The time was 18th century Europe, ideas were flowing, and intellectuals were making a name for themselves in academia. Many well-educated and cultured members of mankind were digging deeper into their brains to find a reason for everything that happens on Earth and beyond. Philosophers Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Cesare Beccaria, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke contributed to the Enlightenment by educating the people of Western Europe in the ideas of logic and philosophy to help explain the world around them. Philosophers of this time took a risk by contributing ideas to society that did not coincide with government or church. Denis Diderot was arrested for publishing his belief that God did not belong in science and philosophy (Sic 29). Then rebels against the law could be sentenced to death or prison for heresy or treason. Rulers didn't like the idea of ​​intelligent citizens having more influence than they did. Voltaire supported the distinction between philosophy and science, especially in public campaigns directed at superstitious people of the time (Sica 124). He believed that reason and facts about Earth were in no way connected. Voltaire created the idea of ​​deism, that the universe is a clock and God is a clockmaker. The opinionated and rebellious ideas of the Enlightenment sparked the French Revolution (Baker 27). Enlightenment thinkers promoted personal thought and natural law. The documents and laws present in the French Revolution all derived from enlightened thoughts. The French philosophers of the Enlightenment made a great contribution to the creation of new ideas that triggered a new model of thought. Contrary to popular belief, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland, despite… middle of paper… .sion and new wave thinking stems from past events that occurred during the Enlightenment. Vital forces in the founding of the United States, including Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, were greatly altered and the revolutionary ideas of the Enlightenment, therefore, were their country (Sica 178). Both men had classical educations in crucial subjects such as mathematics, science, philosophy and history. Jefferson implicitly recognizes the importance of making the successful ideas of the past come to fruition in his nascent and growing country. Without the Enlightenment, one can only conceptualize how distinctly different the world would be today (Sica 191). Valuable guarantees of human and natural rights, declarations of liberty, and rights of free speech, religion, and the press are all rooted in America that come from the revolutionary ideas of the Enlightenment.