head of the Church infallible, Romanists
profess to find a place in their system for the
principle of authority; but with Protestantism
the case is entirely different. With it the voice
of the Church can only mean the voice of the
majority. Now, if theological disputes are to
be settled by the majority, that means that the
authoritative basis of the Church is democratic
instead of theocratic, as in the old days when
the Bible was accepted as the ultimate and
infallible standard. -
The fact has to be faced that Scottish the-
ology at present is in a transition state, and will
remain so till the leaders in the Churches
courageously face the question which is
troubling clergy and laity alike—namely, the
question of the position of the Bible in the
sphere of theology. In the Bible, apart from
all theories, the religious nature of man will
always find sustenance. The religious instinct
OF SCOTLAND 53
is independent of theories. It is as inde-
structible as human nature. To that fact
philosophies the most opposite, like Spencerian-
ism and Hegelianism, bear testimony; but
religion will never exercise its proper influence
so long as it remains at the vague stage of
sentiment. Protestantism at the time of the
Reformation would not have conquered had
it not been able to confront its great rival with
a comprehensive theory of life, embracing in
its sweep the great realities—God, man, and
society. -
There is much talk in these days of ecclesi-
astical unity. That is good, and much to be
desired. But of infinitely greater urgency
and importance is theological certainty. A
religion of sentiment may do for isolated
individuals, but a Church with a mission must
aim at something more than sentiment. Its
unity must be rooted in knowledge. The
unity of a Church without a definite creed,
and resting on sentiment only, is a delusive
unity—the unity of a landscape in a fog.
Just now the fog in theological Scotland is
somewhat dense, but there are signs that it
is gradually lifting. There are signs that unity
54 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
of religious sentiment is being supplemented
by unity of belief. There are signs that in
a roundabout way Scotland is coming back
to the fundamental elements in the old creed.
In the words with which I conclude my book,
A Century of Intellectual Development—
“Is not science pressing to the front the
fundamental idea of Calvinism, the sovereignty
of God and the sacredness of law Ż In regard
to God is not the science of to-day proclaiming
in unmistakable tones the Hegelian doctrine
of the Absolute as the inner life of all reality ?
And what is the modern passion for democracy,
with its demand for equality, but a political
form of the idea of brotherhood upon which
the Broad Church placed so much stress 2
What, too, is the modern passion of philan-
thropy, showing itself in earnest efforts to
rescue the fallen, to bind up the broken hearts,
and to relieve human suffering, but an un-
conscious attempt to reproduce the spirit of
Jesus Christ and to proclaim Him, in the style
of Ritschlianism, the founder and inspirer of
the Kingdom of God? In brief, amid all the
diversity of religious and theological opinion,
may we not detect practical unanimity on these
points—the Sovereignty and Fatherhood of
OF SCOTLAND 55
God, the Headship and Leadership of Christ,
the brotherhood of man, the dignity of service,
salvation through sacrifice, and the kingdom
of righteousness as the end of all aspiring
endeavour—the goal of humanity ?”
THE RISE OF PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER IV
THE RISE OF PHILOSOPHY
BETWEEN theology and philosophy in the
earlier stages there is a natural affinity.
Theology, in the orthodox sense, busies itself
with the systematizing of the doctrines of
revelation, while philosophy busies itself
with their intellectual comprehension. The
relation between the two is clearly shown in
the saying of Anselm : “I believe in order
that I may understand.” As the fundamental
demand made by the Church of the Middle
Ages upon the human mind was belief, it is
easy to see that philosophy was used not in
the independent pursuit of truth, but in order
to make reason harmonize with faith. For
this purpose great use was made of Aristotle’s
philosophy so far as it was understood. Here
was laid the foundation of the huge system
known as Scholasticism, which kept the human
59
60 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
mind in bondage till the Reformation, or rather
the Renaissance. In truth the Reformers
were in no mood to study the philosophical
side of the conflict with Rome; indeed in the
reformed universities Aristotle was dominant
till towards the close of the sixteenth century.
Ultimately Aristotle was dethroned, but it
was not till the Revolution that Scotland got
breathing space for the consideration of the
problems of philosophy in the modern sense
of the term. -
Philosophy, like theology, deals with the
great subjects, God, the universe, and man;
and by carefully noting the attitude of the
various thinkers to these three questions we
shall be able to trace the evolution of Scottish
philosophy. When Francis Hutcheson, the
father of Scottish Philosophy, began to busy
himself with metaphysical inquiries a new
method had come into vogue, the inductive
with its respect for facts in place of the
scholastic with its endless word-spinning and
dialectical gymnastics. Locke set the fashion
by refusing to soar into transcendental regions,
and by insisting upon an examination of the
powers of the human mind, so as to gauge
OF SCOTLAND 6i
its capacity for dealing with the great problems
of existence. The method of Locke was fol-
lowed by Hutcheson, though not slavishly.
In the sphere of Ontology he rejected the
Cartesian demonstration of the existence of
God, and, true to the inductive principle, based
the defence of Deism on the argument from
Design. He finds Locke's system helpful in
his conflict with Calvinism, and the doctrine
of natural depravity he opposes by the utili-
tarian theory of morals with its all-embracing
optimism.
As it was the avowed object of the Moderates,
in the phrase of Hutcheson, to put a new face
on theology, they found the philosophy of
Locke admirably suited for their purpose.
Hutcheson had no desire to deny the super-
natural, he ignored it. He set himself to
construct a scheme of thought which, without
doing violence to Scottish beliefs, would sub-
stitute a thinly veiled rationalism for the
Calvinism of the Kirk. While rejecting the
Cartesian demonstration of Llie existence of
God, he found it necessary to use the Deity
as a kind of philosophic figure-head. The
idea of God which Descartes based on innate
62 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
ideas Hutcheson, following Locke, traced to
an empirical origin; but in the deistical creed
of the Scottish Moderates God reigned but
did not govern. Experience, not revelation,
was to be made the starting-point of the
thought of the future. This is clearly seen
in the ethical side of Hutcheson's philosophy.
He seeks the sanctions of morality not in
revelation, but in the constitution of human
nature. By the aid of Locke, Hutcheson
thought it possible to retain enough of the
theological dogmas to constitute a kind of
natural religion, while at the same time making
experience and the study of human nature
take the place of the fervid supernaturalism
of the Confession of Faith.
But a change was to come over the philo-
sophic optimism of the deistical school. David
Hume appeared upon the scene, and delivered
a series of deadly blows at thc Lockian philo-
sophy. Locke not only asserted that all know-
ledge was built out of experience; he set him-
self to describe the process. He found ideas
to originate in sensation and reflection. Ex-
ternal objects mirrored themselves in the
mind, and by means of reflection were
OF SCOTLAND 63
converted into ideas. So much for the nature
and origin of knowledge. What of its valid-
ity ? If impressions coming through the senses
have to be worked up into ideas by reflection
before they gain the dignity of knowledge,
we have to ask, What is the relation between
the objective reality and the subjective ideas 2
Locke’s reply is disconcerting. We must not,
he says, think that our ideas are exactly the
images and qualities of something inherent
in the object. How, then, are we to discover
the precise nature of the objective world
which we think of as material 2 Locke recog-
nizes that all the qualities of Matter do not
exist as they seem, but are conditioned by
the mind. Light and heat, for example, have
no objective existence; they exist only in
relation to mind. But if the mind clothes
Matter with a number of qualities, why not
with all ? Berkeley saw the dilemma, and en-
deavoured to extricate Locke from the philo-
sophic quagmire by abolishing Matter as a
subsLance. Spirit, not Matter, said Berkeley,
is the real substance of the Universe.
We are now in a position to appreciate
fully the intervention of Hume. Berkeley’s
64 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
contention was that there was no evidence of
a permanent substance called Matter. To this
Hume replied that there was just as little
evidence of a permanent substance called
Mind. What we are conscious of, says Hume,
is not an entity called mind, but a chain of
feelings linked together by association. The
effect of all this on the theological side of
the Lockian philosophy was unsettling in the
highest degree. Locke, followed by Hutche-
son, made Causation as expressed in the
argument of Design a stepping-stone to
belief in God. By substituting Association
for Causation Hume knocked the foundation
from Theology. By resolving mind into a
series of feelings, he rendered chaotic the
science of psychology. The three great de-
partments of philosophy—ontology, cosmology
and psychology, by Hume were driven into
bankruptcy.
Hume proved to be an epoch-making force
in the history of philosophy. He wakened
Kant from his slumbers, and started German
thought on its high philosophic career which
found its culmination in the all-embracing
system of Hegel. Meanwhile, what we have
OF SCOTLAND 65
to deal with is not the German, but the Scottish,
answer to Hume. His most resolute opponent
was Reid. Reid has never been estimated
at his real value. Looked upon as the philo-
sopher of common sense, the representative,
so to speak, of the average man, Reid has
been treated as a kind of intruder in the philo-
sophic arena. No one would think of placing
him alongside the German opponents of Hume,
but it is a striking fact that between the
answers of Reid and Kant there is a remark-
able resemblance. Reid saw the great issues
which were at stake. If Hume’s views were
to prevail, religion and all that pertained to
the higher side of life would fall under eclipse.
If these views were to be overturned Reid
recognized that Hume’s errors must be attacked
at the root, namely, the Lockian theory of
mind. Accordingly Reid joined issue with
Locke. As I have dealt with this part of the
subject in my volume Books to Read and How
to Read Them, I may be permitted to reproduce
the following sentences —
“Reid declared that the mind was not a
blank organism, the passive recipient of the
F
66 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
impressions of the senses. According to Reid,
the mind is originally endowed with a definite
structure and equipment with which it pro-
ceeds to interpret experience. In his view
every perception implies a judgment. We
do not, as Locke has it, first collect our isolated
impressions, and then classify and compare
them; in the very act of perception we are
exercising judgment. Now whence comes this
capacity of judging 2 Clearly not from experi-
ence, as without judgment there could be no
experience for us. Reid’s great claim to the
regard of philosophers is that he was the first
who detected the only effective weapon with
which to meet Hume. Strictly speaking, Kant
simply founded his whole system on the fruit-
ful suggestion of Reid—namely, that before
experience itself is possible, before the impres-
sions of sense can even make themselves known,
there must exist a self-conscious mind whose
structure is not created by experience, but
which needs experience to set it to work.”
It is a tribute to Reid’s power that his
influence extended beyond his native land;
along with Hume he took from Scottish
philosophy the reproach of parochialism. In
their contest with the materialistic theories of
OF SCOTLAND 67
their time the French thinkers like Jouffroy
and Cousin found in Reid a formidable ally.
In the words of Cousin : “ It would be
impossible to write a history of Scotland in
the last half of the eighteenth century without
meeting everywhere in the numerous and
remarkable productions of the Scotch genius
of this epoch the noble spirit which that
genius excited, and which in its turn has com-
municated to it a new force.” .."
Scotland in the eighteenth century produced
quite a crop of thinkers of a philosophic turn
of mind, among whom may be mentioned
Campbell, Oswald, Beattie, Lord Monboddo,
Adam Smith, etc., but inasmuch as they
struck no orginal vein of thought, opened
no new avenues of metaphysical inquiry,
they need not detain us long. Upon the
shoulders of Dugald Stewart fell the mantle
of Reid. Stewart was more a rhetorician
than a philosopher; his work might be summed
up in the remark that he gave literary form
to the system of his master, and kindled in Lhe
breasts of a generation of students a noble
enthusiasm for the higher things of the mind.
Nor does Thomas Brown, Stewart's successor,
E 2
68 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
call for detailed mention. His name is associ-
ated with one department of psychology rather
than with fundamental problems, a depart-
ment which occupied also the attention of
Hume—the relation of Cause and Effect, in
which he departed considerably from the tra-
ditional treatment of the Scottish school.
But the day of small men was passing away.
A giant appeared in the person of Sir William
Hamilton. In his hands Scottish philosophy
not only revived, but acquired a world-wide
reputation. Hume's speculations had brought
forth showers of pamphlets, but they never
had been laid to rest. In philosophical
circles an uneasy feeling prevailed that the
last had not been heard of this troubler in
Israel. Reid had spent his force upon Hume,
but the task of demolition had been left
unfinished. To the task Hamilton, in the
spirit of Reid, addressed himself. Hume by
his summary treatment of Mind and Matter
had left nothing stable in the universal flow;
personal identity itself seemed something quite
elusive. Hamilton took his stand on Con-
sciousness. Consciousness of personal identity
and of an objective material world—upon
OF SCOTLAND 69
those two necessary beliefs, which are pre-
supposed in all intellectual activity, hang all
our knowledge. Again we come back to the
question which troubled Reid. What is the
nature of this objective existence which we
call the world 2 Hamilton called himself a
natural Realist after the manner of Reid,
whose theory he stripped of its crudeness,
though there are those who think that Reid
would have difficulty at times in recognizing
his own views in the revised version. If
Hamilton’s speculations did not satisfy the
conditions of an absolutely sound theory,
they had one great merit—they gave a great
impetus to psychological thought, and by
rousing into activity the powers of John
Stuart Mill, and raising fundamental ques-
tions, Hamilton linked the Scottish school
with the latest aspects of the evolution
philosophy.
The problem with which Hamilton’s name
will always be conspicuously associated is
that known as the Relativity of Knowledge.
In his famous Edinburgh Review article,
Hamilton at one bound sprang into the first
rank of thinkers. The remarkable thing is
70 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
that Hamilton, a professed follower of Reid,
whose whole life was spent in combating
the philosophic Nihilism of Hume, should
practically undo the work of his master.
Hamilton did not mean his theory to be
pressed into the service of Agnosticism. While
admitting the incapacity of thought to deal
with the Absolute, he hoped to serve the cause
of Theism by falling back upon faith. This
part of his philosophy he never welded into
organic unity, with the result that the portions
which he owes to Reid, and those which he
derived from Kant, are left unreconciled. In
the words of Professor Laurie in his excellent
book on Scottish Philosophy: “If all our
knowledge be of the relative and conditioned,
and if every attempt to transgress these limits
lead us to the realms of non-conceivability
or contradiction, then philosophy is not in
a position to affirm or to deny anything which
may be supposed to stretch beyond. . . .
From this point of view Hamilton’s philosophy
has strengthened the phenomenalism which,
issuing from the scepticism of Hume, has
assumed a positive form in such writers as
OF SCOTLAND 71
Bain and Mill, and has been further encouraged
by the progress of modern science in its exclu-
sive search for facts and uniformities. . . .
The philosophy of Common Sense, devised
by Reid as a safeguard against Scepticism
and Idealism, was so transmuted by Hamilton
as to lead back again to the conclusion that
nothing can be affirmed or denied beyond the
fleeting phenomena of consciousness.”
In various quarters Hamilton’s views met
with vigorous opposition. John Stuart Mill
subjected them to severe analysis, with special
reference to the theological Agnosticism of
Mansel, who sought to establish the repellent
view that Divine revelations which conflict
with our ideas of morality must be accepted,
because human standards cannot be applied
to the Divine. Thus religiously and intel-
lectually the conscience and mind of man
were absolutely cut off from all contact with
the Great Reality. Hamilton also found in
James Frederick Ferrier—an original thinker
whose cast of thoughl was IIIore German than
Scottish—a keen antagonist. Ferrier, who was
resolutely opposed to the Scottish philosophy,
72 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
as interpreted by Reid and Hamilton, evolved
a system of his own, which may be said to
have died with him. He was a voice crying
in the wilderness—a wilderness, however,
which since his time has been considerably
peopled by exponents of ideas akin to his own,
bearing the stamp of German Idealism.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN
PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER V
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN PHILOSOPHY
SINCE Ferrier’s day the German influence
has come in like a flood, and to this in-
fluence may largely be attributed the un-
satisfactory state in which the Hamiltonian
philosophy was left. Hamilton thought he
could more effectually combat the views of
Hume by calling Kant to the aid of Reid.
The German, like the Scottish, philosopher
opposed the views of Locke which Hume had
drawn to their logical conclusion with such
1amentable consequences. Instead, however,
of falling back, as Reid did, upon common
sense, Kant revived the innate theory in a new
form. Instead of innate ideas, he postulated
for the IIlind an innatc structure by means of
which it is compelled to think under certain
necessary and universal forms. Reality, in
that case, was not an affair of sense impressions
75
76 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
but of thought forms; but it needs little reflec-
tion to see that Kant brings us no nearer
Reality than Hume. According to Hume all
we know is sense impressions; according to
Rant, before we can have knowledge sense
impressions must be taken up and poured into
the mould of the categories. But at the end
of the process we are still without guarantee
that the knowledge so acquired is in touch with
Reality. In a word, Kant, like Hume, ends
in phenomenalism. Hamilton clearly did not
recognize the logical germs of Agnosticism
which lay hidden in Kant's theory of knowledge.
When he wrote his famous Edinburgh Review
article he was mainly intent upon checking the
career of Cousin, who, beginning as a disciple
of Reid, was coquetting with Schelling and his
theory of the Absolute.
Hamilton, as already mentioned, hoped to
bring back religious feeling by means of faith,
but in a scientific age when reason was proceed-
ing from victory to victory, it was a foregone
conclusion that a theory which chained the
human mind to phenomena and refused to soar
into transcendental regions would be eagerly
accepted. Accordingly leaders of scientific
OF SCOTLAND 77
thought in this country, and in Germany, under
the shadow of the names of Kant and Hamilton,
prided themselves on the adoption of Natural-
ism with its contempt for all metaphysical
speculations. Upon Hamilton’s doctrine of
the Relativity of Knowledge, Herbert Spencer
erected his system of philosophy, and Huxley
relates that his Agnosticism owed its origin to
Hamilton’s essay on the Philosophy of the
Unconditioned.
