Final answer:
The founding fathers focused on creating political structures, influenced by John Locke's natural rights theory, and aimed to balance between liberty and order rather than attempting to change human nature.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question asks why the founding fathers did not attempt to change mankind's inherent nature. The founding fathers were heavily influenced by Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke, who posited that men were born with certain natural rights – life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Locke's view was that government should protect these rights rather than enforce a transformation of human nature. The focus of the founding fathers was on creating political structures that upheld these rights and balanced power across various branches of government. They wanted to avoid a monarchy and ensure that individual states retained some independent powers. The idea was to form a government that provided ordered liberty and addressed the economic and political instability of the time. Thus, the correct answer is b) They were focused on political structures, as they believed in the inherent goodness of human nature while also recognizing the need for a government to manage and protect the rights and liberties of its citizens.
Another important aspect was civic virtue; the founders believed good citizenship involved a moral responsibility to act in the best interest of the country's political principles, rather than changing human nature itself. Their primary effort was not to alter human nature but to establish a government that could organize and channel human behaviors toward the public good, thereby achieving a balance between liberty and order.