Note i-107 — INTRODUCTION

Quoted in T. H. Montgomery's A History of the University of Pennsylvania, 396. Smith's educational principles may be partially seen in his "View of the Philosophy Schools" (1754) printed in H. W. Smith's Life and Correspondence of the Rev. William Smith (Philadelphia, 1879), I, 59 f. Although he conceived Nature as affording only "those fainter exhibitions of the Deity" (I, 156), he was a sturdy orthodox rationalist, tending toward, yet not embracing deism. Emphasizing the principal writings of Barrow, Maclaurin, Watts, Keill, Locke, Hutcheson, 'sGravesande, Martin, Desaguliers, Rohault (Clarke's edition), Ray, Derham, and Sir Isaac Newton, Smith suggests the rationalist who buttresses scriptural revelation with the evidences of Deity through discovery by reason of the Workman in the Work. His Discourses on Public Occasions in America (2d ed., London, 1762) are the result "of his office as Head of a seminary of learning [Philadelphia Academy and College]; in order to advance the interests of Science, and therewith the interests of true Christianity" (p. vi). "A General Idea of the College of Mirania" (1762), though written about 1752 while Smith was in New York, suggests the form of his "View": he observes that "besides his revealed will, God has given intimations of his will to us, by appealing to our senses in the constitution of our nature, and the constitution and harmony of the material universe" (Discourses, 44). The same titles and authors are listed as in the "View." A Newtonian rationalist, Smith meditated: "All thy works, with unceasing voice, echo forth thy wondrous praises. The splendid sun, with the unnumbered orbs of heaven, thro' the pathless void, repeat their unwearied circuits, that, to the uttermost bounds of the universe, they may proclaim Thee the source of justest order and unabating harmony" (ibid., 155). Smith arrived at his principles of rationalism apparently without indebtedness to Franklin: there seems to be no evidence that as provost he was merely attempting to fulfill the scientific and rationalistic ideas latent in Franklin's Proposals, that he was a tool in Franklin's hands. Indeed, they were anything but friendly to one another. Hence, one feels that the credit for the relatively modern curriculum should be given more abundantly to Smith than to Franklin.