The major force of the Enlightenment was,however,the interference did violence to the law of nature.They favoured laissez. French philosophes.Among them were such well-known men of faire policies for the reason that the natural order harmonized conflicts letters as Montesquieu,Voltaire and Rousseau.Diederot,who edited of self-interest. the famous Encyclopedie,was also an important French Enlightenment figure.All these people popularized and propagated 2.Historical Context new ideas for the general reading public. The first half of the 18th century was an age of relative peace, As a movement,the Enlightenment developed many security and optimism.But the 1750s saw the world turning toward a ramifications period of turbulence,full of ideological,political,social and economic In their attempt to rationalize government and law,the revolutions. Enlightenment thinkers regarded government as the political The American War of Independence of 1776 ended British expression of law.And law itself was defined as the "necessary colonial rule over that country.The spirit of this revolution is relationships which derive from the nature of things." crystalized in a powerful statement written in The Declaration of (Montesquieu)According to them,the law of all lands is valid only Independence: when it conforms to the law which reason perceives in nature. As regards religion,the Enlightenment was completely secular "We hold these truths to be self-evident,that all men are in outlook,but not to the point of Atheism.The tendency was rather created equal,that they are endowed by their Creator with toward Deism:the universe is set in motion by a God as a self- certain unalienable rights,that among these are life,liberty and regulating mechanism;everything operated according to natural the pursuit of happiness.That to secure these rights, laws,which could be understood by the human mind. governments are instituted among men,deriving their just In art and literature,what coincided with the Age of Reason powers from the consent of the governed,That whenever any was a period called neo-classicism.The most prominent figures of this form of government becomes destructive of these ends,it is the period were Dryden,Pope,Corneille,Racine,Goethe,Schiller right of the people to alter or to abolish it,and to institute a new Haydn,Mozart,David and Ingres.These people were on the whol government..." traditionalists;they had a great respect for the classical artists an authors,and for the rules of their art.They thought that reason an The American victory was followed in 1789 by an even more judgment were the most admirable faculties,and that decorum wa violent political upheaval on the European continent-the French essential.In their work,therefore,the most desirable qualities were Revolution.The seizure of the Bastille marked the end of the French harmony,proportion,balance and restraint. monarchy,and the First French Republic was born in 1792.Guiding In economic thought,the rationalists believed that state this revolution is a document called Declaration of the Rights of 232 233 列百环语酒网减