An Eighteenth-Century Man Envisaged: An Analysis of a Moral Treatise by Seignelay Colbert of Castlehill

Perhaps influenced by his long association with Adam Smith, whose teaching in Glasgow included Lectures on Jurisprudence (1762–1763), Seignelay Colbert of Castlehill published a treatise in 1770, The Elements of the Law of Nature and Natural Morals, which Timothy R. Day has examined. Colbert's treatise is a characteristic representation of a typical Enlightenment trend of thought, which would become quite dated only a few decades after the beginning of the nineteenth century. Such a treatise produced by a Catholic clergyman shows that the influence of the philosophes, to whom Colbert refers in his work, reached its peak in the second half of the eighteenth century. This influence can be seen in the writings of Colbert, who places himself in the sphere of philosophy [one can speak of the Catholic Enlightenment]. Colbert's treatise focuses on the role of man in the natural order of things, presenting the objects of his study to those who have the natural right to maintain peace and concord between nations. Sometimes abstract, Colbert's treatise nevertheless attempts to give a technical basis to his ideas on human nature. Colbert's treatise is valuable as a historical document because its contents bring a certain clarity to an increasingly complex discourse on the Enlightenment.