Final Essay: An "Age of Improvement?" (1500 word Minimum) Essay Question: To distinguish the 1700s from the Reformation Era before it, which was still an "age of faith" like the medieval era, scholars have variously named the 1700s

Final Essay: An "Age of Improvement?" (1500 word Minimum)

Essay Question:

To distinguish the 1700s from the Reformation Era before it, which was still an "age of faith" like the medieval era, scholars have variously named the 1700s. The most famous label --the "Enlightenment Era"-- wisely sidesteps an issue raised by the other names, which is this essay's focus: Was the Enlightment primarily an "age of reason" or was it instead or also an "age of sentiment," or feeling? Do our readings and sources recommend one of these labels more than the other, or can they be harmonized instead of opposed?

All course readings are attached, but you can use any sources. The course main textbook is "Inventing Human Rights" by Lynn Hunt

France’s “Sun King,” the war-making, Versailles-building Louis XIV, capped his absolutist project with the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, ending 87 years of religious toleration in France by forcing Calvinists –still heretics in Catholic eyes– to become Catholic or leave France. Prussia’s King Frederick William reacted with an Edict Concerning Huguenot Refugees. Q: Why did Louis XIV and Prussia’s King Frederick William take such different views of France’s Calvinsts? France’s Louis XIV 1. Be it known that of our certain knowledge, full power, and royal authority, we have... sup-pressed and revoked...the edict of the said grandfather, given at Nantes in April 1598...and in consequence, we desire that all the temples of those of the so-called reformed religion situated in our kingdom, countries, territories, and the lordships under our crown, shall be demolished without delay. 2. We forbid our subjects of the so-called reformed religion further to assemble in any place or private house for the exercise of the said religion. 4. We enjoin all ministers of the so-called reformed religion who do not desire to become converts and to embrace the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman religion to leave our kingdom...within fifteen days...on pain of being sent to the galleys... 7. We forbid private schools for the instruction of children of the so-called reformed religion, and in general all things that can be regarded as a concession of any kind in favor of the said religion. Prussia’s Frederick William As the persecutions and severe punishments which have been repeatedly imposed upon confessors of the reformed religion in France have forced many families to emigrate from that kingdom and to seek refuge in foreign lands, we have been pleased, out of the righteous sympathy we feel for those who suffer for the sake of the Evangelical Religion and the purity of that faith to which we adhere, by means of the present edict signed by our own hand, to offer them a free and safe admission to all our lands and provinces, and to declare further to them what rights, privileges, and advantages we shall permit them to enjoy, as follows: 1. ...We have commanded all our extraordinary envoys...to furnish at our expense the necessary ships and provisions to all those of the Reformed Religion who apply to them, in order to transport their families and their goods from Holland to Hamburg. There they will obtain...all conveyance which they need to reach any city or province of our state in which they choose to live... 4. The goods, furniture, merchandise, and provisions which they bring with them shall be admitted duty free... 5. In case there should be...any empty, forsaken, or dilapidated houses whose proprietors are financially unable to put in good repair, we shall give to the immigrants such houses in full title and reimburse the previous owners in proportion to the value of the properties... We shall also supply the immigrants with wood, stone, plaster, brick, and other materials necessary for the repair of these houses; and these house shall be free from all taxes, quartering of soldiers, and other public burdens, save payments of excise, for a period of six years. 7. ...They shall be accorded full civic rights and permission to join guilds for which they are eligible... 8. All those who desire to set up manufactures, be it textiles, cloth, hats, or other things, will be endowed not only with all special privileges, considerations, and freedom which they might desire, but also we shall support them with money and other supplies so that their projects may become successful enterprises. 9. The farmers...will be given a certain piece of land for cultivation, and they will be supplied with all necessary things at the beginning as has already been done with a considerable number of Swiss immigrants... 10. ...In towns where several families of them are settled, they may choose a magistrate of their own who may settle their difficulties peaceably, without any recourse to courts. 