Contents:

Chronology, Introduction

Chapter One - Casting Out Idols: 1620–1697

• Idols, or false notions: Francis Bacon, The New Instrument (1620)
• I think, therefore I am: René Descartes, Discourse on Method (1637)
• God, or Nature: Baruch Spinoza, Ethics (1677)
• The system of the world: Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687)
• He searched for truth throughout his life: Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697)

Chapter Two - The Learned Maid: 1638–1740

• A face raised toward heaven: Anna Maria van Schurman, Whether the Study of Letters Befits a Christian Woman (1638)
• The worlds I have made: Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World (1666)
• A finer sort of cattle: Bathsua Makin, An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen (1673)
• I warn you of the world: Madame de Maintenon, Letter: On the Education of the Demoiselles of Saint-Cyr (August 1, 1686), and Instruction: On the World (1707)
• The daybreak of your reason: Émilie Du Châtelet, Fundamentals of Physics (1740)

Chapter Three - A State of Perfect Freedom: 1689–1695

• The chief criterion of the True Church: John Locke, Letter on Toleration (1689)
• Freedom from any superior power on earth: John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government (1689)
• A white paper, with nothing written on it: John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)
• Let your rules be as few as possible: John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)
• From death, Jesus Christ restores all to life: John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures (1695)

Chapter Four - All Things Made New: 1725–1784

• In the wilderness, they are reborn: Giambattista Vico, The New Science (1725/1730/1744)
• Without these Names, nothing can be known, Carl Linnaeus, System of Nature (1735)
• All the clouds at last are lifted: Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, The Successive Advancement of the Human Mind (1750)
• A genealogical or encyclopedic tree of knowledge: Jean le Rond d’Alembert, Preliminary Discourse (1751)
• Dare to know! : Immanuel Kant, What Is Enlightenment? (1784)

Chapter Five - Mind, Soul, and God: 1740–1779

• The narrow limits of human understanding: David Hume, An Abstract of a Book Lately Published (1740)
• The soul is but an empty word: Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Man a Machine (1747)
• All is reduced to sensation: Claude Adrien Helvétius, On the Mind (1758)
• An endless web of fantasies and falsehoods: Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d’Holbach, Common Sense (1772)
• Let each believe that his own ring is real: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan the Wise (1779)

Chapter Six - Crush That Infamous Thing: 1733–1764

• This is the country of sects: Voltaire, Philosophical Letters (1733)
• Disfigured by myth, until enlightenment comes: Voltaire, The Culture and Spirit of Nations (1756)
• The best of all possible worlds: Voltaire, Candide (1759)
• Are we not all children of the same God?: Voltaire, Treatise on Tolerance (1763)
• If a book displeases you, refute it! : Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary (1764)

Chapter Seven - Toward the Greater Good: 1748–1776

• Things must be so ordered that power checks power, Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748)
• Complete freedom of trade must be ensured: François Quesnay, General Maxims for the Economic Management of an Agricultural Kingdom (1758)
• The nation''s war against the citizen: Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishments (1764)
• There is no peace in the absence of justice: Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)
• Led by an invisible hand: Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)

Chapter Eight - Encountering Others: 1688–1785

• Thus died this great man: Aphra Behn, Oroonoko: or The Royal Slave (1688)
• Not one sins the less for not being Christian: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Embassy Letters (1716–1718)
• Do you not restore to them their liberty?: Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, Philosophical and Political History of European Colonies and Commerce in the Two Indies (1770)
• Some things which are rather interesting: Captain James Cook, Voyage towards the South Pole, and Round the World (1777)
• The inner genius of my being: Johann Gottfried von Herder, Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humankind (1785)

Chapter - Nine Citizen of Geneva: 1755–1782

• The most cunning project ever to enter the human mind: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Human Inequality (1754)
• The supreme direction of the General Will: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)
• Two lovers from a small town at the foot of the Alps, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie, or the New Heloise (1761)
• Build a fence around your child’s soul: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education (1762)
• This man will be myself: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions (1770)

Chapter Ten - Vindications of Women: 1685–1792

• No higher design than to get her a husband: Mary Astell, Reflections on Marriage (1700)
• The days of my bondage begin: Anna Stanisławska, Orphan Girl (1685)
• A dying victim dragged to the altar: Denis Diderot, The Nun (1760/1780)
• Created to be the toy of man: Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
• Man, are you capable of being just?: Olympe de Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Woman as Citizen (1791)

Chapter Eleven - American Reverberations: 1771–1792

• I took upon me to assert my freedom: Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (1771/1792)
• Freedom has been hunted round the globe: Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
• Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights: Thomas Jefferson and Others, Declaration of Independence (1776)
• A safeguard against faction and insurrection: James Madison, Federalist No. 10 (1787)
• An end to government by force and fraud: Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791–1792)

Chapter Twelve - Enlightenment''s End: 1790–1794

• A partnership of the living, the dead, and those unborn: Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
• The future destiny of the human species: Nicolas de Condorcet, A Sketch of a Historical Portrait of the Progress of the Human Mind (1793–1794)

Texts and Studies, Index