Abolition

Abolition:

A Comparative Essay

 

            “We had but a single object in view – the total abolition of American slavery, and, as a just consequence, the complete enfranchisement of our colored countrymen.”[1] This is, perhaps, the simplest summary of the abolition movement committed to pen and paper, written in 1837 by one of its most radical leaders: William Lloyd Garrison. While the statement is concise, it is also deceptively uncomplicated. This much can be said of any human enterprise that involves more than one mind and abolition is no exception. In a simple survey of abolition one might be tempted to say that leaders like William Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Delany were endeavoring towards the same goal but that, too, would be an oversimplification. As we look to Garrison’s “The Prospectus of The Liberator”, Douglass’ “Narrative”, and selections from Delany’s The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States we can see the commonality that exists within them: they all seek to set the captives free and enfranchise – in one way or another – the African-American population with equal rights. Yet while the antebellum American abolitionist movement was strong and growing, it was not at all uniform and harbored a wide diversity of adherents with a variety of motives, means, and ends.

            If the casting off of shackles is the liberation of the slave’s body, then in no uncertain terms can it be said that education is the liberation of a slave’s mind. Harkening back to the earliest writings of republican thought do we remember the immortal claim of John Adams: in order for a man to be free from tyranny (of “ignorance” as one of the “two great causes of the ruin of mankind”)[2], he must be free to be educated. To the underlying principles of republican enlightenment that existed in the early nineteenth century, knowledge was power. It was under this pretext that William Garrison derived his argument that education should be not held out as a pre-requisite to emancipation. The notion fielded by those in support of “gradual abolition” (a notion Garrison calls “a fatal delusion”[3]) that slaves should retain an education before being freed from bondage went against every concept of justice that a man such as Garrison would have been familiar with.[4] Drawing from his own personal experience on just such a subject, Frederick Douglass recalls that his own literacy and self-induced education as a slave gifted him with a “bold denunciation of slavery and a powerful vindication of human rights.”[5][6] He goes on to say that “the moral that I gained from [my readings] was the power of truth over the conscience of the slaveholder.” Perhaps not as well foreseen by Garrison was what Douglass claimed as the double edge of such education in the hands of one still enslaved: “It had opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out.” [7] Yet it seemed to Douglass that even the slaveholder understood the awesome power of education when, as he summons up an encounter with his first masters in Baltimore, his master, Mr. Auld, forbids his wife from teaching Frederick how to read. In, perhaps, one of the more famous passages of his Narrative Douglass quotes his former master as having said, “A nigger should know nothing except to obey his master – to do as he is told to do. Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world.”[8] (Emphasis added) It is important to note at this point that, while remaining culturally and historically sensitive to the material provided, it is important for a historian to read a work like the Narrative critically. Douglass, at times, gives very explicit details even years after the presumed incidents described. What is not of absolute importance, as some might suggest, is the inerrancy of the narrative but rather the essential truths that Douglass is attempting to communicate to the reader. Did this exact conversation have to take place? Not necessarily. What a historian intends to do with this text is render the reality of the time as Douglass perceived it. In this case it seems that Douglass is intent on presenting education as a universally known foundation to emancipation. It is in that very same vein that we meet Martin Delany. In his work, Condition, Delany not only accuses the slaveholders of withholding education from their bondsmen (which he seems to consider a “given”), but also accuses those in the north who are sympathetic to the cause of enfranchisement of doing the very same to free blacks. To Delany, the white abolitionist might ascend to enfranchisement and equal rights in principle but equal opportunity is far from practice.[9] Calling the education that is available to nearly every white child in the north “the very Key [sic] to prosperity and success for common life”, he then decries the state of education for African-American children as they are taught to barely scribble a chapter of the New Testament and are “announced as having ‘learning enough’” only to be then sent off and given no further training.[10] It is in this passage that we can recognize some of the understandable bitterness and resentment at the historical under-service of even the free African-American community. While it may be politically expedient for some to dwell here on perceptions of “finger-pointing” and blame, the point easily and empirically derived from the texts is that all three men regarded education as the starting point of freedom. True to form, however, all three men differed on their respective approach towards the subject, thus strengthening the position taken here that the means and ends of abolition were not at all homogeneous and were, in some cases, incompatible.

            It is this incompatibility that extends so completely to the theories these men pursued in regards to the government of the United States. In what may be acknowledged as the closest concept of American government to a modern political thinker was that of Frederick Douglass. Douglass, breaking completely with his mentor Garrison, does not advocate at all that the U.S. government was overrun with the national stain of slavery or that such a stain was perpetrated by the Constitution. According to editor David Blight, “Douglass came to believe that the Constitution could be used to exert federal power against slavery”[11], an impression that could have been rooted in his ability to manipulate many other things and people throughout his life to gain the ends he desired (such as the poor, witless schoolboys that he tricked into teaching him how to write)[12]. In this way he was also admitting that he believed that freed slaves could, somehow, integrate into society with whites. It is at this point that he comes into contention with Delany. In his Condition, Delany does not dwell so much on the position of the Constitution in regards to slavery but rather in what he sees as the endemic racial prejudice of whites. It is in Victorian-era racism that Delany sees the true problem when he declares that it was not solely the belief of whites that blacks were inferior that created a system of racism in America, but that whites (specifically Anglo-Saxons of the British tradition) were superior or contained racial supremacy. It was this distinction, though it may seem to some as a split hair, that Delany saw an impossibility of racial integration, provided the slaves were ever freed.[13] From this impossibility does Delany open a petition to other nations of the world to allow the African-American population in the United States immigration rights. He claims that the millions of African-Americans (both free and slave) would add a “powerful auxiliary” to any nation willing to host them with equal rights and enfranchisement.[14] No doubt this was a radical – and some might have accused it of being a seditious – proposition for any reader in power in a foreign government. Delany justifies it by lamenting that while African-Americans love America, “she don’t love us – she despises us and bids us begone… whatever love we have for her, we shall love the country nonetheless that receives us as her adopted children.”[15] Not to be outdone, Garrison ups the proverbial ante by claiming the freed slaves (should ever a day come when all were freed) would only find more of the same in any other nation. It is in America that blacks should stay and it is in America that they can aid in what he sees as the holy plan of God to build the Kingdom of God in fact as much as in theory. Whereas Douglass sees, in a rather utilitarian sense, a Constitution that can be made to serve blacks, and Delany sees, in a resentful and bitter sense, blacks as moving to another nation to be served, Garrison sees, with the eyes of an Old Testament prophet, no nation as capable of serving people of either color. Delivering a contemptuous rebuke, he disparages “the governments of this world… in all their essential elements” as “all Anti-Christ.”[16] Perhaps in the boldest condemnation ever delivered, Garrison would throw out the baby, the bathwater, and the shut up the well from whence said bathwater came! At the point when Garrison was redefining the mission of his particular abolitionist movement, it appears that he extrapolated all of his previous arguments and positions to draw them all to one conclusion: government exists in opposition to God. It exists for the sole purpose of oppression – even in spite of a government’s republican vestments. It is born of violence and “fashioned in the likeness and administered in the spirit of their own disobedience.”[17] To Garrison, the governments of the world – and especially the United States – had set up a kingdom that was incompatible with the teachings and Kingdom of Jesus Christ. It was in the American slavery institution that Garrison was able to see the clearest example of what was endemic in all government: the “dominion of man”, the “thralldom of self”, the “government of brute force”, and “the bondage of sin”.[18] His answer to this problem of government was very different from his two contemporaries. It was not to “change from within” as Douglass had argued, and not to run away – into the arms of the same problems elsewhere, but to completely disengage from the government. Garrison chose to see the government of the United States as Jesus saw the government of Rome: a foreign occupying power, a power that had no true legitimacy over the lives of his followers, and a power that will, one day, be brought into subjection to the Kingdom of God: a “kingdom” that is not like human government but one of “righteousness, peace, and joy”. It was the means of disengagement that he hoped to achieve his stated ends: “the emancipation of our whole race.”[19]

            Let us not wrongly assume, however, that these lofty notions applied to the establishment of men! In each his own way did all three men assist also in the emancipation and enfranchisement of women. While not realized until well after all of them were dead, they gave to the movement of women’s liberation a moral support that remains a strong relationship even today. The causes of civil rights and women’s rights have been entwined since nearly the beginning. While in Douglass’ Narrative there is scarcely an explicit mention of women’s rights, he aptly fed the propaganda machine with vivid imagery of inhumane and inconceivable abuse towards women. It is not meant by the use of the word “propaganda” that such tales as provided in the Narrative are false, but rather their inclusion served a particular political goal in the writings – namely the depravity of the slaveholders, the hypocrisy of slaveholders’ assertions that the races were incompatible, and, of course, the subjection of the cause of women. Taking it a step further, Garrison appends his “Prospectus” with the declaration that “our object is universal emancipation – to redeem woman as well as man from a servile to an equal condition, - we shall go for the Rights of Woman to their utmost extent.”[20] These two leaders do indeed give a very politically correct endorsement of women’s rights, but it feels almost as an afterthought or an appendage to their main message. Not so with Delany! Embedded deeply within his controversial message is as radical a statement as the male-dominated Victorian society is able to hear: “No people are ever elevated above the condition of their females; hence the condition of the mother determines the condition of the child.”[21] It is here that we again see these three agreeing on the principal of women’s rights, but in three distinctly different ways and offering varying degrees of support: Douglass dealing with the issue indirectly, Garrison mentioning his support in passing, and Delany building a core argument around the concept.

            A better topic of contrast could scarcely be found between these three than on the issue of racial identity. In one corner sits Martin Delany, a man very proud of his African heritage and one that laid a good deal of the foundation for concepts such as “black nationalism”. As Douglass once said of Delany: “I thank God for making me a man simply, but Delany always thanks Him for making him a black man.”[22] While much of Delany’s arguments are based around the distinctly incompatible nature of the relationship between whites and blacks in antebellum America, Douglass would be much more neutral – by his own admission – in regards to race. To Delany, he regarded the African-American population of the U.S. as a whole – even perhaps naively perceiving them as monolithic and homogenous. While petitioning other nations to “adopt” the blacks in America he assumes that he has the bargaining power for the whole population. A leader in the community he most certainly was – but negotiating for the mass exodus and emigration of the whole race from a country? A cultural anthropologist never had a more brazen figure in African-American history to analyze! In contrast to that is Douglass’ identification with his “fellow bondsmen”. It could be argued that by identifying with other slaves, he is in fact identifying with them racially as well as in station. When taken with the previous quotation on being simply “a man” instead of “a black man”, the relation to bondsmen seems much more conditional than racial. This is certainly a view we should expect from someone whose mentor was William Garrison. As has been mentioned before, Garrison found his commonality with other men not on the basis of race, but on the basis of universal obedience to Christ. Garrison did not identify, for obvious reasons, with slaves on the basis of race: he was white! Instead he was able to identify with slaves because he believed they shared a condition of servility to man whereas it should only be made to God through Jesus.

            As has been stated before, the temptation of regarding abolition as a singular movement proves false when one is able to see the ways in which these men differed. From issues regarding education, to government, to women’s rights, and race consciousness these three men stood together, even if only loosely. In some ways they were wholly incompatible, in others they were separated by simple details. Remembering that William Garrison was able to so eloquently summarize abolition, we return to him for the purposes of highlighting a fuller panorama of those various abolitionists. “However widely we may differ in our view on other subjects, we shall not refuse to labor with him against slavery, in the same phalanx, if he refuse not to labor with us… we make our appeal for support to the honest-hearted… those who are not afraid to think and act independently, among all sects and all parties.”[23]

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[1] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), “Prospectus of the Liberator” page 265

[2] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), A Dissertation on the Cannon and Feudal Law, page 113

[3] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), Selection from Thoughts on African Colonization, page 257

[4] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), Selection from Thoughts on African Colonization, page 259

[5] Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Narrative), page 68

[6] Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Narrative), page 68

[7] Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Narrative), page 68

[8] Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Narrative), page 63

[9] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, page 483

[10] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, page 485

[11] Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Narrative), page 9

[12] Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (Narrative), page 70

[13] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, page 480

[14] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, page 488-489

[15] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, page 489

[16] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), “The Prospectus of The Liberator”, page 267

[17] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), “The Prospectus of The Liberator”, page 267

[18] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), “The Prospectus of The Liberator”, page 265

[19] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), “The Prospectus of The Liberator”, page 265

[20] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), “The Prospectus of The Liberator”, page 268

[21] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, page 487

[22] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, page 475

[23] The American Intellectual Tradition (HC), “The Prospectus of The Liberator”, page 266

The Essays of Brutus

The Essays of Brutus

         In the late 1780’s the administrators of the United States, through a Constitutional Convention, decided to reform the structure of government in order to create an equal division of power and a more lasting stability. The resulting constitutional document provided the blueprint for a radically new kind of government based on the federalist principles of separation of powers between a relatively stronger central government and the numerous state governments. A man known only by the pseudonym of “Brutus” - through a collection of essays - sought to persuade the citizens of New York of the dangers of this new constitution by illuminating the inherent limitations of national representation, along with the hazards of allowing too much power into the hands of too few men.

In his first essay, Brutus lays out the backdrop of the Constitutional Convention: the confederacy which united the “several states” had proven too weak to address the demands of the young and growing nation. He claims that “[p]erhaps this country never saw so critical a period in their political concerns. We have felt the feebleness of the ties which these Unites-States are held together, and the want of sufficient energy in our present confederation, to manage, in some instances, our general concerns.” (142) In this admission, Brutus does not dispute the essentially broken state of the union. Unlike the Federalists, however, he does not see the possible redemption of the nation in the then-proposed Constitution, but rather a more real threat: the creation of an aristocratic oligarchy masquerading as a republican democracy. In his third essay he laments what he sees as the inevitable death of popular rule at the hands of “the well born, and highest orders in life”. (151) Acutely aware of the propensities of men to align themselves with the already powerful he foresees that the “natural aristocracy will be elected.” (150-151)

His concerns over the specter of “influence” do not stop at the electoral level. Brutus goes to great pains to address what he sees as the genuine menace of the corruption of the legislature. In what might be his most scathing indictment of the notion of a national congress, he alleges that the “legislature will not only be an imperfect representation, but there will be no security in so small a body, against bribery, and corruption… a majority of [legislators]… may pass any law – so that twenty-five men, will have all the power to give away all the property of the citizens of these states – what security therefore can there be for the people, were their liberties and property are at the disposal of so few men? It will literally be a government in the hands of the few to oppress and plunder the many.” (151) Brutus places no faith in the integrity of men with power, rather reminding his readers that this is a lesson learned by the “unerring experience of the ages, that every man, and every body of men, invested with power are ever disposed to increase it and to acquire superiority over everything that stands in their way.” (145) Not relenting in his campaign to sow anxiety of an imminent return to aristocracy and corruption, he does not stop merely with the men comprising the body of representatives but extrapolates his assumptions of the nature of mankind onto the entire federal government as a whole. In a string of arguments Brutus makes clear that Americans cannot trust a strong Federal government to respect the rights of the states. He claims that the Constitution, through its delegation of powers in regards to taxation and revenue generation, puts the national government at a serious advantage at the expense of the states. The fact that the Constitution prohibits the states from collecting tariffs without the consent of the Federal government makes sure that “the only mean therefore left, for any state to support its government and discharge its debts, is by direct taxation; and… when the foederal government begins to exercise the right of taxation in all its parts, the legislatures of the several states will find it impossible to raise monies to support their governments. Without money they cannot be supported, and they must dwindle away, and, as before observed, their powers absorbed in that of the general government.” (144) This, he asserts, is the carefully crafted plan of the Federalists. In addition to depriving the states any way of supporting themselves, he claims the Constitution gives the national government the right to create “all laws, proper and necessary, for carrying all these into execution; and they may so exercise this power as entirely to annihilate all the state governments… for it will be found that the power retained by individual states, small as it is, will be a clog upon the wheels of the [national] government”. (145) 