11. ...The immigrants may worship in the French language and according to their customary ceremonies. After its Glorious Revolution dislodged the scheming King James Stuart II, England’s Parliament took no more chances. To prevent future attempts at the absolutism that the Stuart kings kept attempting, Parliament imposed a new Bill of Rights upon the new King William and Queen Mary. Q: Why might the Bill of Rights be called both innovative and restorative at the same time? Preface: James Stuart I (1610) English Bill of Rights (1689) It lies in the power of no parliament to make any kind of law or statute, without (the king’s) authority for giving it the force of a law... And as ye see it manifest that the king is over-lord of the whole land, so is he master over every person that inhabiteth it, having power over the life and death of every one of them... Where he sees the law doubtsome or rigorous, he may interpret or mitigate it, lest the greatest right be the greatest wrong, and therefore general laws made publicly in parliament may upon the king’s authority be mitigated and suspended upon causes only known to him... A good king will frame all his actions to be according to the law, yet he is not bound thereto but of his good will and for good example... Whereas the late King James II having abdicated the government...and his highness the Prince of Orange (whom it hath pleased God almighty to make the glorious instrument of delivering this kingdom from popery and arbitrary power) did cause letters to be written to the Lords spiritual and temporal for the choosing of such persons to represent them...the said Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons, pursuant to their respective letters and elections, being now assembled in a full and free representative of this nation...declare: (From The True Law of Free Monarchies, 16??) The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth, for kings are not only God’s lieutenants upon earth and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called gods... (And) as to dispute what God may do is blasphemy...so is it sedition in subjects to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power... Do not meddle with the main points of government; that is my craft...to meddle with that, were to lessen me. I am now an old king...I must not be taught my office. (From a 1610 address to Parliament) 1. That the pretended power of suspending of laws, or execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of Parliament, is illegal. 4. That levying money for the use of the crown, by pretence of prerogative, without grant of Parliament... ...is illegal. 5. That it is the right of subjects to petition the king, and...all prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal. 6. That the raising or keeping of a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law. 8. That the election of members of Parliament ought to be free. 9. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel or unusual punishments inflicted. 11. That jurors ought to be duly empaneled and returned... 13. And that for redress of all grievances, and for amending, strengthening, and preserving of the laws, Parliament ought to be held frequently. Although the political theorists Hobbes and Locke both looked to “nature” instead of scripture (as few thinkers were doing), and although both thinkers started with the very Western premise of autonomous individuals willfully entering something like “social contracts” with others, Hobbes and Locke took contrasting views of government’s origins and purpose. Thomas Hobbes tutored the son of King Charles Stuart I, whom England’s Parliamentary majority beheaded upon winning England’s Civil War. John Locke supported the 1689 Glorious Revolution that expelled the Stuarts (which Parliament had restored eleven years after Charles’ 1649 beheading) and limited royal power by the 1689 Bill of Rights. Q: Relate Hobbes and Locke’s contrasting political views to the events they lived through. Thomas Hobbes (1651) John Locke (1689) It is manifest, that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in a condition which is called war; and such a war...consists not in battle only, or the act of fighting, but in a tract of time, where every man is enemy to every man...wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; not commodious building; no instruments for moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and, which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short... ...And therefore it is no wonder if there be required...a common power, to keep them in awe, and to direct their actions to the common benefit. The only way to erect such a common power, as may be able to defend them from the invasion of foreigners, and the injuries of one another...(so that) they may nourish themselves and live contentedly, is to confer all their power and strength upon one man, or upon one group of men, that may reduce all their wills...unto one will..; and therein to submit their wills, every one to his will, and their judgements, to his judgement... And he that carries this person is called “sovereign,” and is said to have sovereign power; and every one besides, his “subject.” To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man...and reason, which is (nature’s) law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it that, being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in life, health, liberty, or possessions...and that all men may be restrained from invading others’ rights and from doing hurt to one another... ...The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property; and the end why they choose and authorize a legisla(ture) is that there may be laws made and rules set as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society.. ..