【正文】 society was reluctant to share any power with them, the real creator of national wealth. They were dissatisfied with the feudal lords and longed for more power from the King so that they could have free development. Intellectual SettingAt the same time, natural science made accelerated progress in the late 17th and the 18th century. It rendered an ideological weapon to the vanguards of the Enlightenment. Many philosophers were trying to seek truth and reason from the newlyemerging natural science. Rene Descartes, famous for his analytical geometry, believed that the only way to know the world and acquire knowledge is mathematical reasoning。 the relationship between humans was peaceful and kind, quite other than the disordered state as described by Hobbes。 that, whenever any form of government bees destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.If these ideas seem familiar to you, it is because they were derived from part of Locke’s theories that the power to govern was obtained from the permission of the people and that were incorporated into the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson. The language of natural law, of inherent freedoms, of selfdetermination that seeped so deeply into the American traits was the very language of the Enlightenment. Hence, the characters of liberty, equality and democracy were carved in the Americans’ bones from the very beginning.3 Democracy, Freedom, and Order the Enlightened philosophy embodied in the Constitution We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the mon defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. a prefaceFormulated in 1787, the Constitution of the . is the first contemporary written constitution. The Constitution with the federal system set up by it was a significant milestone in the history of human civilization. The pursuit for rational political activities, for the first time since Renaissance, sublimated to institutional practice. Other European countries began to frame their own constitutions after the . model. Whereas the constitutions of many countries have taken various forms over time, such as the case in France, the American Constitution has had no change except for a few amendments added to it during the past more than two hundred years, and it is still working today. The longevity of the . Constitution can be well called a miracle. If the Constitution may be pared to a cultural organism, then its genes can be traced back to the origin of its birth, namely, the Enlightenment. The Tripartite Federal SystemThe Constitution set up a federal system with a strong central government. A federal system is one in which power is shared between a central authority and its constituent parts, with some rights reserved to each. , , P22 Besides, legislative powers, executive powers, and judicial powers of the nation are separately vested in a Congress of the ., which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives, the President and a Supreme Court. Each branch has a way of counteracting and limiting any wrong action by other branch. This is a system that is usually called Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances. As previously introduced, it was originally proposed by Locke and later formally set down by French Enlightened thinker Montesquieu. As a judicial official, Montesquieu was among the earliest critics of absolute monarchy. He once wrote: “In republican governments, men are all equal。 or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress or grievances. —the 1st AmendmentIn 1620, 35 Puritans and 67 nonPuritans took the ship Mayflower and left for North America to escape religious prosecution and seek freedo