Freethinkers and Freethought

[George H. Smith]

In the near future, I hope to be doing some writing for a blog titled "The Freethought Heritage." With this end in view, I have started a thread devoted to this topic. This will allow me to post bits and pieces that I may use later.

The first several posts here have been moved from Dennis Hardin's thread, "Revolutionary Deists." Some of my posts didn't fit in that thread, and, in any case, I would like to have my posts in one central location.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

A Biographical Dictionary of Freethinkers of All Nations and Ages (1889), by J.M. Wheeler.

Although published over 120 years ago, this remains one of the very best reference works on freethinkers -- a broad label that includes atheists, agnostics, deists, etc.

This is a rare book -- I paid top dollar for a copy during the 1970s and relied upon it when writing my bibliographic essay for Libertarian Review -- but you can download the entire book for free. Or you can simply consult the online version.

J.M. Robertson, the great historian of freethought and a meticulous scholar in his own right, spoke very highly of Wheeler's book. In regard to figures that have been mentioned on this thread, you may wish to look up the entires for Elihu Palmer, Richard Carlile, and Peter Annet.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

The Dynamics of Religion (1897), by J.M. Robertson (writing under the pseudonym M.W. Wiseman). See Part III, Chapter 1 "The "Transition," pp. 193ff.

The above chapter contains an excellent discussion of the significance of Thomas Paine's Age of Reason.

The atheist John Mackinnon Robertson (1856-1933), a self-educated Scottish historian and author of the standard histories of freethought (as well as many dozens of books on other topics), knew this field better than any other historian, before or since his time.

JMR began his career as a journalist for the Edinburgh Evening News; but with few exceptions, such as a collection of articles in which he criticized Britain's participation in the Boer War, JMR's books are anything but journalistic in style. Rather, they tend to be scholarly and dense. Nevertheless, JMR's scholarship was impeccable and his judgments were almost always judicious. Indeed, many of JMR's conclusions, though controversial at the time, are now regarded as standard fare by historians.

In any matter pertaining to the history of freethought, JMR is the guy to read first. Unfortunately, he rarely gets the credit he deserves from modern scholars.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

The Dynamics of Religion (1897), by J.M. Robertson (writing under the pseudonym M.W. Wiseman).

See Part II, Chapter 7 ("Bentley and Anthony Collins"), pp. 144ff.

I first read this arcane discussion while I was college; and, believe it or not, it had a significant impact on my intellectual outlook.

In 1713, the deist Anthony Collins published A Discourse of Freethinking . This is the piece that brought the terms "freethinking" and "freethinker" into common usage, and it provoked many replies by Christians.

The most celebrated reply to Collins was written by Richard Bentley, one of the most respected classical scholars of his era. The Wiki article says of Bentley:

Richard Bentley (27 January 1662 – 14 July 1742) was an English classical scholar, critic, and theologian. He was long the master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Bentley was the first Englishman to be ranked with the great heroes of classical learning and was known for his literary and textual criticism. Called the "founder of historical philology", Bentley is credited with the creation of the English school of Hellenism. He inspired generations of subsequent scholars.

Anthony Collins, in contast, was a gentleman farmer and largely self-educated. And so emerged a recurring pattern in debates between freethinkers and Christians in 18th century England, viz., the amateur scholar versus the professional scholar.

As Robertson explains, almost every historian -- including the agnostic Leslie Stephen (the father of Virginia Woolf) -- claimed that Bentley had sliced and diced Collins, making him look foolish and incompetent in the process. I have seen the same evaluation repeated in 20th century books on the deistic controversy.

The polymath Robertson -- who knew more than any mortal has a right to know -- would have none of this. Unlike those historians who parrot what they have read by earler historians, Robertson read the original sources for himself; and this, combined with his own considerable knowledge of classical literature, resulted in this radical re-assessment.

So how did this chapter about what JMR calls an "academic legend" influence me? Well, it taught me to be extremely cautious when reading historical accounts of controversial figures. Some years later, when I wrote my own revisionist piece on Herbert Spencer, "Will the Real Herbert Spencer Please Stand Up?" for Libertarian Review (Dec. 1978), I had this chapter by Robertson explicitly in mind.

My Spencer article can be found here. Scroll down to p. 14.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

The Baconian Heresy (1913), by J.M. Robertson.

J.M. Robertson wrote a number of books on Shakespeare, e.g., Montaigne and Shakespeare and Did Shakespeare Write Titus Andronicus? . The book mentioned above -- a "confutation" of the claim that Francis Bacon wrote most of the works attributed to Shakespeare -- no longer has the interest that it once had, because this theory is no longer taken seriously. But "the Baconian Heresy" was fairly popular in JMR's day; indeed, he notes that he decided to write his book "under the shock of the revelation that Mark Twain had died a 'Bacon Shakespearean'."