(and).. whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience..(and)..by this breach they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people who have a right to resume their original liberty...by the establishment of a new legisla(ture) (to) provide for their own safety and security... (From The Leviathan ) (From the Second Treatise of Civil Government) Voltaire’s stay in England, where the Glorious Revolution had sparked a neo-Athenian vibrancy, made him an Anglophile. On returning to France, Voltaire spread Isaac Newton’s theory of universal gravitation, noted England’s limited monarchy with pleasure, and marveled at the almost Dutch busyness of Southern England. The English are the only people on earth who have been able to set limits on the power of kings by resisting them; and who, by a series of struggles, have at last established that wise government where the prince is all powerful to do good and at the same time is restrained from committing evil; where the nobles are great without insolence..; and where the people share in government without confusion. Look at the Royal exchange in London –a place more venerable than many courts of justice– where the representatives meet for the benefit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian transact together as though they all professed the same religion, and give the name of Infidel to none but bankrupts. There the Presbyterian confides in the Anabaptist, and the Churchman depends on the Quaker’s word. At the breaking up of this peaceful and free assembly, some withdraw to the synagogue and others to take a glass. This man goes and is baptized in a great tub; that man has his son’s foreskin cut off while a set of Hebrew words (quite unintelligible to him) are mumbled over his child. Others retire to their churches and there wait for the inspiration of heaven with their hats on, and all are satisfied. If only one religion were allowed in England, the government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another’s throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happily and in peace. (From Voltaire’s 1733 Letters Concerning the English Nation) From the French philosophe Voltaire’s 1733 Letters Concerning the English Nation. In France the title of marquis is given easily to anyone who will accept it; and whoever arrives in Paris from the midst of the most remote provinces with money in his purse and a name ending in ac or ille may strut about and cry, “What a man am I! A man of rank and importance!” And he may look down on a trader with a sovereign contempt, while the trader, for his part, from so often seeing his profession treated so disdainfully, is fool enough to blush at it. However, I cannot say which is most useful to a nation: a lord, powdered to the height of fashion, who knows exactly what time the King rises and goes to bed, and who gives himself airs of grandeur and state at the same time that he is acting the slave in the antechamber of a Prime Minister; or a merchant, who enriches his country, dispatches orders from his countinghouse to Surat and Grand Cairo, and contributes to the happiness of the world. From the romantic Genevan democrat Jean-Jacques Rousseau (excerpted from his 1749 The Folly of Vain Learning). What happiness it would be to live amongst us if our exterior appearance always truly reflected our hearts... Before art had remolded our behavior and taught our passions to speak an affected language, our manners were indeed rustic, but sincere and natural; and the difference of our behaviors in an instant distinguished our characters... Now one pleases by the art of subtle research and fine tastes...so that a vile deceitful uniformity pervades our whole system of manners, as if all our minds had all been cast in the same mold. Politeness constantly requires and civility demands that we always follow custom and not our own inclinations: no one dares to appear what he really is... Shall we never then rightly know the man we converse with? What vices attend this uncertainty? Friendships are insincere, esteem is not real, and confidence is ill-founded; suspicions, jealousies, fears, coolnesses, reserve, hatred, and treasons are hidden under the uniform veil of perfidious politeness, under that boasted civility which we owe to the vast achievements of our age. From Jacques-Louis Ménétra’s 1764 Journal of My Life (New York: Columbia, 1986), the autobiography of a French journeyman glazier. I left this convent and those good sisters with much regret and went to work in the country house of the bishop who is lord and count of Agen... In this place I saw a lot of fanatical peasants who brought the bishop partridges and pheasants every day; and when he went out in his carriage with six horses and a mounted chaplain in front holding a cross the way they carry flags, all of those wretches left their fields to run up to the road and lie down prostrate in order to receive a wave from Monseigneur and offer him a thousand blessings for the one of his... From My Father’s Life, by Rétif de la Bretonne, a fact-based but idealized 1779 biography of the author’s father, a French gentleman commoner. “You are my one and only son and I have always loved you. I want you to live in the country as a good family man, rather than as a bourgeois in town. What would become of you in town? You would become a good citizen, I agree, but your children would grow up far from here, which is our birthplace. They would be swallowed up in the horde of citydwellers and soon forget their roots. You know this yourself. We are all sons of Adam, I know, but we should still be proud of our own stock. And though the name Rétif is only a nickname, it is so old that our real name has been forgotten, especially since those terrible wars of religion in which we were dispossessed (of our land and noble rank). But it's a consolation to me, as it will be to you one day, to return to these parts where our family is so loved and respected. Let us never leave our birthplace nor settle in some large town. Let us renew constantly and enjoy forever our attachment and esteem for our ancestors. On your mother’s side, you are related to one of the best families in the province. That is why I chose her. And she chose me because of the name to which my worthy and respected father had brought such distinction. You know what he was called --“the just man”-- what a name! One of our relations inherited it, and it has never gone out of the family. Such titles are worth more than those we have lost, my son, a hundred times more. To be truthful, I have no time for those old parchment scrolls, which are more often acquired as a consequence of intrigue than as a reward for good deeds one’s ancestors might have done. How many nobles there are whose forefathers were greedy oppressors! I am talking of the old nobility. As for the new nobility, tax collectors who buy (their offices and titles), if they are useful to the state because of the money they hand over, all well and good. But they buy cheaply what ought to be the reward for all kinds of heroism. My son, today we belong to the common people and I am thankful for that. The commoner is the best of men. He pays taxes, works, sows crops, harvests them, trades, builds, manufactures. The privilege of contributing nothing is a dubious privilege. Let us not regret it. You have seen the gentlemen huntsmen of La Puisaie in their gaiters and hobnailed boots, wearing rusty old swords and dying of hunger, but blushing at the thought of work. Would you want to be in their position?” “No father, that precious middle class, so prized by good kings, is the one in which I want to live and die.” Key to the Enlightenment was the encyclopedic urge to describe, name, classify, and explain what seemed like the intelligent design of a wise Creator (who was not, to deists, the God of Abraham). Generations after the Enlightenment began, the Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant, captured a different part of the Enlightenment spirit his 1784 What is Enlightenment? Having traded his Lutheran pietism for a faith in human reason, Kant hoped to base ethics not on religion, which so often divided people, but on reason, which might eventually unite them, as more people developed it, and bring a world of peaceful trading relations instead of regular warfare. So he devised his famous “categorical imperatives”: rules that reason should compel all reasonable minds to affirm. And differently than the encyclopedists, Kant thereby personified the Enlightenment’s new faith in earthly progress through reason — much as Thomas Jefferson did by predicting that the seemingly “reasonable religion” of Unitarianism would gradually attract most Americans. Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another... “Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!” is therefore the motto of the enlightenment. Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remains immature... It is so comfortable to be a minor! If I have a book which provides meaning for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who will judge my diet for me and so on, then I do not need to exert myself. I do not need to think... All that is required for this enlightenment is freedom; and particularly the least harmful of all that may be called freedom, namely, the freedom for man to make public use of his reason in all matters. But I hear people clamor on all sides: Don’t argue! The officer says: Don’t argue, drill! The tax collector: Don’t argue, pay! The pastor: Don’t argue, believe!... Here we have restrictions on freedom everywhere... Do we live at present in an enlightened age? The answer is: No, but in an age of enlightenment. Much still prevents men from being placed in a position to use their own minds securely and well in matters of religion. But we do have very definite indications that this field of endeavor is being opened up for men to work freely and reduce gradually the hindrances preventing a general enlightenment and an escape from self-caused immaturity... The Scientific Revolution --as an academic first named it almost two centuries after it started-- was the work of people who called themselves “natural philosophers.” In