24 beyond wishful thinkingbless, allow, or make sense of. Th e fecundity and amplitude of experi-
ence outreach all the formative limitations imposed upon it.
For the same reasons and in the same sense, no social role in any
society can do justice to any individual human being. No scheme of
social or ga ni za tion can accommodate all the activities that we have
reason to value or all the powers that we have cause to exercise and to
develop. Th is excess over the determinate circumstances of existence
should excite in the mind the idea of our greatness, or of our share in
the attributes that some of the world religions have ascribed to God.
Nevertheless, the ordinary experience of life, although punctuated
by moments of joy, which may be sustained and prolonged by our en-
gagements and attachments, is one of blockage and humiliation. Th e
per sis tent disproportion between our context- transcending powers
and the objects on which we lavish our devotions threatens to turn ex-
istence into an ordeal of belittlement. “In every house, in the heart of
each maiden, and of each boy, in the soul of the soaring saint, this
chasm is found,— between the largest promise of ideal power, and the
shabby experience.” “So each man,” wrote Emerson, “is an emperor
deserted by his states, and left to whistle by himself.”
Th e extremes of economic deprivation and social oppression to
which most of mankind has been condemned for most of history make
this ordeal seem all the more bitter and inescapable. If, however, we
look beyond the surface of life, we see that not even the privileged, the
powerful, the gift ed, and the lucky are free from the burdens of belittle-
ment. For these burdens result universally from the recurrent, shaping
incidents of a human life. Even a man whose circumstances and for-
tune have shielded him from deprivation and oppression must face
these trials in three successive waves in the course of his existence.
First, at the beginning he must be driven out of the sense that he is
the eternal center of the world. He must come to understand not only
that he is just one among countless many but also that he will soon be
nothing. Even if he allows himself to be persuaded that he will gain
eternal life, he cannot regain the illusion of being at the center.
Later, he must resign himself to taking a par tic u lar course in life, if
indeed the course is not imposed on him by the constraints of society.
If he resists committing himself to such a course, he does not become
universal; he merely becomes sterile and sick. However, the conse-