Knowlton Chapter 18

Eighteen: Williams College and New York

I told him that I did not wish to publish my views to the world unless they were at least plausible; and that I was really desirous he would show wherein they were fallacious, if in his power to do so.  He then made precisely this reply—I remember his words exactly, for I have often thought of them—“Why, as for refuting materialism by philosophy, no mortal man can ever do it.  It is only by scripture that it can be done.”

After studying every medical and philosophical text he could lay his hands on regarding the workings of the human mind, Charles was confident he had something original and important to say about the physical origins of thought.  But Charles was also acutely aware that he had first come up with his radical theory of consciousness in a jail cell, and had then elaborated it in the isolation of his cottage in Hawley.  Probably the only person who had read his theory up to this point was his wife, Tabitha.  Having a supportive partner is the best thing that can happen to a writer, but Charles may have wondered whether his argument would make sense to someone who didn’t already share his point of view.  And, although he had read as much as he could find on the subject, there was always the possibility he had missed something important.

So Charles visited Williams College and asked to speak to its President.  Edward Dorr Griffin had been an accomplished “pulpit orator” and a Professor of Sacred Rhetoric before taking over as leader of the college in 1821.  He was a six foot three inch, two hundred forty pound, white-haired man with “an aspect of venerableness as well as of brooding benignity and of a dominating personal power.”  Griffin was well aware of his effect on people, and believed his intellect was as sharp as his oratory.  But the same Williams College historian who described Griffin’s imposing appearance noted, “Griffin grossly overestimated himself, especially as a theologian and a college president.”  This may have been an expression of frustration, however.  Griffin had been hired to root out infidelity and bring a spiritual revival to Williams, and he was only partially successful.

Hearing that Griffin was an expert on “the philosophy of mind,” Charles thought he might be able to have a conversation with the minister about his materialist theory of consciousness.  And because Griffin was an evangelist as well as a scholar, Charles hoped to get a religious perspective on his theories that would expose any weaknesses in his argument.  Charles showed Griffin his prospectus and said he meant to publish his theory, unless it turned out to be either unoriginal or untrue.  

Charles’s materialist claims, declared the college president, were nothing more than hypotheses.  It was all idle speculation, Griffin said.  Charles’s theory that thought was a purely physical process, Griffin announced, just piled hypothesis on hypothesis.  The Scottish philosophers, he said, had ended the debate on all these issues a century ago.  Griffin “went on to prove the independent existence of mind,” Charles said, “by quoting the argument of the Scottish metaphysicians,” who had “proven” that beneath the world of matter there was “a substratum, essence, or unknown something,” that corresponded to the soul. 

But how was the existence of this unknown something “any more or less than a sheer hypothesis” itself, Charles asked.  The president blushed and answered, “Ah, Sir, I perceive that you see pretty quick.”  Griffin dropped his argument against hypothesizing, and the conversation ended on friendly terms.  A few days later, convinced he was really on the right track, Charles wrote to Griffin.  He summarized his theory and asked the president to refute it, if he could. 

Several weeks passed, and Charles went back to Williamstown and tracked down President Griffin.  “Ah, I received your manuscript,” the minister told him.  “I intended to have answered it, but I have not had time, and shall not have until next winter.”  In any case, Griffin said when Charles pressed him, there was no logical argument he could make against materialism.  Knowlton’s theory, the minister admitted, could only be disproven by scripture and faith. 

Charles understood that President Griffin was saying evidence and reasoning were inferior to literal belief in ancient scriptures, even when it came to new fields of science.  Religious authorities had been using this argument against scientific progress for centuries.  There was nothing new in Griffin’s response to Knowlton’s theory, and no answer to Charles’s questions regarding his idea’s originality and validity.  He’d have to look somewhere else.

So Charles visited New York City for the first time, searching for subscribers and trying to insure that his ideas were original.  There were freethinkers in the city who’d be able to discuss Charles’s theory and might even be willing to endorse his book and suggest it to their own readers.  In the late 1820s, many British freethinkers emigrated to America, and several had continued their work in New York.  Among them were Gilbert Vale, a biographer of Thomas Paine and publisher of a freethought newspaper called The Beacon, Frances Wright, a young heiress who in spite of traveling with the Marquis de Lafayette and visiting Thomas Jefferson at Monticello, chose to agitate for social justice and finance a cooperative town in Tennessee for black families she bought out of slavery, and Robert Dale Owen, Wright’s collaborator and co-editor of the Free Enquirer, a weekly newspaper that advocated freethought and workers’ rights. 

Knowlton found the New York freethinkers very encouraging and interested in his materialist theory of consciousness.  Charles made a speech “On Religion as an Affectation of the Human Mind” at a meeting of the Free Press Association, and Robert Dale Owen invited him to speak at the Hall of Science.  The New Yorkers agreed that Charles’s ideas were original and important, and pledged to sell his book in their freethought bookshops when it came out.  Charles and Robert Dale Owen discovered they shared an interest in what was discreetly called “The Population Question,” which Owen had been pondering since his youth in England.  The two men became friends, and when their third child was born in October, 1828, Charles and Tabitha named him Stephen Owen Knowlton.