Last night I dreamt about rational thought. I know my dream was about “sapere aude” since two small horses accompanied me into a book filled room; because I pushed my hand inside the sun and my companion (a dream companion, only half known) said: “You’re hand is in the sun and you’re not burning.” I wiggled my fingers inside a blazing star.
In Peter Gay’s excellent first volume on the Enlightenment he says:
“In 1784, when the Enlightenment had done most of its work, Kant defined it as man’s emergence from his self-imposed tutelage, and offered as its motto Sapere aude—“Dare to know”: take the risk of discovery, exercise the right of unfettered criticism, accept the loneliness of autonomy.1 Like the other philosophes—for Kant only articulated what the others had long suggested in their polemics—Kant saw the Enlightenment as man’s claim to be recognized as an adult, responsible being. It is the concord of the philosophes in staking this claim, as much as the claim itself, that makes the Enlightenment such a momentous event in the history of the Western mind.”
Excerpt From: Peter Gay. “Enlightenment Volume 1.” iBooks. https://itun.es/us/vuGqN.l
My two small horses were affectionate, like loyal dogs. I remember saying aloud to my half known dream pal that the horses were very dear. They were the soul itself, the composite soul, the Platonic soul. And there were lots of books. I felt alert, calm, open to surprise, and sufficiently adult and playful to have books and two horses with kind eyes.
Planet of the Blind 