avoid the spatter
of mud, through horror of the stains which result from it.

Those who do not have this apprehension flounder about, cover themselves
with mud, sink in it and finally are swallowed up.

Yoritomo again takes up the defense of common sense, with reference
to the arts.

"Can one imagine," he says, "a painter conceiving a picture and grouping
his figures in such a way as to violate the rules of common sense?

"We should be doomed, if this were true, to see men as tall as oak-trees
and houses resembling children's toy constructions, placed without
reference to equilibrium among green or pink animals, whose legs had
queer shapes.

"Madmen represent nature thus, which seems to them outlined in
strange forms.

"But people of common sense reproduce things just as sound judgment
conceives of them; if they throw around them at times the halo of beauty
which seems exaggerated, let us not decry them.

"Beauty exists everywhere; it dwells in the most humble objects, makes
all around us resplendent and, if we refuse to see it, we are blinded by
an unjust prejudice, or our minds are not open to the faculty of
contemplation.

"It is revealed above all to those who cultivate common sense and reject
the sophistries of untruth that they may surround themselves with truth.

"Such people scorn trivial casualties; they adopt an immutable
rule, reasoning, which permits them to deduce, to judge, and
afterward to produce.

"All beautiful creations are derived from this source.

"The most admirable inventions would never have been known if common
sense had not helped them to be produced, strengthening those who
conceived them by the support of logic, which demonstrated to them the
truth of their presumptions.

"Authority follows, based on the experience which, by maintaining the
effect of judgment, has armed them with the strength of the mind, the
true glory of peaceful conquerors."

Would one not say that the Shogun, in writing these lines, foresaw the
magnificent efforts which we are witnessing each day and that from the
depths of time he caught a glimpse of these brave conquerors of the
air and of space, whose great deeds, seeming at times the result of a
crazy temerity, are in reality only homage rendered to common sense,
which has permitted them to calculate the value of their initiative
without mistake?

And one can not be denied the pleasure of entering once more into close
communion of thought with the