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Virtues of Freedom
Virtues of Freedom
Selected Essays on Kant

Paul Guyer

1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 19/10/2016, SPi

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Preface

“Virtue” is used in two senses in the title of this collection of essays on the moral
philosophy of Kant that I have written over the last dozen years, corresponding to
two of the definitions we find in the Oxford English Dictionary. One definition is that
a virtue is “A particular form of moral excellence . . . any of certain moral qualities
regarded as of particular worth or importance”; the other is that virtue is “Conform-
ity of life and conduct with moral principles; voluntary adherence to recognized laws
or standards of right conduct.” I argue throughout this book that freedom is a, indeed
the, fundamental virtue in the first of these senses, that which is of intrinsic and
unconditional worth and the source of all more particular virtues and moral obliga-
tions more generally, but also that freedom, or perhaps more precisely what Kant
calls autonomy, is an achievement, a condition of individuals and, when it is shared,
of societies, that must be attained and maintained by the voluntary adherence of
human beings to the moral law in general and to the laws that may be derived from it
for beings in the human condition, the juridical laws of the civil condition (what Kant
calls “right”), and the non-coercively enforceable laws of intra- and interpersonal
morality (what Kant calls “ethics” proper, which is thus narrower than morality as
such). What freedom need not be, although Kant believes that it is also this, is a
metaphysical condition or ability to choose between two alternative courses of action
no matter what one’s prior history would seem to entail that one will do. Kant’s
defense of freedom in this sense—which, since if it exists would exist without any
effort on the part of the individual, could hardly be called a virtue at least in the
second sense mentioned—depends on his transcendental idealism, a doctrine the
defense and even the meaning of which remain controversial more than two centur-
ies after its publication. This doctrine is the basis for Kant’s confidence that “ought
implies can,” that is, that we are always free to choose to do the right thing no matter
what our upbringing, prior choices, and so on might appear to imply. But my view is
that we can let it remain an empirical question just how far human beings are free to
preserve and promote freedom of choice and action in their intra- and interpersonal
doings while still appreciating Kant’s account of the foundation of all duties in the
intrinsic and unconditional value of getting to set our own ends free from unwar-
ranted constraint from others and even from unwarranted constraint by our own
inclinations and his account of the ways in which we can, as he says, cultivate and
strengthen our dispositions to freedom in this sense, while leaving it open whether we
can always get as far in this project as we would like. I say this in spite of the fact that
in at least one prominent place, namely the culminating Section III of his Ground-
work for the Metaphysics of Morals of 1785, his most widely read work in moral
philosophy, Kant attempts to derive the binding force of the moral law upon us from
the alleged fact of our metaphysical freedom; both in earlier works, such as his pre-
Groundwork lectures on ethics and his next major work on moral philosophy, the
Critique of Practical Reason of 1785, Kant lets the supreme value of freedom shine
forth on its own without presupposing the metaphysical claim that we always are free
vi 

no matter what, and in the Metaphysics of Morals that he finally published in 1797
(for which the Groundwork was the groundwork), as well as in his lectures through-
out his mature career, he shows how our individual duties and rights can be derived
from the general value of freedom, all without presupposing a metaphysical concep-
tion of freedom of the will. So I think it fruitful to separate discussion of the virtues of
freedom in the senses I have distinguished from discussion of the age-old problem of
freedom of the will as much as possible.
The chapters in this volume, several of which have not previously been published
and several of which have been published only in German translations, are divided
into three parts, entitled “The Value of Freedom,” “The Actuality of Freedom,” and
“The Achievement of Freedom.” By these titles I mean to suggest that the chapters in
the first part focus on Kant’s idea that freedom of choice is itself the fundamental
value promoted by morality; that the chapters in the second part are concerned
primarily with Kant’s attempt to prove that we always have the freedom to be moral,
regardless of what has gone before; and that the chapters in the third part concern
Kant’s account of the development of the virtue of autonomy in the empirical
circumstances of human life. But the chapters were written for a variety of occasions,
and in any case my interpretation of Kant has evolved over the period during which
they were written, so there are some overlaps among them, and this division into
three parts should not be taken too rigidly. It did seem to me, though, that it would
make the collection more approachable to group the chapters this way than to
present them without division. I have left the chapters largely as they were originally
written or published, although in several cases material is included that had to be cut
from a previously published version, and I have rewritten where necessary in the
hope of avoiding any contradictions or confusions among them. In a few instances
I have also added references to secondary literature that has appeared since the
chapters were first done.
Those necessary words having been said, let me say a little more about the general
argument of the work, and then a few words about what is to be found in each
chapter. My approach to Kant’s moral philosophy is based on the assumption that he
revealed its premise most clearly in lectures given around the time that he was writing
the Groundwork. In the lectures on moral philosophy recorded by Georg Ludwig
Collins in 1784–5 (although Collins was probably copying from an earlier transcrip-
tion rather than taking down what Kant was saying verbatim) Kant is reported as
saying that “Freedom . . . is the highest degree of life. It is the property that is a
necessary condition underlying all perfections. . . . the inner worth of the world, the
summum bonum, is freedom according to a choice that is not necessitated to act.
Freedom is thus the inner worth of the world” (MP-Collins, 27:344). And in lectures
on “natural right” recorded in the summer of 1784, the only known transcription of a
course that Kant gave a dozen times, he is reported as saying that “The inner worth of
the human being rests on his freedom, that he has his own will. . . . If only rational
beings can be ends in themselves, it is not because they have reason, but because they
have freedom. Reason is merely a means” (Fey., 27:1319, 1321). I take these claims to
show what Kant actually means when he says in the Groundwork that the “ground of
a possible categorical imperative” is that “the human being and in general every
rational being exists as an end in itself, not merely as a means to be used by this or that
 vii

will at its discretion” (G, 4:428), which leads to the “formula of humanity”: “So act
that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of every other,
always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (G, 4:429). The
equivalence is secured when Kant defines “humanity” as “the capacity to set oneself
an end—any end whatsoever” (MM DV, Introduction, section VIII, 6:392). Human-
ity is the capacity to set one’s own ends, to set them in some sense freely, free from
domination by other agents but also from domination by one’s own inclinations; but
if this is to be treated always as an end, never merely as a means, then in all self-
regarding actions one must set one’s ends in ways that do not compromise one’s
freedom to set one’s own ends on other occasions and if possible promote or expand
that freedom, and likewise in one’s other-regarding actions, by which I mean any
action that might have an impact on others, one must set one’s own ends in ways that
do not compromise their freedom to set their own ends but if anything promote or
expand that freedom. It takes reason to figure out what this constraint amounts to;
that is why Kant says in his lectures on natural right that reason is the means to
freedom. Reason is not identical to freedom, nor is it of intrinsic value, but it is
necessary in order to figure out how to maximize rather than undermine or minimize
the intra- and interpersonal use of freedom. We might thus say that while freedom is
the only thing of intrinsic and unconditional value, reason is thus first among things
of instrumental value. In his chief exposition of the concept of the categorical
imperative in the Groundwork, Kant tries to put all of this in terms of the require-
ment to avoid contradiction between our maxims and their universalization, where
the contradiction might be between our intention to act on a particular maxim and
the universalization of that maxim or between our intention to act on a particular
maxim and the more general preservation and promotion of agency, in either
case the avoidance of contradiction being the necessary condition of any form
of rationality.
If “humanity” is understood the way I propose, the normative content of Kant’s
moral philosophy quickly becomes clear. What is less clear is how he proposed to
argue for the conception of value that underlies his entire moral philosophy. In the
Groundwork he famously, or notoriously, just asserts it— “Now I say that the human
being and in general every rational being exists as an end in itself . . . ”—and notes that
he puts this proposition forth “as a postulate,” to be provided with grounds in the
third section of the book. There we find an argument that draws on the doctrine of
transcendental idealism, with its distinction between how things appear and how
they are in themselves, an argument that infers that no matter how we appear to
ourselves at our deepest level we just are rational and free, and therefore do act in
accordance with the moral law. Kant thus sidesteps any problem of arguing for a
fundamental normative premise, although to do so he not only appeals to a contro-
versial metaphysical premise but also lays himself open to the objection that he
cannot explain how beings who at the deepest level are not only free but also rational
could ever commit an immoral action, an objection that was quickly put to him. In
the Critique of Practical Reason, published with the date of 1788, the year that this
objection was first published by J. A. H. Ulrich, but written in 1787, thus before Kant
could have seen Ulrich’s objection and not in direct response to it, Kant appears to
drop this metaphysical argument and instead to argue that the binding status of the
viii 

moral law is just an immediately given “fact of reason” (CPracR, 5:31) that cannot be
inferred from anything else, although it can benefit from an indirect argument
showing that no other candidate for the fundamental principle of morality can lay
claim to the universality and necessity that we expect from a moral or pure practical
law. But whether Kant really gives up the metaphysical argument of the Groundwork
is a nice question, since his key claims in the Critique of Practical Reason are that “We
can become aware of pure practical laws just as we are aware of pure theoretical
principles, by attending to the necessity with which reason prescribes them to us” and
that “the concept of a pure will” and thus freedom “arises from the first” (5:30), which
is very similar to what he argued at the key moment of the Groundwork, when he
stated that “a human being really finds in himself a capacity by which he distin-
guishes himself from all other things, even from himself insofar as he is affected by
objects, and that is reason,” which is in turn “pure self-activity”—a pure and free will
(G, 4:452). More generally, Kant seems to have remained attracted throughout his
career to a position I call “normative essentialism.” This is the position, whether it
can be understood empirically, as Kant did in the 1760s, or can only be understood
through the metaphysics of transcendental idealism, as he did after 1770, that human
beings are capable of setting their own ends and that to treat them otherwise is as it
were to deny the most obvious truth about them, the impermissibility of which needs
no explanation other than logic alone. This position is expressed as early as 1764 or
1765 when Kant writes that “In subjection there is not only something externally
dangerous but also a certain ugliness and a contradiction that at the same time
indicates its unlawfulness. . . . that the human being should, as it were, need no soul
and should have no will of its own . . . is absurd and perverse” (20:93), and present
in the Groundwork twenty years later when Kant says that “rational beings are
called persons because their nature already marks themselves out as an end in itself ”
(G, 4:428). On this account, to treat a human being, or any other free and rational
being should there be any others, whether oneself or another, as if it is not a free being
in all of its actions is to contradict its very essence; it is a logical contradiction. It may
well be, as has been prominently argued by Onora O’Neill and Christine Korsgaard,
that the contradiction involved in any particular violation of the categorical impera-
tive should be understood as a practical contradiction, an undermining of one’s own
agency or that of another in a particular or general way, but the underlying reason
why such a practical contradiction must always be avoided is, if I am correct in
ascribing normative essentialism to Kant, that we must avoid the as it were logical
contradiction involved in acting as if something that does have its own will does not
have its own will.
I believe that Kant always remained attracted to normative essentialism, both
before his invention of transcendental idealism and after it, although he was also
often content to let the moral law in the several forms in which he presented it stand
on its own once he had shown how no other candidate for the fundamental principle
of morality could satisfy the (allegedly) self-evident constraints of universality and
necessity. Yet just what kind of freedom must be regarded as belonging to the very
essence of the human being is no easy question. The chapters in Part II are primarily
concerned with Kant’s efforts to prove that we have free will in the sense of being able
to choose either good or evil at any moment in our lives no matter what our lives
 ix

