The Science of Man in the Scottish Enlightenment

Much of the surge in Hume-Madison scholarship over the last several decades presented Hume and Adam Smith as the foremost figures in eighteenth-century Scottish philosophy.Footnote ¹⁶ According to this interpretation, the Scottish Enlightenment stood above all for finding the causes of human betterment in this world.Footnote ¹⁷ A similar argument has been made that the cultivation of polite culture, discourse, and manners within commercial society is the unifying theme of the Scottish Enlightenment.Footnote ¹⁸ From these perspectives—which treat the groundbreaking moral and sociological analysis of progress, commerce, and politeness as the essence of Scottish Enlightenment thought—there is good reason to think, with Nicholas Phillipson, that Hume was “the pivotal figure of the history of the Scottish Enlightenment.”Footnote ¹⁹

But there is another interpretation in which Hume is not at the forefront. This interpretation stresses the primacy of metaphysics. The essence of the Scottish Enlightenment, in this case, is the use of scientific methods to develop a true pneumatology, or science of mind, capable of guiding all subsequent inquiry into moral and natural philosophy.Footnote ²⁰ From this point of view, as James McCosh observed, Reid is “the fit representative of Scottish philosophy.”Footnote ²¹

Of course, Hume also applied the scientific method to moral matters. He, too, portrayed the science of man as the foundation of all sciences. He articulated one that he hoped would be more accurate and useful than its rivals.Footnote ²² But as Roger Emerson wrote, “Hume, driven by the hatred of religious belief which informs most of what he wrote, profoundly differed in outlook from most of his contemporaries.”Footnote ²³ Hume’s science of man was unusual because it rejected the common language of duty and dismissed natural theology, which he regarded as beyond the scope of scientific investigation.Footnote ²⁴ For this reason, Hume’s critics regarded him as one of “the corrupters of science, the pests of society, and the enemies of mankind.”Footnote ²⁵

Both Hume and Reid agreed that “The first Principles of all the Sciences are to be found in the Science of human Nature.”Footnote ²⁶ Hume claimed to “cultivate true metaphysics.”Footnote ²⁷ But Reid argued that “Mr Humes sceptical System” was “wrong & mistaken.”Footnote ²⁸ This kind of combat over the first principles of the science of man shows the centrality of the constitution of the human mind in Scottish philosophy.

The Scottish philosophy, and its corresponding science of man, landed on American shores before Witherspoon did. The Scot William Smith became the first provost of the College of Pennsylvania and incorporated the writings of Francis Hutcheson into the ethics curriculum.Footnote ²⁹ Hutcheson, who opposed Hume’s candidacy for the Chair of Ethics and Pneumatic Philosophy at Edinburgh in 1745, articulated a duty-based, theologically infused pneumatology on which Reid and Witherspoon built. Educated in Aberdeen, Smith applied in America what he had learned in Scotland, that moral philosophy is grounded in an understanding of human nature.Footnote ³⁰ We learn our duties by learning our nature. If we get human nature wrong, then we get everything else wrong, from law and politics to economics and the arts. As Reid asserted, “the painter, the poet, the actor, the orator, the moralist, and the statesman” succeed or fail based on their knowledge of “the principles of the human constitution.”Footnote ³¹ This has tremendous implications for politics. Reid wrote, “it is of great importance, that those who have any share, either in domestic or civil government, should know the nature of man, and how he is to be trained and governed.”Footnote ³²

The science of man that prevailed in Scotland—and in America—in the eighteenth century drew so heavily from Scottish thinkers that writers, such as Madison, who were educated in the tradition, rarely acknowledged their specific debts to them. In some cases, scholars have given credit to Hume for ideas that Madison easily could have drawn from elsewhere.Footnote ³³

