The Concept of Enlightenment

lishing their sovereignty. yet the fully enlightened earth radiate~ b~ disaster triumphant. The program of the Enlightenment was 4-IJ the disenchantment of the world; the dissolution of myths and f#lJ)·r the substitution of knowledge for fancy. Bacon, the "father of experimental philosophy,"l had defined its motives. He looked down on the masters of tradition, the "great reputed authors" who first "believe that others know that which they know not; and after themselves know that which they know not. But indeed facility to believe, impatience to doubt, temerity to answer, glory to know, doubt to contradict, end to gain, sloth to search, seeking things in words, resting in part of nature; thes~ and the like have been the things which have forbidden the happy match between the mind of man and the nature of things; and in place thereof have married it to vain notions and blind experiments: and what the posterity and issue of so honorable a match may be, it is not hard to consmer. Printing, a gross invention; artillery, a thing that lay not far out of the way; the needle, a thing partly known before: what a change have these three things made in the world in these times; the one in state of learning, the other in the state of war, the third in the state of treasure, commodities. and navigation I And those, I say, were but stumbled upon and lighted upon by chance. Therefore. no doubt, the sovereignty of man lieth hid in knowledge; wherein many things are reserved, which kings with