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The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are two of the most important documents in United States history providing a foundation for the social, economic, and political rights of American citizens. Both have important predecessors—our Constitution was influenced by the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights of 1689, and the Declaration by John Locke's writings on the consent of the governed and by a document close to home for Thomas Jefferson, the draft version by George Mason of Virginia's Declaration of Rights. Without these documents and the ideas contained within them, the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution might have taken very different forms.
Perhaps the earliest influence on the U.S. Constitution was written by Aristotle, the Greek philosopher taught by Plato, who in turn tutored Alexander the Great. Toward the end of his career, Aristotle wrote the Politics, a collection of essays on government. In the Politics, Aristotle identified the types of constitutions based on the number of rulers at the head of a government. The "right" type of constitution was based on the common good, whether the government was headed by a king, an aristocracy, or by many (the polity). The "wrong" type of constitution was based on personal self-interest. Although democracy is one of our founding principles, at this time in history, Aristotle included democracy as a principle based on self-interest. The Greek notion of the "middle way," that extremes should be avoided, was an idea Aristotle agreed with, and so he combined negative (but opposite) oligarchic and democratic principles to form the positive, middle way of the polity: the ideal constitution and ideal social order.
