What Were They Thinking? (part 9)

In this series, I hope to show how the understanding of our founders was shaped and guided by those literary works with which they were familiar.

In Part 8, we looked at passages from John Locke's "Two Treatises on Civil Government" and then saw how the concepts which he discussed wound up in the Declaration of Independence. Today we look at another writer whose work* influenced that document.

The first mean whereby Nature teacheth men to judge good from evil, as well in laws as in other things, is the force of their own discretion ... Some things are so familiar and plain that truth from falsehood and good from evil is most easily discerned in them, even by men of no deep capacity ... [From Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity by Richard Hooker, 1593]

Or, in the words which should be much more familiar to you,

We hold these truths to be self-evident ...

Again, from Hooker:

The general and perpetual voice of men is as the sentence of God himself. For that which all men have at all times learned, Nature herself must needs have taught, and God being the author of Nature, her voice is but his instrument. By her from Him we receive whatsoever in such sort we learn ...His meaning is, that by force of the light of reason wherewith God illuminateth everyone which cometh into the world, men being enabled to know truth from falsehood, and good from evil, do thereby learn in many things what the will of God is; which will himself not revealing by any extraordinary means unto them, but they be natural discourse attaining the knowledge thereof, seem the makers of those laws which indeed are his, and they but only the finders of them out ... We see then how Nature itself teacheth laws and statutes to live by.

Sound familiar?

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. [Opening paragraph, The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, 1776]

And from Hooker, once more:

But inasmuch as righteous life presupposeth life, inasmuch as to live virtuously it is impossible except we live, therefore the first impediment which naturally we endeavor to remove is penury and want of things without which we cannot live. Unto life many implements are necessary; more, if we seek, as all men naturally do, such a life as hath in it joy, comfort, delight, and pleasure.

And therefore from the Declaration:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men ...

Previous posts:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7 
Part 8

* I don't imply that Hooker or Locke were the only influences; only that their work can clearly be seen to have played a role in the language of the Declaration.