John Toland. His Methods, Manners, and Mind (review)

562 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 24:4 OCTOBER 1986 with the philosophes as writer and patron established him as the mode! of enlightened despotism. Historians still have not recognized that Fredrick initiated a significant tradition continued by Joseph !! and Catherine of Russia among his contemporaries and subsequently by others, especially in Latin America. Fifty years after Frederick's death this legacy was appropriated by the Comteans particularly in Russia and Latin America. Few are likely to remark these omissions. But there will be complaints about the highly abbreviated treatment given to the emergence of philosophy of history~ Only Vico's New Scienceand Condorcet's Out//ne receive attention, and the exposition of those two thinkers gives no indication of the author's awareness that philosophy of history came massively on the scene between 17z5 and t 775. Its makers were Montesquieu, the men of the Encyc/q~d/a, and the Scottish phitosop/~ers, hut R6d says nothing about this development, although his exposition of Adam Smith is otherwise exceptionally good. ROd's authorial method fastens attention on the expressed thought of individuals in abstraction from their practical intention. To incorporate this dimension would certainly complicate the tale, but its exclusion is not satisfacctory either. This shows in points small and large. For example, ROd wonders against whom Locke's polemic about innate ideas was directed. The answer is Henry More and others at Cambridge whose attempt to inject Platonism into the despiritualized mechanical world produced the "rubbish" Locke undertook to remove. But why enlightenment? And what were its strategic aims? R6d says that it was directed against the despotism of priestcraft and of absolute monarchy (t63). This is unexceptional as far as it goes; but more novel and encompassing conceptions are to be found in the philosophy of history. The author's command of metaphysics is thorough and impressive. For me the high points of the book were the expositions of the systems of Leibniz and Berkeley. Verlag Beck has done its usual job of high competence in production. Hla^M P. C^TON Griffith University,Brisbane Stephen H. Daniel. John Toland. His Methods, Manners, and Mind. McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Ideas, vol. 7- Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, ~984. Pp: xi + z48. $~5.oo. it was Basil Wiitey and Paul Hazard who first brought such names as Toland, Biount, Collins, Clarke, Wollaston, Shaftesbury, and Tindall to the atten6on of students of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.' These hitherto little known clergymen, natural theologists, and deistical freethinkers were shown to have exercized a serious influence on the "climate of opinion" of the eighteenth century, the Century of t Basil Willey, The SeventeenthCenturyBac/~groundand The E/ghteenth CenturyBackground (London: Catto & Windus, 1934 and 194o);Paul Hazard, TheEuropeanMind :68o--z715, trans. by J. Lewis May (l-larmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1964)and EuropeanThoughtin theEighteenth Century (Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, 1964). However, none of these seminal works are mentioned by Daniel. BOOK REVIEWS 563 Reason. Each one in his own way argued for the Reasonableness of Christianity. They were all convinced--and tried to convice others that, as Toland put it in his famous deist manifesto Christianity not Mysterious (1696), the Gospel "affords the most illustrious Example of close and pespicuous Ratiocination conceivable" (46).' Stephen Daniel's book is a welcome one. For, although in recent years eighteenthcentury Anglican theologians have been increasingly studied, no one has yet tried to show the underlying unity of Toland's thought. The author claims that in his philosophic , religious, biographical, and political writings, Toland's method and purpose are the same: to show that every individual can think for himself. Thinking is not the prerogative of an educated elite, be it religious or secular, but is accessible to all. Faith is entirely built on reason and men should believe only what they understand. Of the nine chapters of the book, the first is the longest, treating Toland's response to priestcraft in Christianity not Mysterious. Other chapters discuss Toland's biographies of Harrington and Milton, his strong indictment of educational practices that support prejudices and superstition, his biblical and historical exegesis, his method and theory of polemic. Of...