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PHILOSOPHICAL HISTORY AND THE SCIENCE OF MAN IN SCOTLAND: ADAM FERGUSON'S RESPONSE TO ROUSSEAU*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2013

IAIN MCDANIEL
IAIN MCDANIEL*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Sussex E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality is now recognized to have played a fundamental role in the shaping of Scottish Enlightenment political thought. Yet despite some excellent studies of Rousseau's influence on Adam Smith, his impact on Smith's contemporary, Adam Ferguson, has not been examined in detail. This article reassesses Rousseau's legacy in eighteenth-century Scotland by focusing on Ferguson's critique of Rousseau in his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), his History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (1783), and his lectures and published writings in moral philosophy. Ferguson's differences from Rousseau were more pronounced than is sometimes assumed. Not only did Ferguson offer one of the most substantial eighteenth-century refutations of the Genevan's thinking on sociability, nature, art, and culture, he also provided an alternative to the theoretical history of the state set out in the Discourse on Inequality.

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Articles
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Modern Intellectual History , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , November 2013 , pp. 543 - 568
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

*

The argument developed here was originally presented at the Civic Virtue and Modernity: Rousseau in Germany and Britain conference organized by Andreas Gestrich and Avi Lifschitz and held at the German Historical Institute in London in the summer of 2009. A slightly revised version was delivered at the Forum Ideengeschichte of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, in January 2010. I am grateful to the audience on both occasions for their questions and comments, and to Nicholas Phillipson for originally encouraging this work on Ferguson's contribution to the Scottish “science of man.” I am also indebted to Richard Bourke, John Robertson, Silvia Sebastiani, Tony La Vopa and the anonymous readers for Modern Intellectual History for their many insightful criticisms of an earlier draft and for valuable suggestions for improvement.

References

1 For these claims see Wallace, Robert, Various Prospects of Mankind, Nature and Providence (London, 1761), 111–12Google Scholar; Home, Henry, Kames, Lord, Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion, ed. with an intro. by Catherine Moran, Mary (Indianapolis, 2005), 71, 76–7Google Scholar; Beattie, James, An essay on the nature and immutability of truth, in opposition to sophistry and scepticism, 4th edxn (London, 1773), 437–40Google Scholar. Works which discuss Rousseau's legacy in eighteenth-century Scotland include Warner, James, “The Reaction in Eighteenth-Century England to Rousseau's Two Discours,” Modern Language Association 48 (1933), 471–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; France, Peter, “Primitivism and Enlightenment: Rousseau and the Scots,” Yearbook of English Studies 15 (1985), 64–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leigh, R. A., “Rousseau and the Scottish Enlightenment,” Contributions to Political Economy 5 (1986), 1–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carey, Daniel, “Reconsidering Rousseau: Sociability, Moral Sense and the American Indian from Hutcheson to Bartram,” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 21 (1998), 25–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robertson, John, The Case for the Enlightenment: Scotland and Naples 1680–1760 (Cambridge, 2005), 402–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the works cited in note 2 below.

2 There is now a lively scholarly debate about the precise nature of Smith's relation to Rousseau. Recent works on the topic include Force, Pierre, Self-Interest before Adam Smith: A Genealogy of Economic Science (Cambridge, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berry, Christopher, “Smith under Strain” (review of Force, Self-Interest before Adam Smith), European Journal of Political Theory 3 (2004), 455–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment, 392–7; Hanley, Ryan Patrick, “Commerce and Corruption: Rousseau's Diagnosis and Adam Smith's Cure,” European Journal of Political Theory 7 (2008), 137–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rasmussen, Dennis C., The Problems and Promise of a Commercial Society: Adam Smith's Response to Rousseau (University Park, PA, 2008)Google Scholar; Phillipson, Nicholas, Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life (New Haven, CT, 2010), 138–79Google Scholar. For an earlier but still useful examination see West, E. G., “Adam Smith and Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality: Inspiration or Provocation?”, Journal of Economic Issues 5 (1971), 56–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an eighteenth-century comparison of Smith's sympathy with Rousseau's pity see Kames, Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion, 70–71. One purpose of the present essay is to provide a balance to the overwhelming dominance of Smith in studies of Rousseau's impact in Scotland.

3 Rousseau and Ferguson are frequently described as “men of republican principles” who shared a common framework in thinking about the opposition between virtue and commerce. J. G. A. Pocock identified both Ferguson and Rousseau as Machiavellian civic humanists who were embarked in tracking the contradictions between virtue and commerce, history and corruption; see Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, 2nd edn (Princeton, 2003), 499–505Google Scholar. See also France, “Rousseau and the Scots,” 70; Winch, Donald, “Commercial Realities, Republican Principles,” in Skinner, Quentin and Gelderen, Martin van, ed.s, Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2002), 2: 298–300Google Scholar; Hill, Lisa, The Passionate Society: The Social, Political, and Moral Thought of Adam Ferguson (Dordrecht, 2006), 3, 39–40Google Scholar.

4 On this point see Berry, Christopher J., Social Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1997), 23Google Scholar; Finlay, Christopher J., “Rhetoric and Citizenship in Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society,” History of Political Thought 27 (2006), 27–49Google Scholar. Fania Oz-Salzberger, in her important study of Ferguson's reception in Germany, rightly underlines Ferguson's criticism of Rousseau's non-social state of nature, but misleadingly suggests that Ferguson's idea of citizenship was substantially similar to that of Rousseau; see Oz-Salzberger, Fania, Translating the Enlightenment: Scottish Civic Discourse in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Oxford, 1995), 110–11, 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Ferguson's concern to refute speculative accounts of the “origin of Inequality or Subordination” is particularly visible in his lecture course; see Adam Ferguson, Lectures on Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy, Edinburgh University Library Special Collections MS, Papers of Professor Adam Ferguson, Dc.1.84 (lecture of 22 Dec. 1783).

6 Ferguson, Lectures, lecture of 25 Nov. 1783.

7 On this see Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, “Discourse on Political Economy,” and Rousseau, “The Social Contract,” both in Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. Gourevitch, Victor (Cambridge, 1995), 19, 35, 78 nGoogle Scholar.

8 For Ferguson's claim that a “social compact” was a mere fiction, incapable of grounding the duties and rights of mankind, see Ferguson, Adam, Institutes of Moral Philosophy, 2nd edn (Edinburgh, 1773), 199–202Google Scholar. For a more comprehensive discussion, incorporating extensive criticism of Hobbes's Elements of Law (“De Corpore Politico”) and Rousseau's Social Contract, see Ferguson, Principles of Moral and Political Science, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1792), 2: 214–47.

9 For Ferguson's dismissal of the arguments of “speculative reasoners” on this subject see Ferguson, Adam, History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic, 2nd edn, 5 vols. (Edinburgh, 1799), 1: 95–8Google Scholar.

10 For the critique of modern superiority see Ferguson, Essay, 33. For the more specific claim that the arts and sciences could be sources of corruption see Ferguson, Adam, “Of Statesmen and Warriours,” in Ferguson, The Manuscripts of Adam Ferguson, ed. Merolle, Vincenzo, with Dix, Robin and Heath, Eugene (London, 2006), 40Google Scholar.

11 On this early “dissertation” see Ferguson, Adam to Elliot, Gilbert, 19 March 1758, in The Correspondence of Adam Ferguson, ed. Merolle, Vincenzo, 2 vols. (London, 1995), 1: 26–7Google Scholar. David Hume mentioned Ferguson's “Treatise of Refinement” in 1759; see Hume, David to Smith, Adam, 12 April 1759, in New Letters of David Hume, ed. Klibansky, Raymond and Mossner, Ernest C. (Oxford, 1954), 52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Ferguson, Adam, History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1783), 1: 3Google Scholar.

13 Compare Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Second Discourse, in Rousseau, The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, ed. Gourevitch, Victor (Cambridge, 1997), 184–8, with Ferguson, Essay, 213–20, 224–31, 247–64Google Scholar.

14 The most impressive recent argument for the centrality of the “science of man” agenda in Scotland can be found in Phillipson, Nicholas, Adam Smith: A Philosophical Life (New Haven, CT, 2010)Google Scholar. See also Jones, Peter, ed., The “Science of Man” in the Scottish Enlightenment: Hume, Reid, and Their Contemporaries (Edinburgh, 1989)Google Scholar; Wood, Paul B., “The Science of Man,” in Jardine, N., Secord, J. A. and Spary, E. C., eds., Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge, 1996), 197–210Google Scholar; Phillipson, Nicholas, “Language, Sociability, and History: Some Reflections on the Foundations of Adam Smith's Science of Man,” in Collini, Stefan, Whatmore, Richard and Young, Brian, eds., Economy, Polity, and Society: British Intellectual History 1750–1950 (Cambridge, 2000), 70–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meyer, Annette, Von der Wahrheit zur Wahrscheinlichkeit: Die Wissenschaft vom Menschen in der schottischen und deutschen Aufklärung (Tübingen, 2008)Google Scholar; Ahnert, Thomas and Manning, Susan, “Introduction: Character, Self, and Sociability in the Scottish Enlightenment,” in Thomas Ahnert, and Susan Manning, , eds., Character, Self, and Sociability in the Scottish Enlightenment (New York, 2011), 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the natural sciences in the Scottish Enlightenment see Wilson, David B., Seeking Nature's Logic: Natural Philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment (University Park, PA, 2009)Google Scholar. For the broader European context see Garrett, Aaron, “Human Nature,” in Haakonssen, Knud, ed., The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2006), 1: 160–234Google Scholar; Pross, Wolfgang,“Naturalism, Anthropology, and Culture,” in Goldie, Mark and Wokler, Robert, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge, 2006), 218–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. with Nidditch, P. H., 2nd edn (Oxford, 1978), xiii–xixGoogle Scholar.