Regarding constitutional attachment and political methodology, for example, Madison repeated commonplaces in Scottish thought. Madison’s comment on the sources of constitutional attachment in Federalist 49 reflected Hume’s analysis of the way custom, or prejudice, supports allegiance to government. Constant appeals to the public to amend the Constitution “would, in great measure, deprive the government of that veneration which time bestows on every thing, and without which perhaps the wisest and freest governments would possess the requisite stability.”Footnote ³⁴ But Madison need not have relied on Hume to understand that “reverence” for the constitution grows with “age.”Footnote ³⁵ Witherspoon, writing on the placement of the capital city in the United States, observed that it will “take some time” before the federal constitution “can acquire the respect and veneration necessary in every government from the body of the people, who are always guided by feeling and habit, more than by a train of reasoning, however conclusive.”Footnote ³⁶ Furthermore, Madison’s observation that rational government benefits from having “the prejudices of the community on its side” was shared by Edmund Burke.Footnote ³⁷ The thesis that time produces habitual obedience and constitutional reverence was shared by many eighteenth-century writers. Jason Frank flatly states that Madison “did not need to endorse Hume’s radical skepticism or even be familiar with Hume’s Treatise to use a widely available understanding of the customary basis of power in habit and the sediment of the imagination.”Footnote ³⁸

Similarly, Madison, like Hume, used experience and observation to draw lessons about politics. But Madison did not need to read Hume to adopt this method of inquiry. It is true that Madison’s contemporaries lauded him for the “range of historical illustration” at his disposal.Footnote ³⁹ But as Jack Rakove suggests, this method of “reasoning from past to present” was “familiar … in eighteenth-century thinking.”Footnote ⁴⁰ It was not a matter of controversy.Footnote ⁴¹

The constitution of the human mind, meanwhile, was a matter of controversy. Even then, though, the acknowledgment of intellectual debts was rare, because the first principles of the science of man were established by means of experience, observation, and philosophical rigor, not authority. Peter Diamond suggested that Witherspoon did not acknowledge his debts to Hutcheson in his Lectures on Moral Philosophy, because he, like Hutcheson, was a practical moralist, devoted to articulating a true theory of human nature. If reason and experience verified that theory, there was no need to cite Hutcheson, Reid, or any other alleged authority.Footnote ⁴²

When Witherspoon addressed seniors at Princeton receiving their Bachelor of Arts degrees in 1775, he declared that the education they received was “only intended to give you the elements and first principles of science.”Footnote ⁴³ The Virginia historian Hugh Blair Grigsby wrote that Madison, in informal conversations at the Virginia Convention of 1829–30, “recalled to his young friends in his charming way the memory of Witherspoon, who blended so intimately the duties of the scholar and the statesman and who was the guide of his youth.”Footnote ⁴⁴ Madison, Grigsby observed, had a “philosophical caste of mind.”Footnote ⁴⁵ And this philosophical cast of mind was framed by Witherspoon, his guide, who taught him the first principles of science in accord with the Scottish philosophy.

Common Sense and Conscience: The Science of Man at Princeton

According to Madison’s early biographer William Rives, Witherspoon revised the college’s curriculum to place greater emphasis on metaphysics and moral philosophy. In the new curriculum, Witherspoon presented a science of man inspired by the writings of Hutcheson and Reid to an American audience. This science of man rested on the principles of common sense and conscience. Madison’s science of man rested on these principles, too.

Witherspoon’s Lectures on Moral Philosophy incorporated Reid’s common sense language to rebut the skeptical “metaphysical subtleties” of “infidel writers, particularly David Hume.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Hume had shaken “the certainty of our belief upon cause and effect, upon personal identity and the idea of power,” by arguing that these beliefs were rationally unjustified.Footnote ⁴⁷ Witherspoon responded as Reid and Beattie had. In fact, Witherspoon claimed to have articulated “the same trains of thought” before they had.Footnote ⁴⁸ There are “certain first principles or dictates of common sense”—including intuitive belief in personal identity and necessary causation—that “are the foundation of all reasoning” and that, like axioms in mathematical science, cannot be proven.Footnote ⁴⁹ These are the first principles on which all philosophic and scientific investigation depend.

Witherspoon contended that there are first principles of moral reasoning, as well.Footnote ⁵⁰ His presentation of these, grounded in the fundamental idea of conscience, is consistent with that of Hutcheson and Reid. The priority of conscience in Witherspoon’s thought is where the two streams of Hutcheson’s moral sense theory and Reid’s common sense philosophy converge.Footnote ⁵¹ Scholars take too little notice of this.

