Common Sense, How To Exercise It | Page 6

absolutely indispensable for us to poison ourselves in order to
know that such and such a plant is harmful and that another contains
the healing substance which destroys the effects of the poison?
"We may all possess wisdom if we are willing to be persuaded that the
experience of others is as useful as our own."
The events which multiply about us, Yoritomo says, ought to be, for
each master, an opportunity for awakening in the soul of his disciples a
perfect reasoning power, starting from the inception of the premises to
arrive at the conclusions of all arguments.
From the repetition of events, from their correlation, from their
equivalence, from their parallelism, knowledge will be derived and will
be productive of good results, in proportion as egotistical sentiment is
eliminated from them; and slowly, with the wisdom acquired by
experience, common sense will manifest itself tranquil and redoubtable,
working always for the accomplishment of good as does everything
which is the emblem of strength and peace.

LESSON II
THE FIGHT AGAINST ILLUSION
Common Sense such as we have just described it, according to
Yoritomo, is the absolute antithesis of dreamy imagination, it is the
sworn enemy of illusion, against which it struggles from the moment of
contact.
Common sense is solid, illusion is yielding, also illusion never issues
victorious from a combat with it; during a struggle illusion endeavors
vainly to display its subterfuges and cunning; illusions disappear one
by one, crusht by the powerful arms of their terrible
adversary--common sense.
"The worship of illusion," says Yoritomo, "presents certain dangers to
the integrity of judgment, which, under such influence, falsifies the
comparative faculty, and sways decision to the side of neutrality.
"This kind of mental half-sleep is extremely detrimental to
manifestations of reason, because this torpor excludes it from
imaginary conceptions.

"Little by little the lethargy caused by this intellectual paralysis
produces the effect of fluidic contagion over all our faculties.
"Energy, which ought to be the principle factor in our resolutions,
becomes feeble and powerless at the point where we no longer care to
feel its influence.
"The sentiment of effort exists no longer, since we are pleased to
resolve all difficulties without it.
"In this inconstant state of mind, common sense, after wandering a
moment withdraws itself, and we find that we are delivered over to all
the perils of imagination.
"Nothing that we see thus confusedly is found on the plane which
belongs to common sense; the ideas, associated by a capricious tie,
bind and unbind themselves, without imposing the necessity of a
solution.
"The man who allows himself to be influenced by vague dreams," adds
the Shogun, "must, if he does not react powerfully, bid farewell to
common sense and reason; for he will experience so great a charm in
forgetting, even for one moment, the reality of life, that he will seek to
prolong this blest moment.
"He will renounce logic, whose conclusions are, at times, opposed to
his desires, and he will plunge himself into that false delight of
awakened dreams, or, as some say, day-dreams.
"Those who defend this artificial conception of happiness, like to
compare people of common sense to heavy infantry soldiers, who
march along through stony roads, while they depict themselves as
pleasant bird-fanciers, giving flight to the fantastic bearers of wings.
"But they do not take into account the fact that the birds, for whom they
open the cage, fly away without the intention of returning, leaving them
thus deceived and deprived of the birds, while the rough infantry
soldiers, after many hardships, reach the desired end which they had
proposed to attain, thus realizing the joys of conquest.
"There they find the rest and security, which the possessors of fugitive
birds will never know.
"Those who cultivate common sense will always ignore the collapses
which follow the disappearance of illusions.
"How many men have suffered thus uselessly!
"And what is more stupid than a sorrow, voluntarily imposed, when it

can not be productive of any good?
"Men can not be too strongly warned against the tendency of
embellishing everything that concerns the heart-life, and this is the
inclination of most people.
"The causes of this propensity are many and the need for that which
astounds is not the only cause to be mentioned.
"Indolence is never a stranger to illusion.
"It is so delightful to foresee a solution which conforms to our desires!
"For certain natures, stained with moral atrophy, it is far sweeter to
hope for that which will be produced without pain.
"One begins by accelerating this achievement, so earnestly desired, by
using all the will-power, and one becomes accustomed progressively to
regard desires as a reality, and, aided by indolence, man discounts in
advance an easy success.
"False enthusiasm, or rather enthusiasm without deliberate reflection,