16 Ahnert and Manning, “Introduction,” 6.

17 For the scope of his “history of human nature” see Ferguson, Institutes, 11–13; Ferguson, Principles, 1: 1, 49. For more detailed commentary on the scientific grounding of Ferguson's history of mankind see Wood, Paul, “The Natural History of Man in the Scottish Enlightenment,” History of Science 27 (1989), 89–123Google Scholar; Meyer, Annette, “Ferguson's ‘Appropriate Stile’ in Combining History and Science,” in Merolle, Vincenzo and Heath, Eugene, eds., Adam Ferguson: History, Progress and Human Nature (London, 2008), 131–45Google Scholar.

18 Ferguson, Essay, 8–9. On “particular facts” see Ferguson, Lectures, lecture of 12 Nov. 1783.

19 For endorsements of Buffon and Pliny see Ferguson, Institutes, 12, 15, 19; and Ferguson, Lectures, lectures of 26 Nov. 1776 and 29 Nov. 1780.

20 Ferguson, History, 5: 418–19; Ferguson to Edward Gibbon, 18 April 1776, in Ferguson, Correspondence, 1: 141.

21 Stewart, Dugald, “An Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith,” in Adam Smith, Essays on Philosophical Subjects, ed. Wightman, W. P. D. and Bryce, J. C. (Oxford, 1982), 274–5, 293Google Scholar. For eighteenth-century descriptions of the Essay as a form of theoretical history, histoire raisonnée or allgemeine Cultur-Geschichte see Bisset, Robert, “Biographical Sketch of Dr. Adam Fergusson,” in The Historical, Biographical, Literary, and Scientific Magazine, 3 vols. (London, 1799–1800), 3: 45Google Scholar; Bower, Alexander, The History of the University of Edinburgh, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1830), 3: 10Google Scholar; Jenisch, Daniel, Universalhistorischer Ueberblick der Entwickelung des Menschengeschlechts, als eines sich fortbildenen Ganzen. Eine Philosophie der Culturgeschichte, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1801), 1: 25Google Scholar. On conjectural history and stadial history see Höpfl, H. M., “From Savage to Scotsman: Conjectural History in the Scottish Enlightenment,” Journal of British Studies 17 (1978), 19–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meek, Ronald, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge, 1979)Google Scholar; Hont, Istvan, “The Language of Sociability and Commerce: Samuel Pufendorf and the Theoretical Foundations of the ‘Four Stages’ Theory,” in Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 159–84Google Scholar; O'Brien, Karen, “Between Enlightenment and Stadial History,” British Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies 16 (1993), 53–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 On this point see Sebastiani, Silvia, The Scottish Enlightenment: Race, Gender, and the Limits of Progress (New York, 2013), 6–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Hont, Istvan, “Commercial Society and Political Theory in the Eighteenth Century: The Problem of Authority in David Hume and Adam Smith,” in Melching, Willem and Velema, Wyger, eds., Main Trends in Cultural History (Amsterdam, 1994), 54–94Google Scholar; Hont, “The Language of Sociability and Commerce.”

24 On Hume's Epicurean account of morality and his account of natural religion see Robertson, The Case for the Enlightenment, 289–324. For an important reconsideration of the reception of Hume among Reid, Smith and Kames see Harris, James A., “The Early Reception of Hume's Theory of Justice,” in Savage, Ruth, ed., Philosophy and Religion in Enlightenment Britain (Oxford, 2012), 210–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Wallace, Various Prospects of Mankind, 111–12 n. For background on Wallace, and his critique of Humean scepticism see Luehrs, Robert B., “Population and Utopia in the Thought of Robert Wallace,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 20 (1987), 313–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Scottish moderatism see especially Sher, Richard B., Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1985)Google Scholar.

