During the Enlightenment period, many people around colonial America had their views of where the young American colonies were going and how they were going to get there. Many of these opinionated white men were those in a state of power or wealth. Benjamin Franklin, for example, owned a printing business which allowed for his opinions to be so widespread. Other Enlightenment writers such as Thomas Paine, however, came from a quite poor family, due to his father’s push for education, he eventually became a philosopher and quite well known for his pamphlet advocating for independence from Britain titled, “Common Sense”. Another Enlightenment writer used a different method to advocate for colonial America, his name was Voltaire. Voltaire uses …show more content…
My own mind is my own church” (Pain 268). Voltaire also agrees with this view, and it is shown in his description of El Dorado. This city is portrayed as a paradise and citizens are free to do whatever they want to worship God, yet there is no denial of God. Voltaire also agrees with Franklin on a general lack of morality. The stories Voltaire tells have quite a minimal amount of moral goodness and Franklin agrees with him saying, “I concluded at length that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous was not sufficient to prevent our slipping, acquired and established before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct” (Franklin 134). This quote says that to be virtuous, and moral, we need to establish a habit of these good acts and that is what he tried to do. All three of these characters added their thoughts to the world they wanted to live in. Paine’s principles of natural rights and social justice, Franklin’s importance of reason and self-improvement, and finally Voltaire’s views on injustices and absurdities of his society while still upholding reason and tolerance all contributed to the colonial America they wanted, and the America we see