I mention The Baconian Heresy , which I read around 30 years ago, because of an incidental remark that Robertson makes at the beginning of the Preface. After noting that "this Treatise was in large part complied some years ago," and that he had laid the project "aside after a misgiving that the drudgery it involved had not been worth while," Robertson goes on to say that "it has been finished, by way of a holiday task...."

In other words, Robertson finished this 500 page book during his Christmas vacation! (Many years ago I read somewhere that Robertson traveled from London to his native Scotland for the holidays, and finished the book there. The Preface is signed "Christmas Week, 1912.")

I have long been fascinated by the enormous output of Victorian intellectuals, and JMR's incidental remark is a wonderful illustration of their work ethic.

I am reminded of something that Herbert Spencer once said. He said that his greatest fault was indolence; he should have been writing instead spending so much time playing billiards and rowing in the Thames, his two favorite hobbies. A surprising bit of self-criticism for those who are aware of Spencer's enormous literary output.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

The first issue of Peter Annet's Free Enquirer (Oct. 17, 1761) is a good example of the type of British populist deism that was aimed specifically at the "lower classes."

This edition is an 1826 reprint by the heroic freethought publisher Richard Carlile. Between 1817 and 1835, Carlile served nine years in prison for publishing, among other items, Paine's Age of Reason. Carlile's wife, sister, and over 20 of his workers also served prison time, sometimes for 2 years or more.

Ghs

Addendum: At age 70, Annet was pilloried (with a paper attached to his head that read "blasphemy") and sentenced to a year of hard labor in prison. For some info about Annet, see the Wiki article.

[George H. Smith]

Social Bliss Considered: In Marriage and Divorce; Cohabiting Unmarried, and Public Whoring (1749), by "Gideon Archer" (i.e., Peter Annet).

I first discovered this remarkable tract, written by the deist Peter Annet, quite by accident in 1976, during one of my many visits to the William Andrews Clarke Library in Los Angeles, which has long been an annex of UCLA (even though it is located miles away).

As indicated by its title, this tract defends divorce, unmarried couples living together, and legalized prostitution. The least original part is the defense of divorce, which relies heavily on the arguments given by John Milton a century earlier. But the other two libertarian positions were virtually unheard of, at least in print, in mid-18th century England, which makes this an extraordinary work.

In addition, Annet attacks the legal power that married men in England had over the property of their wives, and his analysis of romantic love, despite some condescending asides about women, has a strikingly modern ring to it. For these and other reasons, this tract should be viewed as an early exposition of libertarian feminism.

The availability of this tract online gave me the opportunity to read it again for the first time in 35 years. I would like to discuss some of Annet's points in more detail, but for this I want to read it at least one more time. I will place any additional comments in a separate post.

Btw, this booklet also contains The Speech of Polly Baker, which is presented as the libertarian-feminist speech of a woman in Puritan New England. This speech, which was often reprinted in freethought and libertarian periodicals (e.g., Benjamin Tucker's anarchist periodical Liberty), was widely regarded as authentic. In fact, however, it was written by Benjamin Frankin in 1747. See the Wiki article here.

Annet's first footnote to the Speech indicates that there was some doubt about its authenticity just two years after its initial publication. Annet seems to argue that, whether authentic or not, the Speech nevertheless conveys some important truths. Annet was more astute than the many later commentators who accepted the Speech at face value.

Ghs

[slpresley]

Social Bliss Considered: In Marriage and Divorce; Cohabiting Unmarried, and Public Whoring (1749), by "Gideon Archer" (i.e., Peter Annet).

I first discovered this remarkable tract, written by the deist Peter Annet, quite by accident in 1976, during one of my many visits to the William Andrews Clarke Library in Los Angeles, which has long been an annex of UCLA (even though it is located miles away).

As indicated by its title, this tract defends divorce, unmarried couples living together, and legalized prostitution. The least original part is the defense of divorce, which relies heavily on the arguments given by John Milton a century earlier. But the other two libertarian positions were virtually unheard of, at least in print, in mid-18th century England, which makes this an extraordinary work.

In addition, Annet attacks the legal power that married men in England had over the property of their wives, and his analysis of romantic love, despite some condescending asides about women, has a strikingly modern ring to it. For these and other reasons, this tract should be viewed as an early exposition of libertarian feminism.

Ghs

Though it is only indirectly relevant (being British and 18th c) to my book in progress on American women resisters to authority in the 19th c., I'd love to read it. I've bookmarked it to come back to later. What a remarkable essay for the 18th c. I'll have to comment on it for the Association of Libertarian Feminists. I wonder if it had any influence on Mary Wollstonecraft.

[sjw]

Given all the writing energy and thoughts you have, you really should have your own blog. I don't know why you didn't create one years ago.

Shayne