“The greatness of the Enlightenment lies less in its ideals, than in our efforts to realize them. The tragedy of the Enlightenment lies there too. … It was a set of abstract philosophical ideals, but it was also a lived historical experience, full of ordinary disappointments and irregularities” – it was, like a centaur, an impossible combination. “We know what a centaur should look like, but we never see one in real life.”