“Downstairs” in the area of humanistic reason, man is a machine, man is meaningless. There are no values. And “upstairs” optimism about meaning and values is totally separated from reason.
Here was a man starting from himself absolutely. And if the humanistic elements of the Renaissance stand in sharp contrast to the Reformation, the Enlightenment was in total antithesis to it.
“The problem is not only to win souls but to save minds. If you win the whole world and lose the mind of the world, you will soon discover you have not won the world” -Charles Malik