have been like hitherto and what might seem inevitable for us to choose. This is a tall
order for Kant to prove, because he has committed himself to a thoroughgoing
determinism at the phenomenal level of experience, what has come to be called
Laplacean determinism, according to which in principle the state of the universe at
any time could be predicted from its initial conditions and governing laws. His way
around this is to argue that temporality and determinism do not hold at the
noumenal level, the level of things as they are in themselves, and there we can at
least believe, on practical grounds, that our choice is free no matter what, and even, as
Kant argues in the Critique of Practical Reason, that our noumenal choice is always
the ground of our entire phenomenal character, so that if the laws of the latter need to
be different from what we think they are in order to make possible a moral choice
that seems inconsistent with everything that has gone before, well, they must be so.
This metaphysical view, fanciful as it may seem, and ultimately be, does not raise a
problem about the possibility of choosing evil, that is, choosing contrary to the moral
law, or, as Kant puts it in his 1793 Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason,
choosing to subordinate morality to self-love rather than vice versa, unless it is
assumed that the moral law is the causal law of the noumenal self. Unfortunately,
Kant does assume that, at least in his works of the 1780s, and it is only in Part I of
Religion that he definitively asserts that noumenal choice is completely free, so that
even having once chosen evil, we are still free to turn around and choose to be good—
good is always open to us, we are not predetermined to be either good or evil, and we
do not need divine grace to choose good. Yet that position might seem to raise yet
another problem, namely, if the noumenal is not temporal, how we can we once
choose evil but then choose good; if the noumenal does not consist of a succession of
moments, then how can we have multiple opportunities for choice? The answer to
this can only be that we can attribute to our noumenal selves everything and just
what we need for morality, that we need the possibility of multiple choices to make
sense of morality, but that noumenal multiplicity cannot really be temporal—that is
just the only way we have of talking about it, given that time is our inescapable form
of intuition, but it cannot be taken at face value.
In any case, I believe that Kant’s assertion that we are always free to do the right
thing no matter what can be separated from his theory of how we are motivated to do
the right thing insofar as we are motivated to do so, and the chapters in Part III
explore what turns out to be Kant’s fairly rich account of what I there call the
empirical etiology of moral motivation and action: the role of feelings not in the
constitution of the normativity of the moral law itself, as on moral sense theory of
the Hutchesonian variety, nor in the determination of the will to be moral in Kant’s
metaphysical theory, but in the transition from the determination of the will to the
performance of action in the phenomenal world. Here I explore the role of what Kant
refers to as the feeling of respect or moral feeling in general as well as of more specific
“aesthetic preconditions of the mind’s susceptibility to concepts of duty” such as
conscience, love of others, and self-esteem. Here I also discuss Kant’s view that
although we need to have such preconditions as a matter of nature and could not
be moved to create them out of whole cloth if we did not have some natural
dispositions in that direction, nevertheless we need to “cultivate and strengthen”
and educate these natural tendencies.
x 

Finally, by way of a conclusion I discuss the relationships among the various


conceptions of moral community that Kant deploys at different points in his works,
including the idea of a realm of ends, of the highest good, of the juridical community,
and of the ethical community. I argue that although there are significant differences
among these several concepts, they are all expressions of Kant’s basic idea that what
morality requires is that everyone be treated equally as an end, that this means
treating everyone as entitled to set their own ends insofar as that is compatible with
allowing others to do so as well, and that the greatest happiness possible in the world
is nothing other than what would result from human beings allowing each other to
set their own ends and assisting them in realizing them rather than, as is all too often
the case, interfering with the freedom of each other to set and pursue their own ends.
In this way happiness, particularly one’s own happiness, is not the motive or
immediate goal of morality, but does become what Kant calls its “object”—what
would inevitably result were morality fully realized. For all his differences with the
ancients and with the proto-utilitarians of his own time, it would have been too much
of a stretch for Kant to insist that human morality has nothing to do with human
happiness at all.
In a little more detail, here is what happens in the chapters in this volume.
Chapter 1, “Kant, Autonomy, and Modernity,” originally presented in a lecture
series on “The Modern Turn” at the Catholic University of America, organized by
Michael Rohlf, serves as an introduction to the volume. Here I ask how Kant’s
conception of the intrinsic and unconditional value of freedom differ from ancient
conceptions of the value of ataraxia or tranquility. I argue that it differs in that Kant
values our freedom to set our own ends for its own sake, not because that is a sure
path to happiness. But can Kant argue for such a conception of the value of freedom
without undermining his own distinction between our knowable phenomenal selves
and unknowable noumenal selves? That remains a question throughout this book.
Part I consists of Chapters 2–7. Chapter 2, “Is and Ought: From Hume to Kant,
and Now,” was originally presented at a conference on “Kant and the Future of
European Enlightenment” held in Greifswald, Germany under the leadership of
Heiner Klemme, and was previously published only in German. Here it serves as
an introduction to the idea of normative essentialism that I have ascribed to Kant.
I argue that contrary to what is often said, Hume did not deny that we can derive an
“ought” from an “is,” but asserted only that it must be derived from the right “is,” in
his case a description of our moral sentiments. Kames and Smith held the same view.
Kant did not reject the attempt to derive “ought” from “is,” but only the attempt to
derive it from a description of our moral sentiments. He instead sought to derive the
moral “ought” from a description of our rational essence, until he turned to the “fact
of reason” doctrine in the Critique of Practical Reason.
Chapter 3, “Freedom as the Foundation of Morality: Kant’s Early Efforts,” origin-
ally appeared in a volume of essays edited by Susan Shell and Richard Velkley on
Kant’s 1764 Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime and the series of
remarks that Kant wrote in his own copy of that work, which constitute our most
extensive source for his earliest approaches to moral philosophy. I argue that in these
pages we can see Kant making a transition from a purely psychological approach to
the value of freedom to normative essentialism. In these notes written in 1764–5,
 xi

Kant introduced his characterization of the fundamental principle of morality as the


“categorical imperative” and the position that this fundamental principle expresses
the intrinsic and absolute value of freedom, but did not settle on a conclusive strategy
for the derivation of the fundamental principle of morality. We might have to reach
that verdict about his entire career.
Chapter 4, “Freedom and the Essential Ends of Humankind,” was presented as a
plenary address at the XI. International Kant Congress in Pisa, Italy, in 2010; the title
reflects the assigned subject of the session in which it was presented. In this, one of
the central chapters of the book, I develop at length the argument already suggested
in this Preface. In his lectures on ethics, Kant identified the greatest possible use of
freedom as the essential end of humankind. In the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of
Morals, he grounds the categorical imperative on the status of humanity as the sole
end in itself. Since his conception of humanity is the capacity of human beings to set
their own ends freely and the command always to treat humanity in one’s own
person and that of every other as an end and never merely a means requires the intra-
and interpersonally consistent use of freedom, the two conceptions of the central
concept of morality are the same.
Chapter 5, “Kantian Perfectionism,” started out as a paper on Kant’s critique of
Christian Wolff ’s approach to moral philosophy for the 2004 First (and to my
knowledge only) International Wolff Congress, and was then reworked for a confer-
ence on “Kantian and Virtue Ethics” organized by Lawrence Jost and Julian Wuerth
at the University of Cincinnati, and published by them in a 2011 volume. Here
I argue that although Kant ordinarily criticizes perfectionism as a vacuous founda-
tion for moral theory, parasitic upon an antecedent and typically empirical concep-
tion of what is to be perfected, in the lectures on ethics he is willing to classify his own
theory as a kind of perfectionism. This is because according to him what is to be
perfected is nothing other than the will or freedom of choice itself. This form of
perfectionism is thus another way of presenting his moral philosophy of autonomy.
Chapter 6, “Setting and Pursuing Ends: Internal and External Freedom,” was orig-
inally presented at a conference on “The Moral Life” organized by the Universities of
Antwerp and Ghent, and then revised for several further presentations, including a
conference on “Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom” organized by several of my
former students including Frederick Rauscher, Jennifer Uleman, Kate Moran, and
Jeppe von Platz at Brown University in October, 2013. It is another one of the core
chapters in the book. Here I argue that all of the categories of duty that Kant
recognizes can be interpreted as duties to treat humanity as an end and never merely
as a means if humanity is equated with the capacity to set ends and the duties are
construed as conditions for the preservation or expansion of that capacity. A bipartite
interpretation of humanity as the two capacities to set and pursue ends is not
necessary; that is, we do not need to make a separate inference that we should strive
to realize our own ends or assist others in realizing theirs because of value transferred
from the setting of ends to their realization as is often presupposed; rather, it is only
rational to set an end when means to it are (reasonably) believed to be available, so
not interfering with the availability of means to ends and providing oneself and
others with means to ends are in fact ways to preserve and expand the range of ends
that may freely be set by rational agents.
xii 