Witherspoon’s Lectures closely followed and sometimes amended the later writings of Hutcheson.Footnote ⁵² It might seem odd that Witherspoon replicated so much of Hutcheson’s moral philosophy, given that they were on opposite sides of ecclesiological debates in Scotland. Witherspoon was the vocal leader of the Popular Party against the Moderate clergy in the Scottish Kirk. Hutcheson’s philosophy, meanwhile, appeared to inform the sermons of Moderate clergy, such as Hugh Blair and William Robertson. These clergymen seemed to downplay the relevance of church doctrine and natural theology and elevate the role of feeling, that is, the moral sense, in their preaching.Footnote ⁵³ When Robertson served as a leading member of the General Assembly, Benjamin Rush wrote a letter to Witherspoon to persuade him to travel to America to become president of the College of New Jersey. He mentioned that Witherspoon’s prospects were better in America, since the Moderate Party in Scotland had marked him “out as Object of their Resentment.”Footnote ⁵⁴

In any case, Witherspoon incorporated Hutcheson’s moral sense language into his lectures. And he equated the moral sense, the moral faculty, and conscience, as Hutcheson had in his later writings. Christina Chuang argues that conscience in Hutcheson’s later work “has a cognitive function.”Footnote ⁵⁵ But Reid, in the Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, contended that Hutcheson’s moral sense always had incorporated rational judgment: “Sense always implies judgment.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Hutcheson admitted as much in Synopsis Metaphysicae, in which he wrote: “Of all these reflexive senses the most notable is the sense of the fitting and the good, which passes judgment as from the bench on all the things men do.”Footnote ⁵⁷

Hutcheson’s early writings, published in the 1720s, targeted the egoists, Thomas Hobbes and Bernard Mandeville, who denied the reality of moral distinctions and resolved all motivation to self-love. Except for Illustrations upon the Moral Sense, Hutcheson did not bother to refute the moral rationalism of Samuel Clarke, because he agreed with Clarke on the most important fundamental principle, namely, that there is a real difference between moral good and evil.Footnote ⁵⁸ As D. D. Raphael observed, it is unclear in Hutcheson’s early works whether the moral faculty operates by sense or reason.Footnote ⁵⁹

But in his later works, Philosophiae Moralis Institutio Compendiaria and the posthumously published System of Moral Philosophy, Hutcheson clearly presented the moral sense, or conscience, as a rational faculty. He treated conscience as hegemonic, playing an authoritative, governing role.Footnote ⁶⁰ It ascertains what is good and evil according to “the constitution of nature” and directs us to what ought to be done for the sake of our “happiness and perfection.”Footnote ⁶¹ The moral sense, or conscience, can ascertain the laws of nature and guide the will accordingly.Footnote ⁶²

Hume informed Hutcheson by letter that his Institutio seemed “to embrace Dr Butler’s Opinion in his Sermons on human Nature.”Footnote ⁶³ Hume made this suggestion because Hutcheson’s later work posited the existence of a “natural desire of moral excellence.”Footnote ⁶⁴ This natural desire is governed by conscience, which reveals the path to virtue by revealing what conforms with nature.Footnote ⁶⁵ The determinations of conscience are authoritative, that is, they bind us. By incorporating the language of the authoritative conscience into his moral sense philosophy, Hutcheson’s moral sense theory became, in Joseph Filonowicz’s term, “Butlerized.”Footnote ⁶⁶ Butler had transcended the arguments that pit sense against reason as the origin of moral distinctions. He argued that conscience, that is, the moral sense, possesses normative authority because it partakes in reason, which reveals the law by which we ought to abide. It has been argued that Witherspoon’s moral philosophy, as well as Reid’s, was “Butlerized,” insofar as they transcended the sense versus reason debate and put trust in the authority of conscience.Footnote ⁶⁷

Witherspoon recognized there was common ground in the moral sense arguments, presented by Hutcheson, and the rationalist arguments, presented by Clarke. Both understood conscience as the source of objective truth about moral distinctions and obligations.Footnote ⁶⁸ Conscience is “the law which our Maker has written upon our hearts” that “both intimates and enforces duty, previous to all reasoning.”Footnote ⁶⁹ “Conscience enlightened by reason” illuminates the “rule of duty” that directs us toward virtue and away from vice.Footnote ⁷⁰ The distinction between virtue and vice is grounded in “the nature of things.”Footnote ⁷¹ Witherspoon incorporated this understanding of the moral sense, or conscience, into his lectures to distance himself from the position he attributed to Hume, namely, that “virtue” is founded “on a delusive feeling.”Footnote ⁷²

