We believed in another world, but we admitted the feebleness of our senses. Then came 'enlightenment,' and made everything so very clear and enlightened, that we can see nothing for excess of light, and go banging our noses against the first tree we come to in the wood. We insist, now-a-days, on grasping the other world with stretched-out arms of flesh and bone.
E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Serapion Brethren. Vol. I
enlightenment, materialism, modernity