We are delighted that in March we are discussing the draft paper "Closed Mouth, Open Mind: Lewis Henry Morgan and the Religion of Cognition" by Daniel Gorman Jr. (University of Rochester). Professor Sarah Dees (Iowa State University) will be our esteemed commentator for this session.
Abstract:
This article explores the religious nonconformity of nineteenth-century anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan, whose religious radicalism contrasted sharply with his Protestant cultural roots and solidly Victorian, middle-class lifestyle. Morgan was raised a Presbyterian in New York’s Burned-over District amid revivals and Anti-Masonic fervor, yet the existing historiography does not interrogate the relationship between this milieu and Morgan’s later deism and fondness for secret societies. To understand Morgan’s complex beliefs, I analyze Morgan’s papers and published writings, from his first speeches (1840–41) to his magnum opus Ancient Society (1877). I also foreground Morgan’s relationships with his wife Mary, his close friend Rev. J. H. McIlvaine, and colleagues such as Charles Darwin. Although it is well known that Morgan believed all animals could think, I argue that Morgan’s mental principle—his name for the spiritual origin of thought—was the core of an idiosyncratic theology that deviated from Christian dogma. Morgan viewed cognition, not Christ, as God’s gift to the world, and he believed that the development of cognition guided animal progress. This theology blended Presbyterianism, Morgan’s theory of cultural evolution, and deism, while cautiously embracing Darwinian biological evolution. Simultaneously, Morgan’s public persona reflected white, middle-class, Protestant values: Morgan recommended the Christianization of Native Americans, socialized with devout Protestants, and struggled to accept new scientific discoveries. His life therefore involved a constant dance between his private religion, the Protestantism of his peers, and new academic disciplines such as religious studies and natural history.