Freedom. Progress. Happiness. Human rights. People did not always value these ideas like we do today.
The Enlightenment helped to make them more important. Scientists led the way in the 1600s and 1700s. Then thinkers in other fields began to see new ways of looking at the world. In England, two philosophers thought up very different ideas about what human beings were like. A group of French philosophers said people could use reason in all parts of life. An Italian thinker wanted to make the criminal justice system better. They all brought big changes to the way governments worked and how people lived in the Western world.
