The proper effect of enlightenment, accordingly, is twofold: improved knowledge rules out illusory means and, insofar as it entails greater power, multiplies the genuine ones. To destroy the illusion of a means is not to cut the amplitude of choice, for, insofar as it extends to illusory means, choice itself is but an illusion. In an ideally enlightened community, authority would be spared the unhappy task of directing the common effrot, in the darkness of illusion, along a possibly disastrous line. But, inasmuch as an excellent condition of knowledge implies greatly increased power, social science at its perfection would multiply genuine means and broaden real choice. It would, consequently, increase the need fo rauthority as a factor of united action in the cases where the plurality of the genuine means renders unanimity fortuitous.
Yves R. Simon, A General Theory of Authority, University of Notre Dame Press (Notre Dame, Indiana: 1980) p. 45.
