buns is typical. When he visited Southey there were hot
buttered buns for tea, and he so much offended Mrs. Southey by
calling them coarse, disgusting food that she determined to
make him try them. He ate first one, then another, and ended
by clearing off two plates of the unclean thing. Actively
conscious of nothing in himself but aspirations towards
perfection, he never saw that, like everyone else, he was a
cockpit of ordinary conflicting instincts; or, if this tumult
of lower movements did emerge into consciousness, he would
judge it to be wholly evil, since it had no connection, except
as a hindrance, with his activities as a reformer. Similarly
the world at large, full as it was of nightmare oppressions of
wrong, fell for him into two sharply opposed spheres of light
and darkness on one side the radiant armies of right, on the
other the perverse opposition of devils.

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