While many might accuse Brutus of being a cynic or a misanthropist, he does not limit his arguments to that of the innate depravity of men with power. In, perhaps, a more practical matter he seems to say that the larger of the problems is not with corruption so much as it is simply with execution. The nation, according to Brutus, is too large and too diverse for any national body to effectively represent the constituency. “Now, in a large extended country it is impossible to have a representation… without having it so numerous and unwieldy, as to be subject in a measure to the inconveniency of the democratic government.” (146) On the one hand, he notes, a representative body must be small in order to proceed quickly and nimbly through the people’s business. On the other, however, a small representative body for a nation so large and diverse in interests would not be representative at all. Too much of the population’s needs would go unheard and unheeded simply because of the lack of individuals to cater to them. Connecting this argument back to his warning of corruption, Brutus offers up the example of his name’s sake in prompting us to remember that history “furnishes no example of a free republic, any thing like the extent of the United States. The Grecian republics were of small extent; so also was that of the Romans. Both of these, it is true, in process of time, extended their conquests over large territories of country; and the consequence was, that their governments were changed from that of free governments to those of the most tyrannical that ever existed in the world.” (146) In this observation Brutus offers up a chilling reminder of the demise of past republics warning that the new American government is not so enlightened as to abstain from the same path.

What’s more, he observes, that there is incredible diversity in the states. That diversity extends so far that some of the states have laws and customs that work in opposite of each other. Under the Constitution, he sees, the diversity and heterogeneous aspects of the states will be forced to conform to a single, national identity – at the expense of the minority. Since “each [state] would be in favor of its own interests and customs”, there would be built in conflicts between the states which the Federal government would have to resolve. (147) That resolution would likely, according to Brutus, favor the more populous representation in the national legislature and oppress the rights of the minority. This argument ties in to his next point of the argument: how can a national government execute its laws over a dissenting or nonconformist state except by force of arms? This, to Brutus, seems to be a great sin and in great opposition to the creation of a free country. “[S]tanding armies… have always proved the destruction of liberty, and [are] abhorrent to the spirit of a free republic… A free republic will never keep a standing army to execute its laws.” (147) In the Constitutional system Brutus foresees a number of inherent conflicts between the states that, according to him, could only be resolved and executed in minority states by force of arms. His argument suggests that this is the same tyranny that the colonies all just escaped.

Brutus’ first and third essays on federalism stand as a sobering admonition against the creation of a strong central government with sweeping administrative powers. While he freely admitted that the citizens of the United States were at the crest of a possible “golden age”, he alerted the people of New York that they were dangerously close to the “subversion of liberty”. If this new government establishes “a despotism, or, what is worse, a tyrannic aristocracy” then “this only remaining asylum for liberty will be shut up, and posterity will execrate your memory.” (142)

Revolution!

Revolution: Science, Politics, and Religion in the Seventeenth Century

            There was nothing particularly spectacular about the cold October morning in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the front door of the Castle Church in protest to perceived doctrinal errors of the Catholic Church. While incredibly bold for one man, it amounted to a simple pinprick in the face of the Church’s monolithic power over European life. What it accomplished, however, was nothing short of revolution. From the subsequent Protestant Reformation came the increasingly symbiotic, inter-dependent, and highly progressive relationship between the development of empiricism, rationalism, experimental Newtonian philosophy, natural rights, and “enlightened” theology which would revolutionize the social fabric of the world for centuries to come.

            It was thanks to the Protestant Reformation of the seventeenth century that men became bold enough in Europe to challenge the Catholic Church’s hegemony on all matters of issues, but most specifically those of theology, religion, economics, politics, and science. In generations past the Church had governed with an iron fist over all manners of thought and knowledge. Nearly all of the cosmology of the medieval world was based on a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible and the Church, through its powers of excommunication, execution and the Inquisition made it very difficult for progressive thinkers of the time to challenge the prevailing worldview. It was only when reform-minded Protestants began to weaken the foundation of the Church with accusations of corruption and incorrect interpretation of the Bible did it become possible for political thinkers and scientists to defy Roman domination of their arenas as well. One of the major advancements of the time was the protestant practice of putting Bibles into the hands of the laity instead of restricting ownership of Bibles to clergymen and priests alone. This allowed anyone who could read to search the Holy Scriptures for their own answers on the nature of God and the world around them.

While this may seem, on the surface, like a simple theological matter it affected a wide range of behavior in Europe. By allowing people to read the Bible for themselves it allowed people to form their own ideas about the values systems that prevailed in their time. A man could choose for himself if God, through the Bible, truly outlawed the use of corpses in medicine, or if the Bible truly told that the Sun revolved around the Earth, or if the world truly was created in seven days or, perhaps most important of all, whether or not God truly gave the Pope complete discretion in the affairs of Christendom. Not only did this empower the common man to act in regard to his individual conscience over the instructions of his priest, but it also emboldened many princes of Europe to break ties with Rome and establish their lands as new homes for thoughts and notions not approved of by the Pope. It was through this princely rejection of Catholicism as a state religion and the establishment of protestant states that allowed for the influx of thinkers and ideas that were previously banned by Catholic authorities.

Let it be said, however, that independence from Rome did not come cheaply for those nations. Nearly all of the major wars of the seventeenth century in Europe revolved, among other things, around the struggle between Catholics and Protestants over the dominant state religion. From the English war with Spain and the Dutch Revolution that led to the Thirty Years’ War and ended in the Peace of Westphalia, to Catholic France’s civil war with the protestant Huguenots, to the War of the Triple Alliance, and the War of Spanish Succession Europe spent more than a century fighting over religion. It must be noted, however, that no nation had a clear-cut distinction in the religion of the native population. Catholics lived in protestant countries and vice versa. In fact one of the most significant treaties to come out of the seventeenth century was the Peace at Westphalia. This peace established the Dutch Republic as an independent protestant nation – no longer under the rule of Spain, set territorial borders for the victors, recognized Calvinism as a legitimate Christian denomination and, perhaps most telling of all, cemented the rights of religious minorities in principalities where the majority of the people – or even just the prince! – established an alternate state religion. In other words Catholics living in a protestant nation and Protestants living in a Catholic nation could not be persecuted for their beliefs. It could be said that this treaty is among the first official documents advocating religious tolerance in Europe. In more ways than one could it be argued that this notion of inter-denominational Christian tolerance was the foundation of eighteenth century notions of freedom of religion found – most specifically – in the American Bill of Rights.

In no way should one conclude that the theological and religious reforms of the seventeenth century stopped at theology and religion. As I alluded to before, the relationship between the Protestant Reformation and the Scientific Revolution was, and perhaps still is, incredibly symbiotic. In other words, the benefits and growth of one movement had foundational effects upon the other without a truly distinct indication of dominance. In this paper I argue that the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century acted as a catalyst for the subsequent revolutions in science and politics, but I cannot argue that the Protestant Reformation was sparked in a theological or religious vacuum. While the argument is outside the scope of this discussion, it may be argued that some aspects of the Protestant Reformation were predicated on perceptions of injustice in Europe with the persecution of Copernicus, a sixteenth century scientist, and his followers by the Catholic Church thus illustrating an interdependent relationship.

What can and should be argued is that many of the scientists of the seventeenth century were so disillusioned by the Catholic Church and its perceived abuses of power that they spent much of their scientific effort to further weaken the Church and make it less influential in the affairs of secular and natural sciences. The Catholic Church intrinsically tied its own legitimacy to the cosmology it created. As mentioned before, this cosmology was based on literal interpretations of the Bible as well as the writings of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. To the natural philosopher and scientist of the seventeenth century the opportunity to prove the Church as a liar was perhaps too great to let slip. This is not to say, however, that whatever liberty provided by protestant states to explore new ideas and schools of thoughts was the same as complete license. While the protestant states protested the hegemony of the Catholic Church, they themselves were still fairly religious and the progressive agendas of contemporary natural philosophers did have limitations. Protestant states did have censors of their own, but those states were arguably far more open to progressive notions than Catholic states. It is no coincidence that the most prominent figures in the scientific and political revolutions were either born, lived in, or were published in protestant countries. Sir Francis Bacon and Sir Isaac Newton were influential members of English nobility. John Locke was also an influential English philosopher. Rene Descartes, while a Catholic Frenchman, spent his final twenty years in the Netherlands. Baruch “Benedict” Spinoza, a Sephardic Jew from Catholic Spain, also wrote his influential works in the Dutch Republic. It is in the writings of these men that I intend to demonstrate the inter-dependent and progressive nature of the relationship between religion, politics, and science in the seventeenth century.

In 1620 Sir Francis Bacon finished his great work for James I, king of England, called Novum Organum along with the accompanying preface, The Great Instauration. In The Great Instauration Bacon lays out the purpose of his new instrument (novum organum), its scope, the needs that bred its creation and a stalwart defense of a budding new cosmology based on empiricism. This work helped introduce the notion that much, if not all, of human knowledge could be derived through the practice of observation. In order to understand nature and the universe-at-large one simply needed to observe it in its natural state. To understand it further a natural philosopher could also remove the object from nature – as much as was possible – and place it in a state of isolation for further observation. While Bacon vigorously argued that the realm of the sacred could not be held to this empirical standard (GI, p.15) he did make a veiled attack upon the Aristotelian mode of thought, backed by the English Church and universities, when he argued that those scholars had “usurped a kind of dictatorship in the sciences” and had fallen to complaints of “the weakness of the human mind… seeing that they will rather lay the blame upon the common condition of men and nature than upon themselves.” (GI, p.10) We can see that despite his most obvious admonitions about giving “to faith that which is faith’s” (GI, p.15) how easy it might have been for many of his later readers to apply his empirical view of nature to the realm of the supernatural. If one cannot observe the supernatural in any way, why should one believe that the supernatural – God included – exists at all? The effect this had on the religious community in subsequent generations must have been immense: a proverbial “bell” which could not be un-rung. In this work Bacon also argued that deriving all knowledge simply from human reason as others, such as Descartes, had argued was folly when he states that: “As for those who have given the first place to Logic, supposing that the surest helps to the sciences were to be found in that, they have indeed most truly and excellently perceived that the human intellect left to its own course is not to be trusted”. (GI, p.12) Man, according to Bacon, could not simply reason himself into knowledge. Knowledge had to come either by observation – with the aid of new instruments (GI, p.13) – or by revelation, which Bacon does not seem to endorse either but makes mention of. It is toward the end of his introductory piece that Bacon seems to direct his most pointed instructions. Science, as he saw it, needed to pass a strict ethical test before man could implement it. New advancements and new knowledge should not, at any point, be made simply for personal gain or private profit. Whatever scientific gains could be made should be applied to the greater aid of all mankind in an attempt to understand and exert control over nature. (GI, p.16) It was in this reprimand that Bacon seems to draw most heavily from Christian Scripture when he reminds his readers that “it was from lust of power that the angels fell, from the lust of knowledge that man fell; but of charity there can be no excess, neither did angel or man ever come in danger by it.” (GI, p.16) It was in The Great Instauration that we see the most bold and most pointed attempts to deconstruct all previous notions provided by Aristotelians, discard them, and develop a new instrument of knowledge rooted solely in scientific process. (GI, pp.5, 8) It was in this solid beginning that we are not only able to see the developing roots of Newtonian philosophy and experimentation later in the century, but also to gaze back to the Reformation that made his challenge of Aristotelianism and careful examinations of Biblical passages possible.

If Francis Bacon was most concerned with the process of the new sciences, Rene Descartes seemed most engaged with the source and the end of this knowledge, arguing that it was man’sreason that enabled them to understand the world. In his Discourse on the Method For Conducting One’s Reason Well and For Seeking Truth in the Sciences, Descartes notes that the empirical faculties do well to help in observation but that man’s sensual faculties, unlike reason, are both too weak and ill-equipped to understand the mysteries of the universe-at-large. (DM, p.18) Yet while Bacon and Descartes seemed to follow different paths, they both began and desired to end at the same place. Whereas Bacon would complain over the lack of serious achievements in the Aristotelian model, Descartes found it much easier to simply ignore it altogether by intellectually deconstructing everything he had learned in his prior education (DM p.18.32). Descartes, coming from a very Catholic upbringing in France, dared not apply this deconstructionist model to God maintaining that since he recognized himself to be imperfect, his notions of perfection must have come from something that was perfect – and that perfection must be God. (DM, p. 19.34) What was perhaps most scandalous were his two main assertions in Discourse on Method: first that all certain knowledge came from reason. It was in this argument that Descartes, knowingly or not, opened up a full-frontal attack upon the prevailing belief system that human understanding of the world was and should continue to be based on the Bible its divine revelations, and other authoritative texts (e.g., Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle). By leaving no room for revelatory knowledge Descartes is canceling out any way to incorporate Biblical understandings of God and creation into this method.

While we see much of this thought in his critique of his Jesuit education (DM, p.3.5), it might even be more evident in the writings of Baruch Spinoza where we see the student going even farther than the master. In his Theological-Political Treatise Spinoza argues that the Bible can’t be trusted in the theopneustonian (Greek for “god-breathed” or “divinely inspired”) reverence that both Christians and Jews give it.  Among a great host of other arguments Spinoza resolved that the prophets of the Old Testament were not chosen because of their incredible wisdom but because oftheir unusual pliability and possible mental instability. In other words, the prophets weren’t oracles of God through intelligence but moved “in the Spirit” by their own passions and prejudices which they flavored God’s messages with. (TPT, p.5) Worse still for the Christian apologist was Spinoza’s criticism of Judeo-Christian religious rituals as “superstitious” and an exercise in the hatred of reason, “turning away from the intellect as naturally corrupt”. (TPT, p.4) This, however, should not be confused with an intentional assault on the whole of the sacred or divine as he argues that “everyone should be allowed the freedom of judgment and the right to interpret the basic tenets of his faith as he sees fit.” (TPT, p.6) Again, this may have been unintentional, but it certainly was substantial. To this day Spinoza’s arguments and skepticism is quoted when discussing the “inherent contradictions” and “inconsistencies” of the Bible. Arguments that for the last three hundred or so years have stuck in the minds of doubters that still demand a verdict. While this was a challenge to the authority of organized churches which determined the tenets of faith, we can also see these words as influential in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution – most specifically the First Amendment. It is fairly evident that this declaration of Spinoza came directly from the first page of Discourse where Descartes states, “’reason’ is naturally equal in all men”. In this assessment Descartes is arguing against the belief that an extra dispensation of carnal wisdom or sacred grace could be found in the priesthood or the nobility extrapolated all the way to the Pope and the kings of Europe. The suggestion that anything could be equal in all men, let alone reason, had the potential to undermine the entire social, political, economic, scientific, and religious order of the world that was grounded in a strict hierarchy with most power concentrated at the top.

One of the most lasting impressions made on the religious developments of the eighteenth and subsequent centuries was this seemingly foundational formation of deism. Deists believe, as Descartes and Spinoza did, that there was a divine figure in the Universe but that it was not necessarily the one told of by sacred scriptures as much as attested to by Nature. This being is not the God of religion, but a god of reason. If one were to argue that Descartes’ theories have become obsolete over time they would be mistaken. It may be that Cartesian cosmology has been replaced in large part by the Newtonian model, but it is easy to see how Descartes’ groundbreaking work laid the foundation for Newtonian sciences and Lockean philosophy.

While some natural philosophers used their freedoms to argue against the Bible or abandon Biblical sources of cosmology, Isaac Newton was among the first of the 17^th century scientists to pursue the sciences vigorously while still reconciling those findings with Biblical data. (NPN, pp.60-61) Newton, more so than any of his predecessors, used Christian Scriptures as a baseline for understanding the “who” and “what” of the Universe and the sciences as an explanation of the “how”. Decrying atheism as both “senseless and odious”, Newton contends that behind the human effort of every scientific discovery lies the “counsel and contrivance of an Author.” (NPN, p.65) At some points in his writings Newton seems to use a very generic or even deist identity for God such as “Maker”, “Author”, “Deity” or “an intelligent Agent”. This, if looked at by itself, might lead some to believe that Newton did not endorse the idea of the Christian God and approached the divine with a more deistic approach like Descartes or worse yet, a radical one like Spinoza; but in his other writings Newton enthusiastically defends the identity of God as “The Lord” and reminds his readers that the Biblical narratives are still the best source by which man can understand “the Eternal of Israel”. (NPN, p.42) Newton’s largest contributions to the future of all human thought are, in a modern context, invaluable. His laws of motion, while difficult to comprehend for the untrained mind, revolutionized how people understand the way the world – and everything in it – moves. But the most striking aspect of these laws of motion is that they, like his supplemental law of gravity, are universally applicable. Newton scientifically proved what Descartes and Spinoza intellectually ascended to: the basic equality of all men. All men may not have been equal yet under human law, but Newton discovered that all men were equal under the state and laws of Nature. “Whence arises this uniformity in all their outward [bodily] shapes but from the counsel and contrivance of an Author?” Newton sees the truth of the universe in the perfection of light and of all earthly eyes that make use of that light to see, in the symmetry of all bodies (both earthly and celestial), in the power of perfect celestial orbits and even in the laws of motion. Such truth, to Newton, all comes from the mind of God: a God that is not available to the senses, but one whose reflection could be seen sensually in the perfect working order of the universe. This notion of equality in the universe may seem, to the modern reader, rather mundane and trivial but to the seventeenth century reader this theory had outrageous implications. One might even be able to see the train of thought that led to Locke’s shocking declaration that all men were entitled to rights in the state of nature. If God created all of Nature, and Nature has laws that apply to all men regardless of rank and station making all men equal under Nature, then all men must also be equal under God! If all men are, thence, equal under God then all men are, in fact, truly equal and the supposed divine right of kings to rule is an indignity to be immediately cast off. It was no less than this very argument that John Locke put forth.

Most scholars recognize John Locke as a very deliberate political revolutionary. He may be best known in America for being the chief influence on Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence. What many scholars fail to recognize about Locke, however, is that he was also a very unintentional theological revisionist. Locke was, in every sense of the word, a rationalist. His writings are nothing short of a comprehensive synthesis for rational thought. His Second Treatise of Government was and still is one of the most provocative revolutionary documents ever produced by human hands. In one fell swoop Locke argues to cast off the shackles of assumed dominion, to establish – at the tip of a sword if necessary – the “natural rights” of all men, and to replace the tyranny of absolutism with the hope and prosperity of a government that is accountable to its citizenry. What was not so equally recognized in his time was this argument of natural rights, based on his notion of tabula rasa (Latin for “clean slate”). It argued that men were born with no innate notions except those that were introduced to them by education and environment. This was a radical new theological argument, though I doubt very much that Locke treated it as such. This apparently simple doctrine of tabula rasa flew in the face of centuries of dogma that built upon the notion that all men were born into a state of sinfulness and needed to be cleansed through baptism: a belief that both protestants and Catholics agreed upon. In America and dozens of other nations across the globe this theory of tabula rasa and natural rights is now the law of the land and does not come as much of a surprise to a modern mind. As has been stated before, however, such was not the case in the seventeenth century: there was no substantial notion of natural rights nor was there any government that applied such a notion so universally as to empower its citizenry to form a “social compact” with it for the safety and security of those rights. It was to this end that law and government existed according to Locke. (STG, pp.32.57, 66.124) He states with great confidence that this equality in the state of nature is evident (STG, p.8.4) and that the “laws of nature, do bind men absolutely” in a state of nature and liberty (STG, p.13.15). It is here that we so clearly see the influences of Newton as he also elaborates the point in claiming that “absolute monarchs are but men” and the “natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth… to have only the law of nature for his rule.” (STG, p.17.22)

There can be no doubt about the political ramifications of these brazen and bold declarations, but what of the religious consequences? He agrees with his religious contemporaries that God both gave the world to mankind to rule over and gave reason to mankind to rule the world judiciously. (STG, p.18.26) What is unique and different about his conclusions of that dominion is that all the earth is held in common between all men for the fulfillment of needs and the enjoyment of the race. (STG, pp.18.25, 24.37, 20.31) It is from that central point that his theory begins to diverge from Scripture and takes on a different role. Whereas Locke argues that all men are endowed with natural rights, to be defended from encroachment with violence (STG, p.105.207), the New Testament places unending responsibility on its adherents (Matthew 5:39-48), makes no mention whatsoever of rights and accepts that violence will be visited upon the followers of Jesus but that it should not in any situation be returned (Luke 22:49-51). What might be most interesting about this difference arethe effects of Locke’s argument. In so many ways does Locke make statements about human rights that starkly contrast New Testament rebukes concerning human responsibilities, and yet so many Western evangelical Christians (especially those in America) will take the word of John Locke over Jesus Christ. In this way does it seem that Locke had just as much of an effect on religious culture as he did on politics and through this it is apparent that he was both a deliberate political revolutionary and unintentional theological revisionist.

By no means should any reader assume that the relationship between science, politics, and religion is limited to these thinkers and the theories that they published for us. Scores of volumes could (and perhaps should) continue to be written on the subject without overlapping. What I’ve hoped to demonstrate is how these five individuals entered into such a sacred relationship and succeeded so completely in laying the foundation of a comprehensive social revolution, which has forever altered the course of human events and will continue to do so for centuries to come.

Enlightened Hypocrisy

Enlightened Hypocrisy

“The influence of personal interest ought to count for nothing in this domain… this kind of interest creates the most formidable enemies of the people.” (Hunt, 69) In his pamphlet on the Third Estate of France, Abbe Sieyes notes the wide disparity between the just values of the Enlightenment and their very narrow application. In this way the Enlightenment suffered from a kind of rhetorical and applicatory ambivalence. In one breath its philosophers claimed that all men had rights by virtue of existing in nature, all the while insisting on a very specific racial and social hierarchy that continued to favor the sole enfranchisement of one specific sect of western society. While most modern scholars can agree that the axiomatic nature of Enlightenment texts suggests universal moral support for all mankind, careful analysis of their application reveals that most Enlightenment principles, including natural rights, was a mere ideology that served the political and economic interests of white, Christian, males.

To understand the problems of Enlightenment ideology one has to understand, in a very basic sense, the state of Europe in the sixteenth century. At the time the first proverbial shot was fired in the revolution that was to become the Enlightenment, all of the political power of Europe was concentrated at the top with about twenty percent of the population exerting arbitrary domination over the other eighty percent.  This twenty percent was made up of, mostly, the nobility of the countries and the clergy of the Catholic Church. As Lynn Hunt points out in her book, The French Revolution and Human Rights, European monarchs derived their legitimacy to rule on a theory of “divine right”. That is, of course, that “monarchs ruled because God had chosen them for their position.” (Hunt, 6) This divine right of kings was reinforced by the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church and their symbiotic relationship was best described by Enlightenment-era scholar John Adams as “the cannon and feudal law” – insisting that men were held in subjection by the withholding of education and knowledge by the Church and monarchs. The whole cosmology of the world was based on church-endorsed Aristotelian philosophy and the writings of Thomas Aquinas who did much to marry the Greek notions of matter and form to a very strict interpretation of the Christian Bible. Challenging the authority of kings, the church, or their particular agendas meant inquisition, imprisonment, or even death.

 It was in this setting that the Enlightenment began. From the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation to the French Revolution, Europe’s religious, scientific, and political landscape was irrevocably transformed. The Enlightenment is defined in the American Heritage^® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy as, “An intellectual movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries marked by a celebration of the powers of human reason, a keen interest in science, the promotion of religious toleration, and a desire to construct governments free of tyranny.” Perhaps most accurate of these claims is that the movement was “marked by a celebration of the powers of human reason” and that these men had “a desire to construct governments free of tyranny.” It was in the power of human reason that the modern liberal republic formulated. It was by a trust in human reason that the ancien regime was swept away by the tides of natural rights and the equality of men.

One of the first and most radical leaps taken in reforming the politics of Europe (and, subsequently, the New World) was based on the writings of John Locke. In his Second Treatise on Government, Locke argues for three major themes: men are born into a state of nature (not a state of societal hierarchy), men are born with certain rights (life, liberty, and property), and the legitimacy of any government lay in its mission to guarantee and protect the rights of its citizens. These major themes may seem rather mundane to the modern reader, but considering these “realities” were completely absent from the Earth at the time of Locke we should view them for what they were: radical and even, to some, dangerous! To Locke these “rights”, understood as a just or legal claim, were inherent to all men and could not be denied by any power nor relinquished by any man without just cause. Locke’s theories were influenced heavily by the English tradition that had developed over centuries ensuring particular rights to its citizens, most of which were guaranteed after the English Civil War between King Charles I and Parliament. (Hunt, 5) Indeed, fearing that the status quo had not really changed since Locke’s era and arguing for a radical implementation of Locke’s theories, Thomas Paine wrote that the fate of Charles I had not made kings more just, only more subtle in their oppression. It was through the writings of Locke and Paine that the foundation of the first modern liberal democracy was formed in the United States of America, and it was with the Declaration of Independence that we see a culmination of Enlightenment principles: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” Upon the initial success of the American Republic, though still far from certain, many supporters in France began to write feverishly on the subject of rights and franchise. One such individual, Diderot, paid homage to the modern rationalistic tradition that had been developing for nearly two centuries when he argued that man was “an animal who reasons” (Hunt, 36) and subsequently argued for the universal application of law instead of the privilege – “private law” – of the elite. (Hunt, 7) What Diderot and his ilk gained instead was the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. In many ways the Declaration was very similar to its American counterpart. They both inserted the power of human reason instead of the arbitrary interests of the enfranchised elite, they were both radical statements encouraging the establishment of a common electorate, and they both founded – in their respective nations – the theory of human rights. It is where they differ, perhaps, that shed the most light onto the framework of revolution necessary in many European countries that were rooted in deep traditions, especially those of ardently Catholic nations.

The very first statement of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen alleges, “All men are born free and equal in rights.” (Hunt, 78) Most interestingly is that, unlike the Jeffersonian document produced across the Atlantic, the alleged “equality” of man was defined: men are equal in rights. Whereas Jefferson left the equality up to a more ambiguous interpretation – which would spark debate in America well into the twenty-first century – the French authors specifically limited the equality of men to their right to remain free. Another interesting note is that the French document abstains from any mention of a “creator”, even one so indefinite and agnostic as the deistic “creator” alluded to in the American Declaration. Instead the French authors pursue a more naturalistic and limited scope: they are “born” free and equal. In the context of the modern debate on abortion and when human life begins one can understand how this careful terminology has potentially impacted the evolution of rights in Europe in contrast to America. What also becomes clear upon further inspection is that these “rights” rendered unto all men were specific: men had the right to “liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.” (Hunt, 78) It is in the right to resist oppression that members of the aristocracy and church must have seen the greatest threat. For what was, I’m sure, very practical reasons the authors did not begin to define security or oppression. Combined with the glaringly absent right to “life”, it is not difficult to see the makings of a particularly bloody revolution. Perhaps every bit as remarkable is the nearly unlimited scope given to the definition of liberty! “Liberty” was given a definition that was, at the same time as being specific, also highly subjective: a nearly unlimited scope of rights that can be exercised to the point of anything that “does not harm another.” This, of course, begs the question: At what point does one’s right become injurious to another or society? And who is the judge? Is there a burden of reasonable proof? The Declaration is ubiquitously silent on the matter. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen is riddled with such seemingly obvious flaws – especially obvious in hindsight. It seems, in several ways, that the Declaration leaves the people of France with more questions than answers. For instance: The Declaration does not adequately differentiate between “man” and “citizen”. The relationship between “man” and “citizen” is indistinct and potentially incongruent. When “men” are declared to be born free and have equality in rights, does the word “men” mean citizens only? Or does it mean all men regardless of citizenship? Men are given the freedom to have whatever opinion they want – even in religion – but what of Protestants and Jews? Did the authors intend to give rights to them as well? The verbiage employed on the subject is that “no one should be disturbed”. This, naturally, leads us back to the original question at hand: Did the Deputies of the National Assembly intend to give rights to all men and make all men (race, creed, and gender) citizens of the “nation”? The first fact that should be noted is that these deputies were experienced legislators. They may not have had the depth and longstanding tradition of the Parliament in England, but these men had deliberated and argued over these complex legal notions for quite some time, as evidenced by documents 1-10 in Lynn Hunt’s The French Revolution and Human Rights. The process of bringing rights to French citizens was an involved evolution over time that included the greatest legal and philosophical minds of their culture. What’s more, one must remember that the French language is incredibly deep and complex. The Latin term lingua franca should remind any scholar of its widespread use among most European communities for the exchange of ideas and business. The French language, unlike its contemporary English and German counterparts, was much better for conveying very specific thoughts and accurately portraying ideas especially in law and philosophy. This was, of course, part of its romantic heritage but also unique in its loose relationship to Latin. A man could say something in French and have a much easier time of transmitting a very precise notion without the kind of rhetorical haziness of other languages. Another consideration is that the National Assembly had the advantage of drawing from existing constitutions in Britain, the national constitution of the U.S., and their various state constitutions when creating the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Taking all of these reflections together it becomes increasingly obvious from the imprecision of the verbiage, the inconsistency of the terms; the subjective nature of the definitions and protections is not unintentional but rather inherently prejudiced. The most likely conclusion to be drawn is that these men had no intention of allowing women, non-Catholics, and non-whites to be “active” citizens. All of these thoughts taken together must mean that the primary intention of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen was to limit the monarchy’s power, not to enfranchise the masses. This is most evidenced by articles 3, 12, 13, and 16 of the Declaration. (Hunt, 78-79)

