ABSTRACT
This chapter defines the meaning for nineteenth-century Europe of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution as perceived by Jacob Burckhardt, John Stuart Mill, and Alexis De Tocqueville. To most nineteenth-century European liberals, England and English history were the pattern for modern development. From the aristrocratic liberals' point of view, the Enlightenment and the Revolution played a double role in the history of European culture. The Enlightenment evidenced many of the traits characteristic of both the French Revolution and nineteenth-century Europe as the aristocratic liberals saw them. Political centralization and political inexperience, individualism, the anti-historical tendency, and the power of public opinion all remained prominent in their vision of Europe long after 1789. The ideas of the Enlightenment and the Revolution were also central elements in modern culture. They contained important contributions to liberty, such as the ideals of the Rechtstaat and constitutionalism and contributed crucial elements of the aristocratic liberals' own modern humanism in their recognition of change and discontinuity.
