SOURCE: "Burns and Philosophy," in A Burns Companion, Macmillan, 1991, pp. 109–15, 391–99.

[In the following excerpt Bold considers Burns's familiarity with the works and ideas of John Locke, David Hume, and other philosophers.]

As a result of the obsequious Preface to the Kilmarnock Edition and Henry Mackenzie's influential description of the poet as a 'Heaven-taught ploughman' (CH, 70) Burns was regarded, by his early readers, as an ignorant man able, by some miracle, to produce poetry. An unsigned notice in the General Magazine and Impartial Review (1787) summed up the position: 'By general report we learn, that R. B. is a ploughboy, of small education' (CH, 88). In fact, by the time the Kilmarnock Edition was published, Burns had read not only the poetry of Pope and Shenstone, not only the fiction of Richardson and Fielding, but the philosophy of John Locke and Adam Smith. Before he left Lochlea in 1784, Burns had read Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), a work regarded as the foundation of British empiricism.

The impact of Locke's Essay on Burns must have been profound, stimulating his insights into human nature and reinforcing his critical attitude to the kirk (religious dogmatists were disturbed by Locke's implication that reasonable discourse depended on 'determined ideas', not obscurantist religious dogma). Briefly, the Essay is an assault on dogmatic beliefs, a book that showed Locke to be preemiment among those David Hume described (in his Introduction to A Treatise of Human Nature) as 'philosophers in England, who have … put the science of man on a new footing, and … excited the curiosity of the public'. In Book I, Locke dismisses the doctrine of an innate knowledge of moral and speculative truths; in Book II he argues that experience accounts for ideas, both ideas of sensation derived from the outer senses, and ideas of reflection induced by introspection; in Book III he discusses the subjective limitations of language; in Book IV he undermines Cartesian assumptions about general truths.

Burns mentions Locke's Essay in his Autobiographical Letter and, writing to Mrs McLehose in January 1788, refers to 'the Great and likewise Good Mr Locke, Author of the famous essay on the human understanding' (CL, 386). Burns would have delighted in Locke's appeals to individual observation, taking this as an encouragement to remain open to natural experience rather than relying on dogma. Locke argued that the mind knows nothing but what it receives from without; so knowledge is founded on observation which the mind rearranges ('Nothing can be in the intellect which was not first in the senses'). Endorsing empirical science (in particular the achievement of 'the incomparable Mr Newton'), with its basis in observation and experiment, Locke rejected the arrogant appeal to innate ideas (of God or anything else). Reacting against scholastic essentialism, Locke drew a distinction between the real (and unknown) essence of an object and its 'nominal essence', accessible to observation. It was a philosophy attractive to a poet of Burns's inquisitive outlook. Indeed, Locke (in 'The Epistle to the Reader') encouraged the individual to regard his own intellectual quest as an end in itself:

For the understanding, like the eye, judging of objects only by its own sight, cannot but be pleased with what it discovers, having less regret for what has escaped it, because it is unknown. Thus he who has raised himself above the almsbasket, and not content to live lazily on scraps of begged opinions, sets his own thoughts on work, to find and follow truth, will (whatever he lights on) not miss the hunter's satisfaction; every moment of his pursuit will reward his pains with some delight, and he will have reason to think his time not ill spent, even when he cannot much boast of any great acquisition.

That reference to 'scraps of begged opinions' must have been relished by Burns as putting the self-righteous in their place.

Burns was never a systematic student of philosophy but, in the course of his short life, showed a shrewd appreciation of those philosophers who confirmed what he concluded through observation and experience. By turns radical, reformist and revolutionary in politics, he was liberal in philosophy; as well as gaining an understanding of Lockean liberalism he was able, in the early summer of 1789, to enthuse over Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations with its emphasis on natural liberty and its insistence that productivity should take priority over pedigree, thus putting the gentry in their place. The Scottish intellectual climate of his time was enlightened and Burns, though raised in a farming community, expanded his intellect through reading and embraced the body of thought that stood for the Enlightenment.

In his first Common Place Book (completed by October 1785), Burns praises Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), a collection of lectures influenced by the empiricist Francis Hutcheson who had taught Smith at Glasgow University and whose Inquiry Into the Origins of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725) associated moral judgement with an intuitive apprehension of virtue as a pleasure. Smith considered that happiness was quantitative and endorsed Hutcheson's sentimental view of morality. Burns wrote:'I entirely agree with that judicious philosopher Mr Smith in his excellent Theory of Moral Sentiments, that Remorse is the most painful sentiment that can embitter the human bosom' (CB, 7).

Elsewhere in the first Common Place Book, Burns expressed a Deism that was implicit in Locke's Essay (with its reference to 'some knowing intelligent Being … which whether any one will please to call God, it matters not') and current among Scottish Common Sense philosophers. Burns declared 'the grand end of human life is to cultivate an intercourse with that Being to whom we owe life' (CB, 22), a teleology that informs a letter of 1788 where he refers to 'a great unknown Being who could have no other end in giving [man] existence but to make him happy' (CL, 90). The Common Sense philosophers, suspicious of rigid Calvinism but reluctant to abandon this 'great unknown Being', were willing to defend the moderate, liberal Presbyterian tradition against the atheistic onslaughts of Hume. One of them, John Gregory, wrote to James Beattie in 1767:

Atheism and materialism are the present fashion. If one speaks with warmth of an infinitely wise and good Being, who sustains and directs the frame of nature, or expresses his steady belief of a future state of existence, he gets hints of his having either a very weak understanding, or of being a very great hypocrite. (William Forbes, An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie, New York, 1807, p. 73)

Beattie was not only a prominent Common Sense philosopher and Professor of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeeen University; he was also a poet. Burns admired Beattie in both capacities. Beattie had, in his Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770), attempted to refute Hume's scepticism; his poem The Minstrel: or, The Progress of Genius (1771–4) was a greatly popular work in its time. Burns praised Beattie in 'The Vision' (1785) for his verse and for his attack on Hume:

In a letter of 1788 Burns saluted Beattie as 'the immortal Author of the Minstrel' (CL, 364).

Burns's satire 'The Holy Fair' (1785), pointedly depicts Common Sense distancing itself from the dogmas of an Auld Licht minister. As soon as the minister gets up to preach, Common Sense departs:

On a parochial level, Burns personifies Common Sense as a tribute to his humane friend Dr John Mackenzie of Mauchline. However, the poem transcends the parochial level and Common Sense is regarded as the natural enemy of life-denying reactionary religion. Again, in 'The Ordination' (1786), Burns invokes 'Curst Common-sense, that imp o Hell' as the enemy of the Auld Licht minister Mackinlay:

And in 'The Brigs of Ayr' (1786) the New Brig (the liberal voice of progression) contrasts 'common-sense' with 'Plain, dull stupidity'.

In the 'Epistle to James Tennant of Glenconner' (1786), Burns praises both Adam Smith and Thomas Reid, the most prominent Common Sense philosopher but, humorously, suggests that Reid's philosophy only elaborates on the sagacity of the common people:

Smith, wi his sympathetic feeling,
An Reid, to common sense appealing.
Philosophers have fought and wrangled,
An meikle Greek and Latin mangled,
Till, wi their logic-jargon tir'd
As in the depth of science mir'd,
To common sense they now appeal—
What wives and wabsters see and feel!
(90/CW, 200)

From personal experience and observation, as well as philosophical inclination, Burns allied himself with a sturdy commonsense and with the Scottish Common Sense philosophers. Coincidentally, Tom Paine's republican treatise of 1776, a book Burns would certainly have known about as a potent influence on the American revolution, was called Common Sense, thus giving the term a revolutionary connotation.

One Common Sense philosopher was personally well known to Burns. Dugald Stewart, whom Burns considered 'The most perfect character I ever saw' (cited by Snyder, 200), met the poet before he went to Edinburgh then went on walks with him in the capital. Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University from 1785 until his retirement in 1810, Stewart was an admirer (and biographer) of the Common Sense philosopher Thomas Reid who oppposed Hume's concept of mind-dependent entities and argued in favour of a commonsense contact with mind-independent realities. Stewart's introduction to his Outlines of Moral Philosophy (1793) gives some indication of his approach:

The ultimate object of philosophical inquiry is the same which every man of plain understanding proposes to himself, when he remarks the events which fall under his observation with a view to the future regulation of his conduct. The more knowledge of this kind we acquire, the better can we accommodate our plans to the established order of things, and avail ourselves of natural Powers and Agents for accomplishing our purposes. (The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart, ed. Sir William Hamilton, Edinburgh, 1854–60, vol. II, p. 6)

If, as is likely, Stewart expressed such ideas in conversation with Burns, the impact would have been positive for Burns also aspired to articulate the insights of 'every man of plain understanding'.