Part I concludes with Chapter 7, “Freedom, Ends, and Duties in Vigilantius,” the
notes for Kant’s course on the metaphysics of morals from 1793–4, and was pub-
lished in a volume of papers on Kant’s lectures on ethics edited by Lara Denis and
Oliver Sensen. This chapter extends the argument of Chapter 6 by examining the
more detailed discussion of a number of examples of duties to self and others that we
find in these notes as compared to the often quite compressed treatments that we find
in the eventual Metaphysics of Morals of 1797.
The chapters in Part II, as I suggested, focus especially on Kant’s lifelong
grappling with the problem of free will. Chapter 8, “The Proof-Structure of the
Groundwork and the Role of Section III,” was written for a workshop in Ground-
work III by Dieter Schönecker at the University of Siegen, Germany, and published
in German translation in the volume resulting from that event. Here I am still
focused on Kant’s attempt to prove the validity of the moral law, but by proving
that we have free will and that the moral law is the only possible law of a free will.
Kant’s distinction between the analytic method of the first two sections of the
Groundwork, which determine the content of the categorical imperative, and the
synthetic method of Section III, which proves that it is binding upon us, is well
known. This chapter argues that this distinction should be understood in the
context of Kant’s insistence that transcendental proofs should employ an “osten-
sive” rather than “apagogic” method, that is, not rely solely upon arguments by
elimination but adduce positive grounds for their conclusion. The ostensive argu-
ment for the binding force of the categorical imperative actually begins in Section II
of the Groundwork, with Kant’s introduction of humanity as an end in itself, but
culminates in the claim of Section III that a “human being really finds in himself a
capacity by which he distinguishes himself from all other things, even from himself
insofar as he is affected by objects, and that is reason” (G, 4:452)—an ostensive
claim if ever there were one!
Chapter 9, “Proving Ourselves Free,” originally presented as an invited plenary
address at the X. International Kant Congress in Saõ Paulo in 2005, addresses the
character of Kant’s attempted proofs of the existence of free will more generally. It
argues that all of Kant’s attempts to prove the metaphysical freedom of the will are
first-personal, that is, proofs of one’s own freedom, while the freedom that we impute
to others is actually compatibilist, known empirically, and thus our knowledge of
their motives is also merely empirical and therefore always uncertain. For this reason
Kant supposes that we should be rigorous in our moral self-appraisal, knowing our
freedom always to do the right thing, but lenient in our judgments of others—a good
result for him to reach, I suggest.
Chapter 10, “Problems with Freedom: Kant’s Argument in Groundwork III and its
Subsequent Emendations,” was written for a volume of essays on the Groundwork
edited by Jens Timmermann. Kant’s arguments for the freedom of our noumenal
wills in both the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason, in spite of
differences, raise epistemological problems about knowledge of the noumenal as
well as the question of how a will that is noumenally rational could ever will
immorally, that is, will evil. Kant tries to avert the epistemological problems in the
second Critique through his doctrine of the primacy of practical reason, and tries to
sidestep the problem about the possibility of responsibility for evil in the Religion
 xiii

by relying solely on the “ought implies can” argument for the freedom of the will,
which does not presuppose that the real will is necessarily rational.
Chapter 11, “Natural and Rational Belief: Kant’s Final Words?,” was written for a
conference on “Final Chapters” organized by Robin Dillon at Lehigh University and
has not previously been published. This chapter also concerns Kant’s resolution of
his problem about responsibility for good and evil in the Religion and argues that this
solution undercuts his long-standing postulate of personal immortality; structured
once again as a contrast between Kant and Hume, it argues that Kant’s position does
not end up being as remote from Hume’s as it initially seems. That is, Kant’s doctrine
of the postulates of pure practical reason seems diametrically opposed to Hume’s
skepticism about belief in any object that cannot be experienced, such as God or an
immortal soul; but while Kant postulates personal immortality in the second Critique
as a necessary condition of the rationality of working toward the perfection of
personal virtue and in the second and third critiques postulates the existence of
God as the author of a nature in which the object of morality, the highest good, can be
achieved, his doctrine of the possibility of moral conversion at any time in the
Religion undermines his earlier argument for personal immortality, and his final
assessment of the conditions of rationality in the Metaphysics of Morals implies that
only the non-provability of the non-existence of God is necessary to make it rational
to try to be moral—a condition that Hume would agree is satisfied.
The chapters in Part III focus on Kant’s account of the empirical etiology of moral
motivation and action: the cultivation and education of virtue in the real conditions
of human life. Chapter 12, “A Passion for Reason: Hume, Kant, and the Motivation
for Morality,” my 2011 Presidential Address to the Eastern Division of the American
Philosophical Association, continues the comparison of Hume and Kant. Hume
famously argued that reason is the slave of the passions, and sets no ends, moral or
otherwise, by itself; Kant argues that moral action must be determined by reason
alone. Their positions seem diametrically opposed. But Hume recognized that we
have a calm passion for tranquility, which mimics reason, and is a foundation of
morality, while Kant recognized that in the phenomenal world we can act morally
only if under the direction of reason we transform our innate passion for our own
freedom into an enthusiasm for the freedom of all. At the phenomenal level, the gap
between their theories is not as great as initially appears.
Chapter 13, “The Obligation to be Virtuous: Kant’s Conception of the Tugendver-
pflichtung,” was presented at a conference on the virtues organized at Bowling Green
(Ohio) State University by Fred Miller, Ellen Frankel Paul, and Jeffrey Paul, and
published by them in their journal Social Philosophy and Policy in 2010. Here I point
out that Kant distinguishes between the ethical duty to be virtuous and the duties of
virtue proper, those to promote the ends that are also duties, namely one’s own
perfection and the happiness of others. The duty to be virtuous is the duty to fulfill
the latter duties out of respect for duty, or the moral law. But can there be such a duty
without tautology or infinite regress, and when one must have a natural predispos-
ition to virtue in order to be susceptible to the concept of duty or claims of morality at
all? There can be, because the actual content of the general duty to be virtuous is to
strengthen and cultivate one’s natural predisposition to be virtuous in general as
well as one’s more specific natural predispositions to conscience, love of others, and
xiv 

self-esteem. Chapter 14, “Kant on Moral Feelings: From the Lectures to the Metaphysics
of Morals,” originally published in a somewhat abbreviated form in a volume of
critical essays on the Metaphysics of Morals edited by Lara Denis, continues the
discussion of the necessity of strengthening and cultivating the natural tendencies
to be moral. In his early lectures on ethics, Kant said that the head is necessary for
knowledge of the moral law but the heart for its execution, that is, he suggested that
moral feeling plays an essential role in the determination to be moral. In the
Groundwork, he seems to repudiate this position by making the feeling of respect a
merely epiphenomenal manifestation of the noumenal determination of the will to be
moral. But beginning with the Critique of Practical Reason, he suggests that the
feeling of respect or a broader set of “aesthetic preconditions of the mind’s suscep-
tibility to concepts of duty” play a role, not in the noumenal determination of the will
to be moral, but in the empirical etiology of moral action. In the second Critique, he
suggests that the feeling of respect plays a role in the selection of particular maxims,
and in the late Metaphysics of Morals that moral feeling in general, conscience, and
the feelings of love of others or sympathy and self-respect are all empirical tendencies
that have to be strengthened and cultivated for the effective translation of the
determination to be moral into particular actions. Finally, Chapter 15, “Examples
of Moral Possibility,” originally published in a volume on moral education edited by
Klas Roth and Chris Sturtevant, discusses the role that real examples of virtue, rather
than mere thought-experiments, can play in our moral education. Kant rejects any
role for empirical examples of human conduct in the determination of the content of
the moral law. Nor would he seem to allow for any role for empirical examples of
action in the discovery of our freedom. Yet although the moral law is in a sense innate
and our freedom to act in accordance with it may be inferred directly from it,
children undergoing moral education nevertheless need examples of moral conduct
to help them see what the moral law may require of them in particular circumstances
and in order to be really persuaded of the possibility of acting morally no matter what
the costs may be. For the latter, in particular, only real examples of moral conduct
will do, so history and biography play an essential role in moral education. I have
introduced these three chapters in a single paragraph because I regard them as
together constituting another core of this collection—to borrow Kant’s terms, per-
haps the heart of the collection alongside the head offered in Chapters 6 and 7.
By way of conclusion, finally, I offer “Kantian Communities: The Realm of Ends,
the Ethical Community, and the Highest Good,” originally published in a North
American Kant Society volume Kant and the Concept of Community edited by
Charlton Payne and Lucas Thorpe. Many strands of his moral thought are pulled
together by a discussion of the various concepts of moral community that Kant puts
forth. The concept of the highest good is the culminating concept of each of Kant’s
three critiques and a central concept in other works as well. But his presentation of it
is ambivalent between individualistic and communalistic conceptions; whether it is a
religious or a secular concept has been controversial; and its relation to the concepts
of the realm of ends on the one hand and of a juridico-civil community or political
order on the other has been disputed. I argue that Kant’s conception gradually
evolves from an ambivalent conception to one that is clearly communalistic, a
condition of humankind that is to be realized within nature, although, in Kant’s
 xv

view, a nature whose laws are underwritten by God; that if the element of punish-
ment for the non-virtuous is omitted, as it should be, then there is nothing to
distinguish the condition of the highest good from the realization of the realm of
ends; and that the highest good may include juridical order, not as a mere stepping-
stone to a purer form of virtue, but as an ineliminable component of the highest good
that is possible in the world, for human beings as they actually are. This is all as we
should expect if the basic value preserved and promoted by reality is that of intra-
and interpersonal freedom, but that is to be realized in the natural world that human
beings inhabit and not an imaginary world inhabited by equally imaginary purely
rational beings.
I could not possibly remember and therefore thank all of those with whom I have
profitably discussed Kant’s moral philosophy over the years during which these
essays were written and the longer period—my whole career—in which I have been
working to one degree or another on the subject. I have already implicitly thanked a
number of colleagues and former students, now themselves respected colleagues, in
referring to the occasions for various of these chapters. I would certainly be remiss if
I did not also mention among those from whom I have learned so much Henry
Allison, Karl Ameriks, Dieter Henrich, Barbara Herman, Rolf-Peter Horstmann,
Patricia Kitcher, Christine Korsgaard, Robert Louden, Onora O’Neill, Jerry Schnee-
wind, and especially he with whom I so often enjoyably and profitably disagree, Allen
Wood; among recent students not already mentioned I also want to single out
Wiebke Deimling, J. Michael Nance, and Reed Winegar. To all those who have not
immediately come to mind I can only apologize.
Contents

Abbreviations xix
Sources xxi

Introduction
1. Kant, Autonomy, and Modernity 3

Part I. The Value of Freedom


2. Is and Ought: From Hume to Kant, and Now 21
3. Freedom as the Foundation of Morality: Kant’s Early Efforts 36
4. Freedom and the Essential Ends of Humankind 54
5. Kantian Perfectionism 70
6. Setting and Pursuing Ends: Internal and External Freedom 87
7. Freedom, Ends, and Duties in Vigilantius 105

Part II. The Actuality of Freedom


8. The Proof-Structure of the Groundwork and the Role of Section III 127
9. Proving Ourselves Free 146
10. Problems with Freedom: Kant’s Argument in Groundwork III and
its Subsequent Emendations 163
11. Natural and Rational Belief: Kant’s Final Words? 185

Part III. The Achievement of Freedom


12. A Passion for Reason: Hume, Kant, and the Motivation for Morality 201
13. The Obligation to be Virtuous: Kant’s Conception of the
Tugendverpflichtung 216
14. Kant on Moral Feelings: From the Lectures to the
Metaphysics of Morals 235
15. Examples of Moral Possibility 260

Conclusion
16. Kantian Communities: The Realm of Ends, the Ethical
Community, and the Highest Good 275

Bibliography 303
Index 310
Abbreviations

The following abbreviations for Kant’s works have been used.

