When the Puritan regime ended in England in the late 1680's, the ban on theater was lifted and drama became completely secular. Women were allowed to perform on stage for the first time. Alexander Pope (1688-1744), the English poet who perfected the heroic couplet, wrote in his Essay on Man:
"Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man."
Religious, political and social dissent was becoming more open in spite of widespread censorship and persecution. A few enlightened rulers helped spread new ideas by patronizing radical thinkers. One of these was Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia (1740-86). Frederick the Great was sympathetic to the American Revolution and wrote a new code of Prussian law to distribute justice among the different classes more equitably. He was a patron of the arts and sciences, including the writings of Voltaire who had said that governments who do not protect people's basic rights should be overthrown. (More on Voltaire will be discussed later in this article). The writings of Thomas Paine had influenced both the French and American revolutions.
Ideas that were to be the forerunners of Humanism flourished. Ideas that would lead to Secular Humanism in particular included Spinoza's pantheism. The others were a related, often overlapping, group of ideas espoused by the Encyclopedists, Materialists, Philosophes, Skeptics and Democrats. But first we will start with Pantheism.
Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), a Dutch philosopher, popularized pantheism, the belief that the universe is identical with God, described by Spinoza as the uncaused "substance" of all things. Pantheism is as old as 3000 BCE Egypt, and includes the love and awe of nature such as that expressed by Spinoza, who denied revelation and the supernatural. He stressed the idea of "immortality" but it was not lived through an afterlife, but rather by attaining a high quality of thought and action in this life that would become part of the unchanging, eternal past. It was a symbolic "living on" through the legacy one leaves to the world and to history.
Spinoza's family fled to Amsterdam during the Spanish Inquisition, two of his best friends had been murdered, and theologians and others had threatened his own security. His work titled Ethics did not appear until after his death because he feared the consequences.
