Montesquieu constituted a bridge between the Enlightenment and the classical world. In his study of the Enlightenment, Peter Gay finds that “Montesquieu was the most influential writer of the eighteenth century.” The Frenchman’s thinking had an impact from France to Russia to Italy, Gay adds, but most of all in Scotland. There, his Spirit of Laws became “the common coin of learned discussion,” always in the background even when not explicitly acknowledged.5
