With this hysterically over-simplified view of life, fostered by lack of self-knowledge, was connected a corresponding mistake as to the means by which his ends could be reached. One of the first observations which generous spirits often make is that the unsatisfactory state of society is due to some very small kink or flaw in the dispositions of the majority of people. This perception, which it does not need much experience to reach, is the source of the common error of youth that everything can be put right by some simple remedy. If only some tiny change could be made in men's attitude towards one another and towards the universe, what a flood of evil could be dammed; the slightness of the cause is as striking as the immensity of the effect. Those who ridicule the young do not, perhaps, always see that this is perfectly true, though of course they are right in denouncing the inference so often drawn--and here lay Shelley's fundamental fallacy--that the required tiny change depends on an effort of the will, and that the will only does not make the effort because feeling is perverted and intelligence dimmed by convention traditions, prejudices, and superstitions. It is certain, for one thing, that will only plays a small part in our nature, and that by themselves acts of will cannot make the world perfect. Most men are helped to this lesson by observation of themselves; they see that their high resolves are ineffective because their characters are mixed. Shelley never learnt this. He saw, indeed, that his efforts were futile even mischievous; but, being certain, and rightly, of the nobility of his aims, he could never see that he had acted wrongly, that he ought to have calculated the results of his actions more reasonably. Ever thwarted, and never nearer the happiness he desired for himself and others, he did not, like ordinary men attain a juster notion of the relation between good and ill in himself and in the world; he lapsed into a plaintive bewildered melancholy, translating the inexplicable conflict of right and wrong into the transcendental view that "Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity."