Q 01/05

Montesquieu is the principal source of which theory of government, now written into many constitutions?

A) Divine right of kings

B) Separation of powers

C) The social contract

D) Popular sovereignty

Answer · why

B) Separation of powers

Separation of powers, he argued, protects liberty because no one body can make the laws, enforce them and settle disputes all at once. The framers of ...

Q 02/05

Montesquieu's noble parents are said to have chosen which unlikely figure as their son's godfather?

A) A beggar

B) A blacksmith

C) A fisherman

D) A gravedigger

Answer · why

A) A beggar

A beggar stood godfather, the story goes, so that the future baron would remember all his life that the poor were his brothers.

Q 03/05

To support his climate theory, Montesquieu froze which animal's tongue and studied it under a microscope?

A) An ox

B) A pig

C) A sheep

D) A rabbit

Answer · why

C) A sheep

A sheep supplied the tongue: he watched its tiny bumps shrink when frozen and rise again as it thawed, and concluded that people in cold countries fee...

Q 04/05

America's founders cited Montesquieu more than any other source except which book, one survey found?

A) Plato's Republic

B) Plutarch's Lives

C) Hobbes's Leviathan

D) The Bible

Answer · why

D) The Bible

The Bible alone outranked him: political scientist Donald Lutz counted citations in late-1700s American writing and found Montesquieu the most quoted ...

Q 05/05

From 1981 to 1994, Montesquieu's face appeared on which everyday French item, later given to Gustave Eiffel?

A) A banknote

B) A stamp

C) A coin

D) A phone card

Answer · why

A) A banknote

A banknote for 200 francs bore his portrait until a new series handed that denomination to the engineer of the famous tower in 1996.