26 Beattie, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, 438 n.

27 Ferguson, Essay, 12, 103, 192.

28 Ferguson, Principles, 1: 163–71.

29 Ferguson, Adam, Essai sur l'histoire de la société civile, trans. Bergier, Claude-François, 2 vols. (Paris, 1783), 1: v–ixGoogle Scholar.

30 Meiners, Christoph, Grundriß der Geschichte der Menschheit (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1786), 81–4Google Scholar. See Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment, 247.

31 Müller's Beobachtungen über Geschichte, Gesetze und Interessen der Menschen represents a selection from a much larger set of notes written in Geneva between 1774 and 1776. For the edited text see Müller, Johannes von, Sämmtliche Werke, ed. Müller, Johann Georg, 40 vols. (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1835), 37: 46–130Google Scholar.

32 Müller, Beobachtungen, 37: 55, 60–68.

33 Rousseau, Second Discourse, 113.

34 Ibid., 124–8, 186, 197. An equally strong distinction between nature and convention ran through both the Discourse on Political Economy and the Social Contract; see Rousseau, , The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, 3, 44Google Scholar.

35 This paragraph draws from the analysis contained in my Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Roman Past and Europe's Future (Cambridge, MA, 2013). For these passages, see Ferguson, Essay, 7–16, 161–3.

36 Ferguson, Principles, 1: 55. This was a rejection of Rousseau's belief that pity prevented humans from degenerating into monsters or beasts, a claim Rousseau associated with Mandeville; see Rousseau, Second Discourse, 153.

37 Ferguson, Essay, 10–12, 73.

38 Ibid., 24–9. For Rousseau's claim that enmity and war emerge from property relations see especially Rousseau, Social Contract, 46; and Rousseau, “The State of War,” in Rousseau, The Social Contract, 162–76. I have written in more detail about this subject in “Unsocial Sociability in the Scottish Enlightenment: Adam Ferguson on War, International Relations, and Agonistic Patriotism,” in Eva Piirimäe and Alexander Schmidt, eds., Sociability, Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism in Enlightenment Political Thought, special issue of History of European Ideas, forthcoming.

39 Ferguson, Essay, 35–43. Here Ferguson was adapting Francis Hutcheson's argument that benevolence and sociability were the foundations of moral sentiment; see Hutcheson, Francis, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, ed. with an intro. by Leidhold, Wolfgang (Indianapolis, 2008), 85–100, 116–47Google Scholar.

40 Ferguson, Essay, 12, 17. For the centrality of inventiveness see also Ferguson, Institutes, 16–17.

41 For Rousseau's conception of perfectibility see Rousseau, Second Discourse, 141. For Ferguson's more straightforward understanding of the “desire of perfection” see Ferguson, Essay, 14; Ferguson, Institutes, 96.

42 Ferguson, Lectures, lectures of 26 Nov. 1776 and 22 Nov. 1776.

43 Ferguson, Lectures, lectures of 20 Nov. 1776 and 16 Nov. 1784.

44 For the relevant passages from Buffon see Leclerc, George Louis, Buffon, comte de, Histoire naturelle générale et particulière: avec la description du Cabinet du Roy, 21 vols. (Paris, 1749–89), 2: 429–44Google Scholar. This usage of Buffon obviously clashed significantly with Rousseau's own substantial borrowings from Buffon; see Rousseau, Second Discourse, Notes II–IV, 189–93.

45 See Kames, Lord, Sketches of the History of Man, ed. Harris, James A., 3 vols. (Indianapolis, 2007))Google Scholar;) Gregory, John, A Comparative View of the State and Faculties of Man with those of the Animal World, 5th edn (London, 1772)Google Scholar; Burnet, James, Monboddo, Lord, Antient Metaphysics. Volume Third. Containing the History and Philosophy of Men (London, 1784)Google Scholar. On these discussions (and Rousseau's relevance to them) see Wokler, Robert, “Perfectible Apes in Decadent Cultures: Rousseau's Anthropology Revisited”, in Wokler, Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and Their Legacies, ed. Garsten, Bryan, with an introduction by Christopher Brooke (Princeton, 2012), 1–28Google Scholar; Wokler, “Apes and Races in the Scottish Enlightenment: Monboddo and Kames on the Nature of Man,” in Jones, Peter, ed., Philosophy and Science in the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1988), 145–68Google Scholar; Barnard, Alan, “Monboddo's Orang Outang and the Definition of Man,” in Corbey, Raymond and Theunissen, Bert, eds., Ape, Man, Apeman: Changing Views since 1600 (Leiden, 1995), 72–85Google Scholar.

46 Ferguson, Lectures, lecture of 26 Nov. 1783.

47 This essay is written on paper with an 1806 watermark; see Ferguson, “Of Nature and Art,” in Ferguson, Manuscripts, 243–7.