Anth. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View


CPJ Critique of the Power of Judgment
CPracR Critique of Practical Reason
CPuR Critique of Pure Reason
Fey. Naturrecht Feyerabend
G Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
ID inaugural dissertation
IUH “Idea for a Universal History”
Kaehler Collegium Philosophiae practicae universalis una cum Ethica
MM Metaphysics of Morals
DR = Doctrine of Right, Part I of MM
DV = Doctrine of Virtue, Part II of MM
MM-Vigilantius Metaphysics of Morals transcribed by J. F. Vigilantius
MP-Collins Moral Philosophy transcribed by G. L. Collins
NF Notes and Fragments
OBS Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime
Ped. Lectures on Pedagogy
PNTM On the Clarity of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morals
R Reflexion (handwritten note from Kant’s Nachlaß)
RBMR Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason
Ri. Kant’s notes in OBS as edited by Rischmüller
TP “On the Common Saying: That may be correct in theory,
but it is of no use in practice”
Sources

1. “Kant, Autonomy, and Modernity.” Not previously published.


2. “Is and Ought: From Hume to Kant, and Now.” Previously published in German
translation as “Ist und Soll: Von Hume bis Kant, und nun.” In Heiner F. Klemme,
ed., Kant und die Zukunft der Aufklärung. Berlin and New York: Walter de
Gruyter & Co., 2009. pp. 210–32. Reprinted with permission of Walter de
Gruyter & Co.
3. “Freedom as the Foundation of Morality: Kant’s Early Efforts.” In Susan Meld
Shell and Richard E. Velkley, eds, Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the
Beautiful and Sublime and the Notes on the “Observations”: A Critical Guide.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. pp. 77–98. Reprinted with per-
mission of Cambridge University Press.
4. “Freedom and the Essential Ends of Humankind.” Kant und die Philosophie in
Weltbürgerlicher Ansicht: Akten des XI. Internationaler Kant Kongress. Berlin
and New York: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 2013. Vol. 1, pp. 229–44. Reprinted
with permission of Walter de Gruyter & Co.
5. “Kantian Perfectionism.” In Lawrence Jost and Julian Wuerth, eds, Perfecting
Virtue: New Essays on Kantian Ethics and Virtue Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011. pp. 194–214. Reprinted with permission of Cambridge
University Press.
6. “Setting and Pursuing Ends: Internal and External Freedom.” Not previously
published.
7. “Freedom, Ends, and Duties in the Vigilantius Notes.” In Lara Denis and Oliver
Sensen, eds, Kant’s Lectures on Ethics: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2015. pp. 187–204. Reprinted with permission of Cambridge
University Press.
8. “The Proof-Structure of the Groundwork and the Role of Section III.” Previously
published in German translation as “Die Beweisstruktur der Grundlegung und
die Rolle des dritten Abschnittes.” In Dieter Schönecker, ed., Kants Begründung
von Freiheit und Moral in Grundlegung III. Münster: Mentis Verlag, 2015.
pp. 111–37.
9. “Proving Ourselves Free.” In Valerio Rhoden, Ricardo R. Terra, Guido de
Almeida, and Margit Ruffing, eds, Recht und Frieden in der Philosophie Kants:
Akten des X. International Kant Kongresses. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008.
Vol. 1 (Hauptvorträge). pp. 115–37. Reprinted with permission of Walter de
Gruyter & Co.
10. “Problems with Freedom: Kant’s Argument in Groundwork III and its Subse-
quent Emendations.” In Jens Timmerman, ed., Kant’s Groundwork of the Meta-
physics of Morals: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009. pp. 176–202. Reprinted with permission of Cambridge University Press.
11. “Natural and Rational Belief: Kant’s Final Words?” Not previously published.
xxii 

12. “A Passion for Reason: Hume, Kant, and the Motivation for Morality.” Presi-
dential Address, Eastern Division, American Philosophical Association, 2011.
Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 86/2 (2012):
4–21. Reprinted with permission of the American Philosophical Association.
13. “The Obligation to be Virtuous: Kant’s Conception of the Tugendverpflichtung.”
Social Philosophy and Policy 27 (2010): 206–32; also in book form in Ellen
Frankel Paul, Fred D. Miller, Jr., and Jeffrey Paul, eds, Moral Obligation. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 206–32. Reprinted with permission of
Cambridge University Press.
14. “Moral Feelings in the Metaphysics of Morals.” In Lara Denis, ed., Kant’s
Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010. pp. 130–51. Reprinted with permission of Cambridge University
Press.
German version: “Kant über moralische Gefühle: Von den Vorlesungen zur
Metaphysik der Sitten.” In Werner Euler and Burkhard Tuschling, eds, Kant’s
“Metaphysik der Sitten” in der Diskussion. Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 2013.
pp. 177–210.
15. “Examples of Moral Possibility.” In Klas Roth and Chris W. Surprenant, eds,
Kant and Education: Interpretations and Commentary. London: Routledge, 2011.
pp. 124–38. Reprinted with permission of Informa Co.
16. “Kantian Communities: The Realm of Ends, the Ethical Community, and the
Highest Good.” In Charlton Payne and Lucas Thorpe, eds, Kant and the Concept
of Community, North American Kant Society Studies in Philosophy 9. Rochester:
University of Rochester Press, 2011. pp. 88–120. Reprinted with permission of
University of Rochester Press.
Introduction
1
Kant, Autonomy, and Modernity

1. Introduction
What is truly modern in Kant’s practical philosophy? The central idea of this
philosophy is that of the fundamental and unconditional value of autonomy, which
is defined at the outset of Section III of the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
as “the will’s property of being a law to itself” (G, 4:446). So it seems natural to see
Kant’s conception of autonomy as what is most novel in his work and as his
paradigmatic contribution to the Enlightenment as a self-conscious break with past
conceptions of morality and the source of its authority. Kant himself certainly
suggested that he saw his conception of autonomy as the key to what is new in his
philosophy when, in the conclusion of the Introduction to the Critique of the Power
of Judgment, the last of his three critiques, he summed up his entire system of
philosophy as a theory of “the faculties of the soul in general, insofar as they are
considered as higher faculties, i.e., as ones that contain an autonomy” (CPJ, Intro-
duction, section IX, 5:196).
No doubt there is something right about the assumption that it is Kant’s concep-
tion of autonomy that is his distinctive contribution to modernity. But the claim
must be stated carefully, for there are certainly elements of Kant’s conception that go
back to antiquity, and that might be considered characteristic not so much of
modernity as of philosophy itself: the ideas that we should rule ourselves by laws of
reason and that by so doing we free ourselves of the dominion of our own passions, as
well as the anti-voluntaristic idea that God (if there is one) wills that we should obey
moral laws because they are rational rather than that they are binding just because he
wills them, all of which are parts of Kant’s conception of autonomy but the last of
which in particular might be taken as the defining idea of the Enlightenment, all also
go back to Plato and the Stoics. So is there anything new and modern in Kant’s
conception of autonomy? I will suggest that there is, but that it lies in the “positive”
rather than in the “negative” aspect of Kant’s conception of the fundamental value of
freedom, that is, it lies in his idea that our fundamental value is setting our own ends
as opposed to being pushed around by our passions, coupled with his idea that each
of us must recognize that every instance of such autonomy is as valuable as our own,
thus that autonomy is a universal value.
A second question that I will raise is whether there is anything distinctively
modern in Kant’s way of arguing for this position. Here I will suggest that when
Kant began thinking about the value of freedom, he appealed to essentially empirical
arguments that are continuous with ancient, especially Stoic styles of argument.
In the Groundwork, Kant replaced all such empirical arguments with an a priori
 , ,  

appeal to our noumenal nature that might be regarded as novel simply because the
ancients did not have his clear distinctions between the empirical and the a priori and
the phenomenal and the noumenal (although at least one prominent twentieth-
century Kant scholar who argued for the decisive influence of Plato on Kant’s mature
moral philosophy might well have contested this claim).1 But Kant quickly backed off
from this style of argument for the validity of the fundamental principle of morality,
presumably because for all that he was happy to argue for “practical faith” in the
noumenal agency of both ourselves and God as the necessary conditions for the
rationality of attempting to fulfill antecedently accepted moral obligations, he realized
that an a priori argument about the noumenal source of the very validity of the moral
law itself would violate the epistemological strictures of his own theoretical philosophy.
This left him with the strategy of accepting the validity of the moral law and its
consequences as a “fact of reason” that could be philosophically defended precisely
by showing that within the epistemological strictures of his theoretical philosophy it
could not be disproven (the same stance Kant takes toward the existence of God).
Perhaps we should also see this defensive and non-foundational argumentative strategy
for moral philosophy as something distinctively modern, perhaps an anticipation of
the method of “reflective equilibrium” advocated by John Rawls.
The discussion in this chapter will therefore be divided into three sections. In
section 2 I will briefly establish the ancient origins of some of the characteristic
elements of Kant’s conception of autonomy. Section 3 will describe what is distinct-
ively modern in Kant’s conception of autonomy. In section 4 I will briefly describe
Kant’s difficult path toward a new style of argument for this conception.

