George Santayana (1863-1952), "Tipperary,"
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1922), pp. 99-106 (at 101):
If experience could teach mankind anything, how different
our morals and our politics would be, how clear, how
tolerant, how steady! If we knew ourselves, our conduct
at all times would be absolutely decided and consistent;
and a pervasive sense of vanity and humour would disinfect
all our passions, if we knew the world. As it is, we live
experimentally, moodily, in the dark; each generation
breaks its egg-shell with the same haste and assurance
as the last, pecks at the same indigestible pebbles, dreams
the same dreams, or others just as absurd, and if it hears
anything of what former men have learned by experience,
it corrects their maxims by its first impressions, and rushes
down any untrodden path which it finds alluring, to die
in its own way, or become wise too late and to no purpose.
Id. (at 103-104):
Reserve a part of your wrath; you have not seen
the worst yet. You suppose that this war has been a
criminal blunder and an exceptional horror; you imagine
that before long reason will prevail, and all these inferior
people that govern the world will be swept aside, and your
own party will reform everything and remain always in
office. You are mistaken. This war has given you your
first glimpse of the ancient, fundamental, normal state of
the world, your first taste of reality. It should teach you
to dismiss all your philosophies of progress or of a governing
reason as the babble of dreamers who walk through one
world mentally beholding another.