first of these, and by far the best known, are the Memoirs of the Life of Sir James
Mackintosh, edited from Mackintosh’s manuscript by his son and published in 1835. In
Ma Vie Constant singles out James Mackintosh, ‘at present a high court judge in
Bombay’,^20 as one of his closest friends at this time: Mackintosh for his part describes
‘Baron Constant de Rebecque’ as ‘a Swiss of singular manners and powerful talents, and
who made a transient appearance in the tempestuous atmosphere of the French
Revolution’,^21 and who was a fellow member of the Speculative Society. It is Mackintosh
who is able to tell us vividly what it felt like to be a student at Edinburgh in the 1780s:
I am not ignorant of what Edinburgh then was. I may truly say, that
it is not easy to conceive a university where industry was more
general, where reading was more fashionable, where indolence and
ignorance were more disreputable. Every mind was in a state of
fermentation. The direction of mental activity will not indeed be
universally approved. It certainly was very much, though not
exclusively, pointed towards metaphysical inquiries. Accurate and
applicable knowledge were deserted for speculations not
susceptible of certainty, nor of any immediate reference to the
purposes of life. Strength was exhausted in vain leaps, to catch
what is too high for our reach. Youth, the season of humble
diligence, was often wasted in vast and fruitless projects.
Speculators could not remain humble submissive learners. Those
who will learn, must for a time trust their teachers, and believe in
their superiority. But they who too early think for themselves, must
sometimes think themselves wiser than their master, from whom
they can no longer gain anything valuable. Docility is thus often
extinguished, when education is scarcely begun. It is vain to deny
the reality of these inconveniences, and of other most serious
dangers to the individual and to the community, from a speculative
tendency (above all) too early impressed on the minds of youth.^22‘Metaphysical inquiries’, ‘vast and fruitless projects’, ‘think themselves
wiser than their master’: as we shall see presently, these phrases are
singularly appropriate for Constant’s impossibly vast project of writing a
history of polytheism (i.e. the belief in many gods) conceived in 1785
soon after he left Scotland, and which may well have been inspired by a
reaction against the lectures of Professor Alexander Fraser Tytler, as we
shall also see later. What Mackintosh calls, in another context, ‘the
pleasures of revolt’ and ‘independence of established authority’
23
were the
very hallmarks of student life in Edinburgh whether manifested in
‘Bacchanalian orgies’^24 or in the calmer pursuit of ‘Oratory, History &
Composition’.^25 It was to the encouragement of this latter trivium that the
The charms of friendship 47