2. The Ancient Aspects of Autonomy


I suggested that we might take anti-voluntarism as a defining mark of the Enlighten-
ment. We find it for example in Shaftesbury, who wrote at the start of the eighteenth
century that “whoever thinks there is a god and pretends formally to believe that he is
just and good must suppose that there is independently such a thing as justice and
injustice, truth and falsehood, right and wrong, according to which he announces that
God is just, righteous and true”;2 Christian Wolff lost his position at Halle and came
into danger of losing his life for arguing that the Confucian Chinese, without belief in
God, nevertheless insisted that “reason be properly developed” since by means of it
“one must arrive at a distinct knowledge of good and evil without grounding virtue on
fear of a lord and without the hope of receiving a reward from him”;3 and as early as

1
See Klaus Reich, “Kant and Greek Ethics,” trans. W. H. Walsh, Mind, New Series 48 (1939): 338–54,
446–63, reprinted in Reich, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Manfred Baum, Udo Rameil, Klaus Reisinger, and
Gertrud Scholz (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2001), pp. 425–59, especially pp. 427–40.
2
Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit, Book I,
Part III, section 2, in Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Lawrence E. Klein (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 181. The Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit was first published,
without Shaftesbury’s authorization, in 1699, but then included by him in the first edition of the
Characteristics in 1711.
3
Christian Wolff, Oratio de Sinarum philosophia practica/Rede über die praktische Philosophie der
Chinesen, ed. Michael Albrecht (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1985), p. 45 (my translation).
, ,   

1759 Kant endorsed Leibniz’s anti-voluntarist view that God chose this world to exist
because he recognized that it is the best among all possible worlds against Crusius’s
voluntarist view that this is the best of all possible worlds simply because God chose it
to exist.4 And in his earliest recorded lectures on ethics, the notes taken by Herder
between 1762 and 1764, Kant stated that “From the arbitrium divinum I cannot myself
obtain the relevant concepts of the good, unless the concept of the morally good be
assumed beforehand . . . the judgement as to the perfection of God’s arbitrium presup-
poses the investigation of moral perfection.”5 So there is no question that the idea that
the fundamental law or laws of morality must be capable of being recognized by
unaided human reason antecedently to any revelation of the will of God and that
any such claimed revelation must be tested against our own insight into the moral law
is certainly a characteristic idea of the leading thinkers of the Enlightenment and a
lifelong commitment of Kant himself. But this aspect of the idea of autonomy cannot
be regarded as a novelty in Kant nor in the Enlightenment as a whole, for it goes back
to Plato, and for that reason can be regarded as a defining idea of philosophy itself
rather than of modernity. In the Euthyphro, the very first in the traditional ordering of
Plato’s dialogues, Plato has Socrates argue that the pious is loved by the gods “because it
is pious, but it is not pious because it is . . . loved” by them.6 Socrates argues against
Euthyphro that we can discover what is pious only through our own rational enquiry
into what is right and wrong, and have no independent access to the loves of the gods
by means of which to discover what is right and wrong; indeed, trying to determine the
will of the gods without the compass of our own insight into right and wrong will lead
only to contradiction and confusion. The idea of using our own reason to discover
what is right and wrong is virtually the starting point of philosophy.
The idea that we must regulate our conduct by the use of our reason and not be led
by our passions is also an idea that goes back to Plato and that was particularly
emphasized by the Stoics from the origins of their school in the century following
Plato. Socrates introduces the model of the tripartite soul in which reason should rule
spirit and appetite in Book IV of the Republic (439c–442d), subsequently analogizing
reason to the philosophically trained guardians who should rule the lower orders in
the just republic. “Fashioning an image of the soul in words” (588b), he compares
reason to the human being who can rule over beasts like the lion and the snake
(588c–590c), and concludes that “it is better for everyone to be ruled by divine
reason, preferably within himself and his own, otherwise imposed from without”
(590d)—at least the best-educated humans can be ruled by reason alone, without
reliance on external inducements. The early Stoics transformed Socrates’s idea of the
just soul into the idea of living in accordance with nature, where nature itself is law-
governed and its laws can be discerned by human reason. Thus Diogenes Laertius

4
See Kant, “An Attempt at Some Reflections on Optimism,” 7 October 1759, 2:29–35; see the discussion
in J. B. Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998),
pp. 492–7.
5
Kant, Lectures on Ethics, ed. Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind, trans. Peter Heath (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 5 (27:9); see Schneewind, Invention of Autonomy, p. 497.
6
Plato, Euthyphro 10d, trans. G. M. A. Grube, in Plato, Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper
(Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), p. 10.
 , ,  

described Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus as saying that the goal for man
is “to live in agreement with nature,” in accordance with our own nature but where
our own nature is part of nature in general: “Therefore the goal becomes ‘to live
consistently with nature,’ i.e., doing nothing which is forbidden by the common law,
which is right reason, penetrating all things.”7 Chrysippus made the continuity
between our own nature and nature in general explicit: “By nature, in consistency
with which we must live, Chrysippus understands both the common and, specifically,
the human nature.”8 And according to Arius Didymus, reported by Stobaeus, “Zeno
defined the goal thus: ‘living in agreement’. This means living according to a single
and consonant rational principle, since those who live in conflict are unhappy.”9 The
assumption is that it is our nature to be rational, so to live in accordance with our
nature is to live in accordance with reason, and our own reason can tell us what this
requires, that being above all the avoidance of internal and external conflict.
The account of early Stoicism preserved by Stobaeus also makes it clear that, as in
Plato, governance by reason means governance of the impulses. “Passion is an
impulse which is excessive and disobedient to the reason which constrains, or an
irrational, unnatural motion of the soul,”10 but in the rational person impulses are
constrained by reason, and so do not become passions. In later, Roman Stoicism, the
idea of the rule of impulse by reason to prevent the development of passion is
transformed into an image of the “happy life” as consisting in freedom from fear
and desire realized through the use of reason. Seneca’s essay De vita beata is one of
the chief texts of later Stoicism. Here Seneca writes that “The happy life . . . is a life
that is in harmony with its own nature, and it can be attained in only one way.” It
must begin with “a sound mind and one that is in constant possession of its sanity,”
accompanied with fortitude, and through the vigorous use of reason we can drive
“away all that excites or affrights us,” from which “ensues unbroken tranquillity and
enduring freedom.”11 Seneca continues: “the happy life is to have a mind that is free,
lofty, fearless and steadfast—a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond
the reach of desire . . . the happy man is one who is freed from both fear and desire
because of the gift of reason.”12 Living in accord with reason frees us from domin-
ation by our own desires, which are the source of our fears, for all our fears might be
collectively characterized as fear of the disappointment of our desires. Freed from
such fear by reason’s insight that these desires bring more trouble than pleasure, we
can live in tranquility.
The ancients thus certainly anticipated some aspects of the idea of autonomy that
seems to be Kant’s distinctive contribution to modernity: Plato pioneered the idea

7
Diogenes Laertius, VII.87–8, quoted in Brad Inwood and Pierluigi Donini, “Stoic Ethics,” in Keimpe
Alegra, Jonathan Barnes, Jaap Mansfeld, and Malcolm Schofield, eds, The Cambridge History of Hellenistic
Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 675–738, at p. 685.
8
Diogenes Laertius, 7.88, from Brad Inwood and Lloyd P. Gerson, eds, The Stoic Reader: Selected
Writings and Testimonia (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2008), p. 114.
9
Quoted by Stobaeus, II.75.11–76.15, Inwood and Donini, p. 684.
10
Stobaeus II.10, Inwood and Gerson, The Stoic Reader, p. 137.
11
Seneca, De vita beata, III.3–4; from Seneca, Moral Essays, trans. John W. Basore (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1938), vol. 2, p. 107.
12
Seneca, De vita beata, IV.3–V.1, Moral Essays, vol. 2, pp. 109–11.
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Slezer, John, in prison after the Revolution, 13;
a creditor punished for imprisoning him, 27.
Small-pox (1713), 387;
inoculation for introduced, 530.
Smith of Whitehill’s plans for introducing water into towns, 238.
Soldiers, recruiting of, by nefarious means, 43;
from criminals, 64;
recruits kept in jails, 79;
mutinies of recruits in Canongate Tolbooth, 182, 601.
Spirits, young man troubled with, at Glencorse, 555.
Spott church communion-cups, 335;
witch of Spott, 275.
Stage-coach from Edinburgh to Glasgow (1758), 612;
from London to Glasgow, 613;
from Edinburgh to London, 407.
Stair church burnt, 355.
Stair, Viscountess of, death of; her coffin placed in an upright
position; bon mot of, 74.
Stang, riding of the, a punishment for cruel husbands, 589.
Staving of Irish victual, proclamation regarding, 241.
Steele, Sir R., visits Scotland, as a commissioner on forfeited
estates, 409, 426;
anecdotes concerning, 429.
Stereotyping invented by Ged, 555.
Steuart, Sir James, Lord Advocate for Scotland, favourable to witch-
prosecutions, 135;
his death, 382;
Lt.-Gen. Sir James Steuart, his recollections of Duchess of Douglas
at Paris, 507.
Stewart, General, killed by Elliot of Stobbs, 523.
Stirling of Kier, his trial for high-treason, 345.
Stobo, John, ‘student in astrologico-physick,’ 85.
Storm, an extraordinary, in 1739, 603.
Strahan, W.S., of Edinburgh, is robbed of a large sum, 333.
Strathmore, Earl of, killed in a drunken fray, 545.
Streets and Wynds of Edinburgh, in 18th century, 591.
Suddy, Mackenzie of, killed at Inverroy, 16.
Summer of 1723, its sultriness, 480.
Sunday observance, 271, 342, 344, 397, 569.
Sutherland, James, in charge of the Physic Garden, 81;
introduces culture of melons, 142.

Tain Tolbooth steeple falls, 277.


