#electronic enlightenment

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I had almost forgot I was the Author of the enquiry concerning the Wealth of Nations.

Adam Smith, philosopher and political scientist, in a letter to the printer and publisher William Strahan. Smith was born on this day in 1723.

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I am a prisoner here in the name of the King, but they can only take away my life and not my love for you. Yes, my adorable mistress, I will see you this evening even if it means losing my head on the scaffold. […]No, nothing can part me from you. Our love is based on virtue, it will last as long as our lives. Order the bootmaker to fetch a carriage—but no, I don’t want you to trust him. Be ready at four o’clock, I will wait for you near your street. Good-bye, there is nothing I would not risk for you, you deserve much more. Good-bye, my dear heart.

Celebrate National Letter Writing Day in the US by reading excerpts from some of the love letters of Voltaire, the great Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher.

Image credit: “Stack Letters Letter Handwriting Family Letters” by Andrys. CC0 via Pixabay. 

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Bastille Day

The people here attacked with stones a body of German cavalry and drove them off. On the 13th, they forced the prison of St. Lazare, released the prisoners and got some arms. The city committee resolved to embody 48,000 Bourgeois. They asked arms at the invalids and being refused the people forced the place and got here a large supply of arms. They then went to the Bastille and made the same demand. The Governor after hoisting a flag of truce and decoying a hundred or two within the outer drawbridge, hoisted the drawbridge and fired on them. The people without then forced the place, took and beheaded the Governor and Lt. Governor, and here compleated arming themselves.

Today is Bastille Day or French National Day, which commemorates the Storming of the Bastille in 1789, a turning point in the French Revolution. Thomas Jefferson was in Paris at the time and recounted the events.

Image credit: “The Storming of the Bastille” by Henry Singleton, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Nature is at her greatest in the smallest things.

Happy World Environment Day! Here, John Locke (the great English philosopher and physician) writes to Nicolas Toinard (a French biblical scholar) on zoology and scientific enquiry.

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To an old man the forgiveness of insults is more useful than revenge.

Born on this day in 1588, Thomas Hobbes (at the age of 86) learns to forgive and forget.

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Elizabeth Montagu, woman of letters

“I think this author a wretched philosopher, a poor metaphysician, a detestable moralist, but he is a man of great wit, infinite memory and much reading.”

As a social reformer, patron of the arts, salonist, critic, and writer, Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800) wasn’t scared to voice her own academic opinions. In a letter to Edward Wortley Montagu, she makes her views clear on Helvétius’ latest philosophical text De l’esprit (a work envisioned to rival Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws).

Image Credit: “Portrait of Elizabeth Montagu by Allen Ramsay, c. 1762.” Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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There is a wicked book in circulation which is much to be abhorred — and I think avoided. The Title Frankenstein...

On this day in 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was published. It caused quite the literary storm, with Hester Lynch Piozzi (a poet, diarist, and patron of the arts) warning her correspondent against this “wicked book.”

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I want all the women married or single to amuse themselves courageously and get divorced or cut by society and if they would all do so, the question of cutting would be at an end…The party of free women is augmenting considerably; I hear every day of new acceders: Why do not they form a club and make a society of their own. The women who go astray have generally so much talent and sensibility, so much genuine goodness of heart, collected into a club, their society would become famous through Europe for its art and refinement, and all that was left of female observers of the conjugal vow, would be scudding away from their husbands as quickly as they could in order to get admitted a member of it.

Clara Mary Jane Clairmont (part of the Shelley–Byron circle) writes to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (the author of Frankenstein, and the only daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the early advocate of women’s rights, who died a few days after her daughter’s birth)--on the ever increasing “party of free women.”