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Voluntary Associations for Propagating the Enlightenment in Philadelphia 1727-1776

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Voluntary Associations for Propagating the Enlightenment in Philadelphia 1727-1776 Philosophy Tut to Use: "Voluntary Associations for Propagating the Enlightenment in Philadelphia 1727-1776 N THE latter part of 1760, Benjamin Franklin put a question, now famous, to Polly Stevenson: "What signifies Philosophy I that does not apply to some Use?" Throughout the eighteenth century no belief was more tenaciously held by philosophers and men of capacity and public spirit generally, whether on the continent of Europe, in the British Isles, or in the English colonies in America. David Hume and other enlightened Scots gave this idea the central place in their commonsense thinking; and in Candide (1759), Voltaire had his Venetian nobleman say disparagingly of an eighty- one-volume set of the proceedings of a learned society that it would have had some value "if a single one of the authors of all that rubbish had invented even the art of making pins; but in all those books there is nothing but vain systems and not a single useful thing."1 On New Year's Day, 1768, in the room of the Union Library Company on Chestnut Street, Charles Thomson exhorted his fellow 1 "It seems, then, that nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to [the] human race, and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biasses to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for other occupations and entertainments. Indulge your passions for science, says she, but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. ... Be a philosopher; but amidst all your philosophy be still a man." David Hume, "Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding," Essays and Treatises Concerning Human Understanding (Edinburgh, 1800), II, 7; I, 288-289, 294-295; Leonard W. Labaree, ed., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, 1959-), IX, 251, italics mine; Jean Francois Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Candide (New York, 1929), 92-93. 70 1977 PHILOSOPHY PUT TO USE 71 members of the American Society held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge to make a fateful decision. "Knowledge is of little Use/' he told them, "when confined to mere Speculation; But when speculative Truths are reduced to Practice, when Theories grounded upon Experiments, are applied to common Purposes of Life; and when, by these, Agriculture is improved, Trade enlarged, and the Arts of Living made more easy and comfortable, and, of Course, the Increase and Happiness of Mankind promoted; Knowl- edge then becomes really useful/' One could search a long time before uncovering a better statement of the ideals and objectives of the philosophers of the Enlightenment as they came to be under- stood and carried out in America.2 11 Let us begin, as the colonial Philadelphians did, in Western Europe, in the British Isles in particular. In England and her colonies, these years embraced an age of freedom quite as much as an age of faith, and many men believed that the cause of mankind could be served in secular and humanitarian, as well as in spiritual ways—no one cried ficrassez Vinfame^ even about the Church of England. The destructive and nostalgic attitudes so conspicuous among the French found no acceptance in the Old British Empire. Englishmen, Scots, and Americans were optimists, confident that progress was a fact and that, by putting philosophy to use, they could achieve widespread happiness. We perceive at once that the corpus of ideas, theories, programs, and schemes that constituted the Enlightenment in Europe and England was never exported to the colonies whole and intact; nor did its votaries ever intend that it should be so transmitted. What was dispatched westward was deftly and unobtrusively selected with the greatest care to represent and buttress a point of view, which was all the more influential because, for the most part, the men who held it did so unconsciously. Searching questions occur to us now: by whom were the enlight- ened ideas and programs chosen, and how did they make the 2 Pennsylvania Chronicle•, Mar. 7,1768. J2 CARL BRIDENBAUGH January selection ? What auxiliary ideas and programs were sent off at the same time ? How and when did they cross the ocean ? And of par- ticular concern to us is whether the Enlightenment was being ex- ported in any organized or institutional forms, or was the transit to America merely a series of random occurrences or the chance work of a few individuals ? Answers to all of these queries cannot be given here, but it is possible to sketch some of the conditions that governed the selection and transmission of certain features of the Enlightenment across the Atlantic. In fact, a realization of the potency of the all-pervading effect of these situations and influences is prerequisite to our under- standing of the course of the Enlightenment in America. That this has been either ignored or not recognized in the histories is probably because, at the time, it