Every feeling of hardship is inseparable from the desire to escape
from it; every idea of pleasure from the desire to enjoy it. All desire
implies a want, and all wants are painful; hence our wretchedness
consists in the disproportion between our desires and our powers.
A conscious being whose powers were equal to his desires would be
perfectly happy.

What then is human wisdom? Where is the path of true happiness?
The mere limitation of our desires is not enough, for if they were
less than our powers, part of our faculties would be idle, and we
should not enjoy our whole being; neither is the mere extension of
our powers enough, for if our desires were also increased we should
only be the more miserable. True happiness consists in decreasing
the difference between our desires and our powers, in establishing
a perfect equilibrium between the power and the will. Then only,
when all its forces are employed, will the soul be at rest and man
will find himself in his true position.

In this condition, nature, who does everything for the best, has
placed him from the first. To begin with, she gives him only such
desires as are necessary for self-preservation and such powers as
are sufficient for their satisfaction. All the rest she has stored
in his mind as a sort of reserve, to be drawn upon at need. It
is only in this primitive condition that we find the equilibrium
between desire and power, and then alone man is not unhappy. As
soon as his potential powers of mind begin to function, imagination,
more powerful than all the rest, awakes, and precedes all the rest.
It is imagination which enlarges the bounds of possibility for us,
whether for good or ill, and therefore stimulates and feeds desires
by the hope of satisfying them. But the object which seemed within