(Condensed, and slightly adapted, from the Professor Sir Tom Devine lecture at http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scottishenlightenment/introduction.asp)



"What made the Scottish Enlightenment possible?

It’s a real puzzle - because if you look at the period before the Enlightenment, Scotland was a poor country. They even executed witches a few decades before the Enlightenment and killed infidel blasphemers and heathens - the Ministers of the Church were not very tolerant. So how come a country like that contributed to one of the greatest cultural developments in 18th century Europe?

Three things. The first is, for many centuries, Scotland’s scholars had links with Europe - they had gone to European universities from the 13th century onwards and they were plugged into the ideas developing in those institutions.
One example: the great Edinburgh University medical school which was world famous in the 18th century (and still is) - it really started as a consequence of its founders having gone to university in Holland which was previously the most advanced centre.

The second thing is that after the Reformation, the reformers decided to establish a school in every parish. It didn’t happen immediately but by about a century and a half after the Reformation (which took place in the 1560-1570’s) many parts of Scotland had a school and that meant that there was a general respect for learning in this society.
We know that almost all children went to school in some areas for about three, four, five years. (One has to remember this was not compulsory and it wasn’t free and it was not universal,) But over time this eventually fed into a society which was comfortable with matters of the mind, which in a sense what the Enlightenment was all about.
So, during the period of the Enlightenment, a lot of the old barriers to cultural development began to collapse. The Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which had previously been fanatically opposed to new ideas, began to become more tolerant.

Thirdly (and related to the first two points) the Scottish thinkers, the scholars, the intellectuals, did not have to take political or religious sides - they, even David Hume, were able to discuss things reasonably freely. It was a civilised and sociable atmosphere. You could have an argument between two of the major figures but afterwards they would still remain friends.

All these things came together in a mix that helped to produce the Scottish Enlightenment.
It was, arguably, part of a general flowering of the world of the mind,
Unarguably, there was a degree of tolerance that had not previously existed."