The Declaration of Independence, on the contrary, placed human life on a new axis by maintaining that happiness is a natural right of the individual and the whole end of government. To be sure, the idea was not original with Jefferson, it had been mentioned more than once in official or semi-official documents, it was in James Wilson, as in the Bill of Rights, but I cannot quite conceive that such a formula could have originated in New England. I cannot conceive either that it could have been proclaimed at that date anywhere except in a new country where the pioneer spirit dominated, where men felt that they could live without being crowded or hampered by fierce competition, traditions, and iron-bound social laws. In his plan for a _Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen_, Lafayette some twelve years later included "_la recherche du bonheur_", in memory of the American Declaration of Independence, but "_la recherche du bonheur_" disappeared in the committee and was never mentioned again in any of the three Declarations of the French Revolution. The nearest approach to it is found in the first article of the Declaration of June 23, 1793; but it simply states that the aim of society is common happiness--and this is quite a different idea. Whether it was right or not, Jefferson, when he reproduced the terms used by George Mason in the Virginia Bill of Rights, gave currency to an expression which was to influence deeply and even to mold American life. In that sense, it may be said that the Declaration of Independence represents the highest achievement of eighteenth-century philosophy, but of one aspect of that philosophy that could not develop fully in Europe. Trees that are transplanted sometimes thrive better under new skies than in their native habitat and may reach proportions wholly unforeseen. Thus the Declaration of Independence written to express the sentiments of the day probably shaped the American mind in an unexpected manner. It was essentially a popular document planned to impress the masses, to place before the young nation at its birth a certain ideal and a certain political faith, but it was also a legal and judicial document intended to make more precise the reasons why the united American colonies had finally resolved to separate from the mother country.