PANALBA

Shaping the New World

Scotland Magazine 08/27/2010 11:00 AM

THE seventeenth century was grim in Scotland. Civil wars racked the nation and ended with religious fundamentalism, mass starvation, a Dutch king on the throne, and virtual bankruptcy. In 1696, an 18- year old student, Thomas Aitkenhead, declared that theology was " a rhapsody of feigned and ill-invented nonsense." The young man apologised, but he was hanged for blasphemy.

The next century started no better. After the Act of Union in 1707, parliament closed down and government moved to London. The Treaty seemed to bring new taxes, but no benefits, and the country became little more than an impoverished backwater.

But there were foundations for progress. The law, the church and education remained separate from those of England and were focuses for national improvement. Literacy in Scotland was the highest in Europe; parish schools were long established, and the Scots had a long tradition of respect for learning. No less than seventeen rectors of the University of Paris up until the time of the Reformation were Scots.

Universities were teaching the rising generation reason and tolerance. And the Kirk's power was curtailed and extremists marginalised by the Tolerance Act of 1712 which permitted the Anglican liturgy. In addition, the Patronage Act reasserted the rights of local landowners to appoint ministers, and they favoured moderates.

By the 1720s, prosperity began to flow from the Union, mostly and spectacularly in Glasgow where tobacco lords dominated the trade with North America. The landed and merchant classes had money which they spent in the patronage of art and ideas.

Within half-a-century, the country was transformed.

"It is to Scotland that we look for our idea of civilisation, " observed Voltaire, the French philosopher and writer. Freedom of expression and intellectual curiosity had led to a cultural flowering that deservedly earned the age the title "Scottish Enlightenment." John Amyat, the King's chemist, was able to say: "Here I stand at what is called the Cross of Edinburgh and can, in a few minutes, shake fifty men of genius by the hand."

These 'men of genius' created the intellectual framework which underpins the modern world.

One of the godfathers of this revolution was Francis Hutcheson, professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow University, who taught his students, many of them future ministers, that all men and women were born free and equal, and that happiness came through helping others.

The other was a judge, Henry Home, Lord Kames, who explained that the development of mankind from hunter-gatherer to civilisation, was based on the desire for property. Lord Kames set out the need for law and creating a balance between freedom and state authority. Complete freedom is anarchy; complete authority is tyranny. Even today, every country debates this balance.

Around Kames's dinner table clustered young men of remarkable accomplishment. The philosopher David Hume has been described as the most original thinker that Europe has ever produced, basing his ideas about human behaviour on observation rather than theology.

But as a notorious atheist, not even his evident distinction could land him the chair of moral philosophy at Edinburgh, where virtually all academics were still ordained ministers.

Another of Kames's protegés, James Boswell, extracted a death bed interview from David Hume in 1776 and, to the author's consternation, he met his end calmly and even cheerfully, still denying a divinity and an afterlife. Dr Samuel Johnson, whose biography was Boswell's masterpiece, was unimpressed. Hume must have been lying.

Others in Kames's social circle were equally influential. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is the foundation of modern economics and outlined the benefits that would flow from free enterprise and the free market.

John Millar and William Robertson established the analytical study of history, and the latter's two volume History of America remained the standard work on the subject for two centuries.

James Hutton was the founder of modern geology. William Cullen was a pioneer chemist. Joseph Black discovered carbon dioxide, latent heat and specific heat; his pupil Daniel Rutherford, nitrogen.

Glasgow established modern teaching through lectures in the vernacular, and the University of Edinburgh took over from Leyden in the Netherlands as the world-leader in the study and instruction of medicine. Adam Ferguson introduced the science of sociology.

In literature, Robert Burns was followed by Sir Walter Scott. In painting, Allan Ramsay was succeeded by Sir Henry Raeburn.

In architecture and design, Robert Adam was the giant of his age. The legal profession was studded with brilliant minds; the universities used teaching methods far ahead of England and the rest of Europe. Such men were not shooting stars soaring above the heads of their contemporaries, but had colleagues, followers and rivals who jostled with them in the quality of their achievements.

Today, men of this calibre would have Nobel prizes and be pampered on university campuses, but until they built themselves the New Town of Edinburgh, they lived cheek-by-jowl with each other and all classes of society in towering stone tenement buildings that provided a rabbit warren of apartments alongside Edinburgh's High Street and Royal Mile.

What comes singing down the century from these people is that life was fun. They were hugely convivial, meeting at oyster bars, taverns, at clubs and at dinner parties where they debated ferociously and exchanged ideas.

They drank vast quantities of claret. A two-bottle man was a commonplace. A three-bottle man deserved respect. A visitor to one such social occasion prudently feigned intoxication early to avoid real collapse. He was startled by a hand fumbling at his throat.

"Dinna be feared, sir. It's me," said a reassuring voice.

"And who are you?"

"I'm just the lad who loosens the cravats".