“Men are born and remain free and equal in rights.” (Hunt, 10) The very language used in every Enlightenment document with regards to natural rights inherently excluded women from the start. The use of “man” or “men” as a descriptor for the considered masses seems both conscious and unconscious for the efforts of defining the enfranchised population. It was conscious in the sense that the rights of an active citizen were limited to males, but unconscious in the sense that – to many of this time – it was quite literally unthinkable to consider women for political rights. It is hard to determine whether this was a reason or an effect, but it is certain that women, like slaves and criminals, due to their general state of reliance on other “qualified” citizens were considered incompatible with independence and, thus, incompatible with citizenship. (Hunt, 82) What’s more, France’s female population – not altogether dissimilar from any contemporary society – was defined by their gender and not by their status in society or occupation. (Hunt, 11) A particularly potent example of this gender-based chauvinism is that of Olympe De Gouges. Gouges, responding to what she considered incredible intolerance, published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and met intense resistance. She was widely criticized and eventually was executed. (Hunt, 27) One of her most incensed critics, Chaumette – who was, ironically, a radical abolitionist – decried Gouges as a “shameless” woman that “abandoned the cares of her household”; a common accusation that intended to portray politically active women as ones who “renounced their sex.” (Hunt, 27-29) Delivering another “diatribe” against women’s rights he asked, “Since when is it permitted to renounce one’s sex? Since when is it decent to see women abandon the pious cares of their household, the cradle of their children, to come into public places, to the galleries to hear speeches, to the bar of the senate? Is it for women to make motions? Is it for women to put themselves at the head of our armies?” (Hunt, 139) Statements such as this serve as an effective illustration of the resistance, even among social progressives, to allowing women into the political sphere. The nature of women’s exclusion from politics and political rights seems highly misogynistic, as evidenced by the spokesman of the National Convention claiming women were “hardly capable of lofty conceptions and serious cogitations.” (Hunt, 28-29) All of this should not serve, however, to insinuate that men in this way universally maligned women. An advocate for women’s rights, Cordocet seemed to appeal to men’s reason when he argued that the more domesticated station of women in life may be enough for men not to vote for them, but it could not be a reason for their exclusion. (Hunt, 121) Even in such a groundbreaking time, such longstanding traditions, relatively unchallenged during the French Revolution, left many women in the yoke of subjection until the twentieth century. Despite several passionate attempts by zealous activists to appeal to justice and reason, women were disqualified from political rights with extreme prejudice upon pain of imprisonment or death. (Hunt, 27)

It may be understandable that the notion of equality among men would not apply to women, even if that notion is – to a modern mind – not entirely reasonable or just; but what of the exclusion of the Jew? Or the Protestant? If the Enlightenment, and the theory of natural rights, was based on universal concepts of equality among men based on human reason, what cause was there to bar men on the basis of religion? Even the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen claimed that “no one should be disturbed for his opinions, even in religion, provided that their manifestation does not trouble public order as established by law.” (Hunt, 79) But doesn’t the disenfranchisement of non-Catholics and Jews constitute them being “disturbed”? Unfortunately, the uncertainty of the terminology enabled abuse of the concept. Even if the authors of the Declaration had intended for these rights to apply universally, there can be no doubt that such educated and litigious men would foresee that such non-specific language would lead to misuse and, perhaps, exploitation. Minority religions suffered a great deal at the hands of the dominant religious powers in every country in the world during this time. There’s absolutely no exception for Europe, and least of all in France. Even in post-Enlightenment Europe, prejudice over traditions and cultural disparities left deep wounds, which many were unable to get past. Consider the history of Northern Ireland, or the impact on modern east-west relations because of the Crusades that occurred, in bulk, nearly 1,000 years ago. The religious prejudices that existed during and after the Enlightenment are one of the most obvious indicators that much of the discussions around equality, reason, and rights were simple ideology intended to benefit a specific sect of society at the exclusion of others.

First to consider is the case of the Jews. Were the Jews a people of all women that they should be so universally excluded from political rights? Were they men “of color”? Had the Jews been included in the chattel slavery system of colonialism? Were Jews criminals or thugs? Had they attempted to undermine the laws of Europe? On the contrary to all points! Of course there were males among the Jewish populations of Europe, and of course those men were of the same race as the Europeans. Even the polygeneticists of the eighteenth century agreed that Europeans and peoples of the Mediterranean (including Jews, Greeks, and Arabs) were of the same race or species as the French and English. According to the petition submitted by the Jews of Paris, Jews in France even wanted to be considered citizens! (Hunt, 94) Even after all of the mistrust, the harassment, and the persecution (Hunt, 95), the Jewish population of France wished to become individual citizens of the nation. It was argued, most heavily amongst ardent Catholics, that the Jews were a nation of their own and not really capable of assimilating into their host countries. (Hunt, 89) If, however, there was a cultural divide between the Jew and the Frenchman – and, to be sure, there was – it was as much the responsibility of French laws and prejudice as it was the perceived “oddities” of Jewish people and customs. (Hunt, 87) “If they [the Jews] had to prevail on justice, they would have little to say. But they have to combat a prejudice…” (Hunt, 94) This prejudice is the enemy of reason, and, as the Jews of Paris rightly argue, the existence of such prejudice against the Jew shows a lack of true reason. When the Jew was excluded from the political process in Europe, all eloquent rhetoric notwithstanding, the Deputies of the National Assembly may as well have pointedly noted their reason as: “You are not like us.” It is in that rampant egotism that we see the true ostentation and nature of Enlightenment ideology. All men are equal, so long as they’re “like us”. If the case of the Jews wasn’t convincing enough, consider the lot of the Protestant in this same situation. Remove the cultural oddities, remove the reclusive nature of the Jewish community (real or imagined), and remove the controversy over usury. What remains? A man like any other man. But what then separated the Protestant from the Catholic? One seemingly simple belief about the nature of the Church. Did the Protestant follow the customs of the Catholic? Overwhelmingly, yes. Did they worship the same God? Yes. Did they seek salvation from the same Redeemer? Yes. Did they have the same contempt for usury? Yes. But what then remains? “You are not like us.” The example of the Jew and the Protestant in Revolution France goes a long way to demonstrate the truth of Enlightenment ideology serving only a prescribed sect of society.

