EUROPEAN HISTORY UNIT 5 DBQ WOODLAWN SCHOOL, 2011-2012

EUROPEAN HISTORY
UNIT 5 DBQ

WOODLAWN SCHOOL, 2011-2012

The following question is based on the accompanying documents 1-11. The documents have been edited for the purpose of
this exercise.

This question is designed to test your ability to work with and understand historical documents. Write an essay that:
 Has a relevant thesis and supports that thesis with evidence from the documents.
 Uses all or all but one of the documents.
 Analyzes the documents by grouping them in as many appropriate ways as possible. Does not simply summarize the

documents individually.
 Takes into account both the sources of the documents and the authors’ points of view.

You may refer to relevant historical information not mentioned in the documents.

Question
Throughout history, different intellectual and social movements have provided essential stepping-stones to new ways of
thinking. Using the documents, discuss how the ideas of the Enlightenment influenced the Romantic Era.

Document 1
"Since it is the understanding that sets man above the rest of sensible beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion
which he has over then; it is certainly a subject, even for its nobleness, worth our labor to inquire into. The understanding,
like the eye, while it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set
it at a distance and make it its own object. But whatever be the difficulties that lie in the way of this inquiry; whatever it be
that keeps us so much in the dark to ourselves; sure I am that all the light we can let in upon our minds, all the acquiantance
we can make with our understandings, will not only be very pleasant, but bring us great advantage, in directing our
thoughts in the search of other things."

-Locke, John: Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Document 2
A deep and sweet revery seizes your senses, and you lose yourself with a delicious drunkness in the immensity of this
beautiful system with which you identify yourself. Then all particular objects fall away; you see nothing and feel nothing
except in the whole...I never mediate or dream more delightfully then when I forget my self. I feel indescribable ecstasy,
delirium in melting, as it were, into the system of beings, in identifying myself with the whole of nature.

-Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: The Social Contract

Document 3
"Nothing remains," said his master, "but to sell our lives as dearly as possible; they will undoubtedly look into the arbor; we
must die sword in hand." Candide

"Atheism and fanaticism are two monsters which may tear society into pieces; but the atheist preserves his reason, which
checks his propensity to mischief, while the fanatic is under the influence of a madness which is constantly goading him on."

"We shall not extend our views into the depths of theology. God preserve us from such presumption. Humble faith is
enough for us. We never assume any other part than that of a mere historian."

-Voltaire

Document 4
I am a sort of spider; and have little else to do but spin my web over again; or creep to some other place and spin there.

Alas! for one has nothing to do but amuse himself; I believe that my amusements are as little musing as most folks. But no
matter; it makes the hours pass, and is little better than [to pass one's life in ignorance and grossness].

-Thomas Gray, Poet

Document 5
Where Athens, Rome and Sparta stood

There is a moral desert now.
Where Cicero and Antonius lived
A cowled and hypocritical monk

Prays, curses, and deceives.

My purpose has hitherto been simply to familarize the highly refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical
readers with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence, aware that until the mind can love and admire and trust, and hope and
endure, reasoned principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the unconscious passengers
trample into dust, although they would bare the harvest of his happiness.

-Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Document 6
"In what does man’s pre-eminence over brute creation consist? The answer is clear as that a half is less than the whole, in
Reason. What aquirement exalts one’s being above another? Virtue, we sponatneously reply. For what purpose were the
passions implanted? That man by struggling with them might attain a degree of knowledge denied to the brutes, whispers
Experience. Consequently the perfection of our nature and capability of happiness must be estimated by the degree of
reason, virtue, and knowledge that distinguish the individual, and direct the laws which bind society..." -Chapter 1

"...Men complain, and with reason, of the follies and caprices of our sex, when they do not keenly satirize our headstrong
passions and groveling voices. Behold, I should answer, the natural effect of ignorance! The mind will ever be unstable that
has only prejudices to rest on and the current will run with destructive fury when there are no barriers to break its force.
Women are told from
their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed
cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for
them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, everything else is needless, for at least twenty years of their
lives." -Chapter 2

-Wollstonecraft, Mary: A Vindication of the Rights of Women

Document 7
"If the labours of the men of science should ever create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in
the impressions which we habitually receive, the Poet will sleep then no more than at present; he will be ready to follow
the steps of the man of science not only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation into
the midst of objects of the science itself. The remotest discoveries of the Chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist, will be as
proper objects of the Poet’s art as any upon which it can be employed, if the time shall ever come when these tings shall be
familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated by the followers of these respective sciences shall be
manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering beings. If the time should ever come when what is now
called science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the Poet will lend his
divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the Being thus produced as a dear and genuine inmate of the
household of man."

-William Wordsworth

Document 8
"A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science by having for its immediate object pleasure,

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not truth; and from all other species- (having this object in common with it)- it is discriminated by proposing to itself such
delight from the whole, as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part."

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Document 9

"Other men make up their minds to act without thinking, nor are they conscious of the causes which move them, not even
knowing that such exist. The philosopher, on the contrary, distinguishes the causes to what extent he may, often
anticipates them, and knowingly surrenders himself to them... Reason is in the estimation of the philosopher what grace is
to the Christian. Grace determines the Christian's action; reason the philosopher's.
Other men are carried away by their passions, so that the acts which they produce do not proceed from reflection. These
are the men who move in darkness; while the philosopher, even in his passions, moves only after reflection. He marches at
night, but a torch goes on ahead."

-Denis Diderot, The Philosophe
Document 10

"Well, I compare my life to a large Mansion of Many Apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest
being as yet shut upon me. The first we step into we call the infant or thoughtless chamber, in which we remain as long as
we do not think. We remain there a long while, and notwithstanding the doors of the second Chamber remain wide open,
showing a bright appearance, we care not to hasten into it; but are at length imperceptibly impelled by the awakening of
the thinking principle within us-- we no sooner get into teh second chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of Maiden--
Thought, than we become intoxicated with the light and amosphere, we see nothing by pleasant wonders, and think of
delaying there forever in delight. However, among the effects this breathing is father of is that tremendous one of
sharpening one's vision into the heart and nature of Man-- of convincing one's nerves that the world is full of Misery and
Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness and oppression — whereby this Chamber of Maiden Thought becomes gradually darken'd on all
sides.... Now if we live, we go on thinking, we too shall explore them."

- John Keats

Document 11
"Liberty Leading the People"

- Eugene Delacroix

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