perspective...................

 Upon every culture there is an internal and external perspective—the perspective of the tribesman and that of the anthropologist.  Homer's Odyssey enables us to share the internal perspective on an enchanted world.  Thanks to such artists as Pope, Goethe, and Mozart, we can acquire the same internal perspective of the sober world of the Enlightenment.  They show us what it was like, to live through the loss of old authority, and to see the vision unfold of man in his freedom, with his dignity not yet degraded, and his religion not yet crumbled to dust. In art, literature, and music, the Enlightenment gave content to its universalism, with stories, epics and operas that might be set in any place of time, each devoted to the human substance beneath the local colour.  Its criticisms of old authority were accompanied by a fervent and pious attempt to retain the ethical view of man. . . . The Enlightenment, we discover, is part of us.  It belongs to the archaeology, rather than the pre-history, of modern consciousness, 

-Roger Scruton, An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture