Enlightenment, the Further reading: Alexander, John T Catherine the Great: Life and Legend New York: Oxford University Press, 1989; Erickson, Carolly Great Catherine: The Life of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994; Troyat, Henri Catherine the Great Pinkham, Joan, trans New York: Meridian, 1994 John F Murphy, Jr Enlightenment, the The Enlightenment in Europe came on the heels of the age of science It dates from the end of the 17th century to the end of the 18th century Beginning with John Locke, thinkers applied scientific reasoning to society, politics, and religion The Enlightenment was especially strong in France, Scotland, and America The Enlightenment may be said to culminate in the revolutions that occurred in America, France, and Latin America between 1775 and 1815 In attempting to justify England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688, Locke argued that man had inherent rights Man, he posited, was a blank page who could be filled up with good progressive ideas He laid the basis for people’s sovereignty People voluntarily came together to form a government that would protect individual rights Government, therefore, had a contract with the people When the government violated people’s natural rights, it violated the social contract Therefore, people had the right to withdraw their allegiance Ironically, the rationale used to justify the triumph of Parliament over the Crown in England was used against Parliament and Britain nearly a century later in the American Revolution Influenced by Newtonian science that posited universal laws that governed the natural world, the Enlightenment emphasis was on human reason According to major Enlightenment thinkers, both faith in nature and belief in progress were important to the human condition The individual was subject to universal laws that governed the universe and formed nature Using the gift of reason, people would seek to find happiness Human virtue and happiness were best achieved by freedom from unnecessary restraints imposed by church and state Not surprisingly, Enlightenment thinkers believed in education as an essential component in human improvement They also tended to support freedom of conscience and checks in absolute government 121 EARLY ENLIGHTENMENT The early Enlightenment was centered in England and Holland It was interpreted by conservative English figures to justify the limits on the Crown imposed by Parliament The limited government supported by the Whigs who took over was spread abroad by the newly created Masonic movement In Holland, which was the home of refugees from absolutist leaders such as refugees from England of the later Stuart monarchy and from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and was nominally a republic, the earliest writings appeared Its most famous philosopher, Spinoza, argued that God existed everywhere in nature, even society, meaning that it could rule itself This philosophy applied to arguments against state churches and absolute monarchs BASIC ENLIGHTENMENT IDEAS The most famous figures of the 18th-century Enlightenment were Frenchmen, including Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau Montesquieu in his greatest work, The Spirit of Laws, argued that checks and balances among executive, legislative, and judicial branches were the guarantors of liberty Voltaire, the leading literary figure of the age, wrote histories, plays, pamphlets, essays, and novels, as well as correspondence with monarchs such as Catherine the Great of Russia and Frederick the Great of Prussia In all of these works, he supported rationalism and advocated reform Diderot edited an encyclopedia that included over 70,000 articles covering the superiority of science, the evils of superstition, the virtues of human freedom, the evils of the slave trade in Africa, and unfair taxes Rousseau, however, was not a fan of science and reason Rather, in the Social Contract, he spoke of the general will of the people as the basis of government His ideas were to be cited by future revolutions from the French to the Russian Enlightenment thought spread throughout the globe and was especially forceful in Europe and the Americas In Scotland, some ideas of the Enlightenment influenced the writings of David Hume, who became the best known of skeptics of religion, and Adam Smith, who argued that the invisible hand of the market should govern supply and demand and government economic controls should not exist In America, deism (the belief that God is an impersonal force in the universe) and the moral embodiment of the Newtonian laws of the universe attracted Thomas