If Scottish philosophy was to remain true to
its traditions, if its conclusions were to harmon-
ize with the fundamental tenets of theology—
namely, belief in man as an intellectual and
moral being capable of reaching the truth in
regard to his relations to God and the world,
the Kantian element which Hamilton had
introduced must be got rid of. Among the
first direct attacks upon Hamilton was The
Philosophy of the Infinite by a former stu-
dent of Hamilton, Henry Calderwood, who
afterwards became Professor of Moral Philo-
sophy in Edinburgh University, a book which
even at this time of day will repay perusal
by those who are perplexed by the prevail-
ing Agnosticism. The late Dr. McCosh also
78 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
proved a vigorous assailant of the theory
of Hamilton, who has nowhere been more
severely handled than in his own country.
Professor Pringle Pattison, who now occupies
Hamilton’s chair, deals very fully with the
inherent weaknesses of the doctrine of Relativ-
ity in his invaluable Scottish Philosophy, and
comes to the conclusion that any attempt to
ingraft the Agnostic relativity of Kant's Critique
upon the Natural Realism of the Scottish philo-
sophy is contrary to the genius of the latter.
Professor James Seth, who succeeded Calder-
wood in the chair of Moral Philosophy, also
deals with the subject in his Ethical Principles.
Dealing with the Unknown and the Unknow-
able of Hamilton and Spencer from the ethical
point of view, Professor Seth says: “Agnosti-
cism if it is true must carry with it the ultimate
disappearance of religion and with religion
of all morality higher than utility. . . . The
practical life is connected in a rational being
with the theoretical; we cannot be permanently
illogical either in morality or religion. The
postulate of man's spiritual life is the harmony
of nature and spirit, or the spiritual constitu-
tion of the universe.” The late Professor
OF SCOTLAND 79
Flint proved himself a discerning and penetra-
ting critic of Hamilton, and in his work on
Agnosticism he shows with his accustomed
lucidity and depth the religious significance of
the doctrine of the relativity of knowledge.
The importance of Kant in the history of
philosophy is greatly owing to the fact that out
of his system developed two opposite theories,
one which might be labelled Agnostic, and the
other Absolute. In Germany an attempt was
made to get rid of the phenomenalism of Kant’s
system by laying stress on the innate element,
the thought forms which by Fichte and Schel-
ling were made the basis of a system of Idealism
which owes its comprehensive originality to
the architectonic intellect of Hegel. Hegel’s
aim was to get rid of the dualism which resulted
from the doctrine of relativity. Accepting
Kant's dictum that knowledge is constituted
by thought, Hegel concluded that if the world
is intelligible only to a self, analysis of the self
should yield the law of the world process, the
universal thought process. With Kant, as we
saw, knowledge is relative, because in the act
of thought we are establishing relations, and as
Hamilton understood it, the Absolute exists
80 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
entirely out of relation, it cannot be known.
To this a Hegelian would reply that the Abso-
lute is not the unrelated, but the sum of all
relations, and that in the act of thought we are in
presence not of mere phenomena, but of the all-
embracing Reality. Introduced into Scotland
by the late Dr. Hutchison-Stirling, a thinker of
great intellectual virility, whose writings influ-
enced a generation of Scottish students, Hegel-
ianism soon became popular, and for a time
eclipsed the Scottish School. Through the
writings of the two Cairds and the enthusiastic
advocacy of a band of young men, German
modes of thinking gained the ascendency. In
this connection special mention should be made
of Mr. R. B. (now Lord) Haldane's profound
work The Pathway to Reality.
Of late there are signs of a reaction.
The claims of Hegelianism have been pitched
too high, and among Scottish philosophers
there are those, like Mr. A. J. Balfour, who have
dealt it damaging blows. In the region of
philosophy Mr. Balfour has proved himself a
master. Among the most abstruse problems
he moves with the ease born of capacity. His
early work, In Defence of Philosophic Doubt,
OF SCOTLAND 81
showed him in quite a Humian vein, directing
his critical shafts, not at the metaphysicians,
but at the scientists and the assumptions upon
which they were erecting their creed of Natural-
ism. In his latest book, The Foundations of
Belief, Mr. Balfour directs his pointed arrows
against German Idealism as expounded by its
Scottish and English advocates. It is difficult
to find the clue to Mr. Balfour’s own system, as
he is much more occupied in criticism of other
thinkers than in scientifically formulating his
own views. His object seems to be not so much
to come forth as a constructive thinker as to pro-
test against the arrogance of scientists on the
one hand and the conceit of Hegelians on the
other, and to inculcate the duty of humility in
presence of the vast problem of Existence
which reason by itself is competent to discover,
but which by itself is incompetent to solve.
In the writings of the venerable Professor
Fraser the reverential caution of the Scottish
school is well displayed. He steers clear
between Agnosticism on the one hand, with its
creeping helplessness, and Hegelianism with its
soaring audacity on the other. He does not,
like the Agnostics, belittle reason in presence of
G *
82 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
the higher problems, nor yet does he imagine
that man with his intellectual measuring line
can plumb the Infinite. Scottish philosophers
have always laid stress upon faith as well as
reason in their study of the scheme of things.
With Kant they agree in laying emphasis upon
the moral side of the problem, and recognize
that by conscience as well as by reason a way
of approach is open to the Infinite. They deny
that reason can do nothing, and that it can do
everything. They strike a middle path; they
trust to the universal and necessary principles
of reason, as far as they go, and when the path
ends they are prepared to believe that in the
result, as in the process, the true and the good
will prevail, in a word that the universe will
be found to be rational through and through.
This is the conclusion to which Professor Fraser
comes in his Gifford lectures on Theism.
These lectures, together with his works on
Locke and Berkeley, breathe the spirit of the
Scottish philosophy in its best form, as com-
bining the deepest search into the great prob-
lems of life and destiny with the reverential
awe, humility, and trust that spring from
religious feeling.
OF SCOTLAND 83
In the writings of Professor Pringle Pattison
we find the best elements of the German school
blended with the characteristics of the Scottish
school. He has been able to combat Agnosti-
cism, which has developed into Materialism,
without running, as Hegelianism is so apt to do,
into Pantheism. Professor Pringle Pattison’s
Idealism is not of this type. In his view the
highest philosophy does not obliterate the dis-
tinction between the divine and the human, and
does not destroy man’s hope of immortality.
The system of Idealism which he has reached
enables him to meet Materialism at all points,
without, as in the case of Hegelianism, com-
mitting philosophic suicide just when victory
is within reach. How, then, does the Professor
combat Materialism 2 He refuses to accept
as valid its interpretation of the Universe in
terms of mechanics. The mechanical view, as
he puts it, “through looking ever backward
finds an explanation of things in reducing them
to their lowest terms, and presents us, for
example, with Matter and Motion as philo-
sophical ultimates.” View the Universe from
the mechanical standpoint, and when we pass
the inorganic sphere we are baffled at every
G 2
84 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
step: Materialism fails hopelessly to account
for life and consciousness, and in despair is
driven to give the whole thing up as an insol-
uble puzzle. In the practical sphere this means
either Pessimism or Stoicism, according to
individual temperament, or, where the religious
instinct is too strong to be suppressed, the cult
of Mysticism or the religion of Humanity.
Now, according to Professor Pringle Pattison,
we get rid of these intellectual nightmares
by interpreting life teleologically. In other
words, we can only understand the Universc
and man, we can only discern their meaning
and value when we study them, not in their
lowest, but in their highest manifestations.
Inasmuch as the latest product of the Uni-
verse is self-conscious spirit we are justified in
postulating Spirit, not Matter, at the outset
of the great evolutionary process. The last
word of science, like that of philosophy, as
interpreted by Professor Pringle Pattison, is
neither Agnosticism nor Pantheism, but The-
ism; and thus room is found for the sentiment
of religion which with him means self-surrender
of the human will to the divine. Without
religion man is a unit struggling with an evil
OF SCOTLAND 85
nature and adverse circumstances; with religion
man feels that God is with him. Religion, in
the view of Professor Pringle Pattison, like
philosophy, seeks after the Supreme harmony.
What of human destiny ? Our philosopher
will have nothing to do with systems which
mock humanity’s highest aspirations, or meet
them with an Agnostic note of interrogation.
He can find no consolation in the progress of
humanity if the individual withers and drops
into nothingness like the dead leaves of autumn.
In his Man’s Place on the Cosmos he pins his
faith to “the old idea of the world as the train-
ing-ground of individual character,” and rests
firmly in the belief “that whatever of wisdom
and goodness there is in us was not born out
of nothing, but has its fount somewhere and
somehow in a more perfect goodness and truth.”
Professor Pringle Pattison, it will be seen, links
philosophy to religion.
In these days of cosmopolitanism it will not
be possible for any country to claim for itself
a distinctively national School of philosophy.
Thought is becoming universalized: into one
mighty stream are flowing innumerable rills.
One thing is certain. If the philosophy of the
86 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
future is to be victorious in its combat with a
materialistic civilization, with all its soul-dead-
ening and intellect-blighting influences, it can
only be by keeping steadily before the eyes of
mankind the three great problems which
throughout its history has ever occupied the
attention of the Scottish School of Philosophy—
God, the world, and man. t
THE SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT
CHAPTER VI
THE SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT
READERs of Buckle will remember the
startling contrasts he draws between the Scot-
land of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies. According to Buckle, in the seven-
teenth century the Scottish clergy kept the
people in a state of intellectual bondage; in
the eighteenth century, thanks to men such
as Hutcheson, Hume, and Adam Smith, the
chains which kept the people in bondage were
broken, and the country entered upon a
glorious career of intellectual freedom and
discovery. It is remarkable that Buckle, who
professed a high regard for science, should
have approached the history of Scotland in a
woefully unscientific spirit. The History of
Civilization had great vogue in its day, and
even yet it may be read with profit by those
who like to have facts presented in the form.
89
90 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
of luminous generalizations. Tried by modern
standards, Buckle’s book, however, is found
wanting, and that simply because the author,
in approaching the study of history, entirely
ignored the great principle of relativity, which
plays such an important part in the interpreta-
tion of the past. National institutions are no
longer judged by absolute standards; they are
studied in relation to their historical environ-
ments and estimated accordingly. Institu-
tions which, tried by modern standards, are
condemned as obstructions to progress may
find their explanation and justification in the
fact that they were the natural and necessary
products of the time in which they flourished.
Attention to the idea of relativity, which
we owe to the evolution conception of history,
would save modern disciples of Buckle from
a partisan attitude towards Scottish history.
Certain writers, for instance, are never weary
of representing the Reformation as the sub-
stitution of one kind of despotism for another—
the despotism of Presbyterianism for the des-
potism of Romanism. Thus it has come about
that writers who have no sympathy with the
great religious movements of Scotland contrast
OF SCOTLAND 91
the turbulence and wranglings of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries with the comparative
calm of the eighteenth century, and in a tone
of contempt discuss the centuries of religious
struggle as a kind of prolonged Donnybrook.
A deep study of Scottish history shows that
there is no such gulf as Buckle represents
between the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies. The antagonism lies on the surface.
When viewed calmly and rationally, it will be
found that the seventeenth was the natural
preparation for the eighteenth century—that,
in other words, the struggle for religious
liberty under the Reformers and the Covenan-
ters was the necessary preparation for the
scientific movement. What the Reformers
and the Covenanters did was to secure liberty,
without which the cultivation of science was
impossible. We see an illustration of this in
the case of Napier of Merchiston. He founded
no school. Why? As I have remarked else-
where—
“The explanation is not far to seek. After
James VI ascended the throne of England in
1603, the trouble between the king and his
Presbyterian subjects, which had long been
92 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
brewing, grew steadily worse. With England
at his back, James resumed with renewed
energy his efforts to anglicize the Church of
Scotland—efforts which were continued by
his son and grandson. In the end the kings
were defeated, and Scotland retained her
national religion; but they were not defeated
without a terrible struggle and a terrible
sacrifice. The best minds of the nation were
absorbed in the struggle, and there was no
time for scientific research. The Covenanters,
it is true, did not view scientific research with
a friendly eye, but it is unjust to blame them
for the neglect of science in Scotland. The
times were unsettled; and when men were
being shot down at their own doors, and sent
as prisoners to the Bass Rock and Dunnottar,
it was not to be expected that science could
gain a footing.”
When the Reformers and the Covenanters
won the battle for religious liberty, when they
secured for Scotland spiritual independence,
they paved the way for the enjoyment
of intellectual independence, without which
scientific research is impossible. Unknown
to one another, the men of religion, the men of
letters, and the men of science were fighting
OF SCOTLAND 93
as soldiers in the same great cause of emancipa-
tion. In the evolution of Scottish life and
thought the seventeenth century was a factor
on the side of progress, and not, as Buckle
thought, an obstructive force. The blood of
the martyr proved to be the seed of the State
as well as of the Church. -
That it was the disturbed state of the
country and not intellectual inaptitude that was
the cause of Scotland’s intellectual backward-
ness was conclusively shown by the quickness
with which the national mind fell into line
with the great scientific movement associated
with Isaac Newton. The improvement was re-
tarded at the outset by the confused notions
held by leading thinkers with regard to scientific
method. The tendency, which may be traced
in Descartes, was to mix two things essenti-
ally different, namely, scientific descriptions of
the Universe with philosophical explanations.
Whereas Descartes, for example, not content
with the discovery of facts and their classifica-
tion was always introducing IIIelapliysical
elements, Newton carefully distinguished be-
tween the mechanical forces with which he
had to deal, and their spiritual interpretation.
94 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
From a metaphysical conception of Matter
Descartes formulated certain views which, as
they could not be verified, were of no real
scientific value. Newton, on the other hand,
laid supreme stress upon verification. Take
his handling of Gravitation. Attraction and
repulsion were favourite metaphysical phrases,
but they had no practical value till Newton
formulated in exact language his famous dis-
covery. As George Henry Lewes says, a
theory may be transferred from science to
metaphysics by withdrawing the verifiable
element. Withdraw the formula inversely as
the square of the distance, and directly as the
mass, and attraction is left a mere occult
quality. It was precisely because Newton
stood faithfully upon verification and demon-
strable fact that even in France he was
recognized in preference to Descartes as the
founder of modern science. +
The positive and logical cast of the Scottish
mind at once detected the significance of
Newton’s system : in fact, Scotland was far
ahead of England in recognizing the great
scientific value of Newton’s work; as evidence
of this is the fact that his system was taught in
OF SCOTLAND t 95
Edinburgh University thirty-five years before
it was recognized in Newton’s own university
of Cambridge. Buckle credits the Scottish
mind with a strong aptitude towards the
deductive method in the search for truth, and
he seems to have justification for this view in
the remarkable success of the early scientists
in the sphere of mathematics—a fact which
goes far to explain the popularity of the
Newtonian system in the Scottish universities.
Further evidence of the aptitude of the Scottish
mind for scientific study is had in the fact that
in the distracted sixteenth century, in the
midst of social and ecclesiastical turmoil, there
sprang up a man who has left his mark upon
the science of mathematics—namely, Napier
of Merchiston, the inventor of logarithms. As
has been well said, “whether we consider the
great originality of the idea, the difficulty of
carrying it into effect in the state in which
algebraical analysis then was, or the immense
practical and theoretical value of the invention,
we shall have little difficulty in claiming for
Napier the honour of a discovery unsurpassed
in brilliancy in the whole history of mathe-
matics.”
96 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Colin Maclaurin, who succeeded David Gre-
gory, the introducer of Newton’s system into
Scotland, was a mathematical genius of the
first order, and gave enthusiastic reception to
the doctrines of Newton. His Memoir on the
Tides, written from the standpoint of the gravi-
tation theory, gained equal honour with Euler
and Daniel Bernoulli, a famous Italian mathe-
matician, the prize of the French Academy
being equally divided among them. Refer-
ring to the part which Maclaurin played in
planting the germs of scientific thought in
Scotland, Professor Playfair, writing in the
second volume of the Edinburgh Review, says,
“ the teaching of science by Maclaurin in
Edinburgh University surpassed probably at
that time the teaching of any other English
or Continental university.”
The close connection between spiritual and
intellectual liberty is seen in the stamp of
progressiveness which the Scottish universities
got at the Reformation. From the writings
of Buckle one would infer that the whole
weight of the Reformed Church was thrown
on the side of obscurantism; whereas, as a
matter of fact, the universities bore the impress
OF SCOTLAND 97
of the great educational movement associated
with the revolt against Rome. On this point
Dr. Merz, in his valuable work on European
thought in the nineteenth century, referring
to the Scottish universities, notes the close
connection between the educational movement
and the Reformation, and in the course of
a contrast between them and the English
universities, says— -
“The universities of Scotland, unlike those
of England, instead of nursing an exclusive
spirit and encouraging only scanty intercourse
between teachers and students of different
centres, lived in constant exchange of pro-
fessors and ideas, much in the same way as has
always been the custom, on a larger scale,
among German and other Continental univer-
sities. Though this is destructive of that indi-
vidual character of the university or the college
which is so highly prized by many English
fellows, it is certainly more conducive to the
progress of studies and research, and it is the
cause why, in the early history of recent science,
the universities of Scotland have played so
much more important a part than those of
England.”
FI
98 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
After the Union, when the political and
ecclesiastical storms had spent their force,
Scotland set herself diligently to cultivate the
things that make for a pacific and progressive
civilization. The heroes of the Reformation
and Covenanting times had accomplished the
great task of establishing the liberties of
Scotland on a firm basis, and it now remained
for the thinkers of the eighteenth century to
build upon the foundation that had been laid
in blood. It must be admitted that in their
attitude to the new spirit and the new condi-
tions the clergy were not equal to the occasion.
They strove to keep the universities as nurseries
to the Church. When, in 1639, the Covenan-
ters gained the ascendency, they passed a
resolution that all masters and teachers of
colleges and schools should subscribe to the
Covenant. Special care was taken that all the
universities, and more especially the chairs of
Divinity, should be filled by those favourable
to the Reformed doctrines. Indeed, after the
Revolution, subscription to the Confession of
Faith was made a condition of holding office
in the universities. Such short-sighted regula-
tions did much to increase the unpopularity of
OF SCOTLAND - 99
the Church among thinking men, and consider-
ably retarded the progress of the scientific
movement. Still, with all their drawbacks,
the Scottish universities were more favourable
to the cultivation of science than those of
England. As Dr. Merz says— -
“Whilst in England modern science was
cultivated outside the pale of the universities
by Priestly, Davy, Wollaston, Young, Dalton,
Faraday, and Joule—to whom we may even
add Green and Boole—all eminent Scotch men
of science, such as Gregory, Simson, Maclaurin,
Playfair, Black, Thomson, Leslie, Brewster,
and Forbes, were university professors, many
of whom did not confine their labours to one
centre, but spread the light of their ideas and
researches all over the country. Whilst Eng-
land has been great in single names, Scotland
has certainly in proportion done more to diffuse
modern scientific knowledge.”
Newton’s epoch-making discovery naturally
directed attention to Astronomy. Now that
Llle law of planelary movements had been
found the minds of leading thinkers became
agitated over the problem of the origin of the
Solar system. Was it possible not only to
II 2
100 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
explain by gravitation the sublime harmony
of the Solar system, but also its origin and
development 2 The answer came in the shape
of the Nebular theory. To Kant is assigned
the credit of the theory, but it is not generally
known that before Kant, James Ferguson, the
Scottish astronomer, anticipated the German
philosopher. Ferguson held that the matter
now forming the sun and planets originally
existed in a detached condition through space,
and by the force of gravitation were drawn
together to form the celestial bodies. Con-
temporary with Ferguson was Alexander
Wilson, the first director of the Glasgow Ob-
servatory, of whose services to science too
little has been written. He was the virtual
founder of the scientific study of the sun, and
the first to make an exhaustive study of sun
spots. He was the first of the Glasgow school
of astronomers to treat meteorology on scien-
tific principles.
The honourable place which Scotland held
in the eighteenth she continued to hold in
the nineteenth century. In the science of
astronomy Scotland was well to the front.
Thomas Henderson, born in 1798, was one
OF SCOTLAND 10]
of the most famous astronomers of his age.
He was the first to measure the distance of
the stars, and thus solved a problem which
had baffled the greatest men of science
from Galileo to Herschel. Contemporary with
Henderson at Edinburgh was John Pringle
Nichol, Glasgow University. As an observer
Nichol ranked far below Henderson, but as a
constructive thinker he ranked above him.
His work in defending the Nebular hypothesis
when most of the great men of science had
abandoned it can never be forgotten. On his
death in 1859 he was succeeded by Robert
Grant, whose History of Physical Astronomy
is a standard work to this day. Mention
should also be made of Sir David Gill, of Aber-
deen, whose work as a practical astronomer has
gained for him an enduring reputation.
The Nebular theory started the scientific
mind on a new track. The idea of seeking the
origin of the Solar system in a highly diffused
gaseous matter raised questions with regard
to the nature of matter. Whether or not it be
as the result of centuries of intellectual dia-
lectics it is a curious fact that the Scottish
mind has always shown a marked fondness for
I02 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
the abstruse departments of knowledge. At
any rate Scottish scientists have taken a
special interest in matter, its nature and con-
stitution. In this department they have done
excellent pioneering work; indeed it may be
claimed for an eighteenth-century scientist,
Joseph Black, the credit, by his investigations
into the nature of heat, of putting scientists
on the track of the modern doctrine of the
indestructibility and transformation of force.
Modern science is now familiar with the con-
ception that the forces of Nature—such as
heat, light, electricity, etc.—which used to be
treated as independent entities are simply
temporary manifestations of one form of energy
which in its totality is incapable of increase
or decrease. At the time of Black, heat was
supposed to be a separate distinct material
agent, though Bacon in his quaint prophetic
way ventured to speak of it as a mode of
motion. By his discovery of what is known
as latent heat Black struck a blow at the
material theory, though it must be admitted
he did not see the full issues of his own dis-
covery. He clung to the old view that heat
was a material substance; but his discovery
OF SCOTLAND I03
paved the way for further discoveries by
his successors which led to the important
conclusion that heat and light are identical,
and are capable of translation into each
other.
If heat is shown to be simply a mode of
motion, and no material entity, might not the
same thing be said of other forms of force 2
Experiment verified the supposition, and thus,
from Black’s investigations into the nature of
heat, the scientific mind proceeded till it was
able to formulate the law of the mechanical
equivalent of heat which has since become the
corner-stone of the far-reaching law of the
conservation of energy. As showing the close
connection between speculative and practical
science, it is interesting to note that in course
of his labours in connection with the steam-
engine, James Watt was greatly aided by the
latent heat theory of Black.
Following Black came Sir John Leslie, who,
in addition to his contributions to the study
of heat and light, anticipated what is now
known as the evolutionary view of Nature.
At a time when Nature was treated on the
department system, when each part was sup-
104 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
posed to have been specially created, we find
Leslie writing as follows: “We should recollect
that in all her productions Nature exhibits a
chain of perpetual gradations, and that the
systematic divisions and limitations are entirely
artificial, and designed merely to assist the
memory and facilitate our conceptions.” The
idea which Darwin and Spencer have popular-
ized in our day is to be found in the writings
of Leslie-the idea of the continuity of Nature.
Nay, further, we find Leslie venturing into a
region which even in our advanced days is dark
and mysterious. There are those who would
extend the idea of life not merely to organic, but
to inorganic matter. The distinction between
living and dead matter, it is said, is not true
to the nature of things. Says Leslie : “All
forces are radically of the same kind, and the
distinction of them into living and dead is not
grounded on just principles.” In a strain
remarkably anticipatory of modern scientific
speculation, we find Leslie saying that even
dead or inorganic substances must in their
recondite arrangements exert such varying
energies as, if fully unveiled to our eyes,
OF SCOTLAND 105
could not fail to strike us with wonder and
surprise. -
On the death of Leslie he was succeeded in
the Chair of Natural Philosophy, in 1833, by
James David Forbes, who permanently linked
his name to science by his important demon-
stration of the polarization of heat. In addi-
tion he made valuable researches on the
conduction of heat by iron bars, and under-
ground temperature. His name will be most
intimately associated with his important in-
vestigations into the nature of glaciers and
glacial motion. In the department of Physics
another Scottish scientist holds high place, Sir
David Brewster, by his discoveries in light and
especially with regard to its polarization. In
the words of the late Professor Tait, to Brewster
are due all the most important results arrived
at in the field of optics during the nineteenth
century. Brewster’s position in science has
been thus described by Forbes, his friend
and fellow-labourer in the same field: “Few
persons have made with their own eyes so vast
a number of important observations ; few
have ever observed better or recorded their
106 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
observations more faithfully. His scientific
glory is different from that of Young and
Fresnel, but the discoverer of the law of
polarization, of biaxal crystals, of optical
mineralogy and of double refraction by
compression will always occupy a foremost
rank in the intellectual history of the age.”
The line of research started by Black and
Leslie, and continued by Forbes and Brewster,
was pursued by James Clerk-Maxwell, the
late Lord Kelvin, and the late Professor
Tait. -
In the sphere of what may be called tran-
scendental physics—that dealing with the nature
and constitution of matter—the Scottish school
of scientists are in the foremost rank. This is
admitted by the author of European Thought
in the Nineteenth Century as follows: “The
important task of rebuilding the edifice of the
physical sciences, and establishing it on a large
scale, fell almost exclusively into the hands of
what we may call the Scottish school of natural
philosophy—James and William Thomson,
Macquorn Rankine, James Clerk-Maxwell, and
Balfour Stewart in this country, whilst Clausius
worked abroad almost alone.” In the same
OF SCOTLAND 107
connection is the following testimony by the
same author :—
“The real compendium of the new doctrine
is the treatise on natural philosophy by Thom-
son (Lord Kelvin) and Tait, which has probably
done more than any other book in this country
to lead the mathematical students at the
foremost universities and colleges into paths
more useful for physical and experimental
research. The greatest exponent of the new
ideas was James Clerk-Maxwell, to whom is
also due the merit of having applied them for
the purpose of testing and confirming the worth
of the treasure which lay hidden in the experi-
mental researches of Faraday. Next to the
handbook of Thomson and Tait no writings
probably have done more—especially outside
of England, on the Continent and in America—
than those of Maxwell to revolutionize the
teaching of natural philosophy.”
What, then, was the revolution in the
scientific conception of the nature and con-
stitution of matter caused by the Scottish
school 7
The germ of the revolution was the kinetic
theory of gases so brilliantly associated with
108 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
the name of Clerk-Maxwell. Up till then men
of science accepted the Newtonian conception
of matter as being made of solid hard particles
—so very hard, in the words of Newton, “as
never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary
power was able to divide what God Himself
made one in the first creation.” Here in
substance was the atomic theory of matter.
This, which is known as the mechanical theory,
got a severe blow when Joule showed that heat,
for instance, was not a property of matter but
a mode of motion. If heat is not a form of
matter, but a mode of motion, might not the
same thing be said of other so-called proper-
ties of matter—light, electricity, magnetism 2
What if it should be found that all the so-called
properties of matter are simply modes of
motion ?
From this it was just a step to the doctrine
of the conservation and the convertibility of
force, or, as it is now called, energy—a doctrine
which was placed on a scientific basis when
Joule discovered the dynamical equivalent
of heat. The investigations of Clerk-Maxwell,
Helmholtz, and Hertz had the effect of sub-
OF SCOTLAND I 09
stituting the dynamical for the mechanical
theory of matter, and though Lord Kelvin was
slow in accepting the new views, when he did
accept them he worked incessantly at the idea
of “a great chart in which all physical science
will be represented with every property of
matter shown in dynamic relation to the whole.”
The atom, which formerly was viewed as a
hard, indestructible substance, now began to
be conceived as a centre of energy, more
particularly when, by his investigations into
the electro-magnetic theory of light, Clerk-
Maxwell was led to the conclusion that we
were not dealing with properties of matter, but
with undulations or vibrations of energy in
a uniform medium. What is this medium ?
It is called the ether; and it was at this point
that Kelvin made the boldest and most far-
reaching attempt that has ever been made to
solve the problem of the nature and constitu-
tion of matter. By his famous vortex ring
theory he sought to show how matter itself
might be evolved from the cthor. Kclvin
himself was not satisfied with the theory, but
a competent authority like Professor J. J.
110 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Thomson—who in this department of physics
is doing splendid work—regards “the vortex
atom explanation as the goal at which to
aim.”
To recent speculation about radium and
electrons Lord Kelvin was not quite sym-
pathetic. His mind, naturally conservative,
was slow to move except under the compulsion
of demonstrative fact. What he aimed at was
to reduce all physical phenomena within the
duality of matter and energy. To this he
added ether and electricity, but the recent
extraordinary discoveries in regard to matter
make it plain that the time is not yet for a
great comprehensive theory which will unify
the marvellous play of forces which we call
the material universe.
The researches of Clerk-Maxwell have been
in the highest degree fruitful. His electro-
magnetic theory of light has been pronounced
as one of the most unifying ideas in modern
science. In the department of electricity
Maxwell’s influence has been thus defined by
Professor Arthur Thomson—one of Scotland’s
rising scientists. “The scientific study of
OF SCOTLAND III
electricity initiated by Oersted and Ampere
was profoundly influenced by the experimental
genius and scientific temper of Faraday, found
mathematical or precise formulation in the
work of Lord Kelvin, and was developed into
a provisional dynamical theory by the extra-
ordinary insight of Clerk-Maxwell. It is per-
haps not too much to say that what Newton
did for gravitational phenomena was done by
Clerk-Maxwell for electrical phenomena.”
Thus it has come to pass that largely to the
investigations of the Scottish school into
the nature of electricity the conception of the
atom which used to be viewed as the im-
perishable foundation-stone of the Universe
has been completely revolutionized. Later
researches, indeed, go to show that the atom
is not an ultimate, but composed of corpuscles
of which it is calculated that five hundred go
to make an atom of hydrogen. It seems as
if at the end of our scientific explanations
we were brought face to face with the view
that in its last analysis, viewed dynamically,
Matter with its mysterious potencies is the
manifestation of what Spencer calls the Infi-
112 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
nite and Eternal Energy, personified -- by
Goethe–
“In Beings floods, in Actions storms
I walk and work above, beneath,
Work and Weave in endless motion,
Birth and Death,
An Infinite Ocean,
A seizing and giving,
The fire of living,
'Tis thus at the roaring loom of Time I ply,
And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by.”
THE SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT
(continued)
CHAPTER VII
THE SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT (CONTINUED)
So far as the practical man is concerned,
he is not, as a rule, particularly interested in
abstruse speculations about the nature and
constitution of matter, nor even in the details
of planetary evolution. He is more interested
in the nature and constitution of the earth,
his dwelling-place, and as a consequence Ge-
ology is more popular than Physics. In this
department of science Scotland has done bril-
liant work. The study of the earth entered
the scientific stage when James Hutton pub-
lished his epoch-making book. His book The
Theory of the Earth has been described by
Huxley as one of “the most remarkable con-
tributions to geology which is recorded in the
annals of the science.” It was remarkable in
this, that it applied, for the first time, scientific
method to a subject which had been relegated
I 2 115
II6 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
to the realm of speculation. When Hutton
began to study the earth geologically, the
crudest notions prevailed. The great changes
everywhere apparent were associated with the
Deluge. Other theories were afloat, but being
merely speculative they possessed no scientific
value. The question which Hutton faced was
this—by what agencies had the earth been
sculptured into its present form 2 According
to one theory—the catastrophic—the principal
agencies at work were convulsions, cataclysms,
fire and flood. Hutton opposed this with the
theory of uniformity, which meant that we
must seek geological interpretation in causes
which we observe operating in the present,
and exhaust them before we import causes
which no longer exist. As the result of pro-
longed study, Hutton came to the conclusion
that the earth, instead of being a rigid mass,
is everywhere undergoing changes. Slowly
but surely the hardest rocks are being dis-
integrated by atmospheric, mechanical and
chemical agencies. In addition, the oceans
are perpetually eating in upon the land. Let
this process continue long enough, and, argued
Hutton, entire continents will be worn away.
OF SCOTLAND 117
What then 2 With the wearing away of the
continents the oceans are filled up. The
solidifying of the debris at the bottom of the
oceans gives rise to new rocks, which become
the basis of new continents. To Hutton it
seemed clear “ that the basis of the present
continents was laid in ancient sea-beds formed
of the detritus of continents yet more ancient.”
An important question arises—by what
agency were these rocks lifted above the
oceans so as to form new continents 2 Hut-
ton's reply was subterranean heat, which
in the form of volcanic action upheaved
ocean beds to form continents. This theory,
to which Hutton, after many years’ silent
study, gave publicity in 1785 in a paper to
the Royal Society of Edinburgh, met with
violent opposition. A rival school, headed
by Werner, a German, repudiated the volcanic
part of the theory, and relied upon what is
known as the aqueous theory. Over these
two theories a violent controversy long raged.
The Huttonians were known as Plutonists,
while the followers of Werner were described
as Neptunists.
It is a remarkable tribute to the thorough-
118 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
ness of Hutton’s investigations that later
students in the same field have found little
to add to this enumeration of agencies in
earth changes. In his Theory of the Earth,
published in 1788, Hutton notes the following
agencies—degradation of land by atmospheric
and aqueous agencies, deposition of the debris
as sediment in the ocean, consolidation and
metamorphosis of sedimentary deposits by
the internal heat and by injection of molten
rock, disturbance and upheaval of oceanic
deposits and formation of rocks by the con-
solidation of molten material, both at the
surface and in the interior of the earth. Com-
paring this, remarks Professor Arthur Thomson,
with Professor Geikie's book, Earth Sculpture,
it is seen that only a few “additional modes
of operation have been discovered in the course
of the century. The progress has been in
measuring the efficiency of the factors which
Hutton recognized, rather than in discovering
new ones.” - -
To Hutton belongs the credit of placing
geology on something like a scientific basis.
His theory of the earth’s formation, sound
at heart, contained, however, serious imper-
OF SCOTLAND II9
fections, with which it was the work of another
Scotsman, Sir Charles Lyell, effectively to deal.
Hutton was right in attributing great geological
changes to volcanic action, but his conception
of the work of that agency was erroneous.
He supposed that after long intervals of
quietness volcanic action suddenly shot up
great continents. What Lyell did was logic-
ally to apply Hutton’s own theory of gradual
changes to the entire geological phenomena.
He denied the existence of great violent up-
heavals, and contended that the phenomena
of the past were explainable on the theory of
gradual changes. Lyell pinned his faith not
merely to the uniformity of nature, but also
to the marvellous effects of gradual changes
extending over long periods of time. Phe-
nomena which the Hutton school thought
could only be produced by volcanic eruptions
were traced by Lyell to the slow action of
warmth, frost and rain. Lyell, however, had
not exhausted all the causes of the earth’s
changes. It began to be seen that among
the causes was ice, and after much controversy
the existence of a great Ice Age was admitted,
the influence of which had to be added to the
I2O INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
agents mentioned by Lyell as a factor in
sculpturing the earth, so to speak, into its
present shape.
Sir Charles Lyell’s merits have long been
recognized. On the foundation laid by Hutton
he erected a solid and imposing structure. No
less an authority than Darwin has left on
record these words: “The science of geology
is enormously indebted to Lyell—more so, I
believe, than to any other man who ever lived.”
In Geology as in Physics the Scottish school
has well maintained its best traditions by
contributing greatly to the remarkable advance
of the science during the nineteenth century.
Among those who conspicuously contributed to
this advance Sir Roderick Murchison deserves
special mention. By his explorations among
what are known as the Transition rocks he
added a new chapter to geological science.
Sir Archibald Geikie states in his book The
Founders of Geology that Murchison’s four
months’ labour among the Transition rocks
marked a new step in British geology. “It
was the first successful foray into these hitherto
intractable masses, and prepared the way for
all that has since been done in deciphering the
OF SCOTLAND 121
history of the most ancient fossiliferous forma-
tions alike in the Old World and the New. At
the end of seven years' toil Murchison published
his monumental work The Silurian System,
which forms “a notable epoch in the history
of modern geology and entitles its author to be
enrolled among the founders of the science.”
Coming to later times the science is admirably
represented in Scotland by Sir Archibald
Geikie and Professor James Geikie, who, with
the advantage of being able to apply the
fruitful idea of evolution to geology, have been
able to weld into an organic whole the scattered
discoveries of the past and the present. In one
department, that of glaciation, Professor James
Geikie's The Great Ice Age is recognized as a
crowning work of the nineteenth century.
Special mention must be made of Hugh Miller,
who, in addition to original research, will
always be remembered as the popularizer of
the science just when it was in danger of being
buried in the debris of technical terms.
Turning to the more complex science of
organic nature, we find Scottish scientists of
the eighteenth century doing excellent work.
There is, for instance, William Cullen, who,
122 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
as professor of medicine at Glasgow and after-
wards in Edinburgh, gave a marked impetus
to scientific knowledge in more than one
department. His biographer claims for him
that his investigations into heat and cold must
not only have directed the attention of his
pupil Black to these studies, but must also
have furnished him with several of the data for
his profound reflections on latent heat. Be
that as it may, Cullen, though unduly specu-
lative in his method, made important contri-
butions to the science of medicine. It is
claimed that “to him is largely due the recogni-
tion of the important part played by the
nervous system in health and disease.” Many
of his speculations “as to the reflex nervous
action of sensory and motor fibres, and the
connection of sensory and motor fibres, are
accepted facts.”
The name of Cullen, whose fame rests on
his contributions to pathology, suggests the
name of John Hunter, who was equally at
home in physiology and pathology. Hunter’s
mind was distinguished by two qualities not
often found together—great comprehensiveness
of outlook and patient attention to detail.
OF SCOTLAND 123
He had quite a Spencerian passion for width
of view, and for the accumulation of facts.
Hunter had grasped the modern idea of the
continuity of Nature perhaps better than any
of his contemporaries. At any rate he made
it the guiding idea in his investigations. For
instance, in treating of the human body he
declared it to be necessary to proceed by the
aid of principles derived from a study of animals
whose laws again must be studied through the
laws of inorganic matter. Quite in the spirit
of the evolution theory, Hunter desired to
unite all branches of physical science in the
order of their development, proceeding from
the simple to the complex. His passion for
facts saved him from the danger of losing
himself in pure speculation. His researches,
we are told, covered the whole range of the
animal kingdom. He dissected upwards of
five hundred different species, exclusive of
his dissection of a large number of plants.
At the time of his death his museum contained
upwards of ten thousand specimens illustrative
of human and comparative anatomy, physi-
ology, pathology and natural history. So valu-
able was the collection that it was purchased
124 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
by the Government for £15,000, and presented
to the Royal College of Surgeons.
When we come to other sciences, we find
Scotsmen taking leading positions. In physi-
ology how much do we owe to Sir Charles
Bell’s pregnant ideas on the nervous system
In 1811 Bell published privately a pamphlet
setting forth a “New Idea,” in which he stated
the opinion that “the nerves are not single
nerves, possessing various powers, but bundles
of different nerves, whose filaments are united
for the convenience of distribution, but which
are distinct in office as they are in origin from
the brain.” The value of this pamphlet is
shown by the remark of Sir Michael Foster
that “our present knowledge of the nervous
system is to a large extent only an exemplifica-
tion and expansion of Charles Bell’s “New Idea,”
and has its origins in that.”
In what is called cellular physiology, impor-
tant contributions were made by Professor John
Goodsir and his brother. In this department
John Goodsir—whose name in the history of
science, particularly with reference to the cell-
theory, has strangely been allowed to fall into
the background—was a pioneer. In 1842 he
OF SCOTLAND 125
communicated to the Royal Society of Edin-
burgh a paper on secreting structures in which
he established the principle that cells are the
ultimate secreting agents. In the cells of the
liver, kidney, and other organs he recognized
the characteristic secretion of each gland. The
secretion, he said, was situated between the
nucleus and the cell wall. At first he thought
the secretion was formed by the agency of the
cell wall, but later he regarded it as the product
of the nucleus. Full justice in science books
has been done to the labours in this connection
of Schleiden, Schwann and Virchow, but Scot-
land’s share in the formulation of the cell-
doctrine, as represented by Professor John
Goodsir, has not had adequate recognition.
In other branches of physiology Scotsmen
have done notable work. In embryology Pro-
fessor Arthur Thomson—who himself deserves
honourable mention along with Professor
Geddes in the present generation—links the
name of Francis Balfour with that of Von
Baer, and states that Balfour's monumental
text-book (1880–1881) gave a strong stimulus
to the study of biology.
In the larger sphere of biology, that dealing
i26 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
with the origin of species, Scotland has done
lasting work. To thinkers of a scientific cast
of mind the special creation theory presented
great difficulties, and Leslie, as we saw, groped
his way to the evolutionary conception that
Nature in all her productions “exhibits a
chain of perpetual gradations, and that the
systematic divisions and limitations are
entirely artificial, designed merely to assist
the memory and facilitate our conceptions.”
The evolutionary idea remained in the air,
though Lamarck’s views now and again cropped
up in biological literature. It was not till 1830
that in the persons of distinguished French
scientists the creation and the evolutionary
theories came into collision at the memorable
debate at the Academy of Sciences between
Cuvier and Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire. Cuvier
clung to the old view, and St. Hilaire contended
for the theory of the transmutation of species.
Cuvier was believed to have inflicted a crushing
defeat upon his rival, and for a time there was
a lull in the controversy. In 1844 appeared
the Vestiges of Creation, by Robert Chambers,
and the controversy raged with redoubled
fury. Of course Darwin’s epoch-making book
OF SCOTLAND 127
superseded all previous attempts to solve the
problem. For his pioneering labours in this
department Chambers, however, deserves to be
held in lasting remembrance. In Germany the
problem had been attacked from the side of
philosophy, but the speculative methods of
Oken, Schelling and Hegel bore no fruit, simply
from the absence of scientific method. Cham-
bers attacked the problem on scientific lines.
Darwin acknowledged the great value of the
book; and perusing it in the light of modern
knowledge the student cannot fail to be im-
pressed with the masterly manner in which
Chambers surveys the whole field, and marshals
his facts in support of the developmental
theory. As he puts it, just as the inorganic
world had been reduced to unity by one com-
prehensive law—Gravitation, so in the organic
world one all-comprehensive law reigns—
Development. It is difficult at this time of
day to realize the storm which arose over the
Vestiges. Science joined hands with theology
in denouncing the book, the leading concep-
tion of which outlived all attack and found
its appropriate setting in the far-reaching,
luminous generalization of Darwin.
128 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Strictly speaking, science has discharged its
task when it discovers and unifies the laws of
phenomena. But the mind of man refuses to
rest in phenomena. Beyond the relative it
seeks the absolute, and almost unconsciously
science encroaches upon philosophy and re-
ligion. Living habitually in the world of the
concrete, men of science when they go beyond
descriptions to explanations of phenomena
have a tendency to rest in materialistic views
of the world.
Forty years ago it seemed as if philosophy
had received its death-blow at the hand of
science. George Henry Lewes wrote a history
of philosophy with the avowed object of
showing that it was mainly a record of futile
strivings, of wasted efforts. Science, with its
atoms, its molecules, its ether, had taken up
the great problems of the Universe and, it was
believed, was competent to present a coherent
set of intelligible explanations resting on the
bed-rock of experience. Science laid claim to
have got down to reality, whereas philosophical
speculations were supposed to be a kind of
bottled moonshine. By and by speculative
thinkers began to ask, What is this Reality
OF SCOTLAND i29
about which men of science talk so glibly 2
Science does not talk quite so glibly now,
though even yet the old dogmatic note is
heard. Men like Haeckel in Germany, and
distinguished speakers at British Association
meetings, talk about the Universe and its con-
stitution in terms of Matter and Energy as if
these terms were fundamental and exhaustive,
instead of being symbolical and provisional.
It can be claimed for the Scottish school that its
distinguished members have refused to coquet
with materialism, and in regard to the ultimate
problems God, the world and man, have been
in close agreement with religion and philosophy.
Striking evidence of this is furnished by the
suggestive book, The Unseen Universe, by the
distinguished Scottish scientists of their day,
Messrs. Balfour Stewart and Tait. However
much the Scottish scientists of the eighteenth
century were opposed to the rigid Calvinism
of their time, their deistic mode of thought kept
them free of materialism, which extensively
prevailed in France, and which in our day has
found expression in the writings of English and
German men of science.
In its interpretation of science philosophy in
K
i:30 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Scotland has consistently opposed materialism.
Professor Pringle Pattison fitly represents
the attitude of the Scottish school when he
dwells upon the futility of all attempts “to
explain human life in terms of the merely
animal, to explain life in terms of the inorganic,
and ultimately to find a sufficient formula for
the cosmic process in terms of the redistribu-
tion of Matter and Motion.” Thanks to the
effective philosophical criticism of thinkers like
Professor Pringle Pattison, a great change has
come over scientists. The more thoughtful no
longer mistake their descriptions of phenomena
for explanations, and acknowledge that the
mystery of the Universe lies beyond the reach
of their mechanical categories. It is now being
recognized by the rising generation of scientists
that all attempts to convert atoms, ether, or
energy, into ultimates, end in futility. Nothing
could bring into clearer light the victorious
nature of Professor Pringle Pattison’s battle
with materialism than the following admission
by a brilliant Scottish scientist who is rapidly
coming to the front, Professor Arthur Thomson,
who thus refers to the inevitable limitations of
the mechanical explanations of things: “When
OF SCOTLAND - 13].
we consider any particular corner in the in-
animate world, say the making of the Niagara
Falls, or the making of the frost flowers on the
window, we do not require in our redescription
more than mechanical formulae; but when we
consider Nature, not in isolated pieces, but as a
harmonious whole, the progressive order, the
Orderly progress, and the beauty of it all, when
we go on to recognize that the earth has been
the parent of its tenants, then we must read
back into the world-egg with which we start
a potentiality of giving rise to all that follows.”
What is this but saying in the language of
science, what Professor Pringle Pattison says
in the language of philosophy, that “if the
Universe is one, we have to read back the
nature of the latest consequent into the
remotest antecedent.”
So long as the materialist view of Nature
prevailed, so long as the great Cosmic processes
were conceived in terms of mechanics, the
feeling of wonder and the sense of mystery
were repressed. It is now admitted that vital
processes such as the phenomena of life cannot
be expressed in terms of physics and chemistry,
and that between the physics of the brain and
** K 2
132 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
consciousness there is a great gulf fixed. Scien-
tists are coming to see that the philosophers.
were right who contended that Nature should
be interpreted through man, rather than man
through Nature. Science has severe limita-
tions, to which the leaders of to-day are keenly
alive. In their writings there is none of the
crude philosophy and boastfulness which char-
acterized the writings of the materialists of the
mid-nineteenth century. The difference is well
marked in the following passage from Professor
Arthur Thomson’s Bible of Nature : “It is
the work of science to reduce things to a
common denominator or to a simple beginning,
such as matter, energy and ether, or the life
of a protoplast. This sort of analysis and
genetic description clears up obscurities, affords
a basis for action, and is in any case forced
upon us by our desire to unravel things to
refund phenomena into their antecedent con-
ditions. But it does not satisfy the human
spirit, partly because the common denominator
is in itself mysterious, partly because science
never tells us why so much should come out
of apparently little.” What is the conclusion
of the whole matter ? In the words of Pro-
OF SCOTLAND 183
fessor Thomson : “Many scientific thinkers
who can find no resting-place in science alone
agree with the author of the Foundations of
Belief (Mr. Balfour) when he says: “I do not
believe that any escape from these perplexities
is possible unless we are prepared to bring to
the study of the world the presupposition that
it was the work of a rational being who made
it intelligible, and at the same time made us,
in however feeble a fashion, able to understand
it.’” Interpret man through Nature, as the
leading scientists of a former generation did,
and you bind humanity fast in fate and deprive
life of all rational purpose. Interpret Nature
through man, after the manner of the new
school of scientists, and you make possible the
view that through the ages an increasing
purpose runs, and that the highest instincts of
the soul are not delusive by-products, but
prophetic hints of a life that will bloom and
blossom otherwhere.
Science when philosophically interpreted
leads the mind into the region of religion. In
the words of John Fiske, one of the most
brilliant expounders of science from the evo-
lutionary standpoint—
134, INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
“The God of the scientific philosopher is
still, and must ever be, the God of the Christian,
though freed from the illegitimate formulae by
the aid of which theology has sought to render
Deity comprehensible. What is this wonderful
dynamic which manifests itself to our conscious-
ness in harmonic activity throughout the
length and breadth and depth of the Universe,
which guides the stars for countless ages in the
paths that never err, and which animates the
molecules of the dewdrop that gleams for a
brief hour on the shaven lawn—whose workings
are so resistless that we have nought to do but
reverently obey them; yet so infallible that
We can place our unshaken trust in them,
yesterday, to-day, and for ever ? . . . Here
science must ever reverently pause, acknow-
ledging the presence of the mystery of mys-
teries. Here religion must ever hold sway,
reminding us that from birth until death we are
dependent on a Power to whose eternal decrees
we must submit, to whose dispensations we must
resign ourselves, and upon whose constancy we
may implicitly rely.” And thus at the end of
their discoveries and interpretations science and
philosophy in the Cathedral of Immensity unite
with religion in worshipping in awe and adora-
tion the God of the Shorter Catechism—“a
spirit infinite, eternal and unchangeable.”
THE ECONOMIC MOVEMENT
CHAPTER VIII
THE ECONOMIC MOVEMENT
IN studying the intellectual development
of Scotland, it is necessary to remember that
the revolt against Rome as the embodiment
of the principle of authority had two aspects—
the religious and the intellectual. In Scotland,
in the name of religious liberty, Protestantism
won the battle. The battle for intellectual
liberty is usually associated with the Renais-
sance, though Protestantism in the conflict
lent its powerful aid. It was inevitable that
the liberating process once begun should extend
to other sections of national life, and thus it
came about that the revolt against authority
spread by and by to the spheres of politics
and industry. In its long despotic reign the
Roman Catholic Church had a powerful ally
in Feudalism. The very desire for liberty was
137
138 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
treated as a crime. The religious man who
claimed the right to dissent from the Church was
a heretic; the political man who rose against
consecrated despotism was a traitor; and the
labourer who claimed the right to work for
himself was a rebel serf. With the overthrow
of Romanism and Feudalism as the dominant
factors in civilization, and the breakdown of
the old theocratic conception of social and
national life, there naturally grew up a demand
for a new theory of civilization. In Scotland
this desire found expression in the writings
of Hutcheson, the founder of Moderatism.
Moderatism, as has been seen, made its in-
fluence felt in all departments of the national
life; it aspired to be something more than the
opponent of Calvinism. In opposition to the
old theocratic regime with its divine-right
theory that Church and State were entitled
to absolute sway over the individual, Hutcheson
formulated another divine-right theory—that
of the individual to control himself under the
guidance of enlightened self-interest. Hutche-
son’s contention was that the aims of Nature
—which is the expression of the Divine will—
were best realized, and harmony of interests
OF SCOTLAND I39
secured by freeing the individual from des-
potisms which claimed to have theocratic
sanction. Adam Smith always acknowledged
his indebtedness to Hutcheson, an indebtedness
which is perfectly obvious when regard is had
to the fundamental ideas of the Wealth of
Nations. It is necessary to make the relations
between the two thinkers quite clear, as there
is a current opinion that in regard to economic
science Smith’s ideas were imported from
France. Even Carlyle falls into this mistake
when, in his essay on Burns, he says “it was
Quesnay’s lamp that kindled the lamp in
Adam Smith.” That Adam Smith when in
France conversed with Turgot and Quesnay
on economic subjects is well known, but that
he was indebted to them for the fundamental
ideas of his Wealth of Nations is quite erroneous.
When he was in the Chair of Moral Philosophy
in Glasgow, Adam Smith, as early as 1752,
embodied in the form of lectures the ideas
of the Wealth of Nations. The year before
Quesnay published his system Smith had ex-
pounded his theory of natural liberty. French
and English writers have claimed Quesnay as
the spiritual father of Adam Smith, whereas
140 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Smith himself always considered Hutcheson
as his great teacher. In a word, Smith’s
economic theories in their main outline were
fully laid before his visit to France.
There is no such thing as absolute originality,
and Adam Smith would have repudiated the
notion that he spun his economic philosophy
entirely out of his own brain. In addition to
Hutcheson he owed much to Hume, who was
a master of the whole subject. Adam Smith’s
position in economics resembles Darwin’s in
biology. Thinkers before Darwin had specu-
lated about species on the lines of evolution,
just as thinkers before Smith had been groping
for a key to economic problems. As I have
said elsewhere : “Smith’s work was epoch-
making for the reasons that made Darwin’s
epoch-making; Smith laid bare the secret
mechanism by which Nature, when duly
obeyed, makes the industrial world an har-
monious and organic whole. The secret mech-
anism which is disclosed in the Wealth of
Nations is the power of self-interest when duly
safeguarded by liberty and justice to produce
industrial harmony in the sphere of wealth
production and exchanges. Just as Darwin
OF SCOTLAND * 141
contends that the best biological results in
Nature are obtained when the great competitive
forces among organisms are allowed liberty
to operate, so Smith contends that the best
industrial results are secured when, under the
necessary conditions of liberty and justice, the
competitive self-interests of free men are
allowed sway.”
At this stage we detect the influence of
Moderatism, which as a reaction against the
theological doctrine of human depravity, had
much to say of the natural goodness of man, a
conception which underlies Adam Smith’s book
the Theory of Moral Sentiments. In making
sympathy the basis of morality, Smith clearly
assumes that men in the pursuit of their
own self-interest have a natural sympathy
with one another and out of the feelings
of dependence and mutual helpfulness there
result social harmony. As he puts it, in
civilized society man stands at all times in
need of the co-operation of his fellows and
the assistance of great multitudes, and in these
circumstances man can only satisfactorily con-
nect himself with his fellows through the
medium of reciprocity of services—a process
142 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
which optimists of the time believed invested
self-interest with ethical and social qualities.