their quests to know nature’s ways, which seemed ever more orderly on close inspection, they championed a new means to new to ambitious new ends. They practiced observation and experiment whose results, when systematized as data, often revealed patterns, as if nature “obeyed” the “laws” that “governed” it (or often, “her”). And knowing nature’s laws, natural philosophers saw, could allow humankind not only to predict but to increasingly control the physical world. Q: Do these thinkers see science as a rival to Christianity? Are they right, in retrospect? Q: Do any of the three thinkers voice a radical or disruptive outlook, from a traditional perspective? Francis Bacon was England’s Lord Chancellor and the “empiricist” champion of the experimental, datadriven science, who urged England’s to elites to approach nature not only to hunt but observe. From his 1605 The Advancement of Learning: We see before our eyes, that in the age of ourselves and our fathers, when it pleased God to call the Church of Rome to account for their degenerate manners and ceremonies, and sundry doctrines obnoxious and framed to uphold the same abuses; at one and the same time it was ordained by the divine Providence, that there should attend withal a renovation and new spring of all other knowledge. Assorted Statements: Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority. Knowledge is power. We cannot command Nature except by obeying her. A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion. In Bacon’s experimental spirit, Galileo Galilei studied astronomy and physics as Florence’s court scientist, where his un-Biblical heliocentric views earned him house arrest by Church officials. Galileo’s conclusions about physical matter –that its physical traits of mass, inertia, and velocity involve nothing expressive like a spirit or will or tendency– began science’s disenchantment of nature, apparent in thinkers like France’s René Descartes. From Galileo’s 1615 letter to the Duchess Christina of Tuscany: The reason for condemning the opinion that the earth moves and the sun stands still is that in many places in the Bible one may read that the sun moves and the earth stands still... (But)...I think that in the discussion of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages, but from sense-experiences and necessary demonstrations; for the holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word, the former as the dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of God's commands. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to accommodate the understanding of every man, to speak many things whose bare meaning seems to differ from the absolute truth. But Nature, on the other hand, is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether man understands her abstruse reasons. For that reason, it appears that nothing which sense-experience shows us or demonstrations prove to us ought to be questioned (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages, which may have some different meaning beneath their words. For the Bible is not chained in every expression to conditions as strict as those which govern all physical effects; nor is God any less excellently revealed in Nature's actions than in the sacred statements of the Bible... I do not mean that we need not have an extraordinary esteem for holy Scripture... But I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended to forgo their use and by some other means give us knowledge which we can attain by them... (As) was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree: “...the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.” The French René Descartes, well known for his Discourse on Method (1637), was not an experimenter but a mathematician and philosopher. From his Discourse on Method (1637): (These general notions concerning physics) caused me to see that it is possible to attain knowledge which is very useful in life, and that instead of that speculative philosophy which is taught in the schools, we may find a practical philosophy by means of which, knowing the action of fire, water, air, the stars, heavens and all other bodies…as distinctly as we know the different crafts of our artisans, we can in the same way employ them in all those uses to which they are adapted, and thus render ourselves the masters and possessors of nature. From his letter to Queen Christina of Sweden (1645): Now free will is in itself the noblest thing we can have because it makes us in a certain manner equal to God and exempts us from being his subjects; and so its rightful use is the greatest of all the goods we possess, and further there is nothing that is more our own or that matters more to us. From all this it follows that nothing but free will can produce our greatest contentments. Robert Boyle (1627-91) was an Anglo-Irish chemist and inventor, sometimes called the first modern chemist thanks to his discovery that the pressure and volume of a gas are inversely proportional (Boyle’s Law). From The Christian Virtuoso: Shewing, That by Being Addicted to Experimental Philosophy, a Man is Rather Assisted, Than Indisposed, to Be a Good Christian (London: John Taylor, 1690), 43-44: He that is addicted to Knowledge Experimental, is accustomed