ce on the top of a
hill something that bears a faint resemblance to a large motionless
body with revolving arms. So far you do not know what it is, but you
begin to search amongst your IDEAS--that is to say, in the present
instance, amongst the recollections at your disposal--for that
recollection which will best fit in with what you see. Almost
immediately the image of a windmill comes into your mind: the object
before you is a windmill. No matter if, before leaving the house, you
have just been reading fairy-tales telling of giants with enormous
arms; for although common sense consists mainly in being able to
remember, it consists even more in being able to forget. Common sense
represents the endeavour of a mind continually adapting itself anew and
changing ideas when it changes objects. It is the mobility of the
intelligence conforming exactly to the mobility of things. It is the
moving continuity of our attention to life. But now, let us take Don
Quixote setting out for the wars. The romances he has been reading all
tell of knights encountering, on the way, giant adversaries. He
therefore must needs encounter a giant. This idea of a giant is a
privileged recollection which has taken its abode in his mind and lies
there in wait, motionless, watching for an opportunity to sally forth
and become embodied in a thing. It IS BENT on entering the material
world, and so the very first object he sees bearing the faintest
resemblance to a giant is invested with the form of one. Thus Don
Quixote sees giants where we see windmills. This is comical; it is also
absurd. But is it a mere absurdity,--an absurdity of an indefinite kind?

It is a very special inversion of common sense. It consists in seeking
to mould things on an idea of one's own, instead of moulding one's
ideas on things,--in seeing before us what we are thinking of, instead
of thinking of what we see. Good sense would have us leave all our
memories in their proper rank and file; then the appropriate memory
will every time answer the summons of the situation of the moment and
serve only to interpret it. But in Don Quixote, on the contrary, there
is one group of memories in command of all the rest and dominating the
character itself: thus it is reality that now has to bow to
imagination, its only function being to supply fancy with a body. Once
the illusion has been created, Don Quixote develops it logically enough
in all its consequences; he proceeds with the certai