Part 9

"In the structure of the mind, inaccuracy brings a partial deviation from the truth, and it does not take long for this slight error to generalize itself, if not corrected by its natural reformer--common sense.

"But how many, among those who suffer from these unhappy illusions, are apt to recognize them as such?

"It would, however, be a precious thing for us to admit the causes which have led us to such a sorry result, by never permitting them to occur again.

"This would be the only way for the victims of illusion to preserve the life of that element of success and happiness known as hope.

"Because of seeing so often the good destroyed, we wish to believe no more in it as inherent in our being, and rather than suffer repeatedly from its disappearance, we prefer to smother it before perfect development.

"The greater number of skeptics are only the unavowed lovers of illusion; their desires, never being those capable of realization, they have lost the habit of hoping for a favorable termination of any sentiment.

"The lack of common sense does not allow them to understand the folly of their enterprise, and rather than seek the causes of their habitual failures, they prefer to attack God and man, both of whom they hold responsible for all their unhappiness.

"They are willingly ironical, easily become pessimists, and villify life, without desiring to perceive that it reserved as many smiles for them as the happy people whom they envy.

"All these causes of disappointment can only be attributed to the lack of equilibrium of the reasoning power and, above all, to the absence of common sense, hence we cannot judge of relative values.

"To give a definite course to the plans which we form is to prepare the happy termination of them.

"This is also the way to banish seductive illusion, the devourer of beautiful ambitions and youthful aspirations."

And, with his habitual sense of the practical in life, Yoritomo adds the following:

"There are, however, some imaginations which can not be controlled by the power of reasoning, and which, in spite of everything, escape toward the unlimited horizons of the dream.

"It would be in vain to think of shutting them up in the narrow prison walls of strict reason; they would die wishing to attempt an escape.

"To these we can prescribe the dream under its most august form, that of science.

"Each inventor has pursued an illusion, but those whose names have lived to reach our recognition, have caught a glimpse of the vertiginous course they were following, and no longer have allowed themselves to get too far away from their base--science.

"Yes, illusion can be beautiful, on condition that it is not constantly debilitated.

"To make it beautiful we must be its master, then we may attempt its conquest.

"It is thus that all great men act; before adopting an illusion, as truth, they have assured themselves of the means by the aid of which they were permitted first to hope for its transformation and afterward be certain of their power to discipline it.

"Illusion then changes its name and becomes the Ideal.

"Instead of remaining an inaccessible myth, it is transformed into an entity for the creation of good.

"It is no longer the effort to conquer the impossible, which endeavor saps our vital forces; it is a contingency which study and common sense strip of all aleatory principles, in order to give a form which becomes more tangible and more definite every day.

"We have nothing more to do with sterile efforts toward gaining an object which fades from view and disappears as one approaches it.

"It is no longer the painful reaching out after an object always growing more indistinct as we draw near it.

"It is through conscious and unremitting effort that we attain the happy expression of successful endeavor and realize the best in life, for slow ascension in winning this best leaves no room for satiety in this noble strife.

"We must pity those who live for an illusion as well as those whose imagination has not known how to create an ideal, whose beauty illumines their efforts.

"It is the triumph of common sense to accomplish this transformation and to banish empty reveries, replacing them by creating a desire for the best, which each one can satisfy--without destroying it.

"The day when this purpose is accomplished, illusion, definitely conquered, will cease to haunt the mind of those whom common sense has illumined; vagaries will make place for reason and terrible disillusion will follow its chief (whose qualities never rise above mediocrity) into his retreat, and allow the flower of hope to blossom in the souls already filled with peace--that quality which is born of reason and common sense."