The notion of conscience shared by Butler, Hutcheson, Witherspoon, and Reid, as Harris states, “makes no sense” for Hume.Footnote ⁷³ For Hume, it is “impossible, that the distinction betwixt moral good and evil, can be made by reason.”Footnote ⁷⁴ “Morality” cannot “be discover’d by the understanding.”Footnote ⁷⁵ But for Reid, the moral sense, though bearing an analogy to the external senses, is an intellectual power that shows “not what man is, but what he ought to be. Whatever is immediately perceived to be just, honest, and honourable.”Footnote ⁷⁶ Reid emphasized that “the moral sense … is the power of judging in morals.” And the authority of the moral sense derives from proper judgment. This contrasts with the view of “Mr. Hume,” who “will have the moral sense to be only a power of feeling without judging: This I take to be an abuse of a word.”Footnote ⁷⁷

When Witherspoon mentioned Hume in his lectures at Princeton, he did so to rebut him. Madison’s reading of Hume’s Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, which were on Witherspoon’s extracurricular reading list,Footnote ⁷⁸ seems to have informed Madison’s views on the construction of political institutions.Footnote ⁷⁹ Still, Madison’s encounter with Witherspoon’s Lectures would have provided him with ample reason to avoid Hume’s skepticism in metaphysical, epistemological, and moral matters. And there were other authors on Witherspoon’s recommended reading list that would have provided further support for a conception of the human person immune from skeptical assaults.

One of those authors is Adam Ferguson who was, along with Reid, Beattie, Hutcheson, and Dugald Stewart, one of the most popular moral philosophers in American universities.Footnote ⁸⁰ The Stoic, teleological, and Christian elements of Ferguson’s thought are undeniable. He borrowed the language of moral sense from Hutcheson. He commented on the providential and objective quality of moral judgments. He propounded a system of natural law and argued that conscience guides the human person towards his natural end.Footnote ⁸¹ According to Ferguson, “The testimony of conscience, which has been emphatically termed, The Lamp of God in the Soul of Man, is a striking evidence of his presence to administer light; and to enforce the discipline … on the instruction and guidance of a conscious and voluntary agent.”Footnote ⁸² Ferguson, a critic of commercial society, who praised the honor, courage, and martial excellence of the Scottish Highlanders, founded his moral thought on conscience, duty, and natural religion.Footnote ⁸³

Ferguson, like Hutcheson and Reid, articulated a central theme of the Scottish science of man, which Witherspoon conveyed to his students at Princeton, namely, that the will is responsive to reason.Footnote ⁸⁴ “The understanding,” Witherspoon wrote, “seems to have truth for its object, the discovering things as they really are in themselves. … the choice made by the will seems to have the judgment or deliberation of the understanding as its very foundation.”Footnote ⁸⁵ Although Hutcheson is often classed among the moral sense theorists as opposed to the moral rationalists, he too wrote in the Institutio that the will is a “rational appetite.” And “the stable desire of happiness” has “reason” for its conductor.Footnote ⁸⁶ The attainment of happiness, in this case, depends on the proper development of sound understanding, because “the affections of the will naturally follow the judgments formed by the understanding.”Footnote ⁸⁷ Madison’s moral and political philosophy hinges on this notion that Hume rejected, namely, that the will is responsive to reason, which can ascertain the nature of things.

Responsiveness to Reason as the Foundation of Self-Government

According to Colleen Sheehan, Madison wanted to establish “a political system in which the will of the society is based on the reason of society.”Footnote ⁸⁸ This, on a societal level, reflects what he thought was true on an individual level, namely, as Sheehan writes, that “in the exercise of his free will, an individual is answerable to reason and conscience.”Footnote ⁸⁹ This matches Witherspoon’s and Reid’s understanding of self-government. Self-government occurs when the rational principle of conscience controls all thoughts, desires, and affections and orders them not toward immediate gratification, but toward the fulfillment of duties to God, oneself, and others.Footnote ⁹⁰ This constitutes our happiness and perfection. The man, or the society, led by passion and interest rather than reason is, in Reid’s words, “like a ship in the ocean without hands, which cannot be said to be destined to any port.”Footnote ⁹¹

