Jan 2009
Knowlton in Ashfield, 1833
01/26/2009 10:44
One of the things that interests me about the people I’m studying in the early 19th century, is their generally high level of literacy and understanding of what’s going on in the world, in spite of the remoteness of places like Ashfield.
When the religious bigots in his Berkshire hill-town of 1800 people tried to ruin his business, Dr. Charles Knowlton called the town to a meeting and made a long speech about belief, morality and politics. The year was 1833: Knowlton had published his Fruits of Philosophy the year before, and was using it with his patients in Franklin county.
“He that will not reason is a bigot, he that cannot reason is a fool, and he that dares not reason is a slave!” Knowlton announced to his neighbors.
“I proceed—
“There are no changes, no events, in a word, no effects without causes, and one effect as necessarily follows its cause as another, whether it occur within a man’s head or without. Every feeling of man, every thought of his brain, as necessarily has its cause as the movement of a water-wheel; and we all as necessarily think as we do think, as rocks unsupported fall to the ground. To admit that a man may think as he has a mind to, is not to admit one whit against what I have now advanced. To have a mind to think so and so, is but to have thoughts and ideas that you will think so and so,—every one of which thoughts or ideas must and does have its cause; which cause, whatever it may be, is but the effect of a prior cause, and this, again, the effect of a still prior cause, and so on throughout the eternal chain of events.”
“All those changes within a man’s head, called intellectual operations, such as remembering, judging, belief, &c. consist entirely of sensorial actions, called thoughts or ideas, which follow one after another, and every one of which has its cause.” (text of the speech as reported by Knowlton here)
The philosophy behind Knowlton’s ideas is remarkably like the 20th-century psychology of behaviorism. Knowlton had published a nearly 450-page book about his theories, called Modern Materialism, in 1829.
The crux of Knowlton’s argument to his neighbors is that freedom of opinion is the basis of American society. Knowlton’s grandfather and father had fought in the Revolution; it was still a recent event. Knowlton asked the townspeople to judge him by his behavior, not his beliefs. He subtly but unmistakably suggests that those who want to judge people by their beliefs rather than their actions (the minister and his friends) choose this because they know their actions will not stand close scrutiny. His charge against the church was dramatically proven when the congregation excommunicated a long-time member who stood up to the minister and supported his friend and doctor, Knowlton. The church was divided over the issue, and the minister was ultimately forced to resign.
The things that really strike me about Knowlton’s speech are the modernity of the argument, and the generally high level of its language and ideas. Knowlton was clearly an odd man, but he had some experience in public speaking. He was probably pitching his argument appropriately for his audience, which suggests they were an intelligent and well-read crowd. This is especially interesting, as most of them were back-country farmers and sheep-herders. An intellectual history of regular people might help me get a better idea of what these people were reading, thinking, talking about in the taverns. I wonder if there is one, or if I should try to do one?
When the religious bigots in his Berkshire hill-town of 1800 people tried to ruin his business, Dr. Charles Knowlton called the town to a meeting and made a long speech about belief, morality and politics. The year was 1833: Knowlton had published his Fruits of Philosophy the year before, and was using it with his patients in Franklin county.
“He that will not reason is a bigot, he that cannot reason is a fool, and he that dares not reason is a slave!” Knowlton announced to his neighbors.
“I proceed—
“There are no changes, no events, in a word, no effects without causes, and one effect as necessarily follows its cause as another, whether it occur within a man’s head or without. Every feeling of man, every thought of his brain, as necessarily has its cause as the movement of a water-wheel; and we all as necessarily think as we do think, as rocks unsupported fall to the ground. To admit that a man may think as he has a mind to, is not to admit one whit against what I have now advanced. To have a mind to think so and so, is but to have thoughts and ideas that you will think so and so,—every one of which thoughts or ideas must and does have its cause; which cause, whatever it may be, is but the effect of a prior cause, and this, again, the effect of a still prior cause, and so on throughout the eternal chain of events.”
“All those changes within a man’s head, called intellectual operations, such as remembering, judging, belief, &c. consist entirely of sensorial actions, called thoughts or ideas, which follow one after another, and every one of which has its cause.” (text of the speech as reported by Knowlton here)
The philosophy behind Knowlton’s ideas is remarkably like the 20th-century psychology of behaviorism. Knowlton had published a nearly 450-page book about his theories, called Modern Materialism, in 1829.
The crux of Knowlton’s argument to his neighbors is that freedom of opinion is the basis of American society. Knowlton’s grandfather and father had fought in the Revolution; it was still a recent event. Knowlton asked the townspeople to judge him by his behavior, not his beliefs. He subtly but unmistakably suggests that those who want to judge people by their beliefs rather than their actions (the minister and his friends) choose this because they know their actions will not stand close scrutiny. His charge against the church was dramatically proven when the congregation excommunicated a long-time member who stood up to the minister and supported his friend and doctor, Knowlton. The church was divided over the issue, and the minister was ultimately forced to resign.
The things that really strike me about Knowlton’s speech are the modernity of the argument, and the generally high level of its language and ideas. Knowlton was clearly an odd man, but he had some experience in public speaking. He was probably pitching his argument appropriately for his audience, which suggests they were an intelligent and well-read crowd. This is especially interesting, as most of them were back-country farmers and sheep-herders. An intellectual history of regular people might help me get a better idea of what these people were reading, thinking, talking about in the taverns. I wonder if there is one, or if I should try to do one?
Hawley
01/24/2009 14:02
Monadnock
01/22/2009 14:31
The mountain, and the rest of the hills around it, look great in the winter. And all year round, really. Contour is everything.
New Tech Gripes
01/21/2009 23:25
So I upgraded the ISP service, and bought a new web design package, RapidWeaver. Inevitably, I spent the entire day trying to get the things to work, separately and together. The email on the new server isn’t quite working yet. I managed to get the web software to actually publish the pages I designed. Buried deep in the Support Forum’s thousands of posts, is a suggestion that worked. It wasn’t a user-error sort of thing. You have to delete some cache files from a Library file in your User file. Not the type of thing you’d stumble over, even if you were a certified UNIX hacker and C programmer with 20 years experience. Maybe they should’ve mentioned it a little more prominently? Would’ve saved me a couple hours of frustration - and I can’t be the only one...
It’s a good thing, after all, that there’re simple solutions like iWeb. Sure, you get herded into the dot Mac world, and woe betide you if you want to do things your own way. But even so, the themes in iWeb are easier to customize than the themes in RapidWeaver. If iWeb could’ve synchronized with a third-party ISP, rather than forcing me to publish the whole site every time and ftp it to the server, I’d probably never have switched. Cuz I’ve got to say, even after all the frustration getting it going; once I changed a couple things on the site and it uploaded only the changes in a second or two --- THAT was COOL!
This photo is apropos of nothing, but I like it.
It’s a good thing, after all, that there’re simple solutions like iWeb. Sure, you get herded into the dot Mac world, and woe betide you if you want to do things your own way. But even so, the themes in iWeb are easier to customize than the themes in RapidWeaver. If iWeb could’ve synchronized with a third-party ISP, rather than forcing me to publish the whole site every time and ftp it to the server, I’d probably never have switched. Cuz I’ve got to say, even after all the frustration getting it going; once I changed a couple things on the site and it uploaded only the changes in a second or two --- THAT was COOL!
This photo is apropos of nothing, but I like it.
Hahvud
01/20/2009 23:08
Drove down to Harvard today, to look at the Norman Himes papers at the Countway Medical Library Special Collections. The Library isn’t in Cambridge, it’s in Boston on Shattuck Street, between about five hospitals. Oddly, I was just reading an 1811 letter from Nathan Smith to Dr. George Shattuck last night. The reading room I was in was called Holmes Hall, which I assume is for Oliver Wendell Holmes, but I didn’t ask. It’s a nice, wood-paneled room, lined on three sides with books. Not ancient medical texts, but lots of reference books: Who was who, National Biography, that sort of thing. The entire wall behind the librarian’s desk was a card catalog. Luckily, I didn’t have to use it. They had a nicely-bound finding aid that had been typed up by someone on a grant from Ortho Pharmaceuticals in 1973. That was about the time Mary Lee Esty was writing her biographical essay on Knowlton for them, too.
The archive has 133 boxes of Himes papers. I asked for four, and they appeared in minutes. There was no one else there today, though. Maybe it’s still break at Harvard. Or everybody was out watching the inauguration. The notes Himes took on Knowlton didn’t reveal any major secrets. There was a copyright date for the first edition of the Fruits of Philosophy in Rhode Island, which supports the story that Knowlton spent some time there in 1831. But the majority of the notes covered things I’ve already learned at Ashfield, Deerfield or online. It’s a lot easier, now that I can find all the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal articles on Google Books.