was so self-evident. It must be remembered that nearly every colonist's view of England and the rest of Europe and, conversely, the outlook that most Englishmen had on America were images filtered through, as it were, dissenters' spectacles, the lenses of which had been ground in the British Isles. Why this is so is quite clear: communications were almost entirely carried on by English merchants, the majority of whom were dissenters. These merchants owned and freighted most of the ships that transported people, books, news, letters, ideas, and sentiments to colonial seaports, and especially, after 1720, to Philadelphia; they also controlled most of the news coming in from their counterparts in the New World. The volume and influence of the trans-Atlantic correspondence has never been as- sessed, but we do know that it was of prime importance in the struggle over the attempt to create an Anglican Episcopate in America and in several other instances. The merchants of London, Bristol, and Glasgow were not only Protestant but radically so, and therefore zealously anti-Roman Catholic; they were also overwhelmingly nonconformist and com- pletely out of sympathy with the Established Church; and not a few of them had experienced religious persecution. It was only natural therefore that they became closely allied with the ministers and spiritual leaders of the nonconformist sects. Although loyal Hanoverians to a man, they subscribed to many of the republican ideas of the Commonwealthmen of the seventeenth century. Denied 1977 PHILOSOPHY PUT TO USE 73 access to the universities and public office because they were not Anglicans, the lay and clerical members of the several denominations found outlets for their talents and physical energies in the indus- trial, educational, humanitarian, and scientific activities that con- tributed so notably to the brilliance of the Enlightenment in Great Britain. The signal achievement of the middle-class Protestant dissenters was their amazing success in putting philosophy to use by forming and employing voluntary associations of every imaginable kind to mobilize the many like-minded people of ability for the attainment of desirable ends. This was a phenomenon that originated in the seventeenth century—notably with the Royal Society of London— and it became a pronounced tendency among Englishmen and Scotsmen. Unable to attain their goals through Parliament or the Church of England, the dissenters gave the voluntary association its most extensive, varied, and successful development. Dissent itself had given rise to the largest and most powerful private organizations and institutions: the nonconformist Presby- terian, Independent, and Baptist churches, which, by 1702, had loosely united as the Body of the Three Denominations. Thirty years later, prominent laymen formed the Protestant Dissenting Deputies to seek repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts and look after the "Civil Affairs" of the nonconformists.3 Far surpassing these dissenting bodies in their impact on the American colonies and dwarfing the Anglican Society for the Propa- gation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, was the older and far-flung Society of Friends. The skill displayed by George Fox in organizing his Quaker fol- lowers for proselytizing and insuring their solidarity in the face of all detractors has often been commented upon. His genius in fore- seeing the possibilities of using yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and special meetings to foster trade and commerce among Friends, and also for humanitarian enterprises, not merely among the widely scattered Quakers on both sides of the Atlantic but for any human beings needing assistance, has been understressed. Here was a 3 On the issue of bishops for the colonies, see Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Trans- atlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics, 1690-1776 (New York, 1962, 1967), 28-53, 83-115. 74 CARL BRJDENBAUGH January mighty voluntary association that, in addition to ministering to the religious, business, educational, and social needs of the membership, contributed to the Enlightenment one of its best-known symbols— the Good Quaker. In accounting for the remarkable success of this institution, primary importance must be given to the fact that its transoceanic strongholds were in London and Philadelphia, and that many branch offices had been set up in Britain and the colonies. The great majority of Englishmen who traded with America and of those who corresponded with the provincials upon religious or cultural matters were either members of one of the Three Denomi- nations or of the Society of Friends. They lived and had their being in an atmosphere of dissent and knowingly screened, if they did not dictate, the ideas and programs that traversed the ocean in both directions. When colonials, even those who were communicants of the Established Church, voyaged to the British Isles, the society In which they mingled was far more often composed of dissenters and unbelievers than of Anglicans.
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