The focus for today’s scholars may be on this new-found freedom of the Enlightenment, but that was not the origin of capitalism.
When Rome began it was strictly an agrarian society. The only asset considered valuable was land. In Roman society, wealthy patricians controlled the land and those without wealth or land were the Plebeians. Patricians considered mercantilism beneath their dignity and refused to engage in such low enterprise. Cicero once referred to all salesmen as liars.