In the future, my research trips will probably be more focused on primary sources. I really need to read all the Boston Investigators from the 1830s, while Kneeland was in Boston. And I have to find out where Knowlton appeared and spoke at Free Enquirers’ conventions and meetings. I suspect he did a lot more of that than even Himes suspected. One interesting connection, that Laura Lovett at UMass suggested to me last fall, is that Himes was researching connections between the birth control movement and eugenics. I don’t think it went back to the 1830s, but the utopians like Owen and Wright may have contributed ideas to the early eugenicists, even if they weren’t thinking along those lines themselves. Maybe a topic for a paper someday.
The archive has 133 boxes of Himes papers. I asked for four, and they appeared in minutes. There was no one else there today, though. Maybe it’s still break at Harvard. Or everybody was out watching the inauguration. The notes Himes took on Knowlton didn’t reveal any major secrets. There was a copyright date for the first edition of the Fruits of Philosophy in Rhode Island, which supports the story that Knowlton spent some time there in 1831. But the majority of the notes covered things I’ve already learned at Ashfield, Deerfield or online. It’s a lot easier, now that I can find all the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal articles on Google Books.
In the future, my research trips will probably be more focused on primary sources. I really need to read all the Boston Investigators from the 1830s, while Kneeland was in Boston. And I have to find out where Knowlton appeared and spoke at Free Enquirers’ conventions and meetings. I suspect he did a lot more of that than even Himes suspected. One interesting connection, that Laura Lovett at UMass suggested to me last fall, is that Himes was researching connections between the birth control movement and eugenics. I don’t think it went back to the 1830s, but the utopians like Owen and Wright may have contributed ideas to the early eugenicists, even if they weren’t thinking along those lines themselves. Maybe a topic for a paper someday.
Intellectual Origins
01/15/2009 14:01
Adair was apparently a legendary professor, who mentored a generation of historians. I first ran into him in the introduction to Daniel Sisson’s published dissertation. Sisson pretty much lifted his thesis, it turns out, from Adair’s introduction. But Adair was much more careful in his statement than Sisson turned out to be in his extrapolation of it.
This dissertation was unpublished forever, but the list of borrowers of the original document at Yale is supposedly a who’s who of history, at least in the minds of the borrowers. Many of Adair’s grad students seem to have found hints and ideas in it that they were able to pursue in their own studies.
Adair begins by situating his study as a post-Beard analysis of Jefferson and Madison’s political ideas. He asks whether something more should be added to Beard’s economic analysis, to explain why, although Hamilton and Madison’s economic ideas were “practically identical,” Madison, “the great antiparty philosopher of the Constitutional Convention, went into opposition and helped organize a highly effective party with Jefferson—supposedly Hamilton’s direct antithesis in economic doctrine”? (9-10)
The answer, Adair says, is that Jefferson and Madison shared a political outlook informed by the classical traditions going all the way back to Aristotle. Hamilton was also a student of the classics, Adair says; but his scholarship was shallower, and he failed to adapt what he learned in the ancient texts to the conditions in early America. He was too much of an idealist.
This is an interesting argument, and intuitively it’s very satisfying. Elite education in the eighteenth century was classical, and all three men (and John Adams, and the rest of the members of the Constitutional Convention) had a shared language. Adair makes his case that the founders didn’t just come up with their political philosophy by watching their neighbors in the Virginia piedmont, as some Turner-influenced historians apparently claimed. But the question of specifically how each man was able to adapt this shared classical heritage into their various plans for the American republic is left largely unanswered.
Adair leans heavily on the Scottish philosophers, especially David Hume, as progenitors of the founding fathers’ world view. He lists the books Madison studied under (Scottish) John Witherspoon at Princeton. In addition to Leibniz, Newton, and Descartes, Madison read Shaftesbury, Locke, Hume, Hutcheson, Mandeville, and Adam Smith. (26) The inclusion of Smith suggests the Republicans were not the economic illiterates that supporters of Hamilton make them out to be. Fisher Ames described Madison as “a thorough master of almost every public question that can arise, or he will spare no pains to become so.” (28) In a note, Adair mentions that by the 1850s, the prominence of continental political classics in school curricula was decreasing, resulting in an observed decrease in references to the ancients in political speeches. (31) But all evidence suggests Madison and Jefferson (and their serious contemporaries) arrived on the scene at the peak of classical scholarship.
