All human beings, regardless of their social status or gender, have an innate ability and God-given right to acquire knowledge, develop their minds, and improve their lives. The key to unlock this human potential is education. Not the kind of education found in schools and universities in the seventeenth century, which was based on medieval Scholasticism, pedantic Aristotelianism, and orthodox Lutheran theology, but education that frees the mind from prejudice and provides practical assistance for the struggles of life and individual self-development. Such are the teachings of Christian Thomasius, philosopher, historian, editor, and professor of jurisprudence at the universities of Leipzig and Halle. Throughout his teaching career--roughly from 1687, when he first defied university tradition by lecturing in German rather than in Latin, to 1728, the year of his death--Thomasius fought against academic presumptuousness and religious dogmatism. In lectures, tracts, and countless disputations he pleaded for the intellectual independence of...