The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the sovereignty of reason and the evidence of the senses as the primary sources of knowledge and advanced ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state. In France, the central doctrines of the Enlightenment philosophers were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism, along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy—an attitude captured by the phrase Sapere aude (Dare to know).The Enlightenment Collection brings together the greatest works to emerge from this incredible period of human intellectual creativity. Featuring:Meditations on First Philosophy, by Rene DescartesThe Ethics, by Baruch SpinozaEssay Concerning Human Understanding, by John LockeAn Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by David HumeThe Social Contract, by Jean Jacques RousseauThe Age of Reason, by Thomas PaineManifesto of the Communist Party, by Karl Marx & Friedrich EngelsOn the Duty of Civil Disobedience, by Henry David ThoreauandOn the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin