Men are perpetually disappointed and disillusioned
because they expect too much from human life and human nature, and
persuade themselves that their experience, here and hereafter, will be,
not what they have any reasonable grounds for expecting, but what they
imagine or desire. The true philosophy is that which
Neither makes man too much a god,
Nor God too much a man.
Wordsworth thought it a boon to "feel that we are greater than we know":
Arnold thought it a misfortune. Wordsworth drew from the shadowy
impressions of the past the most splendid intimations of the future.
Against such vain imaginings Arnold set, in prose, the "inexorable
sentence" in which Butler warned us to eschew pleasant self-deception;
and, in verse, the persistent question--
Say, what blinds us, that we claim the glory
Of possessing powers not our share?
He rebuked
Wishes unworthy of a man full-grown.
He taught that there are
Joys which were not for our use designed.
He warned discontented youth not to expect greater happiness from
advancing years, because
one thing only has been lent
To youth and age in common--discontent.
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