Madison used this understanding of self-government in his own writings. In his final “Annual Message to Congress,” he predicted with gratification that “the destined career of my country will exhibit a government pursuing the public good as its sole object, and regulating its means by the great principles consecrated in its charter, and by those moral principles to which they are so well allied.”Footnote ⁹² According to this vision of “true liberty,” as Madison called it, the government acts appropriately by pursuing the good as its end. This good that the government pursues is preordained. It is prescribed by “the transcendent law of nature and of nature’s God,” as Madison declared in Federalist 43.Footnote ⁹³ That end is “the safety and happiness of society.”Footnote ⁹⁴

The government’s pursuit of safety and happiness is limited by constitutional and moral principles. The constitution represents the will of the people, or, as Madison sometimes termed it, “the cool and deliberate sense of the community.”Footnote ⁹⁵ This imposes one limit on government. Moral principles represent the natural moral order. This imposes another limit. Political leaders are obligated to follow not only constitutional principles, but also moral principles that are founded on the constitution of human nature. Madison expressed this point in Washington’s First Inaugural Address, which he authored: “The foundations of our National policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality.”Footnote ⁹⁶ These moral principles are “the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.”Footnote ⁹⁷ And according to this eternal order, there is “an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage.”Footnote ⁹⁸

The fulfillment of duty will always be in the individual’s and the community’s interest. Madison’s idea here reflects Witherspoon’s argument that “Interest and duty are the same.”Footnote ⁹⁹ Duty is “a wise appointment of nature.”Footnote ¹⁰⁰ It is in our interest to fulfill our duty because it leads to the “truest happiness.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ “The one arises from the other,” as Witherspoon argued.Footnote ¹⁰²

Our true self-interest, grounded in human nature, incorporates both our “moral character” and our “religious hopes.”Footnote ¹⁰³ In accord with the Scottish pneumatology, Witherspoon treated reason as a spiritual and transcendent power, the noblest capacity of man, which grants us insight into truths temporal and spiritual, natural and supernatural.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ For this reason, when describing “liberty and political justice,” goods that constitute our temporal security, Witherspoon presented them as instrumentally good, valuable insofar as they make possible the higher good of “knowledge of God and his truths.”Footnote ¹⁰⁵

The pneumatology that Madison expressed in his “Memorial and Remonstrance on Religious Assessments” is consistent with the understanding of the mind and of the doctrine of God that is characteristic of the Scottish pneumatology. In the “Memorial and Remonstrance,” written in opposition to Patrick Henry’s attempt to pass a bill to publicly fund teachers of the Christian religion, Madison opened the argument on metaphysical—and theistic—grounds. He supposed that God exists and is omniscient. And he supposed that the individual, through the exercise of natural reason, can understand his place in the providential order of things “as a subject of the Governour of the Universe.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ As Phillip Vincent Muñoz points out, Madison reasoned “from Nature to Nature’s God” to determine “our natural capacities.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Madison regularly reasoned in this way, “from the effect to the cause, ‘from nature to nature’s God,’” or, in other words, from “order and design” to “proofs of a general plan.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸ According to Madison, there is a cosmological order in which man, by reason, can find his place. Madison understood this and reasoned accordingly in his “Memorial and Remonstrance.” Witherspoon reasoned similarly in his Lectures, stating: “the principles of duty and obligation must be drawn from the nature of man … if we can discover how his Maker formed him, or for what he intended him, that certainly is what it ought to be.”Footnote ¹⁰⁹

Madison and Witherspoon, however, disagreed about how best to promote public religion.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Witherspoon made clear in his Lectures that “true religion,” by which he meant Christianity, “is the best and most effectual way of making a virtuous and regular people” fit for self-government.Footnote ¹¹¹ At the same time, Witherspoon was a strong supporter of religious freedom, a right he thought could not be alienated.Footnote ¹¹² “Every one should judge for himself in matters of religion.”Footnote ¹¹³ He thought public religion should be promoted as robustly as possible, but without resort to an established church.