Adair says Jefferson’s most powerful influence was Aristotle, and that the hope that a class of virtuous yeomen could stabilize a republic was lifted directly from the Politics. He describes Shay’s rebellion as a debtors’ revolt, echoing an interpretation based on politically motivated contemporary sources (like Knox’s letters to Washington). Leonard Richards’ recent study of the members of the rebellion contradicts the traditional story. Adair says the “ominous event” (quoting Madison, 61) sent the founders rushing back to their shelves for answers in “Thucydides, Xenophon, and Aristotle.” Maybe this was part of the solution…but maybe it also limited the effectiveness of the final solution. The two missing pieces of Adair’s puzzle seem to repeatedly be: how did regular people react to all this classically-inspired politics, and how accurately did the founders really understand their situation, before they fit it to the models written by the masters two millennia earlier?
Adair hints at the possibility of over-applying classical analogies, but only among Jefferson and Madison’s adversaries. Hamilton is described as brilliant, but with a shallow understanding of the classics (76). Adams’ use of Thucydides account of the sedition at Corcyra in his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States is shown to be not only “the most tenuous” of analogies (65), but also to miss the point that Shays and his rebels were behaving symbolically rather than trying to take over the State of Massachusetts. Adair argues that because the principals of the debates believed these analogies significant, we should consider their relationship to the events. This is probably true with respect to Adams’ paranoia, and may be an approach to assessing not only the strengths (as Adair suggests), but the weaknesses of the founders’ vision.
Gouverneur Morris’ posthumous opinion of Hamilton is quoted at length, and probably contains the seeds of a book or two:
Our poor friend Hamilton bestrode his hobby to the great annoyance of his friends, and not without injury to himself. More a theoretic than a practical man, he was not sufficiently convinced that a system may be good in itself, and bad in relation to particular circumstances. He knew well that his favorite form [monarchy] was inadmissible, unless as the result of a civil war; and I suspect that his belief in that which he called an approaching crisis arose from a conviction, that the kind of government most suitable, in his opinion, to this extensive country could be established in no other way. (77) (from)
“For nearly a generation American political thinkers had shared Locke’s exclusive concern,” Adair says, “with curbing the powers of kings. But now in the summer of 1787, the Convention delegates were almost unanimously agreed that the people themselves presented an additional problem.” (109) And perhaps the delegates’ nearly unanimous opinion highlights yet another problem. Ironically, after arguing that Beard ignored politics and ideas, Adair blames Hamilton for economic policies that “divided the American people into sharper cleavage than had existed since 1776.” (114) The reduction of the Confederacy’s problems to Hamilton’s national financial schemes, and the reduction of Hamilton to “a victim of his Plutarch and his Tacitus,” is the book’s greatest weakness. (Adair even quotes Woodrow Wilson: Hamilton was “a very great man, but not a great American,” to which a previous reader wrote in the margin, “TOSH!”)
Adair says Hamilton’s reductive mistake was his assumption of class struggle, that ultimately “faction [would] pivot entirely upon the conflict of haves and have-nots.” (120) Madison saw past this Hobbesian error after long review of his classics, Adair says, and “challenged the basic postulate upon which the ancient mixed government depended for its justification; and in so doing he exploded the justification for a permanent will in the community to keep the immutable strife of the few and the many within bounds.” But he never really says what those other elements of factionalism were, or how Madison proposed to keep them in check or play one against the other to stabilize his system. This is where a look back at Turner, who Adair threw out in the preface, might be helpful. Both Jefferson and Madison had experienced the frontier, and when the Louisiana Purchase was completed Madison breathed a sigh of relief and added a generation onto his expectation for America’s survival. (160) But Madison did the math, and decided that by 1930, Americans would “necessarily [be] reduced by a competition for employment to wages which afford them the bare necessities of life. The proportion being without property…cannot be expected to sympathize sufficiently with its right to be safe depositories of power over them.” (161) “It would be impossible to base a republican government on a minority, without creating ‘a standing military force, dangerous to all parties and to liberty itself.’” Madison’s classics apparently held no answer; he simply hoped when the time came “the wisdom of the wisest patriots” in a future generation would pull them through (from “Notes on Suffrage” written during the Virginia Convention of 1829-30).
