His deepest conviction about "the suffering human race" would seem to have been that its worst miseries arise from a too exalted estimate of its capacities. 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. Friendship is a broken reed, for Our vaunted life is one long funeral, and even Hope is buried with the "faces that smiled and fled." Death, at least in some of its aspects, seemed to him the Stern law of every mortal lot, Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear; And builds himself I know not what Of second life I know not where. And yet, in gleams of happier insight, he saw the man who "flagged not in this earthly strife," His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, mount, though hardly, to eternal life. And, as he mused over his father's grave, the conviction forced itself upon his mind that somewhere in the "labour-house of being" there still was employment for that father's strength, "zealous, beneficent, firm." Here indeed is the more cheerful aspect of his "criticism of life." Such happiness as man is capable of enjoying is conditioned by a frank recognition of his weaknesses and limitations; but it requires also for its fulfilment the sedulous and dutiful employment of such powers and opportunities as he has. First and foremost, he must realize the "majestic unity" of his nature, and not attempt by morbid introspection to dissect himself into Affections, Instincts, Principles, and Powers, Impulse and Reason, Freedom and Control. Then he must learn that To its own impulse every action stirs. He must live by his own light, and let earth live by hers. The forces of nature are to be in this respect his teachers--