Tarbet, Master of, charged with a murder at Leith, 48.
Tascal-money, murder of Cameron for, 486.
Tavern-bill, example of one in Edinburgh, 183.
Taverns much frequented, 575.
Taverns open on Sunday, disturbance regarding, 271.
Taxes of Scotland and England equitably adjusted by Union, 328.
Tea, its disuse recommended in favour of beer, 613.
Tennis Court, theatricals in, 398.
Thanksgiving hypocritically ordered, 221.
Theatricals in Edinburgh (1715), 397, 518, 544, 550, 583, 598;
at Glasgow, 550.
Thrashing-machine invented, 503.
Thunderstorm at Edinburgh (June 10, 1717), 424.
Tinklarian Doctor, a strange enthusiast, 358;
visits the witch-boy of Calder, 449.
Tippermalloch’s Receipts, 53;
medical practice and literature of the time, 53;
Tippermalloch’s pharmacopœia, 54;
his dream about battles and ambassadors, 55.
Toasts, treasonable, drunk at Dumfries, 182.
Tobacco trade of Glasgow, 431, 516.
Tolbooth, Canongate, mutiny of recruits in, 601.
Tolbooth of Edinburgh stuffed with political prisoners, 11.
Toleration Act for Scottish Episcopalians, 367.
Torture employed after the Revolution, 39.
Travelling, formal permission required from government for persons
of eminence, 51;
slowness of, 222;
means of, 406;
coaches set up, 612;
a difficult journey of Lord Lovat, 625.
Treasure lost at sea, dived for, 551.
Trotter’s Compendium of Latin Grammar, 582.
Trustees, Board of, established, 541.
Tyninghame Woods planted by Earl of Haddington, 417.

Union, changes in commerce produced by, 336;


customs and excise of Scotland, 339.
Union, treaty of, 258.
University of Edinburgh, cleared of Episcopalian professors, 7;
medical education introduced, 105.

Vice and immorality severely punished, 342.


Violante, Signora, an Italian rope-dancer, 625.

Wade, General, sent as commander-in-chief to disarm the


Highlanders, 497;
pleads for exiled rebels, 523;
his Highland roads, 526, 561;
fête at Dalnaspidal, 561.
Walker, Helen, intercedes for her sister’s pardon, 602.
Walker, Patrick, his account of the expulsion of the bishops in 1689,
5;
his account of the Seven Dear Years, 196;
denounces the dancing assemblies, 482.
Walking-swords and other weapons worn by gentlemen, 49.
Wallace, Captain John, long kept a prisoner for defending
Holyroodhouse, 13;
petition for release, 68.
Watson, Andrew, Glasgow shoemaker, 386.
——, a skipper, subscription in behalf of, 134.
Weapons worn by gentlemen, a fatal practice, 49.
Weights and measures, statutory, confided to various towns, 51.
Western Isles, Description of, by Martin, 278.
Whales in Firth of Forth, 77, 327;
at Culross and Kilrenny, 458.
Whiston’s Primitive Christianity seized, 363.
Whitfield’s open-air preaching, 606.
William III., crown settled on, 1;
concern in massacre of Glencoe, 60;
his sentiments on Catholic worship, 204;
death of, 256.
Williamson, Rev. J., of Musselburgh, his letter on ‘recent domestic
events,’ 403.
Wilson, Robert, a servant lad, stolen as a recruit, 44.
Windmill at Leith, building of, 290.
Winds, destructive, in Lothian, 471.
Wines, use of, and prices, 183, 270.
Witch-boy at Calder, 449.
——, Marion Lillie, at Spott, 275.
——, the last burnt in Scotland, 540.
Witchcraft jurisprudence, 135;
laws against, repealed, 597.
Witches at Coldingham, 94;
at Torryburn and Pittenweem, Fife, 298;
at Inverness, 302.
Witches, five, burnt at Paisley, 172.
—— of Ross-shire treated leniently for the first time, 216;
see also, 540.
Witches, various, proceedings against, 66, 94, 135, 193, 216, 275,
298, 302, 540.
Wodrow, Rev. Mr, his remarks on mercantile losses at Glasgow, 337,
487, 565;
on plague of bugs at, 542;
excursion into Galloway, 380;
deplores religious changes at Glasgow, 432, 486, 515;
sad account of general condition of the country, 491;
condemns theatricals, 519, 544, 550;
describes profligacy of manners, 521.
Wolf, last in Scotland, killed, 609.
Women of evil repute banished, 115.
Women’s ‘Girded Tails’ satirised, 448.
Wool forbidden to be exported, 238.
Woollen manufactures at Aberdeen, 156.
Wortley Montagu, Lady Mary, satirises Lady Murray of Stanhope,
479;
introduces inoculation, 530.
Writers, malignant feelings displayed on opposing interests, case of;
Leslie and Comrie, 278.
Writing, engine for, invented, 99.
York Buildings Company purchases forfeited estates, 443;
leases Strontian mines, 475;
its failure alluded to, 492;
leases woods of Abernethy, 547.
Young, George, troubles from enforcing Sunday observance, 271.
Young, James, an ingenious mechanist and curiosity-monger, 99;
House of Curiosities at Edinburgh, 100.
THE END.

Edinburgh:
Printed by W. and R. Chambers.

Old Tolbooth, Edinburgh.

The state of the Leg-of-Mutton-School of verse[242] in Scotland at


the end of the seventeenth century, may be pretty fairly inferred from
this specimen.]