Madison’s support of religious freedom was evident throughout his career, from early letters to his contributions to the Virginia Declaration of Rights and his authorship of the “Memorial and Remonstrance.”Footnote ¹¹⁴ Madison, though, no less than Witherspoon, suggested that pure morals and true religion were public goods to be protected. And both Witherspoon and Madison issued religious proclamations, recommending thanksgiving and prayer, during their respective political careers.Footnote ¹¹⁵ In his “Detached Memoranda,” however, which he wrote after he left public office, Madison regarded his proclamations as violations of conscience rights, since they suppose that “political rulers” have a “religious agency” that the people did not give them.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Madison strongly advised against “usurpations on the rights of conscience,” of “giving to Caesar what belongs to God.”Footnote ¹¹⁷ Nevertheless, Madison’s end-goal regarding religion and morals was the same as Witherspoon’s, namely, the spread of religious teachers, zeal for religion, and moral purity. Writing in 1819, around the time his “Detached Memoranda” are dated, Madison credited the doctrine of religious freedom with the moral and religious improvements evident in his native Virginia since the Revolution, referencing “the number of religious teachers, the zeal which actuates them, the purity of their lives, and the attendance of the people on their instructions.”Footnote ¹¹⁸ The seeming decline of religiosity in Virginia in the 1780s perturbed Madison, no less than Patrick Henry. According to Rives, Madison “was a sincere friend” to the cause of religion and was “an enlightened believer in the truth and divine authority of the Christian system.”Footnote ¹¹⁹ Henry responded to the religious crisis by endorsing state sponsorship of Christian teachers. Madison responded by promoting religious freedom. But both thought improvement in religious zeal and moral purity was good for self-government.

The Scottish science of man, the interpretive key I use to analyze Madison’s political thought, reveals that responsiveness to reason is foundational for Madison. Reasoning from effect to cause makes us aware of order in nature and in our own constitutions, the existence of God and our duties to Him. Constitutional limits involve not only written law, but also the moral law, grounded in the human constitution, ascertainable by reason and directed toward the fulfillment of duty. Madison’s language incorporated both a duty-based conception of morals and natural theology. In this way, he inserted two of the main aspects of the Scottish pneumatology that were rejected by Hume into his political reasoning. And this reorients our understanding of Madison on faction and the nature of republican government, which I discuss in the next section.

The Science of Man, Faction, and Republican Government

For Hume, the British government was “if not the best system of government, at least the most entire system of liberty, that ever was known amongst mankind.”Footnote ¹²⁰ Madison, however, argued that the quest for gain that enlivened the British constitution was morally blameworthy. The British constitution depended on private vice for its operation. Unlike other prominent Federalists, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, Madison did not think the British government worthy of emulation. In “Spirit of Governments,” Madison rebuked the “predominant spirit and principles” of the British government, particularly in comparison with those of the “republican governments which it is the glory of America to have invented, and her unrivalled happiness to possess.”Footnote ¹²¹ Montesquieu and Hume had praised Great Britain for its system of liberty. But Madison railed against its corruption. He referred to it as a “government operating by corrupt influence; substituting the motive of private interest in place of public duty.”Footnote ¹²² Hume, on the other hand, had defended what the Country Whigs decried as “corruption,” namely, the dependence of party leadership in the House of Commons on the patronage of the Crown, which rewarded party loyalists with influential administrative positions. Hume argued that “corruption,” in this case, was necessary for the Crown to balance the growing power of the House.Footnote ¹²³

Madison disagreed, distinguishing between the British government, which is based on the “motive of private interest” and the republican governments in America, which rely on more noble principles. The American model of republican government does not operate by force, like most European governments, nor by private interest, like the British government. Instead, “deriving its energy from the will of the society, and operating by the reason of its measures, on the understanding and interest of the society,” it surpasses the other forms.Footnote ¹²⁴ The American type of government is that “for which philosophy has been searching, and humanity been sighing, from the most remote ages.”Footnote ¹²⁵ It is the one in which the will of society is guided by “reason,” “understanding,” and “interest.”

