Was the realm of thought in the eighteenth century so very different from that of today? Judging from the contents of the first Dutch opinion papers – the so-called Spectatorial writings – on the surface, the differences would not appear to be so very great. The same contradictions that occupy our minds today were causing confusion in those days too. Women and men, the highly-placed and the subordinate, the familiar and the foreign, the body and the mind – in many ways well-known discussions. But we cannot fully recognize everything alluded to in these discussions; time has clearly changed the words and forms, the concepts and connotations. The intention of this project was to make elements of this eighteenth century debate accessible to the modern reader by way of an anthology. A central point of departure was sought and found in the theme 'contradictions’. After all, many opinion-forming texts deal with social contradictions or contradictions of another nature and take up a position on the issue in question. The same was true during the Enlightenment. Despite generally accepted consensus and a collective aspiration towards personal happiness and social progress, public opinion in the Dutch Republic was divided on a large number of issues. This can be clearly deduced from the hundreds of voices – from writers, readers, correspondents and imaginary characters – to be heard in the Dutch Spectators. The fact that their allotted speaking time was carefully measured, their words guided and their ideas commented upon by the anonymous Spectator Gentlemen who sometimes took on the role of editor and sometimes that of author, did however tend to limit the influence of any opinions that had not gone down well with the chief author/editor. However, it seemed a worthy ambition to bring a number of these voices back to life in the shape of an anthology and to allow the modern-day reader to become acquainted with a genre of literary texts that helped give form and substance to public debate in the Netherlands of the eighteenth century. A number of sub-themes were chosen that would be familiar to modern-day readers and for which an enormous reservoir of texts was available. The texts were selected on the basis of criteria such as their distribution over the century and the diversity of opinions. Variation in style and representation from as many publications as possible was also sought. The texts were then re-spelled and a short introduction was written introducing the author and explaining the message contained in the text. Explanatory notes were added to strange names, words that were no longer in use, and less well-known expressions. Finally, an afterword was compiled to explain in more detail the rise and decline, the readers and writers, the styles, guidance and ideology behind the Spectator genre. As a sideline, an article was written for a professional journal, which argued in favour of the use of literary sources and the theory of literary methods in social history. One single Spectator text on the attitudes of ‘civilised’ Europeans versus uncivilised 'savages’ was dissected in order to establish the presence of contradictions and discrepancies. These were then placed in the broader context of the Enlightenment. Publications: Een verdeelde Verlichting. Stemmen uit de spectators, Amsterdam 2001 More ... 'Gespleten beschavingsteksten. Lezen op de millimeter als methode voor de sociale geschiedenis', in: Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 26 (2000), p.289-308. Summary. The article is available as Pdf.