Many of the effects of the Age of Reason persist today, particularly in the respect given to science and in the growth of democracy. Enlightenment thought, however, failed in many respects. It tried to replace a religious world view with one erected by human reason. It failed in this because it found reason so often accompanied by will power, emotions, passions, appetites, and desires that reason can neither explain nor control. In the end, the adequacy of reason itself was attacked, first by David Hume in his 'Enquiry Concerning human Understanding', and later by Immanuel Kant in the 'Critique of Pure Reason'. Most thinkers came to realize that cool and calculating reason is insufficient to explaiin the variety of human nature and the puzzling flow of history.
Late in the 18th century there was already under way a sweeping revolt against the claims of reason, a revolt called Romanticism. This was a conscious rebellion against science, authority, tradition, order, and discipline. Romanticism manifested itself primarily in the arts. It emphasized individuality, subjectivity, the goodness of the natural world, and the irrational.