The Puritans (or pilgrims) were almost entirely middle-class people who came with the idea of forming an orderly and moral society. In every law that they passed, the preamble was religious and had to do with obedience to the will of God. The pilgrims believed, he says, that "observance of divine laws...leads man to liberty" (Toqueville 30). This was a far cry from simply doing whatever one wanted. Tocqueville quotes from a speech by Governor Winthrop in which he said,

There is in fact a sort of corrupt liberty, common to animals as well as to man, which consists in doing whatever one pleases. This liberty is the enemy of all authority; it suffers all rules impatiently; with it, w

Secularization, the separation of religion from politics and the rise of a secular realm with a dignity of its own, is certainly a crucial factor in the phenomenon of revolution. Indeed, it may ultimately turn out that what we call revolution is precisely that transitory phase which brings about the birth of a new, secular realm. But if this is true, then it is secularization itself, and not the contents of Christian teachings, which constitutes the origin of revolution" (18).

Hannah Arendt traces the history of revolutions in her book On Revolution. One of the things she says in support of Tocqueville's view of the American Revolution is that "tyrants rise to power through the support of the plain or the poor people, and that their greatest chance to keep power lies in the people's desire for equality of condition" (14). If this principle is applied to a group of "plain people" who are already living in a state of equality, their support of a tyrant across the sea who is in no way responsible for their equality, is unlikely. She traces the idea that interest-or "that which is useful for a person or for a group or for a people, does and should rule supreme in political matters"-dates back to Aristotle.

Having said all this, Arendt then contrasts the idea that revolution is beyond the power of human beings to control and that "men...must subject their will and purpose to the anonymous force of the revolution if they wanted to survive at all" (44) with what took place during the American Revolution. She states, "Yet we need only remember the course of the American Revolution, where the exact opposite took place, and recall how strongly the sentiment that man is master of his destiny, at least with respect to political government, permeated all its actors, to realize the impact which the spectacle of the impotence of man with regard to the course of his own action must have made" (44-45). In her view, the new world ushered in by the American Revolution was not the reflection of a "new science of politics," as Tocqueville claimed, but a "momentous transformation of philosophy" (46).

Arendt asserts that prior to the American Revolution, no real concept of the word revolution existed. Prior to that time, revolution meant a return to a former state as when a King dislodged from his throne by a coup d'etat was restored to his former glory and position. "The 'Glorious Revolution,'... was not thought of as a revolution at all, but as a restoration of monarchical power to its former righteousness and glory" (36). In other words, the American Revolution, which Tocqueville sees as evidence of a new spirit, was intended to be a restoration. Revolution, Arendt says, was a metaphor for the planets turning in their orbs. It was not until later that revolution gained a different focus of meaning. Rather than circling and returning, revolution came to mean an unstoppable force towards something totally different--a new beginning. She states, "...the revolutions started as restorations or renovations, and...the revolutionary pathos of an entirely new beginning was born only in the course of the event itself"(37).

Hannah Arendt, on the other hand, disagrees that "all modern revolutions are essentially Christian in origin." She

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Approximate Word count = 2197
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)