Common Sense, How To Exercise It | Page 8

"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."

LESSON