7
allowing conquered people to keep their religion was “a practice much better than the
ancient.”
26
Like Hume, he distanced himself from the Hutchesonian understanding of
“true religion” as defined by “the
love of God, and of mankind.”
27
Instead he described a
cycle of religious progress and decline, driven by competition between different sects.
28
Religious improvement, Smith believed, could be attained if religions were disassociated
from state authority, and were allowed to freely multiply and compete. Then a “pure and
rational” religion, free from corruption, intolerance and superstition, would naturally
emerge out of the competition.
29
Like Hume again, who suspected that such a religion
would only appeal to philosophers and not to the masses, Smith held that “popular
superstition and enthusiasm” represented a likely insurmountable obstacle to the
practical realization of this plan. He did draw some hope, however, from the religious
variety and toleration he identified in Pennsylvania, which he believed had fostered
“philosophical good temper and moderation.”
30
In any case, Smith held that religious instruction was “no doubt, beneficial to the whole
society,” and therefore part of “those publick institutions and those publick works,
which [are] in the highest degree advantageous to a great society,” and should be
maintained by “the general contribution of the whole society.”
31
In addition, there were
“very easy and effectual remedies” by which the state might “correct whatever was
unsocial or disagreeably rigorous in the morals of all the little sects into which the
country was divided,” thereby helping the emergence of “pure and rational religion.”
First among these was education. It was in the public interest to “encourage, and ... even
impose upon almost the whole body of the people” a basic level of education
(understood as reading, writing and counting).
32
As for the study of science and
philosophy, “the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition,” it should
be made “almost universal” among the middling ranks of the higher ranks of society,
26
Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence (Indianapolis, 1982), 550.
27
Smith does not use the term “true religion”, but he dismisses “false notions of religion” as the
corruption of “natural principles of religion” or of “natural sentiments”. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral
Sentiments (Indianapolis, 1982), 192, 197. D.D. Raphael points out that for Smith, “a theology is
unacceptable if it fails to accord with ‘all our moral sentiments’.” D. D. Raphael, The Impartial Spectator:
Adam Smith’s Moral Philosophy (Oxford, 2007), 104.
28
Adam Smith,
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, 1981),
2:805–6.
29
“[The propagation of a large number of small sects] might in time probably reduce the doctrine of the
greater part of them to that pure and rational religion, free from every mixture of absurdity, imposture, or
fanaticism, such as wise men have in all ages of the world wished to see established.” Ibid, 2:793.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid, 2:815; Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1:12, 2:723. In his discussion Smith cites Hume’s argument
for a state-funded clergy. Ibid, 2:791.
32
Smith, Wealth of Nations, 2:785.
8
which in turn would help shield the inferior ranks from harmful ideas.
33
In the end,
Smith's version of Humean “true religion” was rather unlikely to rise spontaneously from
the progress of society, but it could be encouraged by the state through the legal
imposition of both education and complete religious toleration.
Montesquieu, Hume and Smith therefore all appraised religious beliefs and religious
establishments in terms of their social utility, or contribution to the public good. In the
case of Hume and Smith, this appraisal was supplemented by a reflection on the
mechanisms of religious progress, in which intellectual enlightenment was both the path
towards, and the criterion that characterized, “true religion”. In the following decades,
this naturalistic accounts of the origins and development of religion was adopted by the
Scottish historians of civil society. While being distinctly more straightforward narratives
of religious “progress”, their narratives continued to uphold the existence of a “true
religion”, knowledge of which was gradually built through the development of human
reason and knowledge rather than revelation. This formed the basis of their non-
providentialist accounts of human and religious history.
34
The Scottish historians of civil society also all agreed in giving religion (both Christian
and pagan) an active role in the progress of society.
Robertson, Kames and Ferguson saw
religion as possessing a naturally moderating influence on despotic societies. Robertson
and Kames, for example, both analyzed the difference between the Inca and Aztec
societies in religious terms. The Inca religion was a “mild superstition” that softened the
harshness of a despotic political system and “considered in a political light, was
excellent” in that it “contributed greatly to improve their morals and manners.”
35
The Christian religion, in these accounts, was a particularly effective tool for molding and
softening the morals of rude nations, thus helping them along on the path towards
politeness and civilization: the “mild spirit of Christianity,” Ferguson wrote, “enjoined
meekness and compassion to barbarous ages”.
36
This was a perspective clearly in line
with Montesquieu’s assessment of religion – especially Christianity – as softening
33
Ibid, 2:796, 793.
34
Spadafora, The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth-Century Britain, 370. See Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History
of Civil Society (Cambridge, 1996), 89–90. John Millar,
An Historical View of the English Government, from the
Settlement of the Saxons in Britain to the Revolution in 1688 (Indianapolis, 2006), 403. Henry Home (Lord
Kames), Sketches of the History of Man, ed. James A. Harris, 3 vols. (Indianapolis, 2007), 3:813–14.
35
Robertson’s History of America (1777), cited in Nicholas Phillipson, “Providence and Progress: An
Introduction to the Historical Thought of William Robertson,” in
William Robertson and the Expansion of
Empire, ed. Stewart J. Brown (Cambridge, 1997), 55-73, at 68. On Kames see Silvia Sebastiani,
The Scottish
Enlightenment: Race, Gender, and the Limits of Progress, trans. Jeremy Carden (New York, 2013), 96–97.
36
Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, 192. See also Kames’s account of the Indians of
Hispaniola, who “embraced the Christian religion, and assumed by degrees the manners and customs of
their masters.” Home (Lord Kames), Sketches of the History of Man, 3:73.