In no circumstance is this kind of prejudice so clear and so flagrant as with the instance of race. The primary variable to consider in this period is that many Enlightenment-era thinkers did not consider all “men” to be of the same race of man. That is not to say that all men shared these views, but the men that held the belief of polygeneticism conformed to a theory that different ethnic groups of humans were actually wholly different species of men. One such thinker was François Bernier. In his essay “A New Division of the Earth”, Bernier argues that the differences between the various races are not simple geographical adaptations but rather they are the differences of special origin. In other words, mankind is an amalgamation of different species. These species, according to Bernier, were of four different varieties. Loosely translated for the modern mind these varieties were: European/Mediterranean, African, East Asian/Oriental, and Scandinavian. (Bernier, 2) Obviously missing from his list are the Native Americans or Pacific Islanders. He does concede that there are possibly a fifth species, but does not actually name them. (Bernier, 1) Similar to Bernier’s was the essay by Voltaire entitled “Of the Different Races of Men”. In it, he argues – among many other things – that, “None but the blind can doubt that the whites, the negroes, the Albinoes, the Hottentots, the Laplanders, the Chinese, the Americans, are races entirely different.” (Emphasis added – Voltaire, 1) Silently insinuated from these compiled lists are not only a set of different races, but also a very real hierarchy between them with Europeans at the top. From that racial hierarchy comes the gender hierarchy of men over women, “Enlightened” over uneducated, Christian over Jew, Muslim, or pagan and – in France - Catholic over Protestant. Therefore, in the European Enlightenment you have a very rigid hierarchy that has white educated Christian men as solely capable of citizenship and government. There are others who argued that all men come from the same race but, while correct, the pseudo-empirical philosophers of the day were more likely to agree with polygenetics. Bernier and Voltaire gave empirical differences to argue their case for different races such as skin color, eye shape, body build, hair type, nose shape, and lip size. These differences, accessible and available to the senses, without the advanced knowledge of genetics and DNA would lead many for centuries to agree with the polygenetic theory of human development. It is in this light that much of the seemingly contradictory efforts of men like Thomas Jefferson and John Locke become slightly clearer.

In contrast to the French Revolution, the American Republican ideology centered on the idea that freedom and liberty had been a natural progression of their development as a people over centuries and it was that heritage alone that enabled America to so perfectly execute a Republican government. As mentioned before, it was in this context – of different species of humans – that individuals such as Locke and Jefferson could have what seems to be in a modern world such a bundle of contradictions built upon freedom and slavery. We see that in the Declaration of Independence that Jefferson declares, “All men are created equal”. (Hunt, 13) Yet in what amounts to the same rhetorical breath, he argues in his “Notes on the State of Virginia” that “Negroes” are more suitable to forced labor and subjection to Europeans than whites. That, however, should not be considered as an outright endorsement of slavery. While being a slave-owner, Jefferson did argue that slavery was potentially a great evil. This evil, however, did not lie in racial subjection, but rather in the potential of slavery to corrupt the slave-master and persuade him that tyranny was acceptable. More confusing still is his insistence that the African was still suitable to be a slave because they lack the capacity of reason that whites have. But how could this argument be made without his contemporaries, colleagues, or, more specifically, his critics accusing him of absolute hypocrisy? It seems as though the world must’ve turned upside down in the mind of Jefferson: slavery is not bad for the slave because “negroes” are suited for nothing more than slavery, but it is bad for the slave-owner because it encourages a spirit despotism in him? Perhaps even more confusing is the rhetorical contradictions of John Locke. In his Second Treatise on Government, Locke argues that man is born into a state of liberty and a state of nature. (Locke, 8 § 4) Such a statement was radical enough for anyone of his time. But for someone that was so heavily invested in the slave trade monopoly – both financially and politically – the thought that followed would have been shocking: to hold someone in bondage or slavery was to perpetuate a constant state of war with them and the nature that held all men as free. (Locke, 8 § 4 and Locke, 17 § 24) In an article published by Robert Bernasconi and Anika Maaza Mann entitled “Contradictions of Racism: Locke, Slavery and the Two Treatises”, Locke is described as both the “architect of race-based slavery” and the foremost “philosopher of liberal freedom.” (Contradictions, 90-91) But how could these contradictions live in such enlightened individuals? Oddly enough, the answer may lie in their use of the word “negro”.

In his essay on “The Natural Variety of Man”, Johann Blumenbach refutes the theory of polygenticism and argues that mankind has many different varieties, but is only one species of being. (Blumenbach, 1) While he argues that it is possible to categorize the varieties of mankind he maintains that the differences between the varieties are far outweighed by their similarities. What seems to be the most striking difference between polygeneticists and monogeneticists of the day is the usage of the word “negro” to describe the people of Africa. The use of this name, now considered derogatory in modern cultures, is something that Enlightenment scholars like Locke and Jefferson share with polygeneticists like Voltaire and Bernier. Understanding that polygenetic theory seemed much more appealing to the empirical rationalist of the Enlightenment, we can see how Jefferson and Locke would have fallen in with the notion that these Africans, whom they advocated for slavery, were not actually men but a brutish sub-species of being more akin to an ape than a European. Blumenbach refers to Voltaire (a favorite of Enlightenment thinkers) specifically in his assertions of the ape-likeness of “negroes”. (Blumenbach, 33) It was the use of the word “negro” by Locke and Jefferson, in conjunction with race-based slavery, which illustrates that these men were committed to the concept of polygenetics. A careful examination of Herder and Blumenbach show that these men did not refer to Africans as “negroes”, while strict polygeneticists like Voltaire and Bernier used that word to denote the inferiority of the African race to Europeans. Even Blumenbach, in his categorizing of the varieties of mankind, seems to concede to a natural hierarchy in the following order: Caucasoid (European/Mediterranean), Mongoloid (East Asian), Maylay (Southeast Asian/Pacific Islander), Ethiopian (African), and American (Native American). As illustrated, the most primitive forms of human – to the polygeneticist – are African and Native American. These two races have, arguably, been the most mistreated and abused people on Earth with one suffering hundreds of years of exploitation and slavery and the other suffering near annihilation and, in some tribes, total extinction at the hands of Europeans. It was in the context of racial hierarchy that provides a valuable key to understanding the seemingly intractable contradictions of Locke and Jefferson. That is not to say that there were not some whole sections of European society that considered it utterly unacceptable for slavery and racial inequality to exist. As Hunt notes, many in French society criticized the principle of slavery but gave no serious plan to end it. (Hunt, 10) As would characterize the practice of slavery for decades more, it was considered an “evil” necessary to maintain the economic and social status quo of France.

There were, of course, brave souls that fought against the propagation of slavery both in America and in France. As would seem to mirror the Quaker movement an ocean away, “renegade” French priests like Abbe Raynal and Abbe Gregoire would argue that men should decide whether they are “to listen to the suggestions of interest, infatuation, and of barbarism, rather than those of reason and justice”. (Emphasis added - Hunt, 53) Critiquing the social construct of racial slavery, they brought the criticism to self-reflection upon the insistence that “the only advantage we [Europeans] have over the Negroes is, that we can break one chain to put on another.” (Hunt, 53) But in the end, after countless attempts to abolish slavery (one of which being successful), it was forced to return in the era of Napoleon. It is not only the rhetoric of the Enlightenment, much of which was a prejudiced and traditional as it was revolutionary and progressive, but also in the historical examples we were given that we can be convinced of the mere ideology of natural rights.

Many scholars are right to see the Enlightenment and its subsequent political, economic, religious, and scientific reforms as the beginning of a brave new world for the human race. It is both true and right to see the Enlightenment and the many revolutions of Europe as the launching platform for the liberty of all mankind, but it is dangerous to turn a blind eye to the gross exclusivity of those “inalienable human rights” in the eighteenth century. Perhaps one of the most difficult tasks for a historical scholar is to separate his modern worldview from the subject material he studies. Historians must be extra cautious not to import their particular experiences and the benefit of their hindsight to the individuals and periods they study. It is in this light that we understand that, while natural rights have a universal application in today’s world, the application intended for those rights by their authors was actually quite limited. More to the point, the enfranchisement of the masses (which include women, non-whites, non-propertied, and non-Christians) was never the primary objective of Enlightenment authors of natural rights. The primary intention of natural rights was to limit the power of arbitrary government, founded in the canonical and feudal systems, and enfranchise a very specific sect of society.