48 Ferguson, “Of Nature and Art,” 243.

49 Ibid., 245.

50 Ibid., 244.

51 In emphasizing the correlation between virtue and happiness, Ferguson was echoing similar statements made earlier in the century by Francis Hutcheson and Bishop Joseph Butler. On this theme see Brooke, Christopher, Philosophic Pride: Stoicism and Political Thought from Lipsius to Rousseau (Princeton, 2012), 159–67, 176Google Scholar.

52 Ferguson, “Of Nature and Art,” 246.

53 Ferguson, Essay, 116, 119. Compare Rousseau, Second Discourse, 161, 171–2.

54 Ferguson, Essay, 69.

55 Ibid., 87–8.

56 Ibid., 93.

57 Ibid., 75, 83–5, 87, 92, 98, 178. For a similarly positive description of the savage's “passion for the real and superior distinctions of courage and fortitude” see Ferguson, Principles, 2: 377–8.

58 Colden was a Scottish natural philosopher who was also surveyor-general of New York in the 1720s; see Colden, Cadwallader, The History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada, which are dependent on the province of New-York in America, and are the barrier between the English and French in that Part of the world, 3rd edn, 2 vols. (London, 1755), 1: 2–3Google Scholar.

59 Ferguson, Essay, 97–100, 142. On Smith's account see Smith, Adam, Lectures on Jurisprudence, ed. Meek, R. L., Raphael, D. D. and Stein, P. G., (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar, report of 1762–3, iv.43–57 (216–21). On this aspect of Smith's thought see Hont, Istvan, “Adam Smith's History of Law and Government as Political Theory,” in Bourke, Richard and Geuss, Raymond, eds., Political Judgement: Essays for John Dunn (Cambridge, 2009), 131–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Ferguson, Essay, 174.

61 Ferguson, Principles, 1: 256–7.

62 Ferguson, Essay, 84, 121.

63 Ferguson, History, 1: 5–15.

64 Ferguson, Adam, Analysis of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy (Edinburgh, 1766), 50–51Google Scholar; see also Ferguson, Lectures, lecture of 17 Dec. 1779; and Ferguson, Principles, 2: 416.

65 Ferguson, Essay, 98, 63–4.

66 Ibid., 129.

67 Rousseau, Second Discourse, 184–6. For a similar presentation see Rousseau, “Discourse on Political Economy,” 28–9.

68 Ferguson, Essay, 42.

69 Lucretius, , De rerum natura, ed. Bailey, Cyril, 3 vols. (Oxford, 2001), 1: 490–91 (V.1113–14)Google Scholar.

70 Ferguson, Essay, 35. On Rousseau's own diagnosis see Keohane, Nannerl O., “‘The Masterpiece of Policy in our Century’: Rousseau on the Morality of the Enlightenment,” Political Theory 6 (1978), 457484CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Hundert, E. J., “Bernard Mandeville and the Enlightenment's Maxims of Modernity,” Journal of the History of Ideas 56 (1995), 577–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Ferguson, Essay, 206. Rousseau, Discourse on the Sciences and Arts or First Discourse, in Rousseau, , The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, 14, 22 nGoogle Scholar.

72 Ferguson, Essay, 207.

73 Ibid., 203–20.

74 Ibid., 236.

75 Ibid., 229–32, 235–42.

76 Ibid., 232.

77 Although Rousseau consistently warned that extreme inequalities between rich and poor were a threat to the rule of law and justice, it is important to note that he did not call for the egalitarian redistribution of property. Rather, he called for the prevention of inequality before it arose. He did claim that extremes should be brought “as close together as possible.” See Rousseau, “Discourse on Political Economy,” 19; Rousseau, The Social Contract, 56, 78.

78 Ferguson, Essay, 255.

79 See Institutes, 274.

80 Ferguson, History, 1: 42, 390, 396.

81 Ferguson, Principles, 2: 463.

82 Ferguson, Essay, 203–13.

83 Ibid., 204–5.

84 Ibid., 231.

85 Ibid., 231.

86 Ibid., 130.

87 Ibid., 212.

88 On the ways in which the distinction between nature and culture played out in the works of Rousseau's continental European readers and critics see Sonenscher, Michael, Sans-Culottes: An Emblem in the French Revolution (Princeton, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Rousseau, Social Contract, 109.

90 This theme was given a more providential gloss in the Principles of Moral and Political Science, in which Ferguson noted that “some species of government being necessary to the peace of society, Providence has kindly ordained, that wherever there is a society, there should be government also.” Ferguson, Principles, 2: 244.