both to Pursue, Esteem, and Relish many Truths, that do not delight his Senses, or gratify his Passions, or his Interests, but only entertain his Understanding with that Manly and Spiritual Satisfaction, that is naturally afforded it by the attainment of Clear and Noble Truths, which are its genuine Objects and Delights... He that is accustomed to prize Truths of an Inferior kind, because they are Truths, will be much more disposed to value Divine Truths. A Debate: Science as Nature’s Subjugation? David Fedeler’s The New Experiment: Putting Nature on the Rack https://www.thesouloftheworld.com/the-new-experiment-putting-nature-on-the-rack/ As nature came to be modeled as machine during the period of the Scientific Revolution, a new spirit of began to arise in which nature was not seen as having intrinsic value, but only value as an object of human use — and as an object of technological control. Writing around the end of the sixteenth century, Francis Bacon used language to describe this new idea of human domination over nature that, in its imagery, is shocking to many contemporary readers. This brief excerpt about Bacon’s philosophy is taken from The Soul of the World, chapter 8, “In the Name of Utility: The Exploitation of Nature and the Decline of Pleasure.” Like René Descartes’ search for a universal science, Francis Bacon (1561–1626) spoke of a novum organum, a “new instrument” of human inquiry that will satisfy humanity’s imperial ambitions over the natural world. This new method, he wrote, will apply “not only to natural but to all sciences” and will “embrace everything.” The new method of inquiry will allow for universal, objectivized knowledge. It is like an instrument, “a new machine for the mind,” that will infallibly guide humanity to understand the world as it really is. In this process of coming to know reality, Bacon assures us that the mind will not be “left to take its own course, but be guided at every step and the business be done as if by machinery.” In this way, humanity will gain infallible knowledge and total mastery over nature. The key to Bacon’s domination of nature lies in the experimental method, and the dividing line between experimentation and domination is never distinct. The only reason for experimentation in the first place is to gain power over the world. As Carolyn Merchant points out, Bacon’s guiding image of nature is that of a female waiting to be dominated and violated, and he vows to his readers that the new philosophy will render nature the very “slave of mankind.” Bacon wrote that “nature exhibits herself more clearly under the trials and vexations of art than when left to herself.” In other words, the sure road to understanding is through mechanical experimentation. For Bacon, experimentation is “an inquisition,” in which nature is compelled to offer up her hidden secrets. As part of his professional duties, Bacon was a legal inquisitor involved in the contemporary witch trials, which deeply influenced his language and imagery concerning the domination of nature. During these trials, confessions were tortured out of innocent women laid out on the rack. In similar fashion, Bacon insists that the mechanical experiments of the new philosophy must approach nature “under constraint and vexed; that is to say, when by art and the hand of man she is forced out of her natural state, and squeezed and moulded.” Through experimentation it will be possible to trick nature into confessing things that she might not under less strenuous testing. But once her secret is out, she can be forced to reveal it again and again. Thus Bacon explains that the scientific researcher needs to “follow and as it were hound nature in her wanderings, and you will be able, when you like, to lead and drive her afterwards to the same place again.” Through such experimentation, mankind will be able “to penetrate further,” pass beyond “the outer courts of nature,” and “find a way at length into her inner chambers.” Since the measure of knowledge is power, the new philosophy aims at useful discoveries. In this way, Bacon writes, the mechanical arts do not “merely exert a gentle guidance over nature’s course; they have the power to conquer and subdue her, to shake her to her foundations.” Since “the dominion of man over nature rests only on knowledge,” the key to man’s mastery over the world lies in organized scientific research. In this way, the findings of many researchers will be conjoined in one common enterprise and knowledge will grow incrementally. Bacon calls for a united effort, exhorting all men to make peace among themselves so that they may turn “with united forces against the Nature of Things, to storm and occupy her castles and strongholds, and extend the boundaries of human empire, as far as God Almighty in his goodness may permit.” The new philosophy will allow the human race to “recover that right over nature which belongs to it by divine bequest” and establish the “Dominion of Man over the Universe.” In short, Bacon promises that his new method will lead to genuine progress in every field, usher in the “truly masculine birth of time,” and render nature the “slave of mankind.” Peter Pesic (https://www.jstor.org/stable/237475?seq=1) Abstract: Although many writers state that Francis Bacon advocated the torture of nature in order to force her to reveal her secrets, a close study of his works contradicts this claim. His treatment of the myth of Proteus depicts a heroic mutual struggle, not the torture of a slavish victim. By the "vexation" of nature Bacon meant an encounter between the scientist and nature in which both are tested and purified. The Enlightenment was not an egalitarian embrace of the common people, because so few of them seemed like as agents of progress. And yet, the Genevan Jean–Jacques Rousseau (1712-78), who struggled for a living himself, voiced democratic urges in his 1762 The Social Contract. From LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY: EXPLORING THE FRENCH REVOUTION, https://revolution.chnm.org/d/275. Since no man has any natural authority over his fellow men, and since force is not the source of right, conventions remain as the basis of all lawful authority among men. Now, as men cannot create any new forces, but only combine and direct those that exist, they have no other means of selfpreservation than to form by aggregation a sum of forces which may overcome the resistance, to put them in action by a single motive power, and to make them work in concert. This sum of forces can be produced only by the combination of many; but the strength and freedom of each man being the chief instruments of his preservation, how can he pledge them without injuring himself, and without neglecting the cares which he owes to himself? This difficulty, applied to my subject, may be expressed in these terms. "To find a form of association which may defend and protect with the whole force of the community the person and property of every associate, and by means of which each, coalescing with all, may nevertheless obey only himself, and remain as free as before." Such is the fundamental problem of which the social contract furnishes the solution. If then we set aside what is not of the essence of the social contract, we shall find that it is reducible to the following terms: "Each of us puts in common his person and his whole power under the supreme direction of the general will, and in return we receive every member as an indivisible part of the whole." But the body politic or sovereign, deriving its existence only from the contract, can never bind itself, even to others, in anything that derogates from the original act, such as alienation of some portion of itself, or submission to another sovereign. To violate the act by which it exists would be to annihilate itself, and what is nothing produces nothing. It follows from what precedes, that the general will is always right and always tends to the public advantage; but it does not follow that the resolutions of the people have always the same rectitude. Men always desire their own good, but do not always discern it; the people are never corrupted, though often deceived, and it is only then that they seem to will what is evil. The public force, then, requires a suitable agent to concentrate it and put it in action according to the directions of the general will, to serve as a means of communication between the state and the sovereign, to effect in some manner in the public person what the union of soul and body effects in a man. This is, in the state, the function of government, improperly confounded with sovereign of which it is only the minister. What, then, is the government? An intermediate body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual correspondence, charged with the execution of the laws and with the maintenance of liberty both civil and political. It is not sufficient that the assembled people should have once fixed the constitution of the state by giving their sanction to a body of laws; it is not sufficient that they should have established a perpetual government, or that they should have once [and] for all provided for the election of magistrates. Besides the extraordinary assemblies which unforeseen events may require, it is necessary that there should be fixed and periodical ones which nothing can abolish or prorogue; so that, on the appointed day, the people are rightfully convoked by the law, without needing for that purpose any formal summons. So soon as the people are lawfully assembled as a sovereign body, the whole jurisdiction of the government ceases, the executive power is suspended, and the person of the meanest citizen is as sacred and inviolable as that of the first magistrate, because where the represented are, there is no longer any representative. These assemblies, which have as their object the maintenance of the social treaty, ought always to be opened with two propositions, which no one should be able to suppress, and which should pass separately by vote. The first: "Whether it pleases the sovereign to maintain the present form of government." The second: "Whether it pleases the people to leave the administration to those at present entrusted with it." I presuppose here what I believe I have proved, viz., that there is in the State no fundamental law which cannot be revoked, not even this social compact; for if all the citizens assembled in order to break the compact by a solemn agreement, no one can doubt that it could be quite legitimately broken.