It may seem odd that “interest” is listed here beside “reason” and “understanding.” But it is entirely consistent with the faculty psychology that ascribes to reason the power of directing passion and interest.Footnote ¹²⁶ As Adam Potkay observes, Hume overturned “the classical faculty psychology that places reason above passion.”Footnote ¹²⁷ But Madison turned it right side up. Even in his remarks on faction—allegedly Humean in nature—he portrayed “passion” and “interest” in opposition to “the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”Footnote ¹²⁸ These “permanent” and “aggregate” interests are, for Madison, consistent with the dictates of reason.

According to Madison, interest is an intermediate motive. It can respond to passion or to reason. Our true, or permanent, interest lies in following reason, which guides us toward ultimate happiness. When, as a member of Congress, Madison wrote a letter to James Monroe commenting on the North’s willingness to give control of the Mississippi River to Spain in return for access to Spanish ports, he reflected on the meaning of interest. “There is no maxim in my opinion,” Madison wrote, “which is more liable to be misapplied and which therefore more needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.”Footnote ¹²⁹ But, Madison continued, “taking the word ‘interest’ as synonymous with ‘ultimate happiness,’ in which sense it is qualified with every necessary moral ingredient, the proposition is no doubt true.”Footnote ¹³⁰

Madison interpreted the “popular” definition of interest—the mundane pursuit of material wealth or short-term gain—as a formula for oppression. It causes the majority to ignore the rights of the minority for its own advantage. Permanent interest, though, is revealed by reason. “It is the reason, alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government. The passions ought to be controlled and regulated by the government.”Footnote ¹³¹ It is “the mild voice of reason,” moreover, that is responsible not only for regulating passion, but also for “pleading the cause of an enlarged and permanent interest.”Footnote ¹³² Madison’s notion of enlarged interest, then, is something revealed by reason to be true and permanent. True interest conforms to objective reality, to an external truth about the nature of man and society, rather than to independent utility calculations concerning the individual’s satisfaction of desire.

Reason does not play this kind of elevated role in Hume’s thought.Footnote ¹³³ One lesson from his History of England is that the established system of liberty in Great Britain was the product of historical development, of continual conflict and fluctuation, not reason and foresight. Hume presented partisan discord as a central feature of the growth of liberty in Great Britain. In his Essays, Hume surmised that the abolition of parties was neither “practicable” nor “desirable.”Footnote ¹³⁴ In his History, Hume went further, describing how party rage was indispensable to the formation of free government in Britain: “the parties of court and country … while they oft threaten the total dissolution of the government, are the real causes of its permanent life and vigour.”Footnote ¹³⁵ Madison wrote positively about the role of faction in a large republic. If he learned about the benefits of faction in part from Hume, which seems to be the case, then Hume’s History of England, with which, Spencer writes, Madison “also had a lengthy acquaintance,” would have been “just as important” to Madison as Hume’s Essays. Footnote ¹³⁶

Spencer has provided the most extensive analysis of Madison’s indebtedness to Hume on faction, particularly those insights Hume articulated in the History of England. There are several similarities in Madison’s and Hume’s respective analyses of faction. Both thought the “causes of faction” were “sown in the nature of man.”Footnote ¹³⁷ Both thought that factions, which result both from differing interest and opinions in free states, as well as the structure of the constitution,Footnote ¹³⁸ distort the moral sentiments.Footnote ¹³⁹ When Madison asked about the possible motives that could prevent factions from violating the rights of minorities or individuals, he sounded a Humean note of pessimism. He wrote that neither concern for the good, concern for one’s character, or concern for religion are sufficient safeguards to protect against the adverse moral effects of faction. He concluded that political technology, that is, a well-modeled constitution, was needed to “break and control the violence of faction.”Footnote ¹⁴⁰ This is strikingly Humean, as many scholars have noted.

Madison, like Hume, thought factions were inevitable. He subsequently defended an extended republic that would set several factions against one another, thereby subduing them. “The Society becomes broken into a greater variety of interests, of pursuits, of passions, which check each other, whilst those who may feel a common sentiment have less opportunity of communication and concert.”Footnote ¹⁴¹ This is the idea that, according to Adair, Madison picked out from Hume’s essay, “Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth.”Footnote ¹⁴² And Spencer has shown that Hume’s History, too, taught Madison about “the causes and nature of faction.”Footnote ¹⁴³

