 This does not mean, for Hartley, that life gets easier. Rather he describes the path as increasingly difficult. Although profoundly optimistic about the ultimate future of humanity—he is describing, after all, how association tends “to reduce the state of those who have eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, back again to a paradisiacal one”—he is acutely aware of the many bypaths of human self-deception and destructiveness. He is especially conscious of the dangers facing those whose primary pursuit concerns being sympathetic, theopathic, and morally perceptive. Such a person can become “a bitter persecuting spirit” (OM 1, prop. 97). In general, the “higher” the level of moral and spiritual attainment, the greater the potential for a crippling, demonic destructiveness. In this regard, reading Hartley one encounters a vision of human nature as deeply conflicted, struggling against itself—a view similar to what one finds in Dostoyevsky or Kierkegaard.