Now we come to an all-important aspect of
Adam Smith’s economic philosophy. If free-
dom of trade is essential to home industry, it
is also, he declared, essential to foreign trade.
For centuries trade and commerce were carried
on under the prevalence of the notion that
in these matters the interests of the several
nations were inherently antagonistic. Under
the influence of the old mercantile theory what
One nation gained another was supposed to
lose. In the words of Adam Smith, each
nation has been made to look with an invidious
eye upon the prosperity of all the nations with
which it trades and to consider their trade as
its own loss. “As a rich man is likely to be a
better customer to the industrious people in a
ncighbourhood than a poor, so is likewise a rich
nation. . . . Private people who want to make
a fortune never think of retiring to the remote
and poor provinces of the country, but resort
either to the capital or to some of the great
commercial towns. They know that where
little wealth circulates there is little to be got;
but where a great deal is in motion some share
OF SCOTLAND 143
of it may fall to them. The same maxim
which would in this matter direct the common
sense of one, or ten, or twenty individuals,
should regulate the judgment of one, ten, or
twenty millions, and should make a whole
nation regard the riches of its neighbours as a
probable cause and occasion for itself to acquire
riches. A nation that would enrich itself by
foreign trade is certainly most likely to do so
when its neighbours are all rich, industrious
and commercial nations.” *
The Wealth of Nations was published in I? 76,
and immediately arrested attention, though its
political influence was checked by the reaction
caused by the French Revolution, which
also, as we noticed, checked the influence of
Moderatism in the sphere of religion. In both
the religious and the political, the principle of
natural liberty which inspired Smith's great
work was, as the result of the Revolution,
identified with anarchy. Still the Wealth of
Nations found a friendly reception in high
quarters. In the House of Commons Pitt
sympathetically referred to the book, whose
influence made itself felt in the purification of
the tariff in later years. Inspired by Adam
144 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Smith’s ideas Gladstone and Cobden still
further popularized Free Trade, with results
familiar to every student of British history.
Under the guidance of the idea of natural
liberty which was the ruling thought in
the minds of Hutcheson and the Moderates,
and which is the basal conception of the
Wealth of Nations, the work of emancipation
has gone forward in all directions. A com-
mercial policy resting on Free Trade, a foreign
policy based on the idea of national liberty and
independence, a legal code making for equality
before the law and freedom from the fetters of
feudalism, ecclesiastical freedom from Eras-
tianian interference—these and numerous other
emancipatory movements drew their inspira-
tion from the idea of natural liberty which on
the economic side received such powerful
exposition and advocacy from Adam Smith.
A thinker of the first rank is known by the
amount of controversial literature which his
writings call forth. Judged by that standard
Adam Smith’s position in the intellectual
realm is beyond dispute. As in the cases of
Newton and Darwin, Smith reduced to order
a whole set of phenomena which, up till he
OF SCOTLAND 145
wrote, was in a condition of chaos. No man is
infallible, and since Smith’s day Political
Economy as a science has undergone consider-
able modifications, but the fundamental ideas
remain untouched. Even those who have a
leaning to Protection admit that complete Free
Trade is the true economic ideal, and their
differences of opinion with their opponents
revolve round the question whether in the
present condition of Continental nations,
bristling as they are with hostile tariffs and
armed to the teeth, a medium policy of a
retaliatory nature might not be beneficial.
These differences, however, do not affect the
fact of Adam Smith’s world-wide influence.
At his feet the modern students of the science
still sit. It is related that on one occasion
Pitt met Smith at the London house of Dundas.
Smith was late in arriving, and immediately
the whole company rose to receive him. “Be
seated, gentlemen,” said Smith. “No,” re-
plied Pitt, “we will stand till you are the first
seated, for we are all your scholars.” These
words of Pitt find an echo in the modern
mind—we are all his scholars.
Since the time of Adam Smith economic
L
146 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
science has undergone marked changes. Rest-
ing on an optimistic theory of life, the Smithian
system in the hands of the Ricardo school
tended to pessimism. A firm believer in the
beneficence of Nature, Adam Smith would
have welcomed the vast powers which science
has given mankind over material forces; were
he alive to-day he certainly would be dis-
appointed with the comparatively small contri-
bution which science has made to social well-
being. In this regard the high hopes of
thinkers of the past have not been realized.
Bacon, for instance, looked upon science, with
the great command which it gave man over the
forces of Nature, as the pioneer of a kind of
millennial bliss for the human race. As he
put it: “The real and true goal of the sciences
is nothing else than the enrichment of human
life by the introduction of new inventions
and resources.” Knowledge of Nature meant
power over Nature, and once this was gained
there was expected as a natural consequence
a widespread diffusion of leisure and comfort.
Science, in the form of mechanical inventions,
was expected to so lighten the labour of
humanity that the individual, freed from
OF SCOTLAND 147
degrading toil, would develop rapidly along
the lines of physical, intellectual, and moral
improvement. The extent to which science
has contributed to the labour power of the
world was strikingly shown by Sir William
Ramsay in his recent presidential address to
the British Association. No civilization worthy
of the name can be built up without leisure.
Greece was able to shine with an intellectual
splendour which is the admiration of the world,
and that simply because the necessary leisure
was procured by what was practically slave
labour. In the words of Sir William Ramsay :
“A large proportion of the people had had
ample leisure. They had time to think and
to discuss what they thought. How was this
achieved 2 The answer was simple ; each
Greek freeman had on an average at least five
helots who did his bidding, who worked his
mines, looked after his farm, and, in short,
saved him from manual labour. Now we in
Britain were much better off; the population
of the British Isles was in round numbers
45,000,000; there were consumed in our fac-
tories at least 50,000,000 tons of coal annually,
and it is generally agreed that the consumption
L 2
148 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
of coal per indicated horse-power per hour is
on an average about 5lb. This gave 7,000,000
horse-power per year. Seven million horse-
power were about 175,000,000 man-power.
Taking a family as consisting on the average of
five persons, our 45,000,000 would represent
9,000,000 families; and dividing the total
man-power by the number of families, we must
conclude that each British family had, on the
average, nearly twenty “ helots doing his
bidding, instead of the five of the Athenian
family.”
One would be entitled to expect from this
greatly-increased mechanical power a corre-
sponding increase of leisure. How far we are
from this is seen when we contrast the high
hopes of Bacon and the philosophers of the
enlightenment in France and England with
the sombre statement of John Stuart Mill as
follows: “ Hitherto it is questionable if all
the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day’s toil of any human being.
They have enabled a greater population to
live the same life of drudgery and imprison-
ment, and an increased number of manu-
facturers and others to make fortunes. They
OF SCOTLAND I49
have increased the comforts of the middle
classes. But they have not yet begun to effect
those great changes in human destiny which
it is in their nature and futurity to accomplish.”
So that the upshot is that science, with its
mechanical inventions, has done little or noth-
ing to secure the needful distribution of wealth
which makes leisure and a command of the
comforts of life universal possessions. Further,
science, from the side of economics and biology,
has done much to justify the existing unsafis- -

#:
§of
factory state of affairs. In the handsº
Ricardo, political economy helped on #he
movement towards wealth monopoly by teach-
ing that high profits could only be possible
through low wages, and as high profits were
said to be the motive powers of national
prosperity, increased leisure and increased
wages were out of the question. Next came
Malthus, who, from the population side, showed
that there were no covers laid at Nature’s table
for the poor man. Following upon this came
Darwin, who showed that progress was achieved
through a struggle for existence, in which the
weakest must go to the wall, and of course,
in the industrial struggle, the weakest was the
150 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
worker. Improvement in his position was not
encouraged by Nature.
In the hands of some of Darwin’s followers
the theory assumed most forbidding forms.
Huxley, for example, conceived life as a huge
Donnybrook, in which head-splitting and
general turmoil were reduced to a science.
Those who succeeded in the struggle were the
elect, the favoured ones. Science, in a word,
became Calvinistic. Quite on the lines of the
old theological doctrine of election, Haeckel,
quoting Scripture, declared that “many were
called, but few were chosen.”
In the ranks of science within recent years
there has grown up a reaction against the
gladiator theory of existence. Prince Kropot-
kin did good service, not only to the science of
biology, but also to the science of Society,
when in his book, Mutual Aid, he showed that
the struggle for existence had been grossly
exaggerated, if not caricatured, by the early
Darwinians. More influential in primitive
times than ruthless competition is a sense of
human solidarity. Then came the late Pro-
fessor Drummond, with his illuminating view
that along with the struggle for self there has
OF SCOTLAND L51
gone on all through history a struggle for
others. Out of this has grown family life and
the opportunities for self-sacrifice and all the
higher virtues which have given a halo of the
divine to human life. Among the rising biolo-
gists, Darwinism is now interpreted on demo-
cratic rather than on aristocratic lines, as may
be seen from the writings of two Scottish
scientists, Professor Arthur Thomson and Pro-
fessor Patrick Geddes. Hitherto science has
been too much left in the hands of specialists,
who have pursued their studies in a mechanical
way, utterly regardless of its bearing upon the
great surging life of humanity.
Messrs. Thomson and Geddes are idealists.
Both writers in criticism of the Huxley school
have emphasized the social side of evolution—
the side which takes account of the part which
co-operation, as opposed to competition, has
played in civilization. In their view “it is
possible to interpret the ideals of ethical pro-
gress through love and sociality, co-operation
and sacrifice, not as mere Utopias contradicted
by experience, but as the highest expressions
of the central evolutionary process of the
natural world.” Such a view of life has
152 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
important practical consequences. In dealing
with man as a social being we must substitute
co-operation for competition, brotherly help
for friendless rivalry.
Science, in the early Darwinian days, was
decidedly materialistic. In the hands of the
new school it is pre-eminently idealistic. It
aims at beautifying as well as interpreting life,
and as evidence of this may be noted the great
success of the attempt of Professor Geddes
from the standpoint of science, to give a more
humane touch to political economy and to
the beautifying of civic life. Democracy has
never taken kindly to science, simply because
of its aristocratic tendencies, but with the
advent of the new spirit we may expect the
beginning of a new era in which knowledge
will indeed be power; not a power to be wielded
in the interests of the few, but a power to be
employed for the elevation of the many in all
that makes life worth living.
Thinkers to-day are learning the truth which
previous thinkers failed quite to appreciate,
that environment is more potent as a factor in
social evolution than has been hitherto sup-
posed. Heredity lay for a time with fatalistic
OF SCOTLAND 153
weight on humanity, and had much to do
with the pessimism of Darwinism. Thanks to
the new school, we are learning to put heredity
in its proper place, and to recognize the vast
influence which environment plays in the
moulding of the race. No progress could be
made in social reform, for instance, so long as
it was believed that the children of the slums
were doomed to evil, and could not be changed,
no matter how you changed their surroundings.
The new school of Darwinians recognize the
great influence of environment, and, while not
ignoring heredity, have given a biological
interpretation of Society which gives room for
the larger hope. They have facts to justify
their hopeful creed. The Poor Law Inspector
of Glasgow has given it as his opinion that,
provided you take the children of dissolute
parents early enough away from their slum
surroundings, they cannot be said to suffer
at all from their birth environment. He
supports his view by figures which go to show
that out of some 630 children sent by him
to the country and kept under close obser-
vation for years, only twenty-three turned
out bad. The old Darwinians would not
154 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
have troubled about these children. They
were doomed at their birth, and it was going
against Nature to strive against the curse of
heredity. Democracy can now hail as a friend
the new spirit which has sprung up in science
within recent years. The old gladiator school
is dead. The alliance between Science and
Democracy is hopeful for the future. Demo-
cracy needs guidance; and economic science
with something of the optimism of Adam
Smith, incorporated as it now is with Soci-
ology, can supply the guidance of which
Democracy, in a complex civilization, stands
in special need.
THE LITERARY SPIRIT
CHAPTER IX
THE LITERARY SPIRIT
IT is greatly to be regretted that the spirit
of partisanship has entered so deeply into the
study of Scottish history. It might be expected
that on a subject like literature it would be
possible for writers to leave behind the heated
atmosphere of ecclesiastical controversy and
rise into the ampler air of cultured serenity.
Instead, in the case of literature as in the case
of science, we find fierce antagonism toward
the Church for what is called its obstructive
influence upon the purely human side of
Scotland’s development. Echoing Buckle, dis-
ciples of the Humanist cult are never weary
of dilating upon the disastrous effects of the
Reformation upon the literary side of Scotland.
They point to the brilliant outburst of Scottish
literary genius in the pre-Reformation period
and contrast it with the blight that followed
157
158 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
the religious struggle. What is the real
explanation ? Simply this, as has already
been pointed out : the literature of the
golden age remained feudalistic when the
nation was preparing to enter the path which
ultimately brought it within the sweep of the
great industrial epoch with the rise of the
middle classes. The poetry of the time had
no vital connection with the new ideas which
were in the end to destroy both Feudalism
and Romanism. It is a remarkable fact,
which bears out this line of thought, that the
one man of letters of the pre-Reformation
period who lives in popular memory was Sir
David Lyndsay. Why 2 Because he busied
himself not with fantastical allegories of a
dying civilization, but with the ideas and
feelings which were ushering in the new time.
The golden age was ended not by the Reform-
ation, but by its own inherent weakness. It
breathed the spirit of stagnation notwith-
standing its close connection with the Renais-
sance; it lived in a dying world, and had no
vital relation to the world which was being born.
Another aspect of the question remains.
Is it true that the Reformation was inherently
OF SCOTLAND i59
hostile to literature and the new learning
generally 2 That the Reformers were not
likely to take kindly to Humanism as it was
represented in the semi-Paganism of Italian
authors and reflected in much of the objec-
tionable poetry of Scottish writers is highly
probable. In their revolt from the doctrinal
side of Romanism the Humanists in too many
cases revolted also from the ethical side; the
result being a kind of literature which, to put
it mildly, did not make for righteousness.
The Humanists, in their rebound from the
ethical strictness of the supernatural theory
of life, went to the other extreme, and revelled
in a laxity which speedily ended in open and
unabashed immorality. Poetry was used not
to reveal the ideal, but to glorify the sensual.
In their stern battle against Rome, whose
moral corruption was as palpable as its theo-
logical and ecclesiastical errors, the Reformers
were not likely to get much help from a band
of literary Pagans who were offering incense
at the altar of a degrading naturalism.
That the Reformers had no hostility to
learning and literature as such is plain from
the great effort they made to foster the
160 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
intellectual spirit after the downfall of the
Romish Church. In remodelling the curricu-
lum at the Universities they gave attention
to the various departments of the newest
learning of their time. Science and literature
were favoured. In pressing their scheme
upon the nobility the Reformers said: “If
God shall give your wisdoms grace to set
forward letters in the sort prescribed, ye shall
leave wisdom and learning to your posterity—
a treasure more to be esteemed than any
earthly treasure ye are able to amass for them.”
In 1563 a petition was presented to the Queen
and Lords of articles requesting reform of the
University, “in the name of all that within
this realm are desyrous that leirning and
letters floreis.” The avarice of the nobility
was stronger than their love of learning, and
the Reformers petitioned in vain.
So far from the Reformers being obstruc-
tionists in the sphere of learning and letters,
the truth is that the ideals of men like Knox
and particularly Melville were high enough
and wide enough to include all the intellectual
elements of a well-ordered social state. Only
ignorance of the literary history of Scotland
OF SCOTLAND 16]
at the time of the Reformation can explain
the constant assertion that intolerance and
fanaticism caused a blight to fall upon the
Scottish intellect. In strict truth it was only
at the Reformation that the mind of Scotland
in science and literature received its proper
bent. It was only at the Reformation that
Scotland became a nation—one in religion, in
belief, in sentiment, and in feeling. It was
only at the Reformation that Scotland rescued
the individual from the tyranny of the feudal
despotism of the nobles as well as from the
spiritual despotism of the Pope. It was only
at the Reformation that in the national mind
were sown the seeds of the great literary har-
vest which was to come to fruition in the
eighteenth century. That the harvest did
not come sooner was not the fault of the Re-
formers. That this is so is clear from the
earnest efforts made under Andrew Melville
for the higher education of Scotland, and the
great enthusiasm which existed for classical
learning as well as for theology.
The influence of the Reformation in the
development of the literary spirit is admitted
by no less an authority than the late Professor
M
162 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Masson. In his chapter, “Literary History of
Edinburgh '' in his Edinburgh Sketches and
Memoirs, he says: “The first eighty years
of the sixteenth century may be regarded
(the pre-Reformation authorship and the first
Reformation authorship taken together) as
one definitely-marked stage, and the earliest in
the literary history of Edinburgh. It was an
age of high credit to Scottish literary history
all in all.” -
And yet the fact remains that the literary
impulse given by the Reformation was not
sustained. A period of intellectual stagna-
tion set in. That it was not due to what has
been called the intolerance and fanaticism of
the Reformers has been abundantly shown.
To what, then, was it due 2 It was due to the
fact that Scotland had other things to think
about than poetry and belles lettres. To her
was allotted the task of fighting for the funda-
mental basis of all mental activity, the right
to think for herself on religious and ecclesi-
astical questions. Without independence in
these matters no real enduring literature was
possible; and while the great battle so victori-
ously won by the Covenanters and embodied
OF SCOTLAND 163
in the Revolution Settlement was in process,
the cultivation of literature seemed as much
out of place as Nero's fiddling performances
while Rome was burning. The cultivation
of the Muses is fit only for a time of social
stability and leisure. The Reformers and
Covenanters fought the great battle of liberty,
and it ill becomes those who have entered into
their work to traduce their memories and
belittle their labours. The literary develop-
ment interrupted by the contest with Episco-
pacy made a fresh start when social order was
secured by the disappearance of the Stewarts
from the scene. -
Naturally repressed during the long period
of ecclesiastical and political turmoil, the
literary side of Scotland made a fresh start
with the opening of the eighteenth century.
