A little later, this state of mind gives birth to a thirst for real life—­the impulse to do and suffer—­which drives a man forth into the hurly-burly of the world.  There he learns the other side of existence—­the inner side, the will, which is thwarted at every step.  Then comes the great period of disillusion, a period of very gradual growth; but once it has fairly begun, a man will tell you that he has got over all his false notions—­l’age des illusions est passe; and yet the process is only beginning, and it goes on extending its sway and applying more and more to the whole of life.

So it may be said that in childhood, life looks like the scenery in a theatre, as you view it from a distance; and that in old age it is like the same scenery when you come up quite close to it.

And, lastly, there is another circumstance that contributes to the happiness of childhood.  As spring commences, the young leaves on the trees are similar in color and much the same in shape; and in the first years of life we all resemble one another and harmonize very well.  But with puberty divergence begins; and, like the radii of a circle, we go further and further apart.

The period of youth, which forms the remainder of this earlier half of our existence—­and how many advantages it has over the later half!—­is troubled and made miserable by the pursuit of happiness, as though there were no doubt that it can be met with somewhere in life,—­a hope that always ends in failure and leads to discontent.  An illusory image of some vague future bliss—­born of a dream and shaped by fancy—­floats before our eyes; and we search for the reality in vain.  So it is that the young man is generally dissatisfied with the position in which he finds himself, whatever it may be; he ascribes his disappointment solely to the state of things that meets him on his first introduction to life, when he had expected something very different; whereas it is only the vanity and wretchedness of human life everywhere that he is now for the first time experiencing.

It would be a great advantage to a young man if his early training could eradicate the idea that the world has a great deal to offer him.  But the usual result of education is to strengthen this delusion; and our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than from fact.

In the bright dawn of our youthful days, the poetry of life spreads out a gorgeous vision before us, and we torture ourselves by longing to see it realized.  We might as well wish to grasp the rainbow!  The youth expects his career to be like an interesting romance; and there lies the germ of that disappointment which I have been describing.[1] What lends a charm to all these visions is just the fact that they are visionary and not real, and that in contemplating them we are in the sphere of pure knowledge, which is sufficient in itself and free from the noise and struggle of life.  To try and realize those visions is to make them an object of will—­a process which always involves pain.[2]