The Enlightenment was a social movement, which began in the late 17th and 18th centuries in Europe, emphasizing that reason was the cause of events in life, rather than religion, tradition or cultural beliefs. During this period, society experienced a renaissance, exploring ideas that took away the authority of the Catholic Church, which up until that point had been believed by people to be the cause of everything in life. These ideas discovered in this period transformed people's views in the so-called Western world on religion and life itself. Between 1714 and 1818, ideas from Europe traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, and the thirteen colonies themselves went through a period of Enlightenment. Thinkers such as Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin emphasized religious tolerance and believed in deistic ideals, which revolved around the thought that man's destiny was in his own hands, not God's. Benjamin Franklin, in particular, advanced some revolutionary ideas about how one should live their life. These thoughts spread through society and directly influenced later literary movements such as the Romanticism period. In Benjamin Franklin's The Way to Riches, he explores and solidifies the idea that God will not determine how man will succeed, but depends on man's desire for success. In this piece he states: “Sloth, by causing disease, absolutely shortens life.” By sloth, Franklin means laziness. This statement highlights the fact that laziness does not lead to success and basically becomes a disease once it becomes routine. It seems to shorten life because the lazy person accomplished nothing and spent their time doing something useful. Franklin also makes the point that when… in the center of the card… it is in the universe, but it is better to simply accept it and see the beauty in it. Although order puts things in perspective and organizes them as expressed by Benjamin Franklin, both William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman in their respective poems challenge the idea of ​​reason and express how order negatively affects man's perspective on nature and about the world. In this investigation, the Enlightenment clearly influenced future literary movements and the mindset of authors during these periods. Although many processes used today to discover the meaning behind nature, such as the scientific method, gained prominence during the Enlightenment, but were immediately downgraded in the era of Romanticism, which reflected on how reason conflicted with communion and the perception of nature. The Enlightenment was a time of self-discovery, but it influenced literature in many ways in the years to come.