Naturally, too, the development took the
form of a reaction from the ideals of the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries. From the
nature of the case those ideals were somewhat
narrow and exclusive. Protestantism, as
represented by the Covenanting section, drew
much too sharp a line between sacred and
secular. They modelled the national life too
MI 2
164 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
closely upon the Hebrew Theocracy, and
treated as unworthy of the serious considera-
tion of men the Hellenic side of human nature
—the side which finds expression in literature
and art. In the time of storm and stress
literature could not thrive, but with some
measure of political and social stability and
peace it was natural that the Scottish mind
should seek to break away from the narrow
groove of ecclesiasticism.
In the form of literary activity which sprang
up after the Union we can distinctly trace
the influence of the reaction. The eighteenth-
century temperament in Scotland, averse to
the supernatural, turned readily to the natural.
The new movement drew its inspiration
largely from France, and showed itself in a
fondness, in all forms of thought and activity,
for qualities and ideals in direct opposition to
the Covenanting regime. Instead of the Cal-
vinism of the Reformation and Covenanting
periods, we have in the eighteenth century
the Humanism of Continental thinkers, par-
ticularly the French. In the theological
literature of the one period man is viewed as
a helpless, depraved being, utterly unfit, apart
OF SCOTLAND I65
from Divine help, to rise in the scale of being;
in the theological literature of the Humanist
period we have man represented as a self-
regulating being, capable of following the
dictates of an enlightened self-interest. The
theological literature of the eighteenth century,
as shown in the pages of Hutcheson and Blair,
finds its explanation in the fact that the
preachers of the time had moved away from
the vivid supernaturalism of the early period.
The Moderates substituted the watchword
Culture for the old Calvinistic watchword Re-
generation; and Culture became the watchword
in all branches of Scottish eighteenth-century
literature. The thinkers of that century,
wearied of the strife of the previous century,
yearned for a social state from which theo-
logical disputes and ideas were banished, and
instead there reigned comfort, ease, good
breeding and good-fellowship. Tired of the
strenuous life of the battle-field, they yearned
for the calm of the study and the drawing-
TOOIſle
We find this feeling reflected in philosophy
as well as in theology. It dictated the efforts
of Francis Hutcheson and Adam Smith to
I66 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
dissociate moral philosophy from theology.
It set them, in opposition to the theologians,
to seek in human nature, apart from super-
natural stimulus, all the necessary inspiration
for a well-balanced and cultured humanity.
The Hutcheson school, in short, adopted the
theory of life which had long been dominant
in England and France. In historical writing,
too, we trace influences which had their root
in the Humanist movement of the eighteenth
century. Here supernaturalism is conspicu-
ously absent. Robertson is quite Voltairian
in his methods, and Adam Ferguson quite
plainly draws his inspiration from Montes-
quieu. Hume is notoriously secular in his
tone, and Adam Smith’s conception of society,
as revealed in his Wealth of Nations, leaves
no room for the theory for which the Cove-
nanters so strenuously fought. In all this
we are far removed from the Headship of
Christ. The Scottish thinkers did not, like
their French brethren, break violently with
the current creed; they simply ignored it.
They were Deists, not Atheists. God was
thought of as a monarch who reigned but did
not govern. Man, endowed with reason, was
OF SCOTLAND t 167
perfectly able to find his way about without
supernatural guidance.
When we come to poetry we also detect
the influence of the Humanist movement.
Given a conception of man in which the ele-
ments of mysticism and enthusiasm are absent,
in which the admired qualities are good-
nature, politeness, dignity, and decorum, and
the imaginative literature will faithfully re-
flect the conception. Shakespeare, with his
almost Calvinistic dealings with the super-
natural, his fierce energy, his portrayal of
the diabolic element in humanity, will be un-
popular. In Voltairian language, he will be
treated as a barbarian. To the mild loungers
of the drawing-room poetry will be nothing if
not decorous, measured, correct, pleasing, not
rousing, soothing, not stimulating. This is
exactly what we find in the poetry of the
eighteenth century. Everything was done by
rule. Even when in Thomson’s Seasons
there is a distinct feeling for Nature, we are
very far from any higher conception of Nature
than that of a piece of wonderful mechanism,
the contemplation of which gives pleasure.
But the imagination will not be satisfied with
168 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
the bald literalness of mere scientific descrip-
tion, so, to make it poetic, Nature had to be
dotted over with absurd shepherds and shep-
herdesses and all kinds of semi-mythological
extravagances. --
Hitherto Scottish literature had been largely
imitative. French models were slavishly fol-
lowed in history, essay-writing, and literary
criticism. Everything was sacrificed to cor-
rectness—so much that Hume could not
tolerate Shakespeare, whose great outbursts
of energy and feeling were disconcerting to the
nerves of the frigid school. In the main, the
literary development of Scotland had been of
the self-conscious and hot-house type. A new
phase is associated with Allan Ramsay. Some-
what of a Pagan in his methods and ideals,
Ramsay gave to the poetry of his time what
it sorely needed—naturalness and spontaneity.
Moreover, he fought for a natural poetry. He
protested against the imitative school. Ram-
say restored feeling to its proper place in
poetry. He broke down the artificial dykes
which had been constructed by the critics of
the imitative classical school, and allowed the
emotions to play freely upon the ever-changing
OF SCOTLAND I69
phenomena of Nature and life. To be in the
fashion, Ramsay, of course, had to be anti-
ecclesiastical, and in order to be that it was
thought necessary also to be anti-moral, with
the result that in his poetry Naturalism at
times runs riot. Making allowance for the
low standard of his age in these matters, Allan
Ramsay deserves high praise as perhaps the
first Scottish poet who broke down the notion
that poetry was mainly a product of the
schools, and was intended only for the learned
few. In Fergusson the humble side of Scottish
life found another representative. In his
verses we have a kind of prophetic anticipa-
tion of Burns. The Pagan element, which
appears in Ramsay’s verses only, appeared in
the life of Fergusson, and the result we all
know. The eighteenth-century reaction from
the ideals of the seventeenth century too often
acted with disastrous effect in the sphere of
personal morality and happiness—a fact which
finds dramatic illustration in the career of
Robert Burns. -
BURNS AND HIS EPOCH
CHAPTER X.
BURNS AND HIS EPO CH
BEFORE attempting to define the place of
Burns in Scottish literature it may be well
to clear away some misconceptions to which
Taine, the great French critic, has given cur-
rency. In his English Literature, he traces
the inspirational ideas of Burns largely to
German and French sources. In the words
of Taine : “ Thus rises the modern man im-
pelled by two sentiments, one democratic, the
other philosophic. From the shallows of his
poverty and ignorance he rises with effort,
lifting the weight of established society and
admitted dogmas, disposed either to reform
or to destroy them, and at once generous and
rebellious. These two currents from France
and Germany at this moment swept into
England. The dykes were so strong they
could hardly force their way, entering more
slowly than elsewhere, but entering neverthe-
I73
I'74 INTELLECTUAT, DEVELOPMENT
less. The new spirit broke out first in a
Scotch peasant, Robert Burns.”
Taine's tendency to sum up historic epochs
in neat portable generalizations never led him
farther astray than in his attempt to define
the intellectual environment of Burns. Till
Carlyle began to write, Scotland knew next to
nothing of German speculative philosophy.
True, De Quincey and Coleridge had dabbled
in transcendentalism, but it will hardly be con-
tended that these writers lived in the Burns
period. There is more plausibility in the view
that Burns was subject to French influence,
notably Rousseau. Between Burns and Rous-
seau there is undoubted resemblance. Both
sprang from the people, both were at war
with the conventionality of their time, and
both broke away from the classical standard
of literature. But it is surely going beyond
the mark to argue from resemblance to dis-
cipleship. It does not follow that because
both writers adopted a new attitude towards
Nature, for instance, that Burns took his
keynote from Rousseau.
The truth is, Scotland before France showed
a tendency to naturalism as opposed to classic
OF SCOTLAND 175
artificiality. This fact is admitted by Taine
when, in dealing with the poetry of Thomson,
he says: “Thirty years before Rousseau
Thomson had expressed all Rousseau's senti-
ments, almost in the same style. Like him,
he painted the country with sympathy and
enthusiasm. Like him, he contrasted the
golden age of primitive simplicity with modern
miseries and corruptions. Like him, he praised
patriotism, liberty, virtue; rose from the spec-
tacle of Nature to the contemplation of God,
and showed man glimpses of immortal life
beyond the tomb.” Clearly we must look
elsewhere than to Rousseau for the intellect-
ual environment of Burns. Suppose we look
nearer home. We can fairly well account for
the intellectual outlook of Burns without going
outside our own island. Burns appeared upon
the scene when two antagonistic theories of
man and society were contending for mastery
—Calvinism and Moderatism.
It is sometimes represented as if Burns were
drawn into opposition to Calvinism by the
Harsh treatment which he received at the hands
of the Evangelical party. That treatment no
doubt inspired his attacks on Calvinism, but
176 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
there is evidence that Burns in earnest Scottish
fashion had silently grappled with the tre-
mendous problems of life, was well read in the
theological literature of his time, and gave the
Moderate theory full intellectual consent. For
evidence let us take the letter written by Burns
to Mrs. Dunlop, dated June 21, 1789, in which,
after distinctly repudiating the Calvinistic
tenets as presented in a sermon which he had
just heard, he goes on to give his own confes-
sion of faith in quite the style of Hutcheson
and his disciples—the existence of God, the
eternal distinction between virtue and vice, a
retributive scene of existence beyond the grave.
To Rousseau Burns was not indebted for his
creed. It was in the main the outcome of a
powerful mind, working on the facts of life,
and aided in its operations by the teachings
of Hutcheson, Blair and Adam Smith, whose
theory of the moral sentiment he quoted in
one of his letters. At the same time it would
be a mistake to define Burns as a Moderate
of the ordinary type. The average Moderate
was terribly at ease in Zion. His theory of
life with its rosy optimism, well enough suited
for the literary club and drawing-room, was
OF SCOTLAND 177
quite inadequate to the terrible facts of life
as seen from the standpoint of the toiling
peasant. Far removed from the stern realities
and drudgery of existence among the poor, the
philosophers of the drawing-room could talk
of this as the best possible world, and close
their eyes to the struggles of the common
people, who were described even by a man
like Hume as the “vulgar.” Burns knew
only too well that many things in human
nature and society were more easily explained
by Calvinism than by Moderatism. There
was, for instance, the strange antagonism
between the higher and the lower nature of
man, in theological language, between the
flesh and the spirit. Burns knew by sad
experience what the self-satisfied Moderate
with his gospel of culture did not know, the
truth that lay under the Pauline distinction
between Nature and grace, and he could echo
in the midst of his agonizing hours of remorse
the words of the Apostle: “O wretched man
that I am who shall deliver me from the body
of this death 2 °
Burns had intellectual breadth and religious
susceptibility enough to appropriate what was
N
I'78 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
best in the two phases of the religious thought
of his time. Thus it happened that while the
average Moderate looked upon Calvinism as
represented by the Covenanters as a detestable
fanaticism, an enemy to the amenities of social
life, Burns paid tribute to their magnificent
stand for liberty. And this brings me to the
common opinion, to which Taine gives expres-
sion, that Burns owed his democratic fervour
to Rousseau and the French Revolution. As
a matter of fact, long before the democratic
note was sounded in France, Scotland was
familiar with the full-blown creed of democ-
racy. Democratic fervour was in the blood
of the Scottish people from the time of George
Buchanan onward. Long before Locke and
Rousseau opposed the doctrine of divine right
of kings and advocated the right of rebellion
against despotism, Scottish thinkers had for-
mulated theories of government which were
totally irreconcilable with all kinds of despot-
ism. Long before Rousseau, Samuel Ruther-
ford wrote his famous Lea Real, the political
text-book of the Covenanters, in which it is
laid down that king and beggar sprang of one
clay. If all men are equally free, there is
OF SCOTLAND 179
no reason in Nature why one man should be
king and lord over another. Royal power,
according to Rutherford, is vested in the people
alone, and they may take it away if the condi-
tions upon which it is given are violated. On
the basis of this the Covenanters refused to
recognize the Stewarts and their divine right
theory. Burns, who had Covenanting blood
in his veins, had no need to go to Rousseau
for his democratic fervour. His “ A man’s
a man for a that ” owes infinitely more to
Samuel Rutherford than to Rousseau.
The thought of the eighteenth century was
essentially aristocratic. The people were con-
stantly spoken of as the “vulgar.” The
political creed of Deism tended to Toryism.
The common people were utilized in posing
for artistic purposes. They were used in
poetry mainly for picturesque ends. True,
Allan Ramsay brings us into contact with real
flesh and blood among the humbler ranks,
but even with him there is an element of
condescension. Burns with his “A man’s a
man for a’ that ” struck a vein which in
these days has been worked out in numerous
directions, religious, social and political. In
N 2
I80 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
harmony with his advanced views of humanity
was the joy with which Burns hailed the
French Revolution as the harbinger of a new
day: “When man to man the world o'er shall
brithers be an’ a that.”
The new way of viewing man naturally led
Burns to a new way of viewing Nature. With
one stroke he abolished the mythological
machinery of his predecessors, and used Nature
as a vehicle for the expression of human
thoughts and feelings. The work of Burns
may be summed up as follows: He broke
down the shallow deistic philosophy of human
nature to which he was intellectually attracted
by showing its insufficiency in his own case to
satisfy the infinite hunger of the heart, or tame
the wild surgings of his passions. Moreover, he
broke down the shallow optimism of the Deists
by revealing, outside of the drawing-room area
of frigid philosophers, a world of humanity
seething with sorrow, misery, and injustice; and
by demanding justice in the name of humanity
for the lowliest of mortals, he gave a great
impetus to the democratic spirit which sprang
up in Scotland at the close of the eighteenth
century. Further, Burns, by bringing Nature
OF SCOTLAND 181
and man into direct contact broke the spell
of the classical theory of poetry, and paved
the way for the great literary revolution of
the opening years of the nineteenth century.
It may be justly claimed for Burns that he
was a genuine product of Scottish life and
thought. No attempts to dissect his environ-
ment will reach the secret of his genius, but
it is something to know that the influences
which made him what he was intellectually
were of native origin. And Burns has repaid
his debt to his country by being in a very
special sense one of the makers of modern
Scotland. When he began to write, leading
Scotsmen had grown ashamed of their native
language. Moderatism, which set the fashion
in literature, thought itself too cosmopolitan
to be patriotic. To be a citizen of the great
world of letters was considered of greater
moment than to be a genuine Scot. In one
of his matchless Burns orations Lord Rosebery
puts this very well when he says: “From the
time of the Union of the Crowns, and still
more from the legislative Union, Scotland had
lapsed into obscurity. Except for an occa-
sional Jacobite rising her existence was almost
182 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
forgotten. She had, indeed, her Robertsons
and her Humes writing history to general
admiration, but no trace of Scottish author-
ship was discernible in their works; indeed,
every flavour of national idiom was carefully
excluded. The Scottish dialect, as Burns
called it, was in danger of perishing. Burns
seemed at this juncture to start to his feet
and reassert Scotland’s claim to national
existence. His Scottish notes rang through
the world, and he thus preserved the Scottish
language for ever, for mankind will never let
die that idiom in which his songs and poems
are enshrined. That is a part of Scotland’s
debt to Burns.” If Scotland to-day has a
distinctly national spirit we owe it to Burns,
and Scotsmen owe it to his memory to keep
alive that spirit by fostering in our univer-
sities and schools the study of our national
history and literature.
THE GERMAN INFLUENCE
CHAPTER XI
THE GERMAN INFLUENCE
THE deistical school which in religion, philo-
sophy and literature had set the fashion in the
eighteenth century, was brought to a dramatic
end by the French Revolution. At first sight
there seems no connection between the calm,
frigid, self-centred life which was the ideal
of the eighteenth-century Humanists, and the
fierce, tumultuous self-abandonment which
characterized the Revolution, and yet they
stand related as cause and effect. The Revo-
lution on the intellectual side was the neces-
sary harvest of the seed sown by the Humanist
thinkers. Nay, more, the French Revolution
drew its inspiration intellectually largely from
English sources. In the writings of English
and Scottish expounders of Deism were the
germs of views of man and society which had
only to be passionately adopted by a people
of a logical turn of mind in order to bring
185
186 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
about a social convulsion of the most startling
kind. The note of Deism was the all-suffici-
ency of man apart from supernatural aid, and
consequently denial of the Calvinistic dogma
of the natural depravity of man. For a time
these views were contentedly held in harmony
with Toryism and found expression in Pope’s
famous phrase, “Whatever is is best.” But
when Deism, as in the case of Burns, came into
contact with the realities of life, what may be
called Tory Quietism was seen to be absurd.
If man was naturally good how was the misery
of the world to be accounted for 2 Clearly
it was owing to bad institutions. And then
we find in the writings of men like Godwin,
the poetic discontent of Burns united to a
fierce revolutionary political spirit spreading
to France, where existing political and social
institutions were notoriously out of harmony
with the elementary principles of justice. The
revolutionary spirit kindled a world-wide con-
flagration, and in doing so created a violent
reaction against the fundamental ideas of the
Humanist school. Out of this reaction sprang
new conceptions of religion, of man and soci-
ety, conceptions which coloured the literature
OF SCOTLAND 187
of Scotland and determined the line of its
development in the nineteenth century.
It is worthy of notice that, while Scotland’s
literature in the eighteenth century bore the
impress of France, in the reaction which fol-
lowed the Revolution it bore the impress of
Germany. The German mind, as was seen in
the case of Goethe, had a strong antipathy to
the dreary Materialism of the French thinkers.