But this does not fully capture Madison’s theory about the role of faction in a system of self-government. According to Hume’s empirical and technological approach to politics, a properly constructed constitution fosters liberty through the balance of conflict. Through constitutional balance, the multiplicity of passions and interests in the political community are appropriately channeled toward the public good. But Madison repudiated the claim that balancing competing interests, alone, contributes to a thriving modern republic. He mocked the idea that we should foster more inequality, more class distinctions, or more parties to create more checks and thus a more perfectly balanced government. This would “not [be] less absurd than it would be in ethics, to say, that new vices ought to be promoted, where they would counteract each other, because this use may be made of existing vices.”Footnote ¹⁴⁴

For Madison, competing passions and interests are dealt with appropriately only when political actors make them subservient to reason. In a letter to Washington, he argued not that an impersonal procedure should channel passions and interests, but that an umpire, “disinterested & dispassionate,” should resolve “disputes between different passions & interests in the State.” The discovery of a “disinterested & dispassionate” umpire was “the great desideratum which has not yet been found for Republican Governments.”Footnote ¹⁴⁵ In this instance, Madison advocated for a national veto on state legislation because he thought that the national power could be—as ideally the British monarch would be—dispassionate and disinterested, adhering to reason and coordinating the activities of communities within the state’s jurisdiction accordingly.

Madison thought senators, too, could prioritize wisdom, justice, and the common good over the diverse passions and interests that drive the various communities within the state. He believed, as did Charles Rollin, author of The Roman History, that the “authority” of the Roman senate was “the authority of virtue … and of merit.”Footnote ¹⁴⁶ Rollin’s portrayal of Roman history inspired Catherine Macaulay, who wrote a History of England designed to compete with Hume’s. Macaulay was far friendlier than Hume to the ideas of divine providence and eternal and immutable moral truths open to reason.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ And Macaulay’s claim that the Roman republic was filled with patriotic and virtuous statesmen, until they were corrupted by power and luxury, is reminiscent of Madison’s idea in Federalist 63 that the US Senate would consist of a “temperate and respectable body of citizens” capable of governing by the “authority” of “reason, justice, and truth.”Footnote ¹⁴⁸ Although Madison’s pet idea of the national veto never found its way into the US Constitution, he still thought the US Constitution was superior to the British Constitution, because it relied not only on the clash of private interests but also on the election of “the purest and noble characters which [the Society] contains” to deliberate disinterestedly about to the common good.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ This fuller picture, in which Madison thought disinterested and dispassionate actors, above all, were responsible for directing the community toward the common good, is consistent with the Scottish science of man.

Madison shared with other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers the insight that political institutions, alone, even those that balance countervailing passions, are not sufficient to maintain self-government. Hutcheson and Witherspoon thought constitutional government must, first, secure wise government, and second, prevent abuses of power.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ A good constitution does not merely balance competing interests. It must be properly balanced in another way, first, giving enough power to political agents to pursue the common good, and second, impeding both the potential for political overreach and the illicit quest for private gain.

Madison followed this reasoning closely.Footnote ¹⁵¹ “The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first, to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous, whilst they continue to hold their public trust.”Footnote ¹⁵² The lack of wisdom in the state and federal governments was, arguably, the primary impetus for his effort to reform the Articles of Confederation in the late 1780s. At the same time, he asserted in Federalist 10 and 51 that enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. For this reason, constitutional limits are essential. Ambition must check ambition to prevent abuses of power. Hutcheson, Witherspoon, and Ferguson endorsed this theory of countervailing passions, which pit ambition against ambition in the very structure of government.Footnote ¹⁵³ Unlike Hume, however, they did not think constitutional machinery, alone, could secure good government.

Madison claimed that republican government presupposes the existence of the noble qualities of the human person more than any other form of government.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ That is what makes wise government possible. But the human person is also inclined toward depravity. This makes it necessary to use constitutional structures to keep political agents faithful to the public good when they are tempted to act for private advantage. This duality of human nature is evident in Witherspoon’s first “Druid” essay: “there is, doubtless, no small degree of error, ignorance, prejudice, and corruption to be found among men … but the human race in general, with all its defects, is certainly the noblest and most valuable in this lower world, and therefore the most worthy of cultivation.”Footnote ¹⁵⁵ A conception of government that recognizes only one part of this duality of nobility and depravity is untrue to human nature as Madison conceived it.