Gilbert Burns suggested that, in his Mount Oliphant period, Burns 'remained unacquainted … with Hume' (GN), thus implying that he subsequently read Scotland's greatest philosopher though in his capacity as a historian (since Gilbert links Hume with William Robertson). As noted above, there is a reference to Hume as 'the sceptic' in 'The Vision' and in the 'Prologue Spoken by Mr Woods' (on the actor's benefit night, 16 April 1787) there is, Kinsley supposes in annotating a passage on Edinburgh's cultural reputation, a 'tribute to the philosophers Hume, Dugald Stewart, and Adam Smith … and to Hume and Robertson as historians' (Kinsley, 1232):

The second line of the quotation pays no tribute to Hume who had no faith in heaven and who insisted, in A Treatise of Human Nature, 'Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.' Produced for declamation in public, the phrase about 'heaven-taught Reason' sounds suspiciously like a specific disavowal of Hume the philosopher, though Hume the historian is given due credit.

Before Burns left Edinburgh and its 'heaven-taught Reason', he sent an 'Address to William Tytler', Tytler (1711–92) being the author of A Historical and Critical Enquiry into the Evidence against Mary Queen of Scots (1760), an attempt to refute the Stuart volumes (1754, 1757) of Hume's History of England. On reading the Enquiry Hume described Tytler as 'a Scots Jacobite, who maintains the innocence of Queen Mary [and is] beyond the reach of argument or reason' (cited by Kinsley, 1233). Burns, however, described Tytler as

Revered defender of beauteous Stuart,
Of Stuart!—a name once respected,
A name which to love was once mark of a true heart,
But now 'tis despis'd and neglected!
(152/CW, 276)

Burns advised Tytler to burn this poem as 'rather heretical' (CL, 291). Though he disapproved of Hume's treatment of Mary Queen of Scots, Burns was proud to list—in a letter of 1791 written for publication in the Statistical Account of Scotland—'Hume's History of the Stewarts' (CL, 587) among the books in the library of the Monkland Friendly Society.

Burns could be devious when it suited his strategy and was cautious about condemning Hume the historian in public. Hume the philosopher required different tactics: the implied rebuke of the 'Prologue Spoken by Mr Woods' and a diplomatic silence. Though Hume had been dead for a decade when Burns arrived in Edinburgh, the sceptical philosopher was still a dangerous figure to discuss, still widely regarded as the atheistic scourge of God-fearing folk. Yet the work of Burns is in accord with Hume's naturalism and his affirmative attitude. In his Conclusion to Book I of A Treatise of Human Nature (which fell 'dead-born from the press' when published in 1739) Hume declared 'Human Nature is the only science of man; and yet has been hitherto the most neglected.' In Section I, Part IV of Book I of the Treatise, Hume said:

Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel; nor can we any more forbear viewing certain objects in a stronger and fuller light, upon account of their customary connection with a present impression, than we can hinder ourselves from thinking, as long as we are awake, or seeing the surrounding bodies, when we turn our eyes towards them in broad sunshine … It is happy, therefore, that nature breaks the force of all sceptical arguments in time, and keeps them from having any considerable influence on the understanding.

This appeal to nature is as compelling as that of Rousseau, Hume's hostile friend. Hume may have felt that poets were 'liars by profession' but, as a man who valued passion above reason, would surely have approved of Burns. And it is difficult to believe that Burns, sometimes a liar through discretion, did not approve of Hume—the enemy of dogma, the empirical successor to Locke, the admirer of nature, the friend of Adam Smith and Dr Blacklock (to whom Hume transferred his salary as librarian of the Advocates' Library)—even though direct evidence is elusive.

Notes

Abbreviations

Poems are cited with reference to two sources: the number assigned to them in James Kinsley's three-volume The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns (1968) and his one-volume Burns: Poems and Songs (1969), available as an Oxford Paperback; and the page numbers from James A. Mackay's one-volume The Complete Works of Robert Burns (1986), authorised by the Burns Federation. Thus 'Tam o Shanter' (321/CW, 410–15) indicates that the poem is numbered 321 by Kinsley and printed on pp. 410–15 of Mackay's edition….

CB

Raymond Lamont Brown (ed.), Robert Burns' Common Place Book (1969).

CH

Donald A. Low (ed.), Robert Burns: The Critical Heritage (1974).

CL

James A. Mackay (ed.), The Complete Letters of Robert Burns (1987)….

CW

James A. Mackay (ed.), The Complete Works of Robert Burns (1986)….

GN

Gilbert's Narrative (see Appendix D)….