To escape from it, and from the dreary political
and social conditions of the time, the German
genius sought refuge in Romanticism in litera-
ture, and Idealism in philosophy. These new
influences came to Scotland through two writers
widely different in genius and temperament—
Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle. Scott be-
gan his literary career by translating Bürger’s
Lenore, a spectre ballad, as it has been called,
of the violent kind. He also translated
Bürger's The Wild Huntsman and Götz von
Berlichingen—pieces which fired his blood and
inspired him with the idea of finding in his
native land materials for his romantic genius.
It would be manifestly out of place here
to enter into criticism of Scott’s poems and
novels in detail. Sufficient for the present
188 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
purpose to note that under the inspiration
of the Romantic spirit Scott entirely changed
the current of Scotland’s literary thought.
It was a protest against the revolutionary
conception of man and society. As Professor
Dowden puts it, with thinkers of the Godwin
type, man was denuded of all distinctions.
“Man is not conceived as growing out of the
past : the heritage from former generations is
a heritage of superstition, tyranny, unreason;
it exists only to be relinquished or destroyed.
The year One has arrived; and the whole world
is to be reconstructed, without reference to
inheritance or accumulated tendencies on the
principles of Reason.” We know how furi-
ously Burke fought against this theory, and
how valiantly he pleaded for recognition of
the truth which to-day finds scientific expres-
sion in evolution, that of the continuity of
humanity amid great diversities of govern-
ments, customs and civilizations. The truths
to which Burke gave philosophical expression
Scott brought home to the world in a succes-
sion of poems and novels which have long
since established themselves in the front rank
of imaginative literature. From those regions
OF SCOTLAND I89
traduced by the revolutionary thinkers as
regions of unreason and superstition, Scott
by his magic wand summoned new worlds,
and in so doing opened up new intellectual
fountains of delight for a humanity which was
sick unto death of materialistic theories of man
and utilitarian theories of Society.
Carlyle has made it a complaint against
Scott that he was content with being a mere
story-teller, that he had no message to his day
and generation. The criticism is not quite,
fair. In Scott's day there were too many.
writers with messages. There were theological,
philosophical and literary messengers all put-
ting forth their theories of man and his destiny,
too often regardless of the real, living, historical
man. It was Scott’s mission to lift men’s
minds away from theories and abstractions,
and bring them into direct contact with real
living men. What Burns did for Nature,
Scott did for humanity. Burns drove from
the field of poetry the artificial sentiments
and mythological conceits of classicism; and
Scott banished from the field of history the
superficial conceptions of a shallow philosophy
and revealed humanity not as an assemblage
190 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
of serfs, brutalized by two kindred despots—
the king and the priest—but as members of
a social order, rough in texture it is true, but
linked together by feelings not entirely ignoble
and frequently illuminated by the chivalrous
and the heroic. On his limitations it is not
necessary to dwell. The aim here is chiefly to
trace the influence which Scott exerted upon
the literature of his country. The total im-
pression of that influence is well summed up
in the words of Professor Masson : “Remem-
bering all that Scott has left us—those imper-
ishable tales and romances which no subsequent
successes in the British literature of fiction
have superseded, and by the genius of which
our little ‘land of brown heath and shaggy
wood,” formerly of small account in the world,
has become a dream and fascination for
all the leisurely of all the nations—need we
cease from thinking him in juxtaposition,
or on a level at least, with England’s great-
est man, the whole world’s greatest man, of
the literary order, or abandon the habit of
speaking of Sir Walter Scott as our Scottish
Shakespeare * *
Nor must we overlook the great influence of
OF SCOTLAND I91
Scott in European literature. As the author
of the History of Comparative Literature says:
“The author of the Waverley Novels was for
France, as well as England, the founder of the
modern novel; he was also one of the reformers
of historical writings. Before his time it
lacked the dramatic and the picturesque ele-
ments. His influence became European, and
had its effect in different ways on Manzoni
in Italy, Fogué in Germany, and in France
on Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, De Vigny,
Mérimée, and Balzac and his successors.”
From Germany came, through Carlyle,
another influence very different from that of
Scott’s to give a new direction to Scottish liter-
ature. Under the spell of the French Revolu-
tion original thinking had been well-nigh
suppressed. The Edinburgh Review held aloft
the torch of literary criticism, but its standards
were conventional, and its stimulus to creative
thought was slight. Any deep thoughts about
man and his destiny the Whig writers had
they kept to themselves—hence the singular
absence in all their writings of any reference
to fundamental questions. Now no great
writing is possible unless men are willing to
I92 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
put into it their deepest thoughts about the
great problems of existence, and thus till the
advent of Carlyle Scottish literature has no
distinctive mark. The writers of the Whigs
preserved a judicious silence on all questions
bordering on theology and philosophy. Over-
awed by the Evangelical party, who, as the
result of the French Revolution, had ousted
the Moderates in popular influences, the Whigs
confined their speculations mainly to political,
social and literary questions, and to these
they brought no great depth of speculative
thought.
Their standards of criticism were, for the
most part, conventional. Everything mysti-
cal, transcendental and visionary, had to be
tried at the bar of worldly common sense,
and at that bar was contemptuously dismissed
as unworthy of the regard of practical man.
In vain the Calvinists thundered the old soul-
stirring doctrine of their creed. The men of
letters passed by on the other side. Their
ideal was a social state in which ruled a well-
ordered secularity, in which the deeper passions
of the soul and all broodings on the mysterious
side of life were sternly kept under control.
OF SCOTLAND - 193
Carlyle differed entirely from the Whigs on
this point. A Covenanter in temperament,
he had the Calvinist tendency to lose himself
in contemplation of the Infinite. Man’s chief
end, in his eyes, did not consist, as it did with
the Whig school, in advancing the cause of
social order and individual freedom, but in
reaching some kind of solution of the great
Mystery of Existence which would throw light
upon man’s relation to God, the universe, and
destiny. In form, Carlyle’s answers to the
great question differed entirely from those
of the Scottish Evangelicals, but in spirit he
was entirely with them in their protest against
the tone and ideals of the Secular school.
Scott lifted the minds of his generation away
from the meagre utilitarianism of his day by
his pictures of a past filled by heroic deeds and
soul-stirring episodes. Carlyle tore aside the veil
of prosaic conventionality which the devotees
of secularity had woven round the nature of
man, and revealed man to himself as a being
whose thoughts and passions, refusing to be
limited by the known, wandered among the
Infinite. Under the spell of the Age of Reason
man and his dwelling-place had been stripped of
O
194 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
all mystery. Unable to accept the theories
of the Church, the thinkers and early writers
of the early years of the nineteenth century
rested contentedly in a theory of man and
Nature in which the supernatural had no place.
With them descriptive analysis of man and
Nature was accepted as explanation, and where
science appeared the old religious emotions
of wonder and worship were supposed to flee
away. -
One has only to open Sartor Resartus to see
that Carlyle brought into Scottish literature
an order of thought and emotions which by
their revolutionary nature were calculated to
break down the commonplace creed of the
Jeffreys, the Macaulays, who had been nurtured
on the barren philosophy of Secularism. Car-
lyle is sometimes spoken of as an importer of
German Transcendentalism—a kind of Scot-
tish Coleridge. Had Carlyle been no more
than that, his influence would have been
evanescent. In Carlyle blended two qualities
which made his influence on Scottish literary
development far-reaching—the Covenanting
spirit and the German philosophic spirit. f
It is open to doubt how far Carlyle improved
OF SCOTLAND I95
upon the methods and results of his Covenant-
ing forefathers. He shared with them their
soul-torturings, but he did not seem to have
gained, like them, those visions of the Islands
of the Blest where their spirits in times of
direst earthly distresses found rest and peace.
Apart from that, Carlyle’s methods had a revo-
lutionary effect on the thought of his time.
If we have a profounder conception of history
than that of Macaulay; if our critical standards
in literature are immeasurably higher than
those of Jeffrey; if our social ideals strike a
more humanitarian note than those of the old
economists; if our philosophy is more idealistic
than that of the systems which were popularized
by the Moderate school; if, in a word, the
Scottish thought of to-day has burst its narrow
parochial bonds—to Thomas Carlyle is mainly
due the honour of the great transformation.
THE EvoluTION OF FICTION
CHAPTER XII
THE EVOLUTION OF FICTION
WITH the suppression of the rising of the '45
the history of Scotland, from a purely national
point of view, may be said to come to an end.
The Rebellion was something more than an
attempt to restore the Stewart dynasty. It was
the dramatic and final stage in the inevitable
conflict between two antagonistic ideals—the
feudal and the industrial. At the Union
Scotland had entered into partnership with
England in commerce and industry; but senti-
ment dies hard, and many, while alive to the
superiority of the new days, gazed regretfully
upon the days which were vanishing. At the
Union Scotland gained much, but it paid a
heavy price in the loss of its individuality,
which meant the loss of the sharp dra-
matic contrasts and the vivid heroisms which
make the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
illustrious.
199
200 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
From a literary point of view the Union
was not wholly beneficial. In its backward
state, intellectually, Scotland was compelled
to go for light and leading to France and
England, and thus the leading spirits of the
nation were divorced from the aspirations and
ideals of the common people. Burns provoked
a reaction which was sustained by Scott.
Carlyle contributed to the patriotic spirit by
his sympathetic interpretation of the religious
side of the national life; though at the same
time, by introducing the German element, he
helped to lead the Scottish mind out of the
parochial into the cosmopolitan arena.
After Burns, Scott and Carlyle we find a
change coming over Scottish literature. The
national spirit grew less and less pronounced
under the influence of commerce, industry, and
the gradual spread of the English language
and manners; and history clearly shows that
with the decay of nationalism literature also
decays. Scott could have no successor ; he
exhausted the past and gave no guidance to
the literary interpretation of the future ; and
Carlyle found an outlet for his genius in other
than Scottish spheres of thought and activity.
OF SCOTLAND 201
The result of the Union from a literary point
of view was that Scotland presented to her
men of genius no self-centred, self-developing
national life which by appealing to their
imagination could result in a new form of
truly national literature. Genius there was
in abundance, but it spent itself mainly in
microscopic efforts, in detailed pictures of
Scottish life; not in focusing and giving
literary expression to the thoughts and ideals
of a people bound together by unity of national
feeling and purpose, but in describing life as
it was, or in sentimental handling of bygone
times.
In the great mass of Jacobite literature we
have enshrined in poetic forms of a high order
the sentimental side of Scotland; and in the
domestic novel we find the national genius
seeking the outlet which was denied in the
higher region of nationality. In the absence
of a real national life, creative genius of the
highest order is impossible, and thus we are
prepared to find in the literature of Scotland
from the beginning of the eighteenth century
onwards—with the exception of Carlyle’s writ-
ings—an absence of soul-stirring originality.
202 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
We have literature represented mainly by
the talented but not original writers who
grouped themselves round the Edinburgh Re-
view and Blackwood’s Magazine. We are all
proud of Christopher North, Jeffrey, Lockhart,
and the others who held aloft the torch of
literature in the early years of the nineteenth
century, but in reading their writings we do not
feel as if we were breathing the atmosphere of
genius. Literature in their hands was contro-
versial, and had nothing in it distinctively
Scottish. With the decay of national feeling
there was bound also to come a fall in the
Scottish mental temperature, which showed
itself in the rise of a kind of fictional literature
far removed from the Romanticism of Scott.
Thus we have the rise of the domestic novel,
which in the case of Miss Ferrier gave scope for
microscopic character-sketching and satirical
treatment of common life as mirrored in the
middle classes. Then we have the realistic
novel, as represented by Galt, in which, as in
the Annals of the Parish, we no longer deal
with human nature on the heroic side, but are
introduced to the grimly tragic side of prosaic
existence. -
OF SCOTLAND 203
In poetry the tone is the same. We find
abundance of talent and streaks of genius in
the poets who come after Burns. We have
descriptive, sentimental, heroic, and other kinds
of poetry; but it remains unread, except by the
diligent student. Who, for instance, now reads
Wilson’s The Isle of Palms, or Aytoun's
poems—with perhaps the exception of the
Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers—not to men-
tion the large army of authors who disported
themselves in verse during the nineteenth
century Ż - .
With the appearance of Robert Louis Steven-
son it seemed as if Scottish literature was once
more to strike the note of distinction. About
Stevenson’s genius there can be no dispute;
and had he lived in an earlier time, when it
was possible for him to be haunted by great
ideals and inspired by deep emotions, he would
have taken a place not far below Scott. A
greater artist in the technical sense than Scott,
he failed just where Scott was strong. Scott
flung himself upon life with a hearty objec-
tivity. Stevenson, no doubt largely owing to
ill-health, and to the decay of religious belief,
was lacking in the mental healthiness which is
204 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
necessary in a genius of the first rank. Persis-
tent introspection is fatal to success as a novelist,
and Stevenson was chronically introspective.
His insight into Scottish character was pro-
found, his skill at portraiture undisputed, but
the reader longs to get away from the hot-
house atmosphere of Stevenson to the mountain
breezes of Scott. Still, we must not forget
to credit Stevenson with a distinct vein of
originality. He was a disciple of Scott the
Romanticist, though with Stevenson the spirit
of romance was not, as with Scott, epochal in
its sweep and influence. Scott’s romance was
inspired by the historic and the heroic, supple-
mented by a genius for character creation which
links his name with that of Shakespeare.
Stevenson’s romance was inspired not by the
historic spirit, but by the purely human spirit.
In one of his essays Stevenson defines the
highest achievement of romance to be the
embodiment “ of character, thought or emotion
in some act or attitude that shall be remarkably
striking to the mind’s eye.” In this kind of
romance Stevenson excelled, and in order to
work with effect, he calls into play the weird, the
terrible, the blood-curdling, the supernatural.
OF SCOTLAND 205
One result of dealing with out-of-the-way
characters and incidents is that in the reader’s
mind Stevenson is constantly identified with
his characters; the reader never loses a vivid
sense of the author’s personality. This, while
pleasing in a sense, is a sign of limitation, of
a self-consciousness which we do not find in
the highest order of genius. With longer life
Stevenson would probably have worked clear
of the affectations which hampered his genius,
but as it is his writings are a unique product in
the literature of his native land.
There are those who bluntly declare that
Scottish fiction has no future. In these days
nationalism as applied to the things of the
mind is said to be losing its power. Cosmo-
politan influences are gaining so rapidly upon
nationalism that the parochial field, with its
strongly marked individualities and quaint
manners, is no longer available for the novelist.
We are just now suffering from a return of
the ideas which were so popular about the
time of the French Revolution, when it was
held as an accepted dogma that all the dif-
ferences among mankind were due to cir-
cumstances and education. Give men equal
206 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
education, social and political opportunities,
and the differences which distinguish mankind,
and which we attribute to race and nationality,
would disappear. This revival of the equality
dogma of the French Revolution receives
plausible sanction from science, which as a
civilizing influence is undoubtedly breaking
down barriers of distance and such-like ob-
stacles to the fusion of races. On the other
hand, science from another point of view is a
foe to the new idea of equality and the trans-
formation of humanity under the sway of
educational, industrial and political influences.
If science has shown us the variability of all
life and its modifiability it also emphasizes
the elements of heredity and continuity by
which the stability of species is secured. The
school of the Frcmch Revolutionists, which
attributed almost everything to environmental
influences, has given place as a result of the
doctrine of evolution to the modern school,
which holds that each people possesses a
national constitution as unaltering as its ana-
tomical characteristics, which is the source
of its sentiments, thoughts, institutions, beliefs,
and arts. From this point of view it will be
OF SCOTLAND 207
seen how superficial is the belief that because
Scotland and England were united politically
two hundred years ago, and have since been
subjected to the same general influences, there-
fore the two nations are so identical that there
is no room for the development of separate
literatures. Is it conceivable that the intellec-
tual and moral characteristics of a people which
have come to them from a long past age are to
be set aside by a mere change of legislative
machinery 7 Now and again circumstances
arise which seem to favour the equality idea.
Under the spell of imitation one nation or the
leading section of a nation may, as in Scotland
at the time of the Moderates, endeavour to
copy the literary ideas and methods of other
nations, but in the end race reasserts itself, and
a national literature is the result. Burns and
Scott represent in Scottish literature the re-
assertion of the national spirit as opposed to
the cosmopolitan; and there is no reason why
in our own day, even in the midst of influences
which make for the obliteration of national
distinctions, Scotland should not reassert once
more her individuality in literature, particularly
in fiction.
208 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Granted that Scottish fiction has a future,
the question arises: What particular form is
it likely to take 2 Novel-writers have been
divided into two classes, Idealists and Realists.
At best the division is a rough one. There is
nothing in the nature of things to prevent a
writer being at once an Idealist and a Realist.
He may, like Scott, weave a world of romance
and at the same time give realistic pictures of
life. Still the distinction within limits is a real
one. We call a writer a Realist who confines
himself to delineating character and manners
as he finds them existing around him. We
call him an Idealist when his characters, or at
least his principal characters, embody a higher &
type of life; and we call him a Romanticist
when he transports his readers from the
commonplace life of to-day to the idealized
world of the past. Now, as a rule, it will be
found that in fictional literature the law of
action and reaction holds sway. For instance,
the novels of Scott were part of the reaction
against the ideal of the French Revolution.
The thinkers of the Revolution held fast by
the doctrine of the equality of man, the iniquity
of Government, and the hideousness of the
OF SCOTLAND 209
past, which to them was simply the result of
superstition and despotism. The past de-
served to be blotted out ; the year of the
Revolution was the year One. Such a theory
of life confined literature within very narrow
limits. It killed Romanticism by clipping
the wings of Imagination. Resting on a
materialistic theory of life, it confined men’s
thoughts and aspirations to the seen and
tangible; it made no provision for the higher
aspirations of the soul. In fiction Scott was
the most prominent figure in the reaction.
Scott did not neglect the present, but his
method did not permit him to deal with the
collective life of the present. Unrivalled in
delineating the character of individuals, he did
not essay a picture of village life in the Scotland
of his own time. That demanded a more
microscopic form of genius than Scott pos-
sessed. He himself somewhere speaks of his
“bow-wow ’’ style. w
In Galt we have represented the realistic
side of Scottish village life. In the Annals
of the Parish we have a lifelike picture of
Scotland in the transition stage, the beginning
of the new industrial period. The rise of the
P
210 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
new era, with its influence on the sentiments,
imagination, and feelings of the people, is
given in a few masterly strokes which, while
clearly realistic, have none of the forbidding
realism of Zola. It is astonishing that Galt
has had no real successor. He created a
new school, and everything seemed favourable
to the new departure. Instead of Scottish
novelists utilizing the common people, they
have shown a preference for dealing with
certain select classes of the community. Susan
Ferrier, for example, took for her sphere the
higher middle-class element. Sharply tinc-
tured with the feudalism of the law and with
marvellous power, she put them under the
microscope. Mrs. Oliphant, though different
in spirit and method, followed much the same
plan. Coming nearer our own time we find
the ecclesiastical and religious side of life
powerfully attracting our novelists. George
Macdonald was the novelist of the reaction
against Calvinism, and naturally his limita-
tion of aim limited his influence. J. M.
Barrie and Ian Maclaren have left us remark-
able portraits, antique specimens of Scottish
Dissenting life, but these are snapshots, not
OF SCOTLAND 2II
elaborately finished pictures. The “Kailyard
school,” profiting by the interest which Barrie
created, wove their plots so completely round
ecclesiastical subjects that it seemed as if
Scottish life was bounded on the one side by
ordination dinners, and on the other by church
soirées. This school had not in it the roots of
permanence. It represented a temporary
yearning in the public mind for an ideal element
in Scottish fiction. Weary of the realism of
life, as revealed in the newspaper press, the
public readily snatch at anything which leads
the mind into the region of the poetic and the
sentimental. Mr. J. M. Barrie began idealizing
certain phases of Scottish ecclesiastical and
religious life, and by his inimitable genius the
popularity of the new school was secured. But
abiding popularity cannot possibly be predicted
of the “Kailyard school.” In truth, the task
they undertook was begun long years before
by a writer of greater genius—George Mac-
donald, whose shoe-latchet the Kailyarders
are not worthy to unloose. There is more
hope of the Celtic revival as evidenced by a
writer like Neil Munro, whose insight into the
Highland character, and sympathy with the
P 2
212 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
weird mysticism of the Celt, give to his writings
a depth and reality which his predecessor
William Black did not possess. A reaction
against the sentimentalism of the Kailyarders
was soon to come, and it came with the publica-
tion of The House with the Green Shutters, a book
of terrific power, in which rural life, character
and manners are depicted with a fierce gloomi-
ness, a persistent cynicism, and a sustained
sordidness that remind the reader of Zola. Not
only was the novel very defective from the side
of art, but in addition the author neglected
to use the opportunity which came to his hand.
Modern Scottish life in its commoner aspects
has for some time been waiting for adequate
fictional treatment. In this respect we are far
behind England, where the various aspects of
the national development, social, political and
industrial, have been worked into fiction.
Dickens, as a reaction against the romantic
mood, utilized the humanitarian wave which
passed over England in the middle of the last
century, while Charles Kingsley made capital
out of religious scepticism and the social and
economic problems of the Victorian period.
How comes it that in these fields Scottish
OF SCOTLAND 213
fiction has been sterile 2 Never, surely, was
there ampler material for a successful Scottish
novel on new lines. In the olden days, when
the conditions of life were stable, novelists like
Miss Ferrier were limited in their scope of
treatment. The reader’s interest centred on
the development and play of character, the plot
being more or less a conventional affair. Under
modern conditions the field of the novelist is
greatly increased. We are in the midst of an
industrial revolution, under which human con-
ditions have lost their stability and assume
a seeming arbitrariness which frequently
plunges multitudes into poverty and despair.
Economic changes at the other side of the
globe have greater effect on the happiness of
humanity at home than the most destructive
of wars. Now more than at any period of
history, in consequence of the complexity and
instability of commercial and industrial con-
ditions, the deepest feelings of human beings
are in a constant state of tragic turmoil. Men’s
desires have increased at a greater rate than
the power of satisfying them. The tragedy is
all the greater when it is considered that just
when the material conditions of life are so
214 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
unstable the modern desire for material
happiness has become more intense. In old days,
when religion was a power in Scotland, material
prosperity in the form of accumulated wealth
did not wholly absorb the mind, and poverty
did not seem to be the one unutterable woe.
With the decay of religious belief and of church
authority,” society has no higher aim than
worldly success, which takes the form of an
inordinate thirst for wealth and for the grosser
pleasures which wealth can buy. Increased
leisure, so far as the people are concerned, is
mainly devoted to sordid pleasures; and thus
we have a social state characterized by great
economic inequalities, and to masses of sordid
poverty, giving birth to Socialism, with its
gospel of discontent. On the intellectual
side we have scepticism, with a lowering
of ideals manifesting itself in the lower orders
in a painful, dreary social life; in the middle
classes in sheer Philistinism; and in the upper
classes in worship at the shrine of pleasure.
Modern Scotland is unfavourable to the rise
* See the remarkable volume recently published,
Non-Churchgoing, edited by W. Forbes-Gray (Oliphant,
Anderson & Ferrier). " .
OF SCOTLAND 215
of literature of the highest kind, whether of
the Romantic or Idealistic type. We need
a literature which will not flatter our national
vanity nor throw a halo round our national
materialism, but which will picture Scottish
life as it really is. The complexity of modern
life, the feverish struggle for existence and
success, the thirst for pleasure, the disintegra-
tion of religious beliefs, the smug respectability
of the middle classes, the Socialistic aspira-
tions of the working classes, the awful contrast
between riches and poverty—these things, which
characterize the Scotland of to-day, afford
ample scope for a Scottish novelist who has the
courage not to pander to the sentimental side
of his countrymen, but resolutely to paint a
true picture of the time.
Such a picture would reveal the extent to
which Scotland has fallen below the ideals of
the great leaders of the past. The Reformers,
Moderates, and Covenanters differed seriously
on fundamental questions, but in one thing they
were agreed—they sought, according to their
lights, to train their fellow-countrymen to face
worthily the great problem of life. In order
to do that, it is essential that the pilgrim should
216 INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
be provided with a chart by means of which he
will have a clear conception of the journey, and
so avoid the pitfalls which exist for the ignorant
and the unwary. The Reformers and Cove-
nanters do not commend themselves to the
modern apostles of culture, but in their day
and generation they did noble work for Scot-
land, simply because they had a definite theory
of life, which satisfied their intelligence and
inspired them to heroic deeds. The Moderates,
too, though looking askance at what they
considered the fanaticism of the “ zealots,”
treated life as a solemn trust, and from their
own standpoint, as in the case of thinkers like
Hutcheson, were able to construct for their
intellectual satisfaction a full-orbed system of
philosophy. We have drifted far from the
creed of the Reformers and Covenanters, and
science, with its stern teachings, prevents us
taking refuge in the optimistic Deism which
satisfied the Moderates. The modern mind in
Scotland, as elsewhere, tends to rest in Indiffer-
ence, which is the congenial soil, not of heroism,
but, according to individual temperament, of
sombre stoicism or riotous epicureanism. One
thing is plain–Scotland must sink into a
OF SCOTLAND 217
materialistic view of life unless it can get be-
yond this standpoint. Let it be understood
that life is an insoluble riddle, man’s pilgrimage
an aimless wandering among fogs and quag-
mires, and the result will be materialism in
creed and conduct. Science left to itself tends
to materialism, but under the magic touch of
religion and philosophy it is capable of subor-
dinating material resources to ideal ends. The
intellectual task before the Scotland of to-day
is the construction of a creed in which the
materialism which science brings with it will
unite with the idealism of religion, philosophy
and literature in so raising the tone of the
national life that, in the firmament of history,
the Scotland of the future will shine with as
great a lustre as the Scotland of the past.
INDEX
A
ADDISON, 31
Agnosticism, 70, 71, 76, 77, 79,
81, 83, 84
Ampère, 111
Anglicanism, 11
Anselm, 59
Arianism, 26
Aristotle, 59, 60
Arminianism, 26
Aytoun, W. E., 203
B
Bacon, 102, 146, 148
Bain, A., 70
Balfour, A. J., 80, 81, 133
Balfour, F., 125
Balzac, 191
Barrie, J. M., 210, 211
Beattie, 67
Bell, Sir C., 124
Berkeley, 63, 82
Bible, the, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46,
47, 51, 52
Black, J., 32, 99, 102, 103, 106,
122
Black, W., 212
Blair, R., 32, 165, 176
Boston, T., 27, 31
Boswell, J., 32
Bradley, Prof., 16
Brewster, Sir D., 99, 105, 106
Broad Church, the, 16, 54
Brown, T., 67
Bruce, A. B., 50
Buchanan, G., 178
Buckle, H.T., 89,90, 95, 96, 157
Bunyan, J., 33 -
Bürger, 187
Burke, E., 188
Burns, R., 32, 139, 169, 173, 174,
175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180,
181, 186, 189, 200, 203, 207
C
Caird, E., 80
Caird, J., 41, 80
Calderwood, H., 77, 78
Calvin, J., 14, 19, 45
Calvinism, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18,
20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 34,
40, 41, 54, 61, 129, 138, 164,
175, 177, 178, 210
Campbell, M*Leod, 41
Campbell, 67
Carlyle, T., 13, 31, 139, 174, 187,
189, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195,
200, 201
Chalmers, T., 34, 35
Chambers, R., 126, 127
Chillingworth, 44
Church of Rome, 6, 8, 15, 137,
160
Church, of Scotland (the Kirk),
25, 26, 33, 61, 157
, Established, 39, 41, 44, 50
,, United Free, 51
,, Free, 39, 40, 45, 48, 50
,, U. P., 40
Clausius, 106
Clerk-Maxwell, J., 106, 107, 108,
109, 110, 111
- 219
220
INDEX
Cobden, R., 144.
Coleridge, S. T., 174
Confession of Faith, the, 40, 51,
98
Cousin, 66, 67, 76
Covenanters, the, 44, 91, 92, 98,
162, 163, 166, 178, 179, 215,
216
Cullen, 32, 121, 122
Cunningham, W., 35
Cuvier, 126
D
Dalton, 99
Darwin, C., 104, 120, 126, 127
140, 144, 149, 150
Darwinism, 151
Davy, Sir H., 99
Deism, 25, 28, 33, 179, 185, 186,
216
De Quincey, 174
Descartes, 61, 93, 94
De Vigny, 191
Dickens, C., 212
Disruption, the, 34, 35, 41, 44
Dods, M., 50
Dowden, E., 188
Drummond, H., 150
T}umas, 191
Dundas, H., (Viscount Melville),
145
E
Emerson, R. W., 30
Episcopacy, 163
Euler, L., 96
Evangelicals, the, 33, 39, 44
Evangelicalism, 34, 35, 41
Evangelical Union, the, 40
F
Fairbairn, P., 49
Faraday, M., 99, 107, 111
Ferguson, A., 166
Ferguson, J., 100
Fergusson, R., 169
Ferrier, J. F., 71, 75
Ferrier, Miss S., 202, 210, 213
Feudalism, 137, 138, 158
Fichte, 79
Fiske, J., 133
Flint, R., 79
Foque, 191
Forbes, J. D., 99, 105, 106
Foster, Sir M., 124
Fraser, A. C., 81, 82
Free Trade, 144, 145
French Revolution, the, 33, 34,
143, 178, 185, 191, 192, 205,
206, 209
Fresnel, 106
G
Galileo, 101
Galt, J., 202, 209, 210
Geddes, P., 125, 151, 152
Geikie, Sir A., 120, 121
Geikie, J., 118, 121
Gill, Sir D., 101
Gladstone, W. E., 144
Godwin, 186
Goethe, J. W., 112, 187
Goodsir, J., 124, 125
Grant, R., 101
Gregory, D., 96, 97
Gregory Smith, Prof., 7
EI
Haeckel, E., 129, 150
Haldane, Wiscount, 80
Hamilton, Sir W., 68, 69, 70, 71,
75, 76, 77, 78, 79
Hegel, 16, 17, 20, 29, 64,479, 127
Hegelianism, 53, 80, 81, 83
Helmholtz, 109
Henderson, T., 100
Hertz, 109
Higher Criticism, the, 44, 50,
51, 52
Hodge, 45
INDEX
221
Hooker, 33
Hugo, Victor, 191
Humanism, 5, 159, 164
Hume, D., 29, 32, 62, 63, 64, 65,
66, 68, 70, 75, 76, 89, 140, 144,
166, 168, 177
Hunter, J., 122, 123
Hutcheson, F., 26, 27, 60, 61,
62, 64, 89, 138, 139, 140, 165,
176, 216
Hutchison-Stirling, J., 80
Hutton, J., 115, 116, 117, 118,
II9
Huxley, J. H., 115, 150
I
Idealism, 71, 72, 81, 83, 187
J
James IV, 5, 6, 7
James VI, 91
Jeffrey, Lord, 195, 202
Jouffroy, 66
Joule, 99, 108
E.
“Kailyard school,” the, 210,
211
Kames, Lord, 31
Kant, I., 64, 66, 70, 75, 76, 79,
82, 101
Kelvin, Lord, 106, 107, 109, 110,
111
Kingsley, 212
Kirk, the. See Church of Scot-
land
Knox, John, 6, 8, 9, 14, 44, 160
Kuenen, 46, 47
L
Lamarck, 126
Laurie, Prof., 70
Leslie, Sir J., 99, 103, 104, 105,
106, 126
Lewes, G. H., 94, 128
Locke, J., 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65,
66, 75, 82, 178
Lockhart, J., 202
Lotze, 20, 29
Luther, M., 18, 19
Lutheranism, 10, 11
Lyell, Sir C., 119, 120
Lyndsay, Sir D., 158
M
Macaulay, Lord, 195
McCosh, J., 77
MºCrie, T., 34
Macdonald, G., 210, 211
Maclaren, Ian (Rev. John Wat-
son), 210
Macrae, D., 40
Malthus, 149
Mansel, 71
Manzoni, 191
Mary, Queen, 9
Masson, 162, 190
Materialism, 83, 187
Mathieson, 32
Melville, A., 44, 160, 161
Mérimée, 191
Merz, J. T., 97, 99
Mill, J. S., 29, 69, 71, 148
Miller, H., 34, 35, 121
Moderates, the, 27, 32, 33, 44,
63, 215, 216
Moderatism, 25, 27, 28, 31, 32,
33, 34, 138, 140, 143, 175, 177,
18]
Monboddo, Lord, 67
Morison, J., 40
Munro, N., 211
Murchison, Sir R., 120, 121
Mysticism, 84
|N
Napier of Merchiston, 91, 95
Nebular theory, the, 100
222
INDEX
Nero, 163
Newton, Sir I., 93, 94, 95, 96,
99, I08, 144 -
Nichol, J. P., 101
North, Christopher (John Wil-
son), 202
O
Oersted, 111
Oken, 127
Oliphant, Mrs., 210
Oswald, 67
P
Pantheism, 83, 84
Pitt, W., 143, 145
Playfair, L., 96, 99
Pope, A., 186
Priestly, 99
Pringle Pattison, A. S., 78, 82,
83, 84, 85, 130, 131
Protestantism, 9, 10, 11, 28, 52,
53, 137, 163
Q
Quesnay, 139
Quietism, 186
R.
Rainy, R., 48
Ramsay, A., 168, 169
Ramsay, Sir W., 147
Rankine, M., 106
Reformation, the, 5, 8, 10, 11,
14, 18, 21, 43, 45, 52, 60, 90,
96, 98, 157, 158, 161
Reformers, the, 10, 11, 60, 90,
91, 92, 159, 160, 162, 163,
215, 216
Reid, T., 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70,
71, 75, 76
Renaissance, the, 60, 137
Renwick, J., 44
Ricardo, 149
Ritschlianism, 54
Robertson, W., 32, 166
Roman Catholic Church. See
Church of Rome
Romanism, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13,
14, 18, 19, 20, 44, 52, 90, 138,
158, 159
Romanticism, 187, 202, 209
Rosebery, Lord, 181
Rousseau, J. J., 175, 176, 179
Rutherford, S., 27, 178, 179
S
Saint-Hilaire, G., 126
Schelling, 76, 79, 127
Scholasticism, 59
Schwann, 125
Scott, Sir W., 187, 188, 189, 190,
191, 200, 203, 204, 207, 208,
209
Secession, the, 40
Seth, J., 78
Shaftesbury, 27
Shakespeare, W., 167, 168
Simson, J., 26, 99
Smith, A., 32, 67, 89, 139, 140,
141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146,
154, 165, 166, 176
Smith, G. A., 50 -
Smith, W. Robertson, 44, 45, 46,
47, 48, 50 -
Socialism, 215
Spencer, H., 17, 20, 29, 77, 78,
104, 112
Spencerianism, 53
Spinoza, 20
Steele, 31
Stevenson, R. L., 203, 204, 205
Stewart, Balfour, 106, 129
Stewart, D., 67
Stoicism, 84
Story, Principal, 41
INDEx
223
T
Taine, 173, 175
Tait, P. G., 105, 106, 107, 129
Theism, 82, 84
Thomson, A., 34
Thomson, J., 99, 106
Thomson, J., 167, 175
Thomson, J. A., 110, 118, 125,
130, 132, 133, 151
Thomson, Sir W. See Lord
Kelvin
Transcendentalism, 195
Tulloch, Principal, 41
Turgot, 139
U
Union, the (of 1707), 98,181, 199,
200, 201
Unitarianism, 26
Upton, 30
V
Virchow, 125
Von Baer, 125
W
Watt, J., 32, 103
Wellhausen, 46, 47
Werner, 117
Wilson, A., 100
Wilson, 203
Wollaston, W. H., 99
y
Young, T., 99, 106
Z
Zola, 210, 212
vºivº er Michio Añº".
JUN 20 1914
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