SOURCE: Behrens, C. B. A. “Shadows on the Enlightenment.” New York Review of Books 13, no. 11 (18 December 1969): 27–29.

In the following review of The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, Volume II: The Science of Freedom, Behrens discusses the strengths and weaknesses of Gay's discussion of the Enlightenment.

David Chodowiecki, a hack illustrator of the eighteenth century, once produced a sketch to illustrate the Enlightenment which was reproduced in the Göttingen pocket calendar for the year 1792. It showed a hilly landscape, with a man on foot, a man on horseback, and a coach, all facing toward the rising sun. It was a pretty picture but suggested nothing in particular. As a German historian observed, it might equally well have borne the legend: “the mail-coach at sunrise.” This historian used it to demonstrate that though everyone in Germany at the end of the eighteenth century continually talked about Enlightenment, no one knew what...