1. A very animated review of these affairs will be found in Mr Burton’s


excellent History.
2. Collection of Papers, &c. London, Richard Janeway, 1689.
3. Account of the Pope’s Procession at Aberdene, &c., reprinted in Laing’s
Fugitive Poetry of the Seventeenth Century.
4. Biographia. Presbyteriana, i. 221.
5. Under this title, a pamphlet, detailing the outing and rabbling of the clergy,
was published in London in 1690.
6. Stewart’s Sketches of the Highlanders, i. p. 99, note.
7. Wodrow’s Analecta, i. 338.
8. Life and Diary of Lieutenant-colonel Blackader of the Cameronian
Regiment. By Andrew Crichton. Edin. 1824.
9. Privy Council Record, MS., Gen. Register House, Edinburgh.
10. Home of Crossrig’s Diary. Stevenson, Edinburgh, 1843.
11. Domestic Annals of Scotland, ii. 408, 432.
12. Acts of Scottish Parliament, ix. 12.
13. On the 12th February 1690, the Privy Council had under their notice the
case of a man named Samuel Smith, who had been imprisoned in the Edinburgh
Tolbooth for three years on a charge of theft, without trial, and ordained him to be
set at large, there being ‘no probation’ against him.
14. Privy Council Record.
15. Privy Council Record, under February 22, 1698.
16. Memoirs of Sir Ewen Cameron of Locheil [by Drummond of Balhadics], p.
243.
17. Memoirs of Sir Ewen Cameron of Locheil, p. 254.
18. C. K. Sharpe in note to Law’s Memorials.
19. Privy Council Record.
20. Justiciary Record.
21. Mrs Gibb seems to have been the person who managed the transmission or
carrying between Edinburgh and Haddington.
22. Privy Council Record.
23. Privy Council Record.
24. Privy Council Record.
25. Privy Council Record.
26. Privy Council Record.
27. Privy Council Record.
28. Scots Acts, iii. 310.
29. Privy Council Record.
30. Contemporary broadsides.
31. Domestic Annals, ii. 384.
32. Privy Council Record.
33. Privy Council Record.
34. A picturesque glimpse of the Highland marauding of this period was
obtained some years ago at second-hand from the memory of William Bane
Macpherson, who died in 1777 at the age of a hundred. ‘He was wont to relate that,
when a boy of twelve years of age, being engaged as buachaille [herd-boy] at the
summering [i. e., summer grazing] of Biallid, near Dalwhinnie, he had an
opportunity of being an eye-witness to a creagh and pursuit on a very large scale,
which passed through Badenoch. At noon on a fine autumnal day in 1689, his
attention was drawn to a herd of black-cattle, amounting to about six score, driven
along by a dozen of wild Lochaber men, by the banks of Loch Erroch, in the
direction of Dalunchart in the forest of Alder, now Ardverikie. Upon inquiry, he
ascertained that these had been “lifted” in Aberdeenshire, distant more than a
hundred miles, and that the reivers had proceeded thus far with their booty free
from molestation and pursuit. Thus they held on their way among the wild hills of
this mountainous district, far from the haunts of the semi-civilised inhabitants,
and within a day’s journey of their home. Only a few hours had elapsed after the
departure of these marauders, when a body of nearly fifty horsemen appeared,
toiling amidst the rocks and marshes of this barbarous region, where not even a
footpath helped to mark the intercourse of society, and following on the trail of the
men and cattle which had preceded them. The troop was well mounted and armed,
and led by a person of gentlemanlike appearance and courteous manners; while,
attached to the party, was a number of horses carrying bags of meal and other
provisions, intended not solely for their own support, but, as would seem from the
sequel, as a ransom for the creagh. Signalling William Bane to approach, the
leader minutely questioned him about the movements of the Lochaber men, their
number, equipments, and the line of their route. Along the precipitous banks of
Loch Erroch this large body of horsemen wended their way, accompanied by
William Bane, who was anxious to see the result of the meeting. It bespoke spirit
and resolution in those strangers to seek an encounter with the robbers in their
native wilds, and on the borders of that country, where a signal of alarm would
have raised a numerous body of hardy Lochaber men, ready to defend the creagh,
and punish the pursuers. Towards nightfall, they drew near the encampment of the
thieves at Dalunchart, and observed them busily engaged in roasting, before a large
fire, one of the beeves, newly slaughtered.
‘A council of war was immediately held, and, on the suggestion of the leader, a
flag of truce was forwarded to the Lochaber men, with an offer to each of a bag of
meal and a pair of shoes, in ransom for the herd of cattle. This offer, being viewed
as a proof of cowardice and fear, was contemptuously rejected, and a reply sent, to
the effect that the cattle, driven so far and with so much trouble, would not be
surrendered. Having gathered in the herd, both parties prepared for action. The
overwhelming number of the pursuers soon mastered their opponents. Successive
discharges of firearms brought the greater number of the Lochaber men to the
ground, and in a brief period only three remained unhurt, and escaped to tell the
sad tale to their countrymen.’—Inverness Courier, August 17, 1847.
35. This post-boy appears to have been forty-four years old.
36. Lord Viscount Kingston was a cadet of the Winton family, and had
delivered a Latin oration to Charles I., at his father’s house of Seton, in 1633.
37. In the parliament which sat down in September, robbing the post-packet
was declared to be ‘robbery,’ to be punished with death and confiscation of
movables.—Scots Acts.
38. Privy Council Record.
39. Privy Council Record.
40. Privy Council Record. The privileges of Mr Hamilton were confirmed by
the Estates in June 1693.
41. Privy Council Record.
42. Privy Council Record.
43. A portrait of the house, and some particulars of the family, are to be found
in Robert Stuart’s Views and Notices of Glasgow in Former Times, 4to, 1847.
44. This must have been Lady Raeburn (Anne Scott of Ancrum).
45. Probably his sister Isobel’s husband, described in Burke as Captain
Anderson.
46. Acts of General Assembly, 1690, p. 18.
47. See page 10.
48. Melville Correspondence, p. 150. The parliament, on the 18th July 1690,
gave a warrant for subjecting one Muir or Ker to the torture, in order to expiscate
the truth regarding the murder of an infant, of which he was vehemently
suspected.
49. Mr Burton, in his History of Scotland from 1689 to 1748, gives the
following account of this nobleman: ‘The Earl of Crawford, made chairman of the
Estates and a privy councillor, was the only statesman of the day who adopted the
peculiar demeanour and scriptural language of the Covenanters. It is to him that
Burnet and others attribute the severities against the Episcopal clergymen, and the
guidance of the force brought to bear in the parliament and Privy Council in favour
of a Presbyterian establishment.’
50. Melville Correspondence. Privy Council Record.
51. Privy Council Record.
52. Privy Council Record.
53. Privy Council Record.
54. Privy Council Record.
55. Burt’s Letters, i. 128.
56. A phrase of the time, found in the Privy Council Record.
57. John Callander, master-smith, petitioned the Privy Council in June 1689,
regarding smith-work which he had executed for Edinburgh and Stirling Castles, to
the amount of eleven hundred pounds sterling, whereof, though long due, he had
‘never yet received payment of a sixpence.’ On his earnest entreaty, three hundred
pounds were ordered to be paid to account. On the ensuing 23d of August, he was
ordained to be paid £6567, 17s. 2d., after a rigid taxing of his accounts, Scots
money being of course meant. Connected with this little matter is an anecdote
which has been told in various forms, regarding the estate of Craigforth, near
Stirling. It is alleged that the master-smith, failing to obtain a solution of the debt
from the Scottish Exchequer, applied to the English treasury, and was there so
fortunate as to get payment of the apparent sum in English money. Having out of
this unexpected wealth made a wadset on the estate of Craigforth, he ultimately fell
into the possession of that property, which he handed down to his descendants.[58]
John Callander was grandfather of a gentleman of the same name, who cultivated
literature with assiduity, and was the editor of two ancient Scottish poems—The
Guberlunzie Man, and Christ’s Kirk on the Green. This gentleman, again, was
grandfather to Mrs Thomas Sheridan and Lady Graham of Netherby.
58. Sir James Campbell’s Memoirs. A Week at the Bridge of Allan, by Charles
Rogers, 1853, p. 334.
59. Justiciary Records.
60. Privy Council Record.
61. Privy Council Record.
62. Record of Convention of Burghs, MS. in Council Chamber, Edinburgh.
63. Anderson’s Prize Essay on the State of the Highlands in 1745, p. 95.
64. New Stat. Acc. of Scotland: Ross, p. 220.
65. Privy Council Record.
66. Dr John Brown: Locke and Sydenham, &c., 1858, p. 457.
67. The second edition of Tippermalloch was published in 1716, containing Dr
Pitcairn’s method of curing the small-pox. It professes to be superior to the first
edition, being ‘taken from an original copy which the author himself delivered to
the truly noble and excellent lady, the late Marchioness of Athole, and which her
Grace the present duchess, a lady no less eminent for her singular goodness and
virtue than her high quality, was pleased to communicate to us and the public.’
68. Analecta Scotica, ii. 176.
69. Privy Council Record.
70. Crossrig’s Diary.
71. Kilravock Papers, Spald. Club, p. 388.
72. Privy Council Record.
73. Privy Council Record.
74. Life of Peden, Biogr. Presbyteriana, i. 112.
75. Privy Council Record.
76. Domestic Annals of Scotland, ii. 29.
77. Criminal Proceedings, a Collection of Justiciary Papers in Library of the
Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
78. Macdonald of Glencoe bore the subordinate surname of M‘Ian, as
descended from a noted person named Ian or John.
79. Addressed to Sir Thomas Livingstone, commander-in-chief of the forces in
Scotland.
80. See Papers Illustrative of the Political Condition of the Highlands from
1689 to 1696. Maitland Club. 1845.
81. Privy Council Record.
82. Privy Council Record.
83. This was the father of Mr Andrew Drummond, the founder of the
celebrated banking-house in the Strand.
84. Privy Council Record.
85. From papers in possession of John Hall Maxwell, of Dargavel, Esq.
86. Privy Council Record. (See onward, under December 31, 1692, and July 13,
1697.)
87. Privy Council Record.
88. Fountainhall’s Decisions, i. 693.
89. Privy Council Record.
90. Fountainhall’s Decisions, i. 693.
91. Domestic Annals of Scotland, ii. 326.
92. Mem. of John Earl of Stair by an Impartial Hand, p. 7.
93. Murray’s Literary Hist. of Galloway, p. 155.
94. Privy Council Record.
95. Minutes of Merchant Company, MS. in possession of the Company.
96. Fountainhall’s Decisions, i. 518, 564.
97. Ibid., i. 525.
98. Ibid.
99. Privy Council Record.
100. Privy Council Record.
101. Privy Council Record.
102. Privy Council Record.
103. Privy Council Record.
104. Privy Council Record.
105. In July 1695, there was a further act ‘anent burying in Scots linen,’
ordaining that none should be used for sepulchral purposes above twenty shillings
Scots per ell, and also commanding that the nearest elder or deacon of the parish,
with one or two neighbours, should be called by the friends of deceased persons to
see that the shroud was in all respects conform to the acts thereanent.
106. Wodrow Pamphlets, Adv. Lib., vol. 115.
107. Privy Council Record.
108. Acts of Scottish Parliament, ix. 429.
109. Privy Council Record.
110. Acts of Scottish Parliament, ix. 420.
111. See Domestic Annals of Scotland, ii. 398.
112. Privy Council Record.
113. Letter from a Gentleman in the Country to his Friend at Edinburgh, &c.
Edin. 1696.
114. Privy Council Record.
115. Fountainhall’s Decisions, i. 590.
116. Privy Council Record.
117. Privy Council Record.
118. Privy Council Record.
119. Scottish Journal, ii. 200.
120. The troubles from the meeting-houses at Coldingham and two
neighbouring parishes, led to their being entirely suppressed by the arm of the
government in March 1700 [q. v.]
121. The above, and some other curious extracts from the parish register of
Coldingham, are given in an interesting volume, entitled History of the Priory of
Coldingham. By William King Hunter. Edinburgh, 1858.
122. Analecta, ii. 250. Wodrow tells us that Lady Dundee had been very
violent against the Presbyterians, and ‘used to say she wished that, that day she
heard a Presbyterian minister, the house might fall down and smother her, which it
did.’
123. Analecta Scotica, i. 187. Wodrow’s Analecta, ii. 250.
124. William Livingstone survived his wife nearly forty years. In the
Caledonian Mercury for February 6, 1733, is this paragraph: ‘We are assured
private letters are in town, giving account, that on the 12th of last month, the Right
Hon. the late Viscount Kilsyth died at Rome, in an advanced age, in perfect
judgment, and a Christian and exemplary resignation.’
125. Privy Council Record.
126. A Summer’s Divertisement of Mathematical and Mechanical Curiosities,
being an Account of the Things seen at the House of Curiosities, near Grange
Park. Edinburgh: James Watson. 1695.
127. Nicolas’s spelling is here given literatim.
128. Privy Council Record.
129. From ‘a double of the oath’ in the Kilravock Papers, Spald. Club
publication, p. 387.
130. Fountainhall’s Decisions, i. 629.
131. Privy Council Record.
132. ‘James Peedie of Roughill and John Anderson of Dowhill were the first
merchants who brought a loading of cherry-sack into this city.’—M‘Ure’s Hist.
Glasg., p. 250.
133. Arnot’s Criminal Trials, p. 163.
134. Chalmers’s Life of Ruddiman, p. 30. Bower’s Hist. Univ. of Edinburgh, ii.
153.
135. Privy Council Record.
136. Privy Council Record.
137. These legends appear to have been intended to read as follows: ‘Three
years thou shalt have to repent, and note it well. Wo be to thee, Scotland! Repent
and take warning, for the doors of heaven are already barred against thee. I am
sent for a warning to thee, to flee to God. Yet troubled shall this man be for twenty
days and three. Repent, repent, Scotland, or else thou shalt’——.
138. On the 7th of January 1696, the Privy Council gave licence to George
Mossman, stationer in Edinburgh, to ‘print and sell a book entitled A True
Relation of an Apparition, Expressions, and Actings of a Spirit which infested the
House of Andrew Mackie, in Ring-croft of Stocking, in the Parish of Rerrick, &c.,’
with exclusive right of doing so for a year.
139. Privy Council Record.
140. Caledonian Mercury, Nov. 20, 1732.
141. Privy Council Record.
142. From Information for his Majesty’s Advocate, &c., against James
Edmonstoun of Newton.
143. Maclaurin’s Criminal Cases, p. 10.
144. Introductions, &c., to Waverley Novels, i. 255.
145. Acts of Scot. Par., ix. 452.
146. Hugh Miller’s Sketch-book of Popular Geology, pp. 13, 14.
147. Privy Council Record.
148. A few of the subscriptions are here subjoined: For £1000 each, the
Faculty of Advocates, John Anderson of Dowhill, Provost of Glasgow, the Earl of
Annandale; Alexander Brand, merchant in Edinburgh; James Balfour, merchant in
Edinburgh; George Clerk, merchant in Edinburgh; Daniel Campbell, merchant in
Glasgow; Sir Robert Dickson of Sorn-beg, Andrew Fletcher of Salton, the town of
Glasgow, John Graham younger of Dougalston, the Earl of Haddington, Lord
Yester, Sir David Home of Crossrig, Sir John Home of Blackader, Sir Alexander
Hope of Kerse, William Hay of Drumelzier, Sir James Hall of Dunglass, Lockhart
of Carnwath, William Livingstone of Kilsyth; George Lockhart, merchant in
Glasgow; the Merchant House of Glasgow, the Marquis of Montrose, Sir John
Maxwell of Pollock, Sir Patrick Murray of Auchtertyre, Francis Montgomery of
Giffen, William Morison of Prestongrange, William Nisbet of Dirleton, Sir James
Primrose of Carrington, the Countess of Rothes, the Countess of Roxburgh, Lord
Ross, Lord Ruthven, William Robertson of Gladney, the Earl of Sutherland, the
Earl of Southesk, Viscount Strathallan, Viscount Stair, Sir John Swinton, Sir
Francis Scott of Thirlstain, Sir John Shaw of Greenock; Thomas Spence, writer in
Edinburgh; John Spreul, alias Bass John, merchant in Glasgow; the Marquis of
Tweeddale, Viscount Tarbat; Robert Watson, merchant in Edinburgh; George
Warrender, merchant there; and William Wardrop, merchant in Glasgow: for
£1200, the Merchant Company of Edinburgh: for £1300, James Pringle of
Torwoodlee: for £1500, the Earl of Argyle, William Lord Jedburgh, and Patrick
Thomson, treasurer of Glasgow: for £2000, Mr Robert Blackwood, merchant in
Edinburgh; Sir Robert Chiesley, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, John Lord Glenorchy,
Lord Basil Hamilton, the Earl of Hopetoun, the Earl of Leven; William Menzies,
merchant in Edinburgh; the town of Perth, Sir William Scott of Harden: for £3000,
Lord Belhaven, the Good Town of Edinburgh, the Duchess of Hamilton, the Duke
of Queensberry, the Easter Sugarie of Glasgow, and Sir John Stuart of Grandtully.
149. Scots Acts, sub anno 1695.
150. [Sinclair’s] Statistical Account of Scotland, vi. 586.
151. In April 1703, John Dunbabbine, an Englishman, who in his own country
had for several years followed the trade of pin-making ‘to the satisfaction of all
those with whom he had any dealing,’ was now inclined to set up a work at
Aberdeen, which he thought would be ‘very much for the advantage of the kingdom
[of Scotland] and all the inhabitants thereof.’ All he required previously was his
work being endowed with the privileges and immunities of a manufactory; which
the Privy Council readily granted.
152. Privy Council Record.
153. Mr James Foulis and Mr John Holland are probably identical with the
persons of the same names who received some encouragement from the
parliament in April 1693, for the setting up of a manufacture of Colchester Baises
in Scotland. See Domestic Annals, under that date.
154. See a pamphlet by Mr Holland, published in 1715, under the title of The
Ruine of the Bank of England and all Publick Credit inevitable.
155. Exchange was not dealt in by the Bank of England, any more than the
Bank of Scotland, during many of its earlier years.
156. Account of the Bank of Scotland, published in 1728.
157. Acts of Scottish Parliament, ix. 465.
158. Culloden Papers, Introduction, p. xliv.
159. Privy Council Record.
160. Patrick Walker’s Life of Donald Cargill, Biog. Pres., ii. 24.
161. Patrick Walker.
162. Ibid.
163. Privy Council Record.
164. Privy Council Record.
165. We have no means of knowing if this concert was connected with the
enterprise of Beck and his associates, noticed under January 10, 1694. The name of
Beck does not occur in the list of performers on this occasion.
166. W. Tytler, Trans. Soc. of Antiq. of Scotland, i. 506.
167. Ramsay’s Scribblers Lashed.
168. Through her, as daughter of William first Duke of Queensberry, her
descendant, the Earl of Wemyss, succeeded in 1810 to large estates in Peeblesshire
and the earldom of March.
169. Privy Council Record.
170. Privy Council Record.
171. See under Feb. 2, 1693.
172. Privy Council Record.
173. Ibid.
174. Privy Council Record.
175. Privy Council Record.
176. Printed informations in the case. Justiciary Records.
177. Acts of Scot. Parliament.
178. Privy Council Record.
179. The authority for this is a very bad one—the scurrilous book called Scots
Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed; but on such a point, with support from other
quarters, it may be admitted.
180. Calamy’s Account of his Own Life.
181. Watson’s Collection of Scots Poems, 1709.
182. Privy Council Record.
183. A tolerably full detail of Mr Hepburn’s persecutions is given in Struthers’s
Hist. Scot. from the Union to 1748. 2 vols.
184. Privy Council Record.
185. Scots Acts, vol. iii.
186. See Domestic Annals, under date August 24, 1669.
187. Privy Council Record.
188. Privy Council Record.
189. Records of Parliament and Privy Council.
190. Acts of Scot. Parl., xi. 82.
191. Ibid.
192. Acts of Scot. Parl., xi. 111.
193. Privy Council Record.
194. Privy Council Record.
195. The above account of the prosecution of Aikenhead is derived from
Howell’s State Trials, in which there has been printed a collection of documents on
the case, collected by John Locke.
196. Preface to Two Sermons, &c., by Mr Lorimer.
197. Foun., Decisions.
198. Privy Council Record, under various dates.
199. Signed at Glasgow, December 31, 1696.
200. Domestic Annals, sub July 9, 1668, vol ii. p. 321.
201. Privy Council Record.
202. Justiciary Record.
203. New Stat. Acc. of Scotland, iv. Wigton, 226.
204. Criminal Proceedings, &c., MS., in possession of Ant. Soc. Scot.
205. New Stat. Acc. Scotland, ut supra.
206. Decisions, i. 522.
207. Privy Council Record.
208. A Voyage to St Kilda, &c., by M. Martin, Gent. 4th ed., 1753.
209. Macaulay’s History of St Kilda, 1766, p. 241.
210. Privy Council Record.
211. Ibid.
212. Privy Council Record.
213. Privy Council Record.
214. Letters from North of Scotland, ii. 134 (2d ed.).
215. Edin. Courant, May 1720.
216. Letters, &c., i. 135.
217. Arnot’s Crim. Trials, Anderson’s Hist. Fam. Fraser, Carstares’s State
Papers.
218. Privy Council Record.
219. Privy Council Record.
220. Privy Council Record.
221. Fountainhall’s Decisions, ii. 5.
222. Privy Council Record.
223. Privy Council Record.
224. Acts of General Assembly.
225. Wodrow Pamphlets, Adv. Lib.
226. Under extremity of suffering during the dearth, in September 1699, one
David Chapman, belonging to Crieff, broke into a lockfast place, and stole some
cheese, a sugar-loaf, and about four shillings sterling of money. His sole motive for
the crime, as he afterwards pleaded, was the desire of relieving his family from the
pains of want. Apprehended that day, he confessed the crime, and restored the
spoil; yet, being tried by the commissioner of justiciary for the Highlands, he was
condemned to death.
On a petition, the Privy Council commuted the sentence to scourging through
the town of Perth, and banishment to the plantations.[228]
227. Published in 1702.
228. Privy Council Record.
229. Coltness Collections.
230. Polit. Works of A. Fletcher, edit. 1749, p. 85.
231. Privy Council Record. Fountainhall’s Decisions.
232. Scots Acts, iii. 628.
233. [Leslie’s] Survey of the Province of Moray, p. 280.
234. The father of the present Earl of Stair, Sir John Dalrymple, was born in
1726, and might have heard these particulars from his grand-uncle, the second
President Dalrymple, who died in 1737. Sir John’s Memoirs of Great Britain are
here followed, therefore, as the best authority available.
235. Dalrymple’s Memoirs.
236. Memoirs of John Macky, Esq., 1733, p. 205.
237. Acts of S. Parl., x. 136. Wodrow’s History, i. 320.
238. Privy Council Record.
239. Ibid.
240. This gentleman, who became Earl of Hopetoun, first of the title, was
married, on the 31st August 1699, to ‘the very vertuous Lady Henrietta Johnston,’
daughter of the Earl of Annandale. A congratulatory poem on the occasion
contains the following passage:

May Hopetoun flourish still with Lady Hen-


Rietta, and have a stock of good childrén.[241]

241. Wodrow Pamphlets, Adv. Lib.


242. See Blackwood’s Magazine, ix. 345.
243. Privy Council Record.
244. Ibid.
245. Of this fact, the use of the word siller for money generally in Scotland is a
notable memorial.
246. Account of Bank of Scotland, p. 6.
247. Letter of Earl of Argyle, Carstares Papers, 458.
248. James Donaldson seems to have been engaged in the poetic elegy trade;
that is, the writing of deplorations in verse on great personages for sale in the
streets: see an example of his verse of this description under November 1695. He
seems also to have been the author of Husbandry Anatomised, or an Enquiry into
the Present Manner of Tilling and Manuring the Ground in Scotland, 12mo, 1697;
and of A Picktooth for Swearers, or a Looking-glass for Atheists and Profane
Persons, &c., small 4to, 1698. See Scottish Elegiac Verses, with Notes, 1847.
249. Privy Council Record.
250. Ibid.
251. Privy Council Record.
252. Privy Council Record.
253. Privy Council Record.
254. The Lord Rankeillor who assisted in giving things this favourable turn
was paternal grandfather of Dr John Hope, well known towards the close of the
last century as Professor of Botany in the Edinburgh University.
255. Quoted in Scots Magazine, Jan. 1810, ‘from a collection of pamphlets in
the possession of Mr Blackwood.’
256. Privy Council Record.
257. The irascible temper of Fletcher is well known, and his slaughter of an
associate in the Monmouth expedition is a historical fact. A strange story is told of
him in Mrs Calderwood of Polton’s account of her journey in Holland (Coltness
Collections). ‘Salton,’ she says, ‘could not endure the smoke of toback, and as he
was in a night-scoot [in Holland] the skipper and he fell out about his forbidding
him to smoke. Salton, finding he could not hinder him, went up and sat on the
ridge of the boat, which bows like an arch. The skipper was so contentious that he
followed him, and on whatever side Salton sat, he put his pipe in the check next
him, and whiffed in his face. Salton went down several times and brought up
stones in his pocket from the ballast, and slipped them into the skipper’s pocket
that was next the water, and when he found he had loadened him as much as
would sink him, he gives him a shove, so that over he hirsled. The boat went on,
and Salton came down among the rest of the passengers, who probably were
asleep, and fell asleep among the rest. In a little time, bump came the scoot against
the side, on which they all damned the skipper; but, behold, when they called,
there was no skipper; which would breed no great amazement in a Dutch
company.’
258. Privy Council Record.
259. Privy Council Record.
260. Privy Council Record.
261. Ibid.
262. Criminal Proceedings, MS. Ant. Soc.

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