Seeds Of Liberty, by historian Max Savelle, 1948, is a virtually excellent, very scholarly history of the American Enlightenment. I’ve only read a small part so far but it seems importantly consistent, especially in concretes, to Peikoff’s, definitive, “Nation Of The Enlightenment.” It’s a very positive, rational alternative to our increasingly bizarre culture. I urge all Objectivists to put it on their list of must-read books. He starts with religion, not philosophy, but shows how the growing rationality guided religion and caused many splits as individuals chose their own mix of reason and faith. He also has a chapter on philosophy. Curiously, though, no clear, systematic isolation of the Enlightenment, not even in the index. Such flaws are tolerable in his wealth of descriptions. And he likes the growing, rational culture, with no modern cynicism or nihilism. I learned of this book in the bibliography of a similar book, forgotten, recommended by an Objectivist. Americans must be reminded of the virtually forgotten culture between Christianity and modernism that, as Peikoff says, was rescued from the jaws of history.
I’m now reading the chapter on economics, an inspiring account of their rapidly increasing productivity and their learning process that resulted in the intellectual recognition of the right to produce and trade. Colonists were banned from making hats so Britain could export their them. And they had to sell hat beaver fur to Britain or pay a tariff. Probably just a bunch of America-hating internationalists who selfishly wanted to trade with furriners. You can take yer Earl Grey tea and . . .
